XXXII, No. 1
PUBLISHED BY
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The Theosophical Quarterly
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CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXII, NO. I
July, 1934
NOTES AND COMMENTS page
FRAGMENTS . 5
=^ovpr.:;.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME . ®4
T.S. ACTIVITIES: Convention’report- 'ifSt'J . ..
REPRINT; H.P.B.’s Message to the Convent 4^
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.. .
. 95
AC C sepl^nw s. .. tk. P<« osic. .t N«, V,... N. V. lE.
Copyright, 1934. by The Theosophical Society
The
Theosophical Quarterly
VOLUME XXXII
July, 1934 —April, 1935
PUBLISHED BY
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
NEW YORK
o
The Theosophical Quarterly
Subscription price, $2.00 per annum; single copies, 50 cents.
Published by The Theosophical Society
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July; October; January; April
Address all communications to P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York
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THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York hy II. P. Blavatsky,
W. Q. Judge and others, in 1875,
We have no connection whatsoever with any other organization
calling itself TheosophicaU formerly headed by Mrs, BesanU nor\^^
with similar bodies, the purposes and methods of which are wholly
foreign to our own.
Editors, The Theosophical Quarterly.
JULY, 1934
The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion or declaration
in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless contained in an official document.
Modern Superstition
4 CCORDING to Webster, superstition is “an excessive reverence for, or
fear of, that which is unknown or mysterious”. Superstitious beliefs are
X A. “irrational”; that is to say, they are based upon incorrect observation and
insufficient experience, or they are products of illogical reasoning. The mediaeval
zoologist was superstitious, when he affirmed, without sufficient evidence, that
bear cubs are bom as chunks of meat which the mother bear licks into shape.
The guest in a haunted house is superstitious when he is too easily convinced
that a curtain fluttering in the wind is a ghost.
Modem science, with its experimental approach to physical tmth, has delivered
mankind from a multitude of baseless fancies and fears. The zoologist of to-day
is careful to observe the habits of bears before he describes them. When strange
things happen in a haunted house, the guiding principle of the scientific investi¬
gator is very properly to seek a normal or commonplace explanation before he
considers seriously the “ghost-hypothesis”. The man of the Twentieth Century
has a comfortable sense of superiority because he no longer supposes that lakes
and forests harbour undines and dragons. He is even a little ashamed of his
interest in contemporary “sea-serpents”.
A comfortable sense of superiority should be regarded as a dang||fcgnal.
It is tme that modem man has been freed from many superstitions wTOh were
ridiculous or horrible or degrading. But also he has cast aside many beliefs
verified by centuries of experience; and at the same time he has taken into his
mind other beliefs as confused and irrational as any of the mental phantoms
which he has ejected. The modem world is no less superstitious than the medi-
seval. It has merely adopted a different set of superstitions.
In particular, modem man is afflicted by an excessive reverence for and fear of
“science”. He seldom dares to question any statement delivered ex cathedra
by a scientist. The advancement of knowledge since the Renaissance has
dazzled him. He does not doubt that the methods of observation and experiment
5
6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
which have revealed and exploited so many secrets of physical Nature, can solve
any problem proposed by the human mind. This is a serious delusion. Scien¬
tists themselves do not often realize the limitations which their methods impose
upon them. Science is fundamentally concerned with the measurement and
analysis of objective, material things. Within its chosen sphere, it speaks with
authority; but outside this, it has no authority whatsoever. The biologist, for
instance, has gathered a wealth of infonnation concerning the physical processes
co-ordinated with organic life; but he knows nothing about this life itself, for
he cannot measiu-e or analyze it. If he confessed his ignorance and helplessness,
no one would blame him; but he prefers a less humiliating expedient. He pre¬
tends that “life” is nothing but a word which defines certain modes of physical
behaviour; that, like colour and odour, life is, in fact, nothing but a phenomenon
of matter, a by-product of certain chemical combinations.
This is, of course, undiluted superstition. It is irrational to attribute “un¬
known and mysterious” qualities to a substance, the attributes of which have
already been specifically defined. “Matter” has mass and extension; it occupies
space. It is atomic or corpuscular, and its particles are in constant motion.
That is practically all that can be said about “pure matter”. It is from this
abstraction that scientific materialists imagine all the properties of life to proceed,
although the most elementary logic must demonstrate that such a process is
unintelligible. The utmost which one can assume is that matter and life are
always found in association; but this is not materialism. As a matter of fact,
the properties of “pure matter” do not even explain electricity or radiation or
the behaviour of the chemical atom itself.
Nevertheless, the superstitious veneration for matter as the source of life
persists, not only among the amateurs of popular science, but among the pro¬
fessionals who ought to know better. One cannot hold such a belief and retain
any faith in a spiritual world or in the soul. That is why almost any sort of
religion which recognizes some mode of conscious existence other than that of
the physical body, is preferable to “science-worship”. The most infantile belief
in unseen intelligences is, indeed, truer to Nature than the creed which admits
no possibility of life or consciousness apart from protoplasm. The dragons of
ancient fancy at least correspond to invisible realities; but the unseen “crea¬
tures” of science—quanta, electrons, atoms, molecules, genes, and so on—
correspond, in the last analysis, only to figments in the minds of professors.
They are necessarily unreal, non-existent, since they are represented as inani¬
mate, lifeless, devoid of any conscious principle or purpose. They are names,
not things, nomina non res.
Anthropocentric Astronomy
Materialistic superstition has curiously affected the development of astronom¬
ical theory. There has been a revival of anthropocentrism. Man is resuming
his old, familiar pose in the centre of the cosmic stage. There is an increasing
tendency among astronomers to take the earth, the human race, and them¬
selves, in particular, much too seriously. Many of them seem to be convinced
NOTES AND COMMENTS
7
that, in all probability, the earth is the only place in the universe where life and
intelligence exist, for they cannot conceive of protoplasm produced under any
conditions except those which accidentally happen to prevail on this planet.
Such a notion is actually more anthropocentric than the Ptolemaic system which
arbitrarily postulated that the earth is the central body of the solar system,
but did not deny the possibility of life elsewhere. On the contrary, many
astronomers of antiquity believed that the heavenly bodies themselves were
living beings, daimons or gods. The universe which Dante contemplated may
appear small, by contrast with the “meta-galaxy” of modem astronomers, but
it was alive at every point; it was infinitely rich in divine possibilities.
The brain-mind, the lower Manas, is incapable of sustained meditation upon
any vast conception; sooner or later, its native arrogance and self-concern will
assert themselves. The cosmic vistas, opened up by Copernicus and Galileo,
have not strengthened man’s sense of the infinite mystery that surrounds him,
as they might have done. If one may judge by the tone of their published state¬
ments, most astronomers to-day appear to have convinced themselves that
there is no mystery, infinite or finite, which their brains cannot solve. The
simple-minded might infer that we really know the nature and origin of cosmic
space and its contents.
The fashionable theory at present is that of the “expanding universe”. We
quote the following from The New York Times of April 24, 1934:
The physical universe, according to the latest cosmological calculations based on
astronomical observation, is a finite sphere 6,000,000,000 light-years in diameter. It is
composed of 500,000,000,000,000 nebula?, each stellar unit being 80,000,000 times as
bright as the sun and about 800,000,000 times as massive. These and other new dimen¬
sions of space and its content were presented before scientists attending the annual
meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, by Dr. Edwin Hubble of Mount Wilson
Observatory, who is said to have “seen and probed more of the universe than any other
person”.
Nebulic are now observed, Dr. Hubble stated, at distances as great as 300,000,000 to
450,000,000 light-years and their speed of recession corresponds to velocities of 30,000
to 40,000 miles a second. Observations so far show that the greater the distance of the
nebulae, the greater is the speed with which they are receding. The speed has been
found to increase at a definite rate, which is about 100 miles a second for ei^ million
light-years of distance. As the latest figures show the physical universe to sttmm 6,000,-
000,000 light-years in diameter, the nebulae at the outer rim of the “cosmic BliDble” are
rushing away from the earth and from one another at the speed of the velocity of light,
186,000 miles a second. As the speed of light, according to the theory of relativity, is
the maximum possible, and as the uttermost boundary of the physical universe coincides
with a point where the outermost nebulae are travelling at the speed of light, this may be
taken as another corroboration of relativity. Beyond this boundary there is literally
nothing, for space cannot exist without matter, according to relativity, and the latest
cosmogony shows that beyond a point of 6 ,(X>o,cxx),ooo light-years there is no more
matter, not even infinitesimal cosmic dust. . . .
“On the grand scale”, said Dr. Hubble, “we may picture the stellar system [the sys¬
tem our sun belongs to] drifting through the universe as a swarm of bees drifting through
the air. From our position somewhere within the system, we look out through the swarm
of stars, past the borders, into the universe beyond. It is empty for the most part—vast
stretches of empty space. But here and there, at immense intervals, we find other
8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
stellar systems^ comparable with our own. They are so distant that in general we do not
see the individual stars. They appear as faint patches of light and hence are called
nebula?, that is, clouds. The nebula? are great beacons scattered through the depths of
space. We see a few that appear large and bright. These are the nearer nebulae. Then
we find them smaller and fainter in constantly increasing numbers and we know we
are reaching out into space further and even further.” . . . The spectra of nebulae, he
said, e.xhibited a peculiar feature in that the absorption lines were not in their usual
position but were displaced toward the red end of the spectrum, and that the fainter
the nebula, or the further away, the greater was the shift in the direction of the red.
. . . Red shifts are due either to actual motion or to some hitherto unrecognized prin¬
ciple of physics. On this interpretation, the nebul.T are running away from us and the
further away they are the faster they are travelling. . . . The faster they are travelling
the further they have gone.
The present distribution of nebulie can be represented on the assumption that they
were once jammed together in our particular region of space, and at a particular instant
about 2,ooo,ooo,cxx) years ago they started rushing away in all directions at various
velocities.
Sir Arthur Eddington recently expressed the hope that “the next generation
will find something worth preser\ing, something not wholly illusory”, in the
present body of scientific thought. The fact is that when scientists speculate
as recklessly as Dr. Hubble, they are false to the principles of their method.
The whole hypothesis of the “expanding universe” is built upon the tiniest and
most unsubstantial foundation. It has a legitimate place in pure mathematics,
w'hich is concerned, not WMth the actual, but wdth the “ideal” or “possible”. But
as an explanation of the w^orld in w’hich w’e live, it is presumptuous and fabulous.
One does not doubt that astronomers describe correctly what they see; but
they see so little and affirm so much. All their assumptions, indeed, depend
upon two postulates, that the velocity of light is universaUy uniform, and that
no greater velocity than that of 186,000 miles a second is possible. This is the
demonstrated speed of light within the earth’s atmosphere; but as an occultist
has written, “could they measure light above our atmosphere”, they would
discover that the speed of light actually varies according to the medium upon
which it travels. There is a most important factor omitted from the astronomers’
calculations,—the variable nature of space, terrestrial, interplanetary and inter¬
stellar. For example, they make no allow^ance for the possible impeding effect
of meteoric masses and atmospheric tremors upon the direction and rapidity
of the light-rays. One cannot avoid the conclusion that a very large part of
contemporary astronomical speculation is valueless except as an entertaining
mathematical exercise.
A Fragment of Occult Astrono.my
Probably the modem astronomer is con\dnced that he carefully distinguishes
between the things which he knows and the things which he postulates. It is,
however, inconceivable that the stars will convey any real message to him, unless
he turn towards them with a humble and reverent heart. This is not a platitude.
The cosmos is a mystery and must be felt as such, to be known even in the slight
measure in which knowledge is possible for man. It is instructive to compare
NOTES AND COMMENTS
9
the conventional astronomical attitude towards the heavens with the humility
and restraint of the Adepts whose \dews are transmitted by Madame Blavatsky.
Reasoning by analogy, they express their conviction that forms of life and sub¬
stance, in some way corresponding to our own, exist, not only in the stars but in
the interstellar spaces which scientists characterize as “empty”. However,
they claim no knowledge which they have not proved by experience, and they do
not hesitate to affirm that there are definite limitations to the extension of human
knowledge in the cosmic field, limitations which are imposed by the nature and
purpose of the Cycle in which man is now evolving.
We are taught that the highest Dhyan Chohans, or Planetary Spirits (beyond the
cognizance of the law of analogy) are in ignorance of what lies beyond the visible Plan¬
etary Systems, since their essence cannot assimilate itself to that of worlds beyond our
Solar System. When they reach a higher stage of evolution, these other universes will
be open to them; meanwhile they have complete knowledge of all the worlds within the
limits of our Solar System. . . . For—while accepting the old Hermetic axiom, “as above,
so below”—as we may well believe that Nature on Earth displays the most careful econ¬
omy, utilizing every vile and waste thing in her marvellous transformations, and withal
never repeating herself, so we may justly conclude that there is no other Globe in all her
infinite sj^stemS so closely resembling this Earth, that the ordinary powers of man’s
thought would be able to imagine and reproduce its semblance and containment. . . .
But even more. The ordinary man has no experience of any state of consciousness other
than that to which the physical senses link him. Men dream; they sleep the profound
sleep which is too deep for its dreams to impress the physical brain; and in these states
there must still be consciousness. How, then, while these mysteries remain unexplored,
can zve hope to speculate with profit on the nature of Globes which, in the economy of
Nature, must needs belong to states of consciousness other and quite different from any
which man experiences here. . . . [The Adepts] know that almost all the Planetary
Worlds are inhabited, but—even in spirit—they can have access only to those of our
System; and they are also aware how difficult it is, even jor themy to put themselves into
full rapport even with the planes of consciousness within our System, differing as they
do from the states of consciousness possible on this Globe. . . . Such knowledge and
intercourse are possible to them because they have learned how to penetrate to planes
of consciousness which are closed to the perceptions of ordinary men; but wyjthey to
communicate their knowledge, the world would be no wiser, because ine^PIck that
experience of other forms of perception which alone could enable them to grasp what
they might be told {The Secret Doctriney ed. 1893, H, 740741).
From these statements we may draw certain inferences. If the law of analogy
be universally operative, there is literal as well as figurative truth in the Pauline
saying that “one star differeth from another star in glory”. Although in its
profoundest essence the All is One, this Unity is manifested as infinite number.
Nature abhors uniformity at least as much as she abhors a vacuum. This is
true on earth, although politicians and economists deny it. Why is it not
equally true in the heavens? If scientists admitted even the possibility of indi¬
vidual variation among the stars and nebulae, with all that this implies, they
might be more cautious in their invention of “cosmologies”. In any case, it is
rational to suggest that if there be an infinite diversity of states of consciousness
in the Universe, the forms of matter and the modes of motion will vary corre¬
spondingly. Inevitably, however, we can comprehend only that which we are
10
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
capable of experiencing. It has been said that we do not see the real Sun. If
this be true, the real stars are, if possible, even more invisible to our earthly
vision. What, then, do we see? Mere points of light transformed by our atmos¬
phere and s>Tnbolizing existences beyond our ken? Vibrations in the earth’s
“ether”, responding to the myriads of ever-mysterious luminous influences that
reach us from the great deep of Space? We do not know. There is so much
which we can never know while we are mortal and human; but at least we can
have the grace to confess our want of knowledge. In truth, no more than Job
do we understand the ineffable power “which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and the
Pleiades, and the chambers of the south”. If we pretend that we know more,
it is evidence that we do not know as much.
Synthetic Supermen
As Theosophy has always taught, the body and outward estate of man change
their form and mode according to the operation of Karma. The term, Karma, is
so fertile in meaning, so rich in connotations, that any attempt to define it
is apt to be misleading. However, we may conceive it, in one sense, as a mani¬
festation of Kundalini Shakti, “the power 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,
Punarjanman (Re-birth), in the doctrines of the ancient Hindu philosophers”
{The Secret Doctrine, I, 312).
W^’e cannot conceive of any living creature, in which both processes of adjust¬
ment are not active. They are complementary, like inhalation and exhalation,
like the expansion and contraction of the heart. Our minds and characters are
affected, more than some of us like to admit, by our physical environment, in
particular by the chemical changes always taking place within our bodies. No
one questions the fact that drugs and internal secretions can paralyze or unduly
stimulate certain brain-centres, and that any cerebral disorder reacts upon our
personal consciousness, disturbing such balance of forces as may exist on the
psychic plane. It is equally self-evident that thought and emotion affect and
modify the body. The strong man strives to overcome his physical and psychic
disabilities. He refuses to surrender to the tyranny of his body or to the temp¬
tations of his environment. Indeed, it is in accordance with Karma that our
bodily processes, in general, can only trouble our consciousness, in the degree
that, in this life or another, we deliberately endowed them with that power by
self-indulgence of one kind or another. It is both natural and just, for instance,
that dyspepsia should make us gloomy, if the dyspepsia itself be the effect of
years or lives of over-eating.
Theosophy is, however, in complete disaccord with those scientists who assert
that it is possible to create a new and better species of mankind by chemical or
surgical means. Genius is made manifest by individual effort, by the spirit of
man working with the materials provided by Karma or Nature. Every new and
better state of consciousness is an inward creation of imagination and will;
NOTES AND COMMENTS
11
it cannot be induced artificially by any set of outward conditions. Nevertheless,
all races have cherished the delusion that there is some easy way, some short¬
cut”, to wisdom and power. It has been everywhere the pretension of left-hand
magic, that one could accomplish by physical practices that which is in reality
only attainable by the full exercise of the spiritual will. Hatha yoga and the
tantric rituals of India are examples.
It is a disquieting sign of the times, that an obsession of this order is becoming
epidemic in certain scientific circles. One never knows what external forms
a scientific obsession may assume, for men of science have a dangerous habit
of testing their ideas upon animals and graduate students. It is by no means
impossible that someday they will produce, not a race of geniuses but a race of
monsters. An experimenter who kills dogs and then tries to resurrect them,
would scarcely hesitate to “create” a Dracula, if this were possible.
The New York Times (March 31, 1934) reports the following “prophecy” by
Professor Bogert of Columbia University. It was delivered before the closing
session of a meeting of the American Chemical Society at St. Petersburg, Florida.
The coming of the superman and the super-race may not have to wait for the tortuous
and uncertain processes of evolution, taking hundreds of thousands of years, hut may
be brought about within a few generations through organic chemistry. A prophecy to
this effect was made by Professor Marston I. Bogert. Organic chemistry, he said, was
gradually learning the relationship between certain chemicals and their influence on
man’s behaviour and personality. It was also learning more and more about the chem¬
ical constitution of living matter, and [how] to synthesize products, in which it improved
vastly upon nature. 1 he time would come therefore, he said, when the chemist would
be able to make substances that would greatly increase the thinking powers of the brain,
as well as the strength, health, and beauty of the body, without having to wait for the
hit-or-miss methods of evolution, which, from the human point of view, might lead in
the wrong direction. When that time came, he said, synthetic chemicals would not be
used merely for the healing of ills and the correction of nature s errors, but for the posi¬
tive direction of the forces of life by the intelligence of man. With the intelligence
nature endowed him with, he would devise ways to develop greater intelligence by find¬
ing artificial means for utilizing potentialities in his brain-power now lying dormant
because nature had not provided the means for making it work at full capacity. . . .
There was every reason to hope that chemists would eventually be able to produce sub¬
stances that would bring out the latent powers of the known and of the now unknown
areas in the brain. Instead of drugs producing stupor, or bringing to the surface q^i-
ties of cruelty and violence, we would have drugs which would enhance .ilertnefljVid
intelligence, stimulate spiritual qualities, enable the body to utilize all its latent powers
without any after-effects and make it possible for man to attain a greater and keener
esthetic enjoyment of his own life, with great good-will toward the rest of his fellows,
“synthetic supermen” like himself. Significant steps promising definite results in this
direction have been made in the last two years in chemical research laboratories in Eng¬
land, Germany, Switzerland, and in the United States, including Columbia University.
This research had revealed. Professor Bogert reported, that seven substances in nature,
all producing different effects, some essential to life while others were very destructive,
were all derivatives of one and the same substance, a chemical known as phenanthrine.
We are expected to infer that the future happiness and grandeur of the human
race depend upon the exploitation of the chemical possibilities of phenanthrine.
12
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
If we were not more or less hardened to this sort of “scientific” dreaming, its
nonsensical quality would be so apparent that all comment would be unnecessary.
Does anyone seriously suppose that phenanthrine will build for us a new Par¬
thenon, or make all men like Giotto and Dante and Shakespeare?
It requires the divine gift of irony to do justice to the chimaeras of the “scientific
imagination”. That is why we venture to quote a stanza from a satirical poem
published in the New York Sun, April 9, 1934. The verses were inspired by the
following news item: “Mother love is due to manganese in her diet, and its
absence causes it to disappear, says Dr. Elmer V. McCollum of Johns Hopkins
University.”
When a little baby’s crooning
Makes mamma a little sick
And she loves to flog the kiddies
With a barrel stave or stick;
When an infant’s cry of “Mother!”
With her nature disagrees,
Don’t be startled, for it’s nothing
But a need of manganese.
Humanist Religion
It is not astonishing that religious instincts and sentiments are paralyzed
and maimed when they are brought into contact with the prevailing scientific
spirit and are not strong enough to resist its invasion of the mind. Even ma¬
terialists are sometimes concerned when they consider the moral chaos which
they have helped to create. They are forced to admit that religion has been a
great historical social force; and some of them are seriously working to found
a new religion which will be the worship of man and of human powers.
We quote from the New York Times, April 9, 1934.
Dr. John Dewey addressed the First Humanist Society of New York yesterday on
“Emotion and Religion”. “With the decay of the older religions”, he said, “man needs
to-day the stimulating force of intense emotion and will find it only in three things: the
‘cosmic emotion’ of Einstein, the passion for the spread of intelligence, and the passion
for social justice.” Asserting that religions always had exploited the emotions for specific
ends, he continued: “Emotional crises such as birth and death, spring sowing and fall
harvest, the initiation of adolescents, because of the striking character of these events,
have by primitive people been associated with the supernatural. Pains have been taken
to make the ceremonials of religion impressive, so as to call out personal emotion. \
large part of the hold which Christianity and Judaism have on their adherents is due
to the emotional atmosphere which accompanied their early life. Even when these
persons become intellectually skeptical, their emotions frequently keep them within the
fold. But heaven and hell seem very remote to-day. They are fading out because our
emotions find sufficient play in the world around us. As we fix our emotions on the
human, the supernatural fades away.”
The Modernist Sin Against Nature
Dr. Hubble, Professor Bogert and Professor Dewey illustrate, in their re¬
spective fields, the most deep-seated of modem intellectual perversions. Unless
this disease of thought be checked, it will ravage and destroy what we call
NOTES AND COMMENTS
13
modern civilization. It is not enough merely to describe it as materialism; for
ancient materialism, whatever its defects, was not inspired by the “delusions of
grandeur” which animate so many of our activities to-day. The typical ma¬
terialists of the Graeco-Roman world, Epicurus and Lucretius and their followers,
confessed the perfection of Nature. Some of them, like Lucretius, sought a
genuine religious consolation in the prostration of their souls before the spectacle
of her divine beauty and order. If they erred, it was because they despised man
too completely, discerning no future for him save annihilation, conceiving him
as a creature of a day, to whose aspirations Nature was utterly indifferent.
This is not the modernist sin. With inexplicable inconsistency, the con¬
temporary materialist, who believes neither in immortality nor in free-will,
nevertheless assumes that man has both the right and the power to attain
happiness and authority upon earth. He sins against Nature because he professes
to believe that the universe, apart from the human personality, is devoid of pur¬
pose or direction or meaning. In the terminology of our ancestors, he blasphemes
against God.
“You must know and remember one thing”, an Indian Master has written;
“we but follow and servilely copy Nature in her works”. These words point to
the abyss which separates Theosophy from all modernistic speculation. The
Theosophist identifies the hidden life of Nature with the divine life —Deus sive
Naiura. He makes no distinction between Nature, in its real essence, and the
“Heavenly Sophia”, the Wisdom which is the manifestation of the Being of
God. The course and order of events, the te^npo and sequence of evolution on
all planes, have, therefore, a sacred causation and significance. In any case, one
need not be an occultist to realize the dream-like quality of the fancy that the
laws of existence can be amended or repealed by any human legislation. Whether
we approve or not, they are fundamental and irrevocable.
Materialists themselves emphasize the absoluteness of the “laws of mechanics”,
to which motion in the inorganic world so generally conforms; but they fail
utterly to perceive that there are principles no less rigorous which set limits to
the activities of the human personality. The true philosopher seeks to adapt his
purposes to the divine purpose, in so far as this is revealed to him by the phe¬
nomena of Nature, by the circumstances and duties of his life, by the constitution
of the sphere of existence into which he is born. It is the grossest illusion t 3
suppose that we can escape from that sphere before we have learned the lessons
which it has to teach us. The result of every attempt to “improve” Nature
and to correct her “errors” is to fall into still greater confusion and misery.
Gerard d’Houville, referring to the genius of Moli^re, has pointed out that his
plots are almost invariably concerned with a common theme, the folly and dis¬
comfiture of those who “have been unwilling to recognize natural laws, and have
fancied that they could twist these principles to their profit” {Revue des Deux
Mondes, April 15, 1934)-
A humanist religion, as conceived by the modernists, is a sin against Nature.
Its plans for social justice, even when inspired in part by admirable motives,
disregard the manifest differences between human beings, and inevitably imply
14
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
injustice to individuals. Its “passion for the spread of intelligence” takes no
account of the elementary truth that intelligence is the most terrible of curses,
when its growth is artificially and inordinately quickened. When there is no
interference with normal growth, the evolution of the intellect proceeds pari
passu with the evolution of the moral sense. The story of the forbidden fruit
in Genesis is a very profound allegory. As to the “cosmic emotion of Einstein”,
one hesitates to comment, for one does not know what Einstein’s emotions may
be. However, it is legitimate to assume that for the devotee of humanism it is
not the cosmos which moves him to ardour, but the current scientific repre¬
sentation of the cosmos—which is a very different thing.
Protestantism and Materialism
“Humanist religion” is not limited to a “little group of serious thinkers”. It is
actually the creed of millions of nominal Christians attached to one or another of
the Protestant denominations. Many churches are nothing but lecture-halls
where current economic and political problems are discussed. For example, we
read in the New York Times (May 14, 1934), that a New York Methodist minister
delivered a violent attack from the pulpit upon the public utilities corporations.
On the same Sunday, in the old Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, a pastor
from Los Angeles extolled the “wonders of science”, suggesting with easy opti¬
mism that “God is whispering in the radio, the airplane and the submarine”,
and arguing—by what logical process we cannot imagine—that these discoveries
make it easier to believe in immortality. Another preacher, a Methodist,
appealed to the “mothers of the world” to become “anti-war conscious”. Still
another, a Presbyterian, denounced the munitions manufacturers. “If their
profits were cancelled”, he said, “we should have crossed in one step half the
distance to a warless world.” Incidentally, according to this view of history,
there would have been no Caesar, no Attila, no Genghis Khan, if it had not been
for the munitions manufacturers.
These pronouncements are thoroughly typical. Both the clergy and the laity
have surrendered to the spirit of modernism. As their activities prove, few of
them have any living faith in God or Nature. Protestantism, with some striking
exceptions, has become one of the subversive influences in the modem state,—
an ally, a despised ally, of the communists and socialists, and an agency for the
dissemination of unnatural doctrines—pacifism, internationalism, class warfare
and the “redistribution of wealth”, birth-control, etc., etc. Doubtless, the
ideal of “ministers of the Gospel”, as they define it to themselves, is the
service of mankind; but they conceive philanthropy and humanitarianism
almost wholly in material terms. They seem to be incapable of imagining a state
of “social justice” which is not brought into being by legislation and the advance¬
ment of physical science. This is the worst form of materialism, and in addition
it is treason to the Master whom they pretend to serve. They are guilty of hy¬
pocrisy, Pharisaism and priestcraft. There is no entity more contemptible than
the priest who employs the symbols and rites of religion to conceal his spiritual
emptiness and his denial of the divinity in Nature and in man.
FRAGMENTS
H e called, and I answered: Master, here am 1 .
And he said: Where hast thou been?
And I answered: All night long I have been seeking the amaranths
growing beside the waters of Paradise.
They are the flowers of death, he said; no need to seek them. When the hour
comes they will lie upon thy breast. There are better things to do.
So I sought for better things to do, and I found them not, though I sought
diligently.
Again he called, and I answered: Master, here am I.
And he said: Where hast thou been?
And I answered: Seeking for an object for my search,—through all the sunlit
day I have sought and found nothing. There were thistles by the wayside and
tall weeds—I would have none of them; the gentle grass was there, and grain
waving in the fields across the hedges.
The sun was hot, the Master said, the world was blackened by it. Leave the
highway for the shade: seek, resting there.
And while I rested I slept, and in my dreams I saw the angels passing up and
down the mystic ladder that goes from earth to heaven, and I heard their voices
singing.
It seemed a long time that I slept, and when I wakened it was to hear the
Master calling; and I answered: Master, here am I.
And he said: Where hast thou been?
And I answered: Watching the angels that passed from earth to heaven and
back, and listening to their singing.
He smiled at that. And thou? he said.
I watched, I said.
There are better things to do, he answered; do thou as the angels.
Cav^.
15
THE DIVINITY OF THE KING
IN ANCIENT EGYPT
E veryone knows what Herodotus wrote of the Egyptians—that they
were the most truly religious people living in the world, and when to this
we add for ourselves, as a well recognized historical fact, that in no
civilization of the remote past was authority so centralized and so absolute as in
Egypt, there is one unavoidable conclusion: in the estimation of the ancient
Egyptians, power was not something in which chance played a conspicuous part;
it was a divine gift. Again add to this the fact that the King was looked upon
literally as of divine origin, and we see why this power was not even, perhaps,
a gift, but rather was it a literal and unqualified inheritance from the gods. We
also see why the focus of this power, its storehouse as it were, was the Throne,
which meant, of course, the Pharaoh who sat upon the Throne, for in him was
concentrated the “Sacred Force” which came down from above; he was its
sole direct recipient; through him it streamed in unveiled splendour out over
the land and the people under him, sustaining and nourishing both.
Th^ ancestry of the Pharaoh stretched far back into the darkest night of
time. According to Manetho, Egypt, long anterior to recorded history, had
been ruled first by three dynasties of gods, then by four dynasties of demi-gods,
and thus we find an upper triad and a lower quaternary as the ground-plan of
all Egypt’s later historical greatness. Ra, the first King of Egypt—the “solitary
Demiurge” as he has been called—whose rule preceded that of Osiris by many
thousands of years, is said to have had a reign which lasted for ninety centuries,
as we reckon time. Ra struck the key-note; he laid the spiritual foundation;
Osiris and Horus completed the structure; they filled in the mould around which
all the later glory was built. The gods thus exercised a direct and holy influence
upon mankind, until man became civilized. This slow work of cultivation fell
primarily to the lot of the three divine dynasties, each successively contributing
its share; then to the semi-divine group, after which, the future welfare of the
kingdom being well established, “the gods returned to heaven”.
According to tradition, the immediate successors of the gods and the demi¬
gods were not, however, completely mortal (involution like evolution moves
with fine gradations), but were somewhat shadowy, formless beings, designated
by Manetho as “manes”, lesser gods—the outermost link between spirit and
matter. They were like the living rungs of a ladder—a ladder down which the
celestial Force was transmitted to the King, and up which the human “Occupiers
of the Throne” could ascend for spiritual renewal; they formed a bridge between
the human and the divine, between heaven and earth. So the first human King
followed directly after the last of the “manes” who, when in the act of with¬
drawing, passed on the crown to his heir, but the change from divine to human
i6
THE DIVINITY OF THE KING IN ANCIENT EGYPT
17
“did not cause any interruption in the royal lineage”. Therefore we see how
direct was the inheritance, for the Shemsu-Hor (“Servants of Homs”) as those
first Kings of the human dynasties called themselves, carried on the god-imparted
tradition of royalty; and from the time of Menes, the first King of the official
lists, the Egyptians declared that they had an unbroken line of Pharaohs straight
through to the end, even down to the Ptolemies and the Caesars. Divine Right
was an established fact: spiritual first, then physical—an invariable law of life
in any outpouring toward manifestation. In the earliest days, long before
Egypt had reached the zenith of her magnificent civilization (the civilization of
which we have historical records), this basic principle of the divine origin of
authority had become a sacred tradition, and all the later, internal conflicts
which, at last, after thousands of years, resulted in Egypt’s downfall and outer
dissolution, were waged for just that reason, to maintain just that principle,
to keep unsullied—despite all counter and subversive tendencies that gift
which had descended straight from the gods themselves, from Ra himself. So
convinced were the Egyptians that only “The Chosen One” could sit upon the
throne of Ra that, if the heir apparent died and a younger brother became Pha¬
raoh, it was believed to be the^divine will and not a chance mishap which had
regulated the succession. Thus, for instance, Amenhotep I had not been the
direct heir of Ahmes I; it was the death of an elder brother, a result of “the
intervention of the gods”, which made him so. Rameses II was not, originally,
the heir of his father Seti I, yet, in his own incomparably magnificent and
sweeping way, he always maintained that he himself was “King in the Egg ’
and that ended the matter! Incidentally, this is a phrase which has been vari¬
ously interpreted, and it is one about which several interesting speculations
might be made.
It has often been said thait the history of Egypt is the history of her religion;
that the life of the Egyptian people was inseparable from their religious insti¬
tutions; that as the King lived in the gods and the gods in him, so was he a
reservoir of creative energy and force, for in the eyes of the Egyptians, their
King was Ra incarnate. In the Turin Papyrus especially (though it is also stated
elsewhere), we get a clear-cut assurance that all the political institutions of
Egypt had been established at the time of the divine dynasties, and had de¬
scended straight from them. Therefore, the power of the Pharaoh (a divine
power), worked in and through these institutions, imparting life and inex¬
haustible vitality to them. There is a curious fact which invariably strikes and
often puzzles the student of Egypt—though it does not puzzle the student of
Theosophy—the fact that, as far back as we can go, the Egyptian civilization
is found to be not only a fully formed but a mature organism; not something in
the making, but something already accomplished. The very same religious
beliefs, the very same religious rites, without fundamental change, are not
merely dimly discernible but are distinctly and openly traceable from what we
call primitive times to the end of the Graeco-Roman Period. And underlying
them all, the firm foundation upon which they all rest, is to be found the divine
institution of Kingship, the unshakable belief in the divinity of the King himself.
i8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Thus, as a member of the heavenly family—an integral part of it—the Pharaoh
of Egypt was distinguished from all other beings who lived on earth; he was
in a class entirely by himself; he represented and synthesized all life within his
kingdom; and in the early days this was so literally true that the individual was
an individual only when considered within the kingly*power and influence;
outside of these he had no existence at all,—a belief easily understood when we
think of the relation between a Master and his ch^las.
Occupying this unique position, the Pharaoh naturally assumed all the offices
of greatest responsibility in the State. He was High Priest throughout the Two
Lands, although he himself was worshipped as a god in all the temples; it was
he who made the offerings, for even though he could not, of course, always be
present in person, those who officiated were acting literally for him, enabled so
to act only because sustained by his occult power; cut them off from that source
of life, and they perished forthwith. The invariable formula which we find in
the records is, “A royal offering of such and such things”, and so forth. He was
Grand Vizier, even though another might be delegated to represent him; he
was Chief of all the Armies, and Supreme Judge between the guilty and the
innocent; in fact, there was nothing in which the royal hand was not both felt and
seen and accepted. His authority was absolute.
Of all the different channels through which this divine power was transmitted,
and also preserved (transmitted to the priesthood, preserved in the divine person
of the King himself), perhaps one of the most interesting is to be found in the
royal titles, their origins and significance, together with the royal names which
accompanied them. To many of us it comes with something of a surprise when
we learn that the Pharaohs of Egypt had five different and distinct royal titles
(we cannot help wondering if there were not in reality seven, two of which were
and still are unknown), with five or more different names attached, and that
each name as well as the title to which it belonged, implied and actually em¬
bodied a special power or set of powers. This made of every King who sat upon
the Golden Throne of Egypt a very complicated individual indeed, a being con¬
nected by invisible lines of force with every portion of the universe both seen
and unseen. We who are laymen, read of Thothmes or of Rameses, for instance,
and, providing we know which Thothmes or which Rameses is in question
(whether the first, second or third), we are quite sure that we shall recognize
the same Pharaoh again when we read about him, because we think that a name
does not change. What is our discomfiture, however, when we find that names
do change, or rather that he who was so familiar to us under the guise of Thothmes
on one occasion, appears to be a complete stranger when we meet him as Setep-
en-Ra, or as Ka-Nekht-Kha-em-Uast, or as something else on another occasion.
Rameses II had thirty-three names under the head of only one of his five royal
titles, and by any one of these thirty-three names of that single sign of
royalty, must we learn to identify him when threading our way carefully through
the ancient records. What is more important—through the instrumentality
of any one of these, the Pharaoh could set in motion a current of force by the
proper intonation of that name. This was a power in his hands, but it might
THE DIVINITY OF THE KING IN ANCIENT EGYPT
19
also be a power in the hands of an enemy, should that enemy chance upon the
secret intonation; and this fact may partly account for the many names assumed
by most of the Pharaohs, especially the later ones, for it was in later times, when
the priesthood of Amen was in the ascendency, and black magic was a growing
evil which had to be reckoned with, that many extra precautions and protections
became necessary. It is well known what deep importance the people of ancient
times attached to a name; indeed, we might almost say that, with them, a
human being had no separate life as distinct from other human beings, until
the day when he received his name. For not only did his name tell what he was,
but, in the case of royalty, it often had a life of its own. Of Narmer, one of the
proto-dynastic Kings, we learn that, on the battlefield, his name sprang suddenly
into action, brandishing a heavy mace which was held firmly in both hands, and
to such good purpose that the enemy was completely overpowered. Menes,
otherwise known as Aha (the Warrior), was always preceded into battle by his
name—not figuratively, but actually—with the consequence that the enemy fled
in dismay. (The student of Theosophy would no doubt recognize in this the
mysterious power which produces “perceptible, phenomenal results by its own
inherent energy”—Kriyasalcli). Little wonder, therefore, that the choice of
royal names and titles entailed a long chain of consequences!
It is now many years since Egyptologists first recognized certain facts re¬
garding the royal titles. They recognized, for instance, that the protocol of the
Pharaoh of Egypt (at least from the twelfth dynasty onwards), not only con¬
tained the five names and special titles we have spoken of, but also that these
titles with their names were invariably arranged in a fixed order. It was also
long ago recognized that of these five, four were divisible into Horns and Ra
names, two for Horns, two for Ra, while the remaining name and title was
especially appropriated by the Crown. The solar or Ra names, always at the
end of this formal and unchanging list, were, of course, written within the
cartouche, symbol of the universe over which the Pharaoh reigned; the Horns
names, one of which was invariably written first, each had another distinctive
sign. Thus, in full, the normal, royal title (or succession of titles), without the
individual names, read as follows: i. The Horns or Ka title, which was said to
belong to the Pharaoh only “beyond life”, or after his “death”. 2. Lord of the
Two Crowns. 3. The Golden Horus. 4. King of Upper and Lower Egypt—
this was the Coronation Name, and was enclosed in the first cartouche. 5. Son
of Ra—the name received at birth, and to be found within the second cartouche.
It would be impossible to do more than touch on the many far-reaching potencies
which these titles, with their accompanying names, indicated—^for each stood
Yor some spiritual quality—but it will at once be seen that the chronology of the
King’s life was, to all appearances at least, in the inverse order of his titles. Read¬
ing backwards, therefore: as Son of Ra, the last title of the protocol, he was
bom to inherit the throne of his ancestors, and, u])on ascending the throne,
he assumed the next to the last title—King of Upper and Lower Egypt. The
Golden Horus title is partly solar in that the god Horus himself, represented
by the royal Falcon, was the direct spiritual descendent of Ra, and thus the
20
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Pharaoh also was of the golden substance of Ra, and the golden essence of Ra
ran in his veins. To the Egyptians, this was not a metaphysical statement, but
a statement of spiritual fact. As Lord of the Two Crowns—the red and the white
crowns blended into one—he was Lord of the two worlds, the inner and the
outer, and the Crown was presided over by two protective goddesses. The King
was himself the Double Crown incarnate; his was a universal overlordship.
Up to this point, the titles and names are more or less obvious, if one may use
such a word for anything whatever which is connected with ancient Egypt;
it is with the Ka-name (the first Horns title and the first on the list), that we
come upon a mystery the true significance of which has baffled Egyptologists
from the beginning, and about which hardly two will agree on all points. It
remains, therefore, by far the most interesting to students of Theosophy, because,
behind the apparent explanation, there lies a whole region of possibilities.
As we have already noted, the farther back we can get into the so-called primi¬
tive times of ancient Egypt, the more certain are we to come upon her religious
beliefs in their original purity, unobscured by later theologizing. Also we have
to remember that the Egyptians were not the “literal” people which, as a rule,
Egyptologists have considered them; they did not put down, in black and white,
all that they thought and believed. Back of what they wrote, one always has
to search for what they really meant, what they were tr}dng to imply. There
was a veil deliberately drawn over that which was put in “writing”, whether
this was graven on stone or in the script of the papyri; all that portion which
was esoteric was hidden under allegory—but the truth was there for those who
could read. Hence it is that, of the true religion of the ancient Egyptians, we
recognize or understand only so much as we ourselves know and understand of
the universal Mystery Teaching.
The Ka-name was always \\Titten within a device which, for many years,
remained a subject of open dispute among Egyptologists. From its form and
general arrangement of line, it was at first thought to represent a royal standard,
a banner with a deep fringe along the lower edge, and the royal name was there¬
fore called interchangeably and rather loosely, either the “Ka-name” or the
“banner-name” of the King. In the far-off days of earliest Egypt, when the
records were so few that it has often been difficult for us to distinguish between
one King and another, a certain fact was, nevertheless, recognizable: that the
Pharaoh invariably had two distinct names, his birth name and his Ka-name
(later, as we have seen, he had more—at least more names were revealed), but
that he alone, of all his entourage —his nobles, his officials, his household in gen¬
eral—had the latter, and that these two names expressed the Pharaoh’s dual
nature: his body and his “soul”; they also represented the two worlds (inner
and outer), ifi which he lived. Originally, therefore, it was only the King who
had a Ka; not even the royal family—the King’s brothers and sisters—had Kas
of their own, none at least which had developed to the extent where a special
name would be appropriate. This meant, of course, that he who sat upon the
Throne was placed there because he had attained to a spiritual consciousness,
or to a separate spiritual life, not yet attained by others—it was this inner
THE DIVINITY OF THE KING IN ANCIENT EGYPT
21
status which, in reality, constituted his sovereignty. In later times, when
Egypt had begun to suffer from the creeping shadow of democratic ideas, every¬
one was thought to have a Ka—even objects had Kas. Nevertheless, a distinc¬
tion in the case of royalty was always kept, for the King’s was “the living Ka ;
he alone shared in the body and soul of his celestial ancestors: his body, repre¬
sented by his birth name, was the substance of Ra; his “soul”, represented by
his Ka-name, was “a Homs, detached from the supreme Homs”.
This is not the place to enter, in any detail, upon the vexed question of the
Ka, or of what the Ka really was in the secret Teaching of ancient Egypt. That
is a subject in itself, and a very wide and involved subject at that. There is
probably no other single point in the whole of Egyptology which has caused
more animated discussion. The Ka has been described as almost everything
from “a vampire which sucks the blood of its relatives”, to “the activities of
sense and perception”—both ideas, as a matter of fact, being capable of an
occult interpretation. But granting that the Ka of the King was some spiritual
part of him (and the upraised arms of aspiration—the hieroglyphic sign for the
word “Ka”—surely calls for a distinctly mystical rendering), granting that it
represented some personified spiritual status reached by no one else to the
same exalted degree, what were the Ka’s functions in so far as we may discover
them from the exoteric records? Why was the Ka given a name of its own.'"
What was the strange device which remained, from the beginning to the end,
the one invariably used as a frame, a setting, one might say, for the Ka-name
whenever that name was written? And above all, why did the Ka-title belong
to the Pharaoh only “beyond life”, only after his “death” ? Was this figurative,
or was it literal as most Egyptologists would have us believe?
The device upon, or within which the Ka-name was always written was an
upright oblong in form, and was surmounted by the royal Falcon, symbol of
Horus, he who soars aloft in the heavens—the “sky-goer”. It was in a vacant
space in the upper part of the oblong (a space which very likely represented the
heavens themselves), that the Ka-name was written, and below, a number of
perpendicular lines were invariably present, but what those lines were intended
to represent was a riddle which, for many years, remained unsolved—the notion
that the oblong itself was a banner, and that the lines below were intended to
indicate (as already noted), a long fringe, not being entirely convincing.
Egyptian name for this device was “Serekh”, and the meaning of that word*^
“That which makes known”. But what was it that was made known? No one
could answer with any degree of certainty. At last, after many years of investi¬
gation, and as a result of comparing later and more detailed drawings of this
device, with those that were earlier and less decipherable, it was discovered that
the perpendicular lines which had been thought to represent fringe, in reality
represented the upright lines of a closed doorway, flanked by recessed panelling
—exactly the type of door found in the wall, opposite the entrance of early
Egyptian tombs. To Maspero and to Petrie belongs the credit for this decipher¬
ment, though neither ever got beyond a very general interpretation. But what
was the meaning of that small and narrow doorway? What were the ancient
22
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Egyptians trying to make us understand of its true significance in the Mystery
Teaching? It could hardly have been so conspicuously and so invariably pres¬
ent, had it been intended merely to symbolize the ancient doctrine of reincar¬
nation—the passing in and out of life through the doorway of the tomb; though
in its more exoteric form it may have indicated that as well. Such an explanation,
however, would be too obvious, and the Egyptians of old were never obvious. Its
continued presence seems to make evident the fact that it signified something
which was regarded as of the utmost importance, but it is by analogy only that
we are likely to discover why that symbol persisted, from the earliest to the latest
times, as a necessary part of “tomb equipment”.
In the most representative Egyptian tombs, there was always an inner and
an outer chamber, with that small doorway between them, and a study of the
ritual of the dead (in which so many lost secrets are interred), throws much
light on its significance; for it shows us that this doorway was made expressly
for the Ka of the “deceased” when passing from the outer “chamber of offerings”
to the “inner chamber”. We know that the chamber of “burial” was far below,
underground, and that it was up the straight, ascending shaft, connecting it with
the chamber of “offerings”, that the Ka of the “deceased” could mount, partake
of the “offerings”, and then enter the inner sanctuary through that little, closed
doorway. So the door was a door of access —of access to the chamber within;
but it was only the Ka of the “deceased” who possessed its secret, for on the
lintel above it (just as in the device which was called the “Serekh”) the individual
Ka-name was inscribed, indicating proprietorship. The funerary ritual further
assures us that it was only after feeding upon the “sacrifices” made in the outer
“chamber of offerings”, that the Ka could retreat through that doorway to the
inner sanctuary, renewed in spiritual vigour, this “feeding” being continued
as long as the Ka had need of that particular kind of sustenance. It does not
take much effort of the imagination, therefore, to see in this the age-old lesson:
that it is only by the continued sacrifices of the outer man, that the enduring,
inner personality, the divine part of him, comes finally to birth. And it is,
perhaps, from The Voice of the Silence particularly that we may get our real
clue to the probable meaning of the doorway itself. For there we read of retiring
“into the inmost chamber, the chamber of the heart, and the abode of the world’s
mother”, of “the fiery power”, as the result of the action of which the soul be¬
comes a “walker of the sky”—in the language of ancient Egypt, the soul became
Horus, “the sky goer”. Is not that doorway intended to symbolize the “door¬
way of the heart”, the entrance to the Way of Life, only discovered upon the
“death” and “entombment” of the lower nature? Is it not the beginning of the
“small, old path that leadeth far away” to which Theosophy for ever points so
eloquently? And was it not through it alone that the ancient Egyptians, like
ourselves of to-day, hoped to enter into life immortal? But it was the Pharaoh
who showed them the way, because there was no one else in outer, active life,
who could equal him in the greatness of his mystic powers; it was he who had
attained, for he could not otherwise have been acknowledged from above as
“The Occupier of the Throne”. And that is why his Ka-name is always to be
THE DIVINITY OF THE KING IN ANCIENT EGYPT
23
found on the lintel over the doorway—the first title of the Pharaoh, but the
title which became his only “beyond life”.
There cannot be the slightest doubt in the mind of any student of Theosophy
that the Pharaohs of Egypt (particularly those of the earliest dynasties) were
great Adept Kings, in close touch with the Lodge. As we have seen, they were
the direct inheritors of the gods who preceded them, and they were the model
upon which the infant races were to mould themselves—those infant races which
eventually were to clothe themselves with the same garment of immortality
in which the Pharaoh himself was already clothed. It was he who had become
“united with his Ka“; it was he who had become a “walker of the sky”. In the
Pyramid Texts there are innumerable passages indicating the possession of these
great yogi powers by the Pharaoh, passages which can be linked with other similar
passages in The Voice of the Silence, and elsewhere. Thus the Pharaoh is likened
to a great bird with outstretched wings, sailing across the heavens: “He ascends
to the sky as a falcon. ... He flies, he flies! ... He is not of the earth, he is of
the sky!”; or, “He goes to the sky, he goes to the sky! On the wind! On the
wind!” And the unforgettable line of adoring wonder at the splendour and the
majesty of the Pharaoh when he takes his rightful place in the company of the
Immortals: “Oh lofty one among the Imperishable Stars, thou perishest not
eternally!”
In Theosophy we find an incalculable amount of treasure which has come
down to us direct from ancient Egypt. Would it be too unreasonable, therefore,
if we were to think of these great Pharaohs (especially those whose incarnation
in the early days, made it possible for them to work in the still undimmed light
which lingered on after the august Rulers of the divine dynasties had “returned
to heaven”) as our own direct link with the Lodge to-day? We have been told,
not once but many times, that the present crying need in the world is for “God-
instructed men to rule the nations”, and it would seem natural that we should
turn with longing and with hope to those illustrious Kings of old who reigned so
wisely; for back of them stretched the unending line of gods, the Lodge itself,
from whence those Pharaohs sprang, and from whence their wisdom emanated.
We know that the eternal Warfare between the White Lodge and the Blacl^ a|es
on; we are told that it is, even now, gathering for its flood, and that “the BatiBrof
the Marne has not yet been fought in the spiritual world”. Would it be so diffi¬
cult to imagine that already a glimmer of Egypt’s ancient glory had begun to
spread around and over us—had we but the eyes to see? That the mighty Pha¬
raohs of bygone days, drawn up in dazzling battle-formation, may actually, at
this very moment, be preparing for the combat—helping to make it possible
for the gods to return to us? For we know that long ages ago it was promised
they would return—that they would return when the last great battle had been
fought and won: when Horus had at length met and vanquished his immemorial
enemy. Set.
Hetep-en-Neter.
WITHOUT CENSOR
II.
O NCE the decision to enter the Army had been made, there followed a
month of the most hectic preparation. The First Officers’ Training
Camps were to start, again at Plattsburgh, in the middle of May, and
there was none too much time for all that had to be done. Physical examinations
had first to be taken and passed, and once they were safely over, it was obviously
the part of wisdom to see personally those who had it in their power to ensure
that one’s application for admission to the Camp would be acted upon favour¬
ably. When all this had been settled, there were family duties and obligations
to be arranged for and shifted to the shoulders of others. One’s partners had to be
talked to, and the affairs of various clients turned over to them, and plans for
the future conduct and re-arrangement of the business had to be discussed.
Personal affairs had to be set in order, not only for a long absence from the
country, but also in such a way that they would function smoothly during that
absence, and with a minimum of attention. Indeed, it was clear that all such
matters must be so covered as to provide for the possibility of not returning at all.
There was the all-absorbing and highly important problem of the purchase of
clothing and outfit, or as much as would be needed for the following three
months, at least;—the rest could wait. There were talks ^vith friends in the
Movement, most important of all, and which took precedence over everything
else. In fact, there was so much to do, and so many people to see, and so little
time to do it all in, that it seemed a sheer impossibility that everything could be
accomplished in time. It was, by some miracle; but I finally boarded the sleeper
for Plattsburgh A\dth the feeling that the strenuous life of a training camp now
had no terrors for me, and that life there would be in the nature of a rest-cure
compared to what I had just passed through.
Compared with the pre\dous summer, it was a different Plattsburgh which met
our eyes when we left the train the next morning from a siding near the Govern¬
ment Reservation,—and with a different atmosphere. Long wooden barracks
had sprung up, along the side of the Parade Ground and in the woods and
vacant spaces adjoining, each designed to accommodate two hundred and fifty
officer candidates, or a war-strength Infantry Company. The place seemed
alive with Regular Army officers and non-commissioned officers, who herded us
about rapidly, and rushed us through all the ordinarily endless standing in line
and waiting, for allotment to companies and for the issue of Government property,
which seemed an inevitable concomitant of Army life. There was a mass-meeting
held that night, at which the purpose of the Camp and the objects to be attained,
and what would be expected of the candidates, was explained to them in brief,
concise, military language by the Commanding Officer of the Camp and by other
Senior Officers. At the end, there was a roar of applause, and much hand-
^4
WITHOUT CENSOR
25
clapping. In horror, the Senior Major sprang to his feet, and, in biting and
sarcastic terms, directed attention to the fact that in the Army it was not cus¬
tomary to evince either approbation or disapprobation, and ended with the
words, “Hereafter, it will not be done!”. Somewhat crestfallen, the candidates
dispersed, feeling, however, that after all they had been started off on the right
foot (or rather, the left foot, according to Infantry Drill Regulations), and that,
anyway, this was the real thing.
In a little over twenty-four hours the training was under way, although made
difficult by various inconveniences. For, the truth was, things were not ready.
There was a shortage of certain kinds of equipment, sanitary arrangements were
practically non-existent, the food fell below the standard of the Army ration in
quantity and quality, and the blankets which had been issued were some which
had been discarded by the Red Cross as being too small and too light. This last
was remedied by a telegram to New York, and by sleeping with clothes and over¬
coats on until heavy blankets arrived, for the nights on Lake Champlain in
May are still quite cold. All these things would have been of minor importance,
save for the fact that the men were not hardened, coming as they did straight
from sedentary lives in cities; and the unaccustomed, hard physical exercise
was making rapid adjustment to conditions difficult enough in itself. In com¬
paring notes with other men after the War, we all agreed that the conditions
under which we lived for the first two weeks at Plattsburgh that spring, in view
of our physical unpreparedness for them, were equal to an}d:hing which we
experienced in the way of discomfort during our later war experience. But in
a comparatively short time mistakes were rectified, conditions were improved,
and our attention was free to be directed to the training itself.
This training was of a much more severe and intensive character than any¬
thing which any of us had experienced before. I had chosen the Infantry,
because I had always walked a great deal, and because for some years I had
been working with men, at a Rescue Mission operated by the Church of which
I was a member, of the type which we were likely to get from the draft, and I
felt that I knew something about the way in which to handle them. Also, becau^
I felt a certain diffidence in regard to my ability to cope with the various mail|^
matical formulae and calculations necessary in the Field Artillery. The
started with Reveille, after which we were marched to Mess. At eight o’clock
the work began, and, with intervals of ten minutes between each hour, continued
until noon. We were marched again to Mess in the middle of the day, and were
at work again from two to four in the afternoon. Ordinarily, an hour’s drill
alternated with an hour’s lecture, usually outdoors, on some military topic, but
when the Company was marched out on the Peru Road to the open rolling
country for tactical problems, the whole morning was devoted to it. Retreat,
at five o’clock, was followed by Evening Mess, and from seven to nine o’clock
in the evening we were in School, the first hour there being devoted to study,
and the second hour to a lecture with an examination and a quiz.
It was a singularly ill-chosen and inappropriate hour to devote to that pur¬
pose, for all concerned were far from being mentally at their best, as they were
26
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
by that time pretty thoroughly exhausted from the day’s work. I remember
vividly one particular evening when I found it practically impossible to stay
awake. By keeping myself busied with books and papers during the first hour,
I had succeeded in staving off slumber, but when the lecture started and there
was nothing to do but sit still, the soothing tones of the Regular Army Officer’s
voice proved to be more than nature could cope \vith, and the proceedings became
enveloped in a gradually thickening mist, as far as I was concerned. Suddenly,
to my horror, I heard myself called on by the Instructor, to explain how I would
have carried out the problem in question from that point, had I been in com¬
mand, and what mistakes, if any, had been made in the order which had been
actually given. I arose promptly to my feet, in a military and alert manner,
but within was a complete void. I had heard nothing of the problem. An
agonized and hurried mental groping did nothing to stimulate memory. The
one word “pursuit” came, out of the general blackness. So I replied that it
seemed to me that the mistake had been in not exploiting the advantage gained;
that pursuit, prompt and immediate, had been indicated at that point. I warmed
up to it as I went along, and said that apparently the Commanding Officer had
forgotten the military rule,—when in doubt, do something, even if it is wrong;
never do nothing. I thought that the order for pursuit should have been given
at once, not forgetting to include the appropriate flank protection dictated by
the nature of the terrain and the dispositions of the enemy. I remembered that
from that morning’s work. Realizing that I was beginning to run down, I re¬
sumed my seat with the feeling that my chance of a commission had now gone
for good, expecting to hear low but derisive laughter. There was a silence, which
I took to be merely the calm before the storm. Then, to my utter amazement
and relief, I heard the Instructor say, in his most impressive manner, that he
could not emphasize enough the point which had just been made; and he then
proceeded to expatiate upon the subject of pursuit in general, and the clearly
indicated necessity for it in this particular instance, and to insist that rapid and
immediate appreciation of the right action to be taken at a juncture, an example
of which had just been given, must be cultivated by all ranks. I felt that I was an
authority on minor tactics, from then on. It was simple—I could do it in my
sleep.
Close to the Canadian border, as we were at Plattsburgh, there was a large
Roman Catholic element in the population. Just outside the town, there was a
cemetery, and in it a singularly beautiful, life-size Calvary; it was in an isolated
position, so that it stood out in a way which at once arrested attention, and the
figure of the Christ on the Cross was that of a man, militant and courageous,
rising above all suffering, radiating victory, an example of obedience unto death,
the ideal of the Soldier. One dark and misty morning my Company started out
to march to the open country to work out tactical problems in the field. As usual,
we marched at attention until we were clear of the town, and then, at the
command, we marched at ease, as was customary when any distance had to be
covered, in order to minimize fatigue. The leading platoon started to sing,
“There’s a Long, Long Trail”, and the whole column took it up. The Company
WITHOUT CENSOR
27
swung around the turn of the road, and marched on the cemetery. The mists
hung low, completely obliterating the graves and the headstones, gathering about
the foot of the Calvary in masses, and causing it to stand out in bold relief
against a still darkened skyline, while the first rays of the sun, struggling through
the clouds, fell directly upon the figure of the Christ, illuminating it, and in turn
receiving back some of its radiance and its glory. There was a sheen of light, and
as the head of the column saw it, the song which they were singing stopped, and
gradually died away all down the line. There was a moment or two of silence,
and then, at the head of the column, without a word of command, rifles were
shifted to the right shoulder, the marching was at attention again, and the leading
platoon started to sing, “The Son of God goes forth to War”. There was a
ripple, as the whole column came to attention, and took up the hymn all down
the line, “Who follows in his train?” The singing was full of feeling now,—not
the emotion of the revival meeting, but from the hearts of men who were facing
facts, who had measured what the future might hold; men, of officer calibre, who
were to lead other men in battle.
“Who best can drink his cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain?”
Many of them were to enter upon that long, long trail, but they were not afraid,
then, of what they would find at the end of it. They had caught, for the moment
at least, from that figure of Christ in his radiance, something of the spirit of
Victory; they marched, uplifted, in the very presence of their Captain.
Impossible to doubt, after this, that a far different spirit and attitude were
animating the hearts and minds of the men, than in the Camp of the previous
year. They were alive, awake, and eager. They did not talk much about how
they felt in deeper ways. Men together in such circumstances, never do. They
took it out in the way in which they did their work. The morale of the Camp was
high, and as the majority of the men were considerably above the average in
ability and general experience, they often first surprised, then amazed, the
Regular Army Instructors by their aptitude, and the rapidity with which they
assimilated what they were taught. To the Instructors, it was a brand-new
experience to command men of this type in such numbers, and, stimulated by
the experience, they in turn responded, and the instruction proceeded at
rapid pace. The officer candidates varied in age from the early twenties tflRc
middle thirties. vSome of them were already officers in the Reserve Corps, but,
while these men lived in a separate Barracks and were used to some extent to
help in the instruction, their commissions were not safe, and had to be earned all
over again; indeed, I can remember one man who started as a Captain of
Infantry in the Reserve, and ended as a Second Lieutenant in the Quartermaster
Corps, that lowest form of military life! Other candidates, while not in the
Reserve, had been Officers in the National Guard, and had been on the Mexican
Border the previous summer. They annoyed us a great deal, for, from the heights
of their experience, they were constantly holding forth as to how things had been
done, in this way or that, on the Border; some of them made the mistake of
telling all this to the Regular Army Instructors, who responded in the manner
28
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
to be expected, with the result that the entire National Guard caste soon relapsed
to its proper level in the scheme of things, where indi\'idual ability and adapta¬
bility, as evinced at the moment, alone counted. A number of the candidates
were very young men, who were certain to be called later in the draft in any event,
and who, as long as they had to go anyway, wanted to go as officers. Then
there was a leaven of somewhat older men, who had convictions about the War,
and were in for that reason; some of them, indeed, had already seen service
overseas as War correspondents, ambulance drivers, or actually in the Allied
Armies, and, now that the United States was in, had returned home to get com¬
missions in our Army and to go at it again. A mixed lot, but a highly interesting
one. The shirkers had no chance; some of those left us early in the game. Some
were discharged, too, for physical or other inability to stand up to it. Some few
men never did get along, spent a miserable three months, and were simply not
commissioned at all at the end. But they were very few, relatively, and the
level of general attainment and efficiency was so high, and the spirit of mutual
co-operation and of willingness to help the other fellow to put his best foot for¬
ward was so general, that the atmosphere was stimulating and exhilarating in
the extreme.
I have said that men, especially younger men, do not talk easily about their
deeper feelings and convictions in such circumstances, and it is true. But the
deeper those convictions and feelings, the more surely would they express them¬
selves in outer actions and in chance words, so that those men gradually began
to stand out among the others. Then, little by little, in the nature of things,
they naturally gravitated together, and formed a centre or a nucleus. In spite
of the high morale, or, rather, probably because of it, there was a steady stream
of grousing when things went wrong, of grumbling, of complaint at antediluvian
methods; this was entirely healthy, a mere working-off of steam, and is always
present in the Army, and means in general exactly nothing at all. But, in the
circumstances in which we found ourselves, it did mean that individual needs or
weaknesses often became apparent in this way, and it was possible to meet and
correct them, by degrees, with tact and understanding; to try to turn tendencies
in individuals, which might have become destructive later on under the pressure
of war conditions, into constructive forces, for the good of the Service. This
could not be done by abstract lecturing, but only by the effort to be all things
to all men; by talking with them in their own terms, by trying to raise the general
inner level. I was personally greatly aided in this sort of effort by something
which happened after we had been in Camp for several weeks. Five of us, all
older men, were summoned to report one evening at the Quarters of our Com¬
manding Officer. He informed us, after telling us to say nothing to anyone about
it, that we would all be commissioned at the end of the Camp in the higher grades
(the highest of which was the grade of Major). The reason, he said, why we
were being told this at that time, was because he himself felt in need of the assis¬
tance and co-operation which he knew we could give, not only in the adminis¬
tration of the Company, but also in arriving at a proper and fair estimate as to
the capabilities and characters of some of the younger men, which we would be
WITHOUT CENSOR
29
better able to appraise in certain ways than he himself possibly could. Then
and there we were asked to give our views in regard to at least twenty men,
and in most cases not only were thos^ \dews practically unanimous, but they
frequently coincided with the judgment which our Commanding Officer had
already formed. This fact encouraged him greatly, and stimulated us; we
realized at once that we were all going to see eye to eye, and that there were
great possibilities in the situation for co-operation in the most real sense; and
that the Commanding Officer, working in his way with us, would insure turning
into efficient officers some of those younger men with whom we had already been
working as individuals. From that time on, a certain amount of unobtrusive
disciplinary authority was vested in us five men. We had the power to award,
or to withhold for cause, passes to leave Camp on Saturdays for the night. We
alternated in the command of platoons, which gave us the opportunity of study¬
ing the men more intimately, and of checking each other’s judgment. There is
no place where rumour is more rife; where things become known, or partly
known, more rapidly than in the Army, in spite of all precautions. We became
vested, through rumour, with far more power and authority than we possessed,
but this was in fact not at all a bad thing, for it enabled us, in talking with indi¬
viduals, to speak with some measure of actual authority, and increased our oppor¬
tunities to help others.
Stimulating and exhilarating as the life was, it was hard work. Not so much
physically, for after a month of it, we were in better bodily condition than we
had been in for years. It was the pace that was so fast. No pressure of circum¬
stances in civilian life had ever forced us to such continuously intensive living as
this. Yet it was never too hard, for it always seemed possible, by an effort of will,
consciously to break through the level upon which one was functioning to a
higher level, upon which one got a sort of second wind after a hectic day or so,
and from which one never again wished to recede. We made mistakes, plenty of
them. We were terribly ignorant of the elementary details of what Julius
Caesar called the art of war and the drawing up of heavy armed troops, of detai^
which had been second nature to our Instructors for years. There was^^
opportunity to exercise individual initiative in these respects; we had simply to
learn, and memorize facts and Regulations; in this way were things done and
no other; that method was right, any other method was wrong. Now, at the
age of thirty-five, it is exceedingly difficult to memorize long pages of instructions
rapidly; but, as a matter of fact, this was absolutely necessary, especially in the
Infantry training, and we recognized it. The Artillery candidates were greatly
handicapped in their instruction by the fact that they had no guns at all, and only
a few horses, and, as a result, most of the knowledge which they acquired was
theoretical and came from books and lectures. But, as Infantry, we were com¬
pletely equipped, with modem rifles and the heavy pack. We had an immense
Parade Ground for close order company drill, and with a Company of two hun¬
dred and fifty men, it was possible to treat the Platoons as Battalions, and to
gain considerable knowledge of how to drill the Battalion itself. We had the
hills and the rolling country near the Camp for extended order drill, where we
30
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
deployed and worked out tactical problems with blank ammunition. We had
our trenches and barbed-wire entanglements, interspersed with bags of straw
to represent Germans, which we took by assault with the bayonet. We had the
rifle and pistol ranges, where quite a high degree of efficiency in shooting was
developed. We had practice in military map-reading, and in making military
maps ourselves, being sent out individually for this purpose to map a certain
area. As the training progressed, many of us were given the entire Company,
in turn, for, say, half an hour at a time, under varying circumstances and con¬
ditions, that we might have the opportunity of exercising the functions of
command. All the facilities to make it possible really to learn our jobs were ours.
To make proper use of these facilities, we had to learn the fundamental, rudi¬
mentary facts upon which that use was based,—and we learned them; though
with groanings that, unfortunately, were sometimes uttered. For we recognized
the fact that we could attain something then and there which was going to be
essential later overseas; we believed even then that the stalemate of trench
warfare on the Western Front could not last, and that before a decision could
be reached there ultimately, open warfare, the war of movement, the kind of
thing that our own Regular Army knew something about, and that we had a
chance to learn about ourselves on the hills around Plattsburgh, was going to
come into its own.
Time passed swiftly, one day of intense activity succeeded another with light¬
ning rapidity, and before we knew it, the end of the Camp was in sight. As a
matter of fact, the pace had been so fast, that the entire command began to go
stale after the last month of instruction had started, and orders were issued to
ease off on the training in various ways for a few days, to allow all concerned to
get their breath again. This temporary let-up produced the desired result, and
was a very wise move, as it enabled everyone to make a strong finish, and to
leave in the very best possible condition, from every point of view, to take up
the real work for which all this had been merely a preparation. Various events
of that last month were more amusing in retrospect than they were at the time.
I remember an over-night hike, eight miles down the macadam road beside the
Lake, to a large field bordered by a small stream, where the New York Regiment
spent the night under shelter tents, marching back to Plattsburgh the following
morning. We started off at two o’clock on an exceedingly hot afternoon. The
sun, beating down all day on the road, had softened it and brought the tar to
the top, so that the surface was just sticky enough to hold the sole of the shoe
back when a step forward was taken, and make it rub against the foot. As a
result, more than half of the command had blisters on their feet when they arrived
at the camping ground, and every available minute, between then and the start
the next day, was spent sitting with their feet in the stream trying to cool them
off. The worst of it was that those same feet had to be used for the eight mile
march back, with the result that there were more blisters, and the old ones were
raw. The theory back of this entertainment had been, that it would be helpful
for us to have the experience of cooking for ourselves in the open. The proper
rations were issued, and we had the necessary equipment, but the trouble was
WITHOUT CENSOR
31
that the great majority knew nothing whatever about cooking, and subsisted
for two meals mainly on raw bacon, uncooked potatoes, and water. A thoroughly
poor time was had by all. Once a week, for several successive Saturdays, we
were inoculated for practically every known disease, in turn. Some men suffered
no ill effects whatever; but the majority would run a slight temperature by the
evening, and feel generally wretched for about twelve hours, after which the
effects gradually wore off, and they would be entirely fit again when work
started early Monday morning. But this diversion, which the Government so
kindly provided for us at no expense, militated against our enjoyment of the
week-ends; for by that time Plattsburgh, socially, was a very different place
from the early days in May. The Hotel down the Lake had opened, families
and friends had made their appearance, and it was possible, not only to get a
square meal amid pleasant surroundings and under enjoyable conditions, but
also to hear, from older men who were really informed, about the progress of the
preparation which was being made in Washington for our military effort.
As the end of the Camp approached, it was essential to weigh and to analyze
the experience of the past weeks, in the effort, not only to profit by errors of
omission and commission, but also to see what one had to go forward with,
what one had really learned in the truest and deepest sense. It had been difficult
for me, for instance, to report unfavourably about men who had really tried
hard and sincerely; to feel myself forced to say that, in spite of all their efforts,
and of satisfactory performance of duty they were entirely unfitted, because of
some inherent weakness in character, to lead other men. But it was a question
of the lives of others, which would be entrusted to them later on if they were
commissioned, and of the honour of the Army. Clearly it was a test, as far as
I was concerned, of real impersonality, of real detachment. Clearly those two
qualities lay at the very heart of the soldier spirit; one would be called upon to
make use of them constantly in the future; one would be required later on, again
and again, to estimate other men accurately and quickly, and to act at once
upon that appraisal; there would be no time then for a leisurely consideration.
It was obvious, too, that men who were unfit to lead had to be protected from
themselves; it would be grossly unfair to them, through one’s own failure to
face the facts from false sentiment or a mistaken idea of giving them their chanj|^
to cause them to be placed in positions in which they would inevitably baPK
down later, with possibly attendant disgrace. If men did not know the military
value of self-control, if they could not control themselves, clearly they were not
going to be able to control those under their command. Yet there was comfort
in the thought that, in spite of present failure, they were going to have another
chance, and that the disappointment of to-day might well prove to be their
making in the long run; for most of them were young men, who would be called
later in the draft. It would be possible for them, then, to learn self-control,
self-command, in terms of the military life, in terms which they could under¬
stand, which they would have to understand. It would be possible, once having
learned these things in those terms, to get, perhaps, in another life, the idea of
discipleship, to work them out in terms of discipleship. With this realization
32
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
came the reminder that, not only for them, but also for those of us who were in
the Movement, difficulties and hardships and disappointments were always
opportimities, and always would be. Certainly in the military life, in so far as it
had opened up, this was true, and it was clear that, in all probability, the future
was going to be full of opportunities!
It was the intention, at this First Officers’ Training Camp, to draw from each
Infantry Training Company of two hundred and fifty officer candidates, the
commissioned personnel, up to the grade of Field Officer, for a regiment of In¬
fantry in the 77th Division, which was to be organized at Camp Upton on Long
Island, and was to be filled with the draft from New York. The Colonel, the
Lieutenant Colonel, and the three Majors were to be Regular Army officers;
we were to fill the other grades. Accordingly, at the very end of the Camp and
after we had been commissioned, several of us were asked to meet together and,
acting upon this information and upon our knowledge of each other, to draw up
a provisional roster of the commissioned personnel of our regiment, which would,
of course, be subject to revision by higher authority. Armed with the latest
Tables of Organization of an infantry regiment, we spent an entire afternoon
at this, and after we had given ourselves and each other what we considered
were good jobs, grouping ourselves as far as possible as Company Commanders
in the same battalions, we distributed the others, who were not present, through¬
out the various units, with a due regard to preserving a desirable balance of
ability and efficiency in each. We were greatly pleased with ourselves when we
had finished, feeling that we were now all set to get on with the War, and fondly
hoping, so little did we still know of the way in which things are really done in
the Army in war time, that this effort of ours was to be the last word on the sub¬
ject, and that, after the two weeks’ leave to which we were now entitled, we
should meet again at Camp Upton and all carry on together. The final event
of the Camp was a Dress Parade, when we were reviewed by various notables,
and received considerable applause from a Parade Ground lined with spectators.
After which, and not without a feeling of regret that this phase was over, in spite
of my eagerness for what the future had in store, I took the train for New York,
a Captain of Infantry in the new National Army.
Centurion
(To be continued)
11 is not so much the size of the dog in the fight, as the size of the fight in the dog .—
E. J. Young.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
T he Recorder asked for comments on the Convention. Generalities, such
as “splendid”, “a great success”, were the only result. Then the Phi¬
losopher explained: “I object”, he said, “to talking for publication when
adequate comment would oblige one to go beneath the surface. The surface of
the Convention was most satisfactory; what lay beneath the surface was even
better,—but what that was, sceptics would not understand, and it is a mistake
to speak of spiritual realities to those whose experience does not include
them.”
“I should like to explain this”, said one of the editors of the Quarterly:
“The report of the Convention in the next (July) issue must necessarily be incom¬
plete, because, o\\ing to extraordinary political conditions in some European
countries, it would be unwise to mention the presence of certain delegates, or
even to print the letters of greeting received from Branches or groups of students
in those countries. In fairness I should add that the members involved are willing
to take the risk; but it is our duty to protect them so far as possible, and to
think, not only of present conditions, but of what might happen in the event of
war. There are one or two South American republics where men of European
birth are ‘marked’ by their compatriots as ‘traitors’, when such men do not adopt
the particular form of patriotism, favoured by the majority.”
“I wish very much”, the Historian now volunteered, “that one or two current
events had precipitated, so to speak, shortly before instead of after the Con¬
vention. First, on May 8th, at Philadelphia of all places (I am quoting from
The New York Times of May gth): ^
Without a dissenting vote the national convention of the Young Women’s Christian
Association gave its support to Birth Control legislation. . .. This was the first time that
the Y. W. C. A. had accorded official recognition to the Birth Control movement. . . .
Considerable surprise was expressed when the delegates, numbering nearly 1800, voice^
no opposition.
“I wish we might have had the opportunity to comment, at our Convention,
on the performance of those 1800 women,—on their repudiation of religious
principles and of natural law. Of all the brutalizing, soul-destro}dng influences
in modem life. Birth Control is among the worst. The frequency of divorce,
which has become a national scandal, is one of its direct results. The action
of the Y. W. C. A. proves that their use of the word ‘Christian’ is a mockery;
that they have aligned themselves with the forces of moral libertinism; that
they must be counted hereafter as enemies of everything for which we stand.
That there are decent women among them I do not question for a moment. It
is the old story of mob psychology; of the fear, which many women share, of
seeming ‘old-fashioned’. Some hard-boiled woman doctor shouts at them about
their ‘rights’, jibes at them for their ignorance of ‘science’, almost suffocates them
34
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
with filthy detail, browbeats them into a distrust of their own instincts, until
whatever refinement and delicacy they may naturally possess are submerged by
a sense of helplessness and fatality. Even so, they cannot escape the most
terrible responsibility for the degradation of married life, not to speak of un¬
married life, of which their cowardice is the direct cause. If they still believe in a
Day of Judgment—and the trouble is that few of them do—they would do well
to think of such things,—now. Their organization in any case, which, like the
Girls’ Friendly Society, has been going down hill for years—religion pushed out
as materialistic modernism has been poured in—may as well realize that its
latest pronouncement \vill force everyone who has the welfare of young girls at
heart, to steer them as far as possible from its baneful influence.
“Another current event which would have served to illustrate one of the topics
touched on at the Convention, is the recent persecution of Andrew W. Mellon,
who was Secretary of the Treasury in three Republican Administrations. I have
never come into contact with him, directly or indirectly, so I do not speak as a
friend, or even as an admirer—for personally I think he showed wretched judg¬
ment under President Hoover during the ‘boom’ which collapsed in 1929. The
fact remains that the procedure of the present government against him ought to
have brought this country to its feet in a roar of indignant protest. His only
actual offence was his wealth, taken in conjunction with his political affiliation.
The radicals in Washington hate him, and did their utmost to injure him, solely
for that reason; and because Theosophy stands for justice to rich and poor
equally; because members of The Theosophical Society are or ought to be pas¬
sionate lovers of justice ‘without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour’,
it would have been very much in order if our committee on resolutions had ex¬
pressed themselves freely and frankly against the iniquitous misuse of govern¬
mental power of which the persecution of Mr. Mellon is an instance. As, how¬
ever, this was not possible—for the matter did not come to a head until after
our Convention—I want to ‘read into the record’ for publication in the ‘Screen’,
a protest by Samuel Harden Church, President of the Carnegie Institute, which
he telegraphed to The New York Times on May 8th from Pittsburgh, as follows:
The action of the grand jury in exonerating Andrew W. Mellon from the attempt of the
government to make him a criminal without the privilege of having a hearing and making
an argument in defending the honesty of his income tax return will gratify every impartial
mind in this country.
In seeking to justify his assault upon Mr. Mellon’s character, Attorney General Cum¬
mings made the announcement that it is his policy to present to each citizen the govern¬
ment’s tax claim, and if the full amount of that claim is not paid without any further
discussion of the matter a criminal indictment will be demanded.
The cool, calculating villainy of this statement has shocked America, and in attempting
to enforce such a ruthless policy the government has jeopardized the liberty of every
citizen. The action of the government in Mr. Mellon’s case is a shame and an outrage,
and the responsibility for this unpardonable act of tyranny must rest directly upon
President Roosevelt.
“A third event worth noting would have been two front-page, large-type head¬
lines in The New York Times of May 31st. One of these announced: 'Roosevelt
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
35
hails New Unity in Nation, . . . **All Brothers now in a New Understanding'',
he tells Auditors'; the other announced: 'Textile Strike is Imminent; Steel
Walkout Threatened.' Worthy of Mrs. Eddy! But I wondered if many people
saw the point.”
‘‘My contribution is not modern, but ancient”, the Engineer commented.
‘‘I am reading Tibet, Past and Present, by Sir Charles Bell. Yesterday I came
across a passage in which the author states that toward the end of the eighth
century, Mu-ni Tsem-po, King of Tibet, decided there must be a New Deal.
Some men were poor, others rich; this was wrong. He ordained, therefore,
that all men should share equally in the wealth of the country. So an equal
division was made. Much to the King’s annoyance, the equality soon dis¬
appeared. Twice again all were made to share and share alike; but the in¬
equalities became worse than before, because some were idle and some in¬
dustrious, some had brains, others none, while many of those who had been both
poor and indolent became more indolent during their interval of ease, and thus
became poorer than ever.
‘‘The upshot? After the King’s third attempt, his mother poisoned him.’'
‘‘Really?” exclaimed the Student: ‘‘almost too good to be true,—particularly
the coup de grdce!"
‘‘Read it for yourself; it is all in Bell’s book.”
‘‘Mothers are not what they used to be”, the Historian pronoimced, with what
he intended to sound like a groan.
‘‘Just as well for some of us perhaps!” the Recorder injected.
‘‘If a violent change of subject be allowable”, the Student now said, ‘‘may I
suggest that it would be a kindness to members of the Society in Germany if
some light might be thrown on their duty in the very difficult political conditions
confronting them.”
‘‘Why more difficult than the position of some of us here?” the Engineer asked.
‘‘My company sports the Blue Eagle, or whatever the animal is (it looks like a
crow), which is supposed to signify that we are co-operating under the terms of
the National Recovery Act (NRA); and we are co-operating, for the simpk
reason that we cannot possibly do otherwise: but this does not mean thatjM
approve of all or any of its provisions. As a matter of fact we do not approv^—
very few business people do; but this is no new experience, seeing that more than
half the laws in force, both State and Federal, are vote-catching devices, and are
inherently wrong and asinine. No matter what country, or under what form of
government you live, you have to decide, in the last analysis, whether it is your
duty to remain there or not; and at that stage it is well to remember that ‘the
duty of another is full of danger’.”
‘‘lam glad you brought that out”, commented the Ancient, ‘‘for the tendency
of German members will be to demand uniformity of opinion and conduct among
themselves. None of us can escape entirely from the influence of heredity and
environment, and a German member, without realizing it, will instinctively
resent any departure from the rhythm of his own goose-step. He will want to
say: One, Two, Three—March! expecting his fellow-members to fall into line
36
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
with him. I say this in all kindliness. My desire is to help; not to criticize:
but the only way to help is to point out those tendencies which are obvious to
everyone except to those who are in danger of being dominated by them.
“The German people as a whole have been brought up and educated on the
basis of the ‘categorical imperative’; they expect a dogmatic answer to all ques¬
tions—a stereotyped answer, narrow, precise, but of universal applicability.
This is something that Theosophy never will or can supply,—any more than
Christ, or Gautama Buddha supplied it. Theosophy reveals the underlying
principles of right thought and conduct, but leaves it to the individual to apply
those principles to his own problems. There could be no spiritual growth if all
our problems were solved for us in terms of an infinitely detailed Code which we
simply had to obey. The Pharisees had such a code, and we know what hap¬
pened to them.
“The English approach to things is the exact opposite of the German. It is
epitomized in those lines by Kipling: ‘There are five-and-forty ways of writing
tribal lays, and every single one of them is right.’ The idea is vitally important
and essentially true; its danger is that it may lead to everlasting compromise,
and, at its worst, to the feeling that ‘nothing really matters’—a fatal weakness.
“But we are now considering the problem, or the need, of German members,
and not only of those who live in Germany. I should say that their greatest
need is to refrain, with all their hearts, from sitting in judgment on each other,
and then, if they would atone for the sins of their nation and race; if they would
fill the part of the ten righteous men who might have saved Sodom and Go¬
morrah,—let them cultivate humility, that true humility, supremely exemplified
by H.P.B. and Judge, the only force that can neutralize the self-assertion and
arrogance, and at the same time the timidity (a seeming paradox), which are so
largely responsible for the fact that Germany has sold itself to the devil—for
power.’’
“Now you’ve hit it’’, said the Student; “I mean, have hit upon what seems to
be the radical difference between the position of German members and our own.
We know that our Government is capable of every kind of folly, and even of
wrong; but we know also that its intentions are not evil, and that it is not
hatching some hideous plot suddenly to pounce on Canada or Mexico, for
revenge, lust of power, or from jealousy. The German members, on the other
hand, cannot fail to realize that their Government, with ninety-five per cent
of the population, have no scruples, no conscience, and would seize the territory
of any of their neighbours to-morrow, if it were thought reasonably safe to do so.
Can it be right to remain the citizen of a country which so obviously has become
an instrument of the Black Lodge?”
“That is exactly what German members have to decide for themselves, and
what we cannot decide for them. If we were foolish enough to advise them
(which is just what a novice would be likely to do), we should not only deprive
them of the merit of right (that is, of conscientious) decision, but should neces¬
sarily take the consequences or Karma of our advice upon ourselves and—far
more important—upon the Society. Further, as I have suggested already, one
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
37
man’s duty, in similar but not quite the same circumstances, may be and often
is entirely different from the duty of another. ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’.
We shall not judge them; it remains to be seen if they have a sufficient under¬
standing of Theosophy to act on the same principle as between themselves.
When will people learn that it is the motive that makes an act black or white,
rather than the act itself! For example: one man arms in defence of his wife and
children; another man arms in order to attack them; Pacifists see no difference,
or pretend to see no difference, between the action of the two men; Theosophy,
which is synonymous with enlightened common-sense, sees all the difference in
the world. In the same way, two men might leave Germany, one with a bad and
the other with a good motive. It is impossible to judge their behaviour on the
basis of their outer conduct only, and heaven alone knows what mixture of
motives may be actuating them.”
“But if we cannot judge on the basis of outer action, and if it be so difficult
to see into motives, what ground can you have for saying that Germany has
‘sold herself to the devil—for power’?” One of our visitors asked this question.
‘‘Ground enough,—acres and miles of ground”, laughed the Engineer; ‘‘that
of the statements poured forth during the past year or more, by Germany’s
‘leaders and official heads’,—statements greeted with rapturous applause by an
immense majority of the German people. When a man hangs out a sign announc¬
ing that he is a burglar, you may think him cracked, but you would be unwise
to leave your watch on his doorstep; and the truth is that Germany glories in
being a law unto herself, with a right to everything she can wrest from those who
prove themselves weaker than she is. ‘Might makes right’, is her declared
creed,—the changeless creed of ‘that old serpent, called the Dragon, and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world.’ ”
‘‘I wonder whether readers of the Quarterly tire of our constant references to
humility”, the Historian now said; ‘‘I wonder if they regard our ‘predications’
on the subject as pious counsels of perfection, without practical importance, and
as having no bearing in any case on occultism, or on a man’s ability to be of use
to the Movement and to the Lodge. On the chance that some feel that way about
it, I should like to make this challenging assertion: that of the ten million
‘known dead’ of the Great War, half that number lost their lives through vaMy
(lack of humility),—and not necessarily their own: far from it. Obstinacy,
be it remembered, is a form of vanity; and if a man makes a plan, and sticks to it
just because it is his plan—sticks to it regardless of changed conditions, or of the
warnings of friends—with the result that many thousands of lives are lost, it is
clear to my mind that the loss of life was caused by his vanity, and that if he
had been humble of heart, and therefore open-minded, those who were killed,
might be alive to-day.
‘‘No one can study the literature of the Great War—or of any other war for
that matter—without being struck, time after time, by instances of scandalous
waste of life due to this factor. Take, for example, the Boer War of 1899-1902:
Sir Redvers Buller, appointed to command the British forces on the outbreak of
hostilities, left England for South Africa on October nth, the British War Office
38
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
thinking it probable that the Boers would be wiped out and that the war would
be over, before he arrived; that Sir George White, with his sixteen thousand
men in Natal, might easily settle the whole thing. Yet the War Office had an
Intelligence Branch, headed by Sir John Ardagh, which had prepared two
volumes on the military and other resources of the Boer Republics, and which
had advised the War Office that 200,000 men would be required. When these
two volumes were sent to Buller before his departure, he returned them within
an hour, with the message that he ‘knew all about South Africa’. The result was,
of course, that he led his armies into one mess after another, at Colenso, Spion
Kop and elsewhere, and that Lord Roberts, with Kitchener as chief of staff,
had to be sent out as commander-in-chief before the end of the year. It would
have been impossible to teach Buller anything. He was not what is ordinarily
called a vain man, but thought he knew it all, or, rather, that he knew as much
as was necessary, and certainly ten times as much as any civilian,—and there
were innumerable civilians in South Africa, of British birth, who knew Boer
strategy and tactics, and the personnel of the Boer command, as well as the Boers
themselves.
“I should explain, perhaps, that I get my statement about Buffer’s rejection of
those two volumes of laboriously garnered Intelligence, from Winston Spencer
Churchill’s My Early Life; but I happen, independently of Churchill, to know
a good deal about that war, and about the leading men on both sides. On the
Boer side. General Botha, a very forceful and able man, a great statesman and
patriot as well as a great general—undoubtedly the greatest man South Africa
has produced—was astonishingly humble; not only unpretentious and free from
egotism, but with a mind perpetually open, and as willing to learn from his
enemies as from his friends, from his subordinates as from his seniors. Cronje
on the other hand, also a Boer—you may remember his final surrender at
Paardeburg—was at least as obstinate and self-satisfied as Buffer. Lack of
humility in both cases; and, of the two, Cronje had less excuse because he did
not belong to a military caste, except in so far as he was an old man who had
fought against Kaffirs all his life, as well as against the British in the earlier war
of 1880-81.”
‘‘That feeling of caste superiority”, the Philosopher commented, ‘‘undoubtedly
accentuates a man’s native tendencies. It is very rare to meet with a doctor
of medicine who can be more than good-naturedly tolerant if a layman expresses
an opinion about medical matters; and I have no doubt that lack of humility
among doctors (I do not exclude surgeons!) is responsible for a large percentage
of our death-rate. In other words I agree with you—and we of course are only
echoing what every master of the spiritual life has declared—that without
humility as foundation, every virtue becomes a poison: generosity, courage,
kindliness, even self-sacrifice, inevitably feeding vanity and personal egotism,
unless humility be sufficiently developed. On the most practical of grounds,
we need to cultivate it by every means in our power.”
‘‘Yes”, said the Ancient, ‘‘and let us refrain from attributing every bright
(or less silly) idea that we have, to our Master, as his inspiration, from the
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
39
notion that doing so demonstrates our modesty! You laugh; but it is done—and
without conscious guile. Oh, it dies hard, that ancient serpent! Sometimes I
think it never dies, but merely changes its skin. Yet, as was said at the Con¬
vention, Masters are the embodiment of humility, and those who know them
say that when some glimpse of this has been revealed, through the compassion
of their own Master; the sense of it has left them prostrate, as though their own
souls were in the dust, before that infinite, that heart-breaking humility of the
infinitely great.”
This reference to Masters naturally suggested the subject of chdlaship, and
one of our younger members, a visitor on this occasion, was quick to seize his
opportunity. ‘‘What is the meaning of the statement”, he asked, ‘‘constantly
met with in the literature of occultism, that the path of the chela is a hair-line,
with dangers on either side of him?”
The Recorder turned appealingly to the Ancient, whose interest seemed in
any case to be aroused. ‘‘I was thinking of that the other day”, he responded,
‘‘though in terms of analogy rather than directly; but it is only in terms of
analogy that the question can be answered, if the answer is to be of any value
to those who have not as yet been confronted with the difficulties peculiar to
ch^laship. It is a mistake to try to jump our fences before we get to them. How¬
ever, the principle underlying the statement on which the question is based, is
one which all of us need to understand, for it is the same as the Doctrine of the
Mean, of Confucius and of Aristotle, and as the doctrine of the Middle Path,
as expounded by Buddha.
‘‘A hair-line, with dangers on either side: for instance, if we allow ourselves
to be swamped by detail, we shall lose sight of major issues; if we insist upon
winning a battle our way or not at all, the probability is we shall be beaten:
we shall have erred in the direction of over-rigidity. On the other hand, if we
confine ourselves to essentials, and are indifferent to detail, or adopt the attitude
that one way of getting there is just as good as another, we may be able to
‘muddle through’, but the outcome will lack finish and is likely to prove costly.
We shall have erred in the direction of over-flexibility. Who will find the happy
Mean?
‘‘Take another instance: if we allow ourselves to be upset when
wrong, we shall lose our judgment and be governed by our nerves; if, on'Tfie
other hand, when things go wrong, we adopt an attitude of ‘philosophic calm’,
the probability is that we shall lack the energy to set the matter right. Who
will find the Middle Path!
‘‘In the same way, conscientiousness is a great virtue; lack of it, a fatal defect;
but do not all of us know that conscientiousness can be carried to such an
extreme that it cripples a man’s usefulness? And here we have a clue to the right
solution of our problem, for it would be a serious mistake to suppose that the
solution lies in a compromise between two extremes or two opposite tendencies.
This is a world of duality, but only in terms of what is manifest. The triangle,
the trinity, is always present, though ordinarily we see only the two ends of its
base. Looking above (or within) for the apex, we shall in time perceive the
40
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Reality, of which the two extremes of the manifested world are distorted re¬
flections. And what causes the distortion is the personal self through which the
Real manifests. In other words, in the case of over-conscientiousness, it is the
large element of self, in some form or other, which causes the trouble,—perhaps
the desire to make it impossible for others to criticize us (futile hope!), or the
wish to be able to assure ourselves that we have gone the limit and beyond it,—
that we have done more than others would be willing to do. Either rajas or
tamas may govern, according to the temperament. The person who resents
interference with his plan, or delay in its execution, and who fights to put it
through at all costs, is governed by rajas; the person who, in similar circum¬
stances, feebly smiles, and says on general principles and for the sake of ‘peace’
that to-morrow will do, is governed by tamas. It is only the complete elimination
of the personal motive—whether fear, or anger, or laziness, or resentment, or
vain-glory, or what not—that will enable us to find the Middle Path, the happy
Mean.
“Incidentally, the followers of Confucius, with rare exceptions, never under¬
stood this; they were the first to defend compromise as an ideal. The same is true
of the followers of Buddha, except among those who were mystics. It is The¬
osophy alone that explains and solves the problem. Can we ever be sufficiently
grateful for the light that Theosophy throws on all such difficulties! Constantly
I think of this: surrounded as we are by death and sorrow and physical suffering;
living as we are in a world from which the last appearance of stability has fled,
how should we feel, what should we do, if it were not for our knowledge of The¬
osophy, and for the sacrifice of those who brought that knowledge to us! No
other light reveals so clearly, deep in the heart of life, that ocean of compassion
in which alone is rest,—within life, but also brooding over it, and which all of
Nature feels and worships and yearns toward,—except man, whose mind sees
itself as the only good. There is not a flower or a tree, a rock or a bird or an
animal that does not know more of God than the mind of man, and, as a rule,
the more mind, the less man knows. Until mind has been dominated, as a tool
must be dominated, it is, as The Voice of the Silence says, ‘the slayer of the real’
and the source of every woe. Perception is the power we need; and the mind,
as such, is incapable of that; the mind, at best, is a differentiating and comparing
machine. A Master stands, a blaze of glory, pouring out his benediction on
man and Nature; and Nature thrills in unison, while man looks at Nature and
thinks what he can get out of it, in money or in food.
“Yet we need not be like that. We have within us a glimmer of the radiance
of our own Master’s being, and where the least of him is, he is entirely. Our
desire to find him and to love him, is the striving of his own life within us. If we
yield ourselves to that; if we place our hearts beside him, as he dwells there,
waiting,—presently we shall see with his eyes, and hear with his ears,—shall
see him and hear him, no longer hidden within us, but revealed in all the splen¬
dour of his transfigured manhood, in all the beauty of his peace and tenderness
and power: the Warrior of God.’’
T.
REPORT OF THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE
THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
Morning Session
The Annual Convention of The Theosophical Society was called to order at
64, Washington Mews, New York, at 10.30 a. m., on Saturday, April 28th, i934»
by Mr. Hargrove, Chairman of the Executive Committee, who served as Tempo¬
rary Chairman of the Convention. A Committee on Credentials was appointed,
consisting of Mr. H. B. Mitchell, Miss Perkins, and Mr. Kobb^, to confer and
report at once.
Address of the Temporary Chairman
Mr. Hargrove : It is my very great privilege and pleasure, on behalf of the
Executive Committee, and really on behalf of the soul of the Society, to welcome
you all here this morning. I think it must be your experience, as it is my own,
that the longer our membership, the greater is our joy in reuniting here annually.
We must of necessity grow more and more into the Movement, unless, through
our own fault, we grow out of it; and because we grow further into the IMove-^
ment, our roots grow deeper and deeper into the source from which it sprang.
It is certainly not my expectation that anything unusual will be said or done
or seen at this particular Convention. It is hardly credible that we still belong
to the generation that looks for wonders and that seeks a sign; but of one thi^
I am positive,—that the greatest of all possible gifts will be offered to each
of us in our hearts, and that it is for us, individually and collectively, to accept
of that gift, to use it, and to resolve.
So it is not only an immense pleasure and privilege to be here this morning;
it is also a marvellous opportunity, an opportunity which I am sure every one
of us will grasp, an opportunity that we shall look back upon with thanksgiving.
It is time for us to entertain the report of the Committee on Credentials.
This Report having been submitted and accepted, and the Committee dis¬
charged with thanks, Mr. H. B. Mitchell, President of the New York Branch, was
elected Permanent Chairman of the Convention, with Miss Perkins and Miss
Chickering as Secretary and Assistant Secretary respectively.
41
42
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Address of the Chairman
The Chairman: Anyone who speaks here this morning must wish to echo
first the words which we have just heard from Mr. Hargrove. I do not think
that one can come to these Conventions without finding, uppermost in his heart,
the feeling of joy and gratitude that it is his privilege to come. As he reaches
the door, and sees the faces of old friends, that feeling deepens. It grows stronger
still as he meets new friends, distant members, co-workers in the Movement,
whom he may long have known through correspondence, but perhaps never
before has seen. Thus from the day itself, from both old friends and new, happi¬
ness and gratitude come to us.
But as we enter the room, or stand in the doorway and see these pictures on
the walls, of Madame Blavatsky and Judge and our companions of the past,
as we look at the shield which bears our seal and motto and think of all they stand
for, of the Great of Soul from which they come to us, of the lives laid down that
knowledge of Truth might live and grow, something deeper than gladness rises
in us, and our hearts are uplifted in a salute to the Corps. The light of the soul’s
loyalty shines forth, and in it the things of self pass from sight. It does not
diminish gladness, but it no longer lets our consciousness be held in thoughts
of it. The Corps and the Cause claim all we are, and we face our work and
opportunity with the sense of the grave responsibility they entail.
I need not say that in The Theosophical Society each man speaks for himself,
and that what he says commits no one else. But because of that fact we are
free here, as nowhere else, to voice the truth as each of us may see it. Neither
the Society nor any of its members is committed to a belief in Masters because
I believe in them, and therefore none can take it amiss when I state the belief,
quite simply, that as we come into this room to-day, we come into the presence
♦of the Masters to whom the T. S. owes its existence,—into a post, an outpost,
of an ancient Battle-Corps whose battle is our own. Here are our leaders; here
the spirit that can quicken in us the power to follow them. Whatever may be
our personal feelings, whatever we may do outwardly, our first act inwardly,
as we open this Convention, is our salute to the Corps, and our recognition that
we stand here to carry on its age-old work.
What is that work? In Light on the Path we are told of the link that is formed
by those who refuse to be terrified by the greater nature or to be drawn back by
the lesser, “a link between man and his divine part, . . . between the stir of the
market place and the stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas”, between the
Lodge of Masters and the world. It is a link between Infinite Compassion and
infinite need, and our work is to maintain that link. It is for that our Movement
exists. For it, our predecessors lived and laboured and died, and the work and
trust which was theirs are now ours. We are their heirs, the inheritors of their
victories—and of their warfare. We cannot take the one and leave the other,
nor betray the standards they upheld with heroic, patient courage. They gave
their all. It is our all they ask of us—of each one of us, our all of love, of devotion,
of brooding thought and active work.
T. S. ACTIVITIES
43
Very little things can determine great issues. We all know the stories of the
lion and the mouse, of the dropped stitch that unravels the whole fabric, of the
battle lost for the lack of a horseshoe nail. A ship’s captain lets his finger drop
down a line as it moves across the page of his log, thus taking the time of passing
one light as the time of passing another, and, through this error, piles his ship
upon the rocks. A frightened, half-grown boy sticks to his post, despite his fears,
tapping with a finger on a rubber key; and the message goes forth that save^ both
ship and passengers. It was but a finger’s movement in each case—a moment’s
carelessness, a few minutes of self-dominating fidelity. So we are small, and
perhaps can do but little things; yet in the end, great issues may turn upon them.
There is a saying in the Tao-Teh-King to the effect that the sage accomplishes
great things while they are still small, for, “All difficult things have their origins
in those that are easy; and great things in what are small. Therefore the wise
man can accomplish great things without ever attempting them’’. So, too, it
is recorded of the Christian Master that he prefers to work through the simplest
and humblest instruments, in order that the divine power, operating through
them, may stand out the more clearly. It does not need great personal attain¬
ments, to enable us to serve in the work of the Lodge. Great pretensions belie
themselves. All that is asked is the little that we have: that we be faithful:
that we give ourselves in complete loyalty, doing our honest best.
To the extent that we do this, to that extent shall we enter into the Theo-
sophical Movement and become a part of the link which it constitutes, the link
between the temporal and the Eternal. It is of that that I want to speak to-day;
for part of doing our best must be in the giving of our best thought to our oppor¬
tunities and problems; so that we not only strive to be true to the light we have,
but constantly seek clearer light in all that concerns our work. It is of special
moment to us to understand the process that operates in our own Movement,
whereby the Unmanifest is made manifest, and the unchanging Eternal is re¬
vealed in the changes and sequences of time. Through fixity of heart and
purpose, through steadfastness and loyalty of will, we have to maintain an
enduring current of spiritual force in the midst of the shifting tides of the world,
and this work of the Movement can succeed only as it conforms to the princii^
which everywhere guide the incarnation of Spirit, and determine the pattej^n
which the Eternal reflects itself in the temporal. It behoves us, therefore, to
consider these principles.
They are indicated for us in the Proem of The Secret Doctrine. There is first
the hidden Unity, the Unmanifest, the Root and Cause of all. It is useless to
speculate upon this; all that we can do is to point toward it, to use symbols as
sign-posts. So, for us, it may be symbolized, or pointed to, by the unity of the
great Lodge of Masters,—the unity of spirit that we feel within or above all that
comes from them, the overshadowing Movement from which our Movement
springs. But once we pass in thought from this hidden Unity to its emanations,
from the Unmanifest to the manifest, we find duality supervenes. There is the
contrast between form and essence. Spirit (or consciousness) and matter, subject
and object. As Mr. Johnston used to remind us, there is no cutting a stick so
44
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
short that it will not have two ends. Wherever there is matter there is conscious¬
ness, and wherever there is consciousness there is some vehicle to clothe and to
express it. These opposites, The Secret Doctrine teaches, are of the very essence
of manifestation, of “eA;-istence”, of that which comes out of Unmanifested Being.
Not only does this duality mark all external being; it marks, equally, all ex¬
ternal processes. All things move in cycles. The law of periodicity, of flux and
reflux, ebb and flow, is absolute and universal in the manifested world. Day and
night, life and death, sleeping and waking, the beating of the heart, the in¬
breathing and the outbreathing, the voice that speaks and is still,—only through
such alternations, through beginnings and endings, birth and death and rebirth
again, does anything endure in the world of space and time.
These fundamental propositions of The Secret Doctrine are illustrated wherever
we look. Few of us could have come here this morning without feeling that
behind the manifest lay an infinitely greater Unmanifest, without sensing a
Unity behind all diversity. You may not be able to define what you felt; but
you none the less felt it. The heart can lay its hold upon unity where the mind
cannot function, and there is something here which we can love, though we
cannot describe it. It is the true Theosophy, the spirit of the Lodge, the atmos¬
phere of “our Father’s house”. It is in the air, in the walls, in the ceiling and
floor; and its presence illustrates also the second principle of which The Secret
Doctrine speaks, the indissoluble association of spirit and matter. The whole
place, the tables, the chairs, the pictures on the walls, the very bricks of the
fireplace, are stored with all that has lived and been lived in this room. There is
nothing dead, nothing unconscious here. The force and life and consciousness
which animate the Theosophical Movement, live here, pulsing, as though they
were a living substance, in the air about us, carrying our past over for us
into the present.
How does it do this? Outwardly there have been many changes; but inwardly
it has remained the same. Voices which we once heard outwardly, we now hear
only in the silence. New comrades smile a greeting to us; new photographs have
been hung upon the walls; and yet within and above the change there is that
which is unchanged, which endures the same, and upon which, as beads upon
a string, all changes find their place. Inwardly there is that fixed, undeviating
current of spiritual life and love and will, which is the Theosophical Movement,
its very changelessness producing change in all it contacts or through which it
acts. Can we not see that this must be so ? That the immutability and constancy
of spirit, its eternal unity, can manifest itself only through change in form and
circumstance—as continuous, unchanging motion can manifest itself only through
continuous change in place? In the things of the spirit, the Eternal is immanent
in the temporal, even as it is transcendent. Let us remember what Krishna
told Arjuna: “I established this whole universe with a single portion of myself,
and remain separate.” There is the transcendent, overshadowing spirit of The¬
osophy, the single, undivided will and spirit of the great Lodge, always acting,
always here, always the same. But it must show itself in a thousand different
forms and ways, in beginnings and endings, in silence and in speech; and we
T. S. ACTIVITIES
45
must learn to look through these changing forms to that which is fixed and perma¬
nent within them; to see the immortal within the mortal; and then to face and
understand and accept the mortal—to accept change.
Let us pause, for a moment, to consider in a broader view this law of cyclic
change that characterizes all manifestation. The theosophic view of evolution
is not that ordinarily taken by science. Science looks only to the sequence of
forms. We look to the spirit that moulds and animates the form, that uses it as
its vehicle and vesture. We see the whole material world evolving from the
immaterial world,—as speech evolves from thought, and thought from contem¬
plation. To us, life flows from within; science too often presents it as though
it were but a reaction to what lay without. Yet it is illuminating to view, as
science views, the background against which life is lived, the external circum¬
stances in which science would have us believe life arose and evolved. Our earth
is but one of our sun’s planets, and our sun but one of many myriads of suns,
radiating their heat and light and magnetism, and unknown subtile essences and
influences, into space. Through the whole cosmos everything is in motion, puls¬
ing, revolving, flaming. Nothing is still. The planets revolve around the suns;
turn on their own axes, presenting first one face to the sun and then the other;
drawing nearer and then retreating again; causing day and night, winter and
summer; opening themselves to the radiance that is the source of their life, and
then shielding themselves from it, in cyclic alternation of indrawing and outgiving.
Nowhere in the environment or conditions of life is there any escape from such
cyclic alternations. We think of the evolution of animal life from aquatic forms,
on the shores where tides rise and fall. It is not always water there, nor always
air. The clams are left uncovered as the tides recede, to be covered again as they
advance. Or consider any department or aspect of our own physical life: our
breathing, the diastole and systole of the heart, the taking of food and the elimi¬
nation of waste. We eat, but we cannot be always eating. There must be time
given for the assimilation of our food, for the transformation of its constituents
and the sublimation of its energies. So with our mental life: we must take in
and give out. We listen, but we cannot be always listening. We speak, but
cannot be always talking. We have to digest what we hear. We have to thinl^^
that we may speak intelligently; and to contemplate, that we may think in¬
telligently. In every manifestation of life there is the same cyclic rhythm, the
same alternation of opposites, birth and death and birth again, beginnings and
endings which are neither beginnings nor endings, but the way whereby the one
unchanging current of spiritual being manifests itself in time.
It is not always easy to see and accept change as the vesture of the Unchanging,
but could we do so it would free us from the greater part of our burden of grief
and fear. “Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears”; so this
teaching of the law of cycles is, as we have seen, placed at the very foundation
of our philosophy. We shall gain in every way if we can really comprehend it.
For the truth of the matter is this: that it is precisely when some gift we have had
is withdrawn, so that it seems we have it no more, that it is made our own. We
have to learn to find, in denial, the gift of the thing denied.
46
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Does it sound too wild a paradox, a mere juggling with words? Think again
of the illustrations we have used. On the face of the planet, one hemisphere, we
say, is in the light, the other in darkness; the first is receiving from the sun and
drawing what it receives into itself; the second is giving forth what it has re¬
ceived—sometimes we say losing what it has received. But light and heat are
expanding, radiating things; they are a going forth of their source, not an ab¬
sorption. Therefore on the side of the planet where it is day, it is not the true
nature of light which is experienced, but rather its complement. There the
planet is receiving, whereas the sun is giving. It is only as the planet turns, and
this bright side ceases to be bright but becomes dark in the turning of the cycle,
that the gift which it has received and stored away begins to assert its true
influence and to live out its own nature, radiating into the cold and darkness
that surround it. It is not in the day, but in the night, that the earth acts as
does its parent the sun, that the gift which it receives from the sun is consum¬
mated. So it is with the breath drawn into the lungs. The inbreathing is but
half the process, impotent and useless if it stood alone; the purification and
oxygenation of the blood need the outbreathing for their completion. Wherever
we look we see that the denial is as necessary as the giving, for the completion
of the gift.
If we understand this, we face manifested life very differently from the way
in which the world is alone able to face it. To believe in the law of cycles as a
universal law, is of necessity to believe in reincarnation and to recognize that
death cannot be the end. But it is not the fact of a coming rebirth that is of
greatest moment to us. What I would emphasize is that what we call life and
death are but two phases of one continuing being, the two opposite poles of the
duality which marks all manifestation, the cyclic heart-beat through which the
Eternal lives in the temporal. Each the reverse of the other, each the denial
of the other, each the complement of the other, each confirming the other, they
together form one whole. Truly time and space are nothing but devices to make
manifestation possible; means whereby, alternately, the opposite aspects of being
may be held back in order that the other may be experienced in consciousness,
and so both become known and given their full part in the whole.
Think of a tale of adventure, or a drama! There must be suspense, uncertainty,
risk. Always the known must stand in contrast to the unknown; achievement must
be won by struggle,—Easter be reached through Good Friday. Neither is under¬
standable without the other; but also, to be understood, each must be separated
from the other, otherwise, in our consciousness, each would neutralize the other.
Heat and cold together make us neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm,—a dead,
a neutral thing, to be spewed from the mouth of reality. After we have read the
story and closed the book, it all can live in its totality before us,—in its lights
and shadows, its suspense and certainties, its joy and pain. But it could never
have entered consciousness in that way. It is only by means of some such device
as that of time, which, through successive denials, permits us to experience the
innate opposites of being, not simultaneously but successively, that we can know
being to the full,—that all its richness can become manifest.
#
#
t
T. S. ACTIVITIES
47
Time, therefore, through the law of cycles, with the denials and limitations it
enforces, is one of the basic instruments of manifestation. Space fulfils a like
function—the function of separation. “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain
of mustard seed . . . which indeed is the least of all seeds”, so that it scarcely
takes up space at all. All its potentialities, the astral mould, the latent energies,
are packed away, invisible. But plant it, and they begin to unfold, to manifest;
and manifestation involves separation of qualities, and separation takes up room,
occupies more and more of space. There is the development of roots and of
sprouting branches. Unmanifest, they are one, indistinguishable within the seed;
but manifest, they must be separated in space; the one pressing to the light and
air, the other to the dark moisture of the soil. Separation, whether of time or of
space, is basic to manifestation. The roots and the branches can no more be
together in space than the bud and the blossom, the fruit and the seed, can be
together in time. Where each is, the others must be denied, but in that denial
find their completion.
To-day the world is intolerant of denials. The outstanding feature of the past
hundred, or hundred and fifty years, is the breaking down of barriers of every
kind. Science, the popular science of the newspapers, brays that it has broken
down the barriers of time and space; Democracy, that it has levelled those of
caste and birth, and, it might add, of character and ability. We are asked to
“think internationally”. The Chinese wear derby hats. American society has
aped the dances and music of the African jungle. Everywhere there is “confusion
of castes”. Nowhere can privacy be commanded; in the middle of the ocean one
can still be called to the telephone. When it took weeks to cross the ocean, the
voyage was itself a quarantine against the importation of foreign forms of life
that might destroy the balance nature has established in each separate continent.
In these days of airplanes there is no such protection, and the risks that this
entails are only beginning to be perceived.
In business and finance there has been the same levelling and obliteration of
differences. This has more to do with the world-wide economic depression than is
generally realized. Trade breaks down when everybody is doing the same things
and has the same things. When England wanted ivory from Africa, and
wanted brass wire from England, the exchange could be made with profit to liWi.
In Africa brass wire was of exceptional value, in England it was not; but when
the standards have become the same, when England manufactures artificial
ivory, and Africa real brass wire, trade naturally ends.
A generation or two ago the financial markets of London, Paris, Berlin, New
York, and Chicago were separate and different; affected by one another, truly,
but more affected each by its own independent influences. If money were scarce
in one, it might be plentiful in others; and therefore mutual help could be given
and received. Moreover, if a man in St. Louis had money to invest, the proba¬
bility was that he would invest it in a local enterprise. To-day that is not so.
The news of the New York Stock Market’s opening and closing is broadcast over
the radio and printed in the local papers all over the country. The little farmer
invests his savings in the stocks of the “Big Board”. The result is that instead of
48
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
prosperity depending upon a widely diversified and great number of independent
risks, each relatively small, all the eggs have been put into a few very large
baskets. An insurance company may safely insure a thousand different lives or
houses; but none can safely put its entire capital against a single risk; yet that
is very much what the financial world has done. Many risks have been merged
into very few; and these such as none can evaluate or foretell, for they depend
upon the psychic mood of a whole people, upon mob psychology. All the world’s
markets receive the same news, by telephone or telegraph, at the same time.
They are all subjected to the same influences, and these influences are psychic
influences. The unpredictable psychic factor has been enormously increased by
popular “education”; and the inventions of modern science have, as it were,
wiped out the fire-lanes and break-waters, so that there is nothing to check the
forest fires or tidal waves of greed or fear.
That which is so obvious in the external world around us, is equally operative
in the moral and mental life of our generation. Everywhere old restrictions have
been swept away. Obligations, duties, self-mastery and self-restraint, have
become old fashioned terms in contrast to “rights” and “self-expression”. All
of this is the very opposite of that for which our Movement stands. We seek
unity in diversity, not in the destruction of diversity. We see each man’s frag¬
ment of the truth as necessary to the whole; and what we ask of him, above all
else, is that he should be true to his own truth. We see barriers and limitations
as essential to completeness, repression as essential to force; and we perceive
that they can never be dispensed with. The flat levels of unrestraint and uni¬
formity are dead and barren—no part of our ideal. “In my Father’s house are
many mansions”: a house without walls would be no house; surely it could not
contain “many mansions”. The whole intellectual basis of our Society’s ac¬
tivities is found in the fact that Truth manifests in many forms, not in one alone.
Theosophy is to be found in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Christianity, in all the
great religions of the world, in a thousand different forms and fragments, each
contributing its own special light and colour to an understanding of the whole.
One of my former colleagues at Columbia spent many years of his life collecting
snails from a single island in the South Pacific. The formation of the island
might be suggested by placing one’s hand on the table with the fingers spread,—
the fingers representing high rock ridges, the spaces between being fertile valleys.
In the valleys the snails thrived, but they could not cross the ridges. Therefore
in each separate valley the snails had developed independently, and this de¬
velopment had not been confused or obscured by cross breeding, so that, my
colleague told me, every potentiality of the organism had been brought out to
the full in one valley or another.
That is what we need to-day in the world and in our own natures,—we need
the very limitations which we are most tempted to resent. Pain has lessons to
teach us as well as joy; hardship as well as ease. If we take pleasure, instead
of duty, as our guide, we must lose hold of the spiritual principles which our life
is meant to manifest and to develop. We may grow, but it will be a cancerous
growth, without conformity to the inner mould of the spirit, draining the vitality
T. S. ACTIVITIES
49
from our proper development. We who have been taught in the Theosophical
Movement should understand this, and see that life is impoverished and not
enriched by licence and uniformity; and we should set ourselves to establish
and re-create in our own natimes, and of our own wills, those necessary denials
and limitations by which alone spirit can manifest itself in matter.
As I said before, but would emphasize again and yet again, wherever we look,
we see that it is through denial that the gift is made complete and its nature
manifest. These flowers on the table, that are beautiful to us in their varied
colours, show forth, as that colour, the element of light that they do not them¬
selves absorb,—which they sacrifice, and deny themselves. It is the soldier,
who gives his life, who makes life safe for his countrymen. It is the nun who
supports the sanctities of the family. It was in the hour of his own desolation,
in that cry from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
that Christ poured out upon the world the life and spirit which he felt he no longer
received, but which, in that act, united him with the Father in divine and
infinite self-giving. Everywhere “the gods are nourished by sacrifice’’, the spirit
gained and revealed in loss.
It has never been claimed that Theosophy is a soothing syrup for the coward
and the weakling. This teaching of denial and sacrifice and death is the creed
of the warrior, the creed which ought to be pre-eminently ours. If we can make
it ours, ours even in the dark shadows of our fears, it will give us the faith and
courage to face life undismayed, to accept all the changes which we have to accept,
either as craven or as hero. Change comes. Death comes. Rebirth comes.
Our friends pass from us. One by one our comrades in the Movement pass from
the outer world into the inner. We no longer have them by our side; but in
that very loss and denial is the opportunity to come closer to them than ever
before, as we pick up the work and responsibility that was theirs, but must now
be ours. Wherever they may be, they are working in their phase of the cycle
as we are working in ours; and in that common work we are together.
This is Kali Yuga, the iron age of darkness, in which the current of life sinks
deeper and deeper into matter. The great Lodge of Masters, in their compassion,
have poured forth the teachings of the ancient Wisdom, that it might follow that
current of life down into deeper, deader levels of consciousness than it ever
reached before. Thus we have become its recipients, its trustees, a part oMTe
link between the Lodge and the world, part of the channel through whicnT:he
needs of the world must be met. We must learn to give as we have received,
not something that is mere intellectual theory, but something that is vital because
lived. As one must “live the life” to know the doctrine, so, even more, must
one live the life in order to pass on the doctrine as a living thing. For this we
need courage; and we can draw that courage from the doctrine itself. No less
do we need faith; and that, too, is there for us. Could there be better ground
for faith than the way in which we have been led through these fifty-nine years
of our Society’s activities?
So we stand here to-day, to open this Convention, conscious of the Corps, of
which, in our own small way, we may be a part; conscious of the creed that is
50
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
that Corps’ own, and so must be ours as well; not ours to impose upon others,
but ours to impose upon ourselves,—resolved to live by it, feeling in our hearts
the power to live by it, holding fast to the knowledge that, though in the midst
of change, in the temporal sequence of death and birth and rebirth again, yet
we are the inheritors of that which is unchanging, immortal and eternal, which it
is ours to make our own, and which, through our Movement, must be made to
live in the world as the hope and faith and guide of humanity hereafter.
The Chairman then called for the report of the Secretary T. S.
Report of the Secretary T. S.
I have the honour to submit the following Report:
Branch Activities
Since Branches have established the custom of assembling on Contention Day,
to unite in mind and heart with this gathering of delegates and members, we
cannot think of absent members as distant, but rather of our united desire—to
draw lessons from the past year instead of emphasizing its accomplishments,
and then, as the result of aspiration during the Convention, to find the key-note
for the coming year’s work.
In Arvika, Sweden, the Branch consists of long-time members, with a “living
interest in the work’’, who are looking expectantly for recruits to perpetuate
their endeavour. The Secretary, Mrs. Fjaestad, makes grateful acknowledgment
of help from Headquarters, and is commissioned to send Branch greetings to the
Convention. ... [A passage from the Secretary’s Report, although read at the
Convention, is omitted here, as it referred to the activities of Branches, Study
Classes and members in certain foreign countries where strained political con¬
ditions make publicity inadvisable.] The Oslo Branch meets frequently, with
good attendance and sustained interest. Whatever the topic of the evening, it is
always preceded by an appropriate reading from Cavd’s Fragments. The Chair¬
man, Mr. Henning Dahl, writes that, following the custom in another Branch,
they intend to “remember departed friends and teachers on the dates of their
death—thinking of them as living and working for the Cause they loved so
much’’. He adds: “Our inmost \vish is to become a living Branch on the true
Vine, ... so to live as to prepare the way for one who will live the life in its
perfection.’’ The Branch at Gateshead, England, is making steady progress,
taking one rung of the ladder at a time. The Krishna Lodge of South Shields,
Mr. Mackey writes, is trying to “develop strength, stability, faith, courage and
vision’’. The Newcastle Branch has held regular meetings, with a varied pro¬
gramme for its local members, and has circulated the New York Reports among
its numerous corresponding members. The Secretary, Mrs. Cassidy, says that
they find Mr. Johnston’s “Religion of the Will’’ throws much light on the prob¬
lems of the present day, although contributed to the Quarterly in 1908-1909.
The members in Whitley Bay are deeply interested in their study of The Secret
Doctrine. “We have”, Mrs. Ross reports, “a very faithful and sincere circle,
T. S. ACTIVITIES
51
who attend regularly, appreciate the help given, and endeavour to understand
and carry into effect the teachings of Theosophy.” The Norfolk Branch does
not assemble, as it is a “corresponding Branch”, whose members, unable to
meet personally, have therefore had the more practice in an effort to meet at
the point of reality. Mrs. Graves, the Secretary, writes that real progress has
been made.
The Venezuela Branch of Caracas has been active in various lines of which its
delegates will doubtless speak. We shall hear also from the delegates of Hope
Branch, Providence, which has been “developing increased gratitude for the
theosophical philosophy, deeper sense of personal responsibility, greater har¬
mony”. In Toronto, the membership consists largely of men. Mr. Harris writes:
“We have felt the result of the general upset of things, but I believe our meetings
together have been of real help.” The Cincinnati Branch turned, this year, to
the devotional side of Theosophy, and every one has greatly benefited by the
study of the Voice of the Silence. Miss McCormack, the Secretary, says: “Mem¬
bers often come to the meetings tired or depressed and go away with faith
strengthened, experiences made more endurable, courage renewed.” Middletown
is a neighbouring Branch; its members meet at the home of their devoted Presi¬
dent, Mr. Roberts; since pioneer days, he and Mrs. Roberts have been connected
with the T. S. and have courageously maintained this centre, under conditions
often adverse. The Secretary of the Virya Branch of Denver, Miss Mary K.
Wallace, writes of their meetings: “The discussions have been spirited, and
directly related to the interests of the members. . . . Some especially enjoyed
an attempt made to estimate prominent world figures by theosophic standards.
Also there has been definite effort to bring the work of those who so faithfully
laboured for Theosophy—Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Judge, Mr. Johnston, Mr.
Griscom—to the attention of members who knew none of them personally, and
to make those members conscious of the enduring qualities of their effort and
sacrifice.” Speaking for the Pacific Branch of Los Angeles, Mr. Box repels:
“Our main objective and effort have been to stand firmly in the midst qMnc
psychic, emotional mess of things, so to speak, by which we are all surrouTOed.
... We have learned that, in time, we reap what we have sown; and that a
Branch is made up of the same life, energy, traits and force of character, as those
of which its members are made; so that whatever comes from a higher source
than they, reaches it through them. Thus, for instance, if in the past its public
appeal had been largely emotional, instead of toward building and maintaining
itself on a more enduring spiritual foundation,—there would be danger of its
being carried away on the now swiftly flowing, psychic-emotional tide to which
it had thus helped to give rise.”
The Theosophical Quarterly
Our magazine admirably serves as the Society’s travelling representative,
carrying from the heart of the Movement its repeated call to action, and counsels
drawn from ripe experience, which are even more explicit and revealing than
could be given in personal conference. As we rejoice in the appearance of
%
52
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
younger contributors, we also watch the narrowing circle of older ones, mar¬
velling at the work done by the very few, who labour unceasingly to keep the
Quarterly’s presentation of theosophic standards and principles true to the
inner pattern. Fortunately, it has been possible to maintain the library circu¬
lation of the magazine, which represents wide scattering of seed,—destined
ultimately, we trust, to revolutionize the world by the establishment of spiritual
standards. The subscription plan inaugurated, on principle, by the 1932 Con¬
vention, has already demonstrated its practical advantages.
Book Department
Demand for the reprinting of some of otu* books is reminder of the place they
fill; there is constant sale for them, though diminished in volume by financial
conditions. One means of disseminating applied Theosophy is represented by
Dr. Torrey’s pamphlet. Science and its Function in Education, which we had the
pleasure of bringing out (at fifty cents per copy); others, dealing with funda¬
mental problems of interest to the general public, may follow.
Secretary's Office
The work has again been done by volunteers, those of former years, and
several new ones who have recently made special preparation for the service of
the Society. Thanks to the diligence of three members, there is now in the office
a card-index of the thirty-one Quarterly volumes—and one of the indexers
offers to supply the Secretary with information members may desire, as to
issues where wanted articles appeared, or designated topics were discussed.
The “travelling library’’, which contains the standard books on Theosophy and
several series of articles from the Quarterly, not yet published in book form,
awaits more general use.
Every Branch has asked that the thanks of its members for much appreciated
help, should be expressed to the Editors of the Quarterly —for many it is as a
lighthouse in the midst of an angry and treacherous sea. They also ask oppor¬
tunity to speak of their gratitude for the Reports of the New York Branch meet¬
ings, which are made possible by two members—one who takes the notes, and
another who, from these, produces a spirited miniature of each meeting. We
are again indebted to an American member who gives the general T. S. fund a
sum in excess of the amount that would be due from European members, had
these not been requested to pay their dues by making donation to some form of
Allied Relief work. Others might be mentioned who have given generously of
time, money or skill, but the closer one comes to the work, the more one appreci¬
ates that connection with it in any capacity is a privilege for which one wishes
to give rather than to receive thanks. Nature shows that co-ordinated, pur¬
poseful growth requires the activity of a strong, controlling centre; and without
such a centre the Theosophical Movement could not stand as it does to-day,
opposing to general chaos the order and vision of another world. From this
centre emanate the understanding, insight and poise that hold work and workers
true to their orbits. Fortunate, indeed, is one who, situated like your Secretary
T. S. ACTIVITIES
53
at the cross-roads where currents meet, needs and so receives for the Society’s
benefit, direction, counsel, training, to which otherwise one would have no claim:
it is acknowledged in deep gratitude. With the years, the bonds of a common
endeavour and service are more precious, and so I want to thank the Society from
my heart for the opportunity given me.
Respectfully submitted,
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary T. 5 .
This report was accepted with the unanimous thanks of the Convention to
the Secretary and to the Secretary’s helpers, after which the report of the
Treasurer was called for.
Mr. H. B. Mitchell, as Treasurer T. S., after thanking the Assistant Treasurer,
Mr. Kobbd, for having done “all the work of the office’’, reported a net balance,
as of April 28th, 1934, of $4.42. This, he said, would have satisfied Mr. Judge,
who did not believe in allowing T. S. funds to accumulate and thus remain idle,
especially when there was plenty of money coming in. Members might rest
assured, he added, that at no time would the Society be allowed to run into debt.
The printing and mailing of the Quarterly, which cost $3400. in 1932, had cost
$3100. in 1933.
After this report had been accepted with thanks, the Chairman announced the
following three committees which he had earlier been authorized by the Con¬
vention to appoint:
Committee on Nominations: Mr. Auchincloss (Chairman), Mr. LaDow, Dr.
Hohnstedt.
Committee on Resolutions: Mr. Hargrove (Chairman), Dr. Torrey, Mr. Gon-
zdlez Jimenez.
Committee on Letters of Greeting: Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell (Chairman), Dr. Clark,
Mrs. Regan.
The report of the Executive Committee was then called for.
Report of the Executive Committee
Mr. Hargrove : Mr. Chairman and Fellow Members: as you know, our outer
activities do not increase; as you also know, this is not accidental, nor is it due
to lack of energy or of membership or of money. It is because we are conforming
to the spiritual cycles; it is because we have a better imderstanding of The¬
osophy, let us hope, than to try to push against spiritual law. Do you realize,
I wonder, that this assembly, for H.P.B., for Judge, would be a marvellous
dream come true? Do you realize that they worked and prayed and died for this
very thing,—a devoted nucleus, determined to live for the principles and ideals
which H.P.B. and Judge brought with them from the Lodge; determined at all
costs to be true?
H.P.B. and Judge knew the Law of Cycles: who else brought it to our knowl¬
edge? They knew that if the Work inaugurated by them were to survive the
turn of the tide at the end of the nineteenth century; if it were to forge its way.
54
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
as it has done, into the very heart of the twentieth, then the Society would have
to lose in quantity as it gained in quality. This is why, at that earlier period,
they worked for quantity: they foresaw the great sifting process which must
inevitably take place if a nucleus were to survive.
The great sifting process: all of us, I think, are familiar with the old-fashioned
victrola and its revolving plate; and all of us must realize that life is movement,
movement life, and that the life of the Theosophical Movement perpetually
revolves as it moves forward. Now if you place on a revolving plate a large
and light object such as a toy balloon, it will inevitably be thrown off, the more
quickly, the more rapid the revolution of the plate; while if the object be as a
grain of sand, it wull at least have a much better chance to remain on. That is
one illustration of the sifting process that has taken place on so large a scale in
the past. All members who felt themselves to be big, but who in fact were
light, were thrown off. It is only those who, by some miracle, have realized their
own insignificance—at least relatively—who have remained on.
H.P.B. and Judge, great as they were—and because they were so great—were
almost incredibly humble, convinced of their own unworthiness and unfitness to
accomplish the work that had been entrusted to them. All of us who knew Judge
know that; and of course it is manifest in the life of H.P.B. By contrast, if we
look back over the past, we see one member after another disappear into space,
shot off by the ever more and more rapidly revolving life of the Movement. It
is important that this should be understood, for a variety of reasons.
It is inherent in the theosophical philosophy itself, that there should be Kama
Lokic spooks, describing themselves as theosophical societies, in existence at the
present time,—as well as The Theosophical Society founded by H.P.B. and Judge
and others, representatives of which I am addressing at this moment. Such off¬
scourings must exist. They are the result of the great sifting process which had
to take place if we were to survive.
After all, granting that those who inaugurated the Movement and who carried
it on, put the whole of themselves into it—as they undoubtedly did—then they
not only transmitted that which came down from above, but they contributed
human nature, human nature as it is. That means that they put into the Move¬
ment, just as you and I are putting into the Movement to-day, things not only
good, but also (to put it mildly) indifferent; and those things, in time, must be
sifted out also, if, at last, the pure nucleus is to remain.
What happened? Practically all of us have read the Occult World (to go back,
for the moment, to the very early days of H.P.B. in India), and while some of us
owe a real debt to the author of the Occult World —because, after all, he was
largely instrumental, though indirectly, in reminding us once more of Theosophy
and of the Lodge—yet, great as is our debt, we must realize the author’s limi¬
tations. That book, as you know, contains letters from the Master K. H. that
are of endless value; but the book itself is also made up of observations about
phenomena, and so on and so forth, which very clearly demonstrate that Sinnett’s
centre of interest was in external things. He had no more idea of the inner life
than a flatiron. It was on phenomena that he was intent, and anything that he
T. S. ACTIVITIES
55
could drag out of H.P.B. in the way of a sensation—an out and out materialist,
if ever there was one. Almost from the first he showed that he was doomed;
yet he served his purpose while he lasted, and doubtless will receive his reward,
—in spite of his final treachery to H.P.B. He was thrown off that revolving
plate, before she died; and she knew it.
Then there came the trouble over Judge. Those who have been thrown off—
not by any act of the surviving membership, but always through their own sense
of importance, through their own ambition, through their too materialistic and
personal approach to divine truth—have all shared certain characteristics. Any¬
one who knew Annie Besant ought to have realized that she thought Divine
Providence lucky when it ran into her. The same attitude has characterized every¬
one without exception who has failed to cling to the Movement. It always will.
John Jay Chapman, a brilliant man with a very independent mind, wrote a book
at the outbreak of the War in which he analysed the psychological condition of
the German people at that time, describing it as a state of mania, with what we
should call the lower nature in control. It is easy to see that the German symp¬
toms, as he records them, have been exhibited also by those who have been thrown
out of the Society as a result of swollen personality. First, he says, there was a
curious ability to use reason, and then suddenly to lapse into unreason, without
recognizing the lapse from reason into unreason; then there was the attitude of
dogmatic certitude; thirdly, there was megalomania, a sense of intense self¬
exaltation. I should like to add on my own account that in Germany, as in the
case of the derelicts of the Movement, the persecution mania was a marked symp¬
tom. Germany was perfectly sincere at that time in her belief that she was
being persecuted by the entire world. Annie Besant (although it is almost
incredible) convinced herself that she was being persecuted, although the truth
was that she was savagely persecuting Judge. Mrs. Tingley imagined she was
hounded by enemies,—a real mania. But all four peculiarities were invariably
present, if you go through the list of those who led others astray.
For the reason that the Adyar society is the most notorious of these Kama
Lokic spooks at the present time, it is necessary to study it, because, after some
of us older people have gone to a better world, you may be confronted with all
kinds of arguments for a so-called reunion; and reunion in any form oi^o^any
basis would be fatal to the cause of the Lodge. Beware, if you as in<Himuals
should take back to yourselves the devils you have expelled. If you have suc¬
ceeded to any extent in sifting out the worser elements, keep them separate, at as
great a distance as possible, on all planes, and never take them home to yourselves
as you grow older. Exactly the same thing is true of The Theosophical Society:
never let it be tempted, under the plea of reunion or brotherhood, to re-combine
with these shells of the past. I must speak very plainly, but also very deliber¬
ately, for the sake of the future. We have to safeguard the situation so far as we
possibly can.
I doubt if many of you have given time—^why should you?—to following the
activities of the Adyar society—proceedings and activities so foolish in some
cases, that you might well be tempted to suspect me of exaggeration as I speak
56
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of them. I shall not exaggerate: it would be impossible,—and, granting the
nature of that society’s origin (that people with an enlarged ego shot off into
space and drew a number of others with them) what was likely to happen ? The
thing that did happen: a monstrous degradation of Theosophy; Leadbeater
and his drivelling psychism (and worse than psychism, as some of you know).
They were not children, playing they were Kings and Queens; they were more
like lunatics in an asylum, for they called one another by great and imposing
names, such as Arhat (all of them were Arhats!); they reported familiar con¬
versations with Gautama Buddha and with “The Master of Masters’’; they
turned themselves into Bishops and wore intoxicating clothes (the peacock’s
feathers of dementia); they slathered one another with compliments, guaran¬
teeing one another’s initiation into the highest levels of the Lodge. Annie
Besant announced that some Hindu girl, one of her devotees, was “the World
Mother’’; “Bishop’’ Arundale promptly married her. The same Arundale, at
present a strenuous candidate for their Presidency, wrote to Mrs. Besant from
Australia that he spent all his nights in Nirvana. She wrote back (a letter that
has been published), sympathizing with “Dearest George’’ because it must be
“very tiring to spend the night in Nirvana and the day in Australia’’. That was
in 1926. Can you imagine greater balderdash, or a more blasphemous travesty
of Theosophy ? It was not mere childishness or lunacy; there was intensely active
evil back of it all. How could worse harm have been done to the Movement!
But there is nothing extraordinar>^ in this. Wherever the White Lodge forces
its way, the Black Lodge is free to follow. To achieve great things in this world,
great risks must be taken. The Theosophical Movement, coming down from
above with tremendous momentum, plunged into the ocean of human life, and
flung up on every side the mud and scum of human nature, particularly, perhaps,
in those who were drawn to the Movement itself. This evil had to be thrown off
if a nucleus were to survive; and thrown off it was, in repeated shocks and up¬
heavals—disintegrating elements of ambition, selfishness, superstition, materi¬
alism, centring at Adyar, Point Loma and elsewhere. Mrs. Tingley’s personal
ambition and self-seeking became as notorious as the superstition of her followers;
the same is true of the so-called United Lodge, though in different ways. As
many of you are aware, Robert Crosbie was its inspiring genius. Some of us knew
him well, years ago, in Boston. He was one of Judge’s minor sorrows,—because
Crosbie was psychic, always having “visions’’, always imagining that he was
getting “messages’’, and so forth. Judge, of course, thoroughly understood him,
and often grieved over him to us. Later, at a time when there was no excuse for
it, as everyone had been warned, Crosbie followed Mrs. Tingley to Point Loma.
When he finally discovered (much good his psychism did him!) that she was not
what he had imagined her to be, he left Point Loma, and then, when he had
obtained the financial backing he needed, set up as a “guru’’ on his own account,
establishing the United Lodge as recruiting instrument.
Yet all of this sifting process, although it brought Theosophy into terrible
disrepute with the unthinking public, was necessary and essentially wholesome,
inasmuch as it purged the Movement of most undesirable elements; and it will
T. S. ACTIVITIES
57
work out for ultimate good, so long as we recognize the facts, and never, in the
future, allow ourselves to be deceived by efforts to draw us into so-called “co¬
operation”.
All of these outside organizations have carried on public propaganda as if the
Law of Cycles did not exist, that is to say, in spite of the turn of the tide, in spite
of the indrawal of the spiritual forces which were poured out, through H.P.B.
and Judge, during the last quarter of the century. If further evidence were
needed, this alone would show how deliberately misguided they have been. It
cannot be stated too often that the true Movement must indraw, away from the
world, back toward the Lodge, as the spirit leadeth. It is our function, so far as
possible, to draw the world after us,—the best that is in the world, in any case.
Now for another subject: there has been speculation on the part of some of
you, I know, about the next Lodge Messenger, and about the possibility of a
forerunner, as the Comte de Saint Germain seems to have acted as forerunner
at the end of the eighteenth century. But do you realize that whoever comes,
and whenever he comes, will come invisibly before he comes visibly? and that
it is part of our function to-day to move in spirit toward him, until the point of
junction is attained? One purpose of our assembling here to-day is that that
inner contact may be hastened. Clearly that would be the wish of the Masters
for us, as I am convinced it is their wish that those here to-day, in person or in
aspiration, may feel their blessing, may feel their nearness, and may receive
from all that is said and from all that is left unsaid, an overwhelming sense of the
reality of the spiritual world.
What is our objective—I will not say as a Society, because it might be mis¬
understood (the purposes of the Society are published and are known); but
what is our objective as individual members? What are we working for? Ulti¬
mately, for the restoration of the dynasty of Adept Kings. I do not think we
should ever lose sight of that objective; we must not forget the ultimate because
of our immersion in the immediate or proximate. Let us think back in history,
then, just for a moment: nearly all of us have read of the efforts that were made
to restore the Stuarts to the throne of England. Their place had been u||^cd
by the Hanoverians. We know of the sacrifices that were made; that and
women devoted their entire lives—their money, everything that they valued—
to the cause of the Stuarts. Yet they were working for something external in
comparison with that for which we work. Realizing this, we can perhaps shame
ourselves into greater and more one-pointed effort. Does everything that we do
and say and read, centre around the ultimate restoration we entreat?
Then, as an intermediate step, we are working to carry the Movement forward
until the next Lodge Messenger comes. Why will he come? He will come for
the same ultimate purpose: to prepare the way of the Lord, he, a Great Pre¬
parer, but we in our turn, lesser preparers—every one of us; for every member
of The Theosophical Society is, in a sense, following in the footsteps of John the
Baptist, and should be performing a function similar to his.
Of course it is our right, if we choose to reject our opportunity, to say that
we will have none of it, and yet remain members in good standing. I am, how-
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
58
ever, speaking to those who are glad of the chance to make their lives of real
value. We can do this, in part, by perceiving that just as the gulf between the
world and The Theosophical Society is an ever-widening gulf, so should be the
gulf between ourselves and the world. The world, as such, is concentrated lower
nature; and when we are obliged to make contact with the world, we ought to
do it deliberately and with our eyes open, in complete control of what we are
doing and of how we do it. If we are to feel here this morning, and again this
afternoon—as I hope all of us will—the breath of the spirit in our hearts, we shall
have felt, as we entered this room, that we were leaving the world behind us.
Some of you will remember that marvellous passage in one of the Buddhist
books, in which the Buddha describes a meditation of “the Great King of Glory”,
who, after purifying himself, approached the door of the “inner chamber”, and
there stood, commanding, with “intense emotion”, all evil thoughts, all desires
of the personality, all its fears and all its worries, to remain without the threshold.
“Stay here”, “Thus far only”, he ordered. Only then did he enter the inner
chamber, the place of divine vision, there to behold “the heavenly Treasure of
the Wheel”. At the sight of it he made obeisance, exclaiming: “Roll onward,
O my Lord, the Wheel! 0 my Lord, go forth and overcome!” It was another
form, a Buddhist form, of “Thy will be done”; but the story reminds us also
that if we would come into contact with reality, we must first separate ourselves
from unreality; and we cannot do this until we begin to pierce through the rind
of things toward the light that streams from within, until we have caught some
glimpse of the glory of the Real, until something of its transcendent beauty has
lifted our hearts and filled our souls with consuming desire. But now we can at
least resolve to be held down no longer by the hideousness of worldly life; that
we will ho longer try to persuade ourselves that that hideousness is what we
want. Because we know better; foolish as we are, blind as we are, we know
better: you know better. Yes,—the truth of the matter is that with all your
souls you love and long for the noblest, purest, most unselfish you can see. And
it is because the Masters know that, that they stand here to-day and grant us
their blessing.
The Convention then adjourned until 2.30 p. m.
Afternoon Session
The Chairman called for the report of the Committee on Nominations.
Report of the Committee on Nominations
Mr. Auchincloss presented the following nominations: for the Executive
Committee, to succeed themselves, Mr. Harris and Mr. Miller; for Treasurer,
Mr. H. B. Mitchell; Assistant Treasurer, Mr. Kobb6; Secretary, Miss Perkins;
Assistant Secretary, Miss Chickering. It was voted that the Secretary be
instructed to cast one ballot for the election of officers as nominated, and that the
Committee be discharged with thanks.
Report of the Committee on Letters of Greeting
Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell read the numerous greetings to the Convention that
T. S. ACTIVITIES
59
had been received from Branches and from members-at-large. The reading of
these was punctuated with frequent applause. Extracts from these letters are
printed at the end of this Report. Two members from Europe, who were
heartily greeted, read their own reports.
The Chairman, after the report of the Committee on Letters of Greeting
had been accepted with the thanks of the Convention, read a letter which had
been received from one of the members-at-large, in which it was stated that
Mr. Mitchell’s article in the Quarterly, “Collegiate Education and Standards
of Value”, had been read aloud to the two upper forms, including over a hundred
boys, by the Principal of one of America’s largest and best-known private schools.
The report of the Committee on Resolutions was then called for.
Report of the Committee on Resolutions
Mr. Hargrove: Before I submit the report of your Committee, perhaps I
may be allowed to add to something that I said this morning. Speaking of the
inevitable sifting-out process, and of the Adyar and similar societies, I failed to
draw your attention to what seems to me to be an extremely significant fact.
Take the best-known workers in The Theosophical Society,—Charles Johnston,
for instance: Mr. Johnston was a poor man. He never, however, derived any
financial benefit from his membership in the Society. A writer by profession,
not only was he never paid for his articles in the Quarterly, but profits derived
from the sale of his theosophical books, he turned back to the Quarterly Book
Department as a gift. Some of you know that, in later years, he was one of the
assistant editors of the Encyclopcedia Briiannica; that is to say, he earned his
living from “secular” sources, and gave his spare time to work for the Society.
Dr. Keightley, of course, was always a contributor, and never at any time drew
the slightest financial benefit from his membership. Mr. Griscom was a most
important contributor, of money and all else. You will remember that Saint
Paul is said to have been a tent maker, supporting himself. That is the right
principle.
It is wrong and thoroughly unwholesome, that anyone should make a living
out of Theosophy. Yet, if you turn to the other societies, you will find thatAIrs.
Besant, for instance, was entirely dependent upon what she made out|^ her
lectures and her books. There would always be a temptation, in that case, not
only to work for a large membership, but to use the subject to advertize the lec¬
turer and author. The larger the membership, the greater the demand for books;
the greater the notoriety, the larger the sales. Mrs. Besant earned so much that
she was able to support most of those who, under her, controlled the policy of her
society. In the other societies also, the prominent workers are supported,
directly or indirectly, in similar ways. They do not earn their living by secular
work. I repeat that this is bad in principle. Work of that kind ought to be
entirely voluntary. Even when the financial reward provides no more than a
bare living (and Mrs. Tingley made a fortune out of it), the practice is demoral¬
izing to the recipient, and proves that the organization which permits it is blind
to spiritual factors and has been swallowed up by the world.
6o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
I want also to add something in regard to humility. I spoke of the fact that
the people who are thrown off the revolving wheel of the Movement are those
who feel themselves to be big, while those who feel like grains of sand have the
best chance to adhere. This may have seemed to imply that all of us who are
still members of the Society, are models of humility! Alas, no. I came to the
conclusion, long ago, that it is only the Mahatma who can be completely humble;
that all that the rest of us can do is to recognize our lack of humility. This is
where the difference comes in. It is the people who think they are humble, who
take themselves with portentous solemnity, and who cannot either laugh at
themselves or hate themselves, who are lost. In either direction an element of
safety lies. It is bad enough to be vain, but it is infinitely worse not to realize
the silliness of it,—I will not say the “wickedness”, because that is too big a term
when it comes to ordinary vanity; but to see the silliness, and, if possible, the
ridiculousness of it, should in time effect a cure. Nothing is more salutary than
a sense of humour directed against ourselves. The type of humour that laughs
at other people’s adversities is despicable, but if humour be turned against self,
it will do much to keep the exuberance of self in restraint. In brief, we may
assume, because we are here to-day, not that we are humble, but that, first of all,
we wish we were, and that when the opposite is discovered—as it ought easily
to be—we try to treat it with contempt, or with the ridicule it deserves.
Now as to the Report of the Committee on Resolutions, I suggest the first
thing we should keep in mind is that we live in a mechanical age, and that we
ought to resolve not to allow ourselves to become its victims. The mechanizing
tendency manifests in every conceivable way. It is a reversion to primitive forms
of life. The ways of ants are mechanistic. Socialism, Hitlerism, Communism,
NRA-ism, all make for the anthill type of life, and we, as members of The The-
osophical Society, should make up our minds that whatever else happens, we will
not “go insect”. All present efforts to bring political and social life to a state of
outer perfection by outer means, are mechanical both in method and aim. Edu¬
cation, business, and every other form of human activity would, at best, in such
ways become stereotyped and stultifying. This does not mean that we should
raise the flag of rebellion against the NRA, or anything of the kind. We cannot,
at this stage of evolution, expect to control the surface of things; let the world
have the surface, seeing that that is what it wants; and let us keep the inner
power, as we can do if we grow in understanding; for right understanding,
accompanied by right sacrifice, will give us the ability to choose and to aspire
rightly, and our right choice and aspiration of to-day will draw the future—even
the surface of the future—into the mould which Masters alone are wise enough
to provide.
We must resolve to keep a level head in the midst of all that may be said and
urged and threatened by modernistic zealots. We must strive for understanding.
More harm is done in the world by well-meaning people who are stupid, than by
people who are notoriously bad. We must strive for finer and finer kinds of
understanding. We must recognize the tendencies of our racial and family he¬
redity, and because all of us have been bom in western as distinguished from
T. S. ACTIVITIES
6i
oriental bodies, we should expect a tendency to see things materialistically,—
even to interpret Theosophy materialistically. We have, I am sure, been out¬
growing that. As a Society we have made great progress within the last twenty-
five years, away from materialistic expositions of Theosophy, to an understanding
that is becoming more and more spiritual. There was a time, for instance, when
the doctrine of Karma was interpreted mechanically by most members. I well
remember W. B. Yeats, who at that time was interested in Theosophy, walking
up and down the aisle at the Blavatsky Lodge in London, and rightly ridiculing
Mrs. Besant’s cut and dried interpretation. According to her, he said, if you were
an efficient and virtuous boot-black in this life, you would reincarnate, as Karmic
reward, in the guise of an efficient and virtuous grocer!
In those early days it was said by some members that Karma made prayer
illogical. It did not seem to occur to them that even on a materialistic and
mechanical basis, prayer is as natural an activity, and therefore as much an
instrument of Karma, as the wind or the rain or any other agency. But we can
go further than that. A few days ago I read a review of a book by Selma Lagerlof,
the well-known Swedish writer, in which she tells a story of her childhood. Her
father was very ill, and she, a small girl, made up her mind to enter into a com¬
pact with God. She undertook to read the Bible all the way through, if God
would save her father’s life. Her father’s life was saved. It reminded me of a
story of the youth of General Ludlow, whom you all know of as a highly valued
member of this Society. When he was a little boy, his mother used to knit
mittens for him to wear in cold weather, and he was always losing them. One
winter day, he went out to skate with his brother, older by only a year or two.
Before they started, his mother reminded him of all the trouble she had taken in
knitting his mittens, and appealed to him not to lose them again. When the time
came for the boys to return home, the little fellow suddenly remembered his
mother’s appeal,—and he was devoted to her. The mittens had gone! He and
his brother hunted for them everywhere. The ground was covered with snow.
The mittens were red, and would have been easy to see. There was no trace of
them. The child was distressed beyond words: how could he face his mother
after what she had said! So he went down on his knees, in the middle of the road,
and prayed—his brother with him—that they might find those mitte^^a
heart-broken prayer. When they got up from their knees and looked at^md,
there, a few feet away from them, right on the snow, were the mittens. No won¬
der that that child, when he became a grown man, used to say, “It is no use
talking to me about prayer—I know that it works.”
Now let me ask you: if you had known what was going on in the heart of that
child—if you had seen his suffering—would you not have been sorry for him?
Of course you would. Would you not have helped him if you could? And are
Masters with their “legions” less compassionate than we are? No, the truth of
the matter is that it is the privilege and joy of an entire choir of angels to answer
the prayers of children and of the simple of soul. The “miracles” thus wrought
are as much a part of greater Nature’s beauty as the resurrection of life in the
spring. It is part of the divine scheme of things, part of Karma itself that these
62
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
things are. So, more and more, we must get away from the mechanical, materi¬
alistic interpretation of Theosophy; we must gain the realization that there are
margins of beauty around everything, worlds of mystery too sacred for the mind
to penetrate, and that if we would really get at the truth, we must seek and
pursue the spirit,—not the letter.
Then too, if we would carry out the suggestions made this morning, we must
realize that it is .our function to maintain in the world the traditions we have
inherited—our birthright as members of this Society —right traditions: for
instance, the right tradition of manners,—although I am afraid that very few
of us, if any, can think of ourselves as exemplars. Even so, we do not need to
have attained in order to recognize an ideal, and if we honestly value these things,
and strive to act and live accordingly, we shall be keeping alive the tradition.
We owe it to the Movement to try to preserve everything that we see as best in
civilization. The rudeness and roughness which now seem to be the vogue, are
evidence of moral degeneracy, and it is for us, because of our membership, and
no matter how we may fail in performance, to strive ceaselessly to express all
that we can of kindliness, of consideration, of courtesy, recognizing the inesti¬
mable value of these in terms of the spiritual life.
We must maintain the old ideals. There is, for instance, the subject of mar¬
riage—and you know what the world thinks about it to-day, or, no matter what
it thinks about it, what it does. It is for us to uphold the highest, purest ideals of
marriage, and we should be untrue to Theosophy, untrue to Masters, if we were
to fail in this—if we were to fail in setting ourselves immovably against cheapness
of divorce, as against all other laxities in matters of sex.
We must uphold theosophical principles in every direction. Consider the
hierarchical principle—one of the basic truths of Theosophy—in connection with
family life: we must respect it and act upon it. You know as well as I do, that
in far too many families to-day it is regarded as more or less the function of
children to bring up their parents. When children become a public nuisance,
parents say, apologetically: “What can we do? We should lose them if we
pushed them too hard”. In some cases, when one knows the children, one is
tempted to reply: ''Lose them! No such luck for you, my friends”. One does
not say it, because it would not be understood. Nevertheless the attitude of such
parents is cowardly; they shirk their responsibility and prove they are not fit
to be parents. Children who regard their parents solely as a source of revenue;
who are devoid of filial respect; who have no sense of the life-long duty they owe
their parents, are a danger to the community no matter to what class of society
they belong, and no matter what their age. There is no solution except to
adhere to right principle from the beginning—to correct children when they need
it, to praise them when they deserve it—with love, but without fear. If, as a
result, they choose to go, let them go. You cannot in any case deprive them of
their power of choice, and if they choose evil, you will not improve matters by
doing likewise. Parents who are true to their ideals, who are true to truth and to
Theosophy, cannot fail in the end, for it is only by such sacrifice that the wilful
and selfish and depraved can ultimately be saved. The world tries to com-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
63
promise, but compromise accomplishes nothing,—and it is not for us to be drawn
into the current of the world’s worst failures.
Speaking this morning of indrawal, I said that the gulf between the world and
The Theospphical Society is steadily increasing, and must of necessity increase.
Have you thought of what happened after the death of the Master Christ? His
apostles retired into an upper room, away from the world, and there prayed and
meditated,—the women with them. In the Acts of the Apostles it is said that
there were a hundred and twenty of them in all; not a large body of people, but
dynamic, because they were united in faith and purpose,—lifting up their hearts,
waiting, expecting, believing. They were obeying the law of the spirit at the
point between two cycles; and as we, in obedience to the same law, indraw more
and more,—the life of the Society will tend to correspond more closely with that
meeting of the hundred and twenty in the upper room, apart from the world.
There will be practically no propaganda; the activity will be inner rather than
outer,—with the duty mutually to keep alive the fire of real desire, of true
aspiration, as we wait, watch and prepare for the coming of the Messenger.
Therefore, let us forget numbers, let us separate ourselves from the obsession of
quantity. A hundred and twenty people to start a world-wide religion: more
than enough! And in our case, a dozen would be enough. But what a great and
marvellous function it is that this Society will have to perform,—having the
vision, so to live, so to aspire, so to will, as to draw down from heaven the
supreme gift that the world unknowingly awaits.
Let us make ready for that; let us learn how to give the whole of ourselves
to one spiritual desire, and thus become able to wield the power that will have
been placed in our hands. Once we achieve that, the Society will no .longer be as
a voice crying in the wilderness, but, instead, a lightning rod, a conductor, draw¬
ing into every yearning heart the celestial fire which alone can redeem the world,
which alone can lift humanity from the hell it has created, to the new heaven and
new earth we were promised from the beginning.
Dr. Torrey (supplementing, by request, the report of the Chairman of the
Committee on Resolutions): There is a subject which cannot have been far
from our thoughts to-day as we have dwelt upon the unsettled condition o^e
world, and that is the subject of imminent war in Europe. The world faQ^pfce
possibility with confusion and bewilderment, but the same should not be true of
our membership, because, ever since 1918, we have been told repeatedly that
“the war is not yet over’’; that we should “take long views of the war’’, and
that we should remember that “Germany was not beaten though she could
have been’’.
The press is full of rumours and predictions. Simonds, siting in the April
Atlantic under the title: “Austria the Powder Barrel of Europe’’, assures us of
Hitler’s deliberately announced intention to assert the German hegemony over
the block of Central European States which, in times past, have been under
German sovereignty. The recent move against the Dolfuss Government is the
first step, to be followed later by aggression against Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
64
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
M
Bulgaria. This is no fantastic dream. On the contrary it would re-establish a
territorial association which, in the form of the Holy Roman Empire, existed for
the thousand years between Charlemagne and Napoleon. Hitler has made him¬
self a symbol of the desire for unity which, at bottom, is common to^75,000,000
Germans dwelling in the very heart of Europe.
Now history shows us that a programme of aggrandizement at the expense of
neighbour states has invariably landed Europe in armed conflict. Simonds sees
but three solutions for the problem:
1. A concerted action of the European Powers to guarantee Austrian inde¬
pendence.
2. A war for balance of power eventually.
3. A war of prevention instigated by France within the year.
There is small likelihood that the first possibility can be realized. Wordy
conferences accomplish nothing, and the move would have to be backed by a
plain display of force. The European Powers are vacillating, jealous of one
another, and beset with internal troubles. To try to “muddle through” and to
delay the issue is to create a situation fraught with ever-increasing danger.
Finally there is the possibility of a war of prevention on the part of France who
was never in a better position for it than to-day. She has the military machinery,
the statesmen, the willing allies. Let her delay, and her military equipment
becomes progressively outmoded and lessened in efficiency as compared with
that of her powerful enemy. “War within the year”! Sinister and terrible words
of a hard-headed joiumalist. Yet the world, outside the narrow circle of doctri¬
naire pacifists, recognizes the irresistible logic of the position.
Some of us were very young when the last outbreak occurred; some of us
were not so young in years, but we were young in Theosophy. The voice of our
leaders was hardly more than one voice among other voices. And those other
voices—the Chief Executive of the Nation, clergy, liberal educators—confused
and bewildered us just as they bewilder young men and women to-day. The¬
osophy alone can clear up the confusion. I do not mean, of course, that outside
our membership there is no understanding of the situation. I mean, rather,
that the Theosophic truth at the heart of Christianity, Buddhism, or even of
true science, is alone capable of dispelling the clouds of misconception gathered
about the educated modem mind.
For what is the root of the confusion? Here is Germany exhibiting certain
most admirable features: tenacity of purpose, one-pointedness, co-operative
patriotism, certain kinds of moral cleansing, austere living and a searching and
sacrificial attempt to bring her peculiar genius to flower. Is not this the very
path along which our own thinkers would gladly move our Nation? Is not a high
aestheticism and a passion for perfection behind this movement? The German is
faced with a European garden-spot which is an offence to his aesthetic ideal.
Waste and confusion prevail in place of the scientific order and discipline which
he loves; ugly foreign weeds threaten to stifle the native Teutonic plants.
Barring slight differences, this is likewise the ideal of the liberal naturalistic
school of thought in all nations. Science and controlled economics; the culti-
T. S. ACTIVITIES
65
vat ion of sense-pleasures as making for the ultimate good—in a word, materi¬
alism triumphant in congress and in college. Shall American scholars rail at
Germans for adv^ancing farther along the road toward our common ideal? It
ill fits the pot to call the kettle black.
In that homely proverb we strike our first note of reality. Black! Their light
is darkness—the darkness which rests upon the agnostic, prideful race of uni¬
versity-trained men who are given to a passionate belief in Maya, and who seek
through psychism for life and more abundant life.
Germany has long been the source and focus of this evil doctrine. Its doc¬
torate degree granted to the scientific researcher is the model upon which the
American graduate school is founded. Attentive travellers in the country as far
back as Bismarck’s day, bear witness to a ferocious egoism, a strange and sinister
and mighty power which shakes the Teutonic soul to its centre, and makes of the
German warrior something of terror which has not been in the modem world
before. What is the lesson for us who are gathered here?
Kipling has written a short story called “The Mother Hive’’. A wax moth
slips into the hive and proceeds to cajole the working sisters with soft words,
while she spreads her principles (eggs) through the comb, and promises the
coming of a New Era and a Great Change when bees will subsist on the “hival
honey’’ and will work only six minutes each day. Comb will be built with cir¬
cular cells to save wax; guards will be withdrawn from the door, and an era of
song and dance among “the merry, merry blossoms’’ will prevail. The working
sisters are encouraged to lay eggs like queens, and to spread the new principles.
Soon the change is in full swing. A swarm of monstrous and malformed bees
hatches from the workers’ eggs, and the hive becomes foul with wax-moth larvae
and their noisome tunnels. But two wise bees, Melissa and Saccharina, have
come to understanding, and they build a royal queen cell after the ancient
pattern. The old queen lays an egg there and dies exhausted. In secret the
princess is raised on the royal food.
Upon a fateful day the beekeeper and his son come to inspect the hives. Then
occurs the Great Burning and the Sulphur Smoke. But calling the swarnmg-
cry, and accompanied by a slender cupful of clean bees, the new Queen e^lbes
to the old oak, where, clinging fast, the bees witness the Destmction h'f Fire
foretold of old time. In the gloom, a wax moth flits away to the wood crying:
“A slight miscalculation in the plans, my dears, but see what a marvellous change
we brought about.’’
There stands our ideal: a handful of clean bees rallied about an ancient, royal
heritage, waiting through the night of the Great Burning and Cleansing—waiting
to carry on once more according to the Immemorial Law of the Hive.
Mr. Gonzalez Jimenez (who spoke both as a member of the Committee on
Resolutions and on behalf of the Venezuela Branch): It would take a long time
to recount the acti\dties of the Venezuela Branch during the year. I shall limit
myself to summarizing them, but I know that I shall fail to communicate to my
words the fire that lived there. This has been a year full of intensity in the life
66 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of our Branch, a year of precise definitions, of clear conceptions, of a definite
goal.
It is of special significance to us because the Venezuela Branch, in its present
form, was founded on a 24th of June, the summer solstice, twenty-five years ago,
although Theosophy in Venezuela dates back as far as 1881, since the first coming
of Mr. Judge, whose love for the Cause left the lamp lighted in the world of the
Real. And we understand that the fire burning there to-day was kindled by what
that great Preparer did.
If by the light of the three objects of the T. S. we were to seek for an interpre¬
tation of our work, we could epitomize it thus: first, the members of the Vene¬
zuela Branch love each other more, and have realized that this nucleus of love,
without distinction of personalities, has to be spread wide and enclose within
its folds the whole of humanity; second, besides the studies in the Branch meet¬
ings proper, and in the gatherings of students, each member has selected a line
of investigation, either scientific, religious or philosophical, in which to specialize,
so as to contribute this particular aspect to the general fund of knowledge which
it is the purpose of the second object to establish; third, an effort has been made
to understand how the whole programme of life culminates in the transmutation
of the so-called personality into the self-conscious spiritual individuality, whose
archetype is to be found in the Master on whose ray we are: the task of the
spirit in matter, the dispelling of the Maya created for the attainment of self-
consciousness, to come back to the awakened unity through the dream of
diversity.
At this point we may say that some members of the Branch have attended to
the final invitation made by the Society at the Convention at Boston in 1895:
“And lastly, it invites to its membership those who, seeking a higher life here¬
after, would learn to know the path to tread in this.” The work has been, there¬
fore, one of discrimination between the Real and the unreal; the gaining of
knowledge through a universal, comparative study, and the readiness to serve.
As an emblem of what we members are destined to become, the Venezuela
Branch wishes that symbol you are looking at on the wall [a beautifully carved
shield with antique sword, presented by the Venezuela Branch] to remain in
the hall of this Branch that entertains our Conventions, as a mirror and a
pattern: the sword of Will illuminated by the radiant sun of Buddhi lighting up
the endeavour of our Movement: to kill the dragon of the personality which it
tramples to earth and, at the centre, the crown of glory promised to the victor,
the crown of the Master King. That sword belonged to the cavalry of Charles
III, the wise, the gallant king who drove out of Spain in a single night—luminous
night!—the Black Society; and the wood of the shield is from a tree that grew
in the yard of our Branch and was itself watered by Juan Jos^ Benzo. Please
accept it as the symbol of the Victory awaiting us.
Let me end by expressing to our dear Ancients, on behalf of all my fellow-
workers of the Venezuela Branch, our thankfulness for having built the bridge
across the abyss that separates earth from heaven. Our thanks, too, to that
collective consciousness that affectionately we call the Quarterly.
T. S. ACTIVITIES 67
We could summarize the work of this year with the triad of William Q. Judge:
Unity, Study, Work.
Comrades! the voice of the Lodge loudly resounds: Let us cross the Bridge.
La Patrie d'en haul nous appelle. *
The Chairman, after the report of the Committee on Resolutions had been
accepted with thanks, invited the delegates and visiting members to address the
Convention. Referring to the fact that the Venezuela Branch was represented
by ten of its members, who had come all the way from Caracas, he called first
upon Mr. Rafael Carias, President of the Branch, who spoke in Spanish, and
whose remarks were then translated into English by Mr. Bermudez, another of
the Branch delegates.
Mr. Car/as: Mr. Chairman: Our Venezuela Branch has wished to re-affinn
unanimously its deep love and loyalty to the Ideal as promulgated by the
Founders of The Theosophical Society, and attends this Convention, not repre¬
sented by delegates, but by the Branch itself, for here are all its officers. Besides,
each of our companions who remain in Venezuela is also represented individually
by one of us, and this I think to be a unique thing in the life of the Society. We
take it as rather miraculous that as many as ten members have been able to
make this trip, when, for most of them, it seemed something quite impossible to
effect. We all know that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and the
fact of our being here at this Convention we interpret as a great gift, and an
opportunity that will demand the proof of our love for Masters, and the will and
decision to give ourselves to Them with the surrender of our whole hearts.
The Chairman then called upon two members from Europe to address the
Convention, both of whom brought greetings, one from a Branch, the other on
behalf of fellow-members. Next, the other Venezuelan representatives were
invited to speak, doing so either in English, French or Spanish.
Miss Cotton: The Venezuela Branch believes that the greatest honour she
can ever attain will be to have a place in the work of the Lodge, and she is re¬
solved to accept joyfully, no matter at what cost, the responsibility of Ix'loiAig
to the Masters’ Cause.
Madame Sanchez: Here we are; it is the cry of our hearts,—with these
hearts free of themselves, so that the Masters may work through us and make
in us Their dwelling.
Here we are to do Their will.
Miss Reyes: First, our gratitude to those, visible and invisible, who helped
us to come here. ... A Convention of The Theosophical Society is something
our minds may never conceive, but our hearts must feel. The blessing of this
hour is something that never can be longed for too much, and there is not a price
in self-conquest too high to pay for it.
This year, the work of the Venezuela Branch has been one of discernment.
It has been the cry of the Prodigal Son: “I will arise and go to my Father”. We
68
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
must remember our di\’ine origin; we are from heaven and we must return there.
This has been the work of the Venezuela Branch this year, an intense one, the
effort to get a true vision of our duty as members of The Theosophical Society,
through unity of purpose and meditation, tr>’ing above all things to gain devoted
love for the Master on whose Ray we are. I believe that the best prayer of all
here present, is to ask the help of the blessed Masters, so that we can go out
from this Convention with the determination in our hearts, as the last “Frag¬
ments” say: “To shake off the dust of earth, and to consolidate the dust of
heaven.” Thus we shall be able, as far as we can, to carry out their highest
purposes.
Our gratitude for all the help given to usHhrough the New York Branch, that
has been a light in our dark days.
Mr. Garcia : In the first place I wish to give thanks to the Masters for having
granted us the blessing of attending this Convention, and to you for the honour
you confer in inviting us to speak. I have only a few words to say.
There is a feeling among my fellow-members that this will be a decisive Con¬
vention, in the sense that it \vill be a very definite opportunity to make a new
beginning. As I think of the fact that the only branch of the T. S. existing in
the whole of Latin America is the Venezuela Branch, as I think of its continued
existence for more than forty years, I believe that our Branch has a mission to
fulfil: to preserve the spirit of the Movement there.
Mr. Rivero: Mr. Chairman, It is of thankftd significance to me to have the
honour and the privilege of being again with you.
A few days ago I went to Caracas by the quickest way. Fast as it was, the
journey seemed to me very slow, because, full of anxiety, I went to see my mother,
who was dying, and received her last blessing.
There, in my country, as here before leaving, I found, as always, the affection
of my family and the sympathy of my friends,—especially that of my fellow-
members of the Venezuela Branch. Now, with them and j^ou all in Convention
assembled, I have the fortune to be still in the bosom of another mother: The
Theosophical Society.
Notwithstanding that silence is the most eloquent expression in this inspiring
moment, let me voice, \vith humility and reverence, the feelings of my heart in one
single w^ord: gratitude.
Mr. Alvarez Perez: As my English is very limited and all my fellow-
members have already expressed what I w^ould have said, it is little I have to say.
I was recently told that some years ago the Lodge was asking for recruits;
after that it asked for soldiers. In our Branch more than one member is trying
to become a soldier of the Lodge.
Mr. Urbaneja: It is a privilege to be among you after the many years since
I have lived in New York. At present I feel myself filled with a new spirit, that
of the true soldier; for if the Lodge is to have them, we must model ourselves to
T. S. ACTIVITIES
69
its requirements. Let us remember the expression of the ancient Greek mother,
who said to her sons when going into battle: Return with the shield or upon it.
Mr. Bermudez: Out of an infinite compassion we have been called to par¬
ticipate in this feast of feasts. You remember the verse:
What does it take to make a rose,
Mother-mine?
The God who died to make it knows
It takes the world’s eternal wars,
It takes the moon and all the stars.
It takes the might of Heaven and Hell,
And the Everlasting Love as well,
Little child.
Like him, the little child, we, the members of the Venezuela Branch ask our¬
selves what did it take to bring us to this Convention, and we feel that no less
a miracle of Love and Patience has been accomplished. The Everlasting Love!
Wrapped in His flaming arms, we have been snatched from the world, as it were,
and carried here to get the vision of our destiny, of our glory. How to show our
gratitude for this tremendous pri\dlege? There is only one way. To give back
our love to Them who filled us with love, by surrendering our hearts.
Reports from other delegates were then called for.
Dr. Hohnstedt, for the members of the Cincinnati Branch, expressed appreci¬
ation and thanks for the Quarterly; gave a brief account of the work of the
Branch during the past year, and concluded with the hope that more of their
members might be able to attend the Convention in 1935, as all of them would
wish to do.
Mrs. Regan, for the Providence Branch, said that the questions contained in
the notification of Convention by the Secretary T. S., had proved extremely
helpful, especially the question in regard to the ideal of the Branch. This had
been discussed, the result being a unanimous desire that the Branch should
become a centre through which the Lodge might work, with the inferenc e,
each member must strive to become that which would make this possiblJ^
Mrs. Rose, also speaking for the Providence Branch, brought greetin^^nd
gratitude for the Convention.
Mr. Gardiner H. Miller: So many of you are familiar with the proceedings
of the New York Branch meetings, that I do not think I need do more than recall
to your minds some of the things discussed during the season. I should like to do
that, because to me the keynote of Convention is linked very closely with what
has been the theme of our discussion in the New York Branch this winter. We
began with a reference to a book. La Reponse du Seigneur, in which much is said
of the power of contemplation in the attainment of an ideal. Professor Mitchell,
this morning, spoke of denial as often a gift of the thing denied, which reminded
me of something said in that book about prayer—that prayer is not to receive,
but to become; and in the process of becoming (it was stated in that book, and it
70
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
has been the keynote of our season’s discussions, as it has been the keynote to¬
day) we must surrender self. Personality must be surrendered before indi¬
viduality can be attained.
As to indrawal: that seems to me to consist in dropping the personality over¬
board,—forgetting about it. You will recall the Albrecht Diirer picture of the
Knight surrounded by hideous monsters of sin and death, but utterly oblivious
of them. The horrors in the world to-day are so marked that, to accomplish even
the slightest degree of indrawal, we must get clear of the personality, as it affects
our inner aspiration and inner efforts. That does not mean that we are not to
resist the world, for we must fight with all the power, all the will and energy that
we have, to resist it; but we must not worry or fret about it. We must practise
Detachment. That will make possible our indrawal into the spiritual world.
Mr. J. F. B. Mitchell: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Members, in looking for¬
ward to the Convention and asking myself what it was that the Lodge would like
to have come forth from it, it seemed to me that what is asked of us is vision,
and loyalty to that vision,—because if you lack loyalty to the vision, the vision
itself is soon lost. That is what is asked of us, and that, as I see it, is the need
of the world. It follows that when we fight for these things in ourselves, fight
to hold our vision, to be loyal to it in action, in thought, in feeling, we are fighting
the battle of the world. There is no difference. That battle can be fought out
by each one of us in his own mind and heart. Victory there, giving life to the
ideal by living it, will help to bring into the world that which the world so sorely
needs. The need of the world is vision of an ideal to love and to follow.
The desire and effort of the Lodge for man to-day must be to draw forth the
latent heroism in the souls of men, that the soul may unfold its potentialities, of
nobility, of heroism, of splendour. The soul cannot be aroused if it sees no ideal
worthy of its devotion. We have been given the knowledge that the highest
ideal of our own hearts is true, that there is that which is wholly lovable, and that
we may know and love it. There are three things in life that are worth while:
To know that there is that which is wholly lovable and to love it with utter self-
forgetfulness; to know that we, and the world, are loved and cared for with
infinite compassion by those above us; to know that we can gain the power to
help. Theosophy has brought us the knowledge that those things are true, and
that it is possible to give ourselves in utter, complete self-giving to the ideal of
our hearts. It seems easy to do that at a moment like this, but there are many
times when, though we know that that is what we long with all our hearts to do,
we cannot do it.
At this point there is a step that we can always take. I suggest the analogy
of a ship in a storm, leaking, stranded on a rock with waves breaking over it,
sure to break up; and the captain, with hundreds of lives entrusted to his care,
desperately trying to get a line to the shore. He could not throw a line heavy
enough to bear the weight of a man, but he could throw a light line, and when
that had been caught and held, it could be used to draw heavier ones, over which
the passengers could be carried to safety. What we need, to keep ourselves from
T. S. ACTIVITIES
71
being overwhelmed and drowned by psychic waves, is to get a line to the firm
shore of the spiritual world, over which we can pass to safety. We may not be
able to throw the line of our love, and nothing weaker can be counted upon to
bear us, but we can always throw the light line of our attention. We can always
turn our attention to the things of the spirit and hold it there. And when the
line of attention has been thrown, caught and fixed there, then desire and interest
can be drawn along that line; and after desire and interest will go the love that
we long to give. When that love has been given, it will carry our souls to their
salvation, and it will do far more. It will enable us to bring salvation to the
world, because with that love it will be possible to live the ideal as it ought to be
lived, to make it live in the world so that men can see it, can know that it is
true, can know that there is the good, the true, the noble, the wholly lovable.
Then, by contrast, they might see what the world so needs to see to-day: the
existence of active, malignant evil. I had almost said that the world needs to
believe in evil as much as it needs to believe in good. So much of its trouble
to-day is due to the fact that it has lost its belief in the danger and malignancy
of evil. So it plays with it, shuts its eyes to its existence, and, instead of fighting
it to the death, talks of pacifism and disarmament. In spite of the lessons of the
War, the world refuses to recognize that there are men and nations, dominated by
evil of the worst type, which seek to kill—and which, unless fought and con¬
quered, will kill—all that is good in life, all that is beautiful, all that is compas¬
sionate and tender, all that is manly and noble. So, instead of having a clear-cut
fight between those on one side who see good and love it, and who know and hate
wickedness, and, on the other side, those who deliberately choose to throw in
their lot with that wickedness, we have everything mixed and colourless. We
have the tragedy of those who wish to do good but are caught by their own stu¬
pidity, caught by the use which the powers of evil make of their vague, unin¬
telligent desires, turning them to Pacifism, Socialism, and the whole brood that
we have to-day.
Year after year, I am impressed by the power that right thinking by members
of the Theosophical Movement has, to affect the thought of the world. The The-
osophical Movement has been compared to a spear-point of light, conquering the
darkness of the world in order that (ns Mr. Hargrove said this morning) the
Adept Kings may come back from exile and rule once more on earth. Before
that can happen, the world must ardently desire it, and before it can dcs^pt,
it must see it as the ideal; and false ideals and other obstacles must be crared
out of the way. When Madame Blavatsky started her work, two of the greatest
obstacles were the dogmatism of science and the dogmatism of religion. Both of
these have been greatly weakened. Before the world could desire Adept Kings,
the notion that the ideal was democracy had to be removed. You will remember
how, for years, in meeting after meeting of The Theosophical Society, that false
ideal was attacked. It has not been weakened to the same extent as dogmatism,
but its throne is rocking.
The ideals that the world needs for its salvation have been brought into it by
our leaders. They are here. In the simile of an earlier Convention, our leaders
72
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
have scaled the wall of the beleaguered city in which the heart of the world is
held captive. They have planted our banner on that wall and call to us to come
up to them. It is for us to go forward, to win the day, or die of shame.
Dr. Clark: I should like to continue what has been spoken of by so many:
the contrast between the world and the Theosophical Movement. In one of the
books of the spring, Dr. Breasted’s Daum of Conscience, he tries to meet one of
the situations now present in the world—the loss of all respect for morals and
ethics, especially on the part of the young, which he explains as due to the fact
that, in the past, the standards and obligations of morals have been taught as
descending to man from heaven, and as man has lost all belief in heaven he has
lost respect for what was supposed to descend from there. Dr. Breasted brings
forward, to replace that standard, the discarding of which is responsible for so
much evil in the world to-day, another standard of ethics and morals which he
says was put together by men in Egypt, many hundreds of years before the
alleged heaven-sent standards were given to man. Let us accept his statement,
though if we were to investigate the source of that Egyptian standard, we might
be led to believe that it too was sent from heaven. He thinks that in the present
state of the world men will respect anything they themselves create. His con¬
tention may be right,—that some may be won to this earth-made standard and
good accomplished. Nevertheless, the course of history, throughout all the cycles
of civilization, shows that nations develop and grow only when men act in
obedience to that which they believe is given them from heaven; and, on the
other hand, that nations disintegrate and civilizations dissolve, when they are
governed by ideals that have their origin in man and his wisdom.
It is our good fortune to be members of The Theosophical Society. We know
that it was brought to us from the Lodge, by Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Judge
and others. Therefore, as has been said so many times, it is the great hope of
the world in this period of disintegration. It is our good fortune, a thing for
which we can never be sufficiently grateful, that, in defending and maintaining
its standards, we contribute to the salvation and hope of the entire world.
Mr. LaDow: This morning. Professor Mitchell referred to real life as a
drama, suggesting that when life is truly lived, it assumes a dramatic form.
I believe that we can derive both help and consolation from this, because in a
drama, in a great tragedy for example, each small incident is transfigured by
the denouonent, by the course of the drama as a whole. Not only the petty and
trivial, but even evil and vice may be thus transformed. If we can only think
of the details and nuisances of our personal lives as being potentially parts of
a great drama, if we will to make them so, we shall be able more easily to discover
the lessons which they are intended to teach us.
Dr. Torrey said that “muddling through” is a common practice in Europe. I
venture to add that it is a common practice in America also. It is certain that
we shall never “muddle through” to any theosophical goal. The notion that we
shall inevitably reach that goal, whatever we may do or not do, is an expression
of the mechanical view of life, against which Mr. Hargrove warned us. Karl
T. S. ACTIVITIES
73
Marx must be held primarily responsible for the wide dissemination of the theory
that the human race could not help evolving in a fixed direction. The socialist
state that he prophesied was, therefore, certain to come. Fortunately few of us
regard Marx as a prophet; but we should be careful not to be influenced by
mechanistic theories of any kind. We must cultivate the spirit of self-reliance,
in its true sense.
We must prove our readiness to give ourselves wholly to the work of the
Movement. We must be eager to offer the whole of ourselves, in exchange for
the privilege of sharing the work of the Masters.
Mr. Auchincloss : Many of us, I imagine, as is always the case at Convention,
are experiencing the feeling of being lifted up into a rarified atmosphere; of
functioning upon a higher level than we usually do,—on a level where feeling
is quickened, where our inner perceptions are more acute, where time ceases to
exist. The inner significance of many things unfolds rapidly before us. Past,
present and future are blended, as a consecutive whole. It seems easy, in the
current of Lodge Force which moves us forward here, to function upon this
higher level habitually, and we see no reason why we cannot. But when we
leave this atmosphere, we relapse too often to our old level. We say to ourselves,
—“Ah, no; I cannot do it. I am too dead, too frozen inside. Those long years
when vanity, self-love, self-will, self-reference controlled me, have congealed
things in me. I have a long way to go before I can hold, in daily life and living,
the level of Convention. I must conquer these things, I must thaw out, firsts
When we say this kind of thing to ourselves, we are wrong. We are not work¬
ing with the current of Lodge Force. We are opposing it. Did you ever see the
ice come out of a river, when the thaw comes? First the snow begins to go.
Then the sun becomes warmer, and there are signs of spring. But still the ice
holds unbroken. There is more and more warmth and life in the air. A great
change in nature is apparent. But still the ice holds unbroken, holds for an
unbelievably long time, until one thinks that it is never going to disappear.
Until, suddenly, one day, there is a great crack, and then another, and another.
All at once, the ice begins to move, to disintegrate, to go out. ^
The sun, the warmth of the atmosphere, have done their part. But, alWe.
they could not have done it. For it was the current in the river, working under¬
neath to undermine that icy covering, that finally proved irresistible, and swept
it all away. So it is with us. It is contact with our teachers in the Movement,
with our fellows, that gives us life and warmth, softens us, makes us want to
have that dreadful iciness within us go. But it is the current of Lodge Force
itself, working through them, working within us, that thaws us out, breaks up
and carries away those icy moulds of ours,—if we do not oppose it by thinking
that we must first overcome the old faults and weaknesses and sins, before we
can go forward with that great current. The current will take care of all those
things, if we will only go with it. We shall be lifted up and swept along, the old
moulds will go, and we shall recapture the atmosphere of Convention, and hold
it, and live in it continuously more and more.
%
74
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Mr. Saxe: At a New York Branch meeting, quite a long while ago, one of
the older members was speaking about the point of view and the objective of the
present-day members, as compared with those of the old days. It was pointed
out that whereas now-a-days we speak of the possibility of discipleship and have
that as our objective, in the earlier days, everybody expected to be a chela,
and still earlier, everybody expected to become an adept. It was said that
that is perhaps the best view; people rarely accomplish the ideal at which
they aim, so it is well to aim very high. If a man makes up his mind
to make a million dollars, he may make five hundred thousand; or if he
decides to make five millions, he may make one! Convention is the time
when we should think of renewing our ideals and raising them as high as we
possibly can.
Some of us now living in New York used to be members-at-large, and came here
for more than one Convention; and we know, by experience, how it seems to
such visitors. They have the feeling that if they could be here, right at head¬
quarters, in contact with the older members, they would accomplish wonders.
Perhaps they do not think they would become adepts exactly, but they have an
idea that there is no knowing what they might become. The worst of it is they
are probably right. Most of us had that idea. We did not say: I will be an
adept; but we were very hopeful. Then we finally came, and had all these
wonderful lessons and opportunities. If we could have a strictly confidential
talk, we could give you a very satisfactory explanation of why we are not so
altitudinous, but when we have to speak before those who have been looking
after us all these years, we have to tell the truth. The reason we are not further
along is that we have not had enough self-sacrifice, enough devotion, enough love.
If we had enough of these, all the rest would be accomplished.
We speak about sacrifice from many different angles. It has been pointed out
that we should not think of ourselves as making sacrifices,—in one sense we
cannot sacrifice. But from the point of view of the personality we do have to
sacrifice, and the measure of our progress is largely the measure of the sacrifice
that we are willing to make. One aspect which, while quite familiar to us, we
are apt to forget, is that each time we sacrifice the lower, each time we conquer
ourselves at some point—especially if we do it thoroughly and whole-heartedly—
even though the lower self may object very strenuously, we thereby obtain a
little more vision, a little more light, and a little more joy. When the dark time
comes and we find it difficult to do anything but rest on our oars, it may be help¬
ful to remember this.
Mr. Kobbe: I wonder if we all realize the privilege it is for us to be here
to-day. I do not mean just those of us who are here in person, but all fellow
students of Theosophy who are here in spirit. Much was said this morning
about what is going on in the world around us, about the psychic current that is
coursing through the world and seeping into practically every comer of it. With¬
out Theosophy, I wonder where we should be. Many a supposedly clear-thinking
person, many a person who is trying to live honestly and intelligently, is being
T. S. ACTIVITIES
75
carried, willy nilly, with that current. Yet it is our privilege to be able to stand
on the bank, as it were, and watch the current flow past us.
In the world, standards are being lowered, quality is being disregarded. There
is no principle, apparently, in anything that is being done. Yet we are here,
where there is principle, where standards are maintained, where there is a
decided regard for quality. Do we realize the tremendous privilege this is?
Let us*consider what we may do about this privilege. In detail, of course, each
one will do something quite different from what is done by everyone else; but
in general, what can we all unite in doing? Each time I have thought of that,
the word gratitude has come into my mind and heart. We can take each daily
duty, no matter what it may be, no matter how it may differ from that of
another, and put back of it and around it, gratitude; try to make it a “quality
product”. Thus we can contribute the best that we know; we can try to make
a thing of quality out of whatever we have to do, and give that to the Lodge.
Mr. Brush: Mr. Chairman, We have often been reminded here that insight
gives added responsibility. Those of us who have been privileged to attend the
meetings of the New York Branch this winter, and to some extent those who
receive and read the reports of these meetings, have a special responsibility.
The subject, we know, has centred round the contemplation of the ideal, and its
manifestation in the outer world through positive, conscious action. We have
been given a glimpse into those hidden powers of consciousness that govern our
lives. Our responsibility, it seems to me, consists in this: how far are we going
to be able to transform this priceless information into living knowledge, into
insight that we can use in the service of the Movement? We all know it can
only be done by action, purposeful action, on all planes of our being,—hour
by hour, day by day, and moment by moment. Are we going to allow our¬
selves, younger fellow-members, to waste even the smallest part of this infinitely
precious gift, our heritage from those who have gone before, in idle dreaming or
in merely spasmodic outbursts of effort? If we do, we do so, as we know, at our
own peril and the peril of the Movement that we are all of us trying to serve.
Even a little insight into the issues that wait upon the least of our honest efforts
in the service of the Movement, in spite of our defects and disabilities, ^dpuld
fan our enthusiasm into a living flame, a white heat—and what is more, mt\) it
there.
Mr. Russ: Of course with my deafness I could not hear anything that was
said, but that does not make any difference. I believe you just the same. After
you have been coming to these Conventions as often as I have, you might get
that way yourself. There are many of us here who have been coming very often.
Is that not a fine thing, that I can say “very often”,—because it has reference to
the vitality and the age of the Society. It reminds us of what Madame Blavatsky
said: that The Theosophical Society is doomed to exist—which does not mean
that it will go on whether we do anything or not. Why are we here to-day,
and who brought us here? We know that we joined the Society because we saw
something that attracted us. In one way or another, peculiar to each person.
76
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
we became conscious of the light of the Lodge and the existence of Masters;
and that light attracted us. We accepted it; we opened our minds and our
hearts to it that that light might shine in.
Just as soon as we have done that, we cease to drift aimlessly hither and
thither, and we revolve more or less around this inner light and this centre.
We may actually try to draw near to it; yet while we may keep in mind that
inner light, nevertheless our attention and interest is still in the world, towards
the world. We know that better than anything else. We are held by it, and so
in a sense we walk backwards. We stumble and fall, then get up and do it
again. Then we come to Convention, and as soon as we get here amongst
each other, we realize that we are away from the world; that we may leave the
world alone a little while and let it get along without us. Hardly realizing it,
we look over our shoulders and see a little more of that light, or hear something
of that sound which makes no noise. Is it not natural that we should go away
from here, wishing to carry some of that feeling with us? And we do. But we
have an apprehension that we shall go back to those old conditions of dryness
and discouragement, which we cannot understand, and which we think are dis¬
harmony within us, when that is not necessarily the case—it may be more like
antithesis and contrast.
When you cannot get out of a bad situation, the next best thing you can do
is to try to understand it and visualize it. If you will do that correctly, you can
put yourself in such a condition that, no matter what the circumstances may be,
they cannot harm you or reach you. Through efforts toward detachment, you
will begin to get some sense of that poised silence within you, and that will help
you to realize that the light of the Lodge may be shining on you, and you may
actually see a little of it or feel it. Then you can think again of the Convention
and of how grateful we are to the Masters for having brought us here.
The Convention also had the pleasure of hearing from Mr. Ganson, Mr.
Fisher, Mr. Kobb6 Jr., Mr. Russ Jr., Mr. Miller Jr., Mr. Mitchell Jr., and Mrs.
Field.
The thanks of the Convention having been voted to its officers, to the editors
of the Quarterly, and to the New York Branch for its hospitality, the Con¬
vention adjourned.
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary of Convention.
Julia Chickering,
Assistant Secretary of Convention.
LETTERS OF GREETING
Aylsha.m, Exgla.nd.
Mrs. Graves wrote: In the Norfolk Branch there are encouraging signs of increased ear¬
nestness of purpose and understanding. In these respects, the past year has been encouraging.
... We make a definite effort to become conscious of our unity, not only as a separate Branch
composed of individual members, but as a whole with all other Branches scattered throughout
T. S. ACTIVITIES
77
the world, and especially with the New York Branch, to which we owe so much for help,
guidance, and encouragement.
Mrs. Bagnell wrote that in spite of individual failure to live up to the great ideal of service
set before us, she believes that “we must see that our love for the Movement, our desire to serve
the Masters really well, have grown”, and that therefore there is ground for hope “that the sum
total of the strength, fidelity and devotion in the T. S. has increased.”
Miss Bagnell also wrote, praying that at Convention we may “take fire” once again, and
“respond with united determination in all the yeiir that follows.”
^ Denver, Colorado.
We, the Virya Branch, send our most cordial greetings to the Convention, with the earnest
hope that the purpose of the Convention may be wholly understood and its leadership faithfully
supported by those who are unable to be present as well as those who have that privilege.
Anne Evans, President.
Mary Kent Wallace, Secretary.
Gateshead, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled, Gateshead members
send their sincere greetings and best wishes for a successful session; our thoughts will be with
you. We fully appreciate the good you are doing, and the good work you have done in the
past. The world needs you, and every member must give of their best. You shall have ours.
P. W. Ward,
Secretary, W. Q. Judge Lodge.
Los Angeles, California.
Greetings and best wishes to the members assembled in Convention, and to all those who,
like ourselves, are unable to attend.
We would as intimately add that it has seemed, more than once, and increasingly as time
went by, that the T.S. Conventions, held as they are in the spring of the year, must have in
and behind them the potential life and promise of springtime in its deeper aspect—the Lodge,
or the Masters and their Ch^las, as embodying the higher side of Nature, being the immediate
source of that deeper, inner, fuller life and promise.
In the springtime of the outer year we see to it that whatever should come up, shall do so,
by bringing every power we possess to make it do so; be it food, or for clothing, or to make home
and outlook more beiiutiful, whatever we need for bodily support and protection and to cnrioj^
the personal life. We feel it is much the same at Convention time and afterwards, the spd^V
and summer of the Lodge for whatever it may then give to us. We may not know beforehlTO^
just what its gifts will be this time, but we can be sure they will be a renewal of inner life,
and of the things of that life, whatever may be our own and the world’s pressing inner needs.
If, for our part, we need a new, more virile loyalty, or the wider opened eyes that will enable
us to look through, to behind, what is going on around and within ourselves—thus to see there
more clearly what is Black and what is White, either potentially or actually—and to have the
will or courage both to declare and to stand ever more firmly for right principles and right
action, as political, social, and economic “saviours” and advisers beckon and cry “Lo here,
lo there!” so to speak; or if, as it should, it be more of love as the Masters and their Chfilas
feel and show it, that is needed,—then we will get it, whether we can attend in person or not,
once we have determined it shall be, as we do for outer things, in the springtime of the outer
year.
The parallel, however, is not quite perfect; despite our every effort, outer Nature will yield
only sparingly, and sometimes all but fails us—while the Lodge never does.
For the Pacific Branch,
W. H. Box, President.
78
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled: On behalf of the
members of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Branch I have much pleasure in conveying to you our
heartiest greetings and good wishes. We shall be observing Convention Day, as usual, and hope
to have a continuance of that inspiration and understanding so helpful in the past.
As we would be thankful to receive, so we should be glad to give, and on this occasion what
shall our contribution be? It shall be that spirit whereby we determine to give our all, ourselves,
to the Cause we are privileged to serve. We would do this in gratitude to the Masters for their
unceasing care and guidance, and in loving memory of those Messengers and Workers, faithful
unto death, more intimately known to us. We would also do this in preparation for the next
Lodge Messenger or Forerunner, so that having a vehicle, or body of people, to work through,
the new effort may be so much more effective and beneficial. It is for us, therefore, to have our
lamps filled, like the wise virgins, and be prepared for the opportunities of service that are
ever present. To the extent that our light is embodied, in the degree that we have become the
truth we would give out, will it be of weight and value in this darkened world.
So we feel that your home-coming to-day will be one of joy and thanksgiving, and we trust
that out of it may arise that incentive to greater effort whereby the fulfilling of the Law shall
be more fully made manifest.
To this end we think of you and your deliberations, and pray that the resolute response to
such a call may be the means of bringing forth those “God-instructed men” the world so sadly
needs.
E. Howard Lincoln,
President.
South Shields, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society Assembled in Convention: The members of the
South Shields Branch send to all of you their very sincere heartfelt greetings. We always look
forward to the Convention as a day of joy, reunion and festival: a time of aspiration, and for
expressing our gratitude to the Founders of the Society. These are days of compromise, when
evil is, as it were, sugar-coated to entrap unwary members of the human family into a false
state of security. Therefore we turn to The Theosophical Society and its spirit of truth and
righteousness for guidance through the maelstrom of material life, with its unbridled passions
and desires for lower self-expression so popular to-day. We are with you in spirit and purpose,
and we hope the keynote for the year following will be one of appeal to humanity to turn from
the worship of the unreal to a desire to know and live in the Real.
Thomas Mackey,
President, South Shields Branch.
Toronto, Canada.
To the Secretary, Theosophical Society: Toronto Branch sends most fraternal Greetings to the
Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled.
As we realize more fully the importance of the work of the T.S. for the welfare of the world,
we also begin to realize the responsibility that rests on its members whose Karma has led them
into the circle of its influence. Surely there was never a time when that influence was more
needed than it is now.
It is with a thrill of hope and encouragement that we read the Quarterly. Surely such
teachings as those given in the “Screen” of the last April number are just what this old world
needs to bring it back to sanity.
It has been the experience of most of us to find a much greater readiness on the part of
“outsiders” to listen to and consider some of the truths brought to public notice by the T.S.
There is an interest in and, in many cases, acceptance of the belief in reincarnation, that is very
different from the strenuous opposition one can remember in the early days of the Movement.
The leaven is at work and our efforts will bear fruit in time.
Albert J. Harris.
T. S. ACTIVITIES
79
Whitley Bay, England.
To the Members of The Theosophical Society in Convention Assembled, the members of the
Whitley Bay Branch send sincere fraternal greetings.
The return of the Cycle of Convention day, filled with happy memories of past Conventions,
also forms a new vantage point for further effort and achievement. Theosophy teaches the
great value of striving towards an ideal; it not only shows the way, but postulates that man,
being a spiritual entity, can therefore attain to spiritual consciousness. It shows the tre¬
mendous dignity of man and his potentialities, and thus with the knowledge of his heritage it
enables him to find the way. The art of true living is to know what we are here for, and where
we are going. The theosophical philosophy has placed the key of ^;his knowledge in our
hands; it depends upon each one of us whether we use the key.
We therefore trust that during the hours of Convention the key will be used to unlock the
aspiration of all members, so that we may all draw nearer to our great ideal of Universal
Brotherhood.
Fredk. a. Ross.
President, Whitley Bay Branch.
Oneal, Arkansas.
To the Officers and Members of The Theosophical Society, in Convention assembled:
I will not take up much of your time, but I do want to send my sincere greeting, and to say
how glad I am to have the opportunity to be with you in thought, in heart, and in spirit to-day;
and to offer my humble devotion to Those who make this Convention possible.
We hear much, these days, of “depression”, of difficulties—which reminds me of what a great
friend (not known, personally) once wrote: “We pray for opportunity, and when it is granted
us, we label it difficulty”. How true that is to-day!
Must we not be tried? How else may we prove our devotion, our sincerity? And so, we have
the great privilege of living in this dark and rapidly changing age,—the glorious un-sought
battle lies before us. May we so fight that battle as to make it possible for Great Ones once
more to live among men.
I wish to thank those, personally, who have made it possible for me to receive the “Reports
of the N.Y. Branch meetings”,—they are splendid. The Quarterly is beyond any praise of
mine,—it is a link between me and Home.
Wm. E. Mullina-X.
Oslo, Norway.
War has been the topic at some of our Branch meetings this winter, and the Quarterly
and T.S. literature has—as always—proved rich in answering the many questions. Although
the following is but a trifling incident, I should like to relate an experience I had while serving
in one of the northern regiments last year. I do not doubt that I should be in a position to
prove my point still better were it a question of greater issues.
One summer night—while the sun was shining—the bugles sounded the “Alarm”, ^d we
were hustled off in lorries and by steamers to a large island on the coast, where a ioA fire
had been raging for weeks, and now was threatening the existence of the entire poPnation.
The boys had quite a rough time for a while, the smoke was suffocating and the heat bad, and
they ran a constant risk of being injured. For days and nights they fought the onrushing
fire, with hardly any time for food and rest. Amongst the recruits there were quite a few who
—for political reasons—from the very beginning had shown reluctance and unwillingness at the
drillground. No sooner had we started our almost hopeless task against the elements, than the
spirit of the troops changed noticeably, and it became quite clear to us, how the feeling of
mutual danger and the knowledge of suffering some slight hardships for the help and protection
of fellowmen and their homes, brought to the surface the very best in every man, especially
in the case of the most unwilling of recruits. Their conduct was admirable. Thus they were
given an opportunity to show the stuff they were made of, and they all rose to the occasion and
won the esteem of their officers—to whom they remained loyal afterwards.
8o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
European politicians are no longer harping upon “disarmament”, as the only means of saving
the world from the horrors of war; the trend has now changed from this to “equality of arms”
and to “armed security”. Pacifism has lost many a stronghold; too often have the governments
of late been compelled to resort to armed force. Yet few understand the opportunities that
the sufferings of warfare—and other calamities—bring to individuals and nations. To under¬
stand the eternal problem of life, it is necessary to believe in a life hereafter, which will give a
clue to the understanding and valuation of tragedy—and in the end: the Divine Will. I should
like to quote one of England’s greatest authors:
“Tragedy at its best is a vision of the heart of life. The heart of life can only be laid bare in
the agony and exultation of dreadful acts. The vision of agony, or spiritual contest, pushed
beyond the limits of the d>nng personality, is exalting and cleansing. It is only by such vision
that a multitude can be brought to the passionate knowledge of things eternal and exulting.”
Theosophy gives such vision: To see and grasp our opportunity when it is offered unto us.
Convention time approaching, I wish to send you and all fellow Members united, my very
heartiest greetings.
H. Knoff.
Delegates and members showed the greatest interest in the reading of Letters of Greeting;
which included, in addition to the foregoing, letters from Mr. Henning Dahl, President of the
Oslo Branch (Norway); Mr. S. A. Drummond (Oklahoma); Mr. Birger Elwing (Texas);
Miss Eleanor Evans (London); Miss Anna Fjaested, President of the Arvika Branch (Sweden);
Mr. Herman Hohnstedt, President of the Cincinnati Branch; Mrs. Lancaster (Los Angeles);
Mr. T. W. Lincoln (Yorkshire, England); Mr. and Mrs. Plinio (Trieste, Italy); Mr. A. Jimenez
Ron (Venezuela); Miss Tuttle (Berkeley, California); Mr. Acisclo Valeddn (Venezuela);
telegram from Miss Evans and Miss Wallace, as President and Secretary of the Branch in
Denver; telegram from Captain and Mrs. Hamlen (Augusta Maine): cablegram from Mrs.
Graves, Mrs. Bagnell, Miss Bagnell, and cablegram from Mrs. Raymond (Tokio, Japan).
Several other letters from abroad were read, which, like all other letters, were received with
applause, but are not acknowledged or quoted in the open pages of the Quarterly for reasons
stated elsewhere in this issue.
H.P.B.’S MESSAGE TO THE CONVENTION,
AMERICAN SECTION T. S., 1891.'
To THE Boston Convention, T.S., 1891;
For the third time since my return to Europe in 1885, I am able to send to
my brethren in Theosophy and fellow citizens of the United States a delegate
from England to attend the annual Theosophical Convention and speak by word
of mouth my greeting and warm congratulations. Suffering in body as I am
continually, the only consolation that remains to me is to hear of the progress
of the Holy Cause to which my health and strength have been given; but to
which, now that these are going, I can offer only my passionate devotion and
never-weakening good wishes for its success and welfare. The news therefore
that comes from America, mail after mail, telling of new Branches and of well-
considered and patiently worked-out plans for the advancement of Theosophy
cheers and gladdens me with its evidences of growth, more than words can tell.
Fellow Theosophists, I am proud of your noble work in the New World; Sisters
and Brothers of America, I thank and I bless you for your unremitting labours
for the common cause so dear to us all.
Let me remind you all once more that such work is now more than ever needed.
The period which we have now reached in the cycle that will close between
1897-98 is, and will continue to be, one of great conflict and continued sUjS.
If the T.S. can hold through it, good; if not, while Theosophy will re'min
unscathed, the Society will perish—perchance most ingloriously—and the World
will suffer. I fervently hope that I may not see such a disaster in my present
body. The critical nature of the stage on which we have entered is as well known
to the forces that fight against us as to those that fight on our side. No oppor¬
tunity will be lost of sowing dissension, of taking advantage of mistaken and
false moves, of instilling doubt, of augmenting difficulties, of breathing suspicions,
so that by any and every means the unity of the Society may be broken and the
ranks of our Fellows thinned and thrown into disarray. Never has it been
more necessary for the members of the T.S. to lay to heart the old parable of the
bundle of sticks than it is at the present time; divided, they will inevitably be
broken, one by one; united, there is no force on earth able to destroy our Brother-
*In 1890, H.P.B. was tcx) ill to write a message.
81
82
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
hood. Now I have marked with pain a tendency among you, as among the
Theosophists in Europe and India, to quarrel over trifles, and to allow your
very devotion to the cause of Theosophy to lead you into disunion. Believe
me, that apart from such natural tendency, owing to the inherent imperfections
of Human Nature, advantage is often taken by our ever-watchful enemies of
your noblest qualities to betray and to mislead you. Sceptics will laugh at this
statement, and even some of you may put small faith in the actual existence of
the terrible forces of these mental, hence subjective and invisible, yet withal
living and potent influences around all of us. But there they are, and I know of
more than one among you who have felt them, and have actually been forced to
acknowledge these extraneous mental pressures. On those of you who are un¬
selfishly and sincerely devoted to the Cause, they will produce little, if any,
impression. On some others, those who place their personal pride higher than
their duty to the T.S., higher even than their pledge to their divine Self, the
efifect is generally disastrous. Self-watchfulness is never more necessary than
when a personal wish to lead, and wounded vanity, dress themselves in the pea¬
cock’s feathers of devotion and altruistic work; but at the present crisis of the
Society a lack of self-control and watchfulness may become fatal in every case.
But these diabolical attempts of our powerful enemies—the irreconcilable foes
of the truths now being given out and practically asserted—may be frustrated.
If every Fellow in the Society were content to be an impersonal force for good,
careless of praise or blame so long as he subserved the purposes of the Brother¬
hood, the progress made would astonish the World and place the Ark of the
T.S. out of danger. Take for your motto in conduct during the coming year,
“Peace with all who love Truth in sincerity,’’ and the Convention of 1892 will
bear eloquent witness to the strength that is bom of unity. . . .
Here in England I am glad to be able to report to you that steady and rapid
progress is being made. . . . Here, as with you, attempts are being successfully
made to bring to bear the influence of Hindu on English thought, and many of
our Hindu brethren are now writing for Lucifer short and clear papers on Indian
philosophies. As it is one of the tasks of the T.S. to draw together the East and
the West, so that each may supply the qualities lacking in the other and develop
more fraternal feelings among nations so various, this literary intercourse will,
I hope, prove of the utmost service in Aryanising Western thought.
The mention of Lucifer reminds me that the now assured position of that
magazine is very largely due to the help rendered at a critical moment by the
American Fellows. As my one absolutely unfettered medium of communication
with Theosophists all over the World, its continuance was of grave importance
to the whole Society. In its pages, month by month, I give such public teaching
as is possible on Theosophical doctrines, and so carry on the most important of
our Theosophical work. . . .
And now I have said all. I am not sufficiently strong to write a more lengthy
message. . . . After all, every wish and thought I can utter are summed up in
this one sentence, the never-dormant wish of my heart, “Be Theosophists, work
for Theosophy!’’ Theosophy first, and Theosophy last; for its practical reali-
REPRINT
83
zation alone can save the Western world from that selfish and unbrotherly feeling
that now divides race from race, one nation from the other; and from that
hatred of class and social considerations that are the curse and disgrace of
so-called Christian peoples. Theosophy alone can save it from sinking entirely
into that mere luxurious materialism in which it will decay and putrefy as
civilizations have done. In your hands, brothers, is placed in trust the welfare of
the coming century; and great as is the trust, so great is also the responsibility.
My own span of life may not be long, and if any of you have learned aught from
my teachings, or have gained by my help a glimpse of the True Light, I ask you,
in return, to strengthen the Cause by the triumph of which that True Light,
made still brighter and more glorious through your individual and collective
efforts, will lighten the World, and thus to let me see, before I part with this
worn-out body, the stability of the Society secured.
May the blessings of the past and present great Teachers rest upon you. From
myself accept collectively the assurance of my true, never-wavering fraternal
feelings, and the sincere, heartfelt thanks for the work done by all the workers.
From their servant to the last,
H. P. Blavatsky.
THE LAST MESSAGE, 1891.
15:4:1891.
To the Fifth Convention of the American Section of The Theosophical Society
Brother Theosophists;
I have purposely omitted any mention of my oldest friend and fellow-worker,
W. Q. Judge, in my general address to you, because I think that his unflagging
and self-sacrificing efforts for the building up of Theosophy in America deserve
special mention.
Had it not been for W. Q. Judge, Theosophy would not be where it is to-day
in the United States. It is he who has mainly built up the movement among
you, and he who has proved in a thousand ways his entire loyalty to the best
interests of Theosophy and the Society.
Mutual admiration should play no part in a Theosophical Convention, but
honour should be given where honour is due, and I gladly take this oppor^jjty
of stating in public, my deep appreciation of the work of your General Sec^fry,
and of publicly tendering him my most sincere thanks and deeply-felt gratitude,
in the name of Theosophy, for the noble work he is doing and has done.
Yours fraternally,
H. P. Blavatsky.
oor
REVIEWS
The Invisible Influence, by Alexander Cannon, M.D., Ph.D., F.R.G.S.; E. P.
Dutton and Co., New York; price, Si.50.
If you write a book, get a friend to contribute an Introduction which says:
“No book has stirred up as much controversy in Europe in many years”; for
then, as in this case, the publisher can quote the statement on the “jacket” in
large type, and your ship is launched.
“What fools these mortals be!” We doubt, however, if Europe can have
become quite so foolish as the writer of the Introduction implies. Dr. Cannon
is a student and practitioner of hypnotism; Jesus Christ, he says, was one of the
greatest of hypnotists, and was great, by inference, for that reason; hypnotism
is the “Invisible Influence” of the book’s title. Experiments in hypnotism, for
those not familiar with the subject, can be surprising; but we had not imagined
that this mid-Victorian “thrill” would have meant much to people to-day.
Perhaps we had forgotten the law of cycles; perhaps we are due for another
dose of raps and table-turning; perhaps the present generation will “discover”
magic! It would be entertaining if someone were to rush at us with a copy of
Isis Unveiled as the very latest fad ,—rien de plus chic. Yet, the girls who gave
up astrology for skirt-dancing must have died, years ago; or are they perennials?
Seriously, can we envy the fate of those whose function it is to turn a world of
flibbertigibbets into a world of sages and heroes? Who would be a Mahatma!
However, to return to our review: the writer of the Introduction chooses to
regard Dr. Cannon’s story, not as fiction, but as a record of fact. Dr. Cannon
gives colour to this by stating in his Preface that “the mysteries of the East and
the Far East have been fully explored in a long tour which was made, as it were,
in search of the Holy Grail, more ancient than any known to history”, and then,
in the body of his book, by speaking of a journey of forty-two days “in sedan¬
like chairs”, to Tibet, “where the great mystery Lama Convent lay”, which he
and his travelling companion visited, led there by “a mysterious austere per¬
sonage in scarlet robes, black cap and only one arm,” described as the Knight
Commander, who brought “the great tidings” that Dr. Cannon was soon to be
honoured “with that highest of titles, Knight Commander of Asia, which is
equal to an Earl in this country”, these great tidings being confirmed later, when
Dr. Cannon, as he explains, now “held the scrolls, the Arms of Office, the coat of
arms, and weapons of war which went with this noble office”—all in Tibet.
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REVIEWS
85
Still in Tibet, accompanied by the aforesaid one-armed Knight Commandery
Dr. Cannon and his travelling companion, ceaselessly discussing hypnotism in
English with their Tibetan friend, visited a near-by farm. “The conversation
now became very interesting; the farmer’s wife asked if there was any importance
as regards destiny in the date of birth of an individual, especially since Pythagoras
laid such stress on dates and numbers^ Not bad for a Tibetan farmer’s wife!
The Tibetan Knight Commander, who claimed to know all things, and who
quoted the Christian scriptures and French authorities on hypnotism with equal
ease, had already been hypnotized by Dr. Cannon, obeying the latter’s orders
implicitly; but when it came to the farmer’s wife our mental comment was that
we had never read such bosh in our life or lives,—this verdict standing until
we had read a few more pages, which landed us in the “Great Lama Convent’’,
into the presence of the Great Lama himself. What followed was so childish,
so utterly lacking in imagination as in verisimilitude, that we could explain it
only on the theory that Dr. Cannon had accidentally hypnotized himself, and
had written his book in a state of semi-dream, quite unable to distinguish be¬
tween fact and fiction, and with his sense of humour, if he has any, completely
paralysed. But can anyone, even the feeble-minded, mistake such balderdash
for fact? It is pitiable,—and, although this is incidental, the English of the book
is that of a school-boy of fourteen or less. X.Y.Z.
Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy, by George Santayana; Charles
Scribner’s Sons, New York; price. Si.75.
Five essays are included in this volume: “Locke and the Frontiers of Com¬
mon Sense’’; “Fifty Years of British Idealism’’; “Revolutions in Science’’; “A
Long Way Round to Nirvana’’, this being the development of one of Freud’s
ideas; and “The Prestige of the Infinite’’, a review of Julien Benda’s Essai d'un
Discours coherent sur les Rapports de Dieu et du Monde. With the exception of
“The Prestige of the Infinite’’, the book is singularly devoid of instruction or
interest. One sometimes v^nshes that Santayana had devoted his undoubted
literary talents to lighter, more superficial topics. Like many men of lettgJ
he wHtes more easily than he thinks. He is often most fluent, when his idare
are most elusive.
Santayana calls himself a materialist. Perhaps he adopted this label in his
youth and hesitates to change it. However, it now serves only to befuddle the
reader. Indeed, the general line of Santayana’s thought is based upon propo¬
sitions which are so incoherent as to be unintelligible. He says, for example,
that “all modem philosophy, in so far as it is a description of experience and not
of nature, . . . seems to belong to the sphere of literature, and to be without
scientific value” (p. 47). We defy anyone to make sense out of this. How can
one describe experience without describing nature? What can be the scientific
value of a description of nature, which is not also a description of experience?
If experience be not a part of nature, what is it? If materialists and idealists
have any point of agreement, it is this,—that human consciousness and the
86
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
world or “nature” which surrounds it, are fundamentally one. We only know
nature, in so far as it is made manifest to our consciousness, nor can our personal
consciousness, even in its most subjective moods, be adequately conceived as a
thingdess “natural” than a physical body.
Fortunately, Santayana’s “materialism” has no place in the chapter on “The
Prestige of the Infinite”. As he himself remarks, he has not always shared
“the supreme respect for infinite Being which animates so many saints”. Now,
after many years, he is aware of a sort of conversion. Infinite Being suggests
to him quietude and wisdom, and also “the involution of all forms”, the reso¬
lution of all discords, the “realm of truth” in which all events and transformations
are gathered together sub specie ceternitatis. He is moved to genuine eloquence
by this theme.
We need not look for the principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home
from the beginning. Even the idea of infinite Being, though unnamed, is probably
familiar. Perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each budding mind, the
infinite or indeterminate may have been the primary datum. On that homogeneous
sensuous background, blank at first but secretly plastic, a spot here and a movement there
may gradually have become discernible, until the whole picture of nature and history
has shaped itself as we see it. A certain sense of that primitive datum, the infinite or
indeterminate, may always remain as it were the outstretched canvas on which every
picture is painted. And when the pictures vanish, as in deep sleep, the ancient simplicity
and quietness may be actually recovered, in a conscious union with Brahma. So sensuous,
so intimate, so unsophisticated the “return to God” may be for the spirit, without ex¬
cluding the other avenues, intellectual and ascetic, by which this return may be effected
in waking life, though then not so much in act as in intent only and allegiance. . . .
Nature, in forming the human soul, unintentionally [.^] unlocked for the mind the
doors to truth and essence, partly by obliging the soul to attend to things which are out¬
side, and partly by endowing the soul with far greater potentialities of sensation and
invention than daily life is likely to call forth. Our minds are therefore naturally dis¬
satisfied with their lot, and speculatively directed upon an outspread universe in which
our persons count for almost nothing. . . . Spirit belongs intrinsically to another sphere,
and cannot help wondering at the world, and suffering in it. The man in whom spirit is
awake will continue to live and act, but with a difference. In so far as he has become
pure spirit he will have transcended the fear of death or defeat: for now his instinctive fear,
which will subsist, will be neutralized by an equally sincere consent to die and to fail.
He will live henceforth in a truer and more serene sympathy with nature than is possible
to rival natural beings. . . . Their will is in hopeless rebellion against the divine decrees
which they must obey notwithstanding. The spiritual man, on the contrary, in so far
as he has already passed intellectually into the eternal world, no longer endures unwillingly
the continual death involved in living.... He renounces everything religiously in the very
act of attaining it (pp. 115-121).
These words have a noble quality. It is well to recall to the human spirit
its kinship with the Infinite God. Nevertheless, Santayana does not point to
any practical method of realizing this union with Brahma. The intellect alone
is powerless to accomplish such a transmutation of consciousness. As Gautama
Buddha taught, Nirvana is not an object of thought but a state of being. More¬
over, he was too wise to attempt to describe or to define a profound mystical
experience in ordinary mental terms. Of all intellectual enterprises, the most
futile is the effort to form a conception of the Absolute. It is stated that medi-
REVIEWS
87
tation is the inexpressible yearning of man to “go out towards the Infinite”.
The knowledge thus acquired may, indeed, seem infinite to us; but the more
vast is this knowledge, the more conscious is the knower of the unfathomable
Mystery which encompasses him. “One thing I know”, said Socrates, “that
I know nothing.” The humility of the sage is proportionate to his wisdom.
S.V.L.
The Dawn 0] Conscience, by James Henry Breasted; Charles Scribner’s Sons,
New York, 1933; price, $3.00.
This new book of Professor Breasted’s is what we should have every reason
to expect it to be—thoughtful, full of information, clear-cut. It takes us from
the earliest times in Egypt of which we have even fragmentary records, up to the
fall of Akhenaton, and then, rather rapidly, through the succeeding centuries
when Egypt, in her decadence, had lost the inner, creative power which had
manifested itself in the purest religious aspiration. About the time of the
Middle Kingdom (roughly 2000 b . c .), a steadily increasing sense of social anxiety,
openly expressed, began to show itself; and it is in general to this period and to
this new approach toward life, that Professor Breasted refers when he speaks
of the dawn of conscience. It was during this period that the purely ethical
literature of ancient Egypt was most in vogue—literature regarding the conduct
of human affairs : “The Maxims of Ptahhotep”, “The Instructions of Ke’gemni”,
“The Testament of Amenemhat”, etc., a later example being “The Wisdom of
Amenemope”; and Professor Breasted, in a number of very interesting pages,
traces the evidence for a connection between these moral writings of Egypt,
and some of the Hebrew literature. He shows that, in reality, these are the
source of many parts of the Old Testament, hitherto called “revelation”, so
that we are led to recognize (if we have not already long since done so), how
much we owe to Egypt.
Almost from the start, however, the student of Theosophy will find a great
deal in this book with which he will be in radical disagreement; such, for in¬
stance, as the belief that religious ideas and ideals were evolved by man^pself,
out of his own self-created nature-worship. Yet this is the thesis upd^vhich
Professor Breasted builds his entire argument. It is the usual invertecfroage of
most archaeologists and students of early religions, as already pointed out on
many occasions by the Quarterly. All the basic “facts” of the argument are
upside-down. It would be difficult if not impossible to convince the student of
Theosophy that the Sun-god Ra owed his very existence to the fact that the
early Egyptians recognized the beneficent and powerful effects of the material
sun upon the life of mankind; nor could we agree that Osiris came into being
merely because the verdure which he is supposed impersonally to have typified,
itself sprang into life as a result of the yearly inundation of the Nile. The student
of Theosophy would maintain that Ra and Osiris were divine Kings who, in the
most literal sense, had ruled on earth in the days when the early races believed
in and sought guidance from above, and before man became poisoned by the idea
88
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
that he was his own best and only law-maker. Nor would the student of The¬
osophy agree with Professor Breasted in considering the Pyramid Age as the
age of materialism”, merely, so far as we can judge, because of the magnificent
engineering feats manifested in the stupendous erections of Khufu, Khafra,
Menkaura and others before them. The pyramids speak for themselves, and
for the divinely exalted ideals of their period, and there is nothing whatever in
the exoteric musings of Ptahhotep, Ke’gemni and the rest, praiseworthy as
they are within their own limits, which can in any way compare with the virility,
the fire, the esoteric splendour of the Pyramid Texts. The more Egypt advanced
in outer glory, the more the glory of her ancient, esoteric truths was obscured.
In the early days, when the Lodge still had its servants in the King-Initiates, a
portion of the hidden Wisdom could, by means of symbolic language, be com¬
mitted to writing—as much of it as is ever given out in this way—so that future
generations (those who had the clue), might still read and learn from these Texts.
But with the Feudal Age, when Egypt became darkened by the creeping shadow
of democratic ideas, when the nobles, and later the people themselves, began
to clamour for ‘‘equal rights”, with all that that implies of attendant dangers
and growing inner blindness, then and only then, did the teaching of “social con¬
science” become necessary, because the old spiritual values were rapidly fading.
Are these long lists of moral precepts necessarily an indication of interior growth
as Professor Breasted would have us believe? Social standards and rules of
conduct which belong to a specific age, change and pass, and as man becomes
more externalized, he may well understand moral rather than spiritual direction:
he has to be instructed in a language comprehensible to him. All the religious
teaching of the past—religious in the widest interpretation of the word—has
had to be given in accordance with the capacity of its hearers, and in every
religion there has always been, and no doubt always will be, an exoteric presen¬
tation of the esoteric truth which lies behind it. The lofty state of spiritual con¬
sciousness which made the building of the pyramids possible (first the spiritual
construction, then the concrete erections), surely indicates a higher civilization,
in an interior sense, than that of the later period with its carefully annotated
codes.
One final protest! Remembering the many traditions of lost civilizations and
submerged continents, we feel that Professor Breasted makes an unjustifiable
statement when he writes: “There was no civilized ancestry from whom the
prehistoric Nile-dweller might receive an inheritance of culture,” and again,
“The significance of the appearance of civilization along the Nile does not lie in
the splendour of its buildings alone, but in the fact that as a continuous and
uninterrupted social evolution steadily moving on for a thousand years, it was
rising the first time on our globe." The italics are Professor Breasted’s own—
but why is he so certain of the truth of this claim? Civilizations move in cycles,
as another distinguished Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, has so clearly demon¬
strated, and what satisfactory evidence have we contrary to the idea that these
cycles may stretch back into a past so remote that tradition alone is evidence
that they existed? History as such, is a very recent institution indeed, Herod-
REVIEWS
89
otus notwithstanding, and the mere fact that the hieroglyphic writing which
we find in the earliest monuments of the Thinite Period is already a completely
formed, complicated system, should give us much food for thought. Where did
that highly civilized writing come from? Students of Theosophy, whose rever¬
ence for Egypt’s ancient splendour is profound, would surely feel that a greater
honour was being done her by giving her her rightful place in a vast evolutionary
pageant of long anterior civilizations (the very records of which are now almost,
though not entirely, lost), than is the case when offering her the isolated if
illustrious precedence suggested by Professor Breasted. T.D.
Notebook of Nothing, Fragments of the Lyrical Diary of a Sienese Shepherdess
(by Dina Ferri), with an introduction by Piero Misciattelli; translated from the
Italian by Helen Josephine Robins and Harriet Reid; Bruce Humphries, Inc.,
Boston, price, $2.00.
A book, a life, to be accounted for satisfactorily only through the “twin
doctrines’’ of Karma and Reincarnation. A young Italian peasant girl, her
parents too poor to complete her elementary school education, tended sheep on
her native hills near Siena. With her she carried a little notebook, jotting down
her thoughts and experiences as the days and years passed—simple enough
incidents: the music of birds and streams, of sunlight and starlight and changing
seasons; the pathos of the humble peasant life about her. But the child was a
poet, and her jottings, some in verse form, some in eloquent prose, are all poetry.
She saw with the eye of the poet, and beauty of expression followed with the
simple spontaneity of a bird song. Nature, the approach to the Real for so many
of us, awakened in her a joyous response at every turn: “I heard in an undertone
a great chorus of voices singing to the sky and the sun, and I longed to seize but
one of these voices and shut it into my soul.’’ But more than that, for her,
“nature murmurs the poetry of labour’’,—she is one with all that suffers, all that
yearns in the humble life about her, responding with unfailing pity, and ajgays
with an echo of the great harmony, an intuitive sense of the joy beneath tb^lin:
“Who can be happy who has not wept?’’ “Never through the whole year; grow
pomegranates and pansy flowers.’’ Or of the deserted baby, dead in a damp
garret: “There is still a smile on your little white face, and your tiny hand is
closed on the gift the Angel brought you. It is pardon for the men who forgot
you.’’
Due to an accident, her notebooks were discovered, and because of their great
promise, a scholarship fund was obtained, providing an education for her— un¬
fortunately, as many of us would think, and as she herself sensed later on, for
while it strengthened her desire to “read the great secret that draws us on’’,
it also made the mystery of life, and its pain, the more incomprehensible. “Still
I pursue my way, because a strange destiny has so decreed, and still the horizon
grows wider and wider. But I no longer see there the mountain tops as once in
the country where I was bom, because the same fate that draws me on has
wrapped them in mist which never clears.’’ She died at the age of twenty, in a
go
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
hospital in Siena, courageously accepting her own great suffering, but tormented
by the thought of her inability ever to help her parents in their poverty. Baffled
as she was by the mystery of life, several fragments, written near the end, suggest
that she held in her hand the key, ready to turn when next the opportunity offers.
Referring to times when the heart is heavy with weariness or grief, she writes:
“The music of the heart is silenced, the mysterious inward voice dies in a sigh of
weakness; we rebel against natural law, and in trying to lift ourselves in a void
without support we fall to lower depths. It is only the great souls who always
hear the voice of the heart, because that is the voice of love, and there is no true
greatness without love.” J.C.
The Life oj Cardinal Mercier, by John A. Gade; Charles Scribner’s Sons, New
York and London, 1934; price, S2.75.
It is not often that a book can be recommended so unreservedly, as in this case.
It is quite the best life of Cardinal Mercier so far written, and is likely to retain its
pre-eminence for many years. The author is a Protestant, and while writing
with great admiration for his subject, avoids the mistake which most Roman
Catholic biographers make when portraying the life and character of a co¬
religionist whose saintliness may lead to his canonization,—that is, Mr. Gade
does not gush, is not fulsome, and writes throughout in the best of taste. It is
a book of which America should be proud, though it won’t be, because con¬
temporary America takes its literary opinions from newspaper reviewers, nearly
all of whom hate anything which is not as vulgar as they are.
Cardinal Mercier and King Albert of Belgium were, in our opinion, the only
great men produced, or revealed, by the World War. This is because they were
not in the least concerned about their own glory; they were incapable of “play¬
ing politics”; they stood immovably for what they believed to be right, regard¬
less of consequences. Of the two men, the Cardinal seems to us to be much the
greater. It is obvious that his task was by far the more difficult. Mercier had
to fight the Germans while in their hands; he also had to fight those of his
brother Cardinals who were Pro-German, and there were plenty of them. But
the two men were devoted friends, and while the King would have agreed whole¬
heartedly with our comparison, Mercier would have deplored it.
Mercier was an extraordinarily learned man, thoroughly familiar with modem
science, philosophy and psychology, as well as with the teaching of Thomas
Aquinas and the “sacred theology” of the Middle Ages. He was also an intense
patriot, and, above all, a priest, as a priest ought to be,—not only deeply re¬
ligious, but self-disciplined until control had become almost perfect, with ever-
flowing sympathy and ever-burning zeal, devoting himself ceaselessly to the
service of his Lord. The things he said were not echoes from books, but were
hammered from his own experience, his own suffering, his courage. Thus:
“However troubled a situation may be, or however near it may seem to disaster
and despair, we must always keep our heads up and retain a stout heart. Dis¬
couragement never created energy, and only energy can prepare triumph.”
REVIEWS
91
Again: “Suffering accepted and vanquished will give you a security which may
become the most exquisite fruit of your life”.
He was the embodiment of alert intelligence,—which, being said, compels
mention of the fact that one of his later enthusiasms was peculiarly and, we
should say, painfully Roman. Yet perhaps the moral of this is that so long as the
fundamentals are sound, doctrinal oddities do not greatly matter,—until a
stage has been reached when a disciple, to know his Master truly, must rid
himself, not only of his superstitions, but of “all dependence upon external
things”; and Mercier, great as he was, certainly had not acquired Uparati
(Cessation), essential as a qualification for ch^laship, as Shankara Acharya
declared many centuries ago.
The chapters dealing with Mercier’s activities during the War, are admirably
written and of fascinating interest. The author (who was in Belgium in 1916-17,
as a member of the Relief Commission) is restrained, but the facts speak for them¬
selves, and one of the reasons why we hope his book will be widely read is that
people in America and England try to forget, if they ever knew, what Germany
did at that time. Read about it directly, with their eyes open, they will not
(why be made uncomfortable!), but in this form, related quietly as an outer
event in Mercier’s life, they will have less chance to shut their ears and close
their minds,—will have less chance, therefore, to rest assured, with fatuous
credulity, that if it were not for France, Germany would behave like a lamb
among lambs.
Readers of the Quarterly will be helping a good Cause if they will a.sk for
this book at their Public Library, and will then recommend it to all their friends.
T.
The Transformation of Nature in Art, by Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy♦
Harvard University Press, Cambridge; price, $3.
This is a collection of essays, the first of which, “The Theory of Art in Asia”,
is the most interesting. Dr. Coomaraswamy begins by saying, “In thaMowing
pages there is presented a statement of Oriental aesthetic theory basIKnainly
on Indian and partly on Chinese sources; at the same time, by means of notes
and occasional remarks, a basis is offered for a general theory of art co-ordinating
Eastern and Western points of view. Whenever European art is referred to by
way of contrast or elucidation, it should be remembered that ‘European art’
is of two very different kinds, one Christian and scholastic, the other post-
Renaissance and personal. It will be evident enough from our essay on Eckhart,
and might have been made equally clear from a study of St. Thomas and his
sources, that there was a time when Europe and Asia could and did actually
understand each other very well. Asia has remained herself; but subsequent to
the extroversion of the European consciousness and its preoccupation with
surfaces, it has become more and more difficult for European minds to think
in terms of unity.”
He proceeds to describe the “Yoga” of the artist, wherein, meditating de-
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
votedly upon an idea, he draws to himself its true form from the higher worlds,
in other terms, from “the immanent space in the heart”. Contemplating this
form, he must become one with it and realize it in himself. Dante said: “Who
paints a figure, if he cannot be it, cannot draw it.”
Coomaraswamy quotes the famous six canons of Hsieh Ho, first published in
the fifth century and still authoritative. The first canon he renders thus:
“Operation or revolution (ytin 13817) or concord or reverberation (yun 13843)
of the spirit (chi 1064) in life movement.” This is translated more agreeably
by Okakura as, “the life movement of the spirit through the rhythm of things.”
This canon remains an infallible criterion of the value of all works of art. The
life movement of the spirit forms the world according to Law and Principle,
and the work of art imitates these laws and not the illusory appearances of
manifestation. Coomaraswamy says: “Naturalism is antipathetic to religious
art of all kinds, to art of any kind. The Indian ikon is not constructed to function
biologically, the Christian ikon cannot be thought [of] as moved by any other
thing than its form, and each should, strictly speaking, be regarded as a kind of
diagram, expressing certain ideas, and not as the likeness of anything on earth.”
The ideas and symbols set forth in art are more potent and intelligible as they
are more fixed and representative of the concepts of the race. We understand
a time-honoured symbol at once. It is a familiar language. Westerners are not
puzzled when they see the Holy Ghost descending as a dove. Easterners are not
surprised when they see the Buddha descending to incarnation in the form of a
little elephant.
Oriental life is modelled on types of conduct sanctioned by tradition. For India,
Rama and Sita represent ideals still potent, the svadharma of each caste is a modf of
behaviour, good form being a la mode; and until recently every Chinese accepted as a
matter of course the concept of manners established by Confucius. The Japanese word
for rudeness means “acting in an unexpected way”. . . . This external conformity,
whereby a man is lost in the crowd as true architecture seems to be a part of its native
landscape, constitutes for the Oriental himself a privacy within which the individual
character can flower unhampered. ... It has been well said that civilization is style.
An immanent culture in this sense endows every individual with an outward grace, a
typological perfection, such as only the rarest beings can achieve by their own effort,
a kind of perfection which does not belong to genius; whereas a democracy, which requires
of every man to save his own “face” and soul, actually condemns each to an exhibition
of his own irregularity and imperfection, and this implicit acceptance of formal imper¬
fection only too easily passes over into an exhibitionism which makes a virtue of vanity
and is complacently described as self-expression.
Westerners, in the mass, have arrived at the democratic stage where they
confidently pronounce judgment on every work of art whether they know any
thing about it or not. “I don’t know any thing about art but I know what I
like,” is the common expression of this pretentiousness. The theory of Indian
art requires infinitely more both of the artist and of the spectator than the
theory of modem European art. Coomaraswamy says it is, “a way of destruc¬
tion of the mental and affective barriers behind which the natural manifestation
is concealed.” It requires “self-identification with the ultimate theme”. He
REVIEWS
93
quotes an excellent Indian definition: “Art is Expression informed by Ideal
Beauty.”
The second essay is on Meister Eckhart’s View of Art, showing that the theories
of mediaeval scholasticism agreed fundamentally with those of the Hindu phi¬
losophers. Any one familiar with the works of Giotto and the frescoes of Ajanta,
with Gothic and T’ang sculpture, will be perfectly aware of this. The other
essays on the aesthetic of the Sukranitisara, on Paroksha, on Abhasa, and on the
origin and use of images in India are less valuable to the general reader. Al¬
though published at Harvard, the book would seem to be written for Hindus or
Sanskrit scholars. The pages are heavy with Sanskrit words which fatigue
and distract the reader. Indeed, to dig out the ideas requires more persistence
than most would find worth while. It is a pity that the phraseology of the book
should be so difficult when its substance is of such immense value and interest.
St.C.LaD.
High Gods in North America, by W. Schmidt (Professor of Ethnology and
Linguistics in the University of Vienna); Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1934. price,
S2.75.
The material for these lectures, delivered at Oxford as a result of the Upton
Foundation, was culled by Professor Schmidt from his monumental work,
Ursprung der Gottesidee. He devotes the preliminary chapters to establishing
the validity of his method of research, and of his conclusion that the Selish, the
Algonkins and certain California tribes are the oldest of North American cultures,
and then brings to us a wealth of interesting information and deductions.
The belief, still prevalent in missionary circles, that the loftier of the Indian
concepts were inspired by Christian teaching, is summarily disposed of, as there
is proof positive of an antiquity long antedating the arrival of the White Men.
Professor Schmidt then proceeds to show that, contradicting all evolutionistic
principles, the native religions have not developed upward from height to height
through long ages of time; that, on the contrary, they are seen to diminish in
vigour, purity and amplitude from the high levels of the original inspiration
possessed by the oldest tribal groups. Among these he finds the idea of ^^eator
in its most philosophic form, coupled with the belief in Him as a tru^Mpreme
God, who is not a far-off abstraction, but an All-Father who takes a kee^nterest
in the lives of His people and exercises over them a manifold infiuence; and to
whom they address themselves in a continuous worship of prayer, sacrifice
and ceremonies. In the most ancient of all, there is recognized but one God,
with no other figure to shadow His supremacy; deified First Ancestors appear
only at a much later date.
(An unprejudiced study of these First Ancestors and Culture Heroes might
yield valuable results; according to myths quoted by Professor Schmidt, such
Restorers have appeared at periods of decadence in the religious life, and have
inspired it once more with the fulness of energy which had been imparted
originally by the Supreme One.)
94
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Many tribal traditions are well worth citing; there is the Selish account of the
Soul’s journey, station by station, up the steep path of life to the land of its
desire; there is a tantalizingly short section telling of a celibate society composed
of stoic philosophers, the bravest among all the braves, who were the first to
enter and the last to leave a battle; there is the poetry of the Walum Olum
Legend. The following excerpts from the Delaware Thanksgiving Rite will
serve to show the nobility of its conception, though the enactment and the
symbolism must be left to the imagination.
As is usual in such ceremonies, there is a Leader, or Speaker. After he has
given thanks to the Great Spirit “to whom all men must pray each morning”,
he speaks of the task imposed on everyone, of reaching the Creator at the end of
his life; and he continues: “We must all put our thought to this meeting, so
that the Great Spirit will look upon us and grant what we ask. You come here to
pray, you have this way to reach Him all through life. Do not think of evil,
strive always to think of the good He has given us. . . . We know our fathers
who have left this earth are in the land of Spirits; there the old and the crippled
and the blind look as fair as the rest, for it is nothing but the flesh that is
injured. No sun shines there, but a light much brighter than the sun, the
Creator makes it bright by His power.” He closes the rite with this exhortation:
“My kindred, there is something I want to say, for you to bear well in mind.
It is told traditionally that where one meditates on God in his heart, there is
formed the thought. This is exceedingly hard, but it is necessary that we thus
prepare the soul-spirit, that we may be able to take it, each one, home again
to where it belongs, to our Father, when it is finished here.”
To have gathered and classified such material, and to put the seal of authori¬
tative scholarship on its value, is a real contribution to Theosophy. It es¬
tablishes a foothold in the respected world of science for another of Madame
Blavatsky’s tenets which ran counter to all the accepted formulas of her day:
that religion, far from following with lagging steps the course of material evo¬
lution, is a pure, primal revelation, to be gradually dragged down by ignorance
and self-will to the common levels of human interpretation. E.A.
With so many of the Protestant clergy denouncing war as wholly evil regardless
of the motive with which it be waged—whether in defence of the weak, or as
brigandage—it is opportune to remind our readers of the pamphlet by Charles
Johnston, Christianity and War, published by The Quarterly Book Department in
1915. There could be no better defence of the Christian Master, or clearer proof
of that Master’s belligerency, than Mr. Johnston’s pamphlet provides.
As an antidote to the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick’s “I renounce war, and
never again will I sanction or support another”,—we believe that many students
of Theosophy would be glad to send Christianity and War to clergymen whom
they know to be in need of it. Its price is ten cents, which includes postage.
T.
OVEsncws
m
ac>
Question No. 387 .—Some of us who live far from New York would give so much to live close
to the centre, close to Headquarters. We feel as if we were exiled. What can we do to get home?
Answer. —One may assume that the querent lives in a foreign land, or perhaps in some other
part of this continent. He evidently feels that if he could only live in New York, near Head¬
quarters, life would be so much more interesting and instructive. Of course, the place of our
birth, or of our Karmic adoption, in nearly all cases is the place in which we are intended to
grow up and to work. It is our natural environment, and anyone who leaves it runs a grave
risk, unless his motive be unselfish,—unless his motive be solely to serve in some other part of
the world, as he believes he would not be able to serve in the place of his birth.
Years ago in London, when the Headquarters was in Avenue Road, where H.P.B. then lived,
someone asked H.P.B. if he could not go to India, saying it would be “so easy if one were in the
Himalayas”. H.P.B. said in effect: Easy? You would not survive it for twenty-four hours!
Your Himalayas are right here in London, where you belong. In her reply is contained the real
answer of Theosophy to this question. The inner light, as Judge so constantly reminded us, is
the only light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and for the finding of that
inner light, it does not matter whether we are in New York or at the other end of the earth.
It might prove easier, it might prove infinitely more.difficult, to get in touch with that inner
light here rather than elsewhere. But the answer must depend ultimately upon the motive
instigating the change of place. If the individual were simply seeking more light, thinking
that he might get further instruction, or that life here would be more pleasant or less dis¬
agreeable, then he would be making the greatest possible mistake. Life is just as unpleasant
in one place as in another; there is nothing to choose! It is only youth (and the most un¬
pardonable form of youth) which still dreams the dream that if it were somewhere other than
it is, the sky would always be bright and rain w'ould never fall and everyone would for e^fl|>e
agreeable. There is no such place, there are no such people, anywhere on earth. As wJ(Kw
a little older, we discover facts of this kind, and are none the worse for them—are really much
more cheerful than youth knows how to be. We must realize that right within our reach, in
our present surroundings, no matter what they are, are the means, the weapons, that Karma,
the Good Law, has placed in our hands with which to effect our deliverance. The ultimate ques
tion is not in the least where we think we shall be happiest, but where we can be of most use
And heaven defend us from the illusion which might lead us to suppose that we could be of more
use in China or India (or New York) than right where Karma has placed us. There is plenty to
do there, and more than we can possibly accomplish. Our surroundings, whatever they may
be, are the door, which, if we will open it, will lead us straight into the world of the Real. There
is no other door. There cannot be any other door, except our circumstances here and now, in
our own homes, in our business, in our environment as a whole. While it is not always easy to
see things in that light, we shall not really begin to live until we do.
Of course, common sense must govern. If you were living near a volcano with a record of
periodical eruption, it is difficult to imagine the duty that might hold you there against the pull
of self-preservation; and self-preservation is sometimes as valid a duty as any other. E.T.H.
95
96
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Qlestion No. 388 .—How may those in whom the higher intuitions are not developed best avoid
the dangers of psychism when meditating?
Axs\ver. The first step would obviously be for each one to discover the particular kind of
psychism to which he, individually, was most inclined, and to attack that. Psychism
appears under many guises, some of which might be classed as positive, others as negative.
Among the former are over-activity of the mind or the emotions; among the latter, drifting
or day-dreaming. In each case these states must be replaced by some higher state as nearly as
possible approaching the conditions which we know to be necessary to true meditation. If
our interior stillness is broken by the noise of our minds or the sudden welling up of emotion,
we must make every effort to get above these lower, personal planes, for “all noise is psychic”,
w ether mental or otherwise. If we discover that we have drifted into “day-dreaming”, all
our attention should again be brought under control and re-directed, for if meditation is any-
t ing at all, it is one-pointed and all-absorbing. But our primary need is to be very definite in
our realization of that which we must avoid, as well as of that which we wish to attain. Then,
^ unshakable faith that our Master is eagerly reinforcing every effort of ours, we
s ou nd that our id^l itself is deepening and expanding, and that each day we are one
s ep nearer to him who is the yery goal and object of our meditation. T.A.
AN-sw ER.-^Ieditation, rightly used, is the "open-sesame" to the life of the Soul, to the world
01 K^lity There are many stages of meditation as one leaves behind the psychic world in
wnich we live, and approaches nearer to, or penetrates farther into, the world of Reality The
presetuLnTvT T therefore, are not confined to the lower stages only, but are
ofTv^d.n v J 1, J ^ K \ maintained. Perhaps as simple a way as any
bXep nf the att”T a right sense of direction, and by atteLn and action:
actior^Hhat d T the immediate objective during meditations, and by right
with attendant between meditations. If one pursues his meditations intelligently,
f there will be a logical progression of objectives Take
one
suspicious if self enters the picture tnstancrhetho^ Id ? >"«st immediately be
He should contemplate the ideal of loyalty and make it his endeavn /imsel/ as loyal.
ideal. Whenarightsenseofdirection^isnothelddun'r^^^^^^^^
the trouble is not confined to such periods only, but is due also t^theId
in action between times ’ ' failure to carry through
g.m.w.k.
Answer.— If meditation be not strengthening to the will there is somaii,-
method, and it would be wise to seek the advice of an old,l !^ a “’"^‘hmg wrong with the
certain students are not suitable for others. Positive action bv the^'"n’d ®“‘‘®hle for
practice of completely concentrating the mind on each thine thaf d ‘he
J.F.B.M.
tioner seeks. Carefully to reldt^'-FragmenC'
ardently desiring; then to take it daily, at each meditation. gJng thougMMl”"®
until ones being is pervaded by its living beauty; then t^ rest awhdf ^ ^^
as at a glonous sunset.-ready to carry what one has found into the work"”"'^'’’^*”" '‘•
again at the next time of quiet. Doing this daily, one would find
ifted one above the danger of psychism, and, having thus contacted^hl w\ had
learning how to avoid the lower. ntacted the higher, one would be
R.P.
^ 4 *
o,
Sc
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VOL. XXXII, No. 2 OCTOBER, 1934
Founded by 9. P. Blavatsfty at n«w Vorlt in 1875
PUBLISHED BY
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CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXII, NO. 2
October, 1934
NOTES AND COMMENTS.
FRAGMENTS.
DEVOTION AND UNDERSTANDING
CHARACTER AND FATE.
GROWING THINGS.
FORM AND FUNCTION.
WITHOUT CENSOR, III.
LIFE’S GREATEST CHEMICAL.
A THEOSOPHICAL CALL.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME.
REVIEWS.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. . 7 ....
PAGE
• 99
. 109
. no
. II4
. I 2 I
. 126
• 132
143
ISO
IS4
, 168
183
as second-claM matter September s,
Act of March 3,1879.
1923. at the Poet Office at New York, N. Y.,
Copyright, 1934, by The Theosophical Society
under the
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York by H, P. Blavatsky,
W. Q. Judge and othersy in 1875 .
We have no connection whatsoever with any other organization
calling itself TheosophicaU formerly headed by Mrs. Besanty nor 0
with similar bodiesy the purposes and methods of which are wholly
foreign to our own.
Editors, The Theosophical Quarterly.
OCTOBER,
The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion or declaration
in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless contained in an official document.
The Boundaries of the Earth
T HIRTY-two years ago Willson’s Ancient and Modern Physics was pub¬
lished under the auspices of The Theosophical Society. Basing his
hypothesis upon certain Hindu texts, Willson proposed an astronomi¬
cal theory in harmony with the theosophical teaching concerning the “chains
of globes” and the gradations or planes of cosmic substance. He suggested
that the “true form” of the earth is, in a certain sense, co-extensive with the
“true form” of the Cosmos. The prakritic or physical earth, the habitation of
our bodies, is a tiny nucleus in a cell of solar ether which is in turn contained
within a globe of prana or vital radiation, the whole being encompassed by an
orb or organism, of a subtilty beyond our comprehension, the embodiment of the
thought of the Logoi, the Divine Architects of the Universe. Thus the ultimate
boundary of the earth is not the limit of the so-called physical atmosphere but
the limit of space itself. We do not live on the real earth, but in it, and if we
so will, we can expand our life until it participates in the life of the Cosmos.
The material and physical universe consists of four planes of matter, or fo^®reat
octaves of vibration, each differentiated from the other, as in our physics prakrwr is dif¬
ferentiated from ether. The material universe, the ancient physics teach, was originally
pure thought, Manasa, the product of the spiritual planes above. This manasic world
was differentiated, a real world. That is to say, it was given elementary substances by
the union of its atoms in different sized molecules. Some of its elements combined and
formed Prana. The Prana gathered and formed other worlds, pranic worlds. Then in
the pranic worlds etheric worlds were formed; and finally in the etheric worlds, prakritic
globes like the earth were formed. The earth is the centre of a prakritic globe revolving
in ether around the sun. The sun is the centre of a solar globe of ether, revolving in
Prana around Alcyone [the brightest star in the Pleiades]. Alcyone is the centre of a
stellar globe of Prana revolving around the central and hidden sun of the great manasic
globe. These four conditions of matter: prakriti, ether. Prana and Manasa are the earth,
water, fire, air of the Ancient Metaphysics, the four elements of matter, and are present
in every atom of matter. ... In the great manasic globe this earth of ours is a minute
village of Helios (sun) county, in the state of Alcyone. We are actually and literally
99
O
100
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
living in this manasic globe precisely as we live in this earth, and as in the village we are
subject to all the laws of the manasic world, we can study them here (pp. 33-345 49 -So)*
The Halo of a Planet
Modem astronomers would be well advised to adopt such a model of the
Cosmos as a working hypothesis, although, given their present disposition,
nothing is more imlikely to happen. It is, therefore, interesting and significant
that from time to time they prove, according to their own methods, parts of
Willson’s theory to be true, without the least intention of doing so, without
any knowledge that Willson or his theory ever existed.
For instance, Willson remarked that according to his Hindu sources the tme
diameter of the physical earth is about 50,000 miles. “That is to say, the tme
surface of the earth is the line of twenty-four-hour axial rotation; the line
where gravitation and apergy exactly balance; where a moon would have to be
placed to revolve once in 86,400 seconds. Within that is prakriti; without is
ether’’ (pp. 8-9).
When these words were written, science was only beginning to surmise the
existence of a “higher’’ atmosphere. During recent years, however, it has
been necessary to postulate a concentric series of electric “layers’’ above the
aerial ocean in which we live. The behaviour of “radio-waves’’ can only be
explained by the supposition that they are reflected and bent by contact with
an electro-magnetic “aura’’ surrounding the earth like a shell. The difficulty
is to determine where the earth ends and interplanetary space begins.
In Nature (July 14, 1934) an expert on “wireless echoes’’. Professor Harry
Rowe Mimno of Harvard, presents evidence of two new electric shells above
the so-called F layers. The scientific editor of The New York Times (July 23,
1934) comments as follows upon the general subject of “this haloed earth’’:
All told, we now have five [electric shells]—the Kennelly-Heaviside layer, the Apple-
ton layer beyond that, the two new Mimno layers, and far out beyond the moon the
layer first discovered by Hals and verified by Carl Stoermer. Little did Marconi sus¬
pect when he began his experiments in wireless telegraphy that he had invented a means
for exploring space and visualizing an earthly atmosphere of onion-like structure.
“Ionosphere”, the nearer layers of this atmospheric onion are now collectively called.
Although it is known only by its electric manifestations, there can be no doubt that
this ionosphere is as truly part of our air as the lowermost troposphere in which we live
and move, and the stratosphere. . . . Close to the surface a sapphire atmosphere flashes
resplendently in the reflected light of the sun, and surrounding this are shells that shim¬
mer electrically as the ultra-violet rays of the sun strike them with varying intensity, or
as electrons hurled from sun-spots play havoc with occasional atoms in the highly rati¬
fied air. Far beyond, arches the colossal halo of electrons which Stoermer has made his
special study. . . . These glowing shells that the mind’s eye can see, are real.
Doubtless, they are as real as the rings of Saturn which they seem to resemble;
but there are many orders of reality in the Universe, as our astronomers have
yet to learn. According to ancient physics, there are four great orders of real¬
ity, four great planes of substance, in the manifested Cosmos. Also these
planes and orders are said to interblend at every point, to be inseparable in
NOTES AND COMMENTS
lOI
essence; they cannot be segregated in water-tight compartments. If scientists
could study the ionosphere and its aura directly, and not merely by deduction
from phenomena of another order, they might discover, at least in its outer
confines, a critical condition of matter between its physical and astral states,
a zone'where the prakritic sphere fades into the “ether” which both surrounds
and permeates it. The ionosphere, as described by science, is as obscure and
as indefinite as only a formula of the highest mathematics can be. But there
is reason to believe that the ionosphere, as a real entity, as a thing-in-itself, is
more concrete, more solid than the physical earth which in our naive material¬
ism we accept as the standard of all concreteness and solidity in Nature. “When
demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the inven¬
tion of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter which surrounds
us as a ball of pitch might surround—say, a fly, but which, in our extreme ig¬
norance of all its properties save those we find it exercising on our earth, we
yet call the clear, the serene, and the transparent atmosphere” {Five Years of
Theosophy, p. 159).
The Reversal of the Time-Sense
If all things interblend, if space, time and form be unreal in themselves, if
only the spaceless, timeless One be “the Real of the Real”, it follows that all
mundane science is necessarily limited and relative. All description is tenta¬
tive and incomplete, omitting far more than it can possibly record. It is a
truism that an object can only be seen in a given perspective from some par¬
ticular point of view, and that there is an infinity of possible perspectives and
of possible points of view. It is interesting to note that the Monad of Leibniz,
the principle of individual consciousness, has been defined as a point of view
from which God contemplates Himself. Certainly the relativity of human
knowledge is as obvious as the blue sky, nor was Einstein the first to discover it.
However, it is possible to exaggerate and distort the meaning of relativity.
A rain-drop is not an ocean, but it is just as watery as the ocean. Even the
smallest fragment of truth is true. We experience the real in some degree^i
whenever we experience anything: how could we possibly experience anything
else ? Delusion only appears when we deliberately falsify the image of our experi¬
ence, pretending that it is other than it is, affirming that it includes all possible
aspects of reality, neglecting the testimony of other experiences which should
enrich and supplement our own.
For example, there is no conceivable justification for discarding, in the name
of relativity, the whole past experience of mankind, merely because it is our duty
and privilege to deepen and broaden that experience. Yet that is precisely
what the majority, or at least the vocal minority, of contemporary educators
are preaching as an ideal. As Dean Gauss points out, modem man has reversed
his time-sense. “He has emptied the past and present of significance, and he
must more and more find the meaning of life in things and times outside of and
for ever beyond him.” But to build a future without a past is as rational as to
set out on a journey from nowhere in particular to go nowhere else. What the
102
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
modem world needs as much as anything else is a big dose of Confucianism,
including ancestor-worship, for that would be better than the worship of each
latest fad as it comes along.
Educational Follies
As an example of this reversal of the time-sense, we quote from a report of a
meeting of the National Association of Public School Business Officials {The
New York Times, June 14, 1934).
The social, political and economic welfare of this country is in peril because of the
crisis in the educational system, the speakers said. The youth of the land is not receiving
adequate training, for lack of proper supplies, the right kind of text-books and because
of poorly maintained buildings, they declared. . . . Science text-books morf than Un
years old are being used in New York City schools, because there is no money for the
right kind of books. Dr. Campbell [superintendent of city schools] said. He pointed
out that there have been revolutionary changes in scientific knowledge in the la€t decade,
but books that still teach outdated theories must be used. Dr. Campbell said the only
ray of sunshine in the New York City situation was that conditions in other parts of the
country were much worse.
The italics are ours. One ventures to ask Dr. Campbell, on behalf of the
friendless taxpayer, what guarantee he can give that in ten years the text-books
which he demands will not be equally outdated. There seems to be a law of
cyclic return which determines the course of fads and fancies. If we keep our
old hats long enough, we may be sure that they will become fashionable again.
The outdated theories of science are extraordinarily like our old hats. For
instance, in 1889 Lord Kelvin remarked that “the ether is the only substance
we are confident of in dynamics. One thing we are sure of, and that is the reality
and substantiality of the ether.” To-day the ether is an “exploded superstition”,
because it does not fit into the most up-to-date picture-puzzles of wave-me¬
chanics. But who knows? From Paris comes the news that Professor Carvallo
pronounces the relativity theory to be false. He is supported in this heresy by
Dr. Ernest Esclangon, director of the Paris Observatory, and by Dr. Dayton C.
Miller of Cleveland who has made tens of thousands of observations to support
his belief that an ether exists. The orthodox are unconvinced; but Dr. Camp¬
bell would be wise not to throw away his old text-books, even if some new ones
be bought for him.
However, the best advice might be to throw them all away, both the old and
the new. After all, is it really necessary to keep the children of New York
posted in regard to all these “winds of doctrine” ? If they could understand even
a little—which is most unlikely—their assumption of mental superiority over
their parents would be unbearable. Surely educators should do their utmost to
combat one of the most popular delusions of our time,—that the most recent
theory by anybody about anything must be the most correct. Every boy and
girl should be told, at least once a day, that true science, the experimental
knowledge of facts, must always be distinguished from the theories which men
of science invent, with varying ingenuity, to explain facts.
NOTES AND COMMENTS
103
The real point is that there can be only one legitimate object of public school
education—to prepare children to become good citizens. Unless the taxpayer’s
money is spent for this purpose, the state or the muncipality is guilty of robbery
and waste. Moreover, this rule applies equally to libraries which are supported
by public funds. We are informed that the public library of a large city on the
Pacific Coast has purchased five hundred copies of Anthony Adverse!
The Idea of Progress
The reversal of the time-sense is intimately associated with the idea of progress
which has played so notable a r 61 e in the development of Western thought since
the Renaissance. It originated as a protest against mediaeval “pessimism” con¬
cerning the fall of man and his fatal tendency to degenerate continuously through
the repetition of the original sin of disobedience to God. Without doubt, this
protest was in itself an inevitable reaction against a too persistent emphasis
upon the lower nature of the human being, as if this lower nature were the real
man and the soul were devoid of divine possibilities. It is significant that the
great mediaeval mystics themselves reacted in this spirit, insisting upon the inner
bond of union which links the spiritual part of the soul to all divine things.
Unfortunately, however, the idea of progress, almost from its inception, became
identified with the forces which were preparing an open revolt against everything
for which the mediaeval man had stood. The good, the bad and the indifferent
were all classified as equally obscurantist and superstitious. In particular, war
to the death was declared against the fundamental principle of mediaeval thought
at its best, the principle that earth-life is not an end in itself; that man is a
spiritual being and his true destiny is to be discovered in the spiritual world;
that all his terrestrial experiences have meaning and value only in so far as they
train and prepare him for life in Heaven. Especially during the past two centuries,
progress has become synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge for the
purpose of creating a Utopia, a society of mortal men on earth so organized as to
provide for its citizens the maximum of personal wealth, satisfaction and ease.
The Modem Era has been marked by an extraordinary acquisition o^Mow-
ledge, by an expansion of physical science which has transformed the^mSface
of the earth. However, the ideal social state is as remote as ever, remoter even,
for the feudal society of the Middle Ages seems Utopian by contrast with our
modern democracies and dictatorships. The reason for this is so obvious that the
most materialistic of modernists are beginning to surmise it. We have, indeed,
made some progress in the conquest of the brute forces of physical Nature, but
there has been no corresponding advance in our conquest of the brute forces of
human nature. We have paid the penalty for conceiving and planning a mode of
progress which is contrary to the true principle of growth proper to man. What
is that principle? In every age it has been defined. The acquisition of power
and knowledge should proceed pari passu with the development of character and
of the spiritual will. There is the obvious implication that we delude ourselves if
we pretend that we are bom into this world merely to enjoy ourselves as much as
possible. It is wiser and safer to assume, like the mediaeval doctors, that bodily
104 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
life exists for the sole purpose of forwarding the growth and progress of the
soul.
Inevitably, as the idea of progress became materialized, its expressions as¬
sumed an ever-increasing vulgarity of form. During the past two centuries it
has been one of the most over-worked slogans of political orators. The doctrine
of organic evolution has been interpreted to mean that progress of some kind or
other is inevitable, whatever we may do or not do about it. According to Karl
Marx’s pseudo-science, the varied forms of social organization succeed one
another by means of a mechanical process as irreversible as that which caused
certain fishes to transform themselves into amphibians and reptiles. We are all
of us too familiar with the socialistic dogma that the collectivist state must come,
whether we want it or not, and that when it arrives we shall automatically
become finally and irrevocably happy.
In The Wall St. Journal (July i6, 1934), Thomas F. Woodlock indicates how
deeply the idea of imavoidable progress towards collectivism has pervaded the
nebulous field of economics. Many people, otherwise quite intelligent, have
virtually abandoned the notion that the depression can end normally through the
ultimate balancing of supply and demand, so obsessed are they by the fatalistic
sense that the only possible outcome must be some form of social regimentation.
Woodlock instances the writings of two popular American economists, Walter
Lippmann and George Soule.
These two writers represent, perhaps, our best critical thought concerning politico-
economic conditions, and what they say must be reckoned with. Yet, having given
to both the freest access to his mind . . . this writer is left with the feeling that neither
Mr. Lippmann’s “free collectivism in a representative democracy” nor Mr. Soule’s
class-less, profitless society is ahead of us in any period of time which it is profitable to
guess. And it further seems to him that the best ground for hope in the future is aban¬
donment of the great superstition of the Nineteenth Century—namely its faith in a
law of “progress”, automatic, inevitable and continuous, regardless of what men do to
hinder and obstruct its workings. Skeptical as is Mr. Lippmann, one seems to detect
more than traces of this in his writing; Mr. Soule’s book almost reeks with it. Here
are its concluding words: “The new society will consist of men and women in a new
bond of comradeship setting forth on still another voyage to the unknown.”
“Comradeship?” In what new bond, must one ask? Of what material is it to be
constructed ?
True Progress and Sacrifice
It is a basic tenet of Theosophy, reflected in all the great religions of the
world, that true progress is growth in spiritual self-consciousness, and that this
growth is invariably the fruit of sacrifice. In the Mysteries it was taught that
the Universe itself was created by a divine sacrifice, by the self-immolation of
the gods. There can be no liberation of creative power which is not preceded by
a crucifixion. As we read in The Secret Doctrine, the immemorial symbol of the
manifested Cosmos is the Mundane Cross, denoting the transformation of ab¬
stract idea into concrete form by aspiration and effort and heroic self-tran¬
scendence. Thus the Orphic poets identified the world with the mutilated body
of Dionysos; and the Hindus devised the “fable” of Vishvakarma, the Great
NOTES AND COMMENTS
105
Architect of the World, called in the Rig Veda, the “all-seeing God who sacrifices
himself to himself”. Madame Blavatsky comments:
The Spiritual Egos of mortals are his own essence, o?i^ with him, therefore. Remember
that he is called Deva-vardhika, the “Builder of the Gods”, and that it is he who ties
the Sun, Surya, his son-in-law, on his lathe—in the exoteric allegory, but on the Svastika,
in Esoteric tradition, for on Earth he is the Hierophant-Initiator—and cuts away a
portion of his brightness. Vishvakarma, remember again, is the son of Yoga-siddha,
i.e., the holy power of Yoga, and the fabricator of the “fiery weapon”, the magic Ag-
neyastra {Thf Secret Doctrine, ed. 1893, II, 590).
“As above, so below.” The passion and death of Christ and his resurrection
have a significance both cosmic and human. As the via crucis figures the veri¬
table process of “Cosmogenesis”, so it is the emblem of “Anthropogenesis”, the
birth and growth of the spiritual man. The old Egyptian ritual defined the cross
as the “hard couch of him who is in spiritual travail, the act of giving birth to
himself.” This is the central tradition of Christianity. It signifies the only
method whereby progress, in the real sense, becomes possible for the human
being, who is not an automaton but a creature possessing free-will. Because
the modem apostles of progress reject and scorn the Way of the Cross, they
have falsified and debased the noblest of human ideals beyond recognition. The
growth of the spiritual man is the reward of long travail. All excellent things, as
Spinoza said, are as difficult as they are rare.
The Antiquity of Man
It may help us to realize how difficult and how rare they are, if we reflect upon
the antiquity of the human race. We have been journeying so long and yet
have travelled so short a distance. The so-called historical period of the past
six or seven millenniums, dating back to the supposed dawn of civilization along
the Nile, the Euphrates and the Indus, is a brief moment in the long life of
humanity on this planet. According to the traditions recorded by M^fee
Blavatsky, physical man as a genus of vertebrates has existed, with relH^ly
unchanged form, for 18,000,000 years. How many civilizations have grown and
decayed during this epoch, decayed so completely that, apart from the traditions
mentioned and certain myths common to many races, no vestige or memory
of these past cycles persists? The Secret Doctrine mentions, in particular, two
great continental cultures, the Lemurian and the Atlantean, the latter of which
is said to have flourished during the Miocene, before it was submerged in a
stupendous natural catastrophe about 850,000 years ago.
Scientists are as far as ever from admitting that civilizations, as massive and
as diversified as our own, could have existed in those remote times. The hy¬
pothesis of a civilized man during the Tertiary or even during the Pleistocene
is in too violent contradiction to the fashionable representation of man as an
animal slowly detaching himself from the ancestral tree of the anthropoid apes.
However, certain recent discoveries have obliged zoologists to date the origin
of the human family much earlier even than the Miocene. We quote from the
report of a discussion at the Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological
io6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Sciences held in London (The New York Times, August 2, 1934)- The figures
suggested for the age of man approximate those in The Secret Doctrine.
The discovery that blood serum of Old World monkeys Is more closely related to
man’s than to that of New World monkeys was announced to-day by Dr. Solly Zucker-
man, Oxford zoologist. This announcement has bearing on the riddle of evolution, for
it confirms the belief that man is enormously older than had been supposed. ... It
tends to push man’s beginnings on earth far back—perhaps to the Oligocene era (esti¬
mated at more than i6,ooo,cxx) years ago). . . . Scientists have known that the an¬
thropoid apes of the Old World, such as chimpanzees, have the same groups of blood-
cells as man, and that in this respect apes differ from Old World and New World
monkeys. Now Dr. Zuckerman has found the additional fact that serum proteins in
the blood of Old World apes and monkeys are related to each other and to man’s, but
not to those of New World monkeys. Such a sharp cleavage suggests that the whole
Old World group split off in incredibly distant time from a common stock, which pre¬
sumably also gave birth to the New World monkeys. It also suggests, according to Dr.
Zuckerman, that independent human or human-like stock branched from the apes very
early in geological time.
During the past two years fragments of human remains have been discovered
by Lewis Leakey in East Africa, including part of a skull which he believes to
be that of homo sapiens, “modem man’’. It was found in a deposit between
200,000 and 500,000 years old, and thus there is definite paleontological evidence
that human beings of our own type were contemporaries of the Piltdown and
Peking races. It is no longer possible to point to the inferior anatomical charac¬
ters of extinct species, like the Heidelberg and Neanderthal men, as evidence of
the ascent of man from the ape, if “modem man’’ was in existence when these
lower races appeared in Europe. It is conformable to the known facts to postu¬
late that the Early Stone Age men of Europe were degenerate offshoots of the
main stock, decadent survivors, perhaps, from the mins of Lemuria or Atlantis.
It is also evident that the latest data of paleontology in no way contradict the
theosophical hypothesis that the anthropoid apes themselves are likewise, in a
certain sense, degenerate men, representing “a transformation of species most
directly connected with that of the human family—a bastard stock engrafted on
their own stock before the final perfection of the latter’’ (Isis Unveiled, II, 278).
Early American Civilization
When we consider the length of time required for the exfoliation of the qualities
of mind and heart which constitute man as he is, we shall understand more
clearly why the term progress should not be lightly used. The tempo of Nature
is slow, and man tries to quicken it at his peril. This impression is confirmed even
by the comparatively brief record of human vicissitudes which has been pre¬
served from the past of the race and which we call history. No civilization
known to us has had an unintermpted career of progress. In every instance,
there has been a period of growth, culminating in a phase of relative glory and
power, after which succeeded decadence and death, often hastened by barbarian
invasions or by natural calamities of various kinds. For example, the marvellous
culture of Angkor-Wat in Cambodia quite literally seems to have disappeared
NOTES AND COMMENTS
107
instantaneously, as if the race of its builders had been decimated by some sudden
pestilence. A similar abrupt end came to the pre-Columbian civilizations in the
New World. They were ruthlessly annihilated by the Spaniard, and it remains
to be seen whether the New World civilization which has succeeded them will
ultimately be deserving of a better fate.
The New York Herald Tribune (April 29, 1934) reports an address by Dr.
Herbert J. Spinden, curator of ethnology at the Brooklyn Museum, in which he
referred to the debt which we owe to the Mayas and Toltecs of Guatemala and
Mexico. He suggested that their culture was in many ways superior to our own,
and that the discovery of America was far from being an unmixed blessing, for
the untramelled exploitation of physical wealth and energy, which is so charac¬
teristic of the modem world, had its inception in the work of the Conquistadores.
Dr. Spinden said that the most civilized peoples of the New World were most easily
conquered because of the heights to which their civilization had advanced. European
nations, however, which seemed to find it highly profitable to renege in ethics and fair
dealing with the American natives had to pay dearly for this in the end. “In my opinion,”
he said, “Europe lost her opportunity to develop a genuinely high-minded civilization
out of the spiritual experiences of the Middle Ages because of the extraordinary tempta¬
tions to seize sudden wealth in America.” . . .
He said that the red man succeeded in domesticating a great many food plants which
were not known in the Old World, and that this series now supplies four-sevenths of the
present agricultural wealth of the United States. He then described the successive
phases of Mayan civilization and spoke of the age of Quetzalcoatl, a Toltec king, who
died in 1208, as the American equivalent of the age of Pericles in Greek history. “If I
were called upon to list the world’s greatest humans,” he said, “I would certainly put
Quetzalcoatl’s name beside those of Confucius and Christ as a man who contributed
greatly to the formation of ethics and high ideals of honour. Quetzalcoatl was the ad¬
ministrator of a domain ranging from New Mexico on the north to Colombia on the
south. He was a priest, a philosopher, an astronomer much more skilful than any con¬
temporary astronomer in Europe, and a cultivator of the arts.”
Students of Theosophy will interpret this testimonial of a distinguished archae¬
ologist in the light of the traditions concerning the existence of an ancient c^tre
of the Mysteries in America. This old American civilization had its dar^tee,
however, and its ruin cannot be construed as an accidental calamity. In setter
attributed to the Master K. H., there is a direct reference to this sombre episode
and to its meaning for our race.
What do you know of America . . . before the invasion of that country by the Span¬
iards? Less than two centuries prior to the arrival of Cortez there was as great a “rush”
towards progress among the sub-races of Peru and Mexico as there is now in Europe and
the U. S. A. Their sub-race ended in nearly total annihilation through causes generated
by itself; so will yours at the end of its cycle.
Natural Catastrophes
The drought in the West seems to have done for some Americans what nothing
else could do. It has given them a dim presentiment that disasters and depres¬
sions and calamities may not be as accidental as materialists pretend them
io8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
to be; that the old nomenclature which described a natural catastrophe as an
act of God may not be far from the truth. In other words, American farmers
have begun to experience qualms concerning some of the things which they have
been forced to do by the Department of Agriculture. Mark Sullivan wntes in
The New York Herald Tribune (August i, 1934)-
There is an evident disposition on the part of some of the public seriously to connect
the drought as an act of nature with the Administration’s previous policy of plowing
under cotton and killing off young pigs and sows about to bear young. The idea, crudely
expressed in many quarters, is that the drought is a revenge taken by nature for a deed
that showed ingratitude fo^ nature’s beneficence. In some cases, it is described as an
act of God. So far has this gone that Secretary of Agriculture Wallace and others are
disturbed and have taken pains to combat it. One might sympathize more with them if
their defence did not take the characteristic form of accusing their political and business
opponents, especially the packers, of propaganda, of circulating a superstitious slander
against them. To picture either nature or God as engaged in a conscious act of ven¬
geance, which visits itself upon the whole country, is pretty fantastic. That can be
dismissed. Yet there is this to be said. The drought has the effect, on many perfectly
logical minds, of calling vivid attention to the economic error involved in the destruction
of plenty. To these, the destruction of food when there was hunger in the world was a
mistake which now, because of the drought, takes on the dignity of tragedy.
We do not doubt that the farmers’ views are often crudely expressed. It is
no simple matter to prove that there is a direct connection of cause and effect
between the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the drought. Never¬
theless, the farmers are no more superstitious than those, “with perfectly logical
minds’’, who affirm that natural catastrophes are invariably accidental, mechan¬
istic, without sense or purpose. It is not as if Nature or God actually lost
patience with mankind at intervals and released upon the earth a host of de¬
structive forces. The real problem involves the relationship between human
thoughts and acts, on the one hand, and on the other, the natural order of terres¬
trial phenomena. It has been suggested, for instance, that man influences the
weather, in the sense that his states of consciousness are centres of force which
continuously discharge their content of energy into the atmosphere of the
earth and of the etheric and other spheres by which it is encompassed. “There
is the strongest connection between the magnetism of the earth, the changes of
weather and man, who is the best barometer living’’. Why is it unreasonable to
believe that the catastrophes which visit and may destroy a civilization are, in
reality, induced by the states of consciousness constituting that civilization?
When man defies the di\nne and natural law, is it not logical to assume that his
very defiance engenders a condition of congestion and strain in the greater
Nature of which he is a part, as the infection of an organ sickens the whole body?
A cataclysm would, then, be an act of purgation, an ejection of poison from the
system of Nature, a readjustment of the terrestrial order; but it would also be
the Karma of man himself, the effect of a cause of his own making. It is in accord
with “ancient physics’’ and with a seemly humility, to regard the whole dire
state of the world to-day, including the drought, as the response of Nature to our
very manifest shortcomings, to the dry hardness of our hearts.
FRAGMENTS
C LOSE our ears, 0 Lord, to the sounds of the world, that we may hear
the divine harmonies.
Close our eyes to material things, whatever seems their beauty, that
we may behold the vision of thy surpassing loveliness.
Close our minds to worldly concerns, that we may understand the marvellous
secrets of thy wisdom and thy law.
Close our hearts to love of self and all the phantasmagoria of outer life, that
we may be flooded in the spirit of thy divine charity, and, baptized in its living
waters, be purified into our lost resemblance to thee.
For our life is of the essence of thy Life, and the earth that envelops and
imprisons us is but the mud in which we have long wallowed.
I perceive that the eyes which behold the heavenly beauty, alone can rightly
value the beauty of the earthly; that only as we hear the heavenly music, can
earthly music have true meaning and accord; that only to a mind steeped in
heavenly contemplations, can the science of earth bring its real significance;
and that only in the heart in love with the heavenly Loveliness, can there burn a
genuine and imderstanding love for its own kind.
Since it is in thy Light and in thy Light alone, 0 Lord, that we see light, and
outside that Light there is but the shadow cast by unlikeness.
Cav^.
DEVOTION AND UNDERSTANDING'
W HEN the time comes to resume our Branch meetings, one breaks the
silence of the summer with a certain reluctance. We should have
learned during the summer months something of what Emerson means
by solitude, what Wordsworth means by the bliss of solitude, what the Oriental
teachers mean by the necessity of silence, the period in which nature herself
teaches the soul of the disciple. Many of us may have learned much from
solitude, finding solace and delight in the long silence of the summer. There is
one side of our nature which regrets the breaking of the silence, but another part
of our nature admonishes us that the side of silence is but a part of ourselves;
if we were to yield to it completely, to become more and more absorbed in silence
and solitude, we should be yielding to an impulse of contraction in our natures;
we should be growing not greater, as we should, but smaller, and should presently
shrink to a vanishing point. So there is a real necessity, as Emerson points out,
for society as well as for solitude. When we are alone we are not ourselves in the
fullest sense. To put it in another way, there is far more in our natures than we
can reach when we are alone. And, since our purpose is to realize our real selves,
it follows that we must accept and obey the conditions which will give us access
to more of ourselves; and society in the true sense, such a gathering as a Branch
meeting, gives exactly that opportunity. There is much of us, not in ourselves
but in each other; we come together to take counsel, to contribute our common
experience, in obedience to the intuition that we are not really ourselves while we
are separated. We are aware of a common consciousness running through us all
as we join in consideration of theosophical problems,—a consciousness in no one
of us alone, not complete in any one of us, complete only when we bring all our
consciousness together and use it as a single light to search after the wisdom that
we seek.
On the other hand, association alone, mere gathering together, will not evoke
that wisdom. Most assemblies of people are no higher in consciousness than the
separate persons that compose them. On the contrary, they tend to be lower;
one of the saints has said that he never went into society that he did not return
the worse for it. In the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, the assembly of
the forty had certain defined purposes and activities in common, yet it cannot
be said that the consciousness of the united band was higher, more spiritual,
more universal than that of the individuals; they were worse for their meeting,
the avarice and violence of each strengthening the like evils in the others.
So we come to a second truth: we reach a true self only when we are united;
yet there is much of ourselves that we cannot find by this meeting only; much
that we shall find only by searching above ourselves, not in the consciousness,
> Stenographic notes, revised by Charles Johnston, of his contribution at the opening session of the New York
Branch of The Theosophical Society, in
no
DEVOTION AND UNDERSTANDING
III
the minds and hearts of each other, but in the spiritual life that is within and
above us. This is where the solitude has its purpose. Silence is the way of
approach to this’inner consciousness. If we seek with our whole hearts, and with
wisdom, this life that is above and within us, we shall begin to find many treas¬
ures. This is the door of the Kingdom in the Parable, whence the seeker brought
treasures old and new. Among these treasures we should find serenity by finding
a deeper self, we should find a resting place, firm ground from which we can
survey life passing by as a rapid river, but not carrying us with the current; we
should be aware of life as to some degree apart from ourselves, we should not
be caught in the swirl of things, we should not be a leaf carried along among many
leaves in the tempest; we should stand serene, poised, watching the flow of life.
We should find also the treasure of humility, because we shall realize that what
we generally think of as ourselves is very small and in many ways very mean,
with purposes that are unworthy,—forces, wishes, desires that the better part
of ourselves knows to be below our true level.
We should find aspiration; because, however deep we may sink into ourselves,
however high we may rise, we are always conscious of a higher and deeper
beyond. It is like climbing a mountain; each ascent gained will give you added
height above the valley, and a clearer view of the peaks beyond; and, as we
sink within ourselves, or rise above ourselves, our horizon constantly widens and
becomes more full of life. There is the drawing power of the greater life above
us, constantly increasing in strength and beauty.
We should find charity, through that deeper part of us which is truly allied
to all human beings, the real heart of humanity, for the most part latent; the
true humane sense, the sense of humanity as a great struggling, sinning, suffering
life, of which each of us is an inseparable part; a great life which draws us by its
unity of being, and by an immense compassion for the suffering which humanity
perpetually inflicts on itself. Therefore, we should find charity in that sense,
as a deeper understanding of the striving and darkness of all those with whom
we come in contact, a charity based on the common spirit that is in us all. a
Finding humility, aspiration, charity, we have begun to find the spirit of the*
Masters. Though we may not have recognized it, this is the source through
which humility and charity and aspiration are flowing into our hearts, as the
lower reaches of the river come from the well-springs high up in the mountains.
And we, who are students of Theosophy, should clearly understand this. The
good gifts, the perfect gifts come to us from the Father of life, the life of the Logos
which is active, manifested in the Masters. As, walking on the mountain side,
when one comes across a rivulet, it may be one’s impulse to drink of the water,
and then follow it upward to find its source, so we may, in our inner selves,
refresh heart and spirit with what we can receive of the spirit of the Masters,
their humility, charity, aspiration, and then follow up the stream to see whether
we can find the source; whether we can come into touch with the Masters from
whom wisdom, power, compassion so ceaselessly flow. If we in any measure
succeed, the first proof of it will be this: that new inspiration will immediately
send us back to our duties, not to dreaming or to solitude, but to our concrete
II 2
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
simple tasks. This, for a very plain reason: the true self in us does not consist
in perceiving alone. The Self is not perception only; the Self is spiritual will
quite as much as spiritual wisdom. Therefore, only in the right action of the
purified will, do we find that part of ourselves which supplements the part of
knowing, the part of wisdom.
So we apply ourselves to our duties. For there is always the obvious duty;
if none be in sight, there is the obligation to find out what our duty is. Every
hour, for each of us, there is something that ought to be done. If we are slow in
finding it, the good law will generally step in and find it for us. We shall set to
work, perhaps listlessly and with reluctance, if we be imperfectly inspired; but,
on the other hand, with zeal and joy if we be wise, understanding this: that it is
precisely the Masters’ wisdom that, flowing down from above, has set us this
duty, whatever it be; because our powers are symmetrical on level after level
of our being, and, no matter how high a spiritual power may be, there is some
quite simple power or energy in our ordinary life that corresponds to it. Counting
the stars is not essentially different from counting pennies. So all our starry
powers have their quite simple correspondence in our daily life, and we can only
begin to arouse and evoke the higher spiritual powers by entire fidelity in using
the simple powers we already possess. Therefore, the Good Law presents to us
a range of simple duties which will, if we look wisely into them, give us the begin¬
ning of the exercise of all our future celestial powers. We shall find that, in many
ways, in all ways, provision is made for our ultimate spiritual growth through the
things of now and here; and this will grow clearer, as we realize that we are part
of that immense spirit of humanity, with the tremendous burdens which it has
laid on itself; with its darkness, its suffering, and its enjoyments which are
often more unendurable than its sufferings. For, while failure in life has its
tragedy, much of success in life is far more tragic,—much of what is esteemed to
be success. Here is a potential archangel who engrosses himself in amassing real
estate, of which ultimately he will be able to use only six feet. His whole heart
and mind are full of it, and he is often ruthless in driving toward his goal; in
reality his success is far more tragic than many a failure which may teach the
man who fails splendid lessons of persistence and of courage.
So humanity bears this immense burden of its failures and successes. If we
see ourselves to be an inseparable part of that humanity, we shall see that this
most intimately concerns us; it is not something we can shut the door against,
retiring within a cavern of solitude. The problem is inherent in our very nature!
It will come in. Therefore, the Good Law is likely to put us in a position where
we shall have an opportunity to try to understand our neighbour; really to under¬
stand, with the utmost charity and purity of heart, something immensely
difficult always. And, if we understand in that true sense, with purity of heart
and charity, we shall presently find some small ability to help. Really to help
another human being is one of the hardest tasks one may undertake, a task in
which one may so easily blunder and quite defeat one’s end. Yet it is possible,
if we make it our aim to seek, and to work out in our relations with others, not
our personal aims or theirs, but the purpose of the Masters, the purpose of the
DEVOTION AND UNDERSTANDING
113
Oversoul, helping each and all so far as we can. So far, we cannot accomplish
much. We are still weak and blind and stumbling, yet to some degree we may
help humanity to lift that heavy burden.
These are the purposes and the tendencies of the work we seek to do, in these
theosophical gatherings. The aim is, to form the nucleus of a imiversal brother¬
hood of humanity, and the nucleus is made up of those who are spiritually at one
with the purposes of the Masters, in understanding first, and in action also;
those who are at one with the spirit and purposes of the Masters, and who are
carrying them out, or striving to carry them out. So we meet here with this
explicit purpose: to try better to understand what the divine wisdom, as em¬
bodied in the Masters, purposes; what the goal is; what the aim is; what the
barriers are; to take counsel together, each bringing his experience, his insight
into life, his aspiration, so that these may be added together. We may build up
a united intelligence, devotion, willingness to work, and set that power to search
into this darkness of human life, to help to raise the burdens which are often
borne unconsciously; for men do not realize the immense dead weight of their
success.
We must have a right heart in the work, and a right understanding. Some¬
thing was said in the late spring, at one of the Study Classes, to the effect that
we have, in a measure, a right heart in the matter. By years of effort, we have
gathered together a good deal of genuine devotion, willingness to serve, to work.
We need to supplement that by deeper understanding. Mr. Judge said once
that while devotion will carry the disciple to the goal, the way will be long and
the journey slow. Devotion needs to be supplemented by intelligence, by
wisdom, by genuine insight into life: life in general, and life in particular.
Neither can be valid without the other. Therefore, it is perhaps peculiarly our
purpose and our aim, in this coming session, to lay stress, not so much on the
devotion we already have, but rather on the intelligence that we need to increase,
luminous insight into life, in general and in particular, into universal life, and
into every detail of our own lives, as the Upanishads say, down to the finger tips^
We need that insight, that illumination, in all our tasks, all our duties, all oJ
relations to others.
In the coming months, we shall seek the purposes of the Masters, the work of
the Masters, the devotion and humility of the Masters; we shall seek, with
ardour, with persistence, with a special sense of our need, the light of the Masters.
Study without thought is vain; thought without study is perilous .— Confucius.
It is true that a little philosophy inclineth Man's mind to atheism; but depth in
philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion .— Bacon.
CHARACTER AND FATE
Let him raise himself toward the Self, let him not debase himself; for self is the
friend of self, and self is the enemy of self.
Self is the friend of self for him in whom the self is conquered by the Self; but to
him who is far from the Self, his own self is hostile, like an enemy .— Bhagavad
GIta.
T here is a Greek proverb, ethos anthropoi daimon, usually translated:
“A man’s character is his fate”. It is attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus,
a master of words, whose sayings resemble the fragments of a Scripture,
inasmuch as they stimulate the student to look within and beyond their surface
meaning for their real significance.
“A man’s character is his fate.” The word translated as “fate” is daimon.
In Greek mythology, the daimons were semi-divine beings, intermediate in
dignity and power between the Gods and mankind. One class of daimons was
supposed to preside over human destiny. Thus they were regarded as tutelary
spirits, the guardian angels of humanity. We read of the daimon of Socrates,
which spoke to him as the voice of conscience speaks to ordinary men. He
accepted its injunctions as the commands of a ‘‘Higher Self”. The word, daimon,
therefore, frequently conveyed the sense of ‘‘fate”, of good or bad fortune. As
one obeyed or disobeyed one’s daimon or ‘‘genius”, one was rewarded or punished,
the daimon, in this sense, being an agent of Karma. The surface meaning of
Heraclitus’ maxim seems to refer to this conception, suggesting that every man is
judged by his own daimon, but that its decrees are not arbitrary. A man’s des¬
tiny is determined by his character, that is, by his habitual thoughts, moods,
volitions and acts. Observation and experience testify to the dominion which
habit exercises over reason and good intentions. As we know, states of conscious¬
ness tend to repeat themselves. They predispose us to certain courses of action,
which the average man follows almost automatically. He moves blindly towards
the fate to which they lead him.
However, Heraclitus was too wise to believe that men are necessarily the slaves
and victims of predispositions and habits. There is a fundamental difference
between impulsion and compulsion. Undoubtedly we are impelled to do all
sorts of things which we ought not to do; but we are not compelled to yield
to this stimulus. We are free to obey or to disobey the commands of the daimon.
Indeed, a little further reflection upon the connotations of this Greek word points
to a deeper meaning within our proverb. According to a very ancient belief
recorded by Hesiod, the souls of the heroes of the Golden Age were transformed
into daimons, ceasing to be half-animal, half-human, and becoming half-human,
half-divine. This metamorphosis was achieved by an act of self-transcendence,
figured in the mystical death and resurrection of the Initiate in the Mysteries,
114
CHARACTER AND FATE
IIS
and when it was accomplished, the hero and his “genius” became one in con¬
sciousness, in will and desire. The hero’s character was then no longer a bundle
of psychic and physiological habits, a congeries of elementals. It was an em¬
bodiment of the daimon with whose nature he had identified himself. A man’s
real being is, therefore, his daimon. It would seem that this is the deeper meaning
which Heraclitus sought to convey, but which he may not have dared enunciate
too openly, for it concerned certain secrets of the Mysteries.
According to Theosophy, man continuously fashions his destiny, limiting it
within the narrow confines of a semi-animal existence, or enlarging it until
ultimately it becomes indistinguishable from the destiny of his true genius, his
daimon, his Higher Self. Here and now, we are preparing the conditions of
future births, as in past incarnations we prepared the conditions of this present
life. In other words, at every instant of the day, for better or for worse, we are
using creative powers. The forces of Nature which build and preserve the
Cosmos, act in and through us, whenever we exercise imagination, desire and will;
nor can we act in any way without exercising these powers. The idlest motion
of a hand is first sketched on some surface of the mind. Any thought with
which the mind identifies itself, returns to consciousness again and again, each
time claiming a larger share of our attention.
The world judges events by the noise and commotion that they make; but
the real quality and potency of an act are measured by the motive of the actor
and by the intensity of his will and imagination. “Determined will is a beginning
of all magical operations”, said Paracelsus; “because men do not faithfully
imagine and believe the result, the acts are uncertain, whereas they may be
perfectly certain.” Every operation of consciousness is magical, in the sense
that it is a vehicle of some form of creative energy. However, few men realize
the degree to which their inner sentiments actually lend force and significance
to their outer undertakings. It is commonly supposed that two actions which
are identical in outer appearance, must be the effects of identical causes. This
supposition is not sanctioned by occult science, as the following excerpt from a
Master’s letter shows:
In conformity with exact science you would define but one cosmic energy, and seWo
difference between the energy expended by the traveller who pushes aside the bush that
obstructs his path, and the scientific experimenter who expends an equal amount of energy
in setting a pendulum in motion. We do; for we know that there is a world of difference
between the two. The one uselessly dissipates and scatters force, the other concentrates
and stores it. And here please understand that I do not refer to the relative utility of
the two, as one might imagine, but only to the fact that in the one case there is but
brute force flung out without any transmutation of that brute energy into the higher
potential form of spiritual dynamics, and in the other there is just that. . . . The human
brain is an exhaustless generator of the most refined quality of cosmic force out of the low,
brute energy of Nature; and the complete adept has made himself a centre from which
irradiate potentialities that beget correlations upon correlations through ^Eons of time
to come {The Occult IVorldy pp. 128-129).
We are, indeed, the possessors of a magical treasure, though few realize it.
We spend our patrimony recklessly, not imagining that we have a patrimony.
ii6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
It is a paramount duty to become aware of the fact that the powers of con¬
sciousness are creative and that we are held responsible for their right use. The
sense of responsibility is one of the attributes which theoretically distinguish
man from the brutes. No individual life can be adequately conceived as an
isolated phenomenon, as a thing sufficient unto itself, for it is inseparable, in
essence, from the universal life of Nature. Its purpose is one with the divine
purpose of cosmic manifestation. The creative energies which Nature places
at man’s disposal, constitute a sacred trust which he is intended to invest dis¬
interestedly, sacrificing all personal claims to the proceeds. When the sense
of responsibility is once awakened in the human heart, existence for the first
time begins to reveal some purpose and direction. The smallest duty, perceived
as part of a universal plan, assumes dignity and meaning.
This ideal of human responsibility is implicit in the theosophical conception
of consciousness. It is a theosophical axiom, that consciousness is universal.
Substance and force are inconceivable apart from consciousness, as consciousness
itself is inconceivable apart from some form of substance, some mode of force.
The greatest philosophers have always recognized this fundamental datum, that
consciousness, force and substance constitute a triad within a unity, a “Three-
in-one”, three attributes of an indivisible Being. They cannot be imagined in a
state of separation from one another, or from the One Being which they make
manifest. It is as impossible to form a concept of such a state as it is to visualize
the two faces of a coin existing independently of the coin itself.
However, although consciousness, force and substance are always associated,
it is a theosophical principle that manifestation of form proceeds as a result of
what has been called the descent of spirit into matter. In other words, the in¬
visible and the subtile precede the visible and the gross; the abstract is prior
to the concrete; every form exists subjectively before it exists objectively. In
ordinary human terms, this signifies that every external action is an outgrowth
or exfoliation of an inner state of consciousness. Always the image in the mind
comes first, and the act which expresses the image follows—or, more exactly,
tends to follow, for the effects of any state of consciousness may be neutralized
or transmuted by the intervention of another state of consciousness which is
more potent and more sustained.
These basic ideas should transform our whole view of Nature and of man’s
place in Nature. No one can remain unregenerate and unchanged, if he really
believe that he is an undivided fragment of a living and creative Universe. He
can no longer pretend that his existence is a cosmic accident, an inconsequential
event.
Nevertheless, it is evident that very few really believe these things to be true.
It is hard to believe in the primacy of the spirit, partly because in this age of the
world the dominant tendency of thought is so materialistic that spiritual truths
and values appear remote and unreal. We are children of the cycle and are
bathed daily in its atmosphere. Every student of Theosophy is constantly open
to suggestions, to ideas which are wholly antagonistic to the ideals of Theosophy.
It is of the utmost importance that we should understand what those ideals are.
I Beligtof
CHARACTER AND FATE\ A , 117
in so far as this is possible. Perhaps this undertaking may bemaHe ea^er, if we
contrast them with their opposites, if we examine carefully certain major differ¬
ences between the theosophical and the materialistic conceptions of conscious¬
ness.
With few exceptions, biologists assume that all the processes of consciousness
can be explained as after-effects of physical and chemical change. They recog¬
nize only two “realities”, the organism and its environment, life and con¬
sciousness being phenomena or “epiphenomena” accompanying the interaction
of the organism and the environment. This is equivalent to the assertion that we
ar^ all of us exactly what we are because we could not possibly have become
anything else; that we are bom with certain proclivities which inevitably respond
to certain stimuli. In brief, they profess the doctrine known in philosophy as
the mechanistic hypothesis, the theory that every motion in Nature is rigidly
predetermined and calculable. Thus the mechanists adopt a machine as the
model or symbol of the Universe and of every entity which the Universe con¬
tains. They recognize no real difference between man and a Diesel engine, ad¬
mitting only that man is somewhat more complex. In fairness to the world of
science, it should be noted that the mechanistic hypothesis is not universally
accepted. For example, there is a disposition among physicists to recognize
that motion within the atom cannot possibly be explained in ordinary mechanical
terms.
However, mechanism is entrenched as strongly as ever in biology; and
although it is quite impossible to classify contemporary psychologists in one
category, it may be said of one group—the so-called Behaviourists and their
allies—that they are even more mechanistic than the biologists. Indeed, the
Behaviourists virtually refuse to acknowledge that consciousness exists, even as
an “epiphenomenon”, even as a “disease” to which matter is susceptible on
certain very rare occasions. They wholly neglect it as a causal factor in the de¬
termination of organic action and reaction. They reveal, in clear outlines, the
logical conclusion to which mechanism leads, as becomes evident if we consider
what is implied by their theory of “reflexes”. The following is quoted from the
Magazine Section of the New York Times, March ii, 1934.
In efforts to explain man, two schools of thought have been engaged in controversyTor
generations. “A creature set apart by a soul, by consciousness, by free will,” assert the
vitalists. “Bosh!” retort the mechanists; “a man is simply a physico-chemical system,
like the amoeba, only much more complex”. ... If man is a machine, then it ought to be
possible for the biologist, when he has learned enough and made himself a good enough
engineer and inventor, to become a Frankenstein and create a machine which will be
without soul or spirit, but which will behave as if it were human. The attempt has al¬
ready been made by about a score of scientists. A few weeks ago a student at the Massa¬
chusetts Institute of Technology ... read a paper which bore the harmless and uninspiring
title, “An Electro-Mechanical Analogue of the Conditioned Reflex”. His contrivance
could learn and forget. It consisted of nothing more than a rheostat, some switches, an
ordinary incandescent lamp and wires connecting all these elements into a simple circuit.
It can be animated into a semblance of “consciousness”, and it can relapse into unre¬
sponsiveness. ... The whole purpose [of such models] is to support the thesis that man is
indeed an automaton—a creature that has learned to respond in definite ways to external
ii8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
and internal forces, after which it acts with genuine spontaneity whenever these same
forces in the proper sequence or combination play upon senses and nervous systems. . . .
[The term “conditioned reflex”] brings us to the eminent Russian physiologist, Ivan P.
Pavlov, founder of this new school of psychologists to whom mind, consciousness and soul
are anathema when invoked to explain why we behave like human beings. A goodly
part of Pavlov’s life has been spent in studying dogs or, rather, the circumstances in which
a dog’s mouth will water when it is about to eat. As soon as a dog sees food the watering
begins. It is a reflex action—something over which the animal has no control. . . . In¬
voluntary reflexes are called unconditioned by Pavlov. There are other reflexes which are
the result of training. These are Pavlov’s now famous “conditioned reflexes . Consider
one of Pavlov’s dogs and learn just what is meant by conditioned reflexes. Pavlov
rings a bell . . . when he feeds the dog. Sound and food are associated. After a time the
dog’s mouth drips when he hears the bell and sees the food. Finally the ringing of the
bell without the presenting of any food at all brings about the same effect. The dog has
learned by experience or “association”, as the old-fashioned psychologists would say.
But this ringing of the bell and withholding of food cannot be kept up indefinitely without
affecting the dog’s reflexes. Fooled often enough, his salivary glands will no longer water.
His conditioned reaction is now said to be “inhibited”.... Pavlov varies this experiment.
... He reduces dogs to a state of hysteria by conditioning them in various conflicting
ways. Thus he trained one animal to associate a bright circular patch of light with food,
and an ellipse with an electrical shock. Soon there were yelps of joy at the sight of a circle
and a flow of saliva, but growls of fear when the ellipse was seen. Gradually Pavlov made
the ellipse resemble the circle more and more. The dog was reduced almost to a nervous
wreck, unable to do more than howl and struggle.
All this is intended to prove that dogs behave like machines and that men
behave like dogs. As a matter of fact, it only demonstrates one certainty, that
Pavlov and his imitators are performing the work of fiends and devils. Their
laboratories are torture-chambers, and their experiments upon helpless animals
are even less excusable than those of the vivisectionists who at least profess
humanitarian motives.
A normal unbiased person would regard the “conditioned reflex” as evidence
of intelligence. He would also wonder at the involved method whereby scientists
“discover” things which must have been known since the beginning of history.
Years ago there was a “poem” which might have been dedicated to the “con¬
ditioned reflex”, if this term had been invented at that time. There were these
lines;
“Oh, how the boarders yell,
When they hear the dinner bell.”
It is characteristic of the Behaviourists that they are quite incapable of
imagining a himgry boarder who does not yell when he hears the dinner bell.
Unfortunately, modem educational theory has been greatly influenced by their
dictum that every organic action is a mechanical response to a stimulus. Through
the schools and universities, with the active co-operation of the press, the doc¬
trines of scientific materialism have entered into the consciousness of the masses.
They are only understood, in so far as they re-enforce the very common assump¬
tion that happiness and well-being are wholly dependent upon physical or
economic conditions. A well-known psychologist is said to have remarked that
by cultivating the proper set of reflexes he could make any child a criminal. The
CHARACTER AND FATE
119
so-called man-in-the-street, reading such pronouncements, is encouraged to
believe that he is not morally responsible for anything which he does. Moral
responsibility can have no place in a “universe” where every sequence of events
is wholly explicable in mechanical terms; where, in the most literal sense im¬
aginable, every man’s fate is completely pre-determined from the moment of his
birth.
Theosophy does not deny the obvious fact that, in general, the movements of
inorganic bodies are calculable. We can predict the periodicities of stars and of
atoms, for both stars and atoms obey the same laws which the engineer consults
whenever he designs a machine. Nevertheless, it is most doubtful whether a
machine adequately symbolizes even that part of Nature which is usually called
inanimate. As certain modem physicists are willing to admit, “sub-atomic”
behaviour does not conform to any known mechanical laws. Some have dared
to suggest that the Universe resembles a thought rather than a mechanism.
Moreover, it would be hard to define what is really signified by these terms,
“machine”, “mechanism”, “calculable”, and so on. Doubtless, many human
activities are as calculable as the revolutions of a motor. “Character is fate”
for the ordinary man; he does not escape from the web of his reflexes. However,
this does not mean that he cannot escape, but only that he refuses to make the
necessary effort. Man behaves like a machine, whenever he allows his habits
to dominate him. Like all phases of Nature, mechanism is, in the ultimate sense,
a state of consciousness,—a state of gross consciousness, if we may accept the
testimony of nuclear physics that mechanical motion is primarily a property of
gross or molecular matter.
It is interesting to recall Schopenhauer’s statement that if a cannon-ball
were self-conscious, it would possess the inward certainty that it was free to
control its movement through space, even though its trajectory can be exactly
charted in advance. Metaphysically it is justifiable to postulate that the princi¬
ple of all motion is “desire”; that the “desire” of the atoms of the cannon-ball
to return to the earth, responding to the earth’s “desire” that they should
return, is so constant, so one-pointed, that it overcomes the initial
of any explosion.
According to Theosophy, the atom reflects the Universe; it is a microcosm
of the macrocosm. It is, therefore, proper to conceive it as a symbol of Nature.
However, following an ancient tradition. Theosophy most frequently symbolizes
Nature by some image which is less abstract, more tangible, more obviously
akin to our human life. For instance, the growth of a flower is a universal
subject for mystical meditation, because it so clearly illustrates the laws which
preside over all formative processes, from the creation of a Cosmos to the birth
of the “spiritual man”. “The spirit of Fire (or Heat) which stirs up, fructifies,
and develops into concrete form everything (from its ideal prototype), which is
bom of WATER or primordial Earth, evolved Brahmi. . . . The lotus flower
. . . is the most graphic allegory ever made: the Universe evolving from the
central Sun, the point, the ever-concealed germ” {The Secret Doctrine, ed.
1888, I, 379).
120
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
No symbol of Nature can be true, unless it point to the fundamental principle
that evolution is the exfoliation of a purpose, a growth from within outwards,
the progressive manifestation of an “ideal prototype”. In man, it is said, this
embodiment of spiritual form cannot proceed without his active, intelligent
co-operation. He must become aware of the presence of the shaktis, or creative
powers, within the sphere of his being; and he must realize his responsibility
for their use.
Even among the animals, there is a foreshadowing of the sense of conscious
responsibility. The ruffed grouse will risk her life, when her chicks are in danger,
giving them time to scurry to safety, while she faces the enemy and distracts
his attention from them. She sacrifices the lower to the higher, which means,
in terms of ruffed grouse ethics, her own welfare to the welfare of her brood.
In man, as we know, this sacrifice can exalt the individual to the summit of
divinity. It is the secret of spiritual advancement which only occurs as the effect
of continuous self-transcendence.
As water, rained on broken ground, flows away among the mountains, so he who be¬
holds the properties of life scattered abroad, runs hither and thither after them.
As pure water, poured into pure water, becomes one with it, thus, verily, is the Self
of the silent sage, who has attained to wisdom (Katha Upanishad).
No materialistic hypothesis can explain why or how a man can dedicate
himself to a cause, or can gladly lay down his life for a friend. Machines have
excellent qualities, but deliberate self-sacrifice is not one of them. The nature of
man becomes intelligible, in so far as the inner meaning of Heraclitus’ maxim
is understood. The human soul is, in essence, a daimon, akin to the race of the
Gods; and true human consciousness cannot exist until the outward life of man,
his character, is united, in will and purpose, with his daimon, his divine proto¬
type, the principle of his veritable destiny or “fate”.
Stanley V. LaDow.
Within our mind there is a Buddha, and that Buddha within is the real Buddha.
If Buddha is not to he sought within our mind then where shall we find the real
Buddha? Doubt not that Buddha is within your mind, apart from which nothing
can exist .— The Sutra of Wei Lang.
The greater men are, the humbler they are, because they conceive of a greatness
beyond attainment .— Gibson.
GROWING THINGS
^ “i4/z/ la jolie chose qu'une feuille qui chante!'' —Madame de S^vign^:.
I T was so long since I had seen them, that I hungered for them. Then, one
day, I found myself in the midst of them, and I listened to that swelling
chorus. It was early summer, and I stood once more on my mountainside,
happy and at peace in that wide and tranquil solitude. Below me tree-tops
stretched endlessly, a moving ocean of pale green—feathery tree-tops glistening
in the sunshine as far as I could see. Above me, on the steep hillside sweeping
skywards, I looked through the sun-shot leaves of swaying, swinging branches—
it was like lying in deeply beryl-tinted water, when you float far under the surface
and watch its gold-flecked ripples passing over you. The sunlight danced on the
delicate woodland ferns at my feet, and on the tufted, thousand-coloured mosses;
little gossamer-winged insects crept over and through them how busy they
were! A radiant, living green below me and beside me and above me—and
sunshine over all. Not far off, in the darker shade of the trees, a great rock
rose from the thick brown carpet of fallen leaves—leaves of long-dead autumns.
The broad, lichen-covered sides were full of deep crevices and pockets, into
which the errant winds had blown fruitful, woodland earth, and there, tiny
growing things—little lives drawn from an infinite, unseen world—had sprung
gallantly up to meet the day, and to pass their all-too-brief existence through a
happy summertime. A sudden, soft whirring of small wings near at hand—
a sleek robin watched me shyly from a neighbouring thicket. What an intruder
I felt! The breeze stirred the twig on which he had lighted, and he balanced
himself there merrily, but he kept a wary eye on me! From all directions came
the riotous singing of birds. It was June, the month of song. Then, still another
voice called—a rocky, mountain stream foamed across a clearing, tones and
over-tones—fairy cadences, now high, now low, were mingled with that sound,
and along the moist edge, a soft blue mist of forget-me-nots, and the flamu^
vibrant orange of hawk’s weed. A stalwart, yellow bee, as golden as the
shine, sped swiftly past—he had no time for strangers. Butterflies too—black
and creamy-white and a vivid, iridescent purple—countless butterflies with
their palpitating, fastidious, dainty flight, so different from the headlong im¬
petuosity of a homing bee. I looked up through the overhanging, interlacing
branches of the trees, to the intense blue of the June sky. Far overhead a
mountain eagle soared, supreme and lonely; high and ever higher, great powerful
wings outspread and seemingly motionless—so superbly free, so splendid, so
majestic is that flight! Piled-up masses of white clouds drifted slowly through
the infinite blue of space, casting dark shadows on the mountainsides, trailing
them across the wide valleys below—dark shadows in strange contrast to the
dazzling purity of their own whiteness, yet shadows in which there lurked a
wonderful, luminous transparency, if you watched them long enough. I stood
I2I
122
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
there in silent wonder. I could not tell which was more eloquent: the fathomless,
pathless heavens which drew my heart out of me^ or the radiant, pulsing earth
which so deeply stirred the heart within me. Yet what question could there be,
for were we not all one, the sun and the sun-filled skies; the birds and the trees,
the flowers and the rocks—all of us together, great and small, each in his own
place, one m the One Life ?
We move in a world of unimaginable beauty, surrounded by mighty, living
forces, and there is always the pain of knowing that we can capture no more than
a fragment of the great Heart of Life, only the tiniest fraction of it—^and we
would possess it all. Yet, could we but lose ourselves in it, what need would
there be to capture it ? The All would then be ours. Birth and growth and death
—cycles of growth with fleeting moments of ecstacy sweep over us; this seems
to be the way that most of us grow. For there are sudden partings of the veil
when, through an unforgettable interlude, we know ourselves to be one with all
other radiant, growing things—^how swift to pass these moments are, however!
A mist has gathered, self-created, and it is with difficulty that we can again
penetrate it, for our inner eyes are blinded from disuse; our inner ears are
deaf to the millions of joyous voices calling to us from beyond the barriers we
have raised. Alas, too many of us are aliens in a world where we should be at
home. The lowliest flower that I see growing at my feet, looking up with pure¬
eyed simplicity, opening its tiny cup to be filled by the golden warmth of the
sun, may be growing also in another and still lovelier, inner world, perhaps in
some blessed, unseen garden where Masters walk in the fragrant cool of evening
—its real life being there. If I had the power to see through the exquisite
beauty of its outer semblance, to the still more beautiful, intangible, inner form
and nature, should I not then be one step nearer to that hallowed spot or state
of heart myself? So there is both pain and joy in growth.
I have an old hunchbacked gardener, a native bom and bred. He knows and
understands the language of all growing things; to him they are friends, for
his whole, long, solitary life has been spent among them. He knows what they
like and what they need, and no two are ever treated in the same way.
“Why, they ain’t none on ’em alike’’, he protests. “Don’t yer ’spose they
knows what they wants—^just the same as me and you?’’
“Yes indeed’’, I answer. “We think they don’t understand. It’s we who
don’t understand.’’
He looks quickly up at me with those strange eyes of his—eyes which have
the far-seeing look of the woodsman who has passed his life in the company of
great distances, far spaces. Feeling that he has a sympathetic listener he con¬
tinues :
“But yer has to talk onto ’em. If yer talks onto ’em when yer plants ’em, they
hears yer—and then they grows.’’
“ 0 / course they hear’’, I agree heartily. “What a pity it is that we sometimes
forget to speak to them!’’
“That’s ’cuz we ain’t thinkin' onto ’em’’; and he adds, in a scornful tone,
“it’s ’cuz we ain’t only thinkin’ ’cept onto ourselves.’’
GROWING THINGS
123
He goes on digging in the cool earth, tenderly lifting the root of a newly-
transplanted vine in his mud-covered, work-coarsened hands; setting it into
the carefully-prepared, water-soaked, fertilized soil—the spot which is to be its
home, and where it is to grow and grow and grow, until it becomes great and
strong and beautiful. He surveys it intently.
“Is yer comfortable?” I hear him asking, with deep and true solicitude.
“Does yer feel good? There ain’t narthin’ pinchin’ yer?”
As I watch, I fancy that he waits a short moment, listening for the whispered
answer, and having received it, he presses in the earth (an art this), and the small
root is happy once more in its own kindly and familiar element.
“Now grow!” he orders, with that peculiar tone of authority used only by
one who knows (and who knows that he knows), exactly what he is about.
It is a solemn moment. This is a mystic rite, and in his own lowly degree, he
seems to me to be using exactly the same tone that God must have used when,
in the earliest of all Dawns, the command went forth: “Let there be Light!”
Then my old hunchback, still in humble and unconscious emulation, adds:
“And if yer don't grow, its yer own fault—or I don’t know narthin’ ’bout
plantin’.”
I muse. Deeply do I consider that awful moment when God gave man the
terrifying power of choice—the gift of free-will; and I think of how, every
day of these thousands of millions of years, since man became man, he must
have heard, somewhere within himself, whispering within his own heart, those
very same words:
“Now grow! And if you will not—can you blame Me?”
My old woodsman has inherited much of the Wisdom of the Ages, I see.
Our Master, the Wise Gardener, sets each one of us in the fruitful earth—the
carefully-chosen and prepared conditions of our life, conditions best fitted to
our soul’s need—and he asks just this of us: that we shall grow. Then, with the
infinite compassion of a Master, he gives us time to grow. He does not hurry
and push us, if pushed we cannot be; he knows that one small shoot grows
rapidly, another slowly, just as we ourselves find when, with attentive love, we
watch the upward creeping of our own small vines—the ones that we have
planted. Yesterday I noticed two slender shoots of a creeper which was oL^st
year’s planting. Side by side they were, like twins. Not wishing the wijpT^o
catch and perhaps tear them, I trained them both up against the trelliTput
there for their support, hoping that each would then make firm its own pre¬
carious hold. This morning when, very early, I went out to look at them, the one
had wound two delicate tendrils so tightly about a cross-piece of the trellis,
that I do not think anything but a knife could have got it free—at least that
one step in the upward climb toward heaven was accomplished. The other shoot,
though, as far as I could see, with exactly the same advantages of support and
opportunity, was just as I had left it the night before: still trained against the
lattice, but without the least evidence that it had itself begun to grapple with
its new environment; there was no tightened clasp of any of its lovely, limpid-
green, soft tendrils; its hold upon the outer reality of its existence, through
124
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
which it was to leam the laws of its own world, had not yet been made. No
doubt that would come in time. The mystery of growth! There is seemingly no
end to a contemplation of this mystery if you watch a vine from day to day; if
you watch its amazing adaptability. It clambers over or around almost any
obstacle, and it seems actually to leap across vacant spaces where no support is
to be found. Or, if it cannot climb in one direction, it will turn (evidently in
response to some subtile intuition, some inner guidance) and reach out in another
—one more favourable to the law of its own lovely nature: its aspiration, its
upward climbing. There is only one thing it cannot be—not if it is to continue
to live: it cannot lose its adaptability, it may not become inflexible. It must for
ever be moving forward and upward. If it hardens into rigidity, death has set in,
and its ascent is ended. I have also closely watched individual leaves; I have
watched their slow growth from delicate, coral-pink, baby things, up through
a short childhood to full maturity. No two grow alike; no two with the same
rapidity, nor, of course, do they grow to the same size. Does the quality of life-
sap in them differ? Or is it a dawning individuality? Has the desire to grow,
the energy seized and used, the greater or lesser inner urge, begun to show itself?
Then too, all growing things have voices peculiarly their own—each after its
kind. I fancy that everyone has had the experience, when walking through the
fields or woods, of having his attention sharply arrested by some tiny plant or
shrub. He may have been very much preoccupied by thoughts far removed from
country sights or sounds, yet, suddenly, without warning, he finds himself in¬
tently examining a flower or a patch of moss, or some other lowly growing thing
which, in a moment more, he would have left behind him, unnoticed. This has
happened in a way which he may find difficult to explain. He knows that he did
not actually see it—his “eyes” were too firmly fixed upon his own surging
thoughts. The fact is that he has heard it—though this he did not know; it
has called a happy greeting to him as he passed, not of necessity by means of any
perfume, but because of that marvellous interlocking of the “kingdoms”—an
instant of unsuspected inner awareness on the part of the wayfarer and, for the
fraction of a second, the secrets of all the kingdoms of nature are open to him if
he will but seize that precious moment. The voices of growing things are always
with us, and, if we listen, we can hear the high, sweet piping in the early spring,
as the tiny buds burst from their long winter sleep, and feel the first spring
warmth. In England where the sun is kind—filtered through moist air, and thus
well-tempered to little opening buds—the hedgerows are a sylvan orchestra in
April and in May. The lark’s note is no lovelier. On the smooth, rich brown of
the short, clipped branches, the folded buds hang thick, like drops of liquid
emerald, and it is a deep and wonderful experience to hear them singing as they
grow. But we must pass much time alone with them, I think, or we shall not
leam to hear them calling.
The Master Christ loved all growing things—how many times he spoke of
them! He told us to consider the lilies of the field, and he urged us to look, to
open our dull eyes and drink deep of the marvel of their beauty. He said to his
disciples: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” Perhaps not all of us can be
GROWING THINGS
125
branches—yet; but most of us can be leaves—leaves which draw their life
through the branches and so, direct from the Vine. And even a leaf can be
lovely and can sing.
There is a subtile kind of understanding between the vast, rich world of
vegetation (so eagerly reaching out to us), and the hidden, inner senses of man.
Poets invariably recognize this fact, and many have recorded it. In “A Ballad
of Trees and the Master” (no doubt often before quoted in the Quarterly),
Sidney Lanier showed how truly he believed in the mysterious power of growing
things—that plants and trees and shrubs, quicker to feel man’s need of sympathy
than man is to discover theirs, may be awake and aware, when drugged or evil
human hearts are tragically closed.
‘‘Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thom-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last.
From under the trees they drew Him last:
’Twas on a tree they slew Him—last
When out of the woods He came.”
How often we have been told that we can perceive no beauty of ou^lves
alone; that it is only because our Master is helping us to see with hi^lyes,,
that we have even the first glimmer of true sight! Ceaselessly, with divine
prodigality, life is pouring in golden torrents over us, but too often, we hardly
stop to notice it, so filled are we with our own petty concerns. With this slow
and grudging response, is it not a mystery of mysteries that we ever grow at all?
Yet, because of the tender pruning and staking and transplanting of the great
Lodge Gardeners, we do grow in the midst of this beautiful and ever-new garden
of Nature, where so many of the deepest lessons of life may be read—lessons
which, if truly learned, may lead us at last, there where our hearts are set. Then,
almost imperceptibly maybe, our inner senses will develop; gradually, as we
grow, our inner eyes will begin to see the true loveliness of the hitherto invisible
world which, all the long, weary while, has been lying so close to us; little by
little our inner ears will begin to hear ‘‘the music of surrounding things”.
Wayfarer.
FORM AND FUNCTION
I F we examine a text-book of elementary botany or zoology, we often discover
that the material is grouped under two main headings. On the one hand
is set forth a range of observations on the external features of plants and
animals, on their gross structure, and on the details of tissues and cells which are
revealed by microscopic study. This is the field of morphology, the field of
forms and structures. The pages may, perhaps, be lavishly illustrated, since
the eye catches at a glance the relations of the parts of a form-system whose
description often involves many pages of difficult text, and whose imaginative
reconstruction in the mind is a laborious process.
On the other hand is set forth a treatment of the organs, tissues and cells at
work. The heart in rhythmical pulsation, the stomach pouring out gastric juice
during digestion, the green leaf synthesizing carbon-dioxide and water into
starch through the utilization of the energy of sunlight—all this material, dealing
with the active or functional side of the organism, constitutes the subject matter
of physiology. The pages of the physiological text carry fewer pictures than do
those devoted to morphology, and such as may occur often represent some
organ under its successive aspects as it performs its function. The appearance
of the heart in systole and diastole, or the successive positions assumed by the
drooping mimosa leaf under stimulation—such is one way in which the concept
of function is made more evident to the student.
We see, therefore, that so far as the biologist deals with it, a function is really
only the sequential representation of the organ, and it is clear that the more
extensive the series (viz. the less the measure of the time intervals between the
successive pictures), the more perfect will be the representation of the function.
We understand that the time intervals have no real existence, that a function is
really a continuous flow, and that the apparent intervals which separate one
picture from another are only concessions to the imperfections of our photo¬
graphic apparatus. This explains the popularity of the graph-curve wherein the
function may be represented as a continuum.
Now it is evident that the form of an organ is adapted to the work which it
performs; form and function are in tune with one another. The shape and
hardness of the teeth attest their adaptation to the comminution of food, and,
more than that, the incisors, canines and molars show by their respective forms
that they play specific parts in the general function of mastication. All the
sensory and motor organs, “the organs of perception and action”, are likewise
modified in consonance with the function they perform in the specific environ¬
ment in which the organism finds itself. The organ is adapted to the external
environment as the hand is adapted to the glove—the legs of the wading bird to
deep waters, the eagle’s beak to its carnivorous habits, the expanded leaf to the
interception of sunlight in maximum quantity. But internal adjustments are
126
FORM AND FUNCTION
127
likewise harmonized with admirable nicety. Organs, tissues and cells are bound
into co-operative wholes. Heart, lungs, brain and kidneys wait upon one an¬
other and labour for the whole of which they are parts. In the little as well as in
the great, in a parameciiun as in a planetary system, we discover order, design
and harmonious interaction.
To the elucidation of the difficult problem of these harmonized relations of
forms to functions, generations of botanists have devoted themselves: the
Lamarckians offer one explanation of their origin, the Darwinians another, but
no matter how modified in details by the disciples of one or another school of
thought, all the scientific theories of adaptation as constituting the final admi¬
rable outcome of an evolutionary process, fail to carry conviction or to give that
sense of satisfaction which allows us to pack up our scientific equipment and
depart to new fields of investigation. Something seems to be wanting, and we
persist in feeling that the evolutionary theories bear the same relation to the
world of organic life that a man’s photograph bears to the living man. May it be
that science has conceived the problem too narrowly, and has sought to impose
upon the organic world a fictional nature which is not its own, interpreting
it in the terms of a mode of motion which applies only to mechanics?
At the very outset of its attempt to investigate the problem of adaptations,
science is caught in a dilemma. Its field is the field of measurements, but the
widespread adaptations in nature are not amenable to metrical study. The
movement of a muscle, for instance, is accompanied by a heightened destructive
metabolism in the contracting cells. The vaso-dilators bring about expansion
in the blood-capillaries entering it, and a more vigorous flow of blood carries
away the waste products. This is a scientific process. The moving muscles can
be interpreted metrically: so many contractions per minute, so many milligrams
of excreted wastes, so many microns expansion of the capillaries. But metrical
description has not completely analyzed the phenomenon; there remains a
residue, invisible indeed, but none the less real. Untrained thought, even, does
not hesitate to aver that the capillaries expand in order to eliminate the wastes
more rapidly. This is, of course, the teleological attitude and it is anathei^C
science. It attributes purpose to the nexus of activities which make u^roe
microcosm of a muscle, and ascribes foresight to the biological functions. In a
sense, popular opinion and popular tradition, though it discerns facts through
a mental fog, may often see them in better balance than the specialist who has
imposed some carefully delimited system upon the universality of nature. In
so far as the scientist’s dislike for teleology arises from impatience with super¬
ficial and turbid thinking, one can feel a certain sympathy with his attitude.
The temporary elimination of naive teleology from our minds may have a
measure of heuristic value, but trouble arises when we confuse the means with
the end. For teleology will not be driven out; to the undisciplined mind it
constitutes no problem; to the disciplined, scientific mind it is a perpetual
irritant. For who can detect purposiveness by physical instruments, and how
can foreseeing be measured ? So the scholar who would make of science the sole
instrument of knowledge, attempts to deny teleology and to interpret its seeming
128 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
presence as an appearance only, an epiphenomenon which will one day vanish
in the light of more perfect scientific comprehension. He has done away with
the deus ex machina who once pushed the planets through space. Why should
not the “entelechies” and “vital forces” and the concept of “discamate func¬
tions” follow the other gods into the limbo of discarded superstitions? The
bird builds its nest, the eggs are laid, the fledgelings hatch; the roots of trees
respond to the stimulus of moisture and grow toward a water course; the bee
gathers honey, stores it in the comb, and it is eaten by the colony during the
winter. This alone is science—this description of visible phenomena in sequence,
any one of whose terms may be expanded almost indefinitely as we trace it into
subsidiary detail. And all this material is expressible in metrical terms. Mech¬
anism is the only logical inference from the facts. The motion of material parts
in time accounts alike for a running watch and a beating heart.
During the last decade a considerable breach has been made in the mechanistic
defences by the philosophical holists who see in teleological relations the most
fundamental distinction between mechanism and organism. Teleology, “the
stone which the builders rejected, has become the head of the comer.” The
watch is a machine whose purpose lay in the mind of the inventor. Its parts
are associated in such a way that the potential energy of the mainspring is
progressively released and is conveyed to the hands through a series of inter¬
locking wheels. The heart, on the contrary, is a complex whole whose tissues
and cells are teleologically related to one another, while, at the same time, it
stands in holistic relations with the other organs of the body. It carries its
purpose within itself, and reveals its purpose by its function; it is self-existing,
self-repairing, self-perpetuating. In a word, it is organic. The holist is willing
also to extend the concept of organism to admirable lengths. When a flock of
birds wheels as a unit under an inner urge, when a swarm of myxamoebae builds
up a definite form under the guidance of a mysterious impulse, we have the
essential hall-mark of the organism. Thus far the holists have advanced toward
the comprehension of an ancient theosophic doctrine. They have obviously
called in question the categorical validity of the scientific dogma. Will they, we
wonder, be willing to advance another step along the pathway they have entered?
In The Secret Doctrine there stands a certain sentence so arresting that it has
lingered in the memory of at least one student: “Life and Motion are convertible
terms.” One can imagine the satisfaction with which a biological mechanist
might chance upon it, apply the formula of deus inversus, utilize it as a weapon
to confound his vitalist opponents, and claim the authority of H.P.B. in support
of mechanism! But what does the sentence mean ? It appears to mean just what
another and similar statement means: “Spirit and Matter are One.” Yes, we
add mentally, but not on the same plane.
Let us imagine an animal travelling from one place to another. It sees the
bodies of the world just as we see them, spread out on a flat plane and under the
laws of perspective. As it advances, picture follows after picture, coming out
of the future and vanishing into the past. The place it left has ceased to be;
it remains only as the memory of a past event. The place toward which it
FORM AND FUNCTION
129
moves has not yet become; it lies in the future, in the realm of anticipations.
For the animal does not reason about spatial illusions as we do. Seeing is be¬
lieving, and all it really sees is a temporal sequence of two-dimensional pictures.
In other words, the animal mind seems to convert the third dimension of bodies
into a time-sequence of two-dimensional pictures. It is difficult for us to grasp
the situation immediately, because our experience of motion is involved with
our own mode of time which is a different time-mode from that of the animal.
We can, perhaps, enter more intimately into the world-view of an animal if we
imagine oiuselves speeding rapidly across the country by train. Our critical
faculty for the time being is in abeyance, and we give ourselves over to the mere
visual contemplation of the landscape. Marvellous things are happening. A
sign board runs toward us, rotates on its axis and runs away again; a forest
troops over the brow of a hill, all the trees moving forward together like soldiers
on parade; a water-tower whirls dizzily as we pass it. We pull ourselves to¬
gether—this is altogether too much like Alice in Wonderland—and our reason
proceeds to demolish the charming illusion.
But suppose we had no reasoning power. Then, in very truth, the angles and
curves of the solid world would be translated into motion in time as we moved
about. Or, to put the experience into a more generalized form: Two-dimen¬
sional vision reveals the third dimension of static solids as motion in time upon
a two-space background.
How, then, shall we interpret the “real” motions which occur in our own
three-dimensional world and in our own time? If we reason according to analogy
and according to simple relativity, we are forced to say that our time-sequence is
the imperfect apprehension of a space superior to our own, and that the “real”
motions which occur in our world—the movements of machines, of winds and
waters, of the heavenly bodies—are imperfect apprehensions of the irregularities
of solids which lie in hyperspace. We may finally conclude that motion is always
and everywhere associated with a bend or an angle which carries the boundary
of a body into a space-form higher than that upon which the perceptions are
focussed. As the obser\^er passes the angle, he perceives the phenomenon of
motion. From this consideration it is not difficult to infer that the perpetual
vibration of matter which science assigns to molecular motion, is the result of
the movement of consciousness in circular paths about hyperspatial curvilinecu|
bodies. If we think of the animal consciousness moving around a cube, we ma^
realize also that the circuit transforms itself to its mind into a journey in time,
marked by four recurrent and similar phenomena of motion. Moreover, since
nothing determines the return to the point of original departure, the temporal
journey may prolong itself to eternity as it circles the cube again and again.
But this does not differ in kind from the recurrent cycle of the seasons, of organic
life, or of Manvantara-Pralaya.
The mechanical movements which we have been discussing and which trans¬
late the curves of a next higher world into motions in time, all fall into that
field of the metrical which science has staked out for its own province. Science
measures the boundaries of the angular solid in spatial units by means of rulers
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
130
and compasses; it measures the boundaries of the angular hypersolid in temporal
imits by means of clocks. “Animal science” measures angular solids by means
of clocks and—yes, how does it measure angular hypersolids?
We have seen that the interpretation of biological functions is a subject of
violent disagreement among scientists. The holist or vitalist insists upon the
reality of teleological relations, whereas the mechanist assumes that the so-called
teleological relations are really obscure mechanical relations of a highly complex
type. He insists, and we think rightly, that not a single objective criterion can
distinguish between vital activities and mechanical actions.
But objective criteria are not the sole criteria of reality. When a phenomenon
manifests the holistic and teleological character it falls into categories outside
the realm of mechanics. The living thing is organism and machine in one, and
it is this dual character of its nature which constitutes its central problem to the
mind.
Some three paragraphs back we saw that the intelligent animal measures
angular solids by means of clocks, and we asked: How does it measure angular
hypersolids? The answer seems to be that the animal cannot measure angu¬
lar hypersolids at all, or, if it attempts to do so, it confuses them with solids, and
measures the vehicles, so to speak, through which they pass into manifestation
in three-space. The irregularities of hypersolids whose sequential manifesta¬
tions constitute the mechanical motions of our world, are vital phenomena to
the animal. This is another way of saying that the moving bodies of our world,
inorganic as well as organic, are all alive to the animal, and that their movements
cannot be subjected to any kind of metrical investigation of its devising since they
involve the concept of a new time, a concept which the animal does not possess.
Three sorts of relations seem to be accessible to consciousness on any plane.
These are spatial relations which are investigated by means of rulers; temporal
relations which are investigated by means of clocks; and teleological relations
which cannot be investigated at all by metrical objective methods, but which are
sensed by intuition and are amenable to logical reason.
But temporal relations are spatial relations. Time is but a translation of a
higher space dimension, where noumenal simultaneity holds sway, into phe¬
nomenal sequence in an inferior form of space. We may, therefore, venture
the bold conclusion that teleological relations are likewise spatial relations in
some sort of transcendental or Platonic world. It is conceivable that these
relations, whose presence constitutes our chief distinction between organism and
mechanism, are relations of bodies juxtaposed to one another in a mode of space
which bears the analogous relation to our own world, that the world just above
our own bears to the world of the animal.
“Life and Motion are convertible terms.” Motion is a phenomenon of the
angle. The line, the plane, the solid, all these forms of space set bodies apart
from one another and throw them into finite categories, concealing thereby
their true natures as parts of a single whole. All of them mark the places where
the matter of a given plane bends into another plane, where it undergoes a
change of state or passes into motion. Life is a phenomenon of the borderline;
FORM AND FUNCTION
131
“It manifests only in the midst of duality, in the juncture and interaction of
pairs of opposites.”
Since, in its widest extension, the concept of holism embraces all things, we
are justified no longer in setting apart as something unique, those modes of
organism which we know as plants and animals, to the exclusion of the rest
of the universe. The relations of teleology are universal throughout the entire
scheme of nature.
We come to see, therefore, that the harmony between organ and fvmction is
founded upon an underlying identity. The physiological function is the suc¬
cessive presentments of the organ in time: this is the meaning which science
attaches to the word “function”. But in theosophical metaphysics the function
is the thing in a far truer sense than is the assemblage of finite and changing
attributes to which science applies the same term. “The eye is the act of
vision.” In that world or plane superior to our own, function becomes form,
physiology becomes morphology. Abstract nouns such as “thought”, “will”
and “feeling”, transform into verbs as they enter our world from above, and
they manifest here as embodied activities of “head, heart and hand”. But
“up there” or “in there” they are living, holistic Beings, triple microcosms in a
complej^nd transcendental macrocosmic Pattern which the Hindu calls Mahat.
And it is quite possible that the spatial relations of their elements is responsible
for the teleological and organic impress which we sense in the manifested world.
These unimaginable relations of forms are the teleological relations of sympathy
and harmony, and they constitute the key to those ecological adjustments and
adaptations which constitute a standing challenge to scientific explanation. From
this it follows that the active life of a world below is the dynamic rest of a world
above, and that the final purpose of evolving, conscious life is not to do, but to
be. In the light of this thought certain well-known sentences take on a new
meaning:
“As a lamp standing in a windless place flickers not, this is remembered as the
similitude of the seeker of wisdom."'
''Thou const not travel on the Path before thou hast become the Path itself."
''When this Path is beheld . . . without moving .. .is the travelling in this road. In
this Path, to whatever place one would go, that place one's own self becomes."
R.E.T.
The study of Nature is well-pleasing to God, and is akin to prayer. Learning the
laws of Nature we magnify the first Inventor, the Designer of the world; and we learn
to love Him, for great love of God results from great knowledge .— Leonardo da Vinci.
WITHOUT CENSOR
III.
HE interval of two weeks between the end of the First Officers’ Training
Camp at Plattsburgh, and the date upon which I was ordered to report
at Camp Upton, was spent in New York, and was devoted in large meas¬
ure to purchasing and assembling all possible articles of equipment and clothing
which might be needed; various other articles were added over the ensuing
weeks and months, whenever we heard of something new that we thought was
essential, so that, when the time to go overseas came, we all possessed con¬
siderably more than a General Officer’s allowance of personal possessions, and
much of it had to be left behind. But, absorbing as all this was, it left plenty
of time for more important things. There were frequent opportunities for talks
with friends in the Movement, both in the city and out of town, and these talks
brought vividly to mind the real purpose and meaning which lay behind this new
life, strengthened resolution, increased devotion, and made it possible, in some
measure at least, to catch fire all over again, and to realize that what was hap¬
pening was, that the Commission which had been received from the Commander-
in-Chief of the Army was being confirmed by authority still higher.
The time was over all too soon. I had acquired a Ford car, long past the bloom
of youth, but still highly serviceable and with an exceptionally good engine;
this car later on, at Camp Upton, was to prove invaluable, as it was the only
motor equipment which the Regiment possessed for several weeks, and carried
everything, from the Colonel to potatoes and ice. In order to be entirely free
from any care in connection with this acquisition, and to preserve personal
mobility, I engaged a young man, who was a good mechanic, to take care of the
car and to drive it. He was of draft age, but for some reason had as yet received
no papers or notification, and was entirely willing to put in his time at this job
until his call came. I told him that I did not have the slightest idea as to where
he would sleep, or how he would be fed, but he expressed himself as entirely
satisfied with the arrangement, and willing to take a chance, even if he had to
sleep in the Ford. I was delighted, for it gave me a means of getting about
wherever and whenever I wanted, and also a body-servant of sorts, who could
do things for me and save my time, leaving me free to get the lay of the land and
to find out what was going on. Accordingly, on the day appointed, we em¬
barked in the Ford, which was running like a dream, as the engine had been well
tuned-up, and with my equipment in the back, we made the run of something
under sixty-five miles down Long Island to Camp Upton, and I reported at the
Headquarters of the Commanding General for duty.
During the first part of the trip, I had been under the constant necessity of
either returning salutes, or of saluting my superiors in rank, as there were many
enlisted men on the roads, and our way ran through Mineola where there was a
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Camp. Saluting at that time was enough of a no: later
on, when sometimes one had to salute several hundred times a day, it ceased to
be so. That, however, is not strictly true, for we had been told, in our training,
the origin and purpose of the salute,—that in the days of Chivalry when a
Knight, riding along the road with the visor of his helmet down, met another
Knight, he raised his arm and swept his visor up, so that the object of this chance
encounter might see his face, and they might talk together in gentle and perfect
courtesy. Through the centuries, the purpose of the salute had been maintained,
and it was to this day a mark of respect and courtesy, an acknowledgment of
the tie which bound military men together, an expression and a reminder of the
special qualities which they should possess in common, and of the principles to
which they had dedicated themselves. To the enlisted man, it did not mean all
this. To him it was an act of respect to his superior which he was bound to
perform, and which he did not enjoy particularly at first, as there was no one who
was bound to render a salute to him, and he felt, at the start, that it was a one¬
sided arrangement as far as he was concerned. The insistence upon saluting,
however, in an alert and military manner, on the part of the recruit from the
very first day of his enlistment, had back of it, it seemed to me, far more than
was apparent. The theory of insistence upon saluting, the military reason, was
that the constant performance of this act of courtesy itself made a man a good
soldier, made him want to perform it, aroused in him by degrees an esprit de
corps. All this was true. I have said that the military life, the military order,
seemed, of all human institutions, to be nearest in its forms and essence to the
spiritual hierarchy, to the life and order of the spiritual world. It is easy to see
that this is true in respect to gradations in rank, in regard to the similarity of the
qualities necessary to excel in each; it is not quite so easy to see that it holds
when it comes to matters of method. Yet, here was a case in point. The spirit¬
ual order insists that if a man does not possess certain qualities, but desires to
attain them, he should “act as if” he possessed them, and that then he will
gradually attain them. The military order insists that if a man does not possess
esprit de corps, and it is desirable that he should, he must “act as if” he pos¬
sessed it, through promptly saluting his superiors for one thing, and that then
it will come. There are other similarities in method which will suggest tlMm-
selves later. This realization of the significance of the salute, both from th^pKnt
of view of its military history and value, and from that of its real purpose and
meaning and working in the world of inner consciousness, would itself have
made it a special act, no matter how often repeated. But it came to be some¬
thing much more. It became a moment of opportunity to salute voluntarily
those high in the spiritual world whose commission it was that one bore; a
moment of turning the heart in gratitude and reverence to them; a brief moment
of contact with the source of motive and of inspiration. One liked to think that,
perhaps, far down the Ray someone saw the act, and approved. Anyway, it
helped. I do not mean to say that the consciousness of all this was vivid and
distinct each time a salute was given or returned. Far from it. But no matter
how frequent or how hurried, the act of saluting instinctively became of supreme
134
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
importance, because of what it really meant, because its constant, if automatic,
performance strengthened and deepened that meaning.
Camp Upton was still in the early stages of construction when I arrived there,
and it was at once clear that it would not be ready for several weeks to receive
the men from the draft. An area of perhaps something over a mile in length and
of over half a mile in width had been secured, and a small city of wooden frame-
buildings, designed to house about fifty thousand men, was being erected. Every
vestige of vegetation had been removed, the stumps of trees were being pulled
up, and the air was full of sand and dust. Roads leading into the Camp had
been cut through the woods, and the broad arterial roads within the Camp had
been laid, but in neither case had they yet been hard-surfaced, and whenever it
rained they speedily became seas of mud in which trucks and motors stuck and
had to be hauled out. A slight eminence in the middle of the Camp, hardly high
enough to dignify with the name of hill, was the site of Division Headquarters,
and when I arrived there, only a few barracks had been erected, and those were
in the immediate vicinity of Headquarters. The place was overrun with civilian
labourers, and the paraphernalia of the contractors who were building the Camp
was everywhere, and everywhere there was an atmosphere of bustle and con¬
fusion. The lower or southerly half of the Camp was designed tb house the 77th
Division, each unit being self-contained, with open spaces between the barracks
for formations and drill.
Upon reporting at Division Headquarters, I had my first experience of the
complete and sudden changes which can take place in the Army in war time. I
have said that each infantry training company at Plattsburgh had been designed
to furnish the commissioned personnel, up to the grade of field officer, for a
regiment of infantry in the 77th Division; before leaving Plattsburgh we had
even, at the instance of higher authority, drawn up a provisional roster of the
commissioned personnel of our regiment, and I had been confidently expecting
to receive an assignment to duty more or less in accordance with that plan.
But a cog had slipped in the military machinery. At Plattsburgh there had
been eight infantry training companies; in the 77th Division there were only
four infantry regiments; consequently, twice as many infantry officers reported
for duty at Camp Upton as were needed to fill the Division. The officers were
assigned to duty with infantry regiments, either in the order of their arrival at
the Camp, or according to some other equally hit-or-miss method, one never
knew exactly how. At all events half of the Plattsburgh contingent found them¬
selves left out, and I found myself among the number, and we were all assigned
to the 15 2d Depot Brigade, the permanent Camp organization. There was
nothing for it, at the moment, except to do as we were told. So we repaired to
one of the enlisted men’s barracks already erected, which we were to occupy
temporarily, set up our cots, unpacked our things, found out when and where
we were to eat, and sat down to talk it over.
We were in despair, which did not lessen the next day, or during succeeding
days. We had confidently hoped and expected to lead men from our own city,
men whose ways and characteristics we understood. We had been told so. In
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135
what sort of an outfit should we finally find ourselves now ? What was to become
of us? Were we going to stay at Camp Upton for the duration of the War,
drilling recruits and replacements? The next few days did nothing to relieve
our gloom. There was nothing to do. Part of each day was spent in listening
to lectures by Regular Army officers, or in taking tactical walks in groups in the
surrounding country, working out field problems. The rest of the time we spent
sitting about, watching the building of the Camp, and breathing dust. Finally,
from being utterly bored, we became seriously alarmed, for orders began to come
through from Division Headquarters, transferring various of our number to
other Divisions and Camps as far removed as Texas. I began to wonder where
I was going to end, and what, if anything, I could do about it.
One of my friends was a major of infantry, who had been one of the out¬
standing men at Plattsburgh in point of ability and character. I noticed that
he did not seem to be particularly disturbed as to his own possible future fate;
in fact, as he listened to us talk, he seemed, while sympathetic, faintly amused.
I began to wonder why. Finally, one day, he called me over to his cot, and told
me, under pledge of secrecy, that he had been able to arrange matters as far as he
was concerned, and that he expected before long to be assigned to the command
of a battalion in the Division, and asked me, provided he could further arrange
it, how I should like to have one of the companies in his battalion. I told him
that I should like nothing better, and we settled the matter, provisionally, then
and there. But when I got away by myself, and thought it over, I realized that,
while it was good, it was not good enough; I had just had an experience in regard
to tentative private arrangements, and knew that higher authority could not
be counted upon; I felt that I must try to do something along lines of my own,
as well. The Adjutant of the i52d Depot Brigade was a Regular Army Major,
and I had noticed that he seemed to be overwhelmed with a great deal of paper
work, and that he was without adequate assistance. I went to him, and asked
if I might be allowed to help him in any way possible in his office, saying that I
had much time on my hands, that I hated to be doing nothing, and that I felt
that under him I should have a fine opportunity to learn about Army paper work.
This subtle flattery may have had something to do with it; at any rate, my sug¬
gestion was approved, and I was attached as assistant. I had two thoughts in
the back of my head in regard to this. I knew that, once in his office, I shj||ld
see any order affecting me several hours before I otherwise should,—
even before he did; and that I should then have time to rush around, see my
friend the Plattsburgh major, and try to change things myself at Division Head¬
quarters, if the order were unsatisfactory. It also occurred to me that the Major,
being the only Regular Army officer then assigned to the Depot Brigade, was
also its commanding officer, and that possibly his long absences from his office,
spent at Division Headquarters, might be accounted for by the fact that he was
being consulted as to which officers should be transferred from the Depot Brigade
to other Divisions when requisitions came through from the War Department,
and that it would be well to keep in with him. It was several days before any¬
thing happened, other than a steady flow of orders transferring various men to
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
136
remote points. Then an order came through from Headquarters 77th Division,
assigning me and seven other captains to the Ammunition Train of the Division.
The Adjutant was absent. In haste, I went and found my friend the Plattsburgh
major, told him about this, and asked him what he thought of it, and what an
Ammunition Train was anyway. At that time, it was a brand-new unit in our
Army, and no one knew anything about it. He told me, from what he knew of the
Allied Armies, that in any case it was a front line unit with plenty of action;
that it clearly afforded an opportunity to get into the Division. He advised me to
let the order go through without protest, and said that, once I was in the Division,
he and I could take up again later the plan of my going into his battalion, and
perhaps arrange a transfer then. This sounded like good advice. I went back
to the Depot Brigade office, and awaited the arrival of the Adjutant, and when
he read me the order later on, I expressed my delight at finally getting into the
Division after all, and my great regret at leaving him. I never knew whether
or not he had had any part in the issuing of that order. He gave no sign what¬
ever, and said nothing at all. But I was immensely relieved at this solution,
which was so much better than it might have been. The thing clearly indicated
now was to do the best work of which I was capable in the Ammunition Train,
and, as time and events progressed, to keep my eyes open for possible shifts and
changes. Certainly, this very brief experience had shown me that there were
ways in the Army, diplomatic and otherwise, by which one could do something to
avoid being side-tracked, and that unless one could give a little impetus to the
march of events at the right time, without depending entirely upon favourable
notice from higher up, one was going to do a good deal of waiting with prob¬
lematical results.
Our status did not change for several days, for, while we were now assigned to
a unit, we were still without a commanding officer, and could do nothing our¬
selves. Finally, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Regular Army appeared, hereinafter
to be known as “the Colonel”, who had been assigned to the command. He
looked us over for a day, moved us all to another barracks where we could be
together with him, and then called a meeting, at which he assigned the other
captains, one after another, to the command of the different companies. He did
not even look at me, and I began to think that I was out of luck again, when he
finally turned to me and said, “You will be Regimental Adjutant”. He told
me later on, when we knew each other better, that he had picked me for that job
at first sight, and that was why he had left me to the end. After having com¬
pleted these heavy duties, he remarked that there did not seem to be much to do
at the Camp, and that he thought he would go back to the Army and Navy Club
in New York for a couple of days, and in the meanwhile to carry on. This was an
easy assignment. But gradually we had our majors, and other captains and
lieutenants, assigned to us; one building for enlisted men was completed in the
Ammunition Train area in the extreme southern end of the Camp, into which
the commissioned personnel all moved; and we set up housekeeping there while
we awaited the completion of our other buildings and officers’ quarters.
We watched the arrival of the draft with much interest, and not without some
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137
trepidation, for we knew the type of some of the men whom we were about to
get from the lower quarters of New York, and we were not at all sure as to what
their reaction would be to involuntary induction into the military service. We
were ready for possible trouble, but none came. One reason no doubt was, that
at first we only received a few men in each contingent, and we had time to as¬
similate them and to teach them something of the rudiments of the School of the
Soldier before more men arrived. The early arrivals, in their turn, thus had a
feeling of slight superiority over our later acquisitions, and felt that they were to
some extent in the position of being able to tell the newer men all about it, and
how things were done. We were constantly hampered and held back by the
failure of the camp contractors to complete our barracks. I remember very well
that one of my duties as Adjutant, knowing as I did how many draft men we
were to receive two days later, was to interview the chief contractor, and to insist
that the work of his men should be speeded up to an extent which would ensure
another building being completed in time for us to house the recruits which we
were to take in. After that, I had personally to inspect the progress of the
building, to be sure that there would be no failure to produce the desired results.
Sometimes it looked as if it would be a close call, but somehow we always had
the space we needed in time.
Some of the draft men, when they arrived, looked the picture of dejection, as
if they expected to be led out before a firing-squad next morning. They had just
been through emotional partings with their families; many of them, although
sound, were in poor physical condition, with soft muscles, and were dreading the
work; they had heard stories of rough treatment to be expected in the Army,
and were fearing the worst. They had come in their old clothes, and were a
rather hard and sorry looking lot. But they were resigned, and not at all trucu¬
lent or aggressive. I saw personally each man as he came in, heard his qualifi¬
cations, sized him up briefly, and assigned him either to Regimental Head¬
quarters, to the Headquarters of the battalions, or to one of the companies. In
this way I was able fairly quickly to build up the nucleus of an efficient Regi¬
mental Headquarters, and to get it organized and functioning in an elementary
way without much delay, and this in its turn helped to speed up the company
commanders in their own work of organization. I also had in mind securing for
myself a good orderly—a striker, as he has always been called in the United
States Army—as I knew that such an acquisition would save me a lot of work
and detail in personal ways. So when a man appeared who stated that in civil
life he had been second man in a house on Fifth Avenue, I felt that this was just
what I had been looking for. Although he knew nothing whatever about cooking,
the Tables of Organization of the Regimental Headquarters called for a cook.
I therefore at once assigned him there in that capacity, and told him that his
first military duty would be to learn something of the culinary art. He never
did, but he assisted the other cook, and he was much pleased with the assignment,
as he turned out to be a man with a constant and voracious appetite, and was
grateful to me for placing him in pleasant surroundings where he could indulge
it. He became a very efficient striker, and I now felt that personally I was much
138
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
better fixed than I had ever been in civil life, with a valet disguised under a
military name, and with a chauffeur in the person of the youth who was driving
my Ford—who, by the way, was now fed and lodged at Government expense in
one of the barracks—and that I was now free from any petty concerns about
personal comfort, and could devote myself whole-heartedly to work.
A few days worked a great change in the appearance of the draft men, and a
few weeks caused a wonderful improvement in their morale. They shed their
civilian clothes almost over night, and while some of them looked lumpy for a
while in uniform, owing to misfit sizes, we had taken in a number of tailors in
the draft, and they were at once put to work, with satisfactory results. Rifles,
and the other equipment, were issued. The food, prepared by men who had been
cooks in civil life, was good and plentiful,—much better, in fact, than that to
which many of the men had been accustomed at home. Drill was at once
started, and the hard work and exercise, the fresh air, and all factors working
together, produced before long a great change in the morale of the men. They
found that the life, instead of being hard, was easy. All that they had to do,
was to do what they were told; it was not necessary to think anything out for
themselves any more. A bugle got them up in the morning, and put them to bed
at night; told them when they were to eat; informed them that the next
formation would be in a few minutes. If they had a question, all they had to do
was to ask a non-commissioned officer, and he would give them the answer
(although not, perhaps, at first, until he had had a chance to ask someone else!).
The men began to find themselves, to their surprise, extraordinarily happy.
They began, too, to reflect this in their personal appearance and in the alert way
in which they commenced to carry themselves. They were freer than they had
ever been in their lives before. They liked it. Soon they became delighted with
the life. By the time they had been home on leave for their first Sunday, and
had had an opportunity to swell around a bit and tell family and friends all 4out
it, they were enthusiastic. In two months it would have been impossible to pry
them out of the Army.
All this is another instance of the parallel between the military life, the military
order, and the spiritual hierarchy, the life and order of the spiritual world; an¬
other example of the similarity of the methods employed in each, and the simi¬
larity, relatively speaking, of the results. The aspirant for chglaship is told, at
the start, that his first duty is obedience. It is not a question for him, then', of
understanding obedience. He must obey to the letter at first, and not until he
does so, and has done so for some time, will he understand anything of his own
lower nature, of those things in him which, until they are transmuted and
changed, will keep him from understanding obedience. He starts in to obey the
letter of his instructions, to do exactly as he is told, and he finds, to his utter
amazement and joy, that the first result is that he is happier than he has ever
been in his life before. He is free, because he has surrendered his will to the
divine will. He sees the way out of old, and present, inner problems. Gratitude
and devotion well up within his heart. He is more sensible than ever before of
contact with the spiritual world, of further reaches of wisdom and love and power
WITHOUT CENSOR
139
which it is open to him to contact as he is able. It is the reward which the
“upstairs people” seem invariably to give to a wholehearted initial effort, in
order to lend encouragement, to give stimulus to that necessarily long-continued,
further inner effort in which periods of dryness, of iciness, will inevitably occur.
Perhaps, too, it is their way of showing the gratitude which they must feel, the
joy which it must be to them, that one more soul has turned at last to the Light.
But, be that as it may, the result produced in the aspirant for chMaship when
he first siurenders his will to the divine \vill, is identical, relatively speaking, with
the result produced in the soldier when he starts to surrender his will in obedience
to his military superiors, to military discipline. They both become free. With
the aspirant, there is increased consciousness of the breadth and power of the
spiritual world. With the soldier, there is the beginning of an esprit de corps.
With them both there is the desire, not to rest content in the satisfaction of the
present, but to do something more about it; to make use of this new exuberance
of feeling in further effort.
Some of the men from the draft were conscientious objectors. In most cases
these men were dealt with by their company commanders, and proved open to
persuasion. Some of the more obdurate we got rid of, in various ways, later on.
Usually the conscientious objector was a passive individual, negative, who was
hounded successfully by his non-commissioned officers into doing what he should
do, in the intervals between his interviews with his captain. Sometimes, how¬
ever, he united with his conscientious objections other still more disagreeable
and aggressive qualities, and gave a great deal of trouble. One such case, which
was having very disruptive effects, was brought finally to my attention by the
Regimental Sergeant-Major, who in a burst of confidence expressed the opinion
that the only thing which would do that particular man any good was a thorough
beating-up. In my most military manner I at once directed the Sergeant-Major’s
attention to the fact that anything of that kind was expressly prohibited by Army
Regulations, even in war time; that if that was the only way in which we could
maintain discipline, we should never have any at all; and that, anyway, if st^K
thing took place, and if it were ever discovered, severe punishment woul^)e
awarded to all of the participants. I stopped, and looked fixedly at the Regi¬
mental Sergeant-Major, and allowed my face to relax slightly. I saw a gleam of
comprehension, and of hope, in his eye. He saluted, and left me. The treatment
given must have been thorough; certainly it was efficacious, for that particular
objector became later one of our best non-commissioned officers.
But there were other more complex cases. We received in the draft a man who
had formerly been a Lieutenant in the Austrian Army, and I assigned him tempo¬
rarily to Headquarters, because of his experience, while his case was being
considered. One afternoon I was drilling the Headquarters Company, and gave
a wrong command. The Austrian saw the mistake at once, and as he was a
pivot man, on whom the carrying out of the movement depended, he simply
marked time and waited. As soon as I saw this, I realized my mistake, and
changed the command. After the drill was over, I sent for him, and told him that
I wanted to talk with him as man to man and to sit down, and I asked him how
140
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
he felt about serving in the Army of the United States against the Central Powers.
He replied with entire frankness, and I believed him, that he had been an Ameri¬
can citizen sufficiently long for his sympathies to be entirely with us, and that
he had no feeling about fighting against Austria, but that he had nine uncles and
cousins, some of them officers, in the Austrian Army, and that he did object to
fighting against his own flesh and blood. He realized that we might possibly
later on have Austrian Divisions opposite us, and felt that, even in an Ammu¬
nition Train, he would be to all intents and purposes in a combat unit as far as
his relatives were concerned. He was a splendid fellow. 1 liked him, and felt
that he was telling the plain truth, and that there was no ulterior motive behind
what he said. I consulted the Colonel, who accepted my statement, and felt
that in the circumstances, and on general principles as well, as far as our men
were concerned, it would be better to have him transferred. This was arranged
informally with Division Headquarters, and the Austrian went to the Base
Hospital at Camp Upton as an orderly, a job which he must have thoroughly
hated, but which in all probability kept him there for the duration of the War.
As time went on, and the regiment became filled to strength, we were struck
with the great number of men with German names which we had on our roster,
and the same was true of the other units in the Division. It was not to be
wondered at, in view of the large German element in the population of New York.
But it began to give Division Headquarters some uneasiness, which transmitted
itself to us. How many of these men with German names had in them the ele¬
ments of disloyalty ? How would this disloyalty express itself, once we had taken
them overseas? Was it expressing itself already, perhaps, in the dissemination of
information to enemy agents in regard to the training of the Division? The
thing to do was to find out. In addition to my other duties, I was Regimental
Intelligence Officer, which simply meant that there was the beginning of an
attempt on the part of the War Department, to extend the functioning of the
Intelligence Section of the General Staff down to and including regimental units
in the newly formed divisions. I conferred with the Colonel, and, with his ap¬
proval, and with the help of one other captain and of the Regimental Sergeant-
Major—only we four were in the secret—developed something which could
hardly be dignified with the name of a counter-espionage organization, but which
was, nevertheless, based to some extent upon that principle. We picked out two
of the best soldiers in each company, who were obviously thorough-going Ameri¬
cans, and who, as far as we could judge, had their heads tightly set on their
shoulders, and could keep their mouths shut; in one company, in which the
number of German names on the roster was larger than usual, we picked four
men. Word was transmitted to all of these men, through methods evolved by
the Regimental Sergeant-Major, to come separately after dark to the back of
the officers’ quarters, and to ask for me, and to say nothing about it beforehand
to anyone. I saw them each in turn, and explained to them the problem, and
what was expected of them. Their duties were to keep their eyes and ears open
for any acts or utterances on the part of the other men in their company which
verged on the disloyal, which seemed to show sympathy for the Central Powers.
WITHOUT CENSOR
141
In the event that they ran into anything of this sort, they were to restrain their
natural feelings of indignation and anger, and were to do and say nothing at the
time. Little by little, however, they were to become friendly with the man whom
they suspected, they were to lead him on and draw him out, so working things
that he would express himself with greater freedom with them until, perhaps,
he would commit himself without reserve. If, in order to verify an impression,
it seemed desirable to see something of the home life and former environment of a
man under suspicion, it would always be possible, on some pretext or another, to
arrange for a pass to New York for them, for the same Sunday as the soldier
under observation. They were to report to me from time to time, or whenever
anything special came up, in the same manner. No one of these men knew that
any other man had the same duties. None of the company commanders knew
of this work which was going on within their own companies. Our agents them¬
selves took hold with enthusiasm, and were very keen to clean things up. Check¬
ing and following up reports, and advising the men, took a good deal of time.
Nothing approaching the dissemination of military information was ever dis¬
covered, perhaps because, at that stage in the game, there was not much to
disseminate. Most of the men with German names proved to be entirely loyal
American citizens. But there were some who, it was clear, were essentially dis¬
loyal at heart, and who did not hesitate so to express themselves when they
thought this safe. We finally were in possession of a list of twenty or twenty-
five names, all of them possible trouble-makers later on, whom we resolved to get
rid of at the earliest possible opportunity.
My heart and attention were still largely focussed upon the men of our organi¬
zation themselves, and I inclined especially to the work which involved direct
contact with them. In spite of the interest which the duties of even a minor
staff officer possessed, I had never recovered from the disappointment of not
having an infantry company of my own, for the welfare and the performance of
which I was solely responsible. Nothing more had been heard from my friend,
the Plattsburgh major, in regard to a transfer to his battalion, and I could see,
from what I knew of his organization, that this was not going to be possible
after all, which added to my feeling of disappointment. My Colonel dissolved
this feeling of mine, to some extent, in a conversation one day, in which he asked
me how I liked my job. It was impossible not to give him a look into my mind,
and when he saw what was there, he said,—“I don’t see why you hold on to that
idea. You wanted a company of two hundred and fifty men to look out for, and
I have given you, as an Adjutant, a whole regiment, to say nothing of the
officers.” He went on to explain, however, that at the rate at which promotions
were then being made, he would be a full Colonel before many months, when he
would undoubtedly be given an infantry regiment, and that it was his intention
then to ask for the transfer and promotion, at the same time, of two other
captains and myself, and to make us his three battalion commanders.
This conversation did a good deal towards dispelling my lingering feeling of
disappointment, and finally had the effect of stimulating me all over again.
If any such suggestion as the Colonel had made should work out, it would be all
142
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
right. Then, too, his point about the officers was a good one; as a battalion
commander I should have a number of them under me, and the experience which
I was gaining in my present duties as Adjutant, in handling other officers by
tact and diplomacy and through the cultivation of good personal relations,
instead of through invoking the higher authority which was vested in me as the
Colonel’s right-hand man and issuing orders, was going to stand me in good
stead later on. But it was not until I had examined things in terms of inner
growth and development, in terms of progress in spiritual ways, that I really
saw the light. How many times in the past, in terms of the inner life, had I
seen other people hold fast to some true experience, to some real motive, unwilling
to let it go, grasping it firmly like an orange that has been squeezed dry, long
after all possible stimulus and meaning had, for the moment, been extracted from
it. When a similar experience recurred, higher on the spiral, there would again
always be in it for them further purpose and significance; but, for the present,
they had impeded their inner advance, they had hindered their growth in all
real ways, by their unwillingness to let go of something which had served its
temporary purpose, because of their own preconceived ideas as to its importance
and desirability. How many times had I done the same thing! Now, apparently,
I was doing it all over again. Mobility, the ability to move forward, the power
to advance, was essential in the inner life. Clearly, it was essential in the military
life as well; and not alone in terms of strategy and tactics, but in the daily living
of the soldier. He must not hold fast to preconceived ideas as to what he wants,
or wanted, to do. He must move forward, strengthening himself, rounding him¬
self out, at all possible points, so that he becomes ready for whatever form of
responsibility the future may hold. To keep moving, that was the thing: to
let go of anything which prevented this, once it had proved devoid of immediate
value. When I had first joined the Theosophical Movement, I had been given
work to do, as I have already said, among “down and out” men at a Rescue
Mission. Little by little, I had been given work with individuals upon a different
status, with other and more difficult and complex problems than were to be found
among those men. The point had been reached at which to continue to the same
extent my activity at that Mission, would have impeded my progress, impaired
my effort, in what was opening up before me as an increased opportunity.
Clearly, there was a parallel between all this and the way in which I had been
clinging to the thought of commanding an infantry company. To forget about
the infantry company; that was the thing. But not to forget, as I apparently had
been doing, that there was for me a further point of supreme importance. My
commission, I felt, was not only in the Army of the United States, but was, in a
sense, from those Elder Brothers who were directing the Movement itself. I was
trying, in a certain way, to act as if I were under their orders. If that was the
case, was it likely that things were going to happen entirely by accident, as far as
I was concerned ? I thought that in all probability they were not going to do so,
and faced forward again.
{To be continued)
Centurion.
LIFE’S GREATEST CHEMICAL
T here is a line from a record of inner experience: “Slow, slow are my
steps, oft times I halt by the way, and oft turn back: be not weary, 0
Lord, of waiting for one who follows Thee not with equal step.” It is
the cry of a man (Luis de Granada) who advanced far toward his goal—and a
cry which must awaken a response in the heart of anyone who, striving for an
ideal, finds himself continually faced by the disheartening discrepancy between
his vision and his attainment, continually impeded by his own inherent charac¬
teristics, the thing he has made of himself in the past. How did such a man as
this Spaniard meet the common but seemingly insurmountable difficulty, and
achieve his end ?
Recent newspapers and journals have made frequent reference to chlorophyll,
the green material of plants, and the years of work which certain noted chemists
have devoted to its study. Its close relation to the red colouring matter of the
blood has been commented on, with the supposition that the latter was derived
from this plant element, ages ago. Because of its power to act chemically on
certain other elements, converting them into food, reserve food, and structural
materials, the suggestion is made that it is life’s greatest organic chemical, “for
it has made possible life, as we know it, on this earth”. The correspondence
involved between fundamental processes in plant chemistry and animal chemis¬
try, suggests a chemistry of a higher kind, with various familiar instances of one
element converting another: the effect of one person’s determined optimism
upon a group of people enveloped in gloom; the effect of a single quiet will upon
a crowd in a panic—all the evidences which we meet daily of a human chemistry
above that of mere animal existence. Presumably there is a “chemistry” of
each of the higher planes, including that of the spirit. What is the element here,
corresponding to the chlorophyll of plants, which catalyzes associated elements
into a higher life-substance? As if in answer, there is the statement from the
book already mentioned:
The will is the unitive faculty. . . . Through the work of the will the soul iss
itself, passes to the object of its love, and, leaving its own being, takes that of the
. . . Since love draws the will after it, and she, being mistress of the other faculties,
draws them with her likewise, it follows that the beloved becomes lord over the lover,
and the lover is transformed into the beloved {Pedro Maldn de Chaide).
These two Spaniards, and a number of others quoted in the several volumes
on Spanish mysticism by E. Allison Peers, lived in an age more intent than ours
on the things of spirit, and more clearly aware than are most men to-day of where
to search for that which “has made possible life on this earth”. To many
Quarterly readers they are long familiar, but in that case they may come now,
it is hoped, as old and welcome friends. Great in love of the ideal, and great in
their attainment of it, the experience of these men is of value to all who are
143
144
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
striving toward an ideal,—and who is not striving toward some ideal, except
those who, like Lot’s wife, have looked back and become fixed in a perpetual
adolescence?
To the fact that love is the transforming agent, and the secret of real achieve¬
ment, real life, they bear abundant testimony. “By love’’, writes one (Francisco
de Osuna), “we are drawn out from ourselves and placed within that which we
love: love enters the most secret place of all, while knowledge remains without
among the creatures.’’
So great and so rare is the power of love, that I must needs be even as is the object
of my love, and according to that at which I arrive by love. There is nought that joins
or adheres in as lasting a fashion as love, which joins and unites us with the Beloved in
such a way as to transform the lover into the object of his love. Love is nought but a
mutual and unitive virtue. . . . Since the property of love is to absorb, convert and
transform the lover into the Beloved, or into the thing loved, if the will love chiefly
things of the earth, it becomes as earth; earthly it becomes and earthly is its love; and
if it love mortal things, mortal and human is its will; if it love angels, it becomes angelic;
if it love Thee, our Lord and God, it becomes divine’’ {Diego de Estella).
These last lines, with their reference to the varying forms which the ideal may
and does take, call to mind the fact that not everyone, as yet, is striving for the
angelic or the divine. That need not turn us aside, however, from the experience
of those who are. Their ideal may not be the same as otu-s, their terminology,
with (in this instance) its mediaeval Christian flavour, may be foreign and un¬
congenial to us. Yet whatever the ideal, in the preliminary stages the method
of attainment is the same. It may jar on our love of comfort to have discipline
emphasized, or to hear that the first requisite is complete resignation to the
will of God, and an “emptying out of self’’,—yet we have each experienced on
our own lower plane, the counterpart of that. Who has ever made any real
achievement, without first accepting completely the laws of the condition he
aimed to achieve, and throwing aside at least momentarily everything in himself
which went counter to them? To translate into familiar terms, or into a form
applicable to our own present stage, is a matter of no great difficulty. And if we
seek points of likeness first, we shall almost certainly progress, step by step, to
ease in extracting the kernel from even the least inviting outer shell. Further¬
more, the universal testimony is that as we attain to one ideal, we glimpse a
higher one beyond, little by little realizing that there is in fact but one Ideal,
of which our present vision is a small facet, and that, Buddhist or Christian or
Mohammedan though the source may be, and whether the highest Good be seen
as God, or the Master, or the Beloved,—the Master Soul is indeed one.
Three degrees of love are recognized by these Spanish mystics. The first is
our love for our own selves; the second, love of the Ideal for ourselves; the third,
love of all things, for the Ideal alone. To the possible objection that we are not
capable of such an ascent, they reply:
If thou saidst thou couldst not fast, nor take the discipline, nor wear rough clothing,
nor labour, nor journey, we could believe thee; but if thou sayest that thou canst not love,
we believe thee not {Francisco de Osuna).
LIFE’S GREATEST CHEMICAL
145
And Diego de Estella,
All can love Thee, Lord, learned and ignorant, rich and poor, small and great, young
and old, men and women. To every estate and every age love is common. None is too
weak, none too poor, and none too old to love.
And then, with a touch of humour, he adds: “Many are in Heaven who, for
lack of ability, never fasted, gave alms or went for pilgrimages, but none is
there who has not loved God. . . . Love is ready for all: in every place, at every
time and in every season canst thou love.’’
Others see that not only can we love, but it is the nature of our being, which
all too often we constantly deny:
God is as it were the centre of love, and to Him the weight of this same love draws
every creature. So greatly is He to be loved that all creatures, both sensible and in¬
sensible, love Him in their several ways. . . . What is gravity in a stone, but love for the
centre? What is lightness in fire, but love for the heavens? That which all things desire
is called Sovereign Good, and thus the natural desire which is in them may in some sort
be called love, although, as we said before, insensible Nature, because of its imperfections,
cannot reach, as man and the angels can, that incommutable good, which is God {Juan
de los Angeles).
This suggests the essential difference between the low ideals with which we so
often dally, and an ideal which is real, an aspect of the Ideal, —namely, the draw¬
ing power which the latter exerts. So long as we look for our ideal in external
things, or in our self and the ambitions of its plane, we spend ourselves, exhaust
our energies, give our life force with no replenishing return current from that
on which we spend. When, pushed onward by life itself, we progress sufficiently
to seek our ideal by turning within (inward or upward), we soon begin to sense a
response “from the other side’’. At first it may be no more consciously felt than
is the power of gravitation. But little by little we become aware of it as an actual
response to our appeal, and finally it becomes infinitely more than that.
Pain and suffering are the means which life uses to bring us to the poinL^
this awareness. This is, of course, the reason many of the mystics sought
fering as they did, finding in it, wffien accepted and used, the surest way to
obliterate the impediments in their own natures, and to heighten their awareness
of that response, that invitation, that tremendous drawing power from the other
side of the veil. Until we have some realization of this from our own actual
experience, we can have little more than a mental comprehension of such an
attitude as that in The Dark Night of the Soul, when the soul, failing to find the
Beloved, goes out “into the streets and the broad ways, asking all she meets if
they have seen Him whom her soul loveth. And the answ^er she receives is: ‘Thou
shalt find Him, not in speech but in anguish; not in words but in wounds.’ ”
Or, from another wTiter:
And if, 0 my soul, thou dost say that among all the pains and sorrows of this life thou
canst not for sorrow rise to the love of thy God, consider that these trials are blows of
the steel that God gives to strike from the hard flint of thy heart sparks of fire and love,
and that He afflicts thee that thou mayest love Him. For the most merciful Lord sees
that thy heart is not softened by favours, and He wearies thee therefore with trials,
146
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
that so thou mayest rise to Him through love, and, loving Him thus, acquire new honour
and a new being, when thou art transformed through love into God (Dxego de Estella).
The same thought is found, though less directly expressed, in a letter from
Juan de Avila to a girl who was suffering from an illness:
Rest not until you have found suffering sweet, for herein appears love. Have no pity
upon yourself, for both in Heaven and on earth you have One Who loves you dearly,
and that which comes to you has been closely scanned and sent from the very hand of
Him Who most truly loves you. Let not your faith grow cold in need and danger, nor
your love amid trials. When a fire is strong the wind cannot quench it, but rather makes
it stronger. So when a soul loves God as it were in play, its fire of love is quenched like
a tiny candle with the first breath of wind that reaches it. But true love grows amid
trials, for the more there comes to be borne, the greater the strength it gathers together
to bear it; and if it be of God it conquers all trials—no water is sufficient to quench the
fire which has come from Heaven. God has called such a soul to love Him, and love is
not a thing for a mere pastime: one must hate oneself to love Christ, and deny oneself
to confess Him, and be cruel to oneself to be gentle and meek with the Lord. If we love
Him and desire to have fruition of Him, let us lose ourselves. If we would see Him, we
must go through fire and water for Him. If we would make room for Him in our hearts
we must cast out our very selves and all created things. . . . With burning acid gold is
refined, and when the dross is removed it comes from the crucible refulgent.
This last passage emphasizes a point which has, of course, been implicit in
all that preceded it—the fact that love as it is ordinarily (popularly) thought
of is but a psychic reflection, a travesty often, of the love here referred to. These
writers explain that it is not a love springing from the senses and affections of
which they speak, nor is it a matter of strong feeling or any kindred emotion;
nor can the understanding have any part in it—it is above them all. “Only the
will can greatly love”, wrote Pedro de Alcdntara; and Juan de Avila shows
further that the form of will which is operative is higher than the ordinary:
The profit of the soul consists rather in a man’s denying his own will, and doing with
a good courage that which he feels to be pleasing to the Lord, than in tenderness of
heart and sweetness of devotion. For in the former is revealed the true love which a
man has toward God, wherein consists the perfection of Christianity, whereas in the
latter may be concealed love of self, which befouls all things.
It is a love centred in one thing alone. “Live in this world as though there
were in it but God and thy soul”, and either discard all else or use it only as a
means of approach to the thing loved,—remembering that “there is no creature,
however small, that points not the way to God”. The first attitude, that of
turning away from outer things, finds quaint expression in a few lines, again from
Diego de Estella:
Tell me then, O my soul,—answer me, 0 miserable one,—and declare to me the reason
why thou goest so gladly among the creatures, with such hunger and thirst for them,
and so greatly to thy ^lishonour.? Why goest thou begging from them a poor drop of
troubled water, so flat and brackish to the taste, which rather inflames than quenches
thy thirst, forsaking the pure, delectable and eternal fountain of all blessings, in which
alone thou couldst quench all thy thirst and satisfy all thy desire and thy will.?
The second attitude, that of seeking the divine within and behind the outer
LIFE’S GREATEST CHEMICAL
147
form, is found in a dialogue in one of the books of Juan de los Angeles, where
the Disciple, having been told to meditate “on a newt or an ant or a violet or the
tiny fish or reptiles of sea and land”, complains that this is inconsistent with
the requirement that he turn away from creatures and seek the Creator. He is
told that the difficulty is real and rises opportunely—
Not only are we impeded in thinking upon God if we occupy ourselves with creatures,
but I will even say that all the ills that are in the world have entered it because men have
turned from enquiry concerning the Sovereign and Everlasting Good to that of outward
and external things. . . . but through the creatures we should make search and enquiry
concerning the Creator. ... I use the creatures as instruments and means whereby we
may find God. Wfiat thing is there, how small soever and vile, that shows not forth the
infinite power of God, his wisdom and his goodness? Perplex not thyself either little or
much concerning the bodily form of creatures. . . . but pass immediately to contemplate
the presence of the Lord, Who gives to the thing that thou seest its being; and if thou
dost feel His presence, extend thy thought and consider the omnipotence in that which
is shown thee therein; and then consider more intimately the love which therein and in
all the creatures God has and manifests to us.
The same writer, elsewhere, makes clear the danger of self-deception, which
obviously is a lurking enemy at this point as at most other points along the path:
Thou wilt find some that say mysteriously, as though none should understand them,
that music is a heavenly thing and uplifts the spirit; and that, when they hear it, they
experience (so it seems to them) feelings most spiritual. But the truth is that ail this is
no more than sensuality, wherein they feel this manner of joy, devotion and pleasure.
And this is clear and evident, because the same effects are caused in those that know not
what is meant by “spirit”, nor have aught to do therewith. Quite other are the effects
of music upon true contemplatives, who, when they hear the music of the organ or of
other instruments, put from them the pleasure, outward and physical, which is caused
by the sounds, and pass to the contemplation of interior matters, and to the spirituality
which corresponds with the harmonic accords which strike the ear.
There is one instance of this right use of outer forms which brings us un¬
expectedly near to a holy of holies. An old man “who had practised these things
for more than fifty years”, said that many times he had listened “to sermons
things of God” without understanding a word of them: “so hushed and so
was his innermost understanding that nothing which was of creatures could
take shape within it.” He was told that he ought at such times to withdraw
into retirement. To this he replied that “voices were to him as the sound of
organs, in which the soul took delight even though it understood them not: he
praised the Lord as it were in a counterpoint upon them in a way that could be
felt, although he could not make another to understand it.”
This latter passage suggests the records of inner states—prayer, meditation,
spiritual recollection, contemplation, and finally (though beyond ordinary com¬
prehension) ecstacy—which certain of the mystics have left. The boundless
generosity of their accounts is incredible—describing and analysing for other, and
all too often unsympathetic eyes, their innermost experience. They could
scarcely have failed to see the risk of profanation by the unworthy. Yet they
gave with open hands, for those who were capable of an understanding response
148
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Christina Rosetti must have had them in mind when she wrote, “0 ye who taste
that love is sweet, set waymarks for all searching feet.” One thing their records
make apparent: that persons who have no acquaintance with prayer and medi¬
tation, who through some prejudice perhaps, are turned from it, are like a man
living in a dark cellar of his home, the deserted upper floors of which contain
treasures of unrealized beauty. Prayer is all too often misunderstood, because
regarded as a mere repetition of words. This type of prayer, mental or vocal,
the mystics recognize as right at one stage and in its proper place—a begging of
the Lord for alms, one terms it. But they refer, for the most part, to a vastly
different thing:
Prayer is an uplifting of our hearts to God, whereby we become united and made one
with Him. To pray is for the soul to rise above itself, and above all created things, and
to be joined with God, and engulfed in that ocean of infinite sweetness and love. Prayer
is the issuing of the soul to receive God, when He comes in His abundant grace, and the
soul draws Him to itself as to His kingdom, giving Him a dwelling-place within itself
as it were within a temple, and therein possessing, loving and having fruition of Him.
Prayer is the standing of the soul in the presence of God, and of God in the presence of
the soul. ... a royal door whereby we may enter into the heart of God {Luis de Granada).
Let a man imprison himself within his own self, in the centre of his soul, wherein is
the image of God, and there let him wait upon Him, as one listens to another speaking
from some high tower, or as though he had Him within his heart, and as if in all creation
there were no other thing save God and his soul. Even himself should he forget, and
that which he is doing, for . . . ‘‘that prayer is perfect in which he who is praying, remem¬
bers not that he is praying!” {Pedro de Alcdntara).
Juan Falconi gives three suggestions, simple in appearance, but profound in
application:
The best way to ask, and to pray, is to resign oneself into the will of God. By resig¬
nation of itself the soul walks all day long in prayer and in the presence of God.... Thou
hast no need to keep repeating that thou surrenderest thyself to Him. ... Be still, for
thou art loving Him.
Juan de Avila adds: ‘‘He who has never tasted of God knows neither what
it is to hunger, nor yet to be filled”; and from another, writing on recollection
of the soul, comes that most inviting of definitions: “It is a garden enclosed on
all sides, whose key is given to God alone, that He may enter whensoever He
will.” ’
That these higher states are not within the reach of everyone, need hardly
be said. One finds occasional reminder of the fact, as in the following admonition
from Thomas of Villanueva:
Wherefore, if thou seest that thy soul and spirit are not apt for ascending the mount
of contemplation, do thou exercise thyself in the valley below. There thou mayest remain,
and walk in the active life, which is good likewise, though it is of little value without the
other. Exercise then thyself in contemplation as best thou mayest, though it be but
little, for without this thy achievement would be small, nor couldst thou exercise thyself
in the active life. Contemplation will help thee, and give thee wings that thou mayest
exercise thyself in the active life. . . . But labour thou in this if thou canst not achieve
that, for many would-be contemplatives neither attain to the contemplative life nor are
content with the active life, and remain without either.
LIFE’S GREATEST CHEMICAL
149
Such advice was, doubtless, widely needed in view of the large numbers during
the Middle Ages who turned, for varying reasons, to the monastic life. There is
the well known eastern saying that the Buddha entered Nirvana on the shoulders
of a million men, and this naturally comes to mind in explanation, as it were, of
the achievement of such lofty souls as Saint Teresa or Saint John of the Cross.
An army of monks and nuns, centuries of aspiration, made it possible for the
comparatively few (though the marvel is that there were so many) to reach
the point where the soul,—
is made one spirit in God, by God and with God. While not ceasing to be a soul, it is so
completely infused in God, so entirely transformed in Him, so like to God in the one will
which is between them, in the which willing the two things are one only,—a will en¬
amoured, converted, submerged, engulfed and transformed in the most finely refined
love, wherein the soul is absorbed and made one with the love which transformed it into
itself {Bernardino de Laredo),
These mystics of the Christian Church—^not merely the group in Spain here
quoted, but those of all nations, down through the centuries—were the pioneers
of the Western world in following the trail which the Western Avatar had blazed,
and penetrating the realms to which he leads. And the striking feature of their
achievement is that they did it alone and unaided outwardly, with no knowledge
of the human “principles” except the Biblical division into body, soul and spirit,
no knowledge of the action of Buddhi and Manas, and with the rationale of the
development of higher faculties largely a matter of experiment. Such outer
guidance as they had from superiors and directors, was as often as not a hin¬
drance, as they themselves in some cases discovered and later testified. In the
fullest sense, they learned to stand alone, to advance unaided, and to find the
light in the depths of their own hearts. One of their number writes of a “hidden
theology” which he does not presume to teach, and which no mortal has ever
taught: “Christ has kept for Himself the office of teaching it secretly to the
hearts in which it dwells.” They are the exemplification of the promise made
by the Master Christ that if ye live the life ye shall know the doctrine. Their
discovery had become known to the East millenniums before, and there it had
been developed and amplified, with a fulness and completeness of detail, qa
comprehension of the rationale, and a breadth and depth of understanding whicj
could result only from long centuries of living it and “intending” upon it. And
this Wisdom Religion it was, which in part was disclosed to the Western world
in 1875, in the custody of The Theosophical Society. One can only speculate,
of course, but there seems room for doubt whether that disclosure would have
been—could have been—made, if the mystics had not prepared the way, if the
West, in their attainment, had not already worked out for itself, and made an
inalienable part of its own consciousness, however deeply overlaid, this great
truth in spiritual chemistry, this divine alchemy—the knowledge with certainty
that Wisdom, on the wings of Love, can lift mankind to a life beyond life.
J.C.
A THEOSOPHICAL CALL
HERE is an age-old truth: on what the mind dwells, that it becomes.
In the light of this truth, it should be interesting to consider, briefly,
certain present-day conditions, and to give a theosophical answer to
man in the plight in which he finds himself. Yet it is more than an answer that
Theosophy gives; it is a call, a challenge to man to cease being a creature of
little worth, a compromiser, a bargainer, and to become a creature of moral
worth. Man must become moral before he can become divine.
One way of expressing the purpose of Theosophy is that it is to hold before
man the Ideal of his potential divinity, that he may be brought to intend his
mind on that Ideal, be drawn to it, aspire toward it, and eventually fulfil it,
though the ordinary course which man pursues is exactly the opposite of the one
which will lead to the eventual embodiment of his divinity. Recurrently, man
becomes submerged in debts of his own making, both financial and moral.
Seeking a way out, almost invariably he lowers his standards to meet his needs;
demonetizes his standards of value. Evidence that such a method is not the
real way out, lies in the fact that again man is submerged in debts of his own
making, and, again, seeks the easy, or the apparently easy way out.
Often it is possible to understand more intelligently what is taking place in
the present if an analogue is found in the past. Let us see, then, what happened
once before when man lowered his standards of value and began to live ignobly
instead of nobly; and let us notice, too, in this example from the past, what it
was that led man out of the chaos in which he had submerged himself. By
taking a long backward look it is possible to view present conditions with more
detachment, more dispassionately, and, therefore, with calmer, clearer vision.
Let us turn to the well-known, but significant, example offered by ancient
Rome.
The State of Rome, which eventually conquered half the world and, in doing
so, became the channel through which there has come down to us the splendour
of more ancient civilizations, and the message of the Western Master, was
founded on the quality of virtus. Had not her citizens possessed, individually,
the quality of virtus, the glory of Rome probably never would have existed;
the past of Egypt and of Greece might have fallen into oblivion, and Christianity
might early have perished as a Jewish heresy.
What was, in reality, the virtus of the Roman citizen ? Loosely, the word is
often translated as virtue. To the Roman it meant far more than what we
to-day connote by that word. Virtus is derived from vir, meaning man; and
when the tus was added, the abstract noun thus formed, virtus, meant manhood,
the quality of being a man—a quality sorely lacking in the world to-day. To
those Romans of an early day, virtus was the primal virtue. It meant first and
foremost the physical courage that belongs to real manhood: the courage to
A THEOSOPHICAL CALL
4^e(ey, C'
face hardship and danger. Later it grew to mean moral courage: the cou
to do one’s duty at any cost. It was on this quality of virtus, of the manhood
or moral worth of her individual citizens, that the Roman State was founded
and flourished. While the Roman citizen remained a creature of moral worth,
aware of his responsibility to the State and acting it out, Rome prospered as a
moral entity in the world.
But when those standards were lowered, as they were in later centuries, when
the individual citizen was no longer a creature of moral worth who fulfilled his
moral responsibility to the State, the State, as a moral entity, deteriorated in
precise ratio. Her grandeur diminished as the individual citizen allowed lust of
wealth and personal power to replace his love of honour and duty. In few of her
citizens did her early ideal remain potent, with the result that in the first century
B.c. we can find in Rome certain conditions which parallel those of to-day. One
or two instances will be sufficient to indicate the parallelism.
The Mediterranean Sea was infested by pirates. Roman trade was at a stand¬
still. Imports such as grain from Egypt, necessary to sustain life, were cut off
and, in consequence, food prices rose exorbitantly at Rome. Roman merchants
scarcely dared to send their exports forth in the regular course of trade, for their
ships were captured and the cargoes confiscated. Travellers as well as crews were
seized and held for ransom, or were sold into slavery. So bold did those pirates
become that they sailed right up to the shores and kidnapped Roman citizens.
Is there any essential difference between racketeers who ply their trade at
sea and those who levy their impost in great cities? Any difference between
kidnappers who deport their victims in ships and those who carry them off in
automobiles?
Consider, too, the Roman agricultural situation. Small independent farms,
the land tilled by those who owned them and by a few farm labourers, were
passing out of existence. Men who had become suddenly rich, often through
corrupt practices, bought up the small farms and incorporated them into large
estates. Many such parcels became the property of one proprietor, the land no
longer worked by a free and stalwart citizenry, but by retinues of virtual slaves.
The small farmers, thus dispossessed, and the former farm labourers, flocked to
Rome, where, their number augmented by ex-soldiers, they formed themselves
into a great 61 ass of unemployed, sustained by free com, and for whose amuse^
ment gladiatorial games were staged, either by certain of the new rich,
politicians who thus sought to control them for their own political ends. In
the circumstances, it was not long before these ex-soldiers and these former
stalwart citizens fell into the lax habits of professional loafers, and found it more
convenient to remain idlers than to stand squarely on their own two feet and earn
an honest living.
What essential difference is there between men who sell themselves for ex¬
cursions and picnics, and those whose support could be had for a gladiatorial
game? Between the English dole and the disguised American dole, and the
subsidy of free com ?
With such elements of disintegration present in the first century b.c. of Rome’s
152
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
life, only one consequence would be supposed: the collapse of the State as a
moral influence in the world. That such a catastrophe did not occur at the time
is due, largely, to three men, Crassus, Pompey and Julius Caesar, who pooled
their powers, so to speak, for the sake of the Roman State, who put aside, for
the time, their own separate interests for the good of the whole. Their motives
may not have been unmixed, their purposes may not have been entirely altru¬
istic. They may not have been saints, but they were men with the courage to
carry out their convictions. They appreciated that the virtus, the manhood,
the moral worth of her citizens had to be resuscitated, had to be revived, if the
moral worth of the State, itself, were to be resuscitated, revived. Consequently,
there was held before the people the ideal on which their State had been founded
and had prospered, that once more they might intend their minds on it, and that
a sufficient number of them might be brought to acknowledge, and to act out,
their moral responsibility to the State.
Each of the Triumvirate had a distinct contribution to make. Crassus, the
moneyed man of the three, supplied the necessary funds. Pompey had rid the
sea of pirates. Also, he had led the Roman forces to the East, had conquered
and consolidated much territory, such as Syria and Palestine, which he made
an integral part of the State. Pompey supplied the prestige. Caesar, who was
the youngest and, at the time, the least known of the three, supplied the brains.
It was he who led the Roman forces to the West, into Gaul and elsewhere, and
who conquered and brought that territory under Roman dominion. When he
met his untimely death, he was virtual dictator of Rome. All the fabric of an
Empire had been woven, so that Augustus Caesar, who succeeded, became ruler
of the Great Roman Empire.
True, the existence of the First Triumvirate, as it is called, was comparatively
short, as its members failed to continue in agreement. True, the Roman Empire
had its ups and downs, and, finally, fell. The point is, however, that because,
for a time, the quality of virtus was revived in a sufficient number of her citizens,
the State, in which were present the elements of decay, lasted for some five
centuries, and the field for the propagation of the Christian Master’s teaching was
prepared.
Now to turn more specifically to Theosophy’s call to man, to the challenge it
holds before him in his present plight. Mr. Judge said, “Thoughts are things”.
It is with his thoughts that man creates the atmosphere in which he lives, very
much as he covers the walls of his room with pictures. For centuries he has
hung pictures of a low order there: pictures of greed, selfishness, self-gratification
and the like. He has intended his mind, in the main, on a low order of things.
Theosophy, holding before man the Ideal of his eventual divinity, bids him
replace these pictures, one by one, with those of a high order, of noble standards.
Theosophy offers no easy way, no short-cut out of man’s difficulties. Theosophy
offers the long way, the rugged way, but the sure way. It is the way the Masters
went. It is the way all warriors have trod, and will tread. It is the way of the
soul.
Implicit in manhood is the quality of choice, and Theosophy bids man choose
A THEOSOPHICAL CALL
153
aright. He must, as said, replace methodically the pictures of a low order which
he, himself, has hung; for a picture of greed, a picture depicting self-sacrifice, let
us say; for selfishness, one of unselfishness, and so on imtil the replacement is
complete. There will be times during the process that some picture of a low
order will come vividly to mind, as if to say, “Why all this struggle? What is
the use of it all? You know that I point to the easy way. You have followed
me many times in the past; follow me again.” At such times man must fix his
attention rigidly on some picture of a high order of things, a picture of moral
worth at least; let us say on that of a knight whose entire record was one of
loyalty to his king and to his ideal.
Theosophy, then, bids man profit by his errors of the past, errors which, often,
led him to compromise with difficulty by lowering his standards to meet im¬
mediate needs, instead of raising his standards to surmount the difficulty. There¬
fore, Theosophy calls to man, challenges him, to start from where he is and
with what he has made himself, a creature of little worth, and by his own sincere,
consistent, indomitable efforts to become a creature of moral worth. When this
has been done, in a measure at least, it bids him direct his attention more specifi¬
cally toward attaining divine worth. That may be years, perhaps incarnations,
hence; but with his mind thus intended on his potential divinity, and with the
help that is his from above. Theosophy will bid him gradually raise that which is
of moral worth, imtil it comes into contact with the element of divine worth
within him; until, in short, he comes into union with the divine order of things,
instead of remaining in disunion, as he has been and now is.
While the individual citizen fulfilled his moral responsibility to the State, Rome
remained a moral entity in the world and, as such, prospered. In order that the
call Theosophy makes to man, the challenge it holds before him, may be met,
it is the responsibility of each member of the Society to serve the Ideal to the
best of his ability, and in his degree; to serve it courageously, with fortitude,
with self-sacrifice, with humility, with love, so that it may continue a living,
breathing Reality in a world that sorely needs it, even though the world, ap¬
parently, seems unaware of its need at the moment.
G.M.W.K.
- #
Fot as often as any new thing falleth to a man, be it of ptosperity or adversity, he
should think in himself thus' Of this will I win somewhat,—for he that can do so
shall soon be rich in virtue .— Catherine of Siena.
#
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
T he Recorder, having caught the Historian, the Philosopher and other
friends collectively, announced that a plan had been suggested to him,
but that this plan would require some preliminary explanation.
“Let me remind you”, he said, “of a rather widespread belief at the present
time that a sort of Messiah will come, and come soon, to lead the world out of its
miseries. For the most part, those who share this belief would be regarded as
cranks,—and often are cranks, in the sense that, imbued with an idea which
contains elements of truth, they are unable to discriminate between proximate
and remote, big and little, cosmic and local. Further, all these enthusiasts—
Second Adventists, Irvingites, Spiritualists, Bible Prophecy and Great Pyramid
Interpreters, among them—all translate the idea in ways which accord with
their dominant preconception. There are some, inevitably, who make the sub¬
ject ridiculous. A former member of the T.S., who became one of Judge’s
bitterest accusers (Judge had not approved of him), and who, since that time,
has withered into a professional astrologer, tries to keep up with the procession
by mixing the Book of Daniel, Great Pyramid measurements. Eclipses, the
Zodiac, and Planetary influences, as foundation for prophecies of great events.
Writing and publishing prior to the event (a grave mistake!), he declared: Tn
the year 1932, following the Judgment of the Nations, the Prince of Peace will
appear as the Rider upon the White Horse, having upon His Head a Crown and
in His Hands the Bow of prophecy and the Arrows of truth—all-conquering.
He will rule the nations and execute judgment from afar.’ All I can say is that
the year 1932 did not feel like it! However, very few people, I imagine, keep
track of modem prophets, while, to be fair, the ‘prophet’ I have quoted is in no
way typical. There are men of the highest integrity who watch and pray for
the Coming of the Lord, and who do not make money out of it. In China,
India, and throughout the East, there are rumours of a ‘Coming’, near at hand,
which is to be an outstanding event in history.
“Students of Theosophy have no reason to believe that a Messiah, an Avatar
(an incarnation of the Oversoul), will come soon, although, of course, all things
are possible. In the BhQ^civcul GttQ, Krishna tells Arjuna: ‘I produce myself
among creatures, 0 son of Bharata, whenever there is a decline of virtue and an
insurrection of vice and injustice in the world; and thus I incarnate from age
to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the
establishment of righteousness.’
“Even so, why assume that the present is such a time? On the other hand,
H.P.B. said, and history confirms it, that during the last quarter of every
century the Lodge sends among men a Messenger (of far lesser degree than an
Avatar), in an effort to revive some knowledge of the Ancient Wisdom; and
we know, further, from a study of history, that the Lodge occasionally sends a
154
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
155
‘forerunner', in advance of the Messenger, to explore and prepare the way. We
see such a ‘forerunner’, in the eighteenth century, in the person of Saint-Germain,
—whose mission, by the way, was not completed. Is he, by any chance, as some
allege, living to-day in one of the old palaces along the Grand Canal in Venice,
waiting to resiune his task?
“In any event, while, in the past, the Lodge Messenger has begvm his work in
the world at the beginning of the last quarter of every century (the T.S. was
founded in 1875), continued existence, so far into the twentieth century, of
the nineteenth century effort—the effort of H.P.B. and Judge—has, we believe,
affected the ordinary cyclic rhythm, bringing the next ‘arrival’ that much nearer
as a possibility, though not as a certainty,—bringing it nearer inwardly, though
not of necessity outwardly. You will remember what was said about this at
our last Convention.
“Students of Theosophy naturally are interested in this possibility; naturally
wish to see and know those to whom the future of the Work will be entrusted.
But just what have we in mind as the effect of any such ‘arrival’? A most
interesting question! So much so, that the editors of the Quarterly were
requested to sound some of our members by asking for written replies under
these three heads: ‘What do you think a Lodge forerunner or Messenger could
do, (i) for you; (2) for the T.S.; (3) for the world,—and how?’ Non-members
should be interested also, for there are many outside our ranks who have longed
for the appearance of some man, wiser, stronger, nobler than even the best of
the world’s statesmen or religious leaders, who would be able to persuade or
force humanity into ways of righteousness and peace. And yet,—and yet:
what could the wisest, noblest, best, what could the most forceful and the most
inspired among men, actually accomplish at this time,—and how?
“First, should we be able to recognize him as a true leader, or, just because he
was superior and in that sense different, should we denounce him as an interloper
and charlatan? Judging by the past, most people would want to hang him from
the nearest lamp-post. However, if you will allow me to read some of these
written answers, perhaps you will be good enough, later, to comment ui^
them.” 4 ^
Whereupon the Recorder began reading as follows:
“ ‘(i) I believe that a forerunner or Messenger could make straight for me
the highway to liberation and enlightenment, provided that I did all that is
possible to increase my desire and determination to realize these ends. It seems
to me that he could multiply the possibilities of attaining ch^laship; that his
embodied presence near at hand would place at one’s disposal a new reserve of
spiritual energy; that it would make more concrete the ideal of the Soul and
would be a stimulus to ever greater effort. But there would be an added responsi¬
bility for every individual. He could not make us ch^las by force or by decree.
Those who failed to respond to his presence would sink back to a lower condition
than before.
“ ‘(2) The same principles would be applicable to his relationship with the
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
156
T.S. Its members would benefit according to the sincerity and intensity of their
response. Certainly his appearance would ease the burden now wholly borne by
a very small group of veterans, and it would increase the effectiveness of the
Society as a nucleus of spiritual consciousness in the world. It would provide a
certain assurance that this nucleus will not disappear from manifestation when
the older members die. But the Messenger, if left altogether alone at the helm,
might be forced to seek helpers elsewhere, outside the T.S. What I mean to say
is that he could not help or even preserve the T.S., if its membership remained
cold and indifferent to his appeal.
“ ‘(3) One wonders what he could do for the world. It would seem that the
great mass of mankind desires a Messenger from on high less than it desires any¬
thing else under the sun. How few even dream of his coming! People want
success or comfort or money in the bank, some satisfaction of egotism, some
opportunity for self-indulgence. The materialistic conception of Nature is so
prevalent that even those who have the best intentions are almost devoid of
belief in the reality of spiritual agencies.
“ Tf it were the Messenger’s mission to work actively in the world, it would
seem that his first task would be to clear away some of the debris of the century;
that he would appear as Siva, the Destroyer who is also the Regenerator. There
are so many false ideas, false hopes and desires, false modes of life, which have
drawn into themselves and imprisoned energies which cannot be available for
the building of a new civilization unless they be released through the destruction
of their present vehicles.
“ ‘It is conceivable, however, that the Messenger would not attempt such a
prodigious undertaking at this time. The process of annihilating illusions on a
world-wide scale might be left for the present to the general action of Nature
and Karma. In so far as my ideas upon this subject are at all clear, I imagine
that the Messenger would seek above all to strengthen the elements of spiritual
consciousness wherever these are present in the world. By living the truth
himself, he could awaken a true life in others who were not too deeply buried
beneath an avalanche of delusions.
“ ‘Is not this the function of the T.S., to keep alive a nucleus of spiritual con¬
sciousness which a forerunner or Messenger from the Lodge could use? And is
it not the privilege of each individual member to do his utmost through his own
efforts to keep the fire burning in his particular comer? In the last analysis,
everything depends upon the efforts of individuals.’
“The next’’, the Recorder continued, “strikes a slightly different note:
“ ‘(i) Ever since the possible coming of a Lodge foremnner was spoken of
some five years ago, I have been asking myself what he could do that the “An¬
cients’’, the older members of The Theosophical Society, could not do if we made
it possible. My own need, I feel, is to “gain the strength to receive’’. All the
spiritual help, guidance, knowledge and wisdom that I need for my advance,
and far more, is available. The trouble is with my own effort, which falls so far
below what it ought to be. In consequence, I do not take advantage of my
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
157
opportunity, and do not succeed in taking what is offered. The lack is in the
effective demand, not in the supply.
“ ‘(2) I think that the same thing is true of the T.S. as a whole. Perhaps a
Lodge forerunner or Messenger would bring with him enough of the atmosphere
and inspiration of the Lodge to give us the strength, desire, determination and
love needed to maintain our effort at its maximum, thereby making us grow,
and thus making it possible for us to be given constantly more and more. Con¬
tact with the “Ancients” brings something of this inspiration. Sometimes a
reminder from home will arouse an irresistible longing in the heart of an exile.
Perhaps a touch from a Lodge forerunner would arouse the passionate love of
our home, and the things of our home, which we have, buried in our hearts, but
which we have failed to arouse for ourselves,—a love that would take us on wings
to our goal.
“ ‘As I see it, however, the chief reason for desiring with all that is in us, the
coming of a forerunner, is that he may be recognized by those who have the power
to do so, while they are still with us. Then, when they have to go on, he can
direct the Work and us, so that the Work can be continued in all its branches;
and we can continue to serve, our efforts wisely directed and we saved from doing,
by our stupidity and ignorance, more harm than good. His coming would con¬
tinue our connection with the Lodge, and the incalculable benefits that flow from
it, to us and to the world. Another potent reason for ardently desiring his coming
is that it would take something of the heavy strain from the older members of
the T.S.
“ ‘(3) It seems presumptuous to try to answer this question, but this is the
way the need of the world appears to me:
“ ‘First. Before a man, or the world, can receive new truth, he must have
ceased to be entirely satisfied with the ideas that he has, and must desire some¬
thing better. In the last century, H.P.B. had to devote much effort to breaking
rigid, dogmatic moulds of thought before new ideas could be grasped. To-day,
the moulds are breaking. Men do not know what to believe, and few views are
firmly held. There is questioning and discontent with current ideas on every side.
Religious dogmas have been greatly weakened or destroyed; democracy is no
longer the fetish that it was; there is discontent with modem education; an^
science is destroying the foundations of its own materialism. This process is
going on, but it is certainly far from complete, and it would seem that more
preparation is needed before the minds of men will be ready for a new message
from the Lodge. *
“ ‘Second. The great need of the world is to regain belief in spiritual as
opposed to material values. To bring this about, there must be belief in the
Spirit, in man’s spiritual nature, in Divine guidance and a Di\ 4 ne purpose for
man. The first step would seem to be to demonstrate that there is intelligent
guidance in the universe, and I would make my attack there. I believe that
science has reached, or very soon will reach, the point where, by the skilful
assembling and use of science’s own material, a Lodge Messenger could prove,
in a way that would carry conviction to the world, that there must be such guid-
158
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
ance. It is a short step from that to belief in Divine guidance of human affairs
and a Divine purpose for man. These beliefs, properly directed as a Lodge
Messenger could direct them, would transform the Western world. They would
make possible the restoration of faith and of true religion, and the realization
that the purpose of life is the evolution of the soul, the development of character.
A most important step would be the reform of education, so that life and all
subjects taught would be approached from a spiritual and not, as at present, a
materialistic standpoint. Untold harm is done by present methods. Once the
spiritual nature of the universe had been admitted, a Lodge Messenger would
know how to attack the present methods of the colleges and bring about a change.
It would be harder to have primary education put where it belongs, under the
guidance of religion, and not of the State.
“ ‘One thing sorely needed by mankind is a true ideal to love and to follow.
The war showed that men can still give themselves in splendid self-sacrifice to a
Cause that appeals to them as worthy of their best. They see no such Cause
to-day. There is a good deal of vague groping after idealism, vague desires for
altruism, but for the most part they are directed to materialistic aims. They
lack truth and do not draw men’s hearts. A Lodge Messenger would bring a
true and moving ideal. But I do not think the world is yet ready. More prep¬
aration is needed. During this time of preparation, the continuance of the
Work in the world is vitally important: it may be essential. The coming of the
forerunner before the “Ancients” have to pass on, would ensure its continuance,
and hence the continued preparation of the world for the coming of the Mes¬
senger.’ ”
“What remarkable human documents!” the Philosopher interjected. “They
are at least as valuable as revelations of different personalities—of different
prismatic effects—as for their direct content. Please, some more!”
So the Recorder continued to read:
“ ‘(i) What the Lodge forerunner or Messenger could do for me would be in
proportion to my own desire for his help, my devotion to the Cause he represents,
and the extent to which I had acquired understanding through inner effort and
obedience to spiritual law.
“ ‘(2) H.P.B., in her Conclusion to The Key to Theosophy, has painted a
glowing picture of the possibilities of the T.S. when the next Lodge Messenger
comes, and it seems to me that the conditions for such a result exist in the T.S.
to-day in a devoted, united, though not liumerous body of people ready to wel¬
come the “new torch-bearer of Truth”. As in the case of an individual, the
help that might be received by a group of people would be limited to their
capacity to receive and to understand.
“ ‘(3) It would seem that the world must endure greater suffering before it
will be ready to listen to or heed the message of the Messenger. Out of the
gross materialism and resulting chaos so manifest in the world to-day, must
eventually come a realization of man’s inability to rule or govern himself; then,
a reverence for and a willingness to submit himself to an authority which he
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
159
recognizes as greater and higher than himself. If the world, through more
suffering, begins to learn this lesson, a Messenger or forerunner of the Lodge
could work wonders, using the little leaven furnished by a united, devoted group
of T.S. members to leaven the whole lump, and thus prepare the ground for the
ultimate establishment of a dynasty of Adept kings.’
“I shall now omit passages”, said the Recorder, ‘‘which express ideas contained
in answers I have already read to you. In the next set, I would especially call
your attention to the section numbered (3):
‘‘ ‘(i) We are told that with Masters all things are possible. A great crafts¬
man is known by his tools. He prefers good tools. He keeps them clean, sharp
and in order. Nevertheless, he can do a better piece of work with a poor tool
than can an inferior craftsman. Sometimes he will seize as a tool an object
not made for that purpose, but at hand. Will it serve? Am I a poor tool or
no tool at all?
‘‘ ‘(2) The same thing applies to The Theosophical Society. How far can it be
trusted? To what extent can it be used?
‘‘ ‘(3) As for the world, who can see the hidden aspirations beneath its boiling
scum ? Only the Lodge of Masters.
‘‘ ‘We have been told that Masters work with the cycles: also, that cycles
can be transcended. The appearance, at this time, of a Lodge Messenger in The
Theosophical Society would certainly indicate that for some people the hundred
-year cycle had been transcended and that the Messenger would be able to work
with them upon a higher cycle. While this would be true of the T.S., it would
not necessarily be true of the world. Of course, the effects of all inner work are
felt eventually upon the outer planes, but are not recognized as such. The
presence of such a Messenger would have an influence whether he worked with
the world or not.
” ‘One can imagine a Lodge Messenger doing no visible outer work in the T.Sj
H e would communicate only with the higher consciousness of those who wer#
able to perceive him there. This communion would hasten the evolution of those
sharing in it, and would produce a powerful centre of vibrations in the world.
One may consider this state as already existing, but the advent of a Messenger
would extend it. The increased vibration within the world would stimulate some
to a clearer comprehension of principles, and to better action, and it would also
create a greater explosive flight, from the centre, of the grosser elements.
My feeling is that the work of such a Messenger, being one of preparation,
at the beginning at least, would be carried on in the inner selves of the members.
This feeling is based solely upon the assumption that the cycle of outer work in
the world has not been reached. . . .’
‘‘From another set of answers I extract this very significant sentence, which
follows a reminder of the way in which Avatars and Lodge Messengers have been
treated in the past:
” . . Therefore, I am not concerned about all that a Lodge forerunner or
i6o THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Messenger could do for me. I am gravely concerned about what I could do for
him. To that end, I am endeavouring to perform the tasks allotted to me in
such a manner that, when he comes, they may require a minimum of his time
and attention.’
“Another reply to the second question (what could be done for the T.S.)
raises considerations perhaps not so clearly covered in answers already quoted;
you may judge for yourselves:
“ ‘(2) I should suppose that the force of the forerunner or Messenger would be
used on inner planes, to strengthen and reinforce every organization and move¬
ment of the present day which actually furthers the cause of righteousness and
the real betterment of mankind. The T.S. being, in certain respects, better
fitted than other organizations to receive help of this kind, should be able to make
a right use of a greater share of it, and should be in position to serve as the chief
outer instrument of the new leader. I should suppose that the method of outer
work this time would be very different from that of the last century—-very much
less external, for one thing. The great harm done to the cause of Theosophy in
the eyes of the world by the Adyar and similar organizations would doubtless
be taken into account and offset, and for that reason, the world might hear and
see little of the T.S. as such during the Lodge activities of the remainder of this
century. Furthermore, using the spiral as an analogy, the whole activity this
time would be on a higher level than in the last century. There would almost
certainly be no outer display analogous to the psychic phenomena of the last
time; there might well be no publicity, no large membership, no widespread
interest in the subject of Theosophy. It is conceivable that, instead, the empha¬
sis would be laid wholly on the intensive development of the nucleus, the germ
cell in which life is stored for the future growth of the organism. The fact that
the work survived the turn of the century in 1900 has doubtless affected many
people (unconsciously to themselves) all over the world, outside the present
Society. These would presumably be drawn into the ranks,—not through
publicity, but by the new spiritual force drawing together the already active
spiritual undercurrents; and such persons would enter the Work, not wholly as
newcomers but in some degree prepared. In 1875, many were called but few
were chosen, just as in the time of the Master Christ. In the new outpouring,
it might well be that the proportions would be different, due to the successful
work of the last fifty-nine years,—this time, comparatively few being “called”,
but of that number, many proving fit to be “chosen”. Then the time and force
of the forerunner or Messenger might be chiefly given, not to work that the world
would see and hear of, but to the training and development of active servants
of the Lodge, increasingly conscious of their Lodge connection and increasingly
aware both of the work they are intended to perform in and for the world, and of
how best to do it.’
“One purpose in formulating these questions and in publishing the replies, is
quite obvious, as the next set of answers will show: it is to force us to dig into
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
i 6 i
ourselves and to bring into our waking consciousness, a clear-cut image both
of our desire and of our ideal. ... It may be, of course, that somebody also
wanted to know, and that this was a simple way to get at it! Real people do not
waste their energies.”
J]^he Recorder then read the following:
‘‘ T have taken several days to think about the questions propounded; they
are perhaps the most difficult ones I have ever met. At first I answered to my¬
self : nothing can be done on any of these counts; I have the teachings and it is
up to me to incarnate them; the T.S. has its opportunity likewise, and as for
the world—fancy it listening to a spiritual teacher backed by The Theosophical
Society! But such a reply is only the superficial froth of a weary mind. So I
sought more deeply, knowing well that the questions were not idle ones.
” T thought of similar sendings in the past—of John, and of Saint Germain;
of veiled prophecies; of a nation brought to a desperate plight through its
betrayal by false prophets. . . .
” ‘There grew up within me a feeling that the dire need of the moment is a
revelation'of a clear-cut issue for all of us—a revelation which ^vill force men and
women to take sides in accord with their varying degrees of knowledge. Perhaps
the reading of Berdyaev’s End of Our Time contributed to this feeling. The
time is approaching he tells us, when men must choose between the mysticism
of Christ and that of Antichrist. I recalled that ‘‘the Battle of the Marne has
not yet been fought; it will be fought under the next Lodge Messenger.”
‘‘ ‘Therefore it might seem that the Precursor will sound the same challenge
that John did: ‘‘Repent ye for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. He might
set forth the issue so clearly that neutrality would no longer be possible. Men
would be forced to enter one or the other of the armies which will be slowly drawn
up on the new Kurukshetra [as in the Bhagavad Giia] to abide the Master’s coming.
‘‘ ‘How would he provoke the line-up? How would he initiate the campaign?
One might suggest reverently that he would begin with a simple, unequivocal
declaration of the ancient truths: I am come to prepare the way; to insist th^
you choose of your own free wills whether you will henceforth serve God or Saufl^
As you choose so you must abide. There would be no softening of the woms
through fear of giving offence to any special group. The world would hear
again the stern declaration of the Law. It would be confronted with the vile gods
it has been worshipping.
‘‘ ‘Through what channels would he get his words to the people? With the
power of the Lodge behind him, an address in the streets of New York, if need be,
would start a wave that press and radio would carry through the country,
particularly if it were backed by demonstrations of his powers over nature.
The effect would be an immediate revelation of men’s souls, and they would line
up under one banner or the other. Leading the forces of darkness would be the
intellectuals and liberals—those disciples of scientific materialism and sensuality
who parallel the Pharisees of old. To their standard would flock the host of
hateful subversives—the bitter communists and their like. The Protestant
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Liberal Churches would be split wide open. The Roman fold would probably
form a special wing, aloof and arrogant and utterly unable to admit that truth
could be found outside its particular mediation.
“ ‘On the other side would stand our Leader with a handful of disciples and
would-be disciples just as of old. Supporting him would be the fairly honest,
vacillating, hard-working, church-going middle class who, possibly, in their
bewilderment, would hail him as the long-expected Messiah. The prevalence of
Messianic prophecy among the more orthodox churches to-day would conduce to
this.
“ ‘His teaching would be the ancient Theosophy adapted to the needs of the
present age.
“ ‘What part would The Theosophical Society play in this great sifting? What
could he do for The Theosophical Society?
“ ‘First of all I have sensed the desperate fear of our leaders that they may be
“called home” before their great Trust is in safe hands; he could bring them the
joy they have earned by all these years of devoted toil.
“ ‘The T.S. would come alive and swing into action. For if the world could be
moved by his presence, how much more his own organization. It might not
have to come into the open at all as a Society, since to do so might hinder his
work. The Black Lodge has perverted and befouled the name to such a degree
that he might have to condemn “occultism” unsparingly, and the world could
hardly be expected to distinguish between “theosophists”.
“ ‘As a secret body, understanding something of his origin and purpose, the
T.S. might form a cordon about him, making straight his physical pathway just
as H.P.B. hoped it might do: “... There will be in existence an organized, living
and healthy body when the time comes for the effort of the twentieth century—
an organization awaiting his arrival which will remove the merely mechanical
material obstacles and difficulties from his path.”
“ ‘Some of the members of the T.S. might know the joy of his direct super¬
vision—^his piercing insight using each man’s talents in the most effective way,
just as we use our own bodily powers. This implies ch^laship or something close
to it. Is it too much to hope that he might draw such members together for
private instruction ? Have I not read that such as he can transmit understanding
with a touch? There is a difficult paradox here. Certain members feel that
they are stopped by a barrier: they need more insight and a strong emotional
reaction to send them forward. Yet, as Cav^ has pointed out, if that door is
opened, demons can likewise come through it. Might not all be lost for which
Masters have toiled so long? The situation seems to stand thus:
“ ‘i. The method of intellectual and emotional appeal made through the
Quarterly and at many Conventions has ceased to be effective. A need
exists for a sharper spur.
“ ‘2. If soldiers are not fully trained when the armies are mobilized, they have
to go into battle with the training they have.
“ ‘3. The human soul responds to the challenge to action. The flame of life
bums more fiercely when it encounters opposition which demands action.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
163
“ ‘4. The members have in their minds a considerable body of ethical and
moral knowledge. With direct cognizance and the dangers which attend it, that
knowledge should come to the rescue.
“ ‘5. Nothing venture, nothing gain. Either conquering we “inherit the earth”,
or slain we “gain heaven”, whence we may come forth to fight again.
“ ‘6. Certain of our members have been long with us and are not mere privates.
Of something of the innemess of Masters’ plan they must become directly aware
if they are to serve effectively. . . .’
“You will agree with me, I think, that the answers I am going to read now—
they will be the last—get very close to the heart of things:
“ ‘(i) For me, first and foremost, he could bring relief to those I love, to those
who, ever since the turn of the cycle, through more years than are reckoned as a
generation, have borne the burden of responsibility and the strain of ceaseless
watch and ward and combat for the Movement. He could take over command
from them, as the leader of a relieving force takes over the defence of a be¬
leaguered city, securing its lines of communication, re-manning walls too sparsely
held, and organizing for a new advance. The simile is borrowed, but is truer
than any I could invent. With his coming, whatever the future might hold, our
own captains would have fulfilled the task they undertook, and a very gallant
venture would have been crowned with success.
“ T know that the most lasting victories may be won through what the world
would call defeat. “The gods are nourished by sacrifice”, and we are warring
for the gods. Perhaps Gordon, murdered in Khartoum while Wolseley’s column
was still held back, may have been able to look beyond his own death, and the
fall of all he had laboured to upbuild, to the triumph of Kitchener fourteen years
later. Perhaps he may have seen that, in the end, his death would do for the
Soudan more than his relief could do; and realizing this he may have been
content to die. But I do not think his servant, who loved him, could have been
expected to share in that content. He must have prayed daily for the relief that
did not come.
“ ‘Would it have been better for the world if Roland had been relievoKt
Roncesvalles? had Jeanne d’Arc been spared her martyrdom at Compi^gne and
Rouen? Are there low-rank angels, servants of the servants of the Mysteries,
perhaps still young and “of little brain”, so that they love without knowing what
or why they love, who ask if the whole world was worth its cost of Calvary?
Do their elders sometimes ask the same? Or does there come a time when the
mystery is mystery no more, when the riddle is read from the other end, and
Calvary shines forth, so radiant in the splendour of the spirit’s self-fulfilment,
as to be worth its cost of the whole world,—yes, so that it atones for the whole
world, and reconciles the beholder to it?
“ ‘Fortunately, such questions need not concern me. As Jeanne herself said,
the men-at-arms are to fight, and God will give the victory. The strategy of the
campaign, whether relief is to be sent or withheld, rests with the High Command.
Their duty is not mine. To fight means to strive for victory—not delayed, not
164
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
wrapped in defeat, not purchased by the martyrdom of those above me—but
immediate, manifest, and at the minimum of cost to those we serve. To fight
is to pray; and the coming of the Lodge Messenger would be the answer to my
prayer.
“ ‘Beyond that, I doubt whether there is much that he could do for me. What
could Lord Wolseley have done for General Gordon’s servant? He could bring
Gordon other servants, able to serve him better: but could he make this servant
a better servant ? I am convinced that everything that can be done for me is
being done, that I am given every aid I am willing to accept. Over and over
again this has been proved to us: there is no limit to what is offered; the only
limits are in our power to receive. Doubtless one coming newly from the Lodge
would bring new light to me, a new ray falling at a new angle; and with this
there would be new shame for what it would reveal,—of ways and standards
I had known but permitted myself to forget; of opportunities neglected until
they were lost; of needs I could have met had I not been too self-absorbed to
see them; of weakness and failure and faithlessness, the worst where most un¬
conscious. But even as things are, there is no day in which the Master lets me
lack the light with which to shame my sins. What reason have I to think I should
make better use of more? The lack is not in the light, but in the response to it,
in the will that is so much my own that none but I can move it. That is the
terror of self-will; before it the gods themselves are impotent.
“ ‘(2) For the T.S.? It would have to be hardened and tempered before it
could do the work that the next Lodge Messenger will have to do. It has main¬
tained a clean mould, a skeleton organization, which is of inestimable value;
but the material that fills it is for the most part soft. If it could not be tempered,'
it might have to be run off, and the mould refilled with harder metal, capable of
being given a better cutting edge. There are not many members, as things are,
who could really be counted upon to accomplish results; and it has been sug¬
gested that where results are requisite, effective devils would be preferable to
ineffective saints. It cannot be a pleasant job to have to control and work with
devils; but no one expects the Lodge Messenger to have a pleasant time, and
perhaps he would find this no more nerve-wracking than to be responsible for the
practical consequences of mere good intentions left to act unguided in a crisis.
There is far too much unintelligent devotion and goodness in the T.S. for it to be
safe to leave it to itself, and unless there is someone to lead it aright, it is almost
certain to be captured by those who will lead it awrong. It might be likened to
the arsenal in the beleaguered city of our earlier illustration, which, if the city be
not relieved, must be destroyed lest it fall into the hands of the enemy.
“ ‘(3) For the world? “Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind and naked: ... As many as I love, I rebuke and
chasten: . . . Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’’
“ ‘No verses are more familiar, but the significance of their order is often over¬
looked. There is nothing one can do for the self-satisfied man, and the Lodge
Messenger would knock in vain unless the arrogance of the world, which makes it
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
165
both jnwilling and unable to learn, be first deflated, and something of humility
instilled,—something of the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom.
One thinks of a passage in one of the letters reported to have been received by
Hume from the Master K.H.: “I tell you plainly you are unfit to learn, for your
mind is too full and there is not a comer vacant from whence a previous occupant
would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer” {The Mahatma
Letters, p. 143, revised edition).
” ‘Perhaps the “forerunner”, he who prepares the way for the bearer of the
Lodge message, may not always come in human form. There may be times when
the way must be cleared first by great, wide-sweeping forces, like strong winds
blowing through the psychic world. “And behold, the Lord passed by, and a
great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before
the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind.” It may be that the “depression”,
from which the whole world has been suffering since 1929, is such a wind, blowing
in advance of the coming of the Lodge Messenger, to overthrow and chasten the
world’s conceit, to reveal its wretchedness and blindness, and ultimately to make
it less “unfit to learn”. It is painfully obvious that the Lord is not in the wind,
but even so, it may be preparing the way of the Lord; and to adopt this sup¬
position has at least the advantage of giving us as cheerful an outlook upon our
times as it is possible to find. The exasperation with which we have formerly
read the daily paper, gives place to an awed admiration. As a demonstration of
human folly, we look upon a work of genius.
“ ‘Yet, even so, it has not yet sufficed for the overthrow of human arrogance.
The same sophomoric conceit that marked our boom times and produced the
depression, the same naive conviction that with us all things are new, and that
whatever has been need no more be true, the same substitution of psychic fancy
for physical and spiritual fact, are engraved even more deeply in every line of the
“new deal” that is to end depression. We have entered a world of psychic
reflections that has not merely the confusions of an honest “looking-glass world”,
where right and left are reversed, and the end becomes the beginning, and
plainest print is made illegible. That is what one has when the mirror is Wn
upright at one’s own level. But here the reflection is from below—^as fronTa
mirror beneath one’s feet—from the mind of the demos, distraught by unas¬
similated (and unassimilable) schooling; and in consequence everything
stands upon its head, every maxim is reversed, every falsehood preached as
truth. We have lived beyond our means, therefore we must increase our expendi¬
tures; our business is running at a loss, therefore we must raise wages; we are
bankrupt, therefore we must borrow money to redecorate our homes. Billions of
dollars must be spent to relieve the unemployed, therefore strikes should be
fomented, and men forbidden to accept the wages they can get, so that billions
more may be paid to the idle strikers. There are nations whose aggression is
rampant, therefore the rest of the world should disarm. It is dishonest to buy
votes with one’s own money, therefore buy them with the tax-payers’, etc., etc.
The first need of the world is that it should be jarred out of its psychic debauch,
back to sober fact. If the world is to endure, it must be made safe not for, but
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
166
from democracy, from popular education and college professors, from the black
magic of science, and the priestcrafts that seek profit in perversions of truth.
“ ‘Frankly, I think it is a task which, if viewed only in the light of reason
and “practical politics”, might well seem impossible. There is so much that has
to be undone, and one no more sees how it can be undone than how one can un¬
bake an apple dumpling. Like Hume’s mind, the mind of the world is too full.
Too much is known, both true and untrue. How is the mind of the world to be
emptied to make room for what it needs to receive? Then, too, the world itself
is too full,—too full of people, or of elementals, “bom too soon in human shape”,
whom we mistake for people. It is too full of insects, and of blights of all kinds.
In our greed, we have eaten up its forests, destroyed its prairies, its herds and
flocks, tapped and drained its resources, and are making deserts all about us.
We boast that we have “conquered time and space”, but our “conquest” means
only that we have overthrown what is essential to ourselves. Without the
limitations of time and space, life cannot be supported, and already we have
made the world too small for our needs. We no longer find mystery in it, no
longer the unknown, so that the spirit shrinks and starves and turns back to the
empty husks it had left behind. Unless mankind can be led into the largeness
of the spiritual world, it would seem to have reached the point from which it
must regress, and where our civilization, like others that have failed, must be
swept away, shaken from off the back of the earth, and its habitations left for
disinfection under ocean waters or desert sands.
“ ‘Let us not forget, however, that it is not the way of the Lodge to plan
its imdertakings on the basis of what seems “practical politics” to us. From the
beginning of time it has essayed and accomplished what the world called impossi¬
ble, seeing and seizing the one chance to which all others were blind.’
“There will be neither time enough this afternoon, nor space in the Quarterly,
for much discussion of what I have read to you. Possibly, if the subject should
prove of interest to our readers, and they say so, it might be ‘continued in our
next’.”
“This is not a comment”, said the Student; “but I should like to know what
people mean when they pray so glibly, ‘Thy Kingdom come’.”
“This is a comment”, said the Ancient: “I am wondering to what extent any
of us unconsciously ‘seek after a sign’. It is difficult to surmount our nature,
and it is natural enough, from one point of view, to wish to ‘know’—forgetting
that the mind can never know; that truth of any and every kind dwells eternally
above the mind, and that no one who seeks knowledge for his own satisfaction
can ever find it.
“Need an Adept?” he continued. “We are surrounded by Adepts! What do
I mean? Exactly what I say; but I also mean that there is never a moment
when our own Master does not invite us with, ‘Draw near, and partake’. Then
someone says, ‘But I am blind!' And my answer is, ‘What of it?’ Blind Bar-
timaeus, while blind, knew more of Christ and was closer to him, than all but a
handful of the thousands who had gazed at him with ‘seeing’ eyes. Bartimaeus
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
167
had seen him with the eyes of the spirit, with the eyes ctf faith; and this does
not mean, had made a mental image of his nose or clothes: it means that he had
touched him with his heart, and knew.
“Brown, in India, many years ago, met and talked with Master K.H.; so did
Olcott. You know what they got out of it. In all cases, ‘we find what we bring’.
And the world would find what it would bring: no less, no more. It does not
follow in the least, however, that the world would even hear of the next Lodge
Messenger, who might work among the few, silently. It is possible, on the
other hand, that he will be commissioned to attack and destroy popular idols,—
the world’s superstitious faith in ‘science’, in democracy, in the virtue of peace
(as the world understands it); and perhaps in that case, as more than one of
your replies suggested, he will come as a Destroyer, clearing the way for future
Messengers, that they, when their time comes, may be free to Preserve what is
best from the past, and to Create what will be best for the future. We must
‘take long views’.
“This much in conclusion: what is to be, already is. That is a law of the
spiritual world. Only as we are conscious of what already is, though as yet
unmanifest, shall we be conscious of it when manifest. Let us remember also
that personal contact is not always an aid to understanding, or to appreciation,—
far from it. I have a friend whom I have not seen for years, who is closer to me
to-day than when our personalities met and sometimes clashed.
“For the Work’s sake we must ardently desire that the next Lodge Messenger,
or a forerunner, comes quickly—heaven pity him (no one seems to worry much
about him!); but not until we see and use our present opportunity in its fulness
should we be any better off personally though a dozen Adepts were our daily
mess-mates. The Lodge is ‘here’, and only ‘there’ when we choose to make it so.
It is not by striving and straining that we touch reality; it is by laying our souls
with love at the feet of the Keeper of Dreams. From Him we draw strength to
fight, though all the odds be against us,—to fight, not for victory, but for Him,—
knowing th^t our failure, if we fight to the last gasp of breath in us, and then
fight, dying and dead,—will give Him all He needs to turn His dream (not ours)
into the living beauty of a world redeemed.’’ T.
Blind folk see the fairies,
Oh, better far than we.
Who miss the shining of their wings
Because our eyes are filled with things
We do not wish to see .— Rose Fyleman.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Professor of Buddhist
Philosophy at Otani Buddhist College, Kyoto, Japan; Luzac and Company,
London; price. First Series, 1927, 175, 6d; Second Series, 1933, 20s, $5; Third
Series, 1934, 20s, $5.
Professor Suzuki is a scholar of a type seldom represented in the modem West.
He is accomplished in the difficult science of translating and collating Sanskrit,
Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese manuscripts and documents. But his com¬
mentaries reveal the rare gift of a clear and profound understanding; above all,
he leaves with the reader the impression that he is actively testing in his own
experience the Buddhist truths of which he writes. Certainly there is a minimum
of personal reference in his books; but he is, in the truest sense, in love with his
subject. To the average Orientalist, the Bodhisattva Doctrine is an historical
curiosity which he approaches with the indifference and essential blindness of an
outsider. Professor Suzuki, on the contrary, reveals the Mahayana as a way of
life, as pertinent now as it has ever been to the needs of the Far East.
Zen Buddhism originated as a Chinese adaptation of the Mahayana. Zen is
Dhyana, contemplation. The Western student, even if somewhat familiar with
the Indian forms of the Mahayana, is apt to find great difficulty in understanding
the Chinese approach to the same fundamental doctrines. This is undoubtedly
due, in part, to racial differences, but there is another cause of bewilderment
which Professor Suzuki emphasizes. The Chinese often seem obscure to us,
just because they are so extremely simple and direct. When the practical Chinese
“began inwardly to assimilate Buddhism as the doctrine of Enlightenment, the
only course that opened to their concrete minds was to produce Zen. When we
come to Zen after seeing all the wonderful miracles displayed by the Indian
Mahayana writers, and after the highly abstract speculations of the Madhyamika
thinkers, what a change of scenery do we have here? . . . The people you as¬
sociate with are all ordinary mortals like yourselves, no abstract ideas, no
dialectical subtleties confront you. Mountains tower high towards the sky,
rivers all pour into the ocean. Plants sprout in spring and flowers bloom in
red. When the moon shines serenely, poets grow mildly drunk and sing a song
of eternal peace. How prosaic, how ordinary, we may say! but here was the
Chinese soul, and Buddhism came to sprout in it.”
According to tradition, the Zen School was established by the Indian mis-
168
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sionary, Bodhidharma. The greatest of the early Chinese Patriarchs was Rui¬
ning who may be said to have sounded the key-note of all subsequent Zen
aspiration. He said:
My Master had no special instruction to give, he simply insisted upon the need of seeing
into our Nature through our own efforts, he had nothing to do with [theories concerning]
meditation or deliverance. For whatever could be named leads to dualism, and Buddhism
is not dualistic. To take hold of this non-duality of truth is the aim of Zen. The Buddha-
Nature of which we are all in possession, and the seeing into which constitutes Zen, is
indivisible into such oppositions as good and evil, eternal and temporal, material and
spiritual. To see dualism in life is due to confusion of thought; the wise, the enlightened
see into the reality of things unhampered by erroneous ideas.
Zen insists upon the uncompromising denial of the rights of the personal
man, and holds out no tangible reward to the aspirant save the assurance that,
if he persist, he will be worthy some day of sharing in the supreme sacrifice
of the Bodhisattvas. Its appeal has been essentially aristocratic from the
beginning, and it is characteristic of its spirit that it should have constituted
the religious basis of bushido, the chivalric code of ancient Japan. At the present
time, it is sharply distinguished from the popular Shin sect which promises a
concrete paradise to the faithful.
The methods of Zen instruction are quite unique. Frequently the teachers
make use of koans, verbal formulae or gestures which are traditionally supposed
to induce in the disciple the state of saiori (Sanskrit, sambodhi), enlightenment
or inner wakefulness. It is the duty of the teacher to know the “psychological
moment” when the koan will bear fruit, and also which koan should be spoken
or enacted. Originally at least, there was no stereotyped form of instruction.
The koan was improvised, as it were, in response to the eager questioning of the
disciple. If the Occidental reader fail to make any sense of the koans, this is
largely because he misrepresents their nature and purpose. They are not de¬
signed to be logical statements addressed to the discursive intellect. Their
sole function is to arouse the disciple’s intuitive powers to positive action. For
example, if a Zen aspirant, after long meditation upon some passage of the
^ Scriptures, has formulated some question which he cannot answer, he awaits
the occasion when he can propound his problem to his teacher. Only very rarely
does the teacher respond, in ordinary mental terms, to this appeal, for it is
tradition of Zen teaching that the intellect as such cannot solve any real m^^F
physical problem. The normal procedure is to answer one riddle by proposmg
another. Therefore, the teacher does not analyze the meaning of the Scriptures.
With seeming irrelevance, he will blow out a candle or ask the disciple to stir
the fire or, perhaps, rise in apparent anger and drive the disciple from the room.
Very frequently the Zen masters who are, in one sense, “Nature-mystics”,
fasten their disciples’ attention upon some familiar natural form or process,—
a bamboo-grove, the wild geese flying south in the autumn, a cypress growing in
the temple courtyard, a flowering plum-tree, a cloud drifting over a mountain-
peak. We have seen these lovely images in Sung painting, though we may
seldom have suspected the mystical meanings implicit in them.
170
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
It may not be easy to comprehend why or how these koans can awaken the
disciple to the consciousness of his “Buddha-Nature”. However, the following
examples should indicate the method, even if our minds, being otherwise oriented,
cannot clearly realize what they really signify in the history of Zen.
Sakyamuni was once engaged at the Mount of the Holy Vulture in preaching to a
congregation of his disciples. He did not resort to a lengthy verbal discourse to explain
his point, but simply lifted a bouquet of flowers before the assemblage. . . . Nobody
understood the meaning of this except the old venerable Mahakasyapa, who quietly smiled
at the Master. . . . The latter perceiving this, opened his golden-tongued mouth and pro¬
claimed solemnly; “I have the most precious treasure, spiritual and transcendental,
which this moment I hand over to you, 0 venerable Mahakasyapa.”
Says P‘ing-t‘ien the Elder: “The celestial radiance undimmed, the norm lasting for
ever more; for him who entereth this gate, no reasoning, no learning.” You should know,
commented Tsu-ching, that it is through*your seeing, hearing, and thinking that you
enter upon the path, and it is also through the seeing, hearing and thinking that you are
prevented from entering. . . .
Hui-neng said: “Think not of good, think not of evil, but see what at the moment thy
own original features are, which thou hadst even before coming into existence. . . .”
“A lonely hut on the mountain-peak towering above a thousand others, one-half is
occupied by an old monk and the other by a cloud; last night it was stormy and the cloud
was blown away; after all a cloud could not equal the old man’s quiet way. . . .”
“Like a mountain, one character, ‘master’, stands majestically; on it alone is the
standard established for all rights and wrongs in the world; all the waters ultimately
flow towards the ocean and pour themselves into it; clouds, massy and overhanging,
finally get back to the mountains and find their home there. . . .”
Ling-yiin had an insight into the truth by accidentally watching the peaches in bloom.
The following is his verse composed at the time:
“For thirty years 1 have been in search of the swordsman;
Many a time have I watched the leaves decay and the branches shoot!
Ever since I saw for once the peaches in bloom.
Not a shadow of doubt do I cherish!” S.V.L.
Condamn^e d Mart, by Louise Thuliez; Librairie Ernest Flammarion, Paris,
1933; price, 12 francs.
Here is another book written by one of those fearless and self-sacrificing
women who, in the early days of the Great War, risked their own lives in order
to save the lives of Allied soldiers caught in occupied territory as a result of the
rapid advance of the German invasion of Belgium and northern France, in 1914.
Almost inevitably it reads (as perhaps all such books must read) something like
a romance, for the heroic courage, the quick-witted facing of sudden and terrible
dangers, the miraculous escapes, the complete selflessness which made that
perilous and physically exhausting life of hourly danger not only possible but
actually attractive, are almost too splendid to seem real in times like the present!
Anyone who has read the recent War Memories of Princess Marie de Croy,
will remember that Mademoiselle Thuliez was associated with that ceaselessly-
active group of men and women who raked the countryside (under the very noses
of the Germans) in search of stray British and French combatants, and Made¬
moiselle Thuliez’s account, in the first part of her book, of the life led by these men
REVIEWS
171
while hiding in the Foret de Mormal, a wide tract of beautiful woodland south¬
west of Maubeuge, of how she managed to get food to them, of how she finally
helped to extricate them when their position became too precarious, of how they
were conducted to what was at least temporary safety—all is of absorbing interest.
Later, when this work of mercy expanded, and many other men came to the notice
of the indefatigable group, the long, hazardous night marches toward the Dutch
frontier, the life and death chances which had, in an instant of time, to be decided
upon and fearlessly accepted, the hourly risk of betrayal because of the unin¬
tentional indiscretions of the very men who were being led, at such frightful risk,
to safety and freedom—every word fills us with a kind of breathless admiration.
And then the inevitable arrest came, and with it the mockery of the so-called
“trial” by the Germans—Edith Caveil’s fate has made this same trial well known
to us, for^he was among the accused. Finally the author of this book was,
with others, condemned to death. “Upon hearing the death sentence pro¬
nounced against oneself”, she writes simply, “the first moment is one of pros¬
tration, then it is one of surprise, then of incredulity, and finally of resignation,
for wi'th every cross there is always given the corresponding strength to bear
it.” After a period of some weeks of imprisonment, chiefly at St. Gilles in
Brussels, during which several of her companions were executed, her own death
sentence was commuted to “forced labour” for the rest of her life, and then,
after further delays. Mademoiselle Thuliez was transported to the prison of
Siegburg in Germany, and there she remained until the end of the War. Her
account of her prison life, her comments on the neglect by the Germans and their
vicious treatment of those among the Allied prisoners who fell ill, is valuable
evidence regarding German methods of conducting “civilized warfare”, and the
overwhelming bitterness which she felt when, on her return home after the Armis¬
tice, she found a devastated if “victorious” France as compared with the “con¬
quered” but perfectly intact Germany which she had just left, is a sentiment
with which all readers of the Quarterly will profoundly sympathize. A preface
by General Weygand adds to the interest of the book and to our own sense of
indebtedness to Mademoiselle Thuliez for this graphic and stirring account of her
Wartime experiences. T.D. a
Escape from the Soviets, by Tatiana Tchemavin; Hamish Hamilton, London;
price, 75, 6d.
This reviewer bought two books about Soviet Russia because they were praised
most highly on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, and seemed to
promise a truthful statement of conditions as they are, instead of the misleading
half-truths which newspaper correspondents are obliged to supply so long as
they wish to retain the Soviet’s permission to remain in Russia. The book by
Mme. Tchemavin is to be recommended for the benefit of those who have been
misled, and who fail to realize that Russia, under its present rulers, is the most
perfect existing specimen of Hell on earth. Mme. Tchemavin describes more than
the escape of herself, her husband and child from the horrors of their existence;
172
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
she describes “normal” life and prison “life” in Russia as well—a complete
picture. It is terrible reading, and because this reviewer has never had any illu¬
sions about the fiends in human form who, having murdered the Czar and his
family, took their place as Russia’s Autocrats,—he did not think it necessary to
make himself ill by sharing the author’s torments for long. In other words, he
skimmed the book, but with sufficient thoroughness to wish that all the Parlour
Pinks, Brain Busters, and New Era-ites (New Termites) who afflict us here,
might be forced to read it,—and then, if that were not enough, might be per¬
suaded or bribed to go and live for ever in the land where their dreams have
already come true.
The other book, we cannot recommend. It is written by a correspondent of
the English Manchester Guardian who went to Moscow prepared to be “liberal-
minded” about the Great Russian Experiment. He was disillusioned, and re¬
turned to England to tell the truth as he had seen it. Whether he stayed in
Russia too long, and thus became coarsened by contagion, or whatever the expla¬
nation may be, the language and manner of his book are not only brutal, but vile
to the point of being unreadable. His excuse presumably would be that he
describes vile things—under the head of sex especially. But we do not believe
that good can be accomplished by sinking to the level of a pig-sty.
The same unfortunate mistake is made by another English author, Ivor
Brown, who attacks modem immoralities and idiocies with skill and immense
vigour, but who uses language which ought to make it impossible for any decent
woman, of any age, to read him. Dante described Hell with imequalled realism,
but without a trace of coarseness. Those who would stand for decency or for
righteousness (if that really be their motive), defeat their own ends by adopting
the verbal depravities which are one of the hall-marks of those whom they
condemn. T.
Saint Birgitta of Sweden, by Edith Peacey; Washboume and Bogan, London;
price, 125 , 6d.
“To-night there will be bom a child to whose voice the whole world will one
day listen in admiration.”
These are the opening words of this book. They were heard by a priest as he
prayed for the Lady Ingeborg, the wife of the Lagman Birger Persson. That
night of June, 1302 or 1303, we do not know which, Birgitta was bom. Her
father was a cousin of the reigning King Birger, and was the Lagman of Upland.
Sweden, at this time, was divided into five provinces each governed by a Lagman
who was responsible to the King alone. The Lagmen sat in the first places of
the Council, and administered justice in their provinces. The Lagman Birger
Persson codified the laws of Sweden and ruled his province wisely and well.
Birgitta and her brother and sister were carefully and lovingly brought up and
trained to fill the important duties of their high position.
Birgitta seems to have been a normal, cheerful and singularly sensible child.
She was attracted to prayer and often remained in the chapel when the other
REVIEWS
173
children had left. We are told that at the age of ten, Birgitta had her first vision.
She awoke from sleep to see a beautiful lady holding a crown in her hand.
“Come”, said the vision, “and take this crown.” Birgitta arose, and the lady
placed the crown upon her head.
At the age of twelve, she had another vision. This time, as she was saying
her evening prayers, she saw a great light, and in the midst of the light Jesus
upon the Cross. She heard a voice saying, “This is how I have been treated.”
“Oh my dear Lord, who has dared to treat you so?” said Birgitta. “Those who
insult me and forget my Love.”
At the age of sixteen, Birgitta was married to Ulf Gudmarsson, Lagman of
Naarke. Ulf was a very religious man. When they married, he and Birgitta
joined the Third Order of St. Francis. They had eight children. Birgitta led
a very active life bringing them up and ruling over the province while her husband
was engaged in the civil struggles which took place in Sweden. In 1335, Birgitta
was called to coiut to act as Mistress of the Household for the young Queen
Blanche de Namur. She remained there for five years, seeing with consternation
the decline of the morals and manners of the Court. This was one reason why
she and her husband decided to make a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela.
They put on pilgrim clothes and started to walk from Sweden to Spain. It is
thought that Birgitta may have heard Tauler preach when she passed through
Cologne. On the way back from Spain, at Arras, Ulf was taken very ill. As
he felt himself dying, he prayed for more time in which to prepare for death,
vowing that he would abandon the world and enter a religious order. He
recovered, and, when he returned to Sweden, set about fulfilling his vow. Two
years later, he died in a Cistercian monastery.
After Ulf’s death, Birgitta put on the Tertiary Franciscan habit and retired to a
hermitage in the precincts of the monastery of Alvastra where Ulf had died.
All of her children were provided for. Some of them were married. One son,
Benedict, also died as a monk at Alvastra. She was free to give herself entirely
to the religious life. In her retirement she practised so many austerities that her
confessor was obliged to forbid her to do so. At this time she had many spiritual
experiences and her mission began. It was to be a most disagreeable one. For
the rest of her life she was to receive orders to reprove Kings and Popes, t
the lax clergy and to admonish the erring. It must be a proof of the real
of Birgitta that such a mission could have been entrusted to her.
She now received the Rule of an Order which she was to found, the Order of
the Most Holy Saviour. It was to be composed of two communities; one of
enclosed nuns, one of monks. The whole Order was to be ruled by an Abbess.
The two communities were to use the same church, but the nuns were to sit
in a gallery above the monks. “The spiritual foundation of the Order is to be
humility; but learning is not to be despised. The priests are to devote their
time to study, prayer, and preaching the gospel to the people. The nuns are to
divide their hours between meditation, prayer, and useful work.”
Birgitta obtained the approval of the Archbishop of Upsala and the Bishop
of Aabo, and laid the foundation stone of the new monastery in 1346. Her work
174
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
did not go forward without opposition. Birgitta had sharply rebuked the King.
She was insulted by the nobles and preached against by the clergy. She now
received two revelations. One was a message to the Kings of France and England
telling them to make peace. The other was to the Pope at Avignon, bidding him
return to Rome. She was also told to go to Rome herself and to await his return.
In the autumn of 1349, Birgitta and a few devoted followers arrived in Italy.
The Rome of this time was the one described in Bulwer Lytton’s Rienzi, a city
deserted by the Pope and clergy, and fought over by the powerful barons.
Birgitta was to witness the rise and fall of Rienzi.
In Rome, Birgitta, who had always been studious, took lessons in Theology
and Latin. She went among the poor, trying to help them. She sat upon the
steps of the convent of the Poor Clares and begged her bread. Three of her
children joined her, Birger, Katarina’ who became a saint herself after her
mother’s death, and Karl. Karl was a very gay and dissolute young man. He
died after a scandalous adventure in Naples. For many years Birgitta con¬
tinued to send messages to Avignon, to reprove the clergy, to scold the Queen of
Naples and to be thoroughly annoying. She had, at the same time, a great
influence over many good and devoted people who were willing to listen to her.
She appears to have been a charming and pleasant person, with humour and
great good sense.
At last, in 1367, Pope Urban the Fifth returned to Rome and part of Birgitta’s
work seemed to have succeeded. She transmitted many revelations to the Pope
and to the Emperor Charles the Fourth, who listened to her with respect but
did nothing more. The Cardinals, who wanted to return to France, did all they
could to disparage her. In 1371, the Papal Court returned to Avignon, and
her mission seemed to have failed. However, she was not discouraged, but
continued to admonish Urban and his successor. Niccold Soderini, the Floren¬
tine, probably spoke often of his Swedish friend to St. Catherine of Siena, who
was to carry on Birgitta’s work to its desired conclusion.
In 1371, Birgitta and her household left for the Holy Land. These long
journeys were probably more common in the Middle Ages than we think.
Shortly after they returned to Rome, in 1373, Birgitta died. Her remains were
carried back to Sweden. All through Europe crowds of people came to view her
coffin and to venerate her relics. Birgitta had performed many miracles during
her life, and was generally considered a saint. Her body was at last laid to rest
in the Abbey of Vadstena which she had founded. Seventeen years later Bir¬
gitta was officially canonized. At the Reformation, Vadstena was sacked and
the bones of the saint thrown out in the dust. The Brigittines were dispersed
and exiled.
Edith Peacey, who writes this book, is a nun of the Brigittine Order in England.
Her book is, of course, written from the orthodox Roman Catholic standpoint.
It is in a cheerful narrative style which barely escapes sentimentality, and while
it gives a picture of the life of the day and of the surroundings of the saint, it
unfortunately does not quote her own words sufficiently. One would like to
know her own impressions and experiences more directly. Birgitta wrote her
REVIEWS
175
Revelations and a number of hymns. However, the book does give one the
picture of a powerful, devoted and illumined soul. Few saints have had such
experience of different conditions of life as Saint Birgitta. She had eight children
and ruled a province. She had been at court and had begged her bread in the
streets. The obedience of Saint Birgitta to her highest vision, her humility,
her immense common sense and her charity, contain lessons for everyone, and
should interest students of Theosophy who are seeking for the Real wherever
it may be found. St.C.LaD.
Monarchy, by Sir Charles Petrie; Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1933;
price, 105 , td.
French Royalist Doctrines since the Revolution, by Charlotte Touzalin Muret;
Columbia University Press, 1933; price, S3.00.
Experience testifies that the hierarchical principle is fundamental and universal
in Nature. Every existence is a manifold dominated by a monad, a gradation
of energies maintained in equilibrium by their common subjection to a superior
force. Thus the human being is a hierarchy of states of consciousness which
ought to be co-ordinated by the superior force of the soul.
A nation is no exception to this universal rule. It is composed of groups and
individuals, corresponding to the organs and cells of a physical body, each
with its proper functions, its line and degree of evolution. A true national life
is only possible in the measure that these elements are harmonized and unified
by a central authority. The binding power of custom is insufficient. There
must be a government organizing the nation’s resistance to foreign invasion, and
preserving it from internal disruption.
Many students of Theosophy believe that there is only one form of government
perfectly adapted to real human needs, namely the rule of an Adept King.
There is a tradition that in the infancy of the race the dynasties which reigned
over the nations were of divine or semi-divine origin; and that in some future
which may not be very remote, the Royal Sages will return to govern mank^
as in the beginning. But before that can happen, men must have lost the|Blt
vestige of faith in their fitness to govern themselves. An ideal government with¬
out ideal citizens is a Utopian dream—and nothing more. Every government,
of which there is historical record, has been a makeshift, an imperfect thing, for
a nation has the form of government which it desires and which it deserves. This
does not mean, however, that some forms are not more rational and more con¬
formable to the order of Nature than others. Democracy, for instance, may
be described as a disease of the body politic, and it is no more desirable, from a
sane standpoint, than an attack of measles, though, like measles, it may have
a necessary purgative function in the life of nations. Disease is sometimes a
means of removing poison from a system, and must be held in respect as a
natural process; but it is also “natural” to prefer health to disease, and it is a
hopeful omen that an increasing number of people in Europe and America are
diligently trying to imagine some form of government, some central authority.
176
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
better equipped than parliamentary democracy to restore national life to a
semblance of health. Unfortunately too many fancy that the only substitute
for democracy is some form of despotism or communism, the tyrannical rule of a
dictator or of a faction. In truth, such a “cure” may be worse than the disease.
The great value of Sir Charles Petrie’s work is that he points to an obvious
solution of the problem, obvious at least for those nations which have kept intact
a monarchist tradition. He recommends the restoration and re-enforcement of
the monarchical form of government which has actually been tested by human
experience for thousands of years, and which has been so closely identified with
the history of Christian Europe. As Sir Charles shows, if England and France
had not been monarchies during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European
ci\'ilization could never have revived from the catalepsy which followed the
collapse of the Roman Empire. The dynasties of England and France, with
rare exceptions, united their interests with the interests of the nation as a whole.
The royal family was one with the state. The supreme service of the kings was
to prevent one faction from gaining control of the nation and from exploiting its
resources for selfish advantage. They protected the weak from the strong,
represented the principle of justice, and preserved the continuity of the national
tradition. Thus the early kings fought the barons, and the later kings fought
religious fanatics and lawyers and magnates. Sir Charles points to the existing
political confusion in the French Republic as a direct consequence of the rejection
of the French royal house, for France is tom by factions, and there is no real
central authority to control them. He argues that in spite of fair appearances
England has never recovered from the shock of the rebellion against the Stuarts
which culminated in the rise of the Whig aristocracy.
The real Whig, and the Liberal, wishes the Crown to be a mere figurehead, like the
Doge of Venice, and . . . this conception of its functions is unfortunately held by many
a Conservative to-day. . . . Those who wish to know the exact benefits which the
“Glorious” Revolution conferred upon the British Isles would do well to forsake the
glowing accounts to be found in the pages of Macaulay, Trevelyan, and Oldmixon, for
the study of the Newgate Calendar, the pictures of Hogarth, and the working of the
Penal Laws in Ireland.
Sir Charles contrasts the famous British Constitution of modem times with
the balanced hierarchical order of the mediaeval feudal state.
At the apex of the pyramid stood the monarch, the symbol of the nation as a whole,
and as the representative of which he was, after his coronation, the Lord’s anointed.
He was not a despot, bound by no laws other than those of his own making; rather he
was an integral part of the system of which he was the head. His crown was the em¬
blem of his trusteeship for his people, and his rights and duties were as exactly defined
as those of his subjects. This was, indeed, the distinguishing characteristic of Feudal¬
ism: every man and woman had a definite place in society, which was responsible to
them as they were to it.
It is clear that Sir Charles Petrie is a Tory, in the oldest and purest sense of
the word. That is one reason why his book makes such refreshing and stimu¬
lating reading. It is a profound relief to find someone who is so singularly free
REVIEWS
177
from modernistic delusions of every kind. Even his prejudices have their charm,
the charm of the unexpected. His conception of the United States suggests,
however, that his chief sources of information are Hollywood and the novels of
Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis.
Politics [in the United States] have become corrupt to an extent unparalleled even in
republican history, and to-day the gangster, spiritual brother of the Chinese war-lord
and spiritual descendant of the mediaeval condottiergy is the dominant factor. . . . The
Civil War destroyed the balance between North and South, and stamped indelibly the
Puritanism and materialism of the former upon the whole country. Now with the pas¬
sage of time, Puritanism as an ethical code has been abandoned, and only materialism
remains. All the available evidence goes to show that the United States is an immature
society already in dissolution, and there can be small doubt that bad as is its political
and economical condition, its moral state is far worse. It is true that the same observa¬
tion applies to Europe, but Europe at least has a code, even if it is only too often ignored,
while the United States has none.
These words are not without justification, but they do not contain the whole
truth. Also they suggest no way of escape, for even Sir Charles cannot imagine
the establishment of a monarchy in the United States. We venture to add that
those Americans who believe most firmly in the superiority of monarchy as a
principle, could conceive of no worse fate for their country than the “coronation”
of one or another of their politicians. Facts must be accepted as they are, and
it is a fact that ever since its birth as a nation the United States has been en¬
tangled in a democratic karma or destiny. One may still hope that some day
it will evolve out of this condition. The diseases of nations, like those of indi¬
viduals, are not necessarily incurable.
This reflection leads us to the consideration of Madame Muret’s excellent
book. She has prepared a manual of the ideas of the leading exponents of
royalist theory in post-revolutionary France, from Joseph de Maistre and
Chateaubriand to Charles Maurras and L^on Daudet. Her attitude is detached.
throughout, and the extent of her personal sympathy with royalist views isij
unrevealed; but she presents those views clearly and logically. In our opinion,
the documents which she cites serve as an admirable commentary upon Sir
Charles Petrie’s general doctrine. This is especially true of the work of Joseph
de Maistre who upheld monarchy as the form of government specifically designed
for man by God. It is, moreover, the form “to which society will always tend to
return”, just because it represents the natural and the normal. But men have a
tragic propensity to fall away from the natural and the normal. When this
occurs in a society, other and lower forms of government, corresponding to the
fallen state of the citizens, come into existence. They have a punitive and
corrective function. Maistre believed, for instance, that “the Revolution was
sent as a punishment and lesson to the French people for their impiety.”
One great advantage of the monarchist state is its continuity. Because it is
the expression of a living tradition, it does not live for the present alone. It
respects past experience and profits from it, and it does not heedlessly mortgage
the future. As some of us know only too well, the politicians of a democracy
178
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
constantly act as if their nation had no past and no future. It is the fashion for
each party or faction, when it assumes power, to denounce all the deeds of its
predecessors and to reject whatever wisdom these may have acquired. Therefore,
whereas the “bad karma” of a political error or crime in a monarchy may be
tempered by the “good karma” of past virtues, a democracy must frequently
face full and immediate retribution for its mistakes. Under democratic rule, the
karma of the nation as a whole may be eclipsed, as it were, at any given moment,
by the karma of the faction which is in control. V.L.
Nazi Means War, by Leland Stowe; Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book
Company, New York, 1934; price, $1.50.
To believe that “nobody wants war to-day”, one would have to be an ostrich
with abnormal powers of continuing to breathe with one’s head in the sand.
Nevertheless, despite the spectacle of German violence past and present, Nazi
“putsches”, and Austrian civil war, there are, especially in this country, thou¬
sands of such abnormities. They would do well to read this little book.
Mr. Stowe begins by contrasting Hitler’s two “voices”, the one which speaks
for foreign ears, saying, “Germany wants nothing but peace”, and that which
speaks continually for Germans. He quotes from the unexpurgated German
edition of Hitler’s book. Mein Kampf.
The question of recuperation of German power is not how we can manufacture arms.
Rather it is, how can we create the spirit which renders a people capable of bearing
arms? When this spirit dominates a people, will power finds a thousand ways, each of
which leads to a weapon. . . . Not until the Germans have realized that they must
engage in an active and final conflict with France will it be possible to bring the fruit¬
less struggle to a conclusion—on condition, however, that Germany sees in the exter¬
mination of France a means of providing her people with the necessary room for expan¬
sion. . . . There are eighty million Germans in Europe to-day. This policy will be
recognized as the correct one when in less than one hundred years from now the con¬
tinent of Europe is inhabited by 2$o,ooo,ooo Germans.
Mr. Stowe proceeds to describe the methods by which the government is
rapidly preparing this happy state.
There are more than 1,300,000 uniformed men in Germany to-day—a round million
after the regular army and Prussian police have been deducted. If you estimate the
adult population of the Third Reich at 50,000,000, and its masculine proportion at one-
half that figure, the mathematical result is simple enough. At least one out of every
twenty-five German men wears a uniform, or to be conservative, say one man out of
every twenty-eight.
There are, apart from the regular army, the Reichswehr and the Prussian
police, the Brown Shirts, the Black Coats, the Steel Helmets and the Labour
Corps. The organization of this last resembles that of Mr. Roosevelt’s forestry
camps for the unemployed, except that the young unemployed Germans are
given military training and are building new military roads all over the country.
Also, all German students are required to spend from two to six months in the
REVIEWS
179
Labour Corps. Under the guise of sporting organizations there are automobile
clubs, the members of which are obliged to furnish their cars when called upon.
There are the Air Sports and Air Protection Leagues which provide planes and
train pilots and flyers. All these bodies are organized in military fashion, and
can be merged with the regular army at once. The author discussed this with an
official of the German foreign office. This personage said that they were “no
more militaristic than American football teams”. The Germans always count
upon the stupidity of the Americans and English. They are probably right.
The German universities have been provided with professors of military
subjects, whose courses are, for the most part, required. Professor Banse’s
book. The Science of Military Defence, was banned because of its effect upon the
world outside of Germany,- but the Professor himself continues to instruct his
students in its principles. One quotation from this work is enough.
Biology will stamp it (the next war) as an exterminating fight of entire nations. . . .
Methods to be considered are infection of drinking water and other water with typhoid
bacillus; also the introduction of typhoid fever through fleas and of plague through
artificially infected rats. By landing in the back regions of enemy countries and dis¬
charging carriers of disease, airplanes, especially, should achieve vfry favourable results.
Not only is the German male population being trained in tactics, machine-gun
fire and forced marches, but little boys in school belong to the “Hitler Jugend”,
and are marched up and down in uniform and drilled in throwing hand grenades.
Stowe describes the unveiling of a monument to the Archangel Michael (!) where
several hundred children were assembled. Among other things their leader said
to them: “We do not want to speak the warm words of peace here. Our words
are dictated by the terrible appeal of war. Young crew, raise the hand of oath
before the monument which is dedicated to the sublimity of bloodshedding."
Mr. Stowe goes on to discuss the question of Germany’s power to equip its
armies, the manufacture of munitions, the conception of the Totalitarian State,
the German psychology, and the prospects for war in the near future. He
ends his book with a chapter entitled “If War, What About America?” If what
he says about America be true, we ought to be bowed with shame.
Can we be indiflFerent to the self-destruction of the old world? ... It appears accyJ
rate to state that the temper of the American people to-day registers overwhelmin|:^
against any governmental action which is likely to necessitate the dispatch of a second
American Expeditionary Force across the Atlantic.
He says that if we do not participate, but remain neutral, we should refuse to
make money by the sale of munitions and supplies; but he doubts whether, in
our present condition of financial stringency, we would do this. There is never
a question in his pages of right or wrong, or of the justice of a cause for which one
ought to fight. Peace at any ignominious price is the ideal. After descrioing so
accurately the bloodthirsty, aggressive temper of the Germans, Mr. Stowe
suggests that we should refrain from assisting their victims. The German spirit
is the embodiment of the uncivilized and bestial, but is the spineless, selfish
pacifism attributed (and we fear rightly) to America, any more civilized and
i8o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
human? Alas, they are both aspects of the same thing and lead to the same end.
Not once does Mr. Stowe mention Germany’s conduct in the Great War,—the
same careful preparations, the same psychology, the use of poison gas, the
atrocities in Belgium and France. Why should Germany’s preparations surprise
us now? He sympathizes warmly with Germany over the “cruelty” of the
Versailles Treaty, although its obvious defect was that it did not provide for
Germany’s complete dismemberment.
However, disagree as one must with Mr. Stowe’s principles—or lack of them—
his facts are so important that his book should be widely circulated.
St.C.LaD.
God Mends, by Henry Myers; John M. Watkins, London; price, 25. (75
cents).
It is a pleasure to be able to congratulate John M. Watkins once more on the
high standards he maintains as a publisher. At a time when book-publishing,
like newspaper-publishing, is sinking to the level of a commercial enterprise, he
has clung to what may properly be described as the aristocratic principle of
nil nisi pro hono publico.
This little book, simply and clearly written, is based on the injunction: “Seek
ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you.” It was written primarily for those who are ill and suffering,
but should be helpful, not only to them, but to all who find it difficult, in this
Iron Age, to keep fast hold of spiritual realities. It is theosophical in tone and
outlook, entirely unsectarian, unpretentious. We are in hearty accord with its
recommendation of the use of mantra, which some would call “ejaculations”,
others, “affirmations”,—so long as these express the truth, not lies.
In objection to its main thesis—that love of the Divine Will would induce
bodily health—there are those who will ask: why did so many of the great
saints suffer physically? We suggest, in reply, that much of their suffering was
vicarious; secondly, that when spiritual growth has far out-run the stage as yet
reached by physical organisms, the strain on the outer body may well become
disruptive. We believe, on the other hand, that when the intermediate con¬
dition has been passed (and even the great saints had not passed it), and when
adeptship has been attained, perfect balance between inner and outer forces,
with resulting bodily vigour, becomes the normal state, long out-lasting the
ordinary span of life. In any case, God Mends was not written either for great
saints or for adepts, but for the many; and we wish greatly that the many might
be persuaded to read it. T.
The Universe of Light, by Sir William Bragg; The Macmillan Company, New
York; price, $3.50.
Readers of the Quarterly will remember that, particularly of late, a great
deal has been written in it concerning modem physical science—references
may perhaps specially be made to “Notes and Comments” of,October, 1933,
REVIEWS
i8i
and January, 1934. Therefore, if they have not already seen this recent work
of Sir William Bragg (internationally known for his brilliant experiments in
radiation, for which he received the Nobel Prize), they will be sure to find it
stimulating. One object of the book is to give a summary of the earlier re¬
searches in the field of physics, so as to make the present-day developments, from
which they have sprung, the more comprehensible to those who have not been
able to follow the course of science step by step. The natural starting point
is the three-hundred-year old rivalry between the two theories of light: the
corpuscular and the pulse, later known as the wave theory. These, of course,
at once recall to us the names of Newton and of Huyghens, but also of others—
Young and Fresnel, whose researches did so much to solve preceding difficulties;
of Crookes, so often referred to in The Secret Doctrine, and many more. The
reconciliation of these two early and apparently opposed hypotheses is now being
reached by accepting both. The foremost physicists of to-day believe that both
may be true, that in fact each seems actually needed to supplement the other,
if observed phenomena are to be explained. Science is apparently beginning to
recognize what The Secret Doctrine so long ago pointed out: the law of duality in
the manifested universe, but a duality springing from a fundamental unity.
Light has a duality of expression or habit, but, says Sir William Bragg, the
“greatly differing phenomena are all manifestations of one principle, the magnifi¬
cent inclusiveness of which has grown clearer continuously as we have studied the
nature of light. . . . The wave and the corpuscle are different aspects rather than
different entities. . . . Light in its various forms behaves sometimes like a wave
and sometimes like a corpuscle.” Light is a familiar phenomenon, showing us
the forms and colours of objects which closely surround us, telling us many of
the secrets of the almost unthinkably distant sun and stars, and “if the meaning
of the word is extended, as may be done with every right and reason, to cover
the wide range of radiations which are akin to it, and yet are not visible to the
eye, then light is also the great conveyer of energy from place to place in the world
and in the universe;... it transmits energy which is the mainstay of life, and gives
to living beings the power of observation: and it is akin to the matter of which all
things animate and inanimate are made. The universe is its sphere of actionj
We do it no more than justice when we speak of the Universe of Light.” 1
Here is certainly a recognition of an underlying unity in the Cosmos which,
as the author himself points out, science, a few years ago, could not have fore¬
seen,—but which Madame Blavatsky long ago predicted it would eventually
recognize. It may, however, be said in comment upon the last quotation, that,
to the student of Theosophy, it remains an enigma that science still persists in
thinking of anything in nature as inanimate. Sir William Bragg, among many
other branches of physics, has done most distinguished work in the optical
properties of minerals; for instance, making intelligible many otherwise obscure
problems for mineralogists and geologists—research work for which the world
owes him a great debt. But after so much close observation and careful investi¬
gation, how can it still be imagined that the mineral kingdom (as one example
only) is inanimate? The amazing rapidity with which minerals respond to the
i 82
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
action of light, is a matter of perpetual wonder. Take a piece of rock (granite,
perhaps) which, to the naked eye, may appear to be rather a dull, colourless
lump; but cut a thin section of that mud-stained, ragged and rough fragment of
the earth’s crust, examine it under the microscope, first in ordinary light and then
between crossed Nicols, or better still in convergent light—and see what happens!
The whole character of that small fragment is instantaneously transformed; it
flashes into a wholly new state or condition; in a moment of time you can see
that it is actually pulsating with life. The beautiful polarization colours are as
indescribably lovely and ethereal as any that one ever sees in the sky at sunrise,
and the interference figures, with marvellously delicate tints of the highest orders,
show how alive are the minerals which compose that rock. It may be argued
that it is only the action of the light itself which causes these celestial effects,
but throughout nature there is interaction, a giving and a receiving and a giving
back again, and a dead thing (dead in the accepted meaning of the word—that
which is inanimate) is incapable of such transfiguration; it is incapable of a
response to light or to anything else. The author himself admits that, when ex¬
posed to X-ray analysis, “every crystal writes its own signature,’’—and what
more could we ask ? The fact is that science has yet to discover what Theosophy
has taught throughout the ages: that there is no place in nature for the word
“inanimate’’; that every atom is intensely alive in its own degree, and at its own
evolutionary point. Manifested nature is “embodied consciousness’’—that is
the Mystery Teaching of the past as of all time.
This lack of appreciation of one of the fundamental tenets of Theosophy does
not, however, lessen our interest or our sympathy with what, in general, this
book has to tell us, for it carries what will seem to many of us a hopeful mes¬
sage-one which points toward some of the archaic truths of the Wisdom re¬
ligion. “This widening of our view of the nature of things is surely one of the
most remarkable consequences of modem research,’’ we read. “No one could
have anticipated this fundamental universality. A lifting of the mist has shown
us links and similarities in the prospect where we imagined separations and
differences. ... If, as in our present case, there are contradictions which perplex
us, they must be due to imperfections in our theories and illustrations: and we
need not strain overmuch to resolve them. The resolution will come in its
own time, when research has added to our knowledge and lifted our minds to
higher points of view. Meanwhile we have come into possession of a wonderful
principle which unites all forms of radiation and all kinds of matter.’’
So ends the book, and we lay it down with regret that we have finished it.
It has not, perhaps, been altogether easy reading to the scientifically uninitiated,
but it has been delightful throughout. It is written with simple directness, and
with a wide and liberal point of view, and we feel that the spirit we find in it is
one result of what the world knows to be Sir William Bragg’s publicly expressed
convictions: unlike so many of his scientific colleagues, he firmly believes in the
immortality of the soul, and the divine purpose of Creation. That is, no doubt,
what the student of Theosophy instinctively feels to be at the root of all he has
written in The Universe of Light. T.J3
Question No. 389 .—What is the extent and scope of karmic influence? Does it apply to the
Universe or only to man? Do animals come under karmic law?
Answer. —Karma has been defined as cause and effect. The literal meaning of the word
is “action”. It is universal, in all worlds and on all planes. Mr. Judge, in the chapter on
“Karma” in the Ocean of Theosophy^ says: “Ceaseless in its operation, it beiirs alike upon
planets, systems of planets, races, nations, families, and individuals. ... No spot or being
in the universe is exempt from the operation of Karma, but all are under its sway, punished
for error by it yet beneficently led on, through discipline, rest, and reward, to the distant
heights of perfection.”
Man being endowed with free-will, is not only subject to the consequences of his past acts
and choices, in this as well as in previous lives, but is able by his present acts to expiate his past
and form his future Karma. The acceptance of the doctrine merely as an intellectual concept
is of no avail; it must be acted upon. If a man were once thoroughly convinced of its truth,
he would become a conscious co-operator with the “Good Law” in the thoughts and acts of
his every-day life. By so doing he would help to lift the heavy Karma of the world which
bears so painfully upon those Great Ones who have unselfishly renounced the reward they
have earned, to remain in contact with the world for its eventual salvation. G.H.M.
Answer. —We have been told that the law of Karma exists only in the world of duality;
therefore it cannot with accuracy be spoken of as universal, unless by that term we mean
the manifested universe. Masters, having risen far above these lower worlds, are no longer
subject to it, but no doubt even high ch^las still have Karma of a sort to work off. An Avatar,
we are told, returns voluntarily to life on this earth, not because of karmic necessity; it is
the divine compassion of a Master which draws him; whereas the average man, still
the “maya” of duality, and therefore still “condemned to the circle of necessity”, is ob^d
to come back into incarnation again and again, owing to his personal or national Karma, or
both.
As animals belong to the planes of duality, they would, of course, be subject to karmic
laws, although these would apply more to the species or group, than to the individual. It is
altogether likely, however, that the highly developed animal (such, for instance, as a dog,
remarkable for his intense fidelity), might have begun to weave his own Karma, owing to
the fact that he had advanced, far ahead of his kind, toward a knowledge of good and evil.
T.A.
Answer. —Above, below and everywhere must be the extent of karmic influence, apply¬
ing both to the Universe and to man, and this would naturally include all animals, according
to their nature and type. In a beautiful old classic we read: “He who would escape from
the bondage of Karma must raise his individuality out of the shadow into the shine; . . .
lift himself out of the region in which Karma operates. . . . The initiate has the right to
demand the secrets of Nature and to know the rules which govern human life. . . . There¬
fore you who desire to understand the laws of Karma, attempt first to free yourself from
183
1
184
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
these laws; and this can only be done by fixing your attention on that which is unaffected by
those laws.” p
Question No. 390.— What is the best way to bring to non-Theosophists the principles which
gu e the Society through the present universal unrest and distress and which are so frankly de-
^ the Quarterly? If they refuse to read the Quarterly, are words any use
at all?
Answer. It has often been said that the best, in fact the only way to bring theosophical
princip es to others is by living in accordance with them and so making them a part of our-
se ves, making them ours to give. If we lived by them truly, the inherent drawing power of
these pnnciples would make others desire them. There is never any use in trying to give
a man what he does not want. Often, however, a truth is rejected through prejudice, not
against the truth spoken but against the terms in which it is clothed. Those who have really
ive y principles gam a knowledge of their essence that gives power to translate them into
the terms and analogies most appropriate to the particular hearer. J.F.B.M.
wfcaTsee t‘i^a?rv tr “ Tu P~P'« ‘here are people themselves.
life iusl ^ Quarterly, also, presents varied aspects of the wisdom religion of
hfe Just because a person refuses to read the magazine does not in itself mean there is no
dLT*^ bringing forward theosophical principles and standards. Some people imme-
diately shy away from anything that bears the Mel of Theosophy. We need not wonder
nor be discouraged by that, when we consider the number of pseL-Xheosophist !nd o
ZX M f'^hich parade befL the world One waJ o!
bringing right pnnciples and standards to the attention of a person is to do so in terrZ nf
Am expenence and in language intelligible to that experience. As is said in
no o give of our light to another, but to illumine his own'\ Of course there will be f
when words will not be of “anv use nt ^11” . ,, , oe times
reform all who cross our path. We are most decidedly called udo \
the extent we do so and live that reformation, we shall, by example° [nfluMce^ofte'^iTt
degree of emulation.-often after words have failed P'®-'nnuence others to some
G.M.W.K.
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tary T.S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York. Out-of-town k ^ to the Secre-
vited to attend these meetings whenever they are in New YorlT al!d °
interested in Theosophy are always welcome. ’ visitors who may be
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Hillard, Katherine. Abridgment of the Secret” b^RiNE”. .doth, 3.*oo
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OL. XXXII, No. 3 JANUARY, 1935
Founded by 5. P. Blauatsky at lltw York In IS75
HE SocUty doei not pretend to be able to establiik
at once a uniyersai brotherhood amons^ ment bat
only strives to create the nucleus of such a body*
Many of its members believe that an acquaintance
with the world's religfions and philosophies will
reveah as the common and fundamental principle
underlyinc thesct that ^^spiritual identity of all Souls with the
Oversoul''which is the basis of true brotherhood; and many
of them also believe that an appreciation of the finer forces
of nature and man will still further emphasise the same idea*
The organization is wholly unaectariant with no creed»
6ogm2Lp nor personal authority to enforce or impose; neither
is it to be held responsible for the opinions of Its members#
who are expected to accord to the beliefs of others that
tolerance wnich they desire for their own*
The followinsf proclamation was adopted at the Conven*
tion of the Society* held at Boston* April* 18951
^'The Theosophlcal Society in America by its delegates and
members in Convention assembled* does hereby proclaim
fraternal gfood will and kindly feeling: toward all students of
Theosophy and members of Theosophical Societies wherever
and however situated* It further proclaims and avers its
hearty sympathy and association with such persons and
organisations in all theosophical matters except those of
government and administration* and invites their cor*
tespondence and co-operation*
^To all men and women of whatever caste* creed* race* or
teIig:ious belief* who aim at the fostering: of peace* gentleness*
and unselfish reg:ard one for another* and the acquisition of
such knowledg:e of men and nature as shall tend to the elcva«
tion and advancement of the human race* it sends most ixitndlf
greeting: and freely proffers its services*
^It loins hands with all relig:ions and religious bodiawhose
efforts arc directed to the purification of men's thoughts and
the betting of their ways* and it avows its harmony them*
with. To all scientific societies and individual searchers after
wisdom upon whatever plane, and by whatever righteous
me^ mmued* it is and will be grateful for such discovery
unfoldment of Truth as shall serve to announce and eon-
finn a Kitntiftc b^tsis for ethics.
lastly* it invites to its membership those who* seek*
Hereafter* would learn to know the paA to
Applications for membersliip should be addressed to tiu
Secretary T. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York,
1 PUBLISI
1 THETHEOSOPl
^ED BY 1
IICAL SOCIEH 1
The Theosophical Quarterly
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Subscription price. $a.oo per annum; single copies, 50 cents
Published by The Theosophical Society
at 64 Washington Mews, New York, N.Y.
July; October; January; April
Address all communications to P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York
In Europe, single copies may be obtained from and subscriptioM may be sent to John
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Mr E H Lincoln, 0 Beaconsfield Road, Low Fell, Gateshead-on-Tyne, England, from
_nil TTm.V
CONTENTS OF VOL. XXXII, NO. 3
January, 1935
NOTES AND COMMENTS.
FRAGMENTS.
LETTERS FROM W. Q. JUDGE.
PERCHANCE HE SLEEPETH.
ONE PATH TO THE GOAL.
WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.,
WITHOUT CENSOR. IV.
MANAGING THE PERSONALITY.
LTLE-DE-FRANCE.
LIVING PICTURES.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME.
REVIEWS...
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS; Notice of Meetings
PAGE
. 187
. 197
. 198
. 206
. 209
• 215
. 220
. 230
• 233
. 241
• 243
• 257
. 269
Entered as second-class matter September 5 , 1923 . at the Post Office at New York. N. Y., under the
Act of March 3. 1879.
Copyright, 1935, by The Theosophical Society
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York by IL P. Blavatsky,
W. Q. Judge and othersy in 1875 .
We have no connection whatsoever with any other organization
calling itself Theosophicaly formerly headed by Mrs. BesanU nor
with similar bodies, the purposes and methods of which are wholly
foreign to our own.
Editors, The Theosophical Quarterly, f
JANUARY, 1935
The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion or declaration
in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless contained in an official document.
Facts and Fancies
I N his latest book. Experiment in Autobiography, H. G. Wells whose novels
entertained the generation before the Great War,
facts to fancies. He contrasts himself, in this respect, with George Bernard
Shaw, who was, in the same far-off era, a popular dramatist.
T u' r' o Ck^iwl T rruess 1 have always appeared formidably facty and close-set,
■ sh» .,o«nd k,, .na=••«?»<
leau Then 1 know, fundamentally, the heartless impartiality of natural causation, but
Shaw make" E.olution something brighter and softer by endowing it with an ultimately
benevolent Life-Force.
We have no desire to take sides in any argument as to the supenor ments
of Shaw or Wells. It is equally difficult to imagine Shaw as a benevolent old
gentleman or Wells as a disinterested spectator of truth^ Both of them, in their
different ways, are intellectual mountebanks, whose chief asset is unbounded
itisfaction with their own performance. The passage quoted is interesting
because it suggests the two ways in which men habitually react to the p^ure
of facts upon their consciousness. Wells reacts, or rather poses, as
realist who describes things as they are, especially hard and disagreeabl^hing
which’shock our sensibilities. He does not disguise his contempt for poseurs of
the other species, the sentimentalists, whose vision of facts is clouded by eir
own fancies, and who cultivate the delusion that dreams can come true.
Brutal Realism
The brutal realist does not understand that he also is a victim of fantasy.
H JLcies that the material world comprises the whole of the Real. He fanaes
i88
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
that he is describing a fact when he is only sketching the appearance of its
surface. This crude materialism, which colours so much modem literature,
is rooted in a misconception of the experimental method which is a legitimate
instmment of thought in physical science. Scientific calculations depend upon
the exact measurement of concrete, objective phenomena, upon accurate defi¬
nition of the conditions in which similar sequences of events recur. The appro¬
priate object of scientific experiment is the inorganic world, where causation
appears to be rigidly determined and calculable. It is not the function of the
scientist as such, to enquire into the metaphysical nature of this determinism,
or to take account of the possibility that there is a spiritual impulsive force and
purpose underlying the superficial mechanism of matter. He can predict eclipses
and design engines by applying without question the principles of mechanics,
as these have been shaped by centuries of mathematical theory and physical
experiment. The study of the atom suggests that the mechanistic hypothesis
does not work in the field of the infinitesimal; but that does not affect its use¬
fulness in its own domain. It is obviously a device of the human mind for acting
upon gross matter, a scientific fiction, symbolizing a very fragmentary view of
Nature, but serviceable in so far as it enables man to forecast and control the
action of the brute forces that encompass him.
Scientific fictions become dangerous when they are seriously accepted as philo¬
sophical propositions and are adopted as explanations of things to which they do
not apply. When scientific mechanism is extended beyond its appropriate
sphere, it dislocates the mind. The vogue of brutal realism may be largely
attributed to the dissemination of the notion that only physical facts are real,
and that when these have been weighed and measured they have been fully
described. This is equivalent to the denial of consciousness, that is, of the one
fact in the Universe, the reality of which is beyond dispute.
An author who believes that his pencil is more real than his soul, stores in his
mind a very lop-sided image of the world. Thus when Wells remarks that he
knows “the heartless impartiality of natural causation”, he deceives himself and
others. All he knows is that on the plane of physical sensation certain processes
can be defined in terms of rigorous mechanical causation. But there are plenty
of facts within common human experience which cannot be interpreted in this
way. The epic of organic evolution and, in particular, the dramas of human
life, point to a deeper mode of causation which is neither heartless nor purposeless.
In brief, brutal realism is not realism at all. It is the expression of an excessive
attention to the external aspect of Nature, with a corresponding indifference to
all that is implied by the self-evident existence of consciousness.
Magnesium and Social-Mindedness
In justice it should be said that many scientists, like Eddington and Jeans,
are acutely aware of the limited zone of truth to which their methods give
access. It would seem that popular authors, like Wells, have done more to
fortify materialism in public opinion than all the men of science combined.
However, from time to time one reads extraordinary statements by men of
NOTES AND COMMENTS
189
science, notably by members of the medical profession. There is Professor E. V.
McCollum of Johns Hopkins, for instance, who is apparently convinced that
the human race can be morally reformed by a proper diet. A little while ago he
reported that manganese stimulates mother-love. He now declares that “you
can’t have a sweet disposition without magnesium’’. It is worth while to quote
the ironical conclusion of an editorial on this “discovery’’ in the New York
Times (October 30, 1934), for it shows that the worst enemy of materialism is
common-sense.
As all the psychologists know, there is no connection between mother-love and human
kindness. Mother-love is a selfish, dominating and destructive force which must be
severely frowned upon. It would be terrible if the female parent of a young child mixed
up the magnesium and manganese bottles in the medicine chest, and stimulated her
mother-love instead of her benevolence and social-mindedness.
Some Ideas Concerning Angels
The brutal realist—whether he be a man of science or a man of letters—
resorts to the most bizarre hypotheses to explain away the evidence of spiritual
powers. He seeks the origin of ideal qualities, like honour and chastity, in the
taboos of savages. He classifies religion as a manifestation of inherited animal
instincts which have not yet been suppressed by human reason. He diagnoses
St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus as an epileptic seizure. He
describes the healing science of the Master Christ as a primitive form of psychi¬
atry, assuming that the Master used the methods of a modem psychopathic
ward.
A curious example of this materialistic self-satisfaction appeared on the
editorial page of the New York Herald Tribune, November i, 1934- In semi-
serious vein, the writer considers the source of the immemorial tradition that
when celestial beings appear to man, they come clothed in garments of light.
His little essay was, doubtless, intended as a bit of fine writing, and nothing more;
but it suggests how remote and unreal the angels seem to modem man and ho^
limited is his conception of light.
The Dark Ages were literally so in the homes of man, and later ages, too. It is hard
for us who live in cities long ago made incandescent by Edison to understand how beau¬
tiful light must have been to those who first imagined and portrayed the heavenly beings
as creatures of unearthly splendour. In the comfortless, doleful Northern winter, through
unnumbered centuries, abundant light seemed a worshipful thing. . . . The pagan and
the Christian supernatural host came robed in glory, with swords of lightning. For
light then was rare and costly. Perhaps if electric lamps had been invented before
angels were imagined, the conception of their supreme beauty would have been quite
different. In nights that can be made brighter than noon by lifting a finger, mediaeval
angels would not be conspicuous in any external way. St. Michael’s famous blade would
fall to an airport beam.
One might enquire, in the same semi-serious vein, why the Egyptians identified
their greatest divinities with the Sun, and why the brightest angels were “im¬
agined’’ in Italy, when neither Egypt nor Italy was afflicted with doleful Northern
winters. Why must we assiune that the Host of Heaven have no existence out-
IpO
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
side the human imagination; that their aureoles of dazzling light signify nothing
more real than the need of man to formulate a mental image which quiets his
fear of cold and darkness? Theosophy affirms that the part of Nature which we
contact through the physical senses is but an infinitesimal fraction of the Whole;
that there are forms, modes of being, dimensions of substance, states of conscious¬
ness, so far beyond our ken that we cannot dimly represent what they may be
like. However, this does not imply that there can be no intercourse between man
and the “Hierarchies” of invisible Nature. To deny such intercourse, one wotild
be forced to reject the testimony of all races and of all ages. Inevitably men
have seen the apparitions of “Gods” and “Angels” through the prism of im¬
agination, translating—as it were—their ineffable aspects into conceivable
images. Thus men have adorned Divine Messengers with emblems of physical
light. But why should not these emblems be symbolical of the truth? If the
Heavenly Host be associated in tradition with the idea of light, may it not be
because their essence corresponds to the light which we know on earth? Terres¬
trial light itself is a Divine Messenger, for it is the supporter of organic life and
the matrix in which the first forms of physical sensation are bom.
Even on earth there are ranges of radiation which are as darkness to our sight,
which no Edison has made visible. We cannot perceive the ultra-violet colours
which are within the vision of many insects. According to Theosophy, those
ranges of invisible light have an infinite extension, and the noumenon of light is
life. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Thus the Kabalah
taught that the words of Genesis, “Let there be Light”, refer to the formation
and evolution of the Sephiroth, the Creative Logoi, the Divine Architects of the
Universe.
The Substitution of Emotion for Thought
In some respects, brutal realism is less exasperating than sentimentality. It
is also easier to combat, for it is more tangible, less “subjective”, and its ab¬
surdities and bigotry are often painfully manifest. Moreover, although the
tough-minded materialist may be purblind in the presence of spiritual tmth,
he is capable of describing accurately and honestly the “matter” which he can
see. If he be a man of science, he cannot be dishonest or fanciful in his labo¬
ratory reports, and remain in his caste. Modem science has a mgged code of
truthfulness which is enforced without compromise.
The sentimentalist, however, does not look squarely at facts of any order.
Both spirit and matter are beyond his horizon, and he becomes aware of them
only as mirages or reflections in the atmosphere of the dream-world where his
personal consciousness is concentrated. Because he habitually substitutes
emotion for intellection, his logical faculty does not have a normal development.
His reasoning processes start from false observations, and one cannot be sure of
the conclusions in which they \vill terminate, for they do not necessarily obey the
laws of the syllogism. Between the spiritual or physical reality which confronts
the sentimentalist, and his mind, is suspended a veil of psychic stuff, a web of
fancies, which is what he actually contemplates when he pretends to look at facts.
NOTES AND COMMENTS
191
Doubtless, all human personalities enwrap their consciousness in glamour of
one kind or another. The most brutal realist has private illusions which he
cherishes. The sentimentalist is only distinguished from other men by his
greater reluctance to admit that he has illusions. When the nature of things
forcibly contradicts his mental picture of them, he does not alter the picture
but denoimces Nature.
Ecclesiastical Sentimentality
If the sentimentalists would only keep their dreams to themselves, one could
afford to let them slumber in peace, until life and Karma finally aroused them.
However, few of them have the gift of silence. Some are in a position to do
incalculable harm, for they hold governmental posts in many lands. Many are
Utopians, potentially if not actually, with an avowed or secret desire to reform
both man and Nature. In general, the clergy seem to be especially subject to
waves of sentimentality, perhaps because they are forced by circumstances to
talk almost continuously about spiritual things which very few have directly
experienced. In any event, the mind of the average clergyman is full of what
Spinoza calls “inadequate ideas”. Again and again he confuses spiritual princi¬
ples with their psychic counterfeits, seeing good where there is evil and evil
where there is good. Although he professes his faith in the primacy of the spirit,
he is capable of posing without dignity as a materialist, of arguing that human
vice and misery are products of adverse material conditions and would dis¬
appear if the conditions were changed.
The recent meeting of the Protestant Episcopal House of Bishops at Atlantic
City provides melancholy evidence of this ecclesiastical sentimentality. With
certain notable exceptions, the Bishops showed a deplorable misconception of
their Master’s teaching and standards. They were as susceptible to changing
moods as a political convention. Immediately after they had endorsed birth
control, they prepared for publication a Pastoral Letter denouncing the decay
of morals and the “menace of Reno”, with particular emphasis upon the selfish¬
ness of “conscienceless and godless parents”. This kind of logic is characteristic
of the general order of thought in the document. It reflects not only mental and
psychic confusion, but moral cowardice. Too many of the Protestant rler|Aire
desperately afraid of being thought old-fashioned, of not being considered nfliern
and up-to-date; and this fear impels them to compromise and hypocrisy.
We quote a few sentences from the Pastoral Letter which illustrate a very
common sentimental delusion. The House of Bishops, disapproving the processes
of Nature in general, refuses to admit the spiritual and natural necessity of war.
War is murder on a colossal scale. The only armed force, whether on land or sea,
which is justifiable is a constabulary designed to regulate and safeguard those interests
that have to do with the prosecution of an orderly social and economic life. The testi¬
mony of the great war shows the wicked folly of such a struggle and its aftermath has
shattered the world’s hope and issued in confusions and disorder. . . . The Christian
Church cannot and will not deny loyalty and fealty to its Lord by being partners in
any scheme, national or international, that contemplates the wholesale destruction of
192
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
human life. It refuses to respond to that form of cheap patriotism that has as its slogan:
“In times of peace prepare for war.“ It regards as wicked the waste of the nation*s
wealth in the building of vast armaments and the maintenance of greatly augmented
forces on land and sea.
The whole pacifist argument depends upon the validity of the generalization
that “war is murder on a colossal scale”. Without doubt, some wars have been
murderous feuds, and nothing more; but the statement as a universal proposition
is meaningless. One might as well say that a man who protects a woman or
child from assault is as guilty as the assailant, because he also uses violent
methods. The Great War proves the “wicked folly” of Germany which started
it in open defiance of civilization. Do the Bishops seriously pretend that Bel¬
gium was wicked and insane, when she rejected the criminal proposals of the
German Chancellor; or that England would have behaved like a Christian
nation, if she had broken her pledge to defend Belgian neutrality? Are the
French to-day wickedly wasting their wealth, because in times of so-called peace
they prepare for war, knowing that the Germans, who have so many times
crossed the Rhine, are making ready to cross it again?
To believe that such courses of action are evil, is to betray the principles of
Christ, who gave his life for the helpless and oppressed. It is no wonder that in
all the Occident, multitudes who still believe in fimdamental distinctions be¬
tween right and wrong, have turned in disgust from the Churches. The supreme
tragedy of Christianity is that the ideal image of the Master has been distorted
beyond all recognition, until to the average man it suggests the polar opposites
of its veritable qualities, weakness instead of strength, the spirit of compromise
instead of the spirit of honour.
The End of War
The pacifist is blind to the basic truth that no era of enduring peace can come,
until the virtues of the warrior have become an integral and permanent part of
human nature. It would be agreeable if these virtues could be acquired without
effort and sacrifice, without the need of cultivating them through experience of
discomfort and horror, pain and death. Unfortunately these are the conditions
which are presented and enforced by Nature. We must learn to recognize the
light of the immortal spirit shining through the outer hideousness of the suffering
and dying body.
“Nothing is better for a warrior than a righteous battle”, says Krishna in the
Bhagavad Gita. It is interesting and stimulating to find this theme resumed in
a recent work by Colonel Charles de Gaulle of the French Army, Vers VArmk de
metier. The author comments upon the mission of the soldier, which is not
merely to kill the enemy, as the pacifists insinuate, but to sacrifice himself com¬
pletely and joyfully to a cause which he recognizes to be greater than himself.
Therefore, the true soldier longs, in a certain sense, for war, because only in
battle can he fully give himself. “Between the fictitious activity of an army in
times of peace and its latent power, there is a deceptive element, of which the
soldier cannot become aware without pain.” It is not that he enjoys the spectacle
NOTES AND COMMENTS
193
of the battlefield, with its confusion and carnage. He looks beyond all warfare
to the ultimate peace, but he knows that this peace* is the dynamic consummation
of life, and that only by the way of war can it be attained. Colonel de Gaulle has
restated, in his own terms, a fundamental principle of real Christianity, that
freedom from pain is the reward of those who use pain to rise above it.
If war is in essence destructive, the ideal of the warrior is, however, economy, the
minimum of slaughter for the maximum of victory. It turns to account death and suf¬
fering and terror, the sooner to attain its goal and to bring them to an end. ... In
truth, the military spirit, the art of the soldier and his virtues constitute an integral
part of the capital of humanity. . . . The self-sacrifice of the individual for the group,
the glorified suffering by which troops are formed, best fulfil our aesthetic and moral
ideals; the highest doctrines of philosophy and religion have chosen no other goal.
The World-Picture of Modern Physics
To return to our general theme, the brutal realist and the sentimentalist
suffer from a common delusion, that it is easy to discover and to reveal the truth.
The ultra-modem physicist is at least freed from this kind of self-deception. In
his efforts to interpret the bewildering paradoxes of “sub-atomic” behaviour,
he has reduced the universe to “a stormy sea with the sea taken away and only
the abstract quality of storminess left—or the grin of the Cheshire cat if we can
think of a grin as imdulatory”. Tangible things do not exist in the scheme of
wave-mechanics, and the physicist has practically abandoned the search for them.
He refuses to speak of anything more definite than a “probability”.
However, from time to time, some leader of advanced scientific opinion ven¬
tures to speculate upon the nature of the world-picture which may ultimately
emerge from the void in which the classical Newtonian universe has been dis¬
solved. In his Presidential Address before the annual meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, Sir James Jeans suggested that the
one certain fact in the world is the existence of our own minds. His thcsi|d
represents a return, in spirit if not in letter, to the starting-point of modefl
philosophical speculation, the famous cogito ergo sum of Descartes.
There is nothing new under the sun. It is wise to keep this ancient apothegm
in mind, whenever we read a newspaper. The press habitually describes every
event in the most sensational terms possible. Thus the newspaper accounts of
Jeans’ speculations imply that his ideas have no precedents in the history of
the human mind. Moreover, Jeans himself lends colour to this delusion by
apparently imputing to his predecessors a general naivete which is quite in¬
credible. Doubtless, a gross and crude materialism has been fashionable in
certain strata of society during the past two centuries; but one wonders how
many real men of science have believed that they were “studying an objective
nature which had its own existence independently of the mind which perceived
it”.
For instance, there was Sir Isaac Newton. In the Principia, he carefully
explained that he did not use the word “attraction” in a physical sense; that
his conception of natural forces or “agents” was purely mathematical. In
194
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
his Third Letter to Bentley, he said: “That gravity should be innate, inherent
and essential to matter, . . . is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no
man, who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can
ever fall into it.” A hundred years after Newton, Cuvier, the great zoologist,
remarked in the R&volution du Globe that “it is not certain whether natural
forces are not after all spiritual powers {des agents spirituels).'' In 1870, when
Victorian materialism was at its height, Thomas H. Huxley wrote in his Lay
Sermons: “After all, what do we know of this terrible ‘matter’, except as a name
for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness?
. . . Nor is our knowledge of anything we know or feel more, or less, than
knowledge of states of consciousness.” Certainly, Jeans is not the first scien¬
tific thinker who has concluded that “the external world is essentially of the
same nature as mental ideas”.
The following is quoted from the report of Jeans’ address in Science y September
7 . 1934 -
The old physics imagined it was studying an objective nature which had its own
existence independently of the mind which perceived it—which, indeed, had existed
from all eternity, whether it was perceived or not. It would have gone on imagining
this to this day, had the electron observed by the physicists behaved as on this supposi¬
tion it ought to have done. But it did not so behave, and this led to the birth of the
new physics, with its general thesis that the nature we study does not consist so much
of something we perceive as of our perceptions; it is not the object of the subject-object
relation, but the relation itself. There is, in fact, no clear-cut division between the
subject and object; they form an indivisible whole which now becomes nature. This
thesis finds its final expression in the wave-parable, which tells us that nature consists
of waves and that these are of the general quality of waves of knowledge or of absence of
knowledge, in our own minds. Let me digress to remind you that if ever we are to know
the true nature of waves, these waves must consist of something we already have in our
own minds. Now knowledge and absence of knowledge satisfy this criterion as few
other things could; waves in an ether, for instance, emphatically did not. It may seem
strange, and almost too good to be true, that nature should in the last resort consist of
something we can really understand; but there is always the simple solution that the
external world is essentially of the same nature as mental ideas. . . .
His [the Victorian scientist’s] objective and material universe is proved to consist of
little more than constructs of our own minds. To this extent, then, modern physics has
moved in the direction of philosophic idealism. Mind and matter, if not proved to be
of similar nature, are at least found to be ingredients of a single system. . . . This brings
us face to face with the fundamental difficulty which confronts every form of philo¬
sophical idealism. If the nature we study consists so largely of our own mental con¬
structs, why do our minds all construct one and the same nature? ... I would suggest
that physics itself may provide a possible although very conjectural clue. . . . Atom¬
icity and division into individual existences are fundamental in the restricted space-
time picture, but disappear in the wider, and as far as we know more truthful picture
which transcends space and time. In this, atomicity is replaced by what General Smuts
would describe as “holism”—the photons [or units of radiation] are no longer distinct
individuals each going its own way, but members of a single organization or whole—a
beam of light. . . . The biologists are beginning to tell us, although not very unani¬
mously, that the same may be true of the cells of our bodies. And is it not conceivable
that what is true of the objects perceived may be true also of the perceiving minds?
When we view ourselves in space and time, we are quite obviously distinct individuals;
NOTES AND COMMENTS
IQS
when we pass beyond space and time, we may perhaps form ingredients of a continuous
stream of life. It is only a step from this to a solution of the problem which would have
commended itself to many philosophers from Plato to Berkeley, and is, I think, directly
in line with the new world-picture of modern physics.
Consciousness and the Intellect
Many details in this brilliant philosophic design recall the world-picture of
Theosophy. The student of Theosophy also believes that “the nature we study
consists largely of our mental constructs”, and that mind and matter are “in¬
gredients of a single system”. However, the two pictures are far from being
identical. There is a depressing quality which pervades the “real world” of Jeans’
system. It is, indeed, “a stormy sea with only the abstract quality of storminess
left”. It has as much warmth and vividness as a mathematical formula, and is
admirably adapted for the habitation of such entities as the square root of minus
one. Certainly this is not the “real world” of Theosophy. It is a fundamental
theosophical principle that the universe, if we could see it as it truly is, would
reveal itself as infinitely more vivid, more concrete, more varied in beauty, more
individual in its forms of consciousness, than we can remotely conceive. As
one of the Upanishads tells us: “Who could live, who could breathe, if the heart
of being were not joy?” It is our own world of illusion which, by comparison
with the real, is abstract, vague and empty. But the truth and beauty which we
find and love here, are re-discovered on all the planes of reality, for they are of the
essence of universal being. “There is no existence for that which does not exist,
nor is there any non-existence for that which exists.”
Jeans reduces the universe to a basic substance which is either mind or of
mind-like nature. But what does he mean by mind? The word itself has so
many connotations, that it is almost impossible for anyone to use it twice in
exactly the same sense. Jeans appears to have some conception of a universal
consciousness of which human consciousness is a specialized manifestation or
microcosm. But he clearly identifies this “consciousness” with the intelleoJl
It is, indeed, open to question whether the ideal intellect which he attributearo^
God could be associated with any state of consciousness. The mind of Nature
or of God, as he half-seriously postulates it, is devoid of everything except the
ultra-abstruse figments of pure mathematical theory. It is the intellect of a
super-mathematician.
As Jeans makes clear, it is irrational to conceive all things, including our
minds, as permutations and combinations of an objective and material stuff
extended in space. But we find it no less difficult to imagine any process whereby
a mathematical formula could be transformed into the concrete universe to which
our souls and bodies belong.
Even the limited introspection of which we are capable, demonstrates that
the intellect is not itself a creative power. It is an instrument of consciousness,
a vehicle evolved by Nature, as the physical body is evolved, for the purposes
of soul. Wherever consciousness is immediately present, the twin powers of
perception and will are active. In the oft-quoted phrase of Plotinus, con-
196
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
sciousness is contemplation overflowing into action; as the mystics have so often
repeated, consciousness and love are one and the same. But the intellect per se
is incapable of perception and will and love. It is in its own nature as passive
as a robot; its function being to register and to preserve the images presented
to it by the perceptive powers, and, under the impulsion of will, to formulate in
logical order plans which can be translated into effective action.
The Bridge Between Spirit and Matter
Theosophy, following the most venerable of metaphysical traditions, proposes
a solution of the coexistence of subject and object in one universe, by postulating
that they are aspects of “an Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable
Principle on which all speculation is impossible”.
Parabrahman, the One Reality, the Absolute, is the field of Absolute Consciousness,
i. e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and of which
conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass in thought from
this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast of Spirit (or Con¬
sciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object. Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are,
however, to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as the two symbols or aspects
of the Absolute, Parabrahman, which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether
subjective or objective. 1 he Manifested Universe, therefore, is pervaded by duality,
which is, as it were, the very essence of its E^-istence as Manifestation. But just as the
opposite poles of Subject and Object, Spirit and Matter, are but aspects of the One
Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the Manifested Universe, there is “that”
which links Spirit to Matter, Subject to Object. This something, at present unknown
to Western speculation, is called by Occultists, Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the
Ideas existing in the Divine Thought are impressed on Cosmic Substance as the Laws
of Nature, ... the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation {The Secret Doctrine, ed. 1893,
L 43 - 44 )-
It is suggested that man, in his turn, can build a “bridge” between soul and
body, between subject and object, between the perceiver and the perceived, a
“bridge” which may be said to correspond to Fohat and to be formed of spiritual
intuition and will. Not unnatiu*ally it is unknown to Western speculation, for
it is manifest in the lives of the very few. Plowever, according to the occult
tradition which Madame Blavatsky transmitted, no real understanding of the
simplest fact is possible until that “bridge” is completed by man. The mind,
relying on the physical senses alone, and distracted by self-will and emotion,
can speculate endlessly, but it cannot contact the living truths of greater Nature.
It is this “mind” which is “the slayer of the real”. The intellect is the mirror of
consciousness, whether this be high or low, and only the spiritual man can possess
an intellect which reflects things as they are.
FRAGMENTS
T hou hast started upon the Quest, 0 Soul: hast thou the lion’s heart
that it requires?
Nay, quoth he, no lion’s heart have I. I am weak and fearful, but
I love.
Hast thou strength, then, for the rigours of the Way,—^the heavy burdens
thou must carry, the rough, steep climb, the bitter winds, the peril of a slip to
faltering feet?
Nay, I am all weakness, as I said; know not how to climb, have a poor back
for biurdens, and always stumble when I walk.
Then hast thou light and vision to supplement this weakness, something to
show thee where the turnings are upon the road; where, through the mists, the
chasms lie concealed; where, under newly-fallen snow, are rolling stones or
sheets of slippery ice? Vision thou must have, or else sure knowledge of the
Way.
Nay, neither have I: I tell thee I have but love, and what I love I seek. For¬
bid me not, for I can die of love, so weak I am. The body matters little, but
who coidd slay his heart?
If thus thy love be all, 0 Soul, and if thy heart were slain, where wouldst
thou be upon the Way? Consider well.
Nay, cease thy questioning. 0 thou. Tormentor of my craven soul, leav^
me, that I may pass along. Or, if thy blighting presence must stay with m#
come thou; I parley here no more. I love, and follow where I love.
Then was the troubling voice dissolved in music, and on the strains of music
came the words: Pass on, blest Soul; he who has love has all the rest, or finds
them waiting for him on the Way. Pass on, whatever may betide, to certain
Victory. Cav 6 .
^97
LETTERS FROM W. Q. JUDGE
HE concluding words of Judge’s letter of December 19th, 1895, ^rom
Aiken, S. C., were: “No more and we shall meet’’ (see the Theo-
^ SOPHICAL Quarterly, July, 1933). I was at Macon, Ga., where, on
December 22nd, the very active local Branch, in spite of Macon’s compara¬
tively small population, provided an audience of over 600 people, in the Acad¬
emy of Music, to listen to my lecture on Theosophy. Newspaper reports were
friendly, and Judge, when he heard of it, was pleased, for in those days, numbers
and publicity still counted. We were sowing widely, scattering seeds of the
Ancient Wisdom in every comer we could reach. Not many of us realized then,
as Judge did, that out of the thousands who not only listened, but for a time
joined the ranks of the Society, it would have been against the order of Nature
for more than a handful to bear fruit.
As soon as I could leave Macon, I joined Judge at Aiken, and had the delight
of spending two weeks with him in the boarding-house where he and Mrs. Judge
were staying. Judge’s voice was very weak; it hurt him to talk; but as the love
of his life was the Theosophical Society and the Movement, he not only had
to know the particulars of my lecturing tour, with impressions of the members
I had met, but had to comment for my information, and “for the future’’, as he
put it, when I begged him not to tire himself in this way. (It should be remem¬
bered that he died on March 21st, only three months later.) He used to come
to my room and sit on the bed, cross-legged, yogi fashion—the soles of his feet
turned up—and talk of things he wanted me to know, of things inner and outer,
vital in the real and often hidden life of the Movement. Already showing signs
of exhaustion, constantly struggling with his cough, it seemed none the less as if
he could not, would not die, so strong and steady, clear and one-pointed, was
the inner flame of his purpose; and always the same marvellous smile, springing
from his eyes,—quiet, like sunrise behind hills. Uncomplaining, single-hearted,
he fought on, hoping to live that he might complete the work he had begun.
Often we talked of the book on Occultism, for which he had asked me to collect
material: it was needed, he said; there were so many perversions, misunder¬
standings, of the real thing.
He had not a spark of vanity in him: and that, above all, was the trouble
with his enemies, as it is the trouble to-day with those who discuss him from a
pedestal of superiority, deciding where he was right and where he was wrong,—
in an effort to show, by hook or crook, to a little circle of admirers, their own
acumen, or “spiritual” attainment, or vast experience, that in any case they
may shine in their own eyes, and, if God be good, in the eyes of others also.
How small they are, against the memory of his greatness!
He was still able to take short walks, and occasionally we tried the streets of
Aiken for this purpose; but they were “full of niggers”, as he said,—which
ig8
LETTERS FROM W. Q. JUDGE
199
would not have mattered if it had not been for the amazing rudeness (at that
time, in any case) of the coloured population, and for occasional attempts to
jostle us off the pavement, which both of us foimd intolerable. So we deserted
the streets and took to the woods, agreeing that the North is often imfair to the
“Southern attitude” toward negroes. Northerners failing to recognize the dif¬
ficulties which arise when white people, outnumbered, live side by side with a
race which, as a race, is inferior (the exceptions, both ways, merely emphasizing
the rule).
No man ever worked harder for the ideal of brotherhood than Judge; but he
was not one of those addle-headed dreamers who think that all men are bom
equal, or that distinctions of race, creed, sex, caste and colour, properly accepted,
are any obstacle to a genuinely theosophical relationship.
Judge’s personality was Irish, and, racially, on the plane of his personality, he
disliked the English; but his dislike of the English on that plane was nothing
in comparison with his dislike, on another plane, of the Irish in himself: “that
Irish boy”, he called it privately, with disgust. He was, in other words, in¬
capable of real prejudice,—able to see things for what they were, recognizing
inferiority here and superiority there, with entire detachment. Standing with
him once on a balcony of the old Star and Garter Hotel at Richmond in Eng¬
land, we saw Queen Victoria drive by in an open landau. He had not seen her
before, and was deeply interested. “A remarkable woman”, he said; “a very
remarkable woman”; then, after a pause: “She has extraordinary presence"'. It
was no small tribute, coming from him. How he would have hated the tribe of
present-day, professional belittlers!
Judge left Aiken on January 9th, and, after spending two weeks in Cincinnati
with Dr. Buck, and over a week in Fort Wayne, arrived in New York on Feb¬
ruary 3rd. I had been obliged to leave Aiken in time to lecture in Washington
on the evening of January 7th, proceeding from there to Pittsburgh, then to
Wilkinsburg, to Philadelphia, and so to New York, where I arrived on January
19th, most gladly accepting Mr. Griscom’s kind invitation to his home.
While in Washington I received this,—Judge’s mind still intent upon “things
to be done”, but with a twinkle in his eye as he bestowed on me yet another
sobriquet.
[Postmarked] Aiken, S. C., January 7th, 1896.
Dear Orator,
I forgot to say that we wish to bring out a pamphlet, same series as Devachan,
on Reincarnation, to be made up from Path articles, etc. The last one, “Doc¬
trine of Rebirth”, is a good one; and there is one by [Dr.] Anderson. You will
have to look these up also, when you get to New York, and let me know about
it.
All well, as ever.
200
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
[Postmarked] Cincinnati, 0 ., January i6th, 1896.
Important and Confidential,
Dear Ernest,
There is a small room on the top story of 144 [Madison Avenue] which has a
Yale lock. In it are the following: . . .
Now then: I want to give up the room to the Trustees. Take large sheets of
wrapping paper and twine (Look out for-’s curiosity). Do up the old robe
and ask Griscoms (Mrs.) to take charge of it for me.
Nobody knows what’s in the room, no matter what they may suspect; so
don’t tell them.
Well good bye and
As ever,
%.
[Postmarked] Cincinnati, 0 ., January 19th, 1896.
Confidential.
Dear Ernest,
Without waiting to hear from you: I have thought over the matter of the
Chickering Hall lectures [Claude Wright had been lecturing there, every Sunday
morning], and my opinion is—you had better, if asked by W. [Wright] to take
part or take up, refuse.
If he is going to give up, he should be allowed to do so. I do not think they
are of enough consequence to call for the expenditures they require of all sorts
to make them go right.
As ever.
Nothing definite about plans. My throat bad, and cause of aphonia dis¬
covered therein—three months old.
To understand the reference to Mrs. Besant in the next letter, it is necessary
to keep in mind that K.H. .*. had written to Olcott in August, 1888, that he had
not written to or communicated with anyone, except through H.P.B., since 1885;
that Sinnett, suspecting H.P.B.’s integrity, but still believing in the existence of
K.H., had been determined to establish his own independent line of communi¬
cation with K.H., and, with that end in view, had mesmerized his wife and
others, putting them into “trances”, and had thus seemed what he regarded as
authentic teaching and guidance from the K.H. of The Occult World,—all the
more authentic, in Sinnett’s estimation, because the instruction, thus obtained,
invariably confirmed Sinnett’s preconceptions and prejudices, especially his
rooted conviction that the planets Mars and Mercury belonged to the Earth
chain of globes, and that he was supported in this by K.H. as against H.P.B.
On the appearance of The Secret Doctrine in 1888, Sinnett had bitterly resented
LETTERS FROM W. Q. JUDGE
201
H.P.B.’s correction of his views on this subject; relations between them had
become very strained, and for some time before H.P.B.’s death, in May, 1891,
Avenue Road and Sinnett’s group had kept at arms’ length. Very shortly after
H.P.B.’s death, however, Annie Besant privately approached Sinnett. She
did this because, “all intellect’’ and not in the least spiritual (as H.P.B. had
written of her), she was avid of phenomena and had resented Judge’s refusal to
indulge her craving and his insistence that she must seek and find the “inner
light’’ and thus become a “self-moving wheel’’. For a brief period, Sinnett cap-
tiu*ed her, as so many men had, and as so many were still to do. Thus it came
about, as an after-effect of Sinnett’s influence, that in Lucifer of December,
1895, Annie Besant reversed her earlier statements (see The Path of December,
1893, P- 270), “corrected’’ H.P.B., and, incidentally, led me to explode against
her in a letter to Judge, to which he replied as follows:
[Postmarked] Cincinnati, 0 ., January 20th, 1896.
Dear Ernest,
Will you please attend to the enclosed matter of German application. I en¬
close my reply written in copying pencil, so that it can be press copied.
Claude [Wright] has pretended to attend to these European matters, but I
have no confidence. I asked him to get (a) book to enter matters done as
President of T.S.E., (6) copying book for these letters. Find out if he has them,
and use them. The record should have quite a number of entries. But he has
never informed me about it. If he hasn’t them, then you procure them
please.
Yours from Philadelphia received. It is amusing; they are amusing.
But may I ask if you thought it a reply to my request for copy [to write me]
re squashing B. [Mrs. Besant]? I don’t see Lucifer. You must write me the
stuff and I’ll alter to suit me [This was done. See The Path, March, 1896, p.
362]. I wish to ignore her, but I can’t ignore the point. It is vital in the ph”
ophy. I would not name her other than “editor of Lucifer'*.
I am feeling badly all the week with stomach and throat. Latter no better.
We shall leave here in a few days and go up to Fort Wayne.
-of Philadelphia writes a mawkish note deploring the correction made in
Path about American Section and bolters. Is he the duck you spoke of?
As ever.
P. S. Think of the European laxity. It is now six months since Convention,
and I have had no copy of adopted form of charter or diploma. If I had it, I
could reply better to Reuss.
[Postmarked] Fort Wayne, Ind,, January 29th, 1896.
Dear Ernest,
Am too sick to write. You are too previous about sending a delegate to Lon¬
don in July. That is not occultism. Not the time to think of it now.
202
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Received the stuff re Mars and Earth, and will use it when I get better.
N. B. The yellow stone in the little filagree box is not to be handled. Tell the
Gs [Griscoms] if they have it.
Coryn: My letter in reply from him is to the contrary. He is pleased. Says
that’s the sort of one he likes. I tell you there is too much disposition to make
friction and to get even.
Watch C.F.W. [Claude Wright] when around and tell me if he seems over¬
burdened with work.
Weather here very nice and warm. I found out where the robe is o.k., so you
need not bother. Thanks for all the trouble you took.
As ever,
[Postmarked] Fort Wayne, Ind., January 30th, 1896.
Dear Ernest,
Re letter to-of India. Better point out also the affiliation clause in our
Constitution and say that can be done. If they would take a bold stand, there
might be a good deal done there. Suggest it. He and his Branch would have
as much right as a thousand to declare themselves an Indian T.S.
Just received the Path article and the Bernhardt matter. Thanks. Am a
little better and will read them soon.
We need a pamphlet (in the “envelope series’’) and I wrote Page [manager,
under Judge, of the Publishing department] on it—about Reincarnation. It
will consist of reprints from Path, e.g.. Miss Wakefield’s article and some of
mine and Anderson. Please ask Page if he wrote Miss Wakefield.
I don’t know what headway you are making with all the various things, as
you don’t say. Nor do you send any note or memo of anything for “Screen’’.
Has no point arisen at all ?
As ever.
[Postmarked] Fort Wayne, Ind., January 31st, 1896.
Dear Ernest,
We leave here on Monday and shall arrive Tuesday at Grand Central. Please
m&t me with a carriage to hold you also. I would rather that the people did
not come to the station. Will probably go to the Lincoln House and do not
care on Tuesday to have anyone but you and possibly Griscom call. I am
worse—in voice—than at Aiken, and positively cannot speak.
Will give you particulars in telegram before leaving, as to time of arrival.
LETTERS FROM W. Q. JUDGE
203
If Claude says he wants to come up, I do not care to have him as I shall have
to write what I want with him. But don’t tell him this.
As ever,
It was on February 3rd, at 6 p. m., that he arrived in New York, driving from
the station to the Lincoln Hotel, where he had decided to stay until a suitable
apartment could be found for him. He was far more ill than when I had left
him at Aiken some three weeks earlier: he was much weaker, his cough was
more frequent, his digestion gave him greater pain, he could barely whisper.
But he insisted upon my spending an hour or more with him daily, while he
went over details of the Work in its many ramifications. When he could, he
whispered his comments or directions; at other times he wrote notes on scraps
of paper,—such as: ''Forum. If possible relieve C.F.W. of the Forum, and
take entire charge of it, either at once or by degrees.” "Path. You must attend
to it. Articles to come are yours and Buck’s. I can’t finish mine I fear. I have
Miss Hillard’s. You must write Screen of Time.” He thought of everything; I
must have a desk at 144 Madison Avenue, then our Headquarters; so another note
says: “Your desk is to be in Correspondence Class room, 3rd floor. Desk belongs
to W.Q.J. Use it.” He was indefatigable, unconquerable; and the explanation
was simple: his zeal, springing from so great a love for the Work that so long
as he could think he must think first of that, always of that, and then, from the
same source, find strength to pass on to others, by some means or other, the
thought he willed into action. I can imagine a dying mother, unable to move,
still tending her little one like that.
No matter how ill, he always got up and dressed as usual, refusing to stay in
bed; but, with rare exceptions, he could not receive visitors. He sent for Mrs.
Griscom, wanting to see her, and he saw Mr. Griscom, so loyally devoted to
him, several times.
While Judge was at the Lincoln and I was spending part of every day
him, reporting on what had already been done to carry out his instructions,
upon what remained to be done, and receiving further directions from him
every branch of the work being covered—I did not realize that he was dying.
I did not even think of it as a possibility: he was so intensely alive in heart and
mind, so vibrant with energy. Nor did I realize the extent to which his long
illness had frayed his nerves; if I had, I should not have allowed myself to be¬
come rather discouraged at times by my inability always to please him. His
patience and self-control were really marvellous, but I knew that my inexpe¬
rience and stupidities were occasionally a trial to him, and then doubtless I
looked as well as felt crestfallen.
This childish reaction was stopped completely by a letter which I received,
addressed to me at 144 Madison Avenue, postmarked February 20th, the
204
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
envelope of which was in Judge’s writing. The “letter” itself was in a modified
script which I well knew, and read as follows:
“Ernest—Never mind his nerves which have been exposed a long time. He is
really pleased with what has been done and especially with the way you did
the Screen. A”
I had the grace to be ashamed of myself for making such a message necessary,
or, if not necessary, for having drawn on the compassion of one whose generosity
is imending but whom I might have spared.
It was a relief to Judge when, finally, an apartment had been found for him
(he hated hotels), and his fumitiu-e had been moved into it. It was on the
third floor of 325 West s6th Street. He, Mrs. Judge and I drove there on the
afternoon of February 22nd. From that day he grew weaker and weaker.
Some two weeks before his death his doctor warned him that unless he would
consent to give up all work, he would throw away his only chance to recover.
Judge consented, but the first effect of such a change in his whole life’s practice
was to make his condition worse: there was danger of an immediate collapse.
His cough was incessant; he could no longer lie down; he would doze with his
head on his arms on the back of a chair. Absolutely uncomplaining, he never
lost his magnificent power of endurance and self-control.
On the morning of March 19th, I had gone to the T.S. Headquarters at 144
Madison Avenue as usual, although much worried by Judge’s appearance (as
already stated, I occupied one of the rooms in his apartment). In the early
afternoon I received a telegram: “Go to Twenty-Ninth Street railroad office;
get full particulars all Florida resorts, trains, tickets, sleepers; then come home.
—W. Q. Judge.” When I returned, he whispered that if he could “only get to
some place where he could sit in the midst of simshine and flowers”, he might
yet perhaps recover. Not long afterwards, while I was sitting by the sofa on
which he half sat and half reclined, watching him as he dozed, the “Rajah”
suddenly came to the fore, and with his unmistakable force said, among other
things: “There should be calmness. Hold fast. Go slow”.
On Friday, the 20th, Mrs. Judge and his sister. Miss Emily Judge, persuaded
him to have a professional night nurse. She came, but he would not have her
in his room! It made me laugh; it was so characteristic; it was one of the things
in him that I loved.
In the afternoon he got some broken sleep. It was after this that he told me
he was “away most of the time”—^had I seen him “come back just then?” That
night, Miss Emily Judge was obliged to go home, and as Mrs. Judge badly
needed rest, it became my privilege to sit with him from about ten until about
three o’clock on Saturday morning. During that time he dozed, though rousing
himself every half hour regularly for his medicine. He was fighting to the last
ditch: it was his duty. Unselfish to the end, he told me every time I gave him
his medicine, to go to bed at once; what was I up so late for?—with that rare
LETTERS FROM W. Q. JUDGE
205
smile of his. Numerous excuses were invented, at which he again smiled his
old smile. At about three, Mrs. Judge took my. place, but at six she called me,
saying that Judge wished to see me at once. When I went to him he whispered
asking me to go immediately to fetch a doctor, a specialist, who had been called
in previously to consult with his regular physician. I realized now, if I had
not done so previously, that we were at the last ditch; so I tore through the
streets to the home of this famous specialist, and, when no one answered the
door-bell, rang it furiously for half an hoiu: without ceasing, imtil at last he
appeared,—only to refuse to see Judge on the ground that to do so in the ab¬
sence of his regular physician would be contrary to professional etiquette. I
pleaded, breathlessly; but the fact that a man’s life was at stake did not affect
him.
Hurrying back to the apartment, I found Judge in the same condition, sitting
bolt upright on the sofa—facing it. Telling him the result of my call, I sug¬
gested the name of another specialist; but now he refused to see any doctor.
At about 8:30 I left his room to ask the nurse if she thought anything could be
done, but at about ten minutes to nine Mrs. Judge rushed in, calling us to come
at once. I found him still sitting upright, but with the clear mark of approach¬
ing death on his face. In three minutes he quietly breathed his last. .
Thus seemed to die “the greatest of the Exiles’’,—a warrior of the Lodge. As
I wrote at the time: “He passed from comparative inactivity into the full use
of his powers; from constant physical pain into a state where that pain was only
a memory. For him, death had no terrors, brought with it no separation. So
we who loved him have no cause to mourn, but instead should rejoice that he
is set free at last.’’
The truth is that Judge, “dead”, went out of his way to make it evident to
some of us that he was very much alive. We could not have doubted it, but
his generosity of love demanded expression, and found it.
The debt we owe him is beyond calculation. The existence of the Society
to-day is due primarily to his labour and sacrifice, and to the light he passed o^
H.P.B. had hewn a track through primeval forest, and, to do so, had been oblige
to use dynamite and axe. Judge turned her track into a paved road: he was me
great consolidator. Both built their own memorials: H.P.B., her Secret Doctrine
and Voice of the Silence; Judge, that living nucleus, one of the fruits of which is
the thirty-two years’ existence and growth of the Theosophical Quarterly,
and the continuance, so far into the twentieth century, of the Work of the
Lodge which Masters inaugurated in 1875. In Palestine, many centuries ago,
the Master Christ dominated cyclic law,—in his case, a major cycle. Not since
then has even the hundred-year cycle been over-ridden, until that which Judge
left behind him, as the flowering of his effort, became the means of similar
opportunity.
Gratitude is never easy to express, but the least I can say is that I personally
owe him, directly or indirectly, all that I value in life.
E.T.H.
PERCHANCE HE SLEEPETH
‘T I "^HERE was no trace of arrogant pride in his voice or bearing. You
I wondered if he had a true appreciation of the greatness that is his,
and came to the conclusion that he had not. You were sure that he
had no conception of what he meant to the millions who had watched him, but
also to those countless other millions to whom he was but a great and glamorous
name. And you were very sure that he did not know the wonder and the magic
bound up in the words he was speaking.”
The above is an item copied from a New York daily paper of late date. It is
not written of any adept or initiate, or of any great pioneer in art or science.
It is written, believe it if you can, of Babe Ruth. In the next column an ad¬
vertisement for cigarettes begins: “It would make a camel laugh”. It is well
that camels have a sense of humour, for now they can use it.
Kali Yuga, into the further murk of which we seem to be so blithely marching,
must mean a state of consciousness in which everything is not merely standing
on its head—that is to be looked for in a world of reflections—but is also so
ludicrously out of drawing that it would make a whole menagerie laugh. But
laughter or no, of the many strange gods this strange world has worshipped in
its time, the least inspiring of them all is the great god Speed under whose
chariot wheels thousands are not only metaphorically but literally casting them¬
selves. Speed is spoken of in the New Testament once, when that doomed herd
‘‘rushed violently down a steep place and there perished”. It sounds as a
modem motor race looks.
Some years ago Charles Johnston of beloved memory, in an address to The
Theosophical Society, emphasized the limits of the physical plane and the
certainty that we must proceed on other planes if we are to proceed at all.
Nerve and muscle, he pointed out, can be trained and over-trained almost to
work miracles on their own terms. A horse will trot a mile in a surprisingly small
number of seconds, and next year he may, with luck and youth, do it in a second
less. An athlete will run a mile, breaking all former records; but what physicians
call a ‘‘follow-up” may find him under treatment for a dilated heart at forty;
a silly girl will swim half across the Channel and then be dragged frozen and semi¬
conscious into the boat that has pursued her with a reviving flask; while as to
what the degenerate days call ‘‘Marathons”, debasing the beautiful Greek word
to cover pitiful exhibitions of exertion carried beyond the danger point, the less
said the better; perhaps the poor things are doing it for their daily bread, and one
would keep a charitable silence except toward the law that permits it. The point
is that stress is placed increasingly on the physical; the plaudits of the crowd
are for its triumphs, the ludicrous dithyrambics of the newspaper reporter are
poured out in its honour, and those who “play the game” are the inspirers of such
reverent awe as prompted our opening paragraph.
206
PERCHANCE HE SLEEPETH
207
There would seem to be a natural corollary to this, to be found perhaps in a
holy law that life lived on the physical plane alone, breeds a distaste for life;
for these people do not love it. They love many of its by-products, but not life
itself, and one wonders what another type of “follow-up” would disclose; what
aftermath of weariness is bom finally of high living and low thinking; what
shadows haunt these “heroes” who day by day must have life less abundantly?
When the physical plane betrays physical people they are at once in bad case,
for where shall they turn? Complacency being the last outpost, they continue
to pat themselves on the back, but they do so with uneasy eyes, and looking
round for someone else to blame, they decide that God will do. So the “man
in the street” shouts defiantly that he never asked to be bom, and could not be
convinced that he had clamoured for it, or that, so far from having a grievance,
it was a granted boon and he was living from breath to breath under the clemency
of a spiritual moratorium to which only the bookkeeping of Paradise could be
equal. No—this cock-sure, three dimensional world is not enjoying its own
chaos.
The language of revolt can be very eloquent, and blaming God has always
been an inviting pastime. It lends itself to an inexpensive philosophy, to facile ex¬
uberance of expression, and either to romantic resignation or to heroic defiance—
r 61 es in which man fancies himself. It follows that an ever-easy way to the great
public heart is to mirror it in prose or rhyme stiffened with a little water-starch
of philosophy. Some of us remember the day Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar
Khayyam’s Rubaiyat came to its welcoming American public. Its beauty was
its obvious passport, but oh! how youth responded to its insolence! Here was
an arraignment of Providence in good round confident quatrains—^if there is
such a thing as a round quatrain. Here were those reflections we had coquetted
\vith now and then, echoed back to us in lovely seductive verse that everyone
could quote—and everyone did. To quote is agreeable, but to be quoted to is
horrid, and we fled our friends down the byways. Then people went home and
translated it all over again—the poets must have smiled. Novelists headed their
chapters with its most challenging lines, and it was set to music of course and
sung ad nauseam by quartettes who yelled that they wished to remould “it” to
the heart’s desire, while the baritone, who was only that and nothing ino®
robustly declaimed that with “Doctor and Saint he did eagerly frequent”.^t
was felt that the mills of the million grind exceeding small, and Providence was
getting its come-uppance at last.
(For the purposes of its argument this article must ignore the interpretation of
Sufi mysticism, against which Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat, in a
verbal sense, appears to lean backwards.)
There is another poem, not so well known or so often quoted, which the
present writer loves,—and loves this opportunity to quote. Unlike the Rubaiyat,
it does not leave its passionate questionings unanswered, but passes with quiet
triumph to their spiritual solution. Anna Hempstead Branch is the poet, and
“The Descendant and the Id”, the poem:
208
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
The scholar in his book you know
Talks of ids and biophors, and so
Makes much rebellious dreaming come and go.
This rebellious dreaming carries the poet back into the dark abysses of time to
face “some dim Forefather of my birth”, and together they arraign the principle
of heredity from the outlook of common victims. Then appear those “melan¬
choly pilgrims”, the poet’s immediate ancestors, and the terrors of inheritance
grow ever more vivid; for between them all they have betrayed the past, cheated
the present, and mortgaged the future. (The poor things do not seem to be¬
queath good Karma.)
Heredity, that drives the weak and great,
With hostile lips I kiss thy robes of state.
Such homage wilt thou ask of me, 0 Fate I
The case would seem to be desperate from the fatalist standpoint, did not
presently the inner self intervene; did not speak “that rapt Philosopher, who
bore the little, restless, splendid Biophor”, bidding the poet “look you, with
curious eyes, upon the Id”, for—
‘‘Here is thy will, thy war, thy heavenly fire.
Thy dust, thy want, thy labour, and thy hire.
The dream, the anger, and the old desire. . . .
What dream hast thou of what thyself might be?**
**What Dream hast thou?** Then with a heart of trust
I felt the sharp and exquisite swift thrust
Of swords of angels, flashing through the dust. . . .
Slowly I felt the ancient custom fall
Like shattered rain from off a steady wall.
And great “/ will** is stronger than them all.
For if those hordes that terribly must ride
Drive through my heart and leave their grief inside,
God also wanders there at eventide.
Man from the dust and woman from the bone,—
But oh, we were not wrought of these alone!
God, with His Heavenly Spirit, breathed thereon.
And so, by this path and by that, we come home once more to the Ancient
Wisdom, and it has a still small voice. It says to the level of the physical,
“thus far and no ftirther”; it whispers in the Hall of Learning, “pass on”, and
links its over-worked lures to a weary distaste. The soap-box orators of the
city square shout it down in vain, and in vain is it denied from city pulpits.
Those few who listen can hear it always, as Job heard it when he cried from his
cross of initiation—I know that my Redeemer liveth and that without my flesh
I shall see GodL.S.
* See The Holy Scriptures, A New Translation (The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia).
ONE PATH TO THE GOAL
I T is a well known fact that the records of mystical experience—the experience
of those who have lived the inner life to the point of finding the Inner Light
—show striking unanimity, whatever the period of history represented, and
whatever the race or creed. It is equally true, however, that the mystics of
different creeds, and frequently those of different nationalities, contribute, as
groups, each their unique note. The mediaeval Spanish mystics (the group best
known to the West, perhaps) made the discovery that love of the Ideal, when
developed to a certain high degree, can transmute and unify every element in
the nature, and can then tap the very sources of being, drawing on a new life-force,
and lifting the lover to undreamed-of heights of consciousness. Closely related
to them, and in certain ways influencing them, the mystics of the Mohammedan
faith (the early Sufis) laid an equal emphasis on love, and also found in it the
means to attaining the Goal; but while they sounded that same note, all the over¬
tones and undertones (to use a musical analogy) were subtilely different.
Persian or Arabian as were most of the early Sufis, they lived at the meeting
point of East and West, possessing national characteristics which made them
susceptible to the many influences which converged there. Orthodox Moham¬
medanism, oriental mysticism, the Gnosticism professed by many sects in that
locality, and a large admixture of Neo-Platonism, all became blended with the
original Sufi quietism—furthering largely thereby what seems to have been the
plan of the Lodge for opening the great storehouse of oriental thought to Spain
and the West, through the conquering Moorish advance in North Africa and the
Iberian peninsula. Unlike the mystics of the western world, who were compelled
to fit the revelations they received into the narrow moulds of the Roman
Church, the Sufis enjoyed considerable freedom, due chiefly to the general belief
of their compatriots that all things, supernatural revelation included, are
governed less by religious law than by the personal, moment-to-moment will o^
Allah. They became skilled in aligning their public teachings with orthod«^
views, and while there were, it is true, cases in which unorthodoxy paid the
extreme penalty, since it exceeded even the supposed possible will of Allah, for
the most part there was opportunity for remarkable breadth and profimdity of
thought—the more remarkable when it is remembered that Mohammedanism is
one of the most rigid religious systems that the world has known.
The outstanding characteristic of the Sufi teachings lay, perhaps, in their com¬
plete recognition of the fundamental unity of all things. It is both implicit and
expressed, in their thinking, their writing, their whole attitude toward life. It is
just beneath the surface throughout such a work as the great Masnavi of Jaldlu’d-
Din Rumi, which has been termed the roots of the roots of the roots of the
Mohammedan faith. This extraordinary poem is a collection of tales from every-
209
210
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
day life, with all the flavour of the Moslem East—episodes of the streets and
bazaars, the palace and the hovel; fables of beasts and birds; all the colourful
existence best known to the West through the Arabian Nights, but with a wholly
different purpose in the telling. The stories have always in mind the reality
lying close beneath the outer aspect, the jewel within its homely setting. The
simple conduct of daily life, usually with little or no moralizing, but merely with
the skilful turn of a line, is made to yield its lesson and reveal a world within
worlds, and the reader is expected to bear this in mind and lend himself to it:
O brother, collect thy wits for an instant (and think): from moment to moment
(incessantly) there is autumn and spring within thee.
Behold the garden of the heart, green and moist and fresh, full of rosebuds
and cypresses and jasmines;
Boughs hidden by the multitude of leaves, vast plain and high palace hidden
by the multitude of flowers.
These words, which are from Universal Reason, are the scent of those flowers
and cypresses and hyacinths.
In following up that scent, entering the garden of the heart, and finding there
the heart’s Beloved, lay the whole meaning and purpose of life for the Sufi.
Borrowing from Neo-Platonism, the Sufis made their own the idea that the
universe is the reflection of the Real. By a series of emanations the Divine Light,
streaming downward, fell upon the darkness of not-being, every atom of which
reflects some attribute of Deity—man reflecting all the attributes. Implicit in
this is the belief that God is in every atom,—its essence. “He is a hidden
treasure, and the visible world is a means whereby we may discover Him.’’ He
is not only Being, but Will, the motive power of all action, the spirit, the life of
the world. “0 God, I never listen to the cry of animals or to the quivering of
trees or to the murmuring of water or to the warbling of birds or to the rustling
wind or to the crashing thunder without feeling them to be an evidence of Thy
unity and a proof that there is nothing like unto Thee.’’ From this, it is only a
step to the belief that every atom is seeking to find its way back to Unity. Every
creature is longing for Him; the heart is athirst for Him; God is the goal toward
which all things are moving.
The heaven itself revolves in silence, consumed by its yearning to look upon Him.
The sun, as it goes on its orbit, is seeking to solve the mystery; the moon and the stars
as they wax and wane, are craving for union with Him. When the flames of the fire rise
heavenwards, it is from their longing to meet with Him. The wind, without foot or
pinion, mounts aloft in its search for Him. The water rushing by in every stream seeks
to find its rest in Him. For His sake the mountain is cleft into range upon range, so
that in every spot it may keep its watch for Him. Even the sea, when thou seest it
raging so furiously, is seething with yearning for the Friend.
The place of man in this scheme of things—that is, of the real man within us,
is essentially and potentially, that of divinity itself. The Persian, ’Attar, has
expressed it:
ONE PATH TO THE GOAL
2II
Man, what thou art is hidden from thyself.
Knowest thou not that morning, mid-day, and the eve
All are within thee? The ninth heaven art thou,
And from the spheres into this roar of time
Didst fall erewhile. Thou art the brush that painted
The hues of all this world—the light of life.
That rayed its glory on the nothingness.
But realization of such a heritage is far distant. In his present state, man is
but a prisoner, the bird in its cage, the pearl in the oyster. There is that splendid
poem by Avicenna (Ibn Sina), relating to the soul, quoted in an earlier Quar¬
terly :
Lo, it was hurled
Midst the sign-posts and ruined abodes of this desolate world.
It weeps, when it thinks of its home and the peace it possessed.
With tears welling forth from its eyes without pausing or rest,
And with plaintive mourning it broodeth like one bereft
O’er such trace of its home as the fourfold winds have left.
Man, then, like every other atom in the universe, is seeking to find his way
back to his source, but is ever held down, ever kept separate by the self, blinding
and deluding him and leading him astray. One typically eastern expression of
this concept comes also from the Masnavi:
O camel, on thy back is a bale of roses, from the perfume of
which a hundred roseries grew within thee.
Thy inclination is toward thorn-bushes and sand:
I wonder what roses thou wilt gather from worthless thorns.
O thou who in this search hast roamed from one quarter to another,
how long wilt thou say, “Where, where is this rose garden?”
To accomplish the “passing away” from self, which was obviously necessary,
the Sufis pursued a course of discipline, extending over many years, with extremes
of austerity such as alone seem to satisfy the eastern temperament. The aspirant
in all too many cases, as in other oriental systems, attained only to some un¬
fortunate part-way stage on the long journey, and there became mired in psy¬
chism of various kinds and degrees. The East is miracle-loving, and at times its
avidity in that direction has been abundantly fed; but fortunately, among the
early Sufis there were many whose quest was truly spiritual, who regarded
“miracles” as a temptation, a hindrance to reaching the shrine of Truth,^^d
who saw, as one of their number expressed it, that the greatest miracle iWne
substitution of a good quality for a bad one. By such men as these, the passing
away from self was sought in its most complete sense. They strove for a degree
of identification with the Real in which there could be no “Thou” and “I”, the
very thought of “I-ness” being swallowed up. One of the characters in the
Masnavi, addressing the Deity, says.
Thou didst contrive this “I” and “we” in order that Thou mightst play the
game of worship with Thyself,
That all “I’s” and “thou’s” should become one soul and at last should be sub¬
merged in the Beloved.
212
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
As these lines suggest, it is not death to self that is stressed, but Life in the Real
(a distinction which orientalists might well recognize in their efforts to explain
Nirvana), and the one power which can achieve this end is love, that fire in the
heart consuming all save the will of the Beloved.
O heart, haste thither, for God will shine upon you,
And seem to you a sweet garden instead of a terror.
He will infuse into your soul a new Soul,
So as to fill you, like a goblet, with wine.
Take up your abode in His Soul!
“ 'Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment had not
been,” writes Jaldl; “its being is but shame.... All mankind are children except
him that is intoxicated with God.” Here again, as in all other mystical records,
it is abundantly shown that the love of which they speak is not the love ordinarily
known to humanity. The latter, even at its best, is only the A B C of real love.
“The beloved who is not everlasting is better far away and out of sight.” The
higher love is the rapture of the seer, just as it is in every mystical record; it is
equally the coiu*age of the martyr, the faith of the saint. Expressed in action,
it is self-renimciation, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation—the giving up of wealth,
health, honour, will, life itself, for the sake of entering into and becoming one
with the Beloved. ‘‘Love is a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent
prayer and aspiration.” The mystic’s concept both of love and of peace (two
states of consciousness so grossly misunderstood in the world to-day) might
advantageously be blazoned where all men must see, on the chance of bringing
home to them the nobility and beauty of the reality they are unconsciously
drawn by, and its contrast with the poor counterfeits they consciously seek.
However, with better judgment no doubt, and in conformity with the long-ago
warning about casting pearls, a celebrated Egyptian Sufi, Dhu’l-Nun, declared
that Divine Love must not be spoken of, lest it come to the ears of the vulgar.
He added, ‘‘True knowledge of God is not the knowledge that God is One, which
is possessed by all believers; nor the knowledge of Him derived from truth and
demonstration, which belongs to philosophers, rhetoricians and theologians; but
it is the knowledge of the attributes of Divine Unity, which belongs to the Saints
of God, to those who behold God in their hearts in such wise that He reveals
unto them that which He revealeth not to anyone else in the world.”
The relation worked out by this intensely beauty-loving people (as many of
them were) between the Love of God which they sought, and love of the beau¬
tiful, is worthy of note. Among aspirants in the West, the more characteristic
attitude is to turn away from the beautiful, to renounce it, perhaps to condemn
it, at any rate to regard it as one of the ‘‘weights” to be laid aside in pressing
toward the mark. The Sufi, on the contrary, sought it, embraced it, dwelt upon
it, realizing that everything in the universe is as ‘‘a jug that is filled to the brim
with wisdom and beauty”, and that that beauty must be used as fuel for the
flame of love he was striving to kindle. Out of this attitude grew the large body
of poetry making symbolical reference to human beauty, of which the following
from the Rubaiyat of Hafiz is representative:
ONE PATH TO THE GOAL
213
“Thy lips?^* I askM; quoth She, “Water of
Life is there!”
“Thy mouth?” I ask’d; “ ’Tis sugar sweet
beyond compare!”
“Thy speech?” I ask’d; “Hafiz,” quoth
She, “hath said it is
The joy of those who use the mystic speech of
prayer!”
There was entire recognition of the danger of lingering in the outer form, of
failing to pass from the visible beauty to the Beauty within it.
Alas! thou in the picture wert so much
absorb’d
Thou didst forget the Painter Who the picture
wrought.
Music affords a good illustration of their recognition of this point. Its effect
was recognized and studied, and among the dervish Orders, it was extensively
and effectively used. But while referred to (by Dhu’l-Nun) as a divine influence,
stirring the heart to seek God, there is the warning added that those who listen
to it spiritually attain to God, while those who listen to it sensually, fall into
unbelief.
Jami summed up the attitude toward the aesthetic element when he wrote,
“Beauty and Love are as body and soul; Beauty is the mine and Love the
precious stone.” It resolves itself again into that teaching of the fundamental
unity of all things, wherein beauty and Beloved are one, just as lover and Love
and Beloved are one. Beauty of outer form is a veiled expression of the Beloved
within and behind it. “If gnosis were to take visible shape all who looked thereon
would die at the sight of its beauty and loveliness and goodness and grace, and
every brightness would become dark beside the splendour thereof.” And the
commentator compares a passage from Plato’s Phaedrus: “For sight is the
keenest of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her lovelin|^
would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her.” WF
A recent book by a Latin American tells of the author’s search for an authentic
image of the Master Christ. Impelled by a longing to look “into the very eyes
of the Lord”, he wandered far and wide, always hoping to discover, in oratory
or library or museum, some early sculptured or painted likeness that would satisfy
his longing. “I carried on these rovings,” he says, “not for the vanity of knowing
the historic truth, but for the need of possessing the mystic truth.” It is a need—
the need for the Real—which all mankind feels, even though he be conscious of it
only as the vague unrest and discontent which urge so many on to ever-new
excitement or sensation. And satisfaction lies in this discovery of the Sufis:
He (or That, or whatever we may prefer to call the Real) is the Beauty in all
beauty, the Soul of souls, the one infinite Being in which all are united, the
source of all love. “ ’Tis the sun’s self that lets the sun be seen.” Jaldl is quoted
as saying that the soul’s love of God is God’s love of the soul... in loving the soul
214
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
God loves Himself, for He draws home to Himself that which in its essence is
divine. “Our copper has been transmuted by this rare alchemy.”
There were many among the Sufis who sought (and found) ecstasy. A few tell
of a still higher level of consciousness,—a mystical, unified consciousness, “the
little comer where joy is”; a state in which they can say truly, “The centre is
within me and its wonder lies as a circle everywhere about me.” This higher level
they term Riza, or the quintessence of love—re-phrasing it as “joyous sub¬
mission”. Certain critics, not having experienced it, claimed there was no such
thing—submission, perhaps, but what joy could one find in that! In refutation,
and in explanation characteristically oriental, a story is told (one of the Christ
legends in which Mohammedan literature abounds):
It is said that Christ once saw a blind, forlorn leper who was praying: “Blessed art
thou, O Lord, who hast saved me from such maladies which have overtaken many of
us!“ “Art thou not in misery?” asked Christ. “Tell me which is that malady which
has not overtaken thee?” “Thank God”, cried the leper, “I am not like him who does
not know God!” “You are right,” said Christ. “Give me your hand.” And the breath
of Christ instantly healed the leper, and he became one of his followers.
Regarding still higher stages and the ultimate destiny of man, there was no
apparent uniformity of thought. The tenets of orthodox Mohammedanism
denied the very possibility of many of the states which the Sufi actually experi¬
enced. The interpretation of these states, and the exoteric teaching, accordingly
varied with the degree of orthodoxy required at any given period; varied also
with the foreign religious influences most active at a given time, and with the
degree of enlightenment of the individual teacher. One suspects that there
were almost as many varieties of Sufism as there were Sufis,—certainly an
extraordinary elasticity and fluidity and inclusiveness. Esoterically, of course,
there may have been more uniformity. That there were esoteric teachings,
there is no doubt, and The Secret Doctrine, it may be remembered, suggests that
part of them at least, were of Chaldean origin. However, for the present purpose,
the main point is that the sect embodied and kept alive in the world the knowl¬
edge that Love has the power to raise mankind from animal to angel, and thence
to “what no mind e’er conceived”; also that Love, rightly understood, is an
infinite, creative force, emanating from the source of all Being, streaming down¬
ward to non-being, gathering up all sentient things in its life-giving current,
purging the dross from those who will to enter its consuming fire, and, impelling
incessantly onward and upward, raising them to new life, new consciousness,
—^which, for man, can mean the ascent from mortality to Life Immortal, to
Divinity itself. j q
If thou dost not desire to he dust under the dust, then must thou look away from the
dust .— ’Attar.
WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY
I HAVE heard of the Great Lodge of Masters as having sentinels, whose duty
it is ceaselessly to survey mankind in the hope of discovering, now and then,
one with whom it seems the Lodge may take a chance. When an individual
is thus singled out by these “eyes” of the Lodge, I can imagine him being watched
for a period of years or of incarnations, until some useful quality of his becomes
dominant enough for the sentinel to report on it to his superior. If the sentinel’s
report is acted upon favourably, the Lodge then takes a chance with that soul.
Unless this or something like it is so, I do not know why I joined The The-
osophical Society, which was founded by Madame Blavatsky, Mr. William Q.
Judge and others, at the express command of the Masters as the present outer
expression of the age-old Lodge Movement.
Somebody in the Lodge evidently has seen fit to take a chance on me. Of
course, it must be figured that all this happens in accordance with the working
of Karma. Under the operation of this law of justice one receives exactly his
due. Apparently, then, the Masters accept chances under the operation of
Karma. Nevertheless, the chances thus accepted and taken are in no wise
lessened. So much for the real reason, or cause, of my joining The Theosophical
Society.
Now let us look at the surface working of this reason, or cause, during my
present incarnation. I shall mention only two facts concerning my babyhood
and early childhood. I was such a puny infant, that the doctor in attendance
at the time of my birth told my father I could not live more than a few hours.
Despite this advice, my father sent numerous telegrams announcing the arrival
of a fine boy. Whether due to these telegrams, or to Karma, or to my mother’s
unremitting care—she practically maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil for several
hundred days—by the time I had reached the tender age of three I could have
taken a prize for robustness at almost any baby show. I know, for I have seen
a picture of myself at that age.
The second episode I wish to mention is of my early childhood. Wl^R
learned there was no Santa Claus, I told my mother she might as well thereand
then tell me there was no God, and that there never had been such a person as
Jesus of Nazareth. I had so linked Santa Claus and Christmas and Him that
when I learned there was no chubby old chap who whisked about with presents
each Christmas Eve, I figured that the other person connected with the day
was a make-believe creature also; hence, the Father too. The word illusion was
not part of my vocabulary at the time, so I just wondered how much of every¬
thing was make-believe and how much was not, and this “wondering” continued
for a number of years.
215
2i6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
I pass now. to the last three years spent at boarding-school. Having been such
a puny infant, all energies, both parental and at school, seemed to unite to turn
me out an especially physically fit boy and youth. Moreover I had an aptitude
for games such as football, baseball, hockey, and the like, so that during these
years I found myself representing the school in practically all branches of athletics.
How could it be that the puny infant had developed into a boy athlete? The
more I asked myself the question, the more I was drawn back to the Santa Claus
episode, and reminded of that other figure with whom Christmas is associated.
I used to think: If He and the Father are make-believe, whence comes all this?
In my youthful mind I had decided that my aptitude for athletics was a matter
neither of accident nor luck. I was certain there was more to it than just my
own prowess.
At night, when the lights were out and we were all supposed to be asleep, I
used to ponder these things. We had compulsory chapel service each morning,
and service with a sermon on Sunday mornings. Whether visiting clergy or the
school clergyman preached the Sunday sermon, the trend of their remarks was
always the same: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. This
and much more I pondered, as I lay awake at night. With churches throughout
the country, even in the small hamlets near the school, all founded on the
teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and all proclaiming that teaching, could it be
that He was nothing more than my childish conception of Santa Claus had been?
Could it be that one day I should be told that the New Testament was fiction?
If so, why did the old people as well as the younger go to church? Surely they
did not go to learn about and to worship a myth. Even my immature mind could
not accept that theory. Had any one been sent to prepare the way for Santa
Claus as John had prepared the way for Jesus? Had any one given up all to
follow Santa Claus as had the twelve, and Paul, for Jesus? Then would follow
what to me was the vital question: Who was it, or what Power was it, that had
made a puny baby and frail child grow into a sturdy, athletic boy?
It seemed to me that I owed something, somehow, to the Trinity. So, at the
same time that I asked myself these questions, I used to try to reach up to God.
I had an idea that if I could do so, I should be able to straighten out what I could
not as yet unravel. This effort to reach God I tried only at rare intervals, because
it left me quite shaken. I seemed able to reach up but a certain distance (I
expressed it that way to myself) when I would be enveloped in utter darkness,
such darkness as I believed could not exist anywhere. When I found I could
not penetrate it, I tried to reach around it, so to speak, and approach from the
rear. It was this rear approach, especially, which used to leave me shaken,
because I would try to make it by endeavouring to get back of God; that is, by
trying to vision things before God was and then lead from there to God. But
that left things just a blank. I preferred the darkness to the feeling of blankness,
of absolute nothingness. So I stopped, deciding to leave the reconciliation of
the whole of my problem until later years.
I was not a freakish lad. On these inner problems I kept my own counsel.
I was a hale, hearty, vigorous, normal boy. Yet I had been told that by all
WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
217
the so-called regular rules of life I should have died a few hours after birth,
instead of which I foimd myself a physically fit person able to give and take all
manner of physical punishment. I was trying to account for this, feeling sure
that it was not my strength alone, but something I was being permitted to use.
I had had one ideal, one mould, that of jolly old Santa Claus, knocked into a
cocked hat, and I was trying in my boyish way to rescue the other ideal. I
wanted God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, for if there
were such Power as that, I could account for what otherwise was a mystery to me.
Particularly I wanted my ideal of Jesus of Nazareth, but having had this ideal
shattered by the Santa-Claus episode, I was rebuilding it in my own way, and
with various details, that were at variance with the orthodox conception.
With the ending of school-days, my mode of life underwent a complete change.
For the first time I found myself living in a city, subject to the confinement of a
city both during and after business hours. Used to the country and to vigorous
exercise, I naturally felt shut in and restrained. Also I missed routine, for though
I had to be at the office during certain hours, apart from that, I did not have any
set schedule as had been the case at school, for there I had followed fixed rules
from the time I rose until I went to bed at night. One thing was a distinct relief,
however, and that was not to have to be an athlete. But I had worked up a
certain bodily appetite for exercise and this, apparently, had to be satisfied. I
became restless, and soon drifted into doing that which offered an antidote for
my restlessness. I had formed the habit of exercising the body far more than the
mind, so as invitations to dances began to arrive, I accepted them with alacrity.
The more invitations I accepted and the more dances I attended, the more
frequent the invitations became. The next several years were a veritable round
of dances.
Thus the boy athlete became a dancing-youth-about-town. True, this took
care of the physical exuberance which had to be worked off, but it seems a
peculiar way of preparing to join The Theosophical Society. Nevertheless, it
has a great deal of bearing on the subject. I became so surfeited with all that
goes to make up a dancing-youth’s existence that I awakened one morning de¬
termined to stop it at once. This determination was not reached an hour aft^
awakening, nor even five minutes aftfer, but was a part of what I awakened to ^
that particular morning. At the same time I found myself thinking of those
nights at school when I had lain awake trying to reach up to God’s pavilion.
I had not given that matter much thought of late. Dancing days, or nights
rather, are not conducive to that sort of thing. So then and there I made up
my mind that I wanted no more of the froth of life. Like the spindrift of the
wave, it led nowhere. I had been too long away from considering my ideal of
Jesus of Nazareth, and on that particular morning I was thinking very much
about that great figure, and how disappointing it must be to Him to have to see
one expending strength on frivolity. This was more poignantly emphasized as
I, who was expending it, had not considered it as wholly my own for some time
past. So I determined to renew my search and to conserve strength for the
journey. The first thing to do was simple—just to decline invitations. This was
2 i8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
done, and it was a surprisingly short time before they ceased to arrive at all.
The other part was not so easy, and for that fact I was and am truly grateful,
because in some way or other it had already been impressed upon me that what
is easy of accomplishment is rarely worth while.
Here then was the one-time boy athlete with the athletic contour, both inner
and outer, somewhat disarranged by the activities of the dancing youth, by
laxity of schedule and the absence of regularity. Thereupon the young man, at
the start of his journey, laid down a set of rules, and devised a daily schedule
suitable to the application of the rules.
These rules were simple. In forming them I had in mind a threefold purpose.
First, to rid myself of all that the recent irregularities had brought to me.
Secondly, to put back certain of that which my earlier athletic training had built
up. Thirdly, to put that back in such a way as to have it available for a purpose
other than athletics. Therefore the rules were calculated so as to turn out an
instrument fit for a long journey, and at the same time to give me authority
over that instrument. Recalling the way in which athletic trainers had handled
me, I placed myself in a similar position of authority over the instrument and
handled it to suit the end in view.
By this time I was convinced that I had certain qualities which belonged, at
least in part, to some other Person or Power. In some way, which was not yet
clear, I had the firm conviction that these qualities w^ere associated with the
Trinity, and that the “Associates” had something to say about what should be
done with them, and particularly that representative of the “Associates” who
had gone the way of the Cross for mankind. I no longer had any doubts as to
the reality of Jesus of Nazareth. It seemed to me that His life on earth opened
a way to an entente cordiale, but my conception of it differed in certain details
from the orthodox conception as I had heard it set forth. I still could not account
accurately for my conviction, although I had started my schedule according to
my simple rules, had girded myself for a long journey, was already on my way and
did not purpose to stop.
Up4to the present, life had been serene, because all that I had done was to
toy with it. Now I was dealing with it, and straightway it began to deal with
me. Life and I were no longer playing a game. We had entered the lists for a
life-and-death struggle, and outwardly for a long, long time it looked as though
life would win. Blow after blow fell; often in such rapid succession that there
seemed hardly time to catch sufficient breath to go on with the struggle. Yet
my rules, my schedule, and especially my entente cordiale required that I gain the
ascendency over life; life as the world knows it. Without that ascendency in
view my rules might as well have gone into the scrap basket, my schedule been
abandoned, and my entente cordiale relinquished in favour of some mundane
existence.
As a boy I had learned that no contest is lost until the umpire sounds the
whistle which terminates it. As a dancing youth I had learned that mincing steps
engender mincing ways. So the man-with-the-rules lengthened his stride as
each blow fell, and kept on his way, for as self-imposed umpire his equipment
WHY I JOINED THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
219
did not include the whistle. Life kept on raining blows. I kept on; blundering,
stumbling, falling. Had the stake not been so serious, the whole series of per¬
formances could have been catalogued either as disgraceful or as ridiculous.
Perhaps they are so catalogued. At any rate down I went and up I got. Thanks
to the entente cor diale I would not, or could not, stay down. Not that there was
anything majestic in the way I fell nor in the way I arose. Simply that the
strength was at once mine and not mine.
Right in the thick of it I unexpectedly met an old friend—a friend out of
the past. Out of the past ? Why not ? I had heard her mentioned for the first
time but shortly before we met. Does one recognize a stranger at first glance?
Do strangers meet and speak as friends at first meeting? Does a stranger calmly
enter the lists of life-and-death-struggles with you? She, herself, if you ask
her, will tell you there was instant recognition. We spoke of it then, and have
referred to it many times since our marriage, about two years later.
At the time we met, I did not know my contact with The Theosophical Society
would be established through her. She was not a member, but it was with her
that I attended my first meeting. Later, we joined the Society together. What I
did know from the moment we met, was that my course was being better charted.
She was able to make it clearer to me. In some way, too, she seemed to be con¬
nected with my entente cordiale. Not that life ceased dealing with me; not that
the blows stopped; but the harder they rained, the steadier was her vision and
understanding. Something told me to keep very close to that friend. I did.
So, when I found she wanted to go to a meeting of the local Branch of The
Theosophical Society, it was perfectly natural for me to accompany her.
If I live to be a thousand, I shall always remember passing through the little
door and entering the small room in which the meeting was held. I had not the
slightest notion of what I was going to hear, but as I looked around, everybody
and everything seemed to betoken that it would be worth while. In a few
minutes the meeting began, and one speaker after another unfolded aspects of a
philosophy that sank deep. Now and again I glanced at my friend. How was it
with her? I coidd see that she was satisfied. That made it doubly all right with
me. Before that meeting was over I felt that I belonged to The Theosoph^l
Society. Not that I applied for membership then and received a certificat^P
simply considered myself as belonging, as the little finger, if it could think,
might regard itself as belonging to the hand.
I acquired some of the theosophical literature, which I read, and attended
meetings of the local Branch as circumstances permitted me to do so. The
more of these meetings I attended, and the more of the literature I read, the
more it was impressed upon me, that through the wondering of the boy athlete,
the experience of the dancing youth, and the combat of the man with the rules,
I had been prepared for what, thanks to my friend, I was to find in the the¬
osophical philosophy.
Thus the Lodge has its way of guiding us.
U.U.
WITHOUT CENSOR
IV.
HE winter of 1917-1918 was exceptionally cold and severe, and while
we were comfortable enough in our quarters at Camp Upton, the building
itself was so flimsy that, whenever there was a strong wind, all the heat
in it was blown to the opposite end of the structure, so that it was somewhat like
sleeping out of doors in those rooms which received the full force of the blast.
Our mess, however, was at the far end of the quarters, so that we did not have to
go out for meals, which was a great convenience. Often, as I looked around the
table at the officers gathered there, I thought that, through the luck of the draw,
there was among them a far higher degree of ability than was necessary to run an
Ammunition Train. We had lawyers, bankers, business men, many of them with
experience of affairs in a large way; they lacked only that military experience,
which they were now acquiring daily, to become thoroughly efficient officers.
As a matter of fact, several of them, after they had arrived overseas, went from
the Ammunition Train into either the line or the staff. Our Colonel had sized
them up rapidly and accurately. Never before had he had so many officers of so
high a type under his command. He saw at once that they were all going to work
hard and work well, that they only needed guiding and advice, and he realized,
too, that the better the result of their work and of their effort, the more it would
redound to his own credit as commanding officer.
The Colonel, in addition to being an excellent judge of men, continuously kept
a much closer eye on things than I at first realized, and he was a strict disciplin¬
arian. He was a charming companion when off duty, with a fund of stories and
anecdotes, and a long experience in Army methods and details. He had not,
however, kept up with the times in a military way, and, as an infantry officer,
was entirely unfamiliar with the modern methods of infantry warfare then
practised on the Western Front. He had one rather ancient book by some Ger¬
man General, whose name I have forgotten, which he read constantly, to the
exclusion of everything else of a military nature, except the current Divisional
Orders. But he knew how to get work out of his officers and men, and they all
liked him. When the Colonel’s visits to New York began to be frequent, he sent
for me and said, “Captain, I don’t want the Majors messing into things when I
am in town, or assuming the functions of the second in command, or anything
of that kind. You handle things while I am away, issue any routine Regimental
Orders necessary, and write any letters that can be written by my authority.
If it is a case of immediate letters to officers who rank me, see what you can do
yourself personally about handling it. If you have to, get me on the telephone,
and I will come right down to Camp; and hold things until I get there.” This
plan worked very well, and although the Majors sometimes became inquisitive
and insistent when the Colonel was absent, it was a fine exercise in tact and diplo-
220
WITHOUT CENSOR
221
macy to keep them in their proper place. As his Adjutant, the Colonel frequently
took me with him to the military talks for regimental commanders and field
officers, which were often given by officers of the Foreign Armies, straight from
the Western Front and detailed for that purpose, and all this was most inter¬
esting and helpful. The Colonel was an eminently fair man, and loyal to his
officers and men, and as quick to appreciate as he was to rebuke, and his many
good qualities, together with the high level of ability among the officers, and the
hard work which was being done by all ranks, produced in the course of time
something in the form of an organization in which we began to take pride.
We were greatly hampered, however, in our work of training the men, by the
fact that we were almost entirely without the mat^iel to which we were entitled
under our Tables of Organization. An ammunition train has a large number of
motor trucks and animal-drawn caissons and wagons; we were never given any
of these at Camp Upton, and it was not until we had received them after we
arrived overseas, that we were able to train the men in their use. We did receive
the six hundred odd horses and mules which we were supposed to have, and
established schools of equitation, and taught the men how to care for the animals.
All of these horses and mules were branded with the regimental mark, and were
shipped overseas in advance of our unit, but upon their arrival they were diverted
to some other division, and we had to start all over again when we reached our
final training area in the south of France, with an entirely new lot of horses and
mules which came from Spain, and which were distinctly inferior to our original
animals in size and in strength. Apart, therefore, from the training with the
animals, there was no other technical training possible for our men while at
Camp Upton. As most of them were armed with the rifle, we turned, therefore,
to infantr^r drill, both close and extended order; to interior guard; and to
ceremonies, as the only other means of training, available or practicable; and by
keeping hard at it along those lines, we really evolved, in the course of time,
instead of an ammunition train, a fairly efficient infantry regiment.
We all had, of course, other military duties than those connected directly with
the training. Personally, as Adjutant, I was always more or less submerged with
a mass of paper work, which seemed to grow as time went on. It increased to
such an extent throughout the Division that a Board of Officers was finall]^ a§r
pointed by the Division Commander to inquire into ways and means of rediiWg
it. The first act of this Board was to call for written suggestions from all units
as to possible methods of reduction, and for written estimates as to the amount
of paper work which we were already doing; so the first and only effect was to
give us more paper work to do than ever, and nothing constructive in the way of
reduction was of course ever accomplished. We had trouble with one of our
captains, and, in order to get rid of him, we asked for a Board of Officers to be
appointed by Division Headquarters to pass upon the question of his efficiency.
I remember sitting beside the officer in question during the investigation, and
giving my views on the subject, which were far from complimentary to him.
French classes were started, and, to the unbounded glee of my family and
friends when they finally heard of it, knowing as they did my entire lack of
222
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
qualifications, I was appointed one of the instructors. Fortunately, there was a
complete absence of any previous knowledge of French on the part of my class,
but, I regret to say, there was almost as complete an ignorance when I had
finished with them.
We held several General Courts Martial, upon all of which I sat. Our first
case was that of a soldier who had broken camp, and had absorbed an inordinate
quantity of hard liquor in one of the nearby small towns. The cold air had
minimized the effect until he was once again within barracks, when the heat from
the great stove in the centre of the sleeping quarters had set him completely off
his head, and, seizing a razor, he had tried fairly successfully to carve up his next-
door neighbour because he did not like his looks. The Court, after mature de¬
liberation, decided that this could not be allowed to recur, that it was very
subversive of morale; and in order to make an example for its effect upon the
other men, we found the accused guilty upon the several charges and specifi¬
cations, and awarded a sentence of ten years confinement at hard labour in the
military prison at Fort Leavenworth, which sentence was later approved by the
Division Commander. I said, after mature deliberation. It took us for ever to
try that first case. We were entirely unfamiliar with the Court Martial Manual,
and were obliged to consult it constantly as the trial progressed, in order to find
out what to do next. We did not like to do so in the presence of the prisoner, as
it did not seem quite dignified; so each time the necessity arose we sent him out of
the room with his guard, and had him in again after we had fotmd out what we
wanted. From time to time, the Colonel would open the door and look in upon
our deliberations, and, seeing us still at it, would invoke the Deity in a harsh
voice, and slam the door again. He told us afterwards that we had taken several
hours to do something which should have been accomplished in an hour. After
the War, President Wilson pardoned all military prisoners. Some of us who had
sat on that Court wondered whether or not that particular prisoner would be
able to remember the names of those who had sentenced him, and hoped that,
if he did, he had not retained his former propensity for carving.
The 77th Division had been brought to full strength by the draft, and the air
was full of rumours to the effect that political influence of the strongest kind
had been brought to bear in Washington to send us over as the first di\ision of
the National Army, because we represented the largest city in the United States.
Nowhere is rumour, often entirely unfoimded, more rife than in the Army; no¬
where does real news travel faster. We did not really know what to believe, but
hoped for the best, and speeded things up by every means in our power so as to
be ready to go. Colour was added to the rumour by several Divisional inspections
of each unit; as the Division Inspector was a great friend of our Colonel, we were
always tipped off in advance, and made a good showing each time. But Wash¬
ington had a change of heart, and instead of orders to proceed to the Port of
Embarkation, we received orders requisitioning men from the 77th Division to
fill up certain other Divisions at various points all over the United States.
Politics was obviously at work, and was about to destroy an incipient efficiency
built up with much labour. We hated to let men go upon whom we had spent so
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223
much time and work. However, having by that time been in the Army long
enough to have become proficient in the art of “passing the buck”, we passed out
first all of our conscientious objectors, all of our suspects with German names,
and then those specimens which were imdesirable for other minor reasons. It
may be objected that to send our most undesirable men to other Divisions,
without a word of warning as to their real character, was imfair, and that it did
not free the Army of their presence. It was not possible, however, to get them
out of the Army, for the War Department in its omniscience had issued a
General Order to the effect that no soldier could be dismissed from the Service
for any reason, unless he had committed an act which made him liable, under
the Articles of War, to trial by a General Court Martial. Any such overt act
our undesirables had steadfastly refrained from committing, although we had
been watching them all hopefully. Moreover, we had come to the conclusion
that to send away our suspects with German names was really a most con¬
structive act, since it would break up any traitorous connections which they
might have already formed in their present siuroundings, and would force them
to start their activities all over again under increased difficulties and under new
conditions, and that they would be siu*e to be found out anyway in the long run.
We parted with our first requisitions, therefore, with a certain feeling of relief,
but the drain continued until our unit, and in fact the whole 77th Division, was
down to about half strength. About this same time, too, we were forced to
surrender a number of our best non-commissioned officers, who were ordered to
Officers’ Training Camps and Schools, and given there the chance to earn com¬
missions. All this had a serious effect upon the training of those men who
remained; but it also had most harmful results as far as the general morale was
concerned, and in the early part of the year 1918 we were thoroughly discouraged
and disgusted. We felt that the departure of the Division had been put off for
many months because of these withdrawals, and feared that the War would be
over before we could arrive overseas.
After the first pressure of work in connection with organization was over,
and after things had settled into a regular routine, the Colonel had been niojt
kind about allowing me to go to New York for week-ends. There was no
ing or instruction, nothing in fact but routine formations, between noon on
Saturday and early Monday morning, so there was really very little to do at
Camp in the interval, especially when the ground was covered with snow and ice.
In consequence a general exodus took place early on Saturday mornings, in which
I joined whenever I could, going up to town in my Ford, and driving back late on
the Sunday nights. To facilitate my movements in this respect, the Colonel used
sometimes to invent imaginary regimental business for me to attend to in the
city, especially on those Saturdays when he himself wanted a seat in the Ford for
the trip. This general exodus had the hearty approval of the War Department and
of the Division Commander, the theory being that the morale of both officers and
men was maintained and improved by these frequent visits to their homes, and
that their periodic presence there inspired in their families and in their friends
increased enthusiasm for the War. Be that as it may, these visits were very wel-
224
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
come breaks in the monotony of the life, for they not only enabled me to attend
to various family and business duties, but also to see my friends in the Movement,
to keep in touch with the progress of the Work itself through hearing of the latest
developments, and, above all, to draw new inspiration and fresh strength from
these all too brief contacts with T.S. Headquarters.
As the winter wore on, and as spring drew near, there was greater activity in
the Division, and a definite atmosphere of preparation. It did not take long for
the same old rumours in regard to an imminent departure overseas to spread;
but this time they were true, and they were speedily confirmed by events, and
by orders we began to receive. After all, we were to be the first National Army
Division to go. Recruits began to arrive, and the Division began to fill up again.
This time we received draft men from the coimtry districts as well as some from
New York; our particular unit took in men from the upper part of New York
State, many of them boys from the farms, and well set up specimens physically.
Officers were required to reduce their personal equipment to about one-half of
what they had expected would be allowed. The Division Inspector started his
nefarious activities all over again, aided and abetted by two officers from the
Inspector General’s Department in Washington, and any deficiencies in equip¬
ment revealed by these inspections were supplied with a promptness and a
speed which left our Regimental Supply Officer breathless, as he had never
before secured anything in the way of supplies without waging a pitched battle
first, and not always then. Detailed directions as to the packing and marking of
equipment not needed on the voyage were issued and carried out. Everything
conceivable was stencilled to show that it belonged to the 302d Ammunition
Train. Officers’ trunks reposed in rows around the quarters, after having been
painted with the broad red stripe of the Artillery. (We were theoretically an
Artillery unit, although all our officers were commissioned in the Infantry!)
Identification tags, to be worn on a thong, around the neck, were issued to all
ranks, and it was this light touch which, more than anything else, seemed to
bring home the fact that we were really on the move at last. All leave for
enlisted men was stopped, although fortunately no restrictions were placed upon
officers. The strictest secrecy in regard to the preparations was enjoined. An
advance party, consisting of the Division Commander, most of his Staff, and
one officer from each regiment in the Division, disappeared suddenly from
public view. Finally one morning we awoke to find that one brigade of infantry
had entrained overnight—for Halifax, as we found out later—and that the
remainder of the Division was under the command of the remaining infantry
Brigadier.
In order that the restrictions upon further leave for enlisted men should not
work too great a hardship, their families were still allowed to come to Camp to
see*them on Sundays. Of course, any secrecy in regard to what was going on
was impossible in the circumstances. The visitors ranged all over the place, saw
all the preparations for departure, heard all the gossip and rumours, and went
back to town and repeated everything, with embellishments. It was too ridic¬
ulous. When the orders for embarkation arrived, visiting, as well as leave.
WITHOUT CENSOR
225
should have been stopped at once, and a double line of sentries thrown out around
the entire Camp, to prevent all communication. These visitors completely
demoralized the men. The most heart-rending farewells would be exchanged,
and then the whole thing would be gone through all over again on the following
Sunday, and again on the Sunday after that. As we were one of the last units
to leave, the whole business seemed interminable. Weeping mothers, sisters,
wives, sweethearts and children had to be herded en masse on Sunday afternoons
out of the Ammunition Train area, to ensure their making the last train out,
and that none of them would be left in Camp. It was pathetic; but we lost sight
of the pathos in our concern for the effect which this was having upon the general
morale. By Sunday evening of each week our men were reduced to pulp, and it
was the following Tuesday at the earliest before they had recovered and were
functioning normally. The Colonel continued to allow me to slip up to town
each Sunday until the very last; and each time I said good-bye to my friends in
the Movement, and told them all over again that this was probably my last
appearance. Each re-appearance was, therefore, in the nature of an anti-climax,
and must have produced somewhat the same effect and feeling as the visitors at
Camp inspired in us there. I remember, upon what turned out to be my final
visit, that the first person whom I saw when I arrived at the Sunday Morning
Service was Mr. Griscom. After greeting me, he smiled and said that my
presence would be a great surprise to my friends, as they had been thinking of
me all the week as being on the water, and had been having the Prayers for Those
at Sea for my benefit. I asked him if he thought it would be wise for me to with¬
draw unobtrusively, before anyone else saw me, but he did not seem to think so;
so I stayed, with the distinct understanding, however, that the Prayers were to
be continued at the proper time. I knew, although I had obtained them under
false pretences, as it were, that I was going to need them very much indeed
before many more days had passed.
Unit after unit of the Division left in turn, and finally we received our orders.
I just had time to send two telegrams to New York, announcing our departure
in terms carefully worked out and agreed upon beforehand. We entrained at
Camp Upton early in the morning of April 26th, transferred to ferry boats at
Long Island City, and reached the pier at Hoboken where our transport was
awaiting us shortly before noon. There was a long wait on the pier, for some
reason or other, before the troops were allowed on board, but, fortunately for
us, the Red Cross was on hand with coffee and sandwiches, and tided us over the
interval to the evening meal on the ship. We remained at the pier all that night,
and did not cast off imtil early the following afternoon, but there was an infinite
amount of detail to be attended to, and numerous orders which had to be under¬
stood and which others had to be made to understand, and the time was all too
short as it was. Strict orders had been issued to the effect that, during the trip
down the Bay and through the Narrows, no one in uniform was to be seen on
deck, the theory being that then no one could possibly have the slightest idea that
the ship was a transport loaded with troops. As a matter of fact, we proceeded
on our way to the accompaniment of shrieking whistles and lowered flags from
226
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
everything afloat along our course, while the Staten Island ferry stopped and
everyone on board crowded over to one side to get a good look, producing a
heavy list. But there was a strange feeling of unreality about those last glimpses
of the city in which one had lived all one’s life. That phase of living seemed
over, as it were; heart and mind were intent upon the problems of the moment,
and upon that new life and those new experiences to which one was bound.
Once well outside, oiu* transport, the Northern Pacific, was joined by the trans¬
port von Steuben, which had been awaiting us, and we proceeded in company,
both vessels being heavily camouflaged with the usual paint effects. We had no
convoy of destroyers until we neared the French coast. After the first two
nights out, all ranks slept fully dressed, minus only head gear and pistol belt.
Boat drills were organized at once, with frequent rehearsals, so that, after two
days, we were able to have every last man up from the lowermost regions of the
ship, and in position, beside his designated life-boat or raft, in something over two
minutes after the alarm gongs had started to soimd. Those stand-tos were cold
and dreary and silent affairs. They started one hour before sunrise, and one hour
before sunset, and lasted until the sun was well up or until darkness had actually
fallen. At those times, and in those half lights, the bulk of a ship loomed large
against the horizon from the periscope of a submarine, and presented an excep¬
tional target. All officers were armed with the pistol, and orders covering the
possibility of panic or stampede, or any attempt to rush the boats, in the event
of a torpedoing, were most drastic. As a matter of fact, the stand-tos were all
entirely uneventful; but we were fired upon twice in the middle of one night,
as we approached the French coast, by a submarine which must have happened
to rise to the surface just as we came along. Apparently it was a hurried pro¬
ceeding on the part of the enemy, for one torpedo went past us, and one went
astern, and no damage was done. No one but the watch and the two Command¬
ing Officers—Ship and Troops—knew about it until later. We were going fast,
and our speed probably saved us from further attentions. At night, both vessels
ran with no lights showing, and about half a mile apart. Orders in regard to a
possible display of light were very strict; no smoking was, of course, allowed on
deck, and even wrist watches with luminous dials were forbidden. One night
another vessel, also running at full speed without lights and bound westward,
passed between the von Steuben and the Northern Pacific, and within three
hundred yards of the Northern Pacific, so near that the watch on each vessel
were able hastily to hail one another. We felt aggrieved when we heard of this;
surely, we thought, the ocean was large enough to avoid that unnecessary kind
of thing, and why couldn’t we be let alone? The nights were long and dreary
and uncertain affairs; owing to the darkness on board and to the crowding, there
was not much to do after mess except to lie out in one’s berth, until sleep came,
followed by a sudden, rude awakening, when the stand-to gong rang in the
morning. I had the upper berth, and at the first sound of that gong I would
drop to the floor, not really awake at all, usually on top of the Captain who was
my room-mate, who would be emerging from the lower berth at the same mo¬
ment. After we had disentangled ourselves, there would be frantic and hurried
WITHOUT CENSOR
227
•searchings for head-gear, pistols, and overcoats, which we usually found mixed
together on the floor, no matter how carefully we had laid them out the night
before; for the Northern Pacific, while fast, was long and narrow, and proved to
be a terrific roller with the following wind which we had all the way. And so, on
deck for the stand-to, where the cold morning air blew the last vestiges of sleep
out of us, and made us long for the party to be over, and for mess.
The days were busy enough, and started with an inspection by the Colonel
and myself of the enlisted men’s quarters; we always had with us the Company
Commander whose area we were inspecting, so that criticism and suggestions
could be noted. The men slept in triple-decker bunks, and were very crowded,
and as the air was bad, many of them were continuously sea-sick. In spite of
this, they were forced to come on deck for stand-tos and for their regular duties
-and for watch, and thus gradually overcame their feelings. We were given
voluminous orders from General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces,
which required the making up of all sorts of lists, the furnishing of a great amount
of useless information, most of which had already been given by us, and the filling
in of various forms. These had to be fiunished in quadruplicate, and their
preparation devolved upon me as Adjutant. A deck-house was assigned to us as
a Regimental Headquarters, and in it a battery of typewriters was set up and this
paper-work proceeded. Again and again, on rough days, I would see men gradu¬
ally turn green; they would catch my eye, and at a nod, would disappear on
deck for a space, and then come lurching back again and go at their typewriters
once more. Never before had I had such a strenuous ocean voyage. The bright
-spots were meals; the food was good, and we used to sit together at table after¬
wards as long as we possibly could.
On the morning of May 4th, our seventh day out, we had just completed our
usual stand-to and had gone below, when suddenly the alarm gongs sounded
again. When we had once more taken our positions on deck, we could see, far
off on the horizon, a wisp of smoke, but too distant for any indication as to
whether it was friend or enemy. Within an hour, however, three An^Ban
destroyers hove in sight, sent out from Brest to convoy us in. We were delated
to see them, for we knew that we were now in the real danger zone for enemy
submarines, and were glad of the protection which they afforded. The decks
were crowded that morning by all ranks, watching the manoeuvres of the de-
•stroyers. They were exactly like little terriers. One of them would suddenly
dart off at an angle, to investigate a suspicious smooth spot on the water or some
floating object on the surface, and, finding all serene, would veer around in a
sharp curve and come racing back straight for us. Another would dash around
and around the Northern Pacific in circles, while the third would encircle the von
Steuben at the same time. As the morning wore on, we ran into a thick fog, and
at the first indication of bad visibility the Commanding Officer of the Northern
Pacific turned her in a circle and stood out to sea again. When we were clear of
fog, we started for the coast once more, only to run into more fog and repeat the
performance. This happened three times. Finally, around noon, the sun burned
through, and when the fog finally lifted we saw the von Steuben about three miles
228
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
away to port, and our convoy of three destroyers grouped together an equal
distance to starboard. We had been dashing about all this time in the mine¬
fields, going it blind, and it was really more due to good luck than good manage¬
ment that we escaped trouble. We resumed our previous formation, and soon
the French coast came in sight, then Brest itself, still a long way off, and at the
same time a blimp and two planes appeared, and hovered over us until we were
safe in the inner harbour.
We tied up at a pier, and as we had received orders that no one was to be
allowed on shore for the present, the Officer of the Day was directed to station
sentries on the pier, and the Colonel and I paid an official call on the Commanding
General of the American Base Port, to report ourselves and to receive our orders.
The troops spent the entire next day on board alongside the pier; the Colonel
and I, however, were able to think up some more official questions which we
wanted to ask, and paid another call on the Commanding General, approaching
and leaving his Headquarters, however, by circuitous routes which enabled us to
take in most of the town and to see the sights, and so timing our movements
that we arrived in front of the principal hotel exactly at lunch time. The follow¬
ing morning. May 6th, we disembarked the troops, and forming them on the pier,
marched through Brest, the Colonel and his staff at the head of the Column, to
Pontanezan Barracks three or four miles, I think, on the other side of the town.
This Camp was being used as a receiving depot for incoming American troops,
where they were held until medical examinations had been made, more in¬
spections had been held, and defects in equipment and other supplies had been
remedied, after which the various units were cleared and shipped by rail as soon
as possible to their appointed destinations. Pontanezan had been used as a
camp at one time by Napoleon, and the small house occupied by the Americans
as a Headquarters had once been utilized by him for the same purpose. The
troops were under canvas, and did not enjoy their stay; they were looked over by
so many different staff officers for so many different purposes, that they had no
peace. It was quite cold still on the Brittany Coast early in May, especially at
night, and the food was neither good nor plentiful. One of our men was heard to
remark, “Huh! They call this a Rest Camp. The only thing that is getting a
rest here is my insides.” Personally, I had no rest at Pontanezan either, for we
found that most of the lists which we had made up, and most of the forms which
we had filled in with so much labour and trouble on the Northern Pacific, had
been superseded by new lists and new forms. New orders had been issued by
General Headquarters calling for new information, and most of our work proved
to have been useless and unnecessary, and had to be done all over again.
The Colonel and I occupied a large tent, together with the Chaplain and the
Supply Officer; we each had an army cot in a comer. The second night after our
arrival, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a piercing yell. I sat up,
dazed with sleep, trying to remember where I was and to imagine what had
happened. The sound seemed to have proceeded from the Chaplain’s comer,
as there was still a peculiar whimpering sound emanating from that point. The
Colonel and the Supply Officer were both awake; I could see two shadowy and
WITHOUT CENSOR
229
indistinct forms sitting up in their cots. There was a moment of dreadful silence.
Then the Colonel said, in an awful voice,—“For God’s sake. Chaplain, what’s
the matter?’’ I never knew whether the Colonel felt that mentioning first the
Deity was the proper way to preface a series of remarks to a Father of the Roman
Catholic Church, or whether the Colonel’s own alarm made him instinctively
invoke Higher Authority.- At all events, there proceeded from the Chaplain’s
comer a series of gulps and gasps as from one who has succeeded in coming up
to the surface again for air, and then a weak and tremulous voice, which stated
that it thought it had had a nightmare. There was another moment of dreadful
silence; and then the Army made a short address to the Church, in which the name
of the Deity was again mentioned several times, perhaps for both of the above
reasons, with the element of relief added,—it being explained to the Chaplain
in clear and concise terms just how many different kinds of an idiot he was. I
was shaking with laughter, but made no sound, as it did not seem possible to add
anything to what had already been said. The Chaplain was a chastened man the
next day; but no further allusion was made to the occurrence, and the Colonel
seemed already to have forgotten it, his manner to the Chaplain being altogether
charming.
A trip or two into Brest by the Colonel, accompanied by the Supply Officer and
myself, served to complete arrangements for entraining the command for Souge,
near Bordeaux, where there was a large artillery camp and range, and where we
were to undergo our final training. On the morning of May 9th, a few days short
of a year from the date upon which I had gone to Plattsburgh to the First Officers’
Training Camp, the Regiment was in formation and ready to march into Brest
to entrain. When, at the Colonel’s order, I gave the command, “Battalions,
Attention! Column of companies. First company, right by squads. March!’’,
watched the troops begin to move, and then hurried to take my place at the head
of the column with the Colonel, I felt that we were really entering the last phase
of preparation, and hoped that it would not be long.
Centurion,
{To be continued)
True it is that whoso cannot obey, cannot be free, still less bear rule: he that is
the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing.
—Carlyle.
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us dare to do our
duty as we understand it .— Lincoln.
MANAGING THE PERSONALITY
S members of The Theosophical Society, many of us have attended its
meetings for a number of years, and have heard numerous interesting and
^ helpful addresses and discussions. If we have attended meetings of the
New York Branch, we have heard contemplation discussed—contemplation of
an ideal of life which transcends the life and interests of the personality—and
also the transforming power of such contemplation. The idea may have seemed
to us desirable. We may even have felt, in a general way, that we should like
to make it our own. Then, after contenting ourselves for a time with what
amounted to little more than a pious hope that some day, or in some future life,
we might be able to attain it, we may suddenly have become aware that the
barrier which has been restraining us from making a serious attempt to take
the first steps on the Path toward such a goal, was oiu* personality, and the fact
that all our life we have allowed it to govern our thoughts and acts, and have
habitually centred our consciousness in it and its concerns. Perhaps, following
this realization, we decided to remain a slave no longer.
All of us are familiar with the analogy of the rider and the horse, used to
describe the relation between the individuality (the enduring, reincarnating Ego)
and the personality. In the Phaedrus there is that familiar passage which shows
quite clearly that Plato understood the dual nature of man, as evidenced by his
reference to the charioteer and the two steeds,—one of them “noble and of
noble breed, upright and cleanly made; a lover of honour and modesty and
temperance, who needed no touch of the whip, but was guided by word and
admonition only”; the other, “ignoble and of ignoble breed, a crooked and
lumbering animal; the mate of insolence and pride, hardly yielding to whip and
spur”. This “crooked, lumbering animal”, then, is the creature which we, the
charioteer, must tame and train. To the extent that we have made this truth
our own, instead of entertaining it as a pious platitude, we shall have learned our
first lesson in right self-identification.
In the first results of any such attempt, the experience of one is in a certain
sense the experience of all, yet it is equally true that each man has his own
problem. Let us suppose that “we”, in this case, are a business man with a
family to support, and that we have hitherto regarded oiu* occupation merely as
a means to that end, albeit we have had, as it might be expressed, “quite a kick
out of it” in the contest of wits, ingenuity and energy under the keenly com¬
petitive conditions of modem business. Facing our newly-made resolution, we
now remember having heard it said that we must begin right where we are, and
in the circumstances in life in which we are placed. A little reflection now shows
the necessity of looking upon our business in a new light. No longer may
ambition, desire for reward, or desire for sensation be our dominating motive.
Instead, our business must be used (as it was meant to be) as an opportunity
230
MANAGING THE PERSONALITY
231
for training. We begin by resolving to rise at a certain hour every morning, and
to arrive at our office punctually,—an excellent resolution, if followed by right
action. Instead, the very first morning after our laudable resolve, we oversleep,
owing to having indulged ourselves by remaining up late the night before to
finish a book which interested us. As a result, we hasten through our private
devotions and our toilet, are rather cross during breakfast with our family, gulp
down our food and rush off to the office. Arriving there late, we find that some
important matters which required immediate attention have been undertaken
in our absence by an associate. This man, whose methods we habitually find
very exasperating, has handled the matter to the best of his ability, but in a way
which we know will not further oiu* company’s interests. Instead of assuming
the responsibility for this ourselves, seeing it rightly as the result of our tardy
arrival at the office, we find fault with our associate, have words with him, and
finally lose our temper.
So far, the day’s experience, in this form or some other, is probably a familiar
one to most of us. But let us suppose we are fortunate enough to have a friend,
a fellow T.S. member, to whom we can confide, over the lunch table, the trials of
the morning. Honest and frank confession often brings its own reward. At
any rate, we get a glimpse of the situation through another man’s eyes. In this
case, we are reminded in the course of the conversation that we should learn
through our faults and failures, because they are about all that many of us have
through which to learn. It is pointed out to us that our exhibition of self¬
assertiveness in the events of the morning was a result of our having identified
ourselves with the personality, beginning with the self-indulgence of the night
before. Grateful for the object lesson, and much encouraged, we tackle our
problem with renewed interest.
The next day, we find our task made easier. We have become aware of some
of the danger points; we have learned to look down upon our two steeds from the
charioteer’s position above them; we are acquiring at least a bowing acquaint¬
ance with recollection and detachment. Accordingly, we rise at the hour de¬
termined upon—^having refrained from late hours the night before. We do not
hurry through our devotions; we eat oiu* breakfast calmly, and, incidentally,.
with far better table manners than on the previous morning; we arrive at thjd
office punctually, and the day starts well. But before long, we again bcconw
immersed in business, and for a time completely forget our resolution. After
a while, we recall a suggestion made by our T.S. friend, that we “recollect
ourselves’’ at least once every hour. We glance at the office clock and see that
it stands exactly at noon. With a thought of gratitude to the friend, we take a
fresh hold on ourselves. All goes well until our “unruly steed’’ begins to feel
the curb of the rein, and responds by sulking and displa)nng “insolence and
pride’’, as Plato warned—^with the result that soon we catch ourselves indulging
in sarcastic remarks. However, by pausing a few seconds before speaking, we
are able to prevent further outbreaks of this nature during the remainder of the
day.
Assuming that such are the typical results of initial efforts, it seems clear that^
232
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
intermittent and unskilled though these may be, they nevertheless prove our
power to control and manage the unruly steed of the personality; prove that we
can make oiu* own the ideal offered in T.S. discussions,—though, for full success,
one must concentrate upon the task, as is said in “The Elixir of Life”, without
a single moment’s relaxation. The personality has been in control so long that it
will not surrender without a violent struggle. The rider must be more determined
than the steed, and we must be prepared to continue the struggle, and to keep
on trying, although aware that we shall doubtless fail many times. We have
heard it said that the only real failure is to cease trying, and the least experience
shows us that we must not fail; that the issue, once joined, is one of life or death.
What will provide the motive power to carry us forward? A desire that
transcends every other desire of oiu* hearts for the realization of an ideal which
we have seen as desirable above everything else in the world. When we have
seen that ideal most vividly, and our pulses quicken in eager longing for its
attainment, we may be sure that it is our higher nature beckoning to us and
showing us the way. We have become able, for the time being, to identify
ourselves with the charioteer, and the personality has been transformed into
the “noble steed, who needed no touch of the whip, but was guided by word
and admonition only”. Once we have been lifted out of ourselves, above and
beyond the personality with all its self-seeking, desire for personal gratifica¬
tion and reward, we must push forward in obedience to the heavenly vision,
as did St. Paul. When our vision of the ideal fades, or is lost sight of alto¬
gether, we may be sure that we have allowed the personality to gain the upper
hand temporarily by having identified ourselves with it, and have become, for
the moment, the “crooked, lumbering animal, the mate of insolence and pride,
hardly yielding to whip and spur”. By this time, our experience should have
taught us that we cannot hope to do battle with the personality on its own
plane; w^e must rise above it. We must keep our attention, our desire and our
will fixed in contemplation upon our ideal. As that inspiring book, La RSponse
du Seigneur, warns: “Man, called to ever-increasing greatness, grows smaller
and smaller unless he renounces himself.”
A Master has said: “He who does the best that he can, and all that he can,
does enough for us.” How many of us begin to meet that test? Yet, those
are words of encouragement, because more will not be required of us than we
are capable of, no matter how little and insignificant that may be; but we must
withhold nothing, and give our all. It is the effort and motive that count, and
as we strive unceasingly and with ardour and enthusiasm to become our ideal,
we shall find that as we live up to the light we have seen, we shall gain in wis¬
dom and understanding, and thereby be enabled constantly to purify our motive.
Steady, unremitting effort will enable us gradually to loosen the bonds of the
personality, strengthened though they have been by past years and incarna¬
tions of mastery over us.
H.G.
L’ILE=DE-FRANCE
"N
France^ mkre des arts, des armes, et des loix .— Joachim Du Bellay.
I F you wish to transplant a tree, you must dig it up very carefully, taking care
not to injure the roots. If possible, it is best to take it up with a large
quantity of the earth around it. Then, it must be replanted promptly in
similar soil and in a similar climate, if it is to grow and floiuish. In the Bestiaries
of the Middle Ages we are amused to see deer that are part lichens, or strange
goats that are plants. In modem scientific works we read about plants that
endeavour to perambulate. Man, supposedly, has no roots. He can walk all
over the continents and has made himself boats so that he can leave his native
habitat of dry land. He can, if he have such bizarre desires, go up into the
stratosphere in a balloon, with an oxygen bag on his head. But man, really, is
a creature very much like the lichen deer. He is in two kingdoms at the same
time. His body can roam about at will, but his roots grow upward, like those of
the Ashvatta Tree, into worlds invisible to the physical eye. The higher up his
roots go into the spiritual world, the more perfect a man he becomes. Nowadays,
men try to assert that they have no roots, no history, no ancestry, no heritage,
no race. Plants are watered by rain from heaven, and the same sun and moon
shine upon the deodars of the Himalayas and the cedars of the Rockies. Uni¬
versal powers nourish them. Man’s roots are nourished by the universal powers,
but that does not mean that they have no specific existence or place. The
immediate roots of man are his family, his ancestry, his traditions, his country,
his race, and his Master.
In this Dark Age, full of the winds of Internationalism, Pacifism, Prole-
tarianism and other topsy-turvy doctrines, we meditate too seldom upon this
aspect of human life. Instead, we think in terms of a kind of Protestantism:
one leap, and we can talk directly to God; one denial, and we are detached from
past humanity.
I have been thinking of these things because I have been reading a boo^dS
Edmond Pilon, called UIle-de-France, The Isle of France. This province, as^u
know, is the coimtry surrounding Paris, and is the very heart of France and
the cradle of the French Monarchy which was the incarnation of that heart for
so long. Edmond Pilon’s work, which is one of a series called Les Beaux Pays,
Beautiful Countries, does not pretend to be anything but a little journey through
this province. It is profusely illustrated with excellent photographs of the
landscape, of castles, churches and works of art. Perhaps, if one has never been
there and does not know “the feel” of the landscape, or does not love its history,
one will not find the profound poetry, the deep significance, the spiritual splen¬
dour which I have found. Still, I feel sure that anyone who reads the book
with attention will realize, intellectually at least, something of its richness and
meaning.
233
234
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
This province is called an island because it is surrounded by rivers, the Seine,
Marne, Oise and Aisne.
The Government of the IU-de~Franee^ as it survived in its political limits until the
Revolution, was larger than the geographers describe it. Besides the Bne fran^aisey
the Goele with Danmartin, France (Saint-Denis-en-France, Roissy-en-France) and the
Valois to the limits of the Laonnois and of the BeauvaisiSf it included the Fextn frangaisy
the Mantois (with Mantes), the Pincerais (with Poissy), the Drouais (with Dreux), the
Yveline (Saint-Leger-en-Yveline, Rambouillet), the Hurepoix (Dourdan, Limours, Long-
jumeau), and the Gdtinaisy composed of woods, marshes, heaths, the Bihe (Chailly-en-
Biere), Fontainebleau and its forest, the whole limited, circumscribed, as is fitting for an
island, by the blue line of rivers. ... All this, moreover, not without geological affini¬
ties, a related system of waters, a variety of stock and crops complementing each other:
in nearly every part there are cereals, but wheat is grown more particularly in Brie and
in Hurepoix in the direction of Chartres. There are flocks also in Brie, apples in the
Vexin, honey in Gatinais, vegetables in the Parisis and at Arpajon, grapes atThomery,
grapes at Fontainebleau, at Montreuil, peaches, and, between the two fresh valleys of
the Bievre and the Yvette, strawberries and more strawberries, so many that on certain
summer days the air is heavy with a taste of fruit, with a warm, sweet sap, enough to
intoxicate the bees.
If you will look at a map of France, you will see what a small section this is,
and if you place the whole province on an American state, you will realize in
what a little area so much diversity is contained. The great city of Paris is in
the Ile-de-Francey and all these quiet towns and hamlets, these chateaux and
woods and little rivers,—all this deep country. But if many of these outlying
spots are unknown to tourists, they, nevertheless, have an active life of their
own and are beloved of the Muses. We have heard about the scientist who
visited a South Sea island to study the snails there. Ravines run down the slopes
into the sea, and in each ravine, separated by high ridges from their neighbours,
different species of snails have developed. The isolation of the old days produced
just such diversity of type and intensity of life in the country districts. Now,
when we all use the same mark of toothpaste from Los Angeles to Bangor, and
listen on the radio to the same jokes, in Quebec, Kansas, Seattle and New
Orleans, is our life really enriched ?
Pilon says that by following the roads, those roads which were Roman roads,
the highways of Brunehault, le pav^ du Rot, the King’s Highway, “twenty cen¬
turies of history rise with the stones from out the ages.’’ He speaks first of
those stones which survive from periods which are lost to us in the obscurity of
time, of the megalithic monuments, vestiges of the ancient faith of Gaul. There
are several of these menhirs and dolmens, great rocks which seem to contain
within themselves the secrets of the lost mysteries. They sleep under an en¬
chantment, like Merlin in the forest of Broceliande. What trumpet’s blare will
awaken them? What magic word cause them to speak, to utter musical sounds
like the Vocal Memnon? How well I remember the first picture in my history
book! It represented a Gallic warrior. “The Gauls wore breeches and long
moustaches. They said they feared nothing save that the sky should fall on their
heads.’’ The Romans are represented in Paris by a number of remains, such
L’lLE-DE-FRANCE
235
as the Arena, and the Baths now part of the Cluny museum. Julian the Apostate
lived there. “My dear Lutetia”, he called it. There is a street, la rue Jules
Cisar. Everyone feels that Caesar has just as much right to a street or more
than le President Wilson. Everyone knows about Caesar and has a connection
with him. As for the Middle Ages, there are still great walls and towers and
castles which we are going to see as we journey around the country. There are
the works o‘f the Renaissance, and all the beauties of the eighteenth century;
there are the churches and the ruins of abbeys, there are the gardens.
As for Paris itself, it is the subject of numberless tomes. How could one
describe all its beauties and its wealth of historical associations? Upon Mont¬
martre there still exists the crypt of the Martyrs, at the spot where the first
apostles of Lutdtia, Saint Denis and his companions, Eleuth^re and Rustique,
were decapitated. This crypt dates from the year 375. There is Notre-Dame
de Paris, a little too neatly restored by Viollet-le-Duc, but perfect in its silhouette
at all hours of the day and night, against the gamut of blues of the Parisian sky.
There is the church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont with the shrine of the Patron
Saint of Paris, St. Genevieve. Candles are always burning before the shrine,
for every one knows, even the unbelievers, that St. Genevieve takes an active
interest in her city. Upon the wall of the church is a tablet which says that Clovis
and his family were buried in the ancient basilica which stood nearby. Clovis!
A picture in the history book showed him calling upon Christ at the battle of
Tolbiac. There is the vast Louvre with its incalculable treasures and its memo¬
ries. One sees traced upon the pavement of its court the site of the donjon of
Philip Augustus, where the feudatories swore allegiance to the King. One sees
the window from which Charles ix witnessed the massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
The Salon Carr6 was the bedroom of Henri iii. The Venus de Milo is in Anne of
Austria’s bathroom. The Pavilion de Marsan is part of the Tuileries. The
Princesse de Lamballe and Madame Elisabeth lived there before they were taken
to prison. There is the Tomb of Napoleon. There are the houses of all the
famous men of France and of Europe. There are the streets where they walked,
and not only they, but also the heroes and heroines of fiction. What can one not
see! The chair of Dagobert, the Hand of Justice of the Kings of France, the
helmet of Bayard, the hat of Napoleon, the slippers of Josephine.
And the Place de la Concorde and—but no. If we do not start at once^^®
shall never get out of Paris. Perhaps we can start by going a very little
to places which were once in the country but are now practically in the city.
We can go to Saint-Denis, Saint-Denis-en-France, for this is the province of
France. The father of Hugues Capet was Count of Paris, Duke of France and
Abbot of Saint-Denis. Pilon says: “Here at Saint-Denis are the starting
point and the end: the cradle of the Capetian race and the sepulchre where it
rests. ... It is not possible to comprehend the other monuments, nor to under¬
stand anything about the other abbeys, castles, all the other edifices, religious,
military or civil of the Ile-de-France, if one has not come here first, if one has
not touched the foundations and the bases.’’
The crypt of Saint-Denis was probably the ancient chapel of the Virgin
236 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
built in 832, against the great apse of the Martyrium of the Carolingian church
which contained the remains of Saint Denis. Dagobert foimded the monastery,
but it was Suger, the famous minister of Louis le Gros, who built the Gothic
church. Suger has always been my favourite of all the ministers of France. A
man of great religious devotion, he slept upon the floor of his cell, but he under¬
stood the splendours of the arts. The symbolism of the glass windows came from
Suger, who was evidently an initiate in the Mysteries of the Master Builders.
Saint Bernard, who was an acid soul as regards the arts, disapproved of Suger;
but as Emile Mile points out in his invaluable book on religious art of the
twelfth century in France, Bernard’s dead body was wrapped in the magnificent
Byzantine silks he had despised. At Saint-Denis was kept the Oriflamme, the
Battle Standard of France. Some say this banner was made of the cape of
Hugues Capet. The Oriflamme was borne against the Germans by Louis vi,
it went to the Second Crusade, it floated at Bouvines. In 1914, its reproduction
was raised again in commemoration of Bouvines. Here were the funeral monu¬
ments of the Kings of France, most of whom were buried in the church. During
the Revolution the tombs were opened, and the bones and dust of the rulers
and princes were scattered. Napoleon began the restoration of the church,
and Viollet-le-Duc continued it under Napoleon iii. In 1918 a munitions factory
exploded and damaged some of the windows and the facade, but many of the
monuments are still intact. It is impossible to name all the kings and queens
and princes and princesses who were buried at Saint-Denis. I name at random
Dagobert, Pepin, Blanche de Castille, Charles Martel, Philippe le Bel, Charles vi,
and Isabeau de Bavi^re (who had nearly a whole page in the history book to
show her high, peaked headdress, the henin), the Constable Duguesclin (“All the
women of France will spin for my ransom’’), Louis xii and Anne de Bretagne
(“Duchesse en sabots’’), Francis i, Henri ii and Catherine de Medici, and, in
the crypt, Louis xvi and Marie-Antoinette.
I know of few more desolate spots. Saint-Denis is a very commercial and ugly
town. The church is like a museum. The tombs are empty. The forces of
materialism, darkness, envy and hate are always tr3dng to cut men off from their
inheritance, from the spiritual wisdom they have acquired by past experience,
from the examples of their leaders. When possible, they hurl themselves upon
those leaders and put them to death. They vent their fury even upon the tombs
of past rulers, endeavouring to wipe out every vestige of their existence and
influence. And what do they put in their place? The corpse of a Lenin. Hun¬
dreds of years of history were preserved within these walls. The Kings were the
incarnation of the destinies of the nation, and I think one can say truly that,
whatever their faults, they loved France above all.
After Saint-Denis, of course, one thinks of Versailles. There are great men
who are builders by nature. They not only build up the state, the morale,
the laws, the finances, the army; they build roads and edifices. Suger was
such a man, and so was Louis xiv. If Suger, as the Abbot of Cluny said, built
for God, Louis xiv built for France. He wanted France to be the greatest
nation in Christendom, and he wanted the palace of her King to express her
L’lLE-DE-FRANCE
237
grandeur. No one, surely, can stand upon the great terrace overlooking the
gardens without feeling that he succeeded. Magnificent as is the palace, with
its splendours of marble, carving and gilt, the gardens of Versailles are what
one remembers first. There are those who find them too formal, too designed,
“not natural enough”. They fail to see that in them “Nature” has been passed
through the alembic of man’s consciousness and has been re-created and syn¬
thesized. Its laws, its beauties hav^ been stated so clearly, so logically, that
they are too simple for the ordinary eye to perceive. Simplicity, which is the
ultimate elegance of manners and of the arts, is almost always mistaken for
insignificance by the uncultured. The classic is apt to seem formal and unnatural
to the undisciplined. If Saint-Denis represents the deep religious faith of
France which produced its churches, its ever-growing national life and its unity
as a family under its king as under a father, the gardens of Versailles represent
French thought, its logic, its clarity, its order. What design! What beauty!
One can look down the vast vista of the terraces, down the Tapis Vert, down
the Grand Canal to far-off distances. One can watch, entranced, a jet of water
like a crystal column rising to the tops of the dark trees that surround the
fountain. There is the lovely Grand Trianon whose rose coloured marble
arcades seem mirrored in beds of roses and begonias. There is the exquisite
Little Trianon, the least deserted of all the palaces; for here one can almost
hear light footsteps, and when one enters a room, someone seems to have just
left it by the other door.
There are other royal chateaux; Saint-Germain, with its magnificent terrace,
its chapel of Saint-Louis, its memories of Henri iv, Louis xiii, of the sad, exiled
Stuarts. The Germans destroyed the forest in the Franco-Prussian war, but it
has grown up again. To Compi^gne, Anne of Austria withdrew during the
Fronde. Here Marie-Antoinette was received when she came to France, and
after her Marie-Louise. Here Napoleon iii gave to Eugdnie de Montijo the four-
leaved clover, jewelled with dew drops. German shells fell on the Chateau during
the Great War. Jeanne d’Arc went to pray in the old church of Saint-Jacques
at Compi^gne before she was taken prisoner. The Kings of France were mighty
himters before the Lord. They himted at Rambouillet, where one goes every
May to pick lilies-of-the-valley. They chased the deer and boar at Fontainebleau.
At Fontainebleau, too, Napoleon spent those tragic hours when he was betrayed
by his Marshals, and here he said farewell to the Old Guard before his exile to Elba.
Houdan, Dourdan, Montlhdry, Montford I’Amaury, Vez, La Roche-Guyon,
Pierrefonds, Maintenon, Anet, Chantilly, Vaux-le-Vicomte; their names evoke
what memories! Every little, grey village, every farm is rich with associations.
One summer when I was staying at the Chateau de Rozi^res, we sometimes
walked three miles to the railroad to take the train to market at Senlis. We
passed by one of those old farms, surrounded by walls like a little citadel. It
had a tiny chapel, and, on the outside wall of the chapel was the tombstone of
a crusader in full armour, with his sword, his hands joined in prayer.
Nothing sums up more completely or more movingly the centuries of human
suffering, effort and faith than the little churches of France. Take Saint-Loup-
238
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
de-Naud in Brie. You drive along little country roads between wheat fields
bordered with poppies and cornflowers and rosy corncockles. You see the grey
tower rising above the cluster of trees. This church is one of the gems of twelfth
centiuy architectiore. The apse of the building is Romanesque and there remain
traces of frescoes. As Alphonse de Chateaubriant says in La R^ponse du Seigneur,
speaking of the little chapel in the woods, there is “a vague odour of saltpeter, of
old wax and of old bouquets”. The little chimches of France are very poor now,
but their espousal of Holy Poverty gives them another charm and nobility. At
Saint-Loup-de-Naud the porch of the chimch is in the style of Chartres. In the
tympanum is represented Christ in Majesty, siurounded by the four beasts of
the evangelists. On either side of the portal are long, elegant personages, the
King of Judah, the Queen of Sheba, etc. On the central pillar is Saint-Loup him¬
self, in his bishop’s robes, bearing his crozier. The hands have been slightly
damaged, but the head, so humane, so benign, is intact. Saint-Loup was a
bishop in the seventh century, and episodes of his life are shown in the sculptures
of the vaulting. A precious jewel falls from heaven into the chalice as he cele¬
brates the Mass. The devil is shut up in a vase. The great bell of Sens is carved
there. Clotaire impiously carried it off to Paris; but Saint-Loup told it not to
ring, and it obeyed him and was silent until it was sent back. Clotaire is seen
kneeling before the saint, imploring his pardon. Emile M 41 e says: “This mixture
of puerility and of nobility did not shock anyone then. For the men of this time,
nothing is great, nothing is small, for in every thing the presence of God is
revealed.”
Over the coimtryside floats the sound of bells. “Recollection, meditation,
indrawal of the soul, hope and pardon, that is what the bells say, from huge
Marie, the Great Bell of Notre-Dame, to the humble little bells of the churches
of Arbonne, of Chailly, or of Barbizon, where Millet took the subject of his
Angelus. These bells, do not forget, have sounded the tocsin of alarum, they have
called to work, to combat, to prayer; they have calmed the passionate beating
of many hearts and poured rest into many consciences.”
Who can describe the varied landscape; its blue distances, its little rivers,
its plains and heaths, purple with heather? Every inch of its soil is satiuated
with the love and thought of an immemorial past. Nothing is lost. It is a vast
reservoir upon which to draw. It is a treasure of experience which enriches all
its children. It is the cultime of the race, which every man shares and which
extends his consciousness far beyond the limits of his personal life until it can
include all of its history. I remember experiencing this myself when I was
quite young. I was sitting in a forest, at the edge of a hill overlooking the
coimtry around Nanteuil-le-Haudouin. Here Jeanne d’Arc fought a battle, and
here the Germans were turned back in the Great War. As I sat there, all the
history of France seemed to flow into me from the earth. I saw no visions
with my eyes, but I experienced in my own consciousness ancient faiths and
desperate battles. I participated in the being of himdreds of years. I remember
exclaiming. It is all, all mine!
Now, I do not relate this because it was any proof of merit or an extraordinary
L’lLE-DE-FRANCE
239
experience. On the contrary, this is the birthright of every Frenchman and of
many who were not bom in France this time, but who must have been privileged
to be bom there many times in the past. This is what racial culture means;
not something intellectual, not education, not even being able to read and write,
but being nourished by the spiritual deposit of faith and heroism, by the rich
elements of the racial blood. If men deny this, they repudiate their ancestors.
If they try to cut themselves off from the past, of course they cannot escape
from its consequences, but they can deprive themselves of its benefits, its
wisdom, its strength. If they could see what they would become! Something
so denuded, so alone, so puny that their existence would be a matter of seconds!
Something so hideous that a mosquito would be lovely compared with them!
Westerners laugh at the veneration of ancestors as at a superstition, and, alas,
many of their deluded pupils in the East laugh with them. If they realized even
a little of what their ancestors have done for them, they would find burning
incense before their portraits a very slight symbol of gratitude.
Funck-Brentano, in his superb book on the Middle Ages, describes the building
up of the French nation after the confusion of the Dark Ages. During the
ninth and tenth centuries, every city in France was destroyed. “Three do
not meet two without killing them.” The central authority lapsed. Invasion
and civil war laid waste the country. Funck-Brentano says: “It was in this
anarchy that was accomplished the work of social reconstmction, by the only
organized force which remained intact, under the only shelter that nothing can
throw down, because it has its foundations in the human heart; the family.”
This ought to be encouraging to us who live in an age of such confusion, when
every institution is falling to pieces,—^the family, it would seem, included. If
men really studied history, they might profit from its lessons, and, perhaps,
avoid the dark age into which we seem to be entering. Thus, the family extended
its protection to its dependents; it joined other families; it became a clan. It
protected other clans or fought them. Gradually, the clans gathered cell by cell
around the centre, the royal family, the King, the father of his people. “The
King,” says Hugues de Fleury, “is the image of the father.” With the sceptre,
the Kings of France carried, not the sword, but the Hand of Justice, because
they were the incarnations of Justice. “The King treats his subjects an(^tetes
out justice to them, as a father to his children.” The feudal system, tlBKier-
archical system, is built upon duty and responsibility; the responsibility of the
lord to his serf, the duty of the serf to his lord; the duty of the lord to his over-
lord, the responsibility of the over-lord to his feudatories; the loyalty of the
over-lords to the King, the impartial justice of the King to all his vassals. The
King, who sums up and incarnates the spirit of his people, is in turn responsible
to his Lord, and his responsibility is his Divine Right. When societies are
turned upside down as to-day, rights without responsibility or duty are what
people clamour for, as though such a thing could exist.
Now, of course, the French nation is far from perfect, and in the course of its
evolution has been full of strife and hate and evil. The barons have fought the
Kings and oppressed the people; the Kings have lacked wisdom. The dregs of
240
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the nation rose up in the Revolution and attempted to submerge everything.
Some of the dregs are still floating around on the top. Yet, because of the real
imity of France, because of the heroism, the devotion, the faith of the past, it is
to-day a nation which cannot be destroyed, which, when it is attacked, rises
like one man to defend its soil and its inheritance and performs those acts of
sublime valour which we saw in the Great War.
This gradual formation of the individual is the same for man and nation.
It is only accomplished by loyalty to principle and by imion of consciousness.
There can be no imiversality of consciousness by any other process. A thin,
rootless internationalism is the exact inversion of this. Certainly, all humanity
will share in one spirit some day, but it will be because men have become indi¬
vidual cells in individual nations which, in turn, are united in a spiritual hier¬
archy. That day is a long way off and cannot be attained simply by flying around
the globe in forty-eight hours, or, even, by killing off everybody but the “pro¬
letariat”. Thus, we see that by performing properly and with love the rites
and duties of everyday life, in our families, in our relations with our friends and
companions, with our ancestors and with our nation, we arrive at a state of con¬
sciousness which includes our spiritual race and lineage. By looking at one little
province with all its past and present, we are led beyond its image to the real abode
of the soul. Perhaps we do not appreciate these things until we are taken away
from them. Is this not the reason for the long exile of the soul, that it may yearn
for all it has lost and turn back to its soimce ?
La, est le bien que tout esprit desire,
La, le repos ou tout le monde aspire.
La, est Tamour, la, le plaisir encore.
La, 6 mon ame au plus hault ciel guidee!
Tu y pouras recongnoistre I’ldee
De la beaute, qu*en ce monde j^adore.
“There is the good which every heart desires; there is the rest to which the
world aspires, there is love, and there is pleasure also.
“There, oh my soul to highest heaven guided! There thou canst recognize
the Idea of beauty, which in this world I adore.” Sauvage.
Once I saw mountains angry,
And ranged in battle-front.
Against them stood a little man;
Aye, he was no bigger than my finger.
I laughed, and spoke to one near me,
''Will he prevail?”
"Surely," replied this other;
"His grandfathers beat them many times."
Then did I see much virtue in grandfathers ,—
At least for the little man
Who stood against the mountains .— Stephen Crane.
LIVING PICTURES
R ecently I found in an old trunk a forgotten collection of photographs,
treasured in my boyhood. Opening the package, first came my likeness
^ at the age of four, standing with a basket of flowers in one hand; on the
top of my head a fat curl; on my chubby face a look of happy expectancy, as I
watched “for the birdie to come out”. I always rather scorned this picture on
account of the fat curl. Not so with the next picture, showing me as a boy of
twelve in cadet uniform, a soldier! The small rifle, boy’s size, is grasped firmly in
both hands, bayonet fixed. Most important of all, there is a medal—a solid
gold one—conspicuous on my breast. No veteran could be more proud of his
decorations than I was of mine, despite certain mean insinuations of jealous
rivals to the effect that my father’s close friendship with two of the three Judges
at the Competitive Drill had had bearing on the award of this coveted prize.
Next a photograph of our baseball nine, of the same period. Nothing formal;
just a dozen small boys squinting in the bright sunlight, and displaying as many
bats, gloves, masks and other paraphernalia as were available at the moment.
True, I was only a substitute, but that did not show in the picture, which at
any rate proved conclusively that I was a ball player; destined, no doubt, for
larger things later on.
The fourth, an impressive view of myself as a musician, with violin in one hand,
bow in the other, the whole given dignity by a painted landscape, apparently the
gardens of some chateau, for a background. I fancy I look more musical in this
picture than I sounded, but the violin is a difficult instrument, and takes years to
master, so what cotdd people expect. Everything has to have a beginning!
Besides other portraits of myself and some of my boy friends, there was a
considerable number of snap-shots; dogs and horses, boats and bicycles, and all
the centres of interest of boys of that day and age; and also views of favourite
places and scenes at home, in the mountains and at the seashore.
As I gazed, musing, at these reminders of years long past, all but forgotten, i^ft
seemed to me that they symbolized my own personal consciousness and th'J^
typical dynamic images of my mind, at that time of my life. It was such mind
pictures, vivified by ambition and desires, which spurred me on to corresponding
wishes, intentions and actions. For a boy they were probably the normal thing,
resulting in an average kind of boy’s life.
Continuing the same line of thought, I remembered how, as time passed,
many of these pictures had faded, more or less gradually, from my consciousness,
being replaced by or transformed into others, as I myself was transformed physi¬
cally from boy to youth, from youth to manhood. Changes of surroundings,
different occupations and associates had resulted in the abandonment or revision
of many once-cherished images. But certain pictures, though modified in detail,
long continued as vivid and dynamic as ever. These were mainly of two classes,
241
242
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
those animated by self-love, and those fed by self-indulgence. I must have a
good time; I must be admired.
So I passed on mentally to the time in my life when I heard of Theosophy,
became interested, and ultimately joined the Society. New pictures were then
introduced into my inner gallery; pictures of service and a Cause, of Discipleship,
of Chelaship. With these, many of my older pictures were discordant. I began
to sort out and select, rejecting a number of the old ones automatically. But
there were certain of them, the largest and most vivid, which proved difficult to
dispose of, even though they did seem to clash with the new ones. In some part
of my nature I was attached to them; willing perhaps to have them modified or
reduced, but not to abandon them utterly. I had put so much into them, for so
many years, that they seemed my very self; I identified myself with them.
As I meditated on these things. Light on the Path came to mind, and its drastic
requirements for those who would be disciples: “Kill out ambition (the first
cimse); kill out desire of life—desire of comfort—desire for sensation, . . . and
then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man will seem to be utterly
dissolved. This ordeal must be endured. ...” Surely the destruction of all those
once cherished personal pictures would be one aspect of this necessary ordeal;
wfith their complete disappearance or their final rejection, the familiar personal
life would seem to be utterly dissolved; one would indeed be sunk in an “abyss
of nothingness”. But not until one “has learned to dwell in this abyss, and has
found its peace, is it possible for the eyes to have become incapable of tears”,—
the first of the Rules.
How prone we are to compromise and straddle, to postpone. We may at times
remember the oft-repeated injunction to keep constantly before our mind’s eye
our highest ideal for ourselves, and that this positive attitude, instead of a
negative one, will itself help greatly to free us from subservience to the wrong
ideas and desires. It seems likely that few of us do all that we should in this
respect. In any case there are few who do not need to resort to a courageous
purging process, to a more complete elimination of old pictures. Should we not
review, one by one, all the surviving ideas about ourselves which still minister,
subtly perhaps, to our self-satisfaction and self-love, or which keep alive old
desires that should be relegated to complete oblivion?
One trouble is our lack of conviction that the process must be thorough, the
decision final; that half-way measures will not suffice. We forget that “the
snake of self must be not only scotched but killed;—^when it is only lulled to sleep
it awakes again.” How often we have found ourselves in difficulty because we
disregarded this truth! Do we not know that as long as we keep these mind
images alive, they only await suitable conditions to reflect themselves again
in outer actions; to incite us to new folly?
Possibly it would arouse our somnolent wills to remember that our own private
collection of “pictures”, which we so hate to part from, appears as immature and
absurd to our friends, on both outer and inner planes, as our childhood photo¬
graphs seem to us when we contemplate them, from a somewhat wiser stand¬
point, thirty or forty years later. A. Woodby.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
HE subject of the last “Screen” appears to have interested greatly
those of our readers who are members of the Society; many of them
wrote to say so, others have written helpful comment,—and the Re¬
corder begs to express his appreciation of their courtesy and kindness. But
we have readers all over the world who are not familiar with theosophical litera¬
ture, who know little or nothing of occult tradition, and for whom, therefore,
the subject of Lodge Messengers, except as a general proposition, necessarily
is puzzling if not incomprehensible. With this in mind the Recorder was de¬
termined, when his friends again met, to begin in any case with the discussion
of more mundane topics; so he saved a clipping from a morning paper which he
believed would serve as a mental stimulant, if not as an irritant, and which he
summarized, for their benefit, as follows:
“A news despatch from Washington announces that Mr. Hopkins, Relief
Administrator, wishes to set up a Federal Work Relief Corporation with an ap¬
propriation of from eight to nine billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, to provide
the unemployed with homes, and with land and tools to enable them ‘to raise
part of their own produce’. The despatch says in explanation: ‘Convinced
that industry cannot yet take up the slack of unemployment, and that the
government must, therefore, make work, Mr. Hopkins in his programme calls
for a permanent civil works administration.’
“ ‘Industry cannot take up the slack of unemployment’; this means that there
are too many men and not enough jobs: America, in other words, is over-popu¬
lated. How did this happen? It is clearly part of our function, as students of
Theosophy, to try to discover the cause of the world’s present maladies, our
national maladies included. There can be no real cure until the cause is re¬
moved. Palliatives have their place in every right system of medication, but a
palliative is not a cure, and when a doctor, confronted with an ulcer, prescribes
a palliative the ultimate effect of which is likely to destroy his patient’s heart,
‘liver and lights’, my own choice, if I were the patient, would be to die a natj&l
death. However; I return to my question: how has it come about that Ammca
is over-populated?” And the Recorder turned to Historian No. I.
“My answer is,—through greed”, was the response. “As a nation we are
suffering the consequences of greed piled on greed; we are reaping what we have
sown. Karma, the universal law of cause and effect, is a fact, not a theory:
to-day we are experiencing the Kama of our past.
“Other nations likewise are victims of their greed; we do not stand alone.
But this was an undeveloped and potentially very rich country, so that the temp¬
tation to get rich quick was unusually great, and Americans of every epoch
jumped at it. What say you?” This was addressed to Historian No. II, who
243
244
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
looked as if he were mentally collecting the ingredients of a bomb-shell, and
whose answer to the question fully justified the inference.
“We must remember, in the first place,” he said, “that while many early
settlers came here in the hope of securing religious freedom, others, and prob¬
ably a majority, left their homes in Europe for reasons entirely mercenary.
Nor is this surprising, since the facts of history, not ordinarily presented, show
that it is the result of centuries of encouragement.
“When America was discovered and pre-empted for Spain and Portugal by
the Papal Bulls of 1493, the English people, socially and economically, were in
a dreadful state of distress. Seeing the possibility of relieving conditions by a
western migration. Sir Thomas More put forth his Utopia which, when carefully
examined, appears as the foremost economic treatise of the sixteenth century.
Here in the ‘Golden West’ or the so-called ‘New World’, the impoverished masses
of England might find unlimited opportimities to acquire easy wealth. Nor
could the execution of More, the leader of English imperialism, divert the
thoughts of the English people from America, any more than the excommunica¬
tion of Luther and Henry VIII could put an end to the Protestant Reformation.
During the next few decades, Utopia was not only published again and again
in England, but in every coimtry of northern Europe. The massacre of Coligny’s
colonists in Brazil and Florida in no way stemmed the tide. Following the
reaction of Mary and Edward VI, Elizabeth was compelled to legitimize piracy
as the only means of upbuilding the sea power of England. Soon the old sheep¬
growing gentry of England, reinforced by the Dutch, were threatening Philip’s
domain of the sea. With a new ‘easy wealth’ pouring into England from the
Spanish Main, at last Elizabeth was compelled, in 1578, to choose between
granting the demands of her seamen and open revolt by the imperialists. They
had promised her an empire of gold. The lure was irresistible. The charters
to Gilbert and Raleigh followed.
“The Armada, and the massacre of Raleigh’s first colony, merely delayed the
seizure of Virginia. Before the death of Elizabeth, Raleigh had further inflamed
the popular imagination with his Travels in Guiana, Thoughts of the western
El Dorado were in every English mind. It was useless for Roman influences
to try to turn the tide of English imperialism to the East. Hakluyt’s Discourse
on Western Planting, passing through numerous editions, but magnified the
glories of Utopia. In vain Raleigh was imprisoned by James I upon the demand
of Philip and the Medici. America had been thoroughly prospected by Cabot,
Gilbert, Drake, Raleigh, Hawkins, Grenville, Cavendish, Frobisher, Baffin and
Davis. In 1605, aided by Bacon, Drayton, Jonson and Shakespeare, the
English imperialists were staging plays in London, depicting the El Dorado of
the West. Indians were being paraded through the streets to prove their friend¬
liness. At last the charter of 1606 was extracted from the reluctant King for
the two great joint stock companies that had promised the English masses
fabulous profits. The first task assigned the founders of Jamestown was to
find the gold which the Spaniards and French had been monopolizing. The
whole English nation thought of gold, talked of gold, dreamed of gold. When
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
245
Newport, Smith, Delaware and Dale failed to find it in the South, Smith was
sent to seek it in New England. In 1614 appeared his amazing picture of the
wealth to be had there. During the next two decades the great Puritan
migration set in. Moral considerations had completely broken down. Even
the preachers from their pulpits invoked the sanction of the Old Testament for
the revel of rapine and murder which followed in the name of God. It was the
story of the promised land, all over again. God had commanded them, they were
told, to seize what the heathen had to yield.
“The story of what followed has often been told. Following vain attempts to
enslave the Red Race after the manner of the early Spaniards, the Anglo-Ameri¬
cans resorted to every known form of violence and debauchery. In vain the
native leaders pleaded for justice. This practice continued even after the present
Constitution was adopted, in spite of the fact that the tribes had been given the
legal status of wards of the nation. Thus, while a hostile shot has never been
fired against the tribes of Canada by the British Government, there have been
fifty-five official wars waged against the tribes of the United States. In her
Century of Dishonor, Helen Hunt Jackson drew an appalling indictment against
the American people. Only three instances of wholesale governmental robbery
and murder need be mentioned to support the consensus of opinion among his¬
torians that the martyrdom of the Red Race by the American people is without
parallel. When, early in the last century, gold was discovered in Georgia and the
Gulf States, the five so-called Civilized Tribes, including the Cherokees, Creeks,
Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles, were occupying the Gulf States, under
formal treaties of peace and amity with the United States. They had fought
under the American flag against Great Britain in 1812. They were peaceful
agriculturists. Congress compelled them to enter into new treaties providing for
their removal to the trans-Mississippi desert, where they were allotted the Indian
Territory, to be theirs for ever, administered by governments of their own
creation. During the process of removal by the Army, over half of the seventy
thousand emigrants perished from starvation and hardship. Within fifty ye^j®
oil was discovered, and the Indian territory was soon abolished. To-day, Imif
the land is in possession of the whites, and the inordinate wealth acquired by a
score or more of Indian individuals is cited as evidence of the liberality shown
those of the five Civilized Tribes who managed, despite their transportation, to
survive.
“When gold was discovered in California, in 1849, there were over two hundred
and fifty thousand Indians on the Pacific Coast, occupying the immemorial
domains to which their right had been recognized by both the Spanish and
Mexican governments. Most of them had been Christianized by the Fran¬
ciscans, and with few exceptions were agriculturists or stock raisers. None of
them had been on the war path for over half a century. Within two years, less
than seventeen thousand remained, the survivors being confined to small reser¬
vations in the desert. To-day, they are less civilized than they were in 1849.
“In 1857, the Sioux agreed by formal treaty to abandon Minnesota, and to
accept a definite domain along the Missouri in exchange for their ancient hold-
246
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
ings. Within twenty years, gold was discovered in the Black Hills. Thereupon,
numerous armies were employed to drive the Sioux from their lands and confine
them within their present reservations.
“Although the five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma, the eighteen tribes of Cali¬
fornia, and the Sioux, have each in turn resorted to the Supreme Court of the
United States for redress, so far they have never been compensated for the land
taken from them, or even been paid what was promised them under the formal
treaties violated by the Government.
“In these circumstances, it is not unnatural that the late Lord Bryce in his
American Commonwealth, like Lyman Abbott and Carl Schurz before him, should
have branded the Indian system of the United States as unconscionable, adding
that apparently the only solution of the Indian problem of which the American
people could conceive was the complete destruction of the race.
“The smug explanation of what befell the Red Race in the past is that it was
inevitable, that it was beyond the power of any Government to save hostile
savages who, unamenable to civilization, stood in the path of its advance. In a
recent work. The Red Man in the New World Drama (1931), Colonel Jennings C.
Wise has presented the politico-economic history of the Red Race for the first
time, and shown conclusively that there is no foundation for the view mentioned.
The truth is, according to the ethnologists, the American Indians were the most
peaceful race by natiire known to history. In fact, there is no instance in which
a tribe resorted to the war path against the whites until every reasonable effort
had been made to render this unnecessary. The Indians were a ‘Stone Age’
people, to be sure—retrograde, not advancing—but their history shows that they
were anxious and willing to adopt the ways of European civilization, and that
their generosity alone made possible the colonization of both Virginia and New
England. Over and over, they saved the white settlers from their own stupidity.
The only difference between the Indian system to-day and during the past cen¬
tury, as shown by the present Congressional investigation into Indian affairs, is
that a destructive governmental system, characterized by Lyman Abbott as a
‘Russian bureaucracy’, which consumes most of the tribal revenues, and which is
subservient to local interests, has succeeded to the old reign of murder and pillage.
It is an unwritten law in Congress that the conduct of Indian affairs shall be left
to the dictation of western congressmen. No eastern congressman would dare
interfere, lest he be penalized in the matter of his own interests by the western
group.
“To-day, the Indian trust funds yield the beneficiaries less than three
quarters of one per cent in revenue, and the expenditure of this income is com¬
pletely under the control of the governmental bureaucracy. How it is expended is
illustrated by the case of the Navajo. These people were peaceful agricul¬
turists, occupying the rich valley of the Rio Grande. Under the compulsion of
the whites and the threat of certain destruction, they accepted, in lieu of their
ancient holdings, a desert domain in New Mexico, where at least they might be
free for a while from violence. Under the treaty of removal, they required that
part of this domain be sold, and the proceeds invested in an educational fund for
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
247
their benefit. Education was the last thing the local interests wanted the
Indian to have. Therefore the schools built with this fund were placed at the
edges of the Navajo domain, at an average distance of forty miles from the
centres of Indian population, and open to the whites at the expense of the Indians.
As time went on, despite the fact that the Government failed to extend to these
people the advantages of education, they developed the sheep-growing industry
through which they managed to survive. Every effort is now being made by the
local whites to gain control of their domain. The current Congressional investi¬
gation shows that only recently part of the Navajo educational fund was em¬
ployed to carry out a vast highway and bridge construction project for the
benefit of the whites. The Governor of New Mexico testified before Congress
that a certain bridge, costing over two hundred thousand dollars, and connecting
a tourist hotel with the highway system, would not be used by a dozen Indians
in a year. While such things as this were taking place, the National Red Cross was
compelled to come to the relief of these people as well as the other tribal groups
who were being ground out of existence by the governmental system. In con¬
trast with all this, the British Government utilizes its military forces to protect
the natives of Canada and South Africa who, with such protection, are able to
prosper, and require little aid from the Red Cross. Knowing the facts, the pres¬
ent Indian Commissioner, Mr. John Collier, with truly humanitarian instincts,
is making a desperate effort to compel Congress to amend its methods. The
indications are, however, that he will meet with little success, and that nothing
will save the remaining Indians—about two htmdred and fifty thousand, includ¬
ing mixed breeds—from complete destruction at the hands of the American
people, whose will is but reflected by the governmental system. West of the
Mississippi River the common idea, though not as freely admitted as in the past,
still is that ‘a good Indian is a dead Indian’.
“The opportunities open to the Anglo-Americans during three centuries for
the pillage of the helpless Red Race were not the only influences which tended to
promote a greed for ‘easy’ wealth. Just a century after the appearance of the
Pilgrims in New England, Law’s great South Sea scheme of speculation was
launched in England, Scotland and France. To be sure, the South American ^d
Louisiana bubbles burst in 1720, but already the Scotch-Irish had begun to at
across the Atlantic. Hating the English, determined to be free, through^e
seaboard settlements they passed to the frontier. Soon from the St. Lawrence to
the Gulf extended the urgent civilization which they founded along the ever-
receding frontier. Again in the pulpits preachers taught that the ‘creatures
called Indians’ had no more rights than the buffalo. These white settlers had
come to America in quest of new homes and of those opportunities which the
seemingly unlimited wealth of the West offered them. Efforts to restrain them
by imperial laws, to tax them in the common interest, to deny them free access to
El Dorado, led to the Revolution. Once they had achieved independence, the
old revel started all over again with the opening up of the Northwest Territory
and Louisiana. Before long the industrial revolution, and the opening of the
world market to American commerce by the War of 1812, created a demand for
248
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the American staple,—cotton. In this situation the cry for cotton was added
to that for gold. Now, despite the earnest efforts which Washington, Jefferson
and others had made to abolish the improfitable and injurious institution of
slavery, the increasing demand for cheap labour entrenched slavery more firmly
than before, so that while it was being abolished voluntarily in other countries,
American commercial interests appealed to the Old Testament for its sanction*
Only a bitter fratricidal strife sufficed to end the traffic in human flesh.
“Coincident with all this came the discovery of gold in the West in seemingly
unlimited quantities. At last El Dorado had been found! Again Europe was
crazed. A new, unprecedented and unrestrained migration set in. Uncounted
thousands came without capital to find the ‘easy wealth’ America afforded. Those
in the East, also without capital, who were displaced by this cheap labour,
pressed westward. For a time, railroad and city building absorbed them. Soon
however, Populism, Bryanism, Socialism, Commimism and anarchy raised their
heads. The ills of middle age were appearing, though there was still an economic
frontier to absorb many of the surplus hands. Then the Spanish-American War
and a programme of imperialism intervened. This allayed momentarily the grow¬
ing unrest which, however, had again become acute even before the World
War involved the whole of mankind in economic disaster.
“In America, at first, an artificial prosperity induced by the demands of
Europe ensued. Meantime several centm*ies of economic profligacy had had
their effect. A nation cannot prosper inordinately, as the American people had
done, at the expense of two races inferior in the capacity of self-protection, with¬
out paying a penalty. The American people had grown morally weak imder the
influence of centuries of ‘easy’ wealth. In comparison, the ‘South Sea Bubble’
was as nothing to the gambling which culminated in 1929. It is useless to blame
crooked bankers and brokers for this. Like the tax-evaders and gangsters, they
were but the outward expression of the system which had been developed
through many years.
“When, inevitably, the last bubble burst as the result of a worldwide economic
deflation induced by the calamity of the Great War, several factors added to the
distress of the United States. For the first time in its history there was no
economic frontier to absorb surplus hands. Not only this, but women, deter¬
mined to share in the fruits of an artificial prosperity, gradually had invaded the
field of employment. Consequently, when deflation came, there were not only
fewer jobs, but a vastly increased number of persons demanding them. So the
problem of unemployment was magnified. Finally, the industrial section of the
country, through the medium of the existing income tax, was called upon to meet
in disproportionate measure the cost of relief, since that section contributes
the larger portion of Federal revenue. Therefore, capital found itself not only
overburdened, but alarmed by threats of new levies, just at the time when con¬
fidence on its part was essential to insure the economic readjustment necessary
to the general welfare.
“The truth is, of course, that the bounding, reckless days of America’s youth
had passed for ever, and those who promise to restore it are but deceiving the
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
249
country. The real problem is to readjust our system to the needs of maturity.
This being so, what we need is less legislative experimentation with economic
makeshifts, and more willingness to face the facts of our situation. There must be
a moral as well as a financial accounting. Without this we must flounder on to
self-destruction.”
‘‘Might it not be inferred from what you have said”, asked one of our visitors,
‘‘that Malthusianism supplies the best way out?”
‘‘Why yes, that might be inferred”. Historian No. I replied dryly,—‘‘just as it
might be inferred that our paternal government, in the circumstances, should
painlessly poison some thirty per cent or so of our population, excluding, of
course, all who belong to Labour Unions and have paid their dues. Personally I
see very little difference, as to ultimate Karmic effect, between the one method
and the other,—between wholesale poison and race suicide.”
One of our number, who is of English birth, now turned to the Recorder and
remarked rather grimly: ‘‘Kindly explain, if you use in the ‘Screen’ what has been
said about the treatment of the American Indians, that Historian No. II is one of
the most genuine of American antiques, and that I am innocent!”
We were greatly amused, but the Recorder promised.
Someone then asked if the American Indian, as a fighter, had not proved him¬
self both treacherous and horribly cruel.
‘‘It would be a mistake”, was the reply, ‘‘to speak of Indians in the lump.
The tribes differed greatly, both in origin and in their customs. Some were cruel,
some were not; but the worst of them were not more cruel than the Arabs of
Morocco in recent wars against the French—the Arabs always tortured their
prisoners to death—and at the time of the early Indian wars on this continent,
it is only fair to remember that the so-called civilized races of Europe were
barbarous in their treatment of prisoners, as they were in their judicial punish¬
ments. People were burned alive for expressing unpopular opinions. Always in
the name of God,—three thousand persons were burned as ‘heretics’ by the In¬
quisition in Andalusia in 1481; some five hundred ‘witches’ were burned in
Geneva, in three months, in 1515; nine hundred were burned in Lorraine betweexl
1580 and 1595; Calvin burned Servetus in 1553—always in the name of God.
Even to-day mobs of white men can be diabolically cruel, although, thank
heaven, judicial punishments, in the more civilized countries, have become more
humane. ... It should be remembered also that the American Indians, savage
as they often were, acted under terrible provocation.”
There was a pause. The Recorder then said that he had another question,
sent to the editors by a member in Germany who had asked if it might be dis¬
cussed in the ‘‘Screen”: ‘‘What is the difference between true and false humility?”
It was the Engineer who volunteered, not to answer the question, but to
obtain answers from others. ‘‘Your conundrum,” he said, ‘‘was solved long
ago by Teresa of Avila, that most practical of saints, and, if you like, I will
look up what she wrote on the subject, while the Philosopher explains the
Theosophical principle underlying her replies.” Whereupon the Engineer
disappeared toward the library.
250
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
The Philosopher, thus designated, made this reply: “The Theosophical basis
for humility, as I understand it, is the realization that our personalities are
only the larvae, as it were, of the human beings into which we may develop.
As yet we are not even fledgelings, not even ugly ducklings. Masters alone
have reached the human kingdom. Realization of this truth would make it
impossible for the personality to think itself superior or adequate or wise. One
larva may be wormier than another, or a shade less squirmy; but there is not
much to brag about in that, especially if we look up to the imago, the fourth or
perfect state, to which someday we may possibly attain. Like all else in nature,
we are divine in essence; but there is a vast gulf between potential and actual
attainment, and much of the trouble in the world to-day is due to larvae having
the ‘big head’,— mistaking themselves for the finished product. It is nothing
new, of course; history is full of it. The wiser among us recognize and accept
our limitations, and are thankful for all the light and guidance we can get from
those who are really human—from those who can see where we are blind, can
hear where we are deaf, can understand where we are full of vain imaginings,—
Masters of wisdom. Lords of compassion, who, having passed long since through
the larva stage, have reached ‘the terrace of enlightenment’. They are always
willing to guide those who honestly and without reserve desire their guidance,
while if, like most half-wits, we prefer to pick and choose—obeying in one direc¬
tion and not in another—we can dig such guidance as we want from the sacred
books with which Masters have provided us.
“Christ, like all Avatars, was ‘the first-born of many brethren’; but we are
not obliged to think ourselves his equals—yet!’’
“Really’’, exclaimed one of our visitors, “only a lunatic could do that!’’
“You are mistaken’’, the Philosopher replied; “that is, unless you include
among lunatics the multitude of those who think we know more to-day than the
greatest and wisest of the ancient world. Let me give you a case in point: I am
reading a book on Mesmer, by a Miss Margaret Goldsmith. It is an interesting
book in many ways, and presents a much more attractive portrait of Mesmer as
a man than anything I have previously read about him. The author, however,
is modem, is highly educated, and almost inevitably accepts the latest in
western Psychology as the last word in human understanding. Consequently,
she rather pities Me.smer for his lack of opportunity and extends the same
kindly indulgence to Jesus of Nazareth and his ‘miracles’, not blaming him at
all for his errors and limitations, seeing that he was bom before modem psy¬
chology had explained things. She is, indeed, quite good natured about it,
remarking that although, like other groping ancients, ‘he believed that diseases
were cured by the intervention of a supernatural agency, his cures were a step
in the direction of modem psychotherapy.’ ’’
The Student exploded with laughter. “That is delightful’’, he said. “Such
conceit, and so totally unaware of it! So thoroughly typical of the pseudo-*
scientific approach! You did not say so, but doubtless she used those blessed
words ‘suggestion’ and ‘auto-suggestion’ as sufficient explanation of all the
wonders he performed [“She did’’, interjected the Philosopher]; and it never
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
251
occurred to her that her words explain nothing, any more than it occurred to
her that Christ may have understood many things, even about the cure of
disease, of which she knows nothing. Best of all, though, is the concession
that ‘his cures were a step in the direction of modem psychotherapy’: I shall
not forget that in a hurry; it is worthy of the Brain Trust”.
‘‘How can a larva, which does not know it is a larva—that is to say, which
refuses to recognize entities more highly evolved than itself—how can it fail
to reduce the universe and everything in it to terms of its own larvaship? Wis¬
dom, unless based upon humility, is impossible. . . . But here comes the
Engineer, prepared, I hope, to tell us what St. Teresa the elder had to say in
answer to our question: ‘what is the difference between true and false hu¬
mility?’ ”
‘‘She said a good deal”, the Engineer responded. ‘‘It was evidently a live
question among the novices and nuns of her convents, and her answers, as you
will see, were aimed at the weaknesses with which her long experience, both of
herself and others, had made her familiar. It is possible, of course, that her
language would strike unlettered people as quaint, but students of Theosophy
in any case, trained to read all religious experience in terms of the spirit rather
than of the letter, will not find this an obstacle.
‘‘In her Autobiography, chapter xxx, she says:
[That false humility is the work of Satan] is clear from the restlessness and discomfort
with which it begins, and the trouble it causes in the soul while it lasts; from the ob¬
scurity and distress, the aridity and indisposition for prayer and for every good work,
which it produces. It seems to stifle the soul and trammel the body, so as to make them
good for nothing.
Now, though the soul acknowledges itself to be miserable, and though it is painful to
us to see ourselves as we are, and though we have most deep convictions of our own
wickedness,—deep as those spoken of just now, and really felt,—yet true humility is not
attended with trouble; it does not disturb the soul; it causes neither obscurity nor aridity;
on the contrary, it consoles. It is altogether different, bringing with it calm, sweetness,
and light. It is no doubt painful; but, on the other hand, it is consoling, because we see
how great is the mercy of our Lord in allowing the soul to have that pain, and how well
the soul is occupied. On the one hand, the soul grieves over its offences against God;
on the other, His compassion makes it glad. It has light which makes it ashamed of it¬
self; and it gives thanks to His Majesty, who has borne with it so long. That othgr
humility, which is the work of Satan, furnishes no light for any good work.
‘‘Then, on page 51 of her Interior Castle, I find:
It is very injurious never to raise our minds above the mire of our own faults ....
while we are continually absorbed in contemplating the weakness of our earthly nature,
the springs of our actions will never flow free from the mire of timid, weak and cowardly
thoughts, such as: ‘I wonder whether people are noticing me or not! If I follow this
course, will harm come to me? Dare I begin this work? Would it not be presumptuous?
Is it right for anyone as faulty as myself to speak on sublime spiritual subjects? Will
not people think too well of me, if I make myself singular? Extremes are bad, even in
virtue; sinful as I am, I shall only fall the lower. . . .’ Alas, my daughters, what loss
the devil must have caused to many a soul by such thoughts as these! It thinks such
ideas and many others of the same sort I could mention, arise from humility. This
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
comes from not understanding our own nature; self-knowledge becomes so warped that,
unless we take our thoughts off ourselves, I am not surprised that these and many worse
fears should threaten us. Therefore I maintain, my daughters, that we should fix our
eyes on Christ our only good, and on His saints; there we shall learn true humility, and
our minds will be ennobled, so that self-knowledge will not make us base and cowardly.
“Finally (so far as I am concerned) she says in chapter xxxix of her Way
of Perfection:
Beware, daughters, of a certain kind of humility suggested by the devil which is ac¬
companied by great anxiety about the gravity of our past sins. . . . Everything such a
person says seems to her on the verge of evil, and all her actions appear fruitless, however
good in themselves. She becomes discouraged, thinking that she can do nothing right,
for what is good in others she fancies is wrong in herself. ... At one time it may be
humility and a virtue to think ourselves thus sinful, and at another time it is a most
dangerous temptation. I know this, for I have passed through this state myself. How¬
ever deep humility may be, it neither disquiets, wearies nor disturbs the soul, but is
peaceful, sweet and serene. Although the sight of our wickedness grieves us and proves
to us that we deserve to be in hell and that in justice all mankind should hate us, so that
we hardly dare to beg for mercy, yet if it is a right humility this pain is accompanied by
suavity, content, and joy, and we do not wish to be without it, indeed, it ought to be
prizgd since it results in self-knowledge. It dilates, instead of troubling or depressing
the soul, making it more capable of serving God. The other sorrow which distresses the
mind renders it uneasy, completely subverting it and causing great pain, so that there is
no possibility of calming the thoughts. You may feel certain that this is a temptation
and not humility, with which it has no connection. I believe that this is a plot of the
devil to make us think we are lowly, and at the same time to lead us to distrust God.
“Once more”, concluded the Engineer, “the test is: By their fruits ye shall
know them. If humility, so-called, tends to fix attention upon self, it is of the
devil; on the other hand, if we have a vivid sense of our personal unimportance,
with a great desire to serve our Master and to fit ourselves for his service, we
shall, I think, be on the right track.”
“Yes”, added the Ancient, “and more than that; for if the desire to serve be
real, we shall set to work—and it will be hard work at first, until love makes
it easy—to give that Lord of Life the utmost of our interest and attention. This,
before long, will lead to a desire to use all our faculties and senses (by no means
forgetting our senses) as he would wish, as his instruments, for his purposes,
instead of for our selfish gratification. People used to ask Judge, as they asked
about occultism, about the acquirement of ‘powers’; and always the
answer was the same: get rid of selfishness, make your heart pure, and a Master
could and would teach you occultism in three months; but no Master of the
White Lodge (only of the Black) would help you to acquire any occult power,
little or big, until that necessary preparation has been completed: and humility
is its foundation.”
Said the Student: “I doubt if many people will understand the ‘why’ of what
you have just given as the statement of H.P.B. and Judge.”
“Yet the reason is obvious enough. If men use such powers as they already
possess—their mental powers, their sight, hearing and all else—for selfish ends.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
253
they would certainly use greater powers in the same way, to the injury of others as
well as to their own undoing. Further, until selfishness has been left behind and
the personal nature has been dominated, any occult power acquired would be
psychic, not spiritual (for spiritual power can be exercised only from the spirit¬
ual plane) and no Master of the White Lodge would permit that. On the other
hand, there are countless ‘gurus’ and ‘yogis’ in India and elsewhere, who possess
occult powers of a psychic nature, and who are willing to impart their knowledge
to others whose moral preparation is at best superficial, and is sometimes a
minus quantity. This of course proves conclusively not only that the attain¬
ments of such teachers are psychic, but that, instead of belonging to the White
Lodge, they have one if not both feet in the Lodge of ‘the Brothers of the
Shadow’. In the past, many students of Theosophy, particularly those who have
visited the Orient, have been misled—always through lack of humility, always
through thinking themselves ‘ready’; while others, alas, have not been misled,
but have wanted ‘powers’ right or wrong, convinced at first, perhaps, that they
would be quite well able to decide for themselves when and how it would be
proper to use them. Invariably, in all these cases, the result has been disastrous.
Annie Besant went that way,—although, poor thing, she never got what she
wanted, the only ‘power’ she ever acquired being the ability to make herself re¬
ceptive to the suggestions and mental projections of men like Leadbeater, delib¬
erately lending herself to this for love of power. She was monstrously vain.”
‘‘What”, someone asked, ‘‘do you suppose is the motive that leads the gurus
and yogis of whom you were speaking, to impart their knowledge to others?
Is it money? Are they paid for it?”
‘‘Comparatively few of them accept money, though many accept presents.
You must remember that nearly all of them believe sincerely in themselves,
imagining they are great lights, and that their psychic experience is next to the
last word in spirituality. Vain-glory is the ordinary motive. One of the most
childishly vain men I have ever encountered was a widely renowned yogi who
lived in Benares, next to a shrine erected to himself, with a photograph of him¬
self as its chief decoration. He beamed with delight as he exhibited it. Thou¬
sands of Hindus worshipped him as a god, chiefly, so far as I could discover,
because he wore no clothes. But he, I believe, was entirely harmless, while
some of them are forcefully, aggressively bad.”
‘‘Still another question”, the Recorder now said. ‘‘It was addressed to our
‘Question and Answer’ department, but I purloined it, as I thought it would
suit the Student. I will read it to you:—‘The scathing denunciation of Prot¬
estantism in the closing paragraph of ‘‘Notes and Comments” for July includes
among the unnatural doctrines” which it condemns, internationalism. The
official statement which follows the title page of every issue of the Quarterly
declares that: ‘‘The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the
nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race,
creed, sex, caste or colour”. Why then the condemnation of the international
point of view, or is the word internationalism here used with some narrow cant
or technical significance not obvious?’
254
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
“What is your comment?”
The Student instantly responded. “I am a Protestant”, he said, “and Prot¬
estantism was rightly denounced in ‘Notes and Comments’ for its infidelities.
In the past, the two institutions which have worked hardest for internationalism,
usually by underground means, are the Church of Rome and Latin (Godless)
Freemasonry. Protestantism denies its own principles when it imitates either
of them. The Church of England is a national Church. Its equivalent here is
‘The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America’—its official
title. Rome wants to govern the whole world; so does Latin Freemasonry.
Protestantism, properly understood, has no such ambition: it wants Christ to
govern the nations,—a totally different aim. The Protestantism denounced in
‘Notes and Comments’ is the false Protestantism which, as was there said, ‘has
become one of the subversive influences in the modem state,—an ally, a despised
ally, of the communists and socialists, and an agency for the dissemination of
unnatmal doctrines—pacifism, internationalism, class warfare and the “redistri¬
bution of wealth”, birth-control, etc., etc.’
“But that is not your questioner’s main point. He quotes the principal aim
and object of the T.S., and infers that it upholds internationalism as an ideal.
It does not. He has overlooked the significance of ‘the nucleus’. I am not
a biologist, but if he will consult any encyclopaedia he will learn that a nucleus
is separated from the surrounding cell substance by a membrane; that it differs
markedly from that substance, and that it is the nucleus, and only the nucleus,
which gives the cell continued existence. It is the chief purpose of the T.S. to
discover among mankind, ‘without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or
colour’, those few men and women who are bom ‘nuclear’ by nature, or who have
the capacity to become so. If you will wait just a moment, I will look up
‘Cell’ in the Recorder’s encyclopaedia. . . . Here it is, and this, among other
things, is what it says about the nucleus: it is composed of two different elements,
one of which ‘is handed on from generation to generation’, and ‘contains a large
amount of a phosphorus-containing substance called nuclein’. ‘Within the
nucleus there are often bodies called nucleoli . . . whose nature and function
are not well known.’ We need Dr. Torrey to enlighten us. But there are
analogies: we might learn a great deal from analogies in this case.
“The ‘international point of view’ has come to mean that all men are alike;
and they are not. They are no more alike than horses are like rabbits. It has
come to mean that all men are equal; and they are not: no two men on the
face of the earth are equal in any sense and never will be. Infinite variety is the
characteristic of Nature; only man, in his depravity, is capable of turning out
a standardized product.
“A mother, with an ‘international point of view’, allows her children to play
in the street with all the little toughs of the neighbourhood. Another mother,
with a national point of view (or what corresponds to it) selects companions for
her children with the utmost care and discrimination,—and then watches them.
Which has the higher ideals? Which, of the two, is the more ‘brotherly’?
“The Y. M. C. A. would have us love all men equally—Germans, Irish,
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
255
French, Russians, Americans, Chinamen, what not. That is not an ideal;
it is a nightmare. Some men are bad, some good, some noble; the badness in
bad men ought to be hated; the nobility in others ought to be loved and revered;
the goodness in some others, endured.”
This delighted the Philosopher who, feeling that the Student had “got going”,
and afraid that the subject might be changed prematurely, asked him what he
had meant when speaking of men and women who are bom “nuclear”, or who
have the capacity to become so.
“All sorts of things”, the Student answered. “In the first place they must be
able to laugh at themselves, for otherwise they will never be admitted into the
kingdom of heaven, the denizens of which cannot tolerate bores. In the second
place, they must have open minds and open hearts: they must be open to the
truth regardless of its source, and they must be eager to share it with others.
They should be passionate but controlled; enthusiastic but not effervescent;
wise but not pedantic; so highly educated that they begin to see the extent of
their ignorance; ready to die without a moment’s hesitation for everything
worth while.”
“Stop!” said the Engineer. “What are you doing? Telling us what ought to
be the character of T.S. members if they are to become an integral part of the
nucleus? If so, I resign!”
“If I thought you meant it”, the Student retorted, “my reply would be,—
the sooner the better. I said: ‘who have the capacity to become so’. Do you
deny your capacity?”
“I’m in no mood to deny anything: go ahead.”
“To deny your capacity would be to claim a knowledge both of yourself and
of God which, my friend, you do not possess. I am dogmatic; but I am on sure
ground, because a man who has any real knowledge either of himself or of God,
knows that his capacity is infinite. A woman with her child, a man in battle,
a writer with his pen—when love inspires them—can keep going not only well
but better and better, though they started from absolute exhaustion. To con¬
front the impossible and conquer it, is the first step toward manhood.”
“The first step!” exclaimed one of our visitors.
“Yes, the first step. We shall not be men, until that conquest has b^me
a habit. Masters became Masters in just that way. As personalities we ^yvile
worms and all the rest of it; if we did not start from there, we coulcrnever
attain to divinity. A member of the T.S. may start from anywhere; to become
part of the nucleus, however, he must be prepared to butt his head against the
first ‘impossible’ he encounters, with fell determination to come out on the
other side.”
“All of which is distinctly cognate to a letter I received on the subject we dis¬
cussed in the last ‘Screen’,” said the Recorder. “There are other letters, which I
shall reserve for our next meeting, as they require more discussion than we could
include in this issue. But the first and most significant paragraph of this letter,
you have, in a way, already answered. Here it is”—and he read as follows:
“I hope and request that more be said concerning the Lodge Messenger in
256
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the next ‘Screen’. I have heard indirectly that some people have interpreted
what was said in October in the most pessimistic terms, virtually assuming or
seeming to assume that the future for the T.S. and its members is so hopeless
that nothing can be done about it. . .
“You will remember’’, the Student commented, “the opinion expressed in the
last of the letters printed in the October ‘Screen’,—that ‘the material that fills
the T.S. is for the most part soft’. What you have just read to us, suggests that
some of the material is so soft, that if you needed to lean on it, you would be lean¬
ing on a moan, an ectoplasmic moan, and nothing else. Discouraged! Dis, I
believe, means ‘not’, and courage means ‘courage.’ If that were all we had, we
should be in a mess!’’
“I have not seen any letters expressing pessimism or discouragement’’, said the
Recorder, “although that proves nothing: people do not write that sort of thing
as a rule,—not to the Quarterly; and, as I have produced the worst, it is only
fair to read you two brief and far more typical comments on our October dis¬
cussion, one received from Venezuela, the other from an old member who lives
in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The first writes: ‘To me personally, the October
“Screen’’ has been a direct, vibrant call to preparation for service and to self-
examination’. The second writes: ‘The opinions recorded are bound to revive
the drooping spirits of any of our members who in any way may be apprehensive
as to the future of the T.S.’ How is that for an old war-horse! It is battle that
they scent from afar and quiver to take part in; long ago they learned to leave
results to the Lord.’’
The Philosopher was amused. “It seems to have stirred things up in any case’’,
he said, “and anything is better than to think that if we just toddle along we
shall get there.’’
The Ancient, so far, had remained silent. Now he said with some finality:
“What the Student said about the ‘nucleus’ is comment enough. No man is
conquered until he thinks he is conquered, and when he knows he is fighting on the
side of the angels, to think he is conquered is treachery.’’ T.
A diamond demands to he cut, a block of marble needs to be carved. Man tries to
do this to himself. . , . Alas! scarcely ever has he the courage to strike hard enough.
God, to help him in the work of his perfection, sends him suffering. This completes
the hallowing of souls, and is why the most saintly are the most tried .— Ignatius of
Loyola.
Watch yourself for self-pity. The man who feels sorry for himself has morally
turned up his toes .— The Book of Unpopular Precepts.
REVIEWS
267
The Essence of Plotinus, Extracts from the six Enneads and Porphyry’s Life of
Plotinus, based upon the translation by Stephen Mackenna; edited by Grace
H. Turnbull; Oxford University Press, New York, 1934; price, $2.50.
This book responds to a genuine demand, for in recent years there has been
a notable revival of interest in mysticism and in Plotinus as the greatest of
mystical philosophers during the Christian era in the West. The study of the
Neoplatonic sage, however, has been much neglected, partly because of the
scarcity of translations. The Greek text is difficult and imperfect, and the
average scholar has lacked intellectual sympathy \vith the doctrines which the
Enneads set forth. There can be no doubt that the world is the richer for Mac-
kenna’s life-long devotion to Plotinus. His translation may be said to rank
among the classics of its order, although it might be argued that his style is some¬
times too florid, too “Irish”. There are “purple passages” in the Enneads,
but the mystical enthusiasm which they record is not emotional. It is a sign
of Plotinus’ self-discipline and self-control, that his mind remained austere and
cool and clear, even when it was overshadowed by the memory of spiritual
ecstasy. Plotinus was not a “psychic”.
Miss Turnbull has made excellent use of Mackenna’s work. Her selection of
essential passages reveals an admirable editorial judgment, and her paraphrase
of the original translation is amply justified by her purpose. Of this purpose
she writes in the Preface:
Since this work is intended for the use of those who have not already made a speciaU
study of Plotinus as well as for the students who in great concentration on the letter ofl
his philosophy may have lost something of the fine flavour of his spirit, I have tried to
free Plotinus the philosopher and mystic from the veil of metaphysical subtleties and
outworn science which have too long obscured him from our view, and to show the
shining soul of him alone. Hence I have barred those tractates of the Enneads which,
because of over-technicality of treatment or of theme, do not hold the general reader;
of those that still speak to the spirit I have preserved the passages of the most mystical
and ethical appeal—here a page, there a paragraph or phrase, hoping to delight your
souls, as I have delighted mine, rather than weary you with the jargon of the schools.
There is a Foreword by Dean Inge, an annotated Bibliography, and an
Appendix, giving some of the Platonic and Aristotelian sources on which the
Enneads were based, as well as a series of quotations testifying to the influence of
257
258
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Plotinus upon later mystics, poets and philosophers, from St. Augustine and
Dante to Emerson and Tennyson.
Miss Turnbull’s paraphrase of Mackenna’s translation should be read in
conjunction with Thomas Taylor’s version. For some reason which is not clear.
Miss Turnbull underestimates Taylor, even omitting reference to him in her
Bibliography. It is the part of wisdom not to underestimate Taylor. His
terminology and language are frequently obscure or obsolete; but his com¬
mentaries on Neoplatonic literature suggest many things which modem scholars
overlook. Taylor was convinced that Plotinus and his successors were not
lonely adventmers in some transcendental realm of the spirit. Instead, he
linked their teachings with the truths which had been preserved and guarded by
the Greater and Lesser Mysteries, at Eleusis and elsewhere. Students of Theos¬
ophy would agree with the thesis that the great Neoplatonic philosophers were
cautiously divulging truths which had been cherished in the Sanctuary since the
dawn of history. S.V.L.
Dogs of War! by F. Yeats-Brown; Peter Davies, London, 1934; price, 65.
The author of the Bengal Lancer and Golden Horn writes this book as an
antidote to the silliness of English Pacifists, including Beverley Nichols and
Sir Norman Angell. We especially like the chapters relating his own experience
of the use of armed force in the neighbourhood of the North-West frontier of
India, proving conclusively that the prompt and courageous use of force is the
only way, in many circumstances, to prevent the wholesale massacre of innocent
people.
We wish that the author had called attention to the cause of the pacifist
movement, namely, a materialistic view of life: death, the supreme if not the
only evil; comfort, the supreme if not the only good. This view is held, not
only by avowed materialists, but by many so-called Christians, with ministers
of all denominations and of all ranks (up to that of Archbishop) in the lead.
Captain Yeats-Brown is an interesting writer always, and the contradictions
in his own view of life—his jumble of Hatha Yoga, psychoanalysis, and a fine
idealism—do not make him less so. None the less we wish, for our own peace
of mind, that he would not confuse Freud’s subliminal self with “the world
within man . . . known to the mystics of all great religions’’,—for this is more
than we can endure politely. Freud, a Viennese Jewish doctor, having first
discovered a cess-pool within himself, proceeded to discover similar cess-pools
in his patients—^not a difficult thing to do, considering who most of them were.
From this he inferred and taught that all men and all women are vile in ways
more vile than the most depraved minds of the past had even imagined. In
brief, Freud is responsible for more evil-thinking, and for the suggestion of more
evil, than any other writer of modem times, which is saying a good deal. Captain
Yeats-Brown, who knows something of the Vedanta, must surely realize that there
are heights as well as depths in man, and that to confuse the soul, or the Atman,
with their perverted reflections in matter—worse still, with their perverted
•D'n"\ 7 ’TT 7 WQ
267
REVIEWS 2 59
reflections in the imagination of Freud—^is unphilosophical, misleading, and, we
believe, quite the opposite of what he intends. T.
The Vision of Asia; an Interpretation of Chinese Art and Culture, by L. Cran-
mer-Byng; John Murray, London, 1932; price, 155.
Cranmer-Byng is the distinguished editor of the “Wisdom of the East Series”,
small volumes of excellent translations of the scriptures and literary treasures
of China, Japan, India, Persia and Egypt. He himself has contributed to the
series the Rose Garden of the Persian poet Sa’di, the Book of Odes, and two an¬
thologies of Chinese poetry.
The Vision of Asia is “an interpretation of Chinese art and culture”, but
it is also much more. Cranmer-Byng speaks of the image-laden descriptions of
the Buddhist Paradise as instances of “jungle-mindedness”. His own style is an
almost impenetrable jungle of images and metaphors, of ideas over-running ideas.
It is with the utmost difficulty that one traces the basic structure of the book.
There are enough ideas for several volumes condensed into this one, pell-mell,
with numerous repetitions, until one’s brain reels. One should certainly not
complain, however, at a time when most authors have scarcely one idea to spin
out through all their works.
Cranmer-Byng writes of the confusion and materialism of the Western World
to-day, which have led to its economic collapse and to the menace of communism
that threatens to wipe out all of its spiritual heritage. With this he contrasts
the attainments of Chinese wisdom in the T’ang and Sung dynasties, and in its
further transformations in the great epochs of Japanese civilization.
China has tried everything. Young China has neglected its own history, or
it would be less lured by the delusions of Western social theory.
Wang An-shih, the statesman who lived in the Northern Sung dynasty from A. D. 1021
to 1086, has been regarded by many scholars as the father of Socialism in China. . . .
In his own words, “The State should take the entire management of commerce, indus¬
try, and agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succouring the working classes
and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich.” Certainlyj|Ais
methods he was surprisingly up-to-date from a modern collectivist point of view, wavy
taxation of the rich, total exemption of the poor, old-age pensions, unemployment dole.
State loans to farmers, a comprehensive land tax which would make the mouth of an
English Chancellor water, restriction of copper export, tampering with the currency, and
the establishment of State Banks, which also carried on the functions of pawnshops
and markets, are some of the enactments of Wang An-shih. Like all reformers in a
hurry, he made the pace too hot to last, and Socialism in our time came to an end
with him, although spasmodic attempts at revival on the part of hordes of superfluous
officials kept the movement going for a few years after his death.
Fortunately for China, it still had ingrained in its consciousness the Way of
Heaven of the Tao and the Mahayana, and the Way of Man of Confucius.
Statesmen and officials were primarily trained in ethics in preparation for their
tasks. Traditionally they were supposed to perform all their outer duties
26 o
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
with scrupulous attention and care, while preserving in their souls the con¬
sciousness of the unity of all being in one spiritual life. This “Life-Movement of
the Spirit through the Rhythm of things”, is the first canon of the arts as given
by Hsien Ho, and its perception may be said to be the fundamental canon of
Chinese thought. All Nature is created and moved by this Life-Movement of
the Spirit, and man is but a part of Nature. The Chinese mystic and philosopher
constantly looked for the signs of this divine stirring in all created things, as the
enduring reality and substratum of being. He endeavoured to perceive its laws
and to conform to them, in his own conduct and consciousness. It is in the
works of art that remain, that we see the visible embodiment of his victory, of
his profound reverence, and of his tranquillity. These works of art contain for
the West the lesson of this mystical vision and transcendent faith. The sages
who attained to immortality during this life by transmutation, not by death,
are described thus:
When they trod upon the hoar-frost or the snow, they left no foot-prints; when the
rays of the sun fell upon them, they threw no shadow. They climbed aloft on spiral
gusts of wind; they passed over hills and streams, treading in the air and soaring higher
than the Kwan-lun Mountains, bursting open the Gate of Heaven, and entering the
Palace of God.
Li Po expresses this companionship of man \vith his surroundings in his charm¬
ing poem:
Flocks of birds have flown high and away,
A solitary drift of cloud, too, has gone, wandering on.
And 1 sat alone with the Ching-ting Peak, towering beyond.
We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I.
What does the sage do when he has attained the experience of union? Why!
says someone, in Suzuki's book on Zen, he sits down on the grass and drinks tea!
In no eccentric conduct, in no overbearing zeal, but in the simplest acts of
every-day life, he embodies the force and rhythm of the universal life. He is
That. This is, of course, one of the central doctrines of Zen, the Chinese and
Japanese aspect of the Mahayana.
It is this awareness of the reality of the spiritual world, this immovable
affirmation of its supremacy, which has been the strength and immortality of
the East, and, let us not forget, the force of the West also, its inheritance from
Egypt. The West to-day cannot see the lessons of its past any more than can
Young China or Young India see in their past the truths so essential to their
continued existence. Perhaps, however, the Occidental may recognize some¬
thing of these truths in the unfamiliar forms of Eastern painting and poetry.
It is possible that he is actually less dazzled by the illusions of materialism than
the modernistic Oriental.
Cranmer-Byng is clearly aware of the great benefit which the West can derive
from an acquaintance with Eastern thought and art, and his book is part of his
attempt to make these more accessible. Si.C.LaD.
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imon which it
REVIEWS 261
Orphism, by J. R. Watmough; Cambridge University Press, 1934; price, $1.25.
Orphism is a very elastic term. The Greeks and Romans themselves used it
in many senses. Strictly speaking, it refers to the Bacchic or Dionysiac Mys¬
teries, said to be based upon the secret teachings of the heroic bard, Orpheus.
Partly because of the identification of the Bacchic sodalities with other groups of
Initiates, Orphism became virtually synonymous with mysticism or occultism
in general. As Watmough says: “On the religious side it has become associated
with the worship of Dionysus in Thrace and Demeter at Eleusis: on the philo¬
sophic, with Pythagorean mathematics and Platonic metaphysics. . . . Orphic,
Bacchic, Pythagorean and Egyptian almost meant the same” (p. 15).
One’s attitude towards the Orphic tradition is necessarily determined by one’s
view of the Mysteries of antiquity. Did the Initiates possess genuine knowledge
of the hidden processes of Nature and understand the art of bringing to birth
the Spiritual Man; or were the Mysteries mere survivals of savage magic which
the civilized Greeks re-interpreted and refined, without suspecting that their
Initiates were merely glorified “medicine men”? According to Theosophy, the
Mysteries were primitive only in the sense that they were coeval with the human
race; they embodied the wisdom which man inherited from the “Gods” who
descended on earth in the Golden Age; they were a link between the human
and the divine. Therefore, the student of Theosophy seeks a spiritual meaning
within the myths which were dramatized in the ritual of initiation. He does not
deny that a materialistic and gross interpretation may be read into every sacred
“fable”, for the spiritual and the material correspond to each other, the material
being the shadow or reflection of the spiritual. But why must one search first
for the darkest aspect of a parable ? For example, it is most reasonable to assume
that the duality of human nature and the way to human redemption are sym¬
bolized by the death and re-birth of Dionysus, although only a fragmentary
outline of the great Bacchic myth has come down to us.
The “Orphics” introduced a complicated myth by which EroSy “the Spirit of Go(^
moving over the waters”, created the world; while the Dionysiac and Titanic elements*
accounted for good and evil. The most commonly accepted story is this: first came
Time, from which sprang Ether and Chaos. Out of Ether and Chaos, Time formed a
silver egg. Out of the egg sprang EroSy or in other versions, Phanes, god of light. The
development of the world was a self-revelation of this power. Phanes was next swal¬
lowed by Zeus. The latter, by Persephone, had a son Dionysus. Dionysus was pursued
by Titans and took the form of a bull, which the Titans rent to pieces. Athene saved
the bull’s heart, which Zeus swallowed in order to beget a new Dionysus. The Titans,
stained by the blood of the bull Dionysus, were struck down by the lightning flash of
Zeus; and out of their ashes sprang the race of men—which thereby contained both the
Titanic elements (the spirit of evil) and the Dionysiac (the spirit of good). This myth
. . . appears, by inference, on the golden tablets of lower Italy, in such verses as, “I
am a child of earth and of starry heaven, but my race is of heaven alone” (pp. 53-54).
Orpheus was, as Diodorus says, of the race of Dionysus. One tradition
actually identifies him with the Indian prince, Arjuna, {Five Years of Theosophy,
p. 266). It is significant that his human life repeats the tragedy which had been
enacted by his “Father in Heaven”. Orpheus, like Dionysus, was a messenger of
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Light, and was immolated by the Maenads, the earthly counterparts of the
Titans and emblematic of the unredeemed passional nature of the animal man.
Watmough has little respect for the Mysteries as such, or for the Orphic version
of their divine origin. He is too much impressed by current anthropological
theory, even though he scarcely goes so far as to accept Salomon Reinach’s
notion that Orpheus was a “fox totem”. Watmough’s main thesis is that
Orphism appeared as a movement of religious reform in the Sixth Century B. c.;
that above all it represented an effort to establish a standard of subjective
morality, a more humane social order, and a personal relationship between
God and man, in opposition to the political and purely formal modes of worship
which were regarded as sufficient in the “state churches”, the cults of the Olym¬
pian Gods. There is evident truth in this theory, for even in its most exoteric
forms Orphism held before the devotee the possibility and the ideal that he
might “become like God”. Watmough, how^ever, confuses the issue by drawing
all sorts of fanciful analogies between Orphism and modem Protestantism.
The ob^dous analogy is between Orphism and the Christian mystical tradition
which has certainly flourished as vigorously in the Catholic as in the Protestant
denominations.
However, Watmough’s little treatise has a real value and significance. Not
only does it bring together a number of ancient “sources” which have hitherto
been quite unavailable to the average reader; but Watmough himself, in his
concluding chapter, reveals a deep appreciation of certain aspects of Orphism
and an understanding of its spirit which should be enlightening to every student
of the subject. He suggests that if this spirit could be revived in the modem
world, we should be better and happier.
Viewed as an abstract idea, “Orphism” strikes three major notes on the scale of our
appreciative sense—the note of mysticism, the note of light, and the note of tranquillity.
All these are of immense value for the present day. . . . There is nothing romantic
about the real “Orpheus”. His tranquillity is, above all, restrained and sober. It is a
state of peace which flows naturally from the life of self-discipline and communion with
the source of infinite EroSy losing its coldness in brotherly affection, and its austerity in
tenderness to brute creation. Bacon is nearer to the truth when he says that the tale
of “Orpheus” “may seem to represent the image of philosophy” (pp. 77 seq.).
L.V.
The Gospel of the Hereafter, by the Rev. J. Paterson-Smyth; Fleming H.
Revell Company, New York, new edition, 1930; price. Si.00.
This volume, first published in 1910, by an Irish-bom clergyman of the
Church of England who is now officiating in Canada, is a valuable book to put
into the hands of orthodox Christians,—those who respect the Scriptures while
taking home to themselves very few of the tmths and promises there revealed.
It is a useful book for others, also, who, though they sincerely endeavour to live
the truth as they see it, are sometimes vague as to what that tmth may be,
The book is said to have grown out of the experience of the author, after the death
of a son, and certainly gives the impression of being w'ritten from the heart. It
267
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imnn which it
REVIEWS
263
aims to amend the pagan attitude of much of Protestant Christendom which
weeps, grief-stricken, over a dead body, and, after the interment, conscientiously
avoids mention of one who is “now no more”.
Confining himself to the little that is said in the Old and New Testaments—
for on this subject of the state after death, the author admits that the Bible is
reserved—^he nevertheless finds that little sufficient to make a persuasive
argument for the continuity of consciousness. For clarity of argument, he
divides the time after death into two periods, one, the final period after the Last
Judgment, with which Judgment, he says, Heaven and Hell proper, really begin.
The other period, up to the final Judgment, is the “intermediate” state—inter¬
mediate, that is, between earth life and Eternity; and he calls that period the
“Near Hereafter”. This period, the intermediate, is the real subject of the book.
Restricting himself to the testimony of the Bible and of a very few early Fathers
—^Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian—Dr. Paterson-
Smyth presents this intermediate period as an opportunity for “growth and
purification”, words which suggest the old teaching about Purgatory, not as that
teaching is popularly misunderstood, but as it is set forth by such a mystic as
Dante, in the Divine Comedy.
Because of its sincerity and, perhaps, of its narrow restrictions, the book has
circulated widely, one hundred and twenty-five thousand copies in English alone,
apart from translations. The wealth of mystical literature. Western and Eastern,
could of course have been drawn upon to elucidate and support the argument,
but the use of mystical writers might have weakened the authority of the book
among those for whom it is intended—those who respect the Bible, the whole
Bible, and little else. Even without the corroborative testimony of the great
mystics, the volume seems likely to find a welcome from many members of The
Theosophical Society. Called upon, in an hour of grief, by those who cannot
understand theosophical views of life, members of the Society are sometimes at a
loss for literature suited to the need of their friends. This book, small in size
and easy to read, would seem to meet many needs. C.
4
Metamorphism, A Study of the Transformations of Rock-masses, by Alfred
Harker; Methuen & Co., London, 1932; price, 175. 6d.
Although this is a highly technical book, if we read between the lines it will
prove of great value because of the many striking analogies with the processes
of life as a whole. All students of Theosophy are interested in the architecture
of the Cosmos, in the upbuilding of the Universe (we could hardly read The
Secret Doctrine and remain indifferent); therefore we must also be interested
in the sculptures of our earth, for that is what the magnificent rock-masses
which constitute its crust really are—sculptures of such infinite variety, such
marvellous workmanship, that no two are ever alike either in composition or in
form. Perhaps, however, it is too often our habit to consider only what appears
to us the sublime immutability of our great rock-masses, typifying, as they do,
life’s transcendent Realities, and to forget that, while they symbolize the Change-
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
less, they are not immutable, far from it; we know, in fact, that they are for ever
changing, for ever interchanging; that there is a constant ebb and flow at work,
a ceaseless liberation and re-absorption of their life-forces; we know that they
are growing (though in so vast and leisurely a way as to be imperceptible), as the
whole of creation is also growing; that they are evolving as we too are evolving;
that they share with us the life of “becoming”. We look at our great mountain
ranges spread before us, towering above us, and oim spirits are uplifted to the
pure snows which crown their summits; their power and superb isolation become
a part of our inner life. That is what they do for us; but do we often stop to
think what in return we might do for them to help them on their long journey
upward—in s>Tnpathy and true understanding? For such states as this are
surely reciprocal, and rocks or mountains feel our sympathy as we feel their
strength; and just as there is an interchange, throughout the universe, of
material atoms—streaming from rock to plant, to animal or human being,
and back again—so there must be, or should be, the constant, intuitive exchange
of these finer, invisible forces which we call harmony or states of shared con¬
sciousness, however varied in degree that consciousness may be. Back of the
material appearance lies an intangible realm in which these splendid cyclopean
creatures of Native’s so-called lowest kingdom live, and that they do live, that
they are actually and literally alive in their own degree, that there is a philosophy
of rocks as there is of other phases of life, the student of Theosophy is convinced.
In the esoteric Teaching, older than the ages, we learn that our terrestrial
globe, with its central consuming, transmuting fire, is an entity of a septenary
nature, and that every portion of our earth is throbbing with life —The Secret
Doctrine teaching that the entire universe is a mirror of the Divine. Speaking in
strictly geological terms, there are two main factors in metamorphism: heat and
pressure, and in his book Dr. Harker concerns himself not so much with the
classification of rocks, as with the fundamental chemical and structural changes
which take place within them when subjected to the influence of these agents,
changes, moreover, which are distinctly evolutionary in tendency. “Meta¬
morphism is here conceived, not as a status but as a process; viz. a progressive
change in response to changing conditions of temperature and stress.” And
again: “It is fundamental to a true conception of advancing metamorphism
that a new mineral generated at appropriate temperature does not thereafter
remain passive and lifeless. If not consumed in reactions producing higher min¬
erals, it retains at all higher temperatures the power of rejuvenation.” The
student of Theosophy will at once be reminded that in the spiritual life, the
“heat” of a.spiration and the “pressure” of the spiritual will are the two great
factors necessary to progress, to interior growth, and that it is because of these
that spiritual transformations occur. He will realize also that, on lower planes,
the withdrawal of heat (friction) and pressure from a man’s life, results in
stagnation and death. We live because of these two forces, and one of the
differences between a ch^la and a worldling is that the former applies them to
himself, from within—a deliberate process—while the worldling is acted upon
by them, and usually resents the opportunity for growth thus given him.
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The actual physical force of crystallization is dynamic; the energy and power
manifested is tremendous. In metamorphism, moreover, the crystal grows from
within, not by accretion as in the case of a mineral separating from an igneous
magma: “the crystallization or recrystallization of minerals in metamorphism
proceeds, not in a fluid medium, but in the heart of the solid rock” (it is quite
literally interior), “the growing crystal must make a place for itself against a
solid resistance, and is to be conceived as forcibly thrusting its way outward from
its starting point.” It is the formation and birth of the new crystal individual,
the result of heat and stress, and the actual “structure” or “texture” of the
original rock is fundamentally altered, for “the term ‘metamorphism’, i.e. change
of form, is understood in geology as having reference to atomic and molecular
configuration.”
Physical science talks of inorganic matter, but how could all these transfor¬
mations take place unless there were life within the rocks? How could a rock
change as it does, from one state of matter to another, unless there were life
capable of response to the “direct invasion of the earth’s internal store of heat”?
—using Dr. Harker’s own words. A stone could not even disintegrate or crumble,
it could not “decompose” (as, for instance, felspar does when changing into
kaolinite) were it a “dead” thing. Esoteric science teaches that every atom in
the tmiverse has a consciousness of its own; that, as The Secret Doctrine tells us,
“each particle—whether you call it organic or inorganic— is a life”. As the
great rock-masses of our earth are composed of incalculable millions of rock¬
forming minerals, what unimaginable crores of millions upon millions of these
infinitesimal “lives” must there be in every rugged headland or rough mountain
side. Finally, the ancient Wisdom also teaches the progressive development of
everything in the Cosmos, from a speck of dust to a planet, and it is perhaps
because we find something of this same idea in Dr. Harker’s theory of “ad¬
vancing metamorphism” that his book will be of such interest to students of
Theosophy. The fact that he also introduces the theory of “retrograde meta¬
morphism” is notable, for creation is known to have its failures—in the animal
and vegetable kingdoms, as in the human. Therefore in reading what Dr.
Harker has to tell us, we find ourselves constantly recalling the fact that “every¬
thing in the universe follows analogy”. The book is richly illustrated with
exceedingly interesting drawings (made by the author himself), of several hundred
microscope slides. A caieful study of these illustrations will be an education in
itself, for by their means we can trace many of the processes of change, of struc¬
tural rearrangement, which have taken place within the mineral. T.D.
Saints of Chaos, by Peter Oliver; William Farquhar Payson, New York, 1934;
price, $2.50.
Like many of his contemporaries, Peter Oliver is unfavourably impressed by
the state of the world. Wherever he looks he sees disorder, discord, wasted
energy, confusion of counsel. The pilots of modem civilization cannot agree
on any course or destination, and there are ominous symptoms of mutiny among
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the crew. As Oliver points out, the modem world must somehow reform itself
or it will disappear from existence. No superficial economic or political read¬
justment will save it, for the cause of the trouble is deep. There must be a moral
and spiritual renaissance, a conversion which will reawaken in a sufficient
number of human beings the virtues that are proper to human souls. The
Russian Berdyaev, in The End of Our Time, suggested that humanity might
have to pass through the experience of a new Dark Age, in order to recover the
use of certain spiritual faculties which have been generally dormant since medi¬
aeval times. Oliver abstains from prophecies, but he practically draws the same
moral from history as Berdyaev. He believes also that mediaeval civilization
was, in many ways, on a higher level than our own; that the material progress
of the past four centuries has been purchased by the atrophy of the finer powers
of consciousness, including the power of conscience itself, the elementary sense
of right and wrong.
We are dwellers in the tents of confusion. We of Europe and the Americas, though
we consider ourselves, and with some reason, the leaders of the world, still we are divided
on almost all matters of importance. There is never, in any society, complete agreement
between all people, but there has been at times in the past, agreement between the peo¬
ple of good intent. Socrates, living in the last years of one such time of agreement, called
this that was its basis, the “common consent of good men”. . . . Some thousand years
ago St. Augustine wrote in The City of God, “We are our love”. This is interpreted to
mean that human society tends to realize any goal recognized by the Socratic common
consent of good men. To-day with our divergent and conflicting “loves” there is no
answer, satisfactory to more than one group, to the question of whither what we call
our civilization is tending. Differences of opinion are perhaps desirable, but differences
of conviction on fundamental matters can lead only to the break up of society. . . .
Bearing in mind what St. Augustine says, that we are our love, if we turn back to his¬
tory we observe two great phases. The first is a phase of Unity when men agree on
what they know, when, in other words, men know the things they love; the second a
phase of Diversity when men do not agree, when there is conflict between the abstract
ideals toward which men aspire. . . . The last great unity was that of mediaeval Chris¬
tendom, and this was the greatest of all. The pillars of the old Grecian unity were truth
and beauty, this one stood higher and more firm on a new element that had been added
to life and knowledge, unselfish love. The Middle Ages civilized Europe; religion, science,
art and politics were met and joined together in the great Catholic and Apostolic Church.
. . . Martin Luther was the high priest of the new diversity, the father of our modern
world. Less and less since Luther lived have we known the things we loved. . . . Reli¬
gion, which is concerned with love, in Martin Luther led the way. Science and art,
having to do with truth and beauty, followed. As Luther broke the old religious unity,
Galileo, with his homemade telescope began the new science, and Beethoven, the new
art.
The “Saints of Chaos” are Luther, Galileo, Beethoven, James Watt, whose
steam engine inaugurated the machine age and the industrial revolution, and
the Seventeenth Century political economist, Thomas Hobbes, who foretold the
tyranny of the modem democratic “nation-state” in the Leviathan. Oliver
might have chosen five other “saints”, but the list as it stands is apt enough.
It is our impression that in a sense he exaggerates the power of the ordinary
man of genius. There are always great men, both good and bad, in the world.
REVIEWS
267
but they are limited by cyclic law, nor can they change the main tides of history.
There must be sympathy between their genius and the mass upon which it
acts. In theosophical terms, a great man affects the society in which he is bom
to the extent that it is the karma of that society to be so affected. He is then, as
it were, the vehicle through which some revolution, subconsciously desired by the
multitude, is accomplished.
This amendment of Oliver’s thesis does not affect the historical truth which
he makes evident. Luther, Galileo and Beethoven were bom during a period of
critical transformation. The life was departing from the marvellously unified
organism of mediaeval civilization. Reform was as necessary then as now. The
future depended upon the quality of the change which was certain to come. The
tragedy is that the work of the reformers did not bring about a restoration of
vital unity, but was turned towards the building of a new world doomed from its
birth to division and internecine strife. There was a great opportunity, but
the fashioners of the modem cycle did not live up to it.
Oliver gives an enlightening definition of this failure. Among the many de¬
lusions of the modem mind, perhaps the most serious is this,—that the Good,
the Tme and the Beautiful are not known as co-existent aspects of a Divine
Unity, but are falsely imagined to be capable of separation from one another
and from God. Since the Middle Ages, religion, science and art have tended,
more and more to go their divers ways without reference to the unity which
should include them all. For this mutilation of the Platonic trinity, Oliver
blames, in partiailar, the three major characters of his book, Luther, Galileo
and Beethoven.
Martin Luther is the example of the great and good heart frustrated by the little mind;
in Galileo the picture is reversed. His mind is great, his heart is little. Had he been
good enough, he could have loved the essential Truth and Beauty of the Church with
which he struggled, and still, we believe, could his mind have found the outlet he needed
in the subject he loved. But only the blameless and selfless work miracles. . . . The
music of Beethoven from 1800 to the end, is his own life, told in his art. Except for
occasional moments, it was not a happy life; it is not, except occasionally, happy music.
The art is infinitely great, the life is a poor thing. . . . The great accomplishment of
these changers was that by splitting the fabric of the unity that was mediaeval Christen¬
dom, they separated in the minds of men, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Luther,
changer of religion, of the Good, forgot the Beautiful and I rue. ... In Science, sinc^
the Change, I'ruth has been severed from Goodness and Beauty. . . . Modern art hat
followed a single star, in its case Beauty, oblivious of all else. And Beauty can help
man no more than Truth and Goodness, unless the relation of all three be remembered.
Modern art has forgotten Truth, which is the objective quality of Art, has forgotten
Goodness, the unifying quality, which gives sense, and which our mediaeval ancestors
called Grace. ... It is our firm belief that since the end of the mediaeval unity the
chief cause of our continued frustration in our search for happiness has been that we
have failed to realize that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are one.
This we lay to the door of the three great Changers, Luther, Galileo, and Beethoven.
They saw the old institutionalized unity so intent on its institutional form, that men were
losing all sight of the material and spiritual aspects (and these may not be overlooked!)
of Truth, and Goodness, and Beauty. They turned to these three ideals, to seek them
out, and we have followed, but with such haste and blindness, and with such excitement
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of discovery, that we have lost sight of the fact that it is in the recognition of the exist¬
ence of the three together that we shall preserve our souls.
Oliver can diagnose better than he can cure. Only one who has discovered
an infallible remedy for our present difficulties is entitled to condemn him for
the inadequacy of the “New Unity” which he proposes. Nevertheless, we wish
that he had remained in his r 61 e of disinterested spectator, for the reforms
suggested in the concluding chapter are vague and obscure, when they are not
shown by experience to be impractical. He says, for example:
The greatest of our problems, and the one for whose solution the whole world is clam¬
ouring, is the question of how, without discarding or at least threatening what we have
come to consider as the established order of things, there may be a redistribution of the
world’s wealth. In its commonest form this question concerns itself with the search for
a peaceful method of giving to labour a part of the too large share of produced wealth
which now goes to capital.
There is no reason why this problem should worry Oliver or anybody else.
It is as old as the world and is being solved for us daily. Nature is engaged
continuously in the redistribution of possessions and powers in all her kingdoms.
In so far as the administration of human justice conforms to natural law, the
transfer of wealth is effected without social disorder. Serious trouble becomes
possible, when we try to accelerate or retard this normal process. As history has
proved again and again, it is not a solution of life’s difficulties, to take from the
rich because they are rich and to give to the poor because they are poor. This is
robbery, nor can it be morally justified by any number of fine phrases.
It has been said that most revolutions are caused by abstract nouns which
become charged with emotion in proportion as they are emptied of meaning.
We shall be wise to consider what ideas are signified by the abstract nouns,
“capital” and “labour”. Everyone can speak for himself, but one person at
least is willing to admit that when he speaks or hears these words they usually
mean nothing at all. What is “labour”, for instance? The sum-total of all those
who work for a living? But Nature distinguishes not only between those who
work and those who do not work, but between those whose work is good and
those whose work is poor. The good workman whose craftsmanship consistently
improves is, doubtless, entitled to a larger share of his employer’s profits. In¬
deed, he gets that larger share now, unless the trades unions succeed in sup¬
pressing him. No society can survive which is founded on the spurious principle
that the incapable and the lazy and the dishonest should be paid more than they
are worth, merely because they represent “labour” as opposed to “capital”.
Truly the labourer is worthy of his hire. Modem economists are invited to
meditate upon that phrase which was held in such high respect by the guilds
which built Chartres and Amiens. S.V.L.
V
Question No. 391.—Pf/tew the Churches pray for the dead they specify those ''who die in the
Lord"; those who are "numbered with the saints"; the "faithful departed". But most hearts are
breaking for their dead who do not die in the Lord, and who have no part with the saints. Can
our prayers for them be efficacious, and what form should they best take beyond a cry for mercy?
Answer.— It would seem a mistake to try to separate the “faithful”, even those who are
faiUiful to only a limited extent, into categories of sainthood, or otherwise. It would seem
m^e helpful to think of the prayer in the Litany: “Lord, have mercy upon us miserable sin¬
ners”, because we are all sinners in varying degrees. If a heart is breaking for a departed loved
one, if one consecrates the suffering and weaves it into one’s every-day living on behalf of the
loved one, the sins of the loved one may be vicariously atoned for in a most real and complete
G.H.M.
way.
Answer. —How can we tell whether or not our dead have “died in the Lord , whether or
not they have any “part with the saints”? Many a man who has all his life scoffed at the
Churches, who has appeared outwardly to follow only his own inclinations, may at the same
time have been a fighter, for principle, for the right as he saw it; may have influenced many
to right action; may have been, in fact, close to the heart of real Religion. It may well be
that, at the end, he is conscious of a Presence which says, “Well done!”; it may well be that
he finds himself, after all, in the blessed company of all faithful people.
We have been told that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. We hesitate, perhaps,
to think of ourselves as righteous. We can, however, take that saying to mean that a right
prayer may avail much, a prayer from the depths of the heart, in which we ask nothing for
ourselves, in which our sole concern is for our dead; a selfless prayer, which can contain noth¬
ing which might perturb or disturb the excamate soul. Surely the fine spiritual force called
forth and directed by pure prayer can be efficacious, can reach the spirit of our friend.
We have been told, too, that “the dead, meaning by this, souls in Devachan and in the pre¬
liminary states leading thereto, are under the guardianship of certain classes of Masters, who
most certainly do render help to the dead, just as their illustrious colleagues of another class ^
render help to the living.” Can we not evoke this help?
A cry for mercy, yes, if we think that mercy is required. But a cry, from the depths of
soul, that our friend, now, may be helped to see where formerly he was blind; that there may
be dissolved and broken down in him everything of self that kept him from the light; that,
when the purpose of his Lord has been accomplished in him, a voice may speak to him across
the darkness, that he may know that he is no longer alone. C.R.A.
Answer. —Except for extreme cases, I do not agree with the latter part of the querent s
statement that “most hearts are breaking for their dead who do not die in the Lord' , and so on.
It would be difficult to convince many who have lost father, mother, husband, wife, or child,
that their dead are not of “the faithful departed”. Perhaps it is well, for in the broader sense
they are correct. Theosophy teaches that man is a creature of seven principles: the upper
imperishable Triad and the lower Quaternary. Following death, and after a longer or shorter
269
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
period as the individual case may be, the imperishable principles are freed from the lower or
transitory principles. The former constitute the real man, the Ego, the Soul, which then goes
on to Devachan or heaven. It is this Soul which, through countless series of births, deaths
and rebirths, gradually pushes its way toward immortality. The churches pray for all the
potential “immortals” who quite conceivably “die in the Lord”, are “numbered among the
saints”, and “the faithful departed”, though the churches may not analyze their prayers in
just this way. The Soul does not die with the flesh, and it is for the Soul’s welfare and progress
we pray, or should pray. For peace and rest for the Soul, yes; but also for the strength, the
courage, the vision, with which to meet and overcome the obstacles, the difficulties, the temp¬
tations in its path of progress next time, and which are necessary to the Soul's advancement
toward immortality. Surely the divine mercy turns a willing ear to such prayers.
G.M.W.K.
Answer. —Madame Blavatsky tells us in The Key to Theosophy (p. 150) that, “We are
with those whom we have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them now, than when
they were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the Detachanee, as some may imagine, but
in reality. For pure divine love is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots
in eternity.” And again (pp. 161-2), “Death comes to our spiritual selves ever as a deliverer
and friend. ... At the solemn moment of death every man . . . sees the whole of his past
life marshalled before him, in its minutest details . . . the whole chain of causes which have
been at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is . . . and knows
the justice of all the suffering that has overtaken him.”
Theosophy brings a hope and solace here which are too rarely found within the teaching of
the churches, for it shows us how love, through the intermediation of the Masters, can reach
and aid the dead. In a new birth, a new chance awaits the soul; and those who love that soul
can so treasure the image of its divine potentialities, can so war in their own natures against
all which betrayed and injured it, that the truths the soul itself saw in the moment of death
may be engraved deeply in the astral light, to remain as the moulds for the new incarnation.
B.
Question No. 392. —What is the difference between concentration, contemplation, and medi¬
tation?
Answer. —In Christian terminology, meditation usually is considered as preceding, and as
leading to, contemplation. In occultism the order is as listed in the question. From the
occultist’s viewpoint, briefly, in concentration, the consciousness is pointed to a given object;
in contemplation it dwells uninterruptedly on it; in meditation it is merged wth the object
and becomes at one with it. G.M.W.K.
Answer. —These three powers are spiritual, and are steps in the process of becoming, for
man becomes what he contemplates: as he thinks, so he is. The great majority of mankind
drag down and use these powers for purposes of the personality, or lower self, instead of for
those of the soul. In theosophical literature these terms are used in addressing those who
have an interest in, or are actually striving for, discipleship. Thus, in Mr. Judge’s pamphlet.
Culture of Concentration, the term “concentration” is stated to mean that which “in the Indian
books is called Yoga, which is translated also as Union, meaning a union with the Supreme
Being”. Likewise, “contemplation”, in theosophical terms, is an act and a state of conscious¬
ness far higher than that employed by people in the world, who use this mighty spiritual
power for personal ends. “Concentration” is a power which must be gained in the acts of
daily life, as Professor Mitchell points out in his pamphlet. Meditation. It consists in an act
of the will in directing and controlling the attention and the powers of the mind. On the
higher plane of consciousness, reached as a result of meditation, contemplation involves an
action of the heart, which through love and a yearning for the object contemplated, over¬
flows into action. Concentration of the mind upon the object or subject to be meditated upon,
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
271
and contemplation of it, lead to meditation, in which the consciousness is merged with the
ideal we have contemplated. The “spiritual bouquet”, mentioned by religious writers upon
meditation, corresponds to the higher contemplation already referred to, involving the heart
and overflowing into action through the keeping of a “resolution” arrived at as a result of
meditation.
G.H.M.
Answer. —The terms have been used differently in different schools of thought. Thus
Patanjali uses “concentration” as the all inclusive term, and there is an almost complete
reversal between Theosophic and Christian usage in the positions assigned to meditation and
contemplation. In Theosophic parlance, concentration, contemplation, and meditation
(proper), are three successive stages of meditation, in the more general sense, (i) Concentra¬
tion is the taking of the mind from other matters and placing it exclusively on the chosen
subject. (2) Contemplation, the second step, consists in keeping the mind fixed on the chosen
subject. (3) In meditation, the third step, the personal consciousness, no longer confined to
the mind, becomes (a) part of, or at one with, the chosen subject, and (b) follows on with it.
Thus it is that the life of discipleship can be a life of continual meditation, for complete medi¬
tation implies movement; it is never static or negative, as is often erroneously supposed, both
in the Eastern Yoga and among Christian “Contemplatives”. A useful analysis of meditation,
setting forth its successive stages, as well as some of the difficulties that may be encountered
and the effects that may result, can be found in the pamphlet on the subject by H. B. Mitchell.
Q.
Question No. 393 .—It is said that a Lodge Messenger can only appear if and when his dis¬
ciples make it possible. The Bhagavad Gita says, ''Whenever there is a withering of the Law, O
son of Bharata, and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest Myself." How recon¬
cile these statements?
Answer. —Pages could be written on this subject. Briefly, the Lodge works for the even¬
tual salvation of mankind and, in so doing, its representatives of one or another degree come,
or are sent, in accordance with the operation of Cyclic Law. The representative known as
the Lodge Messenger ordinarily appears during the last quarter of the one hundred year, or
century, cycle. I have always thought of the passage quoted from the GUa as referring to the
manifestation of an Avatar, the coming or sending of whom would be governed by the opera¬
tion of a much larger cycle than that of one hundred year periods. Likewise, mankind is
affected by Cyclic Law, under the operation of which certain preparations are made for the
work to be done by the prospective Lodge representative. Evidently one set of conditions
under which an Avatar manifests himself is “a withering of the Law, . . . and an uprising of
lawlessness on all sides.” G.M.W.K.
Answer. —These two statements do not seem to be in any need of reconciliation. “AiJ
uprising of lawlessness on all sides” does not preclude the possibility, or even the probability
that the disciples of a Master should be in incarnation at the time of, or even in the midst of
“lawlessness”. On the contrary, it is not at all unlikely that they may be there because of it,
since that might be the very time when they could be of the most service in their Master’s
Cause; “lawlessness” might be the very evil which, united, they were called upon to combat.
Consider the present conditions in the world: was ever lawlessness more widespread? Yet,
have we not been told (even did we not see it for ourselves), that the ranks of the Theosophical
Movement are more solidly welded together than they have ever been before? Is not the
“nucleus” here, for the preservation of which and for the growth of which both H.P.B. and
Judge gave their lives—has it ever been so potent for good? And could this be, unless the
Master were behind it all, and guiding it all? T.A.
Answer. —When a statement is quoted, it is often wise to ask who said it, under what cir¬
cumstances, and exactly what was said. We have never heard that the coming of a Lodge
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
272
Messenger depends upon his disciples. It depends .. to bring to
every century, the Lodge sends a representative, a “Lodge Messenger to ^ ^
men the truths of the Ancient Wisdom. It has. however, been said that som
runner" comes in advance to prepare the way for the Messenger, and i h b^n
that in the :8th century. St. Germain was such a that man
(See report of the 1929 Convention in the Theosophical ^ God-
possesses the power of evocation, so that, if there were suffi ...tv,
fnstructed men could be drawn from the Lodge to govern the nations on earth. ^ ^ ^ ^
Answer.— The verse in the Gtla, following that quoted, reads: “For the
hearted devotion and passionate longing for the firm establishing i ^
pvoke an emissary from the Lodge. “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availet
Zdi " The lawlLness so manifest on all sides to-day clearly shows how ^eat is the ne^;
Tdt r Jltalton^ that need on the part of a few can draw down “the blessing whmh^the
world unknowingly awaits”.
Answer -The question is based upon a misunderstanding, for is it said that a
Lodi M^enger can appear only as his disciples make it possible. H.P.B. told us that such
^messel^Tsent intfthe world in the closing quarter of each century when the normal
make possible a new outgiving from the Lodge for the hdp and guidance of man-
kind She told us, too, of agents of the Lodge who constantly move about the world, unkno
for whl they are. save to such as have within themselves the power of recognition; and of
other emissaries who come in answer to special needs, or at special cyclic tunes. The quK-
loner lly well have heard it said that U the hearts of men yearned truly for the coming of a
Master that yearning might itself modify the cycles, and enable a Master to appear at a time
when otherwise he could not. But. in addition, there would have to exist an abiUty to s^e-
guard and use rightly the gift of spiritual force his coming would mvolve. of which even^the
TV/T«ofofc arp hilt, the trustees.
NOTICE
The regular meetings of the New York Branch of The Theosophical Society are held on
alternate Saturday evenings, at 64 Washington Mews, which runs from the east side of Fifth
Avenue midway between 8th Street and Washington Square. North. No. 64 is the first
Studio kst of Fifth Avenue, on the north side of the Mews. The meetings begin at half-past
eight, and close at ten o clock.
During the present Quarter, there will be meetings on,
January I2th and 26th
February 9th and 23rd
March 9th and 23rd
Out-of-town members of the Society are invited to attend these meetings whenever they
are in New York. Visitors who may be interested in Theosophy are always welcome.
STANDARD BOOKS
Blavatsky, H. P. Isis Unvbilbd, Vols. I and II.doth, sio-oo
COMPLETB in one book.cloth, 7 . 5 o
Key to Theosophy .doth, 2.26
Secret Doctrine, The, Vols. I and II and Index .doth, le.oo
ComPLBTB in one book, withont cubject-indes volnme, 7 *60
Theosophical Glossary .doth, 2.26
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge .doth, 2.50
Voice of the Silence .fabric, 1.00
Cave. Praghents, Volume I.boardi, t.so
Volume II.boardt, 1.60
Volume III.boards, 1.60
Gerard, John, Letters to Friends .boards, i .76
Hillard, Katherine. Abridgment of the Secret Doctrine, .doth, s.oo
Johnston, Charles. Bhagavad Gita .Translated, annotated; doth, lc .26
limp leather, 1.76
Crest Jewel of Wisdom, The .doth, 1.26
Great Upanishads, The, Volume I .cloth, i .50
Parables of the Kingdom, The .paper, .60
PatANJALI’s Yoga Sutras .Translated, annotated; doth, 1.26
Song of Life, The .paper, .76
Judge, William Q. Bhagavad Gita .Edited; doth, 1.26; leather, 1.60
Culture of Concentration .paper, .25
Echoes from the Orient .paper, .26
Letters That Have Helped Mb, Volume I and II, each, .doth, 1.00
Ocean of Theosophy .doth, 1.00
Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms .doth, 1.00
Keightley, Archibald. Theosophy as an Influence in Life paper, .20
LaDow, Stanley y. Plotinus ..-so
^itiOD, . 20 | paper, .60
20
• paper.
Mitchell, Henry Bedinger. Meditation, SpedfiK.
Theosophical Society and Theosophy, The^
Mitchell, J. F. B. Collegiate Education and Standards of
Value .paper, .10
Sinnett, A. P. Esoteric Buddhism. cloth, 2.50
Occult World, The .doth. 2.60
Torrey, Ray E. Science and its Function in Education. .. .paper, .50
Walker, E. D. Reincarnation .cloth, 1.75
Idyll of the White Lotus .^r.. cloth, i.SR
Light on the Path. leather, .85
Through the Gates of Gold . .. . . doth. 1.20
THE QUARTERLY BOOK DEPARTMENT,
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Devotional: Bhagavad Gita; Crest Jewel of Wisdom; Fragments; The Great Upani¬
shads; Letters T^t Have Helped Me; Letters to Friends; Light on the Path; The Par¬
ables of the ^ngdom; The Song of Life: Through the Gates of Gold; Voice of the Silence
Philosophical: Abridgment of the Secret Doctrine; Isis Unveiled; Key to Theosophy;
Plotinui; Reincarnation; The Secret Doctrine: Talks on Rdigion; Theosophical Glossary:
Transactions; Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
Introductoet: Culture of Concentration; Echoes from the Orient; Esoteric Buddhism:
Idyll of the White Lotus; Meditation; The Occult World; The Ocean of Theosophy;
The Theosophical Society and Theosoohy.
APRIL, 193S
Founded by B. P. Blavalsky at Rew York In 1875
JiE Sf^icty docs not pretend to be able to establMh
at once a universal brotherhood among: men« but
only strives to create the nucleus of such a body#
Many of it?: members believe that an acquaintance
with the world's religfions and philosophies will
reveah as the common and fundamental principle
underlying: these, that '"spiritual identity of all Souls with the
Oversoul" which is the basis of true brotherhood i and
vvcrsoui wmcn is me oasis ox true Drotnernood i and many
oj them also believe that an appreciation of the finer forces
of ^turc and man will still further emphasise the same idea.
The org:anizatioa is wholly unsectarian, with no creed,
do^ma, nor personal authority to enforce or impose; neither
® jf fo oc held responsible for the opinions of its memberst
who ate expected to accord to the belieb of other* that
tolerance which they desire for their own.
The following p^Iamation was adopted at the Conves-
** Boston, ApriC 18951
The Theaiophical Society in Americabyhs delegates and
members in Conyention assembled, does hereby proclaim
mternal good will and hindiv feeling toward all students of
i beosophy and members of Theosophical Societies wherever
situated It further proclaims and avers its
hearty sympathy and association with such persons and
organiiatioM in all theosophical matters exc^t those of
goverimient and administration, and invites their cor-
res^ndence and co-operation.
. To all men and women of whatever caste.err<>/4 ««>•« n.
teligious belief, who aim at the fostering of peace, g^tleness,
Md unselfish regard one for another, and the acquisition 5
^“owlcdgc of men and nature as shall tend to the elev»-
friendly
f**fly proffers its services. ^
„ « Joms hands with aU religions and religious bodieswhoi*
effom »e directed to the purification of men's thoughts and
the bettering of their ways, and it avows its L3y W
wit^ To all scientific societies and indhridual seatcfiJr*
Appfeaons for „™beri*lp AoaU be Mreexi to At
TT. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York.
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CONTENTS OF VOL, XXXII, NO. 4
April, 1935
PAGE
I?
m
11
300
NOTES AND COMMENTS..
FRAGMENTS..’,. . ’1^ ’ ...... ....
RICHNESS OF LIFE: Karma and the Capacity for Toy
A LAY SERMON.. .
WITHOUT CENSOR, V..T . ••••••• . 296
TWO ANCIENT RECORDS.... . 1 . .. .....
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME....... ' ... ‘
A LAND OF MYSTERY, H. P. Blavatsky(Repiuntj''■
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. ••••••-• •
T.S. ACTIVITIES: Notices..;... ' ' ”'' .... ''’
INDEX.
Act of Septobc S. was. at the Peat Office at N,
Copyright, 1935, by The Theosophical Sodety .
; f
A
i
... 318
••• 334
••• 347
••• 356
358
3 S 9
under the
ii.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
The principal aim and object of this Society is to form the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex,
caste or colour. The subsidiary objects are: The study of ancient and modern
religions, philosophies and sciences, and the demonstration of the importance
of such study; and the investigation of the unexplained laws of nature and
the psychical powers latent in man.
The Theosophical Quarterly is the official organ of the original
Theosophical Society founded in New York by Tl. P, Blavatsky,
W. Q. Judge and others, in 1875 ,
We have no connection whatsoever urith any other organization
calling itself Theosophical, formerly headed by Mrs. Besant, nor
with similar bodies, the purposes and methods of which are wholly
foreign to our own.
Editors, The Theosophical Quarterly.
APRIL, 1935
The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion or ^clarahon
iJthis magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless contained in an official document.
A Neurologist’s View op Genius
A t the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Neurological Institute of New York
Dr Joseph"Collins, one of its founders, predicted that neurologjs ^1
find a way to make even men of genius happy. We quote from the
New York Herald-Tribune, December 21. 1934:
D u n,...rntir'! are the only persons who have ever accomplished anything enduring
impairing 'f”' “'"r XP”™" >"
mieht have been wfyT’l’ul produced the Christian religion
w' h“tT,“^ «( would lead .. a ...rid
of “happy ou had kept Swinburne sober, he wouldn’t have produced the
same masterpieceSh h d, Collins said he thought they would
L°ve suc'eeS as well without their stimulants if they had received the proper neuro-
logical treatment.
Doubtless medical science can. in some instances, check or eradica^rtam
osvchoses and neuroses, abnormalities of imagination and desire that are often
associated with functional diseases of the nervous system. Poe might have been
“Sf alclhsm. the immediate cause of much of his “agony”. But who
can iy to what extent his literary accomplishments were dependent upon stim-
t.nt J To answer that question, it would be necessary to know who and what
L reailv was What was the source of his inspiration? What was the natme
of the iSner visions which moved his imagination and impelled him to wi^e^
With what planes or strata of the psychic realm did he hold intercourse? Was
he a true seer half-blinded by neurasthenia, or was he a neurasthenic because he
t:: I^Lra’ry an irresponsible dreamer, a victim of illusions? Probably, like
27s
2^5 theosophical quarterly
many other artists, he was part-seer and ^highCT aM a lower
unlike that of unredeemed humanity in general. He had a g
nature, and the higher was oppressed and frequently dominated y
'Two Sources or Poetic Inspiration, ^'
Tnsoiration is said to come to most poets from the psychic plane, the so-called
"asJl light-, the magic mirror of the world which
below, and can image all possibilities, both good ^"<1 ^ fasdnated
bears the mark of its point of origin. In his lower moods, the poet is ^ascmat
by images flowing from the inferior levels of the astral light, by
anticipftions of the earthly and the transitory. Too often he has th? fate g
of investing these eidola of mortality, these “images of images , with glamor >
with a chaL that they do not reveal when seen truly. He then pretends that
the shadows of physical facts are more real, more vital, than the facts themselv^.
ifis not astonisWng that he should become a “psycho-neurotic” that he shovfld
suffer, and seek relief by means of drugs or alcohol, for he has doomed hims
to a series of disappointments. How could it be otherwise, when his notions as
to what the world should give him are contradicted at every turn by the actuah-
ties of the world as it is? . • .u
However, men of this order are not the true poets. True poetry is the revela¬
tion of a world of spiritual essence, more real than anything on earth, since the
things of earth are only its imperfect symbols. In the Isha Upantshad, the
Creative Logos, the Formative Power, is named “the wise Poet, the beer .
Contemplating the Eternal Thought reflected in the “waters of space”, the
“divine astral light”, the Great Poet is represented in Eastern scriptures as
imagining the form of Nature and impressing this form upon gross matter. As
Theosophy teaches, every spiritual ideal must pass through the astral or psychic
plane and be reflected there as a form or image, before it can be embodied in the
manifested world. In their highest moments, the artists and poets of the race
have co-operated with the Great Poet in this work of embodying the real. They
have been inspired to create by visions of divine beauty and truth, mirrored in
some domain of the higher psychic world to which their consciousness has had
access.
Like other terms which once had a sacred signification, the word genius has
been distorted and vulgarized. Although Dr. Collins may be unaware of the
fact, it is blasphemy against the divinity within man to affirm that “psycho¬
neurotics are the only people who have ever accomplished anything enduring
in the world”. According to the ancient definition, genius is the spirit or prin¬
ciple that presides over the formation of the individual human soul. It is the
Higher Self, a ray of the Logos containing within itself the potentiality of all
the powers which create and sustain the Universe. The veritable man of genius
differs from the ordinary man in the degree to which he recognizes and identifies
himself with this divine life that is the substratum and essence of his individual
NOTES AND COMMENTS
277
being. It is characteristic of the true work of genius that it is invariably indi¬
vidual and unique, and also that its message is universal, addressed to all men.
It is evident, therefore, that only the very greatest of mankind can be called
men of genius, in the fullest sense, for these alone have completely embodied
their genius.
In Lucifer, V, 227-233, Madame Blavatsky draws a clear distinction between
real and artificial genius:
Genius, as Coleridge defined it, is certainly—to every outward appearance, at least—
“the faculty of growth”; yet to the inward intuition of man, it is a question whether it is
genius—an abnormal aptitude of mind—that develops and grows, or the physical brain,
its vehicUy which becomes through some mysterious process fitter to receive and manifest
from within outwardly the innate and divine nature of man’s over-soul. Perchance, in
their unsophisticated wisdom, the philosophers of old were nearer truth than are our
modern wiseacres, when they endowed man with a tutelary deity, a Spirit whom they
called genius. The substance of this entity, to say nothing of its essence . . . manifests
itself according to the organism of the person it informs. . . . [The flame of genius] is
the very nature of the Spiritual Entity itself, of our EgOy which keeps on weaving new
life-woofs into the web of Reincarnation on the loom of time, from the beginnings to the
ends of the great Life-Cycle. This it is that asserts itself more strongly than in the
average man, through its personality; so that what we call “the manifestations of genius”
in a person, are only the more or less successful efforts of that Ego to assert itself on the
outward plane of its objective form—the man of clay—in the matter-of-fact, daily life
of the latter. The Egos of a Newton, an uEschylus, or a Shakespeare, are of the same
essence and substance as the Egos of a yokel, an ignoramus, a fool, or even an idiot; and
the self-assertion of their informing genii depends on the physiological and material con¬
struction of the physical man. . . . That which makes one mortal a great man and of
another a vulgar, silly person is, as said, the quality and make-up of the physical shell
or casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of brain and body to transmit and give ex¬
pression to the light of the real. Inner man; and this aptness or inaptness is, in its turn,
the result of Karma. . . .
Between the true and the artificial genius, one born from the light of the immortal
Ego, the other from the evanescent will-o’-the-wisp of the terrestrial or purely human
intellect and the animal soul, there is a chasm, to be spanned only by him who aspires
ever onward. . . . The words of the poet who asserts that the lamp of genius—
“If not protected, pruned, and fed with care,
Soon dies, or runs to waste with fitful glare—” ^
—can apply only to artificial genius, the outcome of culture and of purely intellectual
acuteness. It is not the direct light of the Manasaputra, the Sons of Wisdom, for true
genius lit at the flame of our higher nature, or the Ego, cannot die. That is why it is so
very rare.
Genius and Happiness
It would be well if physicians as a class had more of the saving grace of hu¬
mility. After all, medical science, even in its most modernistic phases, has
limitations imposed by Nature. It is inconceivable, for instance, that anyone—
let alone a man of genius—will ever be made happy by anything which a medical
practitioner can do to him. Physical suffering may be alleviated or sup¬
pressed, but only the crudest of materialists would pretend that freedom from
bodily pain is equivalent to the state of consciousness which is called happiness.
Have we never met or heard of people who radiated an inward joy in spite of
278
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
sickness and privation? The true soldier is happiest in the agony of battle.
The saints have acknowledged no bliss save that which is inseparable from the
most intense sorrow. As the Buddhist mystics have taught, the Buddha knows
at one and the same time the ineffable delight of eternal being and the anguish
of compassion for those of his children who still stray in the jungle of illusion.
It is his great sacrifice and his supreme glory, that he does not turn away from
this anguish and live only for the bliss to which he is entitled by right of con¬
quest. As is written in Light on the Path, the disciple enters “into a partnership
of joy, which brings indeed terrible toil and profound sadness, but also a great
and ever-increasing delight”.
Innate Ideas
There is the following passage in a letter attributed to the Master K. H. and
received by A. P. Sinnett in i88i:
[The highest Planetary Spirits] appear on Earth ... at the origin of every new human
kind. . . . They remain with man no longer than the time required for the eternal truths
they teach to impress themselves so forcibly upon the plastic minds of the new races as to
warrant them from being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter. . . . The mission
of the Planetary Spirit is but to strike the Key Note of Truth. . . . The vibrations of the
Primitive Truth are what your philosophers name “innate ideas”.
In the Tragedy of Prometheus Bound, iEschylus symbolizes the attempt of
the Divine Host to create a Self-conscious spiritual Humanity, by the myth of
the compassionate Immortal who sacrificed his heritage of bliss to bring the gift
of creative fire to the darkened consciousness of mortal man. For this act the
Titan was cursed, doomed to aeons of torture, like Lucifer and all the other
“Light-Bearers” who have sought to impress the eternal truths upon the minds
of men, or who have tried to re-awaken in the world some recollection of those
truths. As Madame Blavatsky points out, Prometheus is, in one sense, the
spark of divinity, the germ of immortal life, in the human soul. He is the “in¬
nate idea”, the ideal form which man is intended by Divine Nature to become.
But though from time to time men of genius have risen above the mass and have
embodied that paradigm, it is painfully apparent that the gift of fire has been
the cause of sins and woes innumerable. The Secret Doctrine suggests, indeed,
that by meditation upon the fate of Prometheus one may begin dimly to under¬
stand the meanings hidden beneath two of the “mysteries” which have been
more or less travestied by all the great exoteric religions of the world,—the
Fall of the Angels and the Fall of Man.
It is a theosophical axiom that all things in manifestation are the result of an
interaction between the “above” and the “below”, even the most evil and the
most hideous images invented by the human fancy being distortions, perver¬
sions, inverted and blurred images of the “innate ideas” which constitute the
essence of that part of our nature that belongs to the human Kingdom. If
egotism and sensuality could not prey, like vultures, upon the heart of Prome¬
theus, they would instantaneously disappear; for the powers of evil, as has been
NOTES AND COMMENTS 279
said, cannot create anything; they can merely corrupt and invert that which
already exists.
Individualism and Collectivism
It is apparent that the most fundamental of our “innate ideas” is the ideal of
the perfected man, the genius in full command of all his faculties. The per¬
fected man may be described as a complete individual embodiment of the
divine form or archetype which all human entities are invited to imitate and
which all souls can become, if they persevere to the end. It is an excellent prac¬
tice for everyone to ask himself what he would desire above all else to be. Does
he seek to embody the qualities and attributes of his genius, or is he attached to
earth-bound images which invert and deform the ideal outline of his divine
possibilities?
There seem to be two major misconceptions concerning the nature of the per¬
fected man, and the human mind tends to move back and forth from one of
these delusions to the other. They arise from the difficulty of understanding
the idea affirmed by every great teacher, that the perfected man is both individ¬
ual and universal, both personal and impersonal. Our little minds are seldom
capable of grasping and holding more than one phase of a truth at the same time,
with the usual result that each mental reflection of truth resembles an image in
a distorting mirror. The sense of an original, harmonious unity is lost, and one
aspect of the whole is emphasized out of all proportion to the rest.
The misconceptions in question are illustrated by the two extremes of doctrine
associated with the names of Nietzsche and Karl Marx. The Superman, the
personality which defles all laws, human and divine, has no more place in
Nature than the human ant-hill which is the Utopia of the socialist. Nothing
is more barren than a dispute as to whether man should pattern himself upon
a beast of prey or an insect.
Great centuries, like the Nineteenth, have often been marked by a strong
individualistic spirit. It may seem incredible to the “bright young people” of
to-day, but during the Victorian Age self-reliance, initiative, force of character
were generally held in high esteem. It should be added that the most represen¬
tative leaders of thought, who insisted with emphasis upon the inalw»ble
“rights” of the individual, did not ignore the fact that the individual ^Rts in
a state of society with other individuals towards whom he has certain equally
inalienable duties and responsibilities. Their argument, which cannot be
answered, was that no real society can exist, unless it be composed of real
individuals who collaborate with a minimum of centralized regimentation and
compulsion. John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, Emerson and Carlyle, were
not anarchists.
One might suggest, however, that many of the best minds of the Nineteenth
Century were deluded by the idea that human progress is inevitable and con¬
stant. This optimism naturally led them to take a more hopeful view of
so-called human nature than is justified by history or experience. Nietzsche
was not alone in his identification of individual rights with the claims and
28o THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
pretensions of the animal man. Throughout Western Europe and America,
the truth that only the fittest can survive in the struggle for existence was
interpreted by multitudes in the most downright materialistic sense. It is not
difficult now to see the error of this perverted individualism, for many of the
horrors of the machine age are its handiwork. It was consistent with such a
doctrine to regard t e successful man of the world as the climax of evolution,
and to conceive of Nature as merely a source of wealth, an object of exploita¬
tion by the ruthless and the greedy.
The pendulum of opinion is now swinging towards an opposite error, even
more pernicious, for there is some stimulation in the notion that every man
must learn to stand on his own feet and to fight his own battles. It is a typical
irony of history, that the “collectivism” which is now crippling individual
initiative, is a natural product of the democratic system which the moral
materialists of the Eighteenth Century invented as a means of overthrowing
the aristocratic code inherited by the modern world from the Middle Ages.
The purposes of “collectivists”, especially in economics and education, are
made very clear in a report on “Social Foundations of Education”, published for
the American Historical Society under a grant by the Carnegie Foundation, and
prepared by Professor George S. Counts of Teachers College, New York. Dr.
Counts believes that it is the mission of educators to “bring the mentality of
the American people in accord with their surroundings and to prepare them for
life under profoundly altered circumstances”.
The age of individualism in economy—the age that nurtured the young republic—is
patently drawing to a close. The age of corporate, social, or collective action in economy
is opening. The modern corporation may be regarded as almost symbolic of the decline
of the role of the individual in economy.
Dr. Counts* argument is that a new collectivist society is emerging out of the
ruins of the “old deal”, and that the American public schools must prepare the
coming generation for the battle which “the mass of the people” must wage
against the “rights” of individual property-holders. In other words, he looks
forward to an era where everything will belong to everybody in general and to
nobody in particular. With the tact which is characteristic of American radicals
of his species, he does not call this stage of blessedness communist or socialist,
but corporate, social or collective, for these words have not yet accumulated
so many explosive connotations. It is needful to understand, however, that all
these terms have come to mean the same thing, the sacrifice of the individual
to another entity which is variously styled “society”, “the totalitarian state”,
“the average man”, and so on. When a cynical Soviet chieftain talks about
“the rule of the proletariat”, and a sentimental clergyman pleads for “social
justice’* and “social-mindedness”, they are propelling mankind towards a com¬
mon goal, though they may differ widely as to the appropriate means of attain¬
ing it.
Social-Mindedness
Strange as it may seem to the “social-minded”, it is possible to desire sincerely
NOTES AND COMMENTS
281
the ultimate salvation and union of the whole human race, and at the same time
to be unalterably opposed to any form of rule by “the mass of the people”.
Anyone who is at all humane naturally sympathizes in some measure not only
with himself and with his family and friends, but with the whole mass of anony¬
mous humanity afflicted by the world-depression. Nevertheless, it is well to be
honest in these matters. We are not Buddhas and Mahatmas whose hearts
naturally overflow with equal compassion for all creatures. Charity must begin
at home; and it is safe to assume that a man’s love for his wife and children is not
very profound, if their illness does not affect him more immediately than the
newspaper report of a famine in China. The average capacity for real sympathy
is very small, and if we scatter it abroad to the four quarters, it will be spread
out very thin indeed.
A little reflection suggests that a true, as opposed to a hypocritical or imag¬
inary social-mindedness only exists, when the members of a society consciously
share a common purpose and harmoniously co-operate towards its fulfilment.
Partially and casually this occurs in some families and tribal groups, in some
religious communities, in some friendships, in the lives of some nations during a
war or under the ascendency of a great leader. But as Theosophy teaches, perfect
unity of heart is impossible between two or more ordinary human personalities.
The ideal community is a community of real individuals, united in the love of the
same principles of truth, beauty, and virtue, each expressing those principles
according to a mode unique and peculiar to himself. Thus a group of disciples
can attain brotherhood through the unifying power of devotion to a Master.
The Theosophical Society exists for the purpose of forming the nucleus of a
Universal Brotherhood by the only means whereby this can be realized,—by
the free co-operation of individuals who dedicate themselves, severally and col¬
lectively, to the principle that “there is no Religion higher than Truth”. Stu¬
dents of Theosophy believe that in the Great Lodge, the assemblage of the real
men of genius of all the human races, there already exists a veritable Brotherhood,
a Communion of Saints, and it is because the highest ideal of fraternity is ac¬
tually embodied there, that men dream of it here below.
The Formation of Wholes
The spiritual unity of mankind is the highest conceivable expression of a li^
which can be observed in operation wherever one searches in Nature. Phy¬
sicists and even biologists are beginning to note the fact that in all the natural
kingdoms there is a tendency of units or particles to come together and to co¬
operate—as it were—towards the formation of systems or groups or “wholes”.
Thus the atom is “created” through the combination and collaboration of
various corpuscles or wavicles. In essence, however, the atom is something
more than the sum of its parts. It has its own measure of “individuality” and
is a distinct entity. By an analogous process atoms are grouped into molecules,
molecules into living cells, and so on, until organic evolution reaches a sort of
culmination with the production of the marvellous and complex multicellular
bodies of animals and plants. The general conception of evolution as a process
282 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of integration of groups, has been popularized by General Smuts’ theory of
“holism”.
It is reasonable to assume that a corresponding massing of “consciousnesses”
proceeds in Natime, pari passu with the evolution of the series of physical
“wholes”. In the human body, for instance, there is a general consciousness
embracing, but also separate from, the consciousness of the various organs. There
is evidence that certain animals act differently when they are alone and when
they are in a group, as if there were two sets of instincts, one for the individual
creature and another for the flock or herd. In the bees and ants, it almost ap¬
pears as if the community had acquired a definite independent nature of its own.
We speak of the “consciousness of the hive”, and are sometimes tempted to think
of the individual bees as mere cells or instruments of a superior organism.
If this “holistic” tendency be universal, it must be a dominating force in
human history. All things come from the One, as Plotinus said, and aspire, in
their inmost nature, to return to the One. Men tend to come together in groups,
to incorporate themselves in social organisms. To a large extent, this process goes
forward without personal choice, for an individual cannot as a rule help being born
in the family or class or nation to which he belongs. But the nature of the larger
unit into which he enters may be said to correspond to certain elements of his
own personal nature. Thus a group of bad or weak men become a gang or a
mob, whereas a group of strong and good men can grow into a disciplined army
or a veritable brotherhood of disciples.
The Consciousness of a Congeries
It would seem that meditation upon the formation of wholes can guide us
towards the solution of the problem that has perplexed so many generations of
philosophers, the problem of the relation between the individual and society,
between the particular and the universal. We should have learned long ago
that the intellect as such cannot possibly comprehend this enigma, for it is an
absolute mystery that either the Universe or the individual should exist. But
by observation and experience, we may discover in some degree how individual
consciousness tends to grow or expand into full self-realization in so far as it
becomes genuinely representative of a larger social consciousness in which it is
integrated.
How precise and true is Plato’s expression, how profound and philosophical his remark
on the (Human) Soul or Ego, when he defined it as “a compound of the same and the
other”. ... It is “the same and the other”, as the great Initiate-Philosopher said; for
the Ego—the “Higher Self” when merged with and in the Divine Monad—is Man, and
yet the same as the other\ the Angel in him incarnated is the same with the Universal
Mahat (The Secret Doctrine^ ed. 1893, II, 92-93).
We may test this truth on any plane of human activity, the highest that we
can conceive, or the lowest, for even the lowest of the worlds is a distorted image
of the highest. The entities composing any congeries participate, in greater or
lesser measure, in the consciousness of the congeries as a whole, but that collec¬
tive consciousness is also a thing in itself, something more than the sum-total of
NOTES AND COMMENTS
283
the “consciousnesses” of its components. Both good and evil potentialities in
an individual are accentuated, in the degree that the individual acts as the
agent or vehicle of a group-consciousness. As Gustave Le Bon has shown, a
mob is capable of crimes, of which relatively few of its constituents, if acting
alone, would ever be guilty. On the other hand, disciplined troops, acting col¬
lectively, perform feats of sustained valour, of which few soldiers, acting as
individuals, would be capable.
The Last Phase of a Cycle
These considerations are not merely interesting as abstractions. They have
a direct bearing upon the most vital question of our time, whether our civiliza¬
tion can be saved from a ruin as complete as that of the Roman Empire. As
Sir Flinders Petrie has demonstrated, the civilizations of the past have been
subject to a cyclic or rhythmic law as definite and as rigorous as that which pre¬
sides over the rise and fall of the tides and the succession of the seasons. No
great race or nation has been able to evade the dominion of this law, for there
is no attested way of escape save one—to become established in a state of con¬
sciousness which cannot be affected by the cyclic changes that prevail upon the
planes of ordinary experience. Tradition testifies that such a transmutation of
the mortal into the immortal has been accomplished by individuals, but never
by a racial or national group.
Sir Flinders Petrie’s deduction is, therefore, significant. According to the
available historical evidence, extending through eight great periods, the advent
of democracy in a civilization normally denotes that the apex of a cycle has been
passed, that a “day” in the life of humanity is turning towards its close.
When democracy has attained full power, the majority without capital necessarily eat
up the capital of the minority, and the civilization steadily decays, until the inferior
population is swept away to make room for a fitter people. The consumption of all the
resources of the Roman Empire, from the second century when democracy was dominant,
until the Gothic kingdom arose on its ruin, is the best-known example in detail (The
Revolutions of Civilkation, p. 124).
Democracy is not fundamentally a system of government but a state of mii^
It prevails in a civilization when the standards of the undifferentiated mas^j^
the people become dominant in all the major forms of human activity, not only
the political and the economic, but the scientific, the artistic, the moral and the
religious. For instance, it was pointed out fifty years ago by the English his¬
torian, Lord Acton, that the average man does not really want liberty but
“security”. He demands the assurance that he will be fed and sheltered and
amused, and is willing to accept almost any debasement to attain what he fan¬
cies to be this end. As a matter of fact, he can never be guaranteed even the
minimum of security, and the demagogues who promise it are illusionists. But
any dealer in quack remedies is certain to have some following, and in the final
phases of a democratic society he meets almost no opposition except from
dealers in other nostrums. Lord Acton foresaw that under such conditions the
284
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
state tends to assume the form of a dictatorship, the chief function of which is
to placate the mob, to keep it as quiet as possible.
It can be shown, as in the instances of Athens and Rome, that the decline of
a civilization is marked by two phases. First, there is an era of unrestrained
and worldly individualism, which is followed by a period when individual initia¬
tive is increasingly suppressed, as authority passes ever more completely into
the control of the representatives and exploiters of the masses. If anyone should
chance to note certain resemblances between such a period and the era in which
we are living, he is free to draw his own conclusions; although the continued
existence of The Theosophical Society and its nucleus, distinguishes our cycle
from those that preceded it, and makes the situation far from hopeless.
Vulgar Religion
However, we shall be wise to look at the dangers, without quailing, but also
without sentimental delusions. Not only spiritual but economic conditions are
going to grow steadily worse, if there be a continued transfer of authority from
those who have some sense of honour and responsibility—if only a little—to
those who have none. Not the least of the dangers is the devastating wave of
vulgarity which is sweeping into every comer of our lives, and which levels all
before it. It has already inundated a large portion of the clergy.
We refer almost at random to a survey of social conditions made by Dr.
Harry F. Ward of the Union Theological •Seminary, and Winifred L. Chappell,
secretary of the Methodist Federation of Social Service. The authors are dis¬
tressed because the New Deal after all its promises has not abolished poverty
and economic inequality, and conclude that the experiments of the “brain-
trust” have “brought the bankers back into control of the government”. This
will be news to the bankers, but if it were true, there is no reason why it should
embitter anyone who confesses his faith in the words of Christ. The Master
Christ stated as lucidly as possible that his Kingdom was not of this world.
That Kingdom can come in the midst of destitution and discomfort, nor should
it matter in the least, as regards its advent in the individual soul, who is in con¬
trol of the government. Even governments would improve if the Master were
permitted to mle in the hearts of those who profess to be his followers. To
imagine otherwise, to believe that material well-being must precede spiritual
re-birth, is to reveal a crude worldliness typical of the “average man” in an
advanced stage of moral decay. It is virtually equivalent to an assent to Lenin’s
assertion that “Religion is the opiate of the people”.
Machinism and Civilization
Without doubt the peril of spiritual bankruptcy is intensified by the fact
that we are living in an age of machines. The machines which modem man has
invented have reacted disastrously upon his inner life. Modem man lives encom¬
passed by mechanical devices which toil and spin for him, attend to his needs,
amuse him, never relaxing their hold upon his attention. It is no wonder that
whole populations are coming more and more to resemble exhibits of machine-
NOTES AND COMMENTS
285
niade models. A few observers are beginning to realize the extent to which
Americans in particular have standardized and stereotyped themselves in recent
years. Millions of them dress alike, eat the same foods, read the same trash,
listen to the same broadcasts, and—so far as one can judge—are subject almost
simultaneously to the same moods of elation and fear. Contemporary America
actually gives one a presentiment of what a collectivist society would be like.
It is significant that the Bolshevik leaders deliberately use the machine as a
means of reducing all minds to a dead level. They have discovered the affinity
between mechanism and communist states of mind. As was shown by the
recent exhibition of the Soviet educational system at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York, the central theme of their schools is mechanistic.
Even pre-school children are trained to work with small tools. The object, as
Dr. John Dewey suggests, is to produce “human beings inspired with social
purposes”. Anyone can imagine what John Dewey and his Russian friends
mean by “social purposes”.
In the Mercure de France (November 15, 1934). M. L 6 on de Poncins published
some replies, with his comments, to a questionnaire which was sent to a number
of industrialists, economists, and scholars. They were asked whether they
believed the impact of the machine upon civilization to be good or evil. It is of
great interest that the majority of the respondents express without equivocation
their conviction that the growth of modem industrialism is “a disaster and a
calamity”. As M. de Poncins’ “inquiry” is international in scope, this majority
vote has more significance than if it had been French only, for France has
always been the least industrialized of the great nations of the Occident.
We paraphrase some of M. de Poncins’ comments:
The Russian communists are practically the only people left who are blind and fanati¬
cal partisans of the unlimited development of machinism. Even the Americans have
lost their original enthusiasm. . . . The advantages of machinism are immediate and
obvious: it is more agreeable to have instruments which make quick and easy a task
which was once long and painful, and which thus create or which ought to create, great
material prosperity. The disadvantages are more remote and more subtle, but they are
none the less redoubtable; we begin to perceive them to-day. The machine contains
potentialities of good and of evil. If one may judge by the experience of the past five
hundred years, the potentialities of evil increase more rapidly than the potentialities of
good, in proportion to the development of machinism. . . . Modern man has used the
machine in accordance with his ideal and his dominant mentality; it is this mentality
which is responsible for the evil results which we see to-day. . . . However, this modern
mentality is of quite recent origin; its first symptoms began to be manifest during the
Renaissance; under the influence of Jewish and Puritanical conceptions they were de¬
veloped by the Reformation and were definitely established by the French Revolution
of 1789. The new conceptions introduced industrial mercantilism into the economic
domain, equalitarian democracy in politics, and materialistic rationalism in religion. . . .
“So long as tendencies of a material order were not predominant in man”, says the
Orientalist, Rene Guenon, “he never dreamed of consecrating all his time and all his
efforts to the invention and construction of machines. It goes without saying that the
successes obtained in this domain have subsequently amplified and generalized these
same (material) tendencies, but these tendencies are the point of departure.” There is a
fact which will doubtless astonish many of our contemporaries, so infatuated with the
286
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
dea of progress: the principle of the machine was known in remote antiquity among
very diverse peoples. But then, you will ask, why did they not produce an industrial
civilization comparable to that of to-day.^ “The only answer which I can think of ,
writes the American, Stuart Chase, “is that they didn’t do it, because they didn’t want
to*’ (art. **Machinism et Civilisation: Rhultats une EnquHe Internationale*).
Are we to conclude that what is called “modern progress’’ is really a colossal
mistake, a violation of Nature? Some may be inclined to think so, and to ad¬
mire the sagacity of the wise men of antiquity who did not tell everybody all
that they knew. However, the machine age is here and we must live in it,
making the best of it, using its opportunities for discipline and the cultivation
of fortitude, charity, and all the other innate virtues of man which do not have
a mechanical origin. Also, we can dwell with insistence upon the idea that
Nature and man are not machines, but are living, purposeful, and in essence
divine. We can think thus, and can seek and find evidence that this idea is
true.
A Way of Liberation
Theosophy suggests a way of liberation from the deluge of vulgarity and
mechanism. It is not a return to a spurious “individualism” which was
worldly and materialistic, a glorification of greed and the “heresy of separate¬
ness” ; nor is it a surrender in any sense to the “collectivism” which, as in Russia,
means a pooling of the lower natures of many human entities and the control of
what is bad in a population, by what is worst.
Theosophy proposes and makes possible the formation of Groups of Disciples,
who can gather around themselves a disciplined army or hierarchy of followers.
This is not in contradiction with the fundamental tenet that the first object
of Nature is the production of real individuals. Individuality does not mean
isolation. The real individual completes the self-consciousness he has already
acquired through his recognition of the Divine World and its expression in the
Lodge of Masters, as the fruit of free and ardent co-operation with all that is
highest and best in other men, for the highest and best in others is one in essence
with the highest and best in himself. There is a true and harmonious relation
between the spiritual man and the society of which he is an undivided part.
But in order that such a relation can exist, he must be an indispensable and
unique factor in that group. A symphony becomes a cacophony unless every
note be sounded clearly and distinctly. Thus it is said that the higher one
ascends in the scale of being, the more individual one becomes.
The existence of Groups of Disciples would allow the Lodge, the Higher Self
of Humanity, to intervene more directly in human affairs. The Masters who
have embodied the innate divine idea of the perfect man, could surely offer
guidance and inspiration with more expectation of response, if there were in the
world definite assemblages of men animated by a common determination to
extend the ancient virtues of honour and good faith, of “noble living and
noble dying”.
FRAGMENTS
N O possible combination of circumstances can make you happy,—not
heaven itself. Happiness depends upon your reactions to circum¬
stances. The Masters cannot make the world happy by changing the
conditions of the world. God placed man in Paradise, and this world is what
man has made of it. If God made a second Paradise, man would do the same.
There are three things that make for happiness: understanding, acceptance,
co-operation.
Could you see as the Masters see, you would find happiness. The vision of
the reality of your life, would be a thing of such surpassing beauty, that, as you
are now, you would die of it. So much for understanding.
Or if, in perfect faith and love, you could accept the Master’s will for you,
and accept all things as his will, then you would find happiness,—absolute peace,
unshakable serenity.
If, finally, with imperfect understanding, inadequate acceptance maybe, you
could, nevertheless, rouse your w*!!! to co-operation with your circumstances,
going out gladly to them as to welcome guests, entertaining them, even the
most painful of them, as messengers from on high, laden with priceless gifts and
golden instruction—if you met them thus, I say, studying the veiled beauty of
those gifts, reading and following, as best you could, those instructions, then,
then you would be happy.
Ah, you say,—I wonder.
Could I but persuade you to put it to the test, to give it honest trial for one
day! How many long years of suffering it might spare you, what piteous
waste of force and time and tears. For some day you will do it, when the to^
ture of every other kind of living has become unbearable. "
But 0 the bleeding Heart of your Master that must await that day!
It has been decreed, in the magnanimity of the Law, that we shall have our
part in the great plan of our salvation. So the Masters wait upon our willing¬
ness, wait for our consent to co-operate with them, wait, how often! upon our
leisure. They respect our decisions with a majestic courtesy, leaving the hour
to us so long as the day may last. Meanwhile, with an unalterable patience,
they hold in their hands the gifts they long to bestow.
On all sides we are surrounded by wonders, but above all other wonders is
287
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
the wonder of their love. Ev^ry provision, is made for us, every path is opened,
no possibility is denied. Where there is denial, we have made it; where a path
is blocked, we have placed the obstacle there, often with careful toil. But all
the cunning of man has never devised a means by which that provision for us
could be lessened or tiumed aside.
It is we who create conditions, we who have built up the circumstances at
which we now rebel, we who have crossed the lovely pattern the Lords of
Karma had invented for our weaving. What we have to-day, we fashioned in
long-gone yesterdays; what the future will bring, is taking shape as the min¬
utes of to-day slip by.
Ah, you say,—I wonder.
And I, too, wonder. Further words are useless; better to leave you with that
wonder in your heart and the perfume of its undying nostalgia. Lay it away
where you will, in the most hidden recess of your consciousness, the scent will
cling there; and at any slightest disturbance of its hiding place, wafts of its
penetrating fragrance will float through your nerves to tingle them, into your
brain to fill it again with images and dreams.
O ye men of My alba, tarry not too long! The day is passing, the day must
have an end. Soon comes the long night of forgetfulness, and the dawn of
another day will find your spirits where they fell asleep. What mighty prog¬
ress may not others have accomplished, awake to inner things, in this same
period of your oblivion? Trust the Compassion that broods over you. Hasten,
before the darkening curtain falls upon the sunset embers of this day of oppor¬
tunity. Never can it be the same. O ye men of Myalba, tarry not too long!
Cav]^.
RICHNESS OF LIFE
Karma and the Capacity for Joy
NE evening many years ago, under the brilliant star-lit sky of the Philip¬
pines, an old army officer, veteran of many campaigns, recounted for the
benefit of his youthful second lieutenant, some of the fruits of his long
experience in handling men. One of the things he said was that, while he had
never been cruel enough to do it, if he ever had wanted to make a punishment
really intolerable, he would have condemned the culprit to a term of hard and
useless labour. He would, for instance, have compelled him to dig a long, deep
ditch through a difficult, rocky place and, when it was finished, make him fill it
up again until all was as before. The cruelty of the punishment would have
lain in the culprit’s realization that all his pain and effort were utterly
useless.
It is just this sense of futility that makes the pain and suffering in life seem
intolerable to so many people. Seeing neither purpose nor justice in them, they
think of pain and suffering as not only hard but useless, and of life itself as only a
series of accidents, with some pieces of good luck, but many more cruel blows
from blind chance. They thus inflict on themselves the punishment the army
officer thought too cruel for his most hardened offender. It is one thing to work
or to suffer for a keenly desired end, and a totally different thing to believe one¬
self whipped into exactly the same labour or suffering for no end at all. Few
things do more to lighten pain and misfortune than the perception that they
have a purpose and lead to a goal that we ourselves greatly desire.
It is this gift, with many others, that Theosophy brings to those who study
and who try to live by its teachings. Through their own observation, they come
to see that life has purpose, that things do not happen by chance, and that
nothing at all ever happens that cannot be used for good, for the growth of the
soul and the development of character. A great many things happen that, in
fact, are not so used, but this is because man has free will and can, if he choose,
refuse the gifts that life seeks to give him. Some understanding of the beneficent
purpose of life is essential to peace of heart, and without that peace there can be
no happiness. Life is not in the least interested in providing easy, comfortable
or “happy” outer circumstances for mankind. It is tremendously interested in
increasing man’s capacity for a blessedness that is both wisdom and joy, that
these may be his, irrespective of outer circumstances. Such joy is a quality of
the soul, and man experiences it to the degree to which he has succeeded in
clearing the channels from the soul to his personality. Every act done from
principle, for the right, for the highest that he can see, against his personal self-
interest or inclination, every choice of “the better” rather than “the dearer”,
tends by so much to clear those channels. Every act of self-indulgence, every
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choice of the dearer rather than the better, clogs them. If they were completely
blocked, joy would be impossible.
With all the world seeking happiness, it is remarkable that so little attention
has been paid to the fact that one class, and only one, has ever claimed to have
attained it,—the saints and mystics of all ages. Without exception, they have
testified to a happiness that words were quite inadequate to express. Outer
circumstances certainly had nothing to do with it, for they lived, for the most
part, in the utmost poverty, many with wretched health, some never passing a
day free from pain, others spent years in prison. By the conquest of their lower
natures, they gained some touch of the radiant joy of the soul’s consciousness, a
joy that no suffering, or hardship or persecution could take from them. The
purpose of life is, in the course of millenniums, to bring all mankind to the full
splendour of that consciousness.
The first step is to bring man to choose of his own free will (for he must not be
dragged, even into heaven) to tread the path that leads to that goal, and to turn
from those that lead away from it. The function of Karma is to make each man
realize the consequences of wrong choices, so that next time he may choose more
wisely. That is one reason why things have consequences. Karma literally
means the law of action, the way in which things act, and all things are designed
to act so as to carry out the purpose of life. Every act done, every thought or
feeling entertained, even though not carried out in action, has its inevitable
sequel. A force is thereby set flowing in a certain direction, leading to joy or to
pain in accordance with its nature. The only way to avert the effect, is to set
in motion a stronger current in the opposite direction. Selfishness, for example,
has certain invariable results which can only be obviated by greater self-sacrifice.
Even in that case, the selfishness has its effect, though it may not be noticeable,
for the power of sacrifice that ought to have taken the man toward his goal, is in
part expended in checking his wrong momentum.
When Madame Blavatsky first brought the law of Karma to the attention of
the western world, even those who accepted it tended to think of it as a me¬
chanical and outer law, a kind of celestial book-keeping requiring the payment
of debts in kind. If I stepped on someone’s toe, the Karmic consequence would
be for someone to step on my toe, and so on. One incurred a debt to the law
which had to be paid. There is truth in this. Debts to the law must be paid.
Every act is a cause and its consequences are sure and inescapable. But it has
also come to be realized that the Masters, who are the Lords of Compassion, are
also the Lords of Karma; that Karma is compassion; that the universe is not
mechanical but Infinite Love, and that Karma itself is poetic justice.
This is a far truer view, but it also has its danger. The mind is very skilful in
producing excuses for self-indulgence, and its nature is to feel that somehow or
other in its particular case, unpleasant consequences can be averted. If the mind
could be really made to believe that there is never any escape from the results
of actions, it would be far more careful of what it permitted itself to suggest.
If, for instance, a man knew beyond the faintest doubt that every time he gives
way to irritation, he must suffer for it, it would act as a most powerful deterrent
RICHNESS OF LIFE
291
to his bad temper. That he does so suffer is the fact. It is also poetic justice
that he should suffer; but the moment poetic justice is mentioned, the mind
seizes on it: “Ah! Poetic justice, that lets me out. It would be anything but
poetic justice if one of my excellent good intentions should be made to suffer,
merely because I lost my temper under such great provocation”, and so on. Those
who find themselves so arguing, would do well to go back to the mechanical
view of the inevitableness of consequences. It is not true compassion to let
anyone “get away” with deliberate disobedience.
There is also a tendency to limit one’s conception of Karmic effects to outer
circumstances. Karma does affect one’s outer circumstances, but this is secon¬
dary. The primary effects are inner. Outer circumstances, in any case, are
only of importance to us for their influence on our inner states, our thoughts,
feelings, sensations, etc. What that influence is to be depends far less on the
outer event itself than on the individual concerned, on his past Karma and his
present will. There are few more wide-spread or more pernicious errors than the
current belief that a man’s inner state, his happiness or unhappiness, depends
upon his outer circumstances. “No man can be religious if he is hungry”, is a
typical statement of this point of view,—one often adopted by modern clergy¬
men, who appear quite ignorant of the use of fasting, in all ages and in all re¬
ligions, as an aid to spirituality. Consciousness is not, as science sometimes
assumes, a by-product of matter, nor is its character necessarily determined by
material conditions. A man may have very little immediate control over what
happens to him, but he may acquire almost infinite control over his own reactions
to those events. It is the character of these reactions, the kind of thought,
feeling or sensation with which he responds, that matters to him, not the outer
occurrence itself. He may react to a given situation with irritation or with sym¬
pathy, with craven fear or heroic valour. The choice lies in his own hands, and
in accordance with that choice will be the nature of his consciousness, and accord¬
ing to the nature of his consciousness, will be his happiness or unhappiness.
This is part of what is meant by the statement in the Idyll of the Whit^^ius
that, “Each man is his own absolute lawgiver, the dispenser of glory (^Boom
to himself; the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment.”
Our point is that every action, every choice made by the will, brings its owm
immediate reward or punishment in the kind of thought and feeling that it
engenders within us, and which thus becomes our mental environment, colouring
with its colour, distorting with its distortion, everything that reaches us. Sup¬
pose, for example, that a man is frankly criticized by a friend for some wrong
course of conduct. He has his choice between feeling and expressing gratitude
or vresentment. He chooses to give way to resentment. The Karmic punishment
is not that his friend—or some one else—^will, in turn, express resentment to him,
although that may very well happen. The Karmic punishment occurs at once
and inevitably. It consists in the resentment itself, inside the man. He has
admitted it, created it, and, for a longer or shorter period, he must live in it,
surrounded by it, imprisoned in that type of feeling. He may not realize it as
punishment, but it is. Its sourness and bitterness, its killing effect upon all
2g2
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
joy, is not any less sour or bitter or killing because some elemental inside him
persuades him that he is right in feeling resentful. Naturally also, reactions of
that kind tend to repeat themselves with increasing intensity.
If, instead of resentment, the man chooses gratitude, he fills himself with
the light and joy of gratitude, and reaps at once his reward. Gratitude drives
out lower types of thought and feeling. No one, for instance, can feel gratitude
and self-pity simultaneously. Whatever his choice may be, the Karmic result
is immediate and inevitable in its effect on his consciousness.
There are other results. Each choice a man makes opens him to other in¬
fluences at the same level. Like a radio receiver, man can tune himself to differ¬
ent pitches, so that he receives and responds to, wave lengths of various rates
of vibration, high or low. The ovmer of a radio can choose between a great
variety of possible programmes, low and vulgar, or perhaps high and inspiring.
When his radio is set for a certain wave length, that—good or bad—is admitted,
and all others excluded. In just the same way, each man is surrounded con¬
tinuously by psychic influences from the astral world around him, pressing upon
him, like the waves around a radio, or like water pressing against the bottom of
a boat. These influences are of very different rates of vibration, so to speak,
or are on very different levels, from the filth of the gutter to the music of the
stars, and all between.
If we tune ourselves to the level of resentment, all on that level and nothing
higher, can gain admittance to our thought and feeling. If we tune ourselves to
gratitude, we open ourselves to the level of gratitude, a quality of the soul, and
that which is on the plane of the soul can flow in, closing the door to what is
below it. Each choice of the will tends to tune us to its level, opening us to
corresponding influences both from the psychic sea in which we are immersed,
and also to certain reactions from the outer world of events.
It is a matter of everyday experience that a given occurrence has one effect
on us when we are in one mood, and a totally different effect, or no effect at all,
when we are in a different mood. The type of effect is a part of the Karma of the
choice that resulted in the particular mood we were in. Moods themselves are
Karma, the result of past choices of the will, usually made unconsciously it is
true, but made none the less. A man feels gloomy. Why ? The chances are a
hundred to one that it is because he has been thinking about himself instead of
his work, or of others, or of something that would interest his real self instead
of his personality. All that happens to him as a result of his gloom, and it may
be a great deal, is a part of the Karma of thinking about himself. We ought to
train ourselves ceaselessly to ask: Why? Why did this happen? Because of
that; yes, but why was that and why that, until we have pushed it back to the
moral cause at the root of it all, and to what needs to be done in ourselves about
it. There always is a moral cause and always something that ought to be done
about it. We have, let us assume, failed to carry our point, a sound one, at some
meeting. Why did we fail when we were right ? Because we had been interrupted
six times while we were preparing for the meeting, by subordinates with questions
that had to be answered. In consequence we were irritated, flustered and in-
RICHNESS OF LIFE
^93
sufficiently prepared. It was not our fault; anyone would have been. Perhaps,
but why were we preparing just before the meeting, why had not the questions
been answered earlier? Perhaps the trouble was procrastination several days
before. Perhaps it was lack of firmness in not refusing to answer unnecessary
questions at that time. Irritation is frequently due to indecision or lack of
firmness. Whatever the cause, it should be found and steps taken to correct it.
The effort to see the cause and to guard against its recurrence in the future
will often take most of the sting from a defeat. A man’s mistakes may be turned
into most valuable assets by understanding their causes, so that he will not
make them again. It removes the sting because it leads us to attack our fault
vigorously. To do this from a right motive is to align oneself with the soul,
and thus to share in the courageous, unresentful consciousness of the soul.
Every right action ought to have its immediate reward in consciousness. Every
step on the road to heaven ought to be heaven. This is not to say that sacrifice
is not very real and very hard. “The heart will bleed and the whole life of the
man seem to be utterly dissolved.” The spiritual life calls men, not weaklings,
and calls them to heroic valour, not to beds of ease. The Masters turn back from
the threshold of unutterable bliss, sacrificing themselves for man; and those
who would serve them, must, in their place and degree, learn to follow in their
footsteps. Every soul must learn sacrifice, but sacrifice should bring its reward.
That, in our case, it does not always do so, is because we have not yet learned
to be whole-hearted, to give ourselves completely in love and devotion to the
Masters’ cause, the cause of the soul. “To go half-way is misery but all the way
is heaven”, does not mean that we must attain to adeptship before we find
heaven. It means that to find joy we must do whatever we do with all our
hearts. When we look back, like Lot’s wife, with regret to what we are leaving,
that which should have been our joy, turns to salt in our mouths. Those who,
like some of the saints, have learned to give themselves wholly, have found
rapture even in martyrdom.
Even though the immediate reward be missed, it remains true that every right
action tends to clear the passages from the soul to the personal conscig|^ess,
and so to increase the individual’s capacity for joy, The mind i^Ben to
thoughts, feelings, impulses, from above and from below. Accordi^^to the
habitual nature of these thoughts and feelings will be the character, the “colour”
of the mind, its sensitiveness and clarity, or its denseness and callousness. Just
as a given shade of colour applied by an artist to the picture that he is painting,
will appear light or dark depending upon the background against which it is
seen, so the effect in consciousness of any given outer event varies through an
almost infinitely wide range with the colour of the mind and heart experiencing
it. Every impulse from above, entertained and made one’s own, makes the
nature that much finer, more sensitive, clearer, keener, more appreciative of
beauty, more capable of enjoyment. Every impulse from below, similarly enter¬
tained, has just the reverse effect, making it duller, denser, less capable of
feeling, and so requiring coarser and coarser stimulation in order to feel alive at
all. It has been said that every mental deficiency, without exception, is due to
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
some moral disobedience in the past, perhaps in some other life. It should not be
forgotten, however, that the past of every man includes many, many lives, and
much good as well as much bad Karma has usually been accumulated. A man
leading a degrading life may have brought over from some former incarnation
a keen appreciation of beauty which he has not yet had time to destroy com¬
pletely. From one point of view, it is fortunate that we usually change so slowly,
but we do change. There is nothing that we cannot change.
If the effects of Karma on consciousness and thus on the powers of appreciation
and enjoyment, were better understood, there might be less complaint of injustice
in the world. There are those whose faith in an over-ruling Providence is shaken
when they see one man, with callous selfishness, dishonestly accumulate a
fortune, while another, working hard and honourably, remains in poverty.
Surely, they think, if the doctrine of Karma were true, the dishonest man would
lose his fortune to the other. Perhaps he will, in some other life, perhaps not.
Karma is not interested in a man’s bank account but in the development of his
soul. Wealth and poverty are merely the means by which lessons are taught, not
ends in themselves. Often the best way to show a man that he does not really
desire something he thinks he wants, is to give it to him. That is a method life
frequently uses. If leaving a man with an ill-gotten fortune will teach him his
lesson more rapidly and effectively than taking it away, why take it away?
We tend to think of unpleasant or painful outer consequences as the Karmic
punishment for wrong doing, and to feel, if no such consequences are visible,
that justice has somehow failed. The fact is that the inner effects are the penalty,
and the outer results are Karmic compassion, sent to jar the man from his in¬
sensibility, that by pain and suffering he may be turned from hell toward heaven.
But for the pain that his wrong choices cause him, he might continue deadening
himself and sinking lower and lower indefinitely. As it is, the pain, usually a
gentle warning at first, goes on increasing until, if unheeded, it becomes un¬
bearable, and the man is forced to turn or go mad. This process must often
take a number of incarnations for its completion. Sometimes, particularly with
such sins as drunkenness and gluttony, one can see the entire cycle take place
in a comparatively few years.
As we have said, the effects in consciousness of any given outer event vary
almost infinitely with the “colour” of the mind experiencing it, and this colour
depends on the man’s past, on his Karma. Karma is poetic justice. It does a
man no good to see each day, from his beautifully landscaped country place, a
wide view of entrancing loveliness, if by self-indulgence he has ruined his ability
to appreciate beauty, or by lack of mental control, has so filled his mind with
irritation or resentment that he has made himself blind to all else. (If anyone
doubt this, let him test it for himself and see, the next time he is filled with
violent resentment, how much appreciation of beauty can get through it.) We
do not mean that no one enjoys ill-gotten wealth. Many certainly give every
appearance of doing so, for the coarsening process is a gradual one. Furthermore,
very few people are consistently bad. But in the end, the utterly selfish man’s
state becomes that described in “The Parable of the Persian Beggar” in the
RICHNESS OF LIFE
295
Theosophical Quarterly for October, 1932, the story in which a drunken
beggar is made Caliph for a day by Haroun-al-Raschid. Made Lord of the wide
realm of Persia, with all its opportunities for giving and receiving joy and glad¬
ness, the one thing the beggar was capable of desiring was to drink himself into
insensibility. That was all his day as Caliph brought him.
On the other hand, each step nearer to the spiritual world, all growth in
selflessness, greatly increases the capacity for joy in little, commonplace things.
A simple walk in the country, the arching of meadow grasses, the colour of buds,
the grace of a bird’s flight, a fairy garden of moss, grasses and gentian on a hum¬
mock in a stream, the mysterious charm of woods, the golden sunlight of late
afternoon, may give the keenest delight to a recollected mind. When the mind is
self-absorbed, the very same things may produce no effect whatever. Greater
appreciation of natural beauty is, of course, only one of many forms of
spiritual delight with which Karma rewards selflessness. One might, to take
another illustration, contrast the intense joy of whole-hearted admiration for
some nobility of character in one we love, with the sourness of envy which the
same quality can so easily arouse—as the Pharisees, and many others since then,
have abundantly proved. The power to look up with unstinted admiration is
one of the great gifts of life. “Hero worship of the worthy is salvation.’’ What
we admire, that, in time, we become.
Beauty can be truly appreciated only when it is used as a door to the spiritual
world, the home and source of all joy. Far more than the mere artist, it is those
who, as Fray Luis de Granada put it, “mount by the staircase of the created world
to the contemplation of the beauty and wisdom of its Creator’’, who are en¬
raptured by the loveliness of nature. Luis de Granada, himself a mystic, found
delight at every turn. The ‘‘noble bearing’’ of a horse, the structure of a sea shell,
an ant, a bee, the majesty of the stars at night, the charm of meadows, the
grandeur of mountains, the delicacy of a lily, great things and small, all gave him
keea joy, and all led him to adoration of the omnipotence and beauty of their
Creator. “Our thought”, he wrote, “must break down the walls of Heaven, and
pass beyond—contented with knowing not only that which it can see, but also
that which is invisible.” J.F.B.M.
The Btiddha said: You yourself must make the effort. Buddhas do bi^point
the Way .— Dhammapada.
The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind; and he who has so
little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but
his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs
which he purposes to remove .— Samuel Johnson.
He who postpones the day for living as he knows he ought to do is like the fool
who sits by the river and waits till it flows by; but it glides and will glide on till
all time .— Horace.
A LAY SERMON’
The Way of Life
I N the eighth chapter of Romans and the sixth verse are these words:—“For
the minding of the flesh is death, but the minding of the spirit is life and
peace.”
This verse from the Christian Bible plainly defines two lines of thought and
action diametrically opposed to each other, and the result of following either.
The teachers of all religions have told us that we cannot serve two masters,
and that we must choose either one or the other—either God or mammon. So
here, St. Paul, the initiate, tells us that going in one direction is the way of
death, and going in the other is the way of life and peace. It would naturally be
thought that there would be no hesitation in the choice between these two
courses of action; but what do we find? We find people choosing the way of
death rather than the way of life. There must be some reason for this. We
shall therefore need to examine our verse more closely, that its meaning and
application may become clear.
The verse, as a whole, certainly stresses one important factor which is a key to
its understanding, and that is the dual nature of man—the higher representing
that which is pure and noble, and the lower the opposite of these. Man being
endowed with mind is a responsible being and has to work out his own salvation.
The extent to which he does this depends entirely upon another part of his
nature, and that is the principle of desire. It is apparent that we must first
desire a thing before we exercise the will to obtain it. We see that the two ways
indicated in the verse have their root in desire, and this will remind us of the
teaching, “Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also”. So it would seem
that our desire will be according to our view of life. If we think that we are in
this world merely to gratify self in one form or another, our hearts will be set in
that direction. If, on the other hand, we think there is a much higher purpose to
be served, we shall act accordingly. It will be noticed that the verse is emphatic
in both directions, that action either way produces the corresponding result.
As we go along in daily life we see the effect of the minding of the flesh in various
ways; consciousness is centred in one or more forms of gratification to the
practical exclusion of all other interests and purposes. Such selfishness and
enslavement of the will are certainly death to any consideration for others, and
to all higher thoughts and feelings generally. The minding of the flesh is death
physically, mentally and spiritually. We see people losing their physical health
and vitality long before the maturer years of life are reached; we see a depraved
mental outlook which is the victim and slave of low desires; we see the lack of
the sense of moral obligation, and the wholly material view of life, which lives
»An address given at Unitarian Free Church, Sunderland, England.
296
A LAY SERMON
297
only for the moment, and recognizes no Divine guidance or order in anything.
Such is the result of going in the direction of the flesh, and the consideration
brings with it a sense of grave responsibility, so far as we ourselves are concerned.
It is said that “the sin and shame of the world are our sin and shame, for we are a
part of it”.
There are people who would like to help the world but who say they can do
little or nothing for lack of ability, position or time. But no poverty or cir¬
cumstance can prevent right thought and right action. Strong, positive thoughts
for good can contribute greatly to the world’s uplifting; they can strengthen the
moral tone generally, and help some individual to withstand the wiles of the
tempter, the sleepless adversary. Is it not an encouraging thought that we
are placed just where we are needed most, and that each of us in our own way can
play our own useful and most necessary part? There is no need to ape the ways
of others. It is much better to do our own duty well—humble though it may be
—than to want some other duty which is not within our scope, and for which we
are not fitted at this particular time. We have our own special task which others
cannot perform. We contact and so can influence a certain number of people
who cross, or go along, our pathway, where others do not reach. On the other
hand, those others contact still a different number whom we could never touch;
and so the world is benefited and enriched by individual effort and sacrifice.
Let us look for a moment for the reason why so many choose the way of death.
First, perhaps, it is due to lack of self-control, lack of will-power to dominate
the lower desires as they appear, or, in other cases, lack of effort to try again when
we have failed to stand the test. For ages, the psychic trend of thought has
done much to strengthen and increase low desires, until what is really perverted
function is even regarded as natural. We are often the victims of such glamour.
Second, it is lack of vision to some extent. We may have heard that we are the
children of God, but we may not realize the spiritual unity of mankind,—that
mankind, in essence, is divine, and that it should be man’s object to express that
divinity in daily life. Man has for so long regarcjed himself as a separate person¬
ality, with no definite fundamental relationship to other personalities, tha t he
lives from the point of view of self-interest, self-assertion, self-preservaoBf He
does not see that he is his brother’s keeper, in fact his very self. So he acts, as a
rule, from the standpoint of diversity, instead of from that of unity. The dual
nature of man is, therefore, the key to the understanding of this verse, the second
half of which we may now consider.
There is no doubt that the minding of the spirit does give life and peace, to
all who live thereby. Some experience this in quite a simple, humble way,
while others have a deeper vision of its reality. But, whatever the understanding,
all sincere effort brings a corresponding result. Our effort and application in the
minding of the spirit, must be according to our vision. The minding of the spirit
to many, might consist mainly of those “little, nameless, unremembered acts
of kindness and of love” without which the world would be a sorry place indeed.
The minding of the spirit might also mean a trusting in God or Providence re¬
garding the affairs of life. There is a faith in things Divine, blind though it
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
sometimes is, that has the conviction of experience, and that tides people over
many a crisis of sickness, hardship or want.
The minding of the spirit is the cultivation of the things of the spirit—and
there are no things more valuable to cultivate. Faith is one of these things,
whether blind or enlightened, though, even with the latter, trust is necessary
before certainty arrives. The disciple must have faith that the Master is there,
before spiritual contact can be made. So we have been told that “Faith is the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. This faith or
trust in things Divine, gives contentment and peace in spite of all trials and
difficulties. There is too little nowadays of, “Ask the Master to help you. He
will carry you through”, and too much of personal, worldly struggle. As the
minding of the spirit gives faith and peace, so it gives life, and in more ways
than one. It gives zeal and energy to do life’s allotted tasks, for now we strive to
do with our might, with our whole heart and soul, what our hands find to do,
and consequently we work much more accurately. And we find a satisfaction
in our efforts, so that in this striving and attaining a greater measure of life is
gained—a dim reflection of that immortal life looming in the distance.
As we cultivate the things of the spirit, we find that this positive attitude is
the best way of eliminating the things of the world. The more concerned we are
with the higher things of life, the higher nature, the less shall we be feeding and
strengthening the lower aspect, the lower nature. It is not that we are to run
away from the world, but that we should be in it and yet not of it. Such effort
is always a battle, a warfare, until the final victory is gained; so it is said that
“he who conquereth himself is greater than he who taketh a city”. We have a
great example in the Christian Master, who withstood all temptation, and
vanquished his enemies by utterly refusing to depart in any way from spiritual
principles. In speaking of these enemies it is well to remind ourselves that there
are two great forces in the world—the force for good and the force for evil—and
thus it will be rightly assumed that those enemies belonged to the evil Powers.
The force for good needs helpers and workers in the world, and it is encouraging
to remember that as we cultivate the things of the spirit we contribute to the
spiritual, the real, welfare of mankind. This is true service, the opposite of self-
seeking in any form. We can become so lifted out of self that we cease to have
personal rights and wrongs, and work solely for this glorious Ideal.
If such a life is a life of warfare, as it undoubtedly is, how can it be “life and
peace”, it may be asked? The life of the spirit is a fuller, wider, deeper experience
than the question supposes; it transcends the purely personal, and reaches up to
that which is permanent and everlasting. “The soul of man is immortal, and
its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour have no limit.”
The peace that is gained is the Master’s peace—that peace which the world can
neither give nor take away. It is not “peace at any price”, nor the cessation of
inner or outer conflict. It is that oneness of heart and purpose whereby the
Master’s will is done at all costs. As a house divided against itself cannot stand,
neither can a man who is pulled this way and that by the winds of fancy and
desire. This peace is that state of mind and heart whereby the whole life is
A LAY SERMON
299
placed in the hands of the Master and the Divine Law. The circumstances and
conditions of life are accepted and made the best of, for the man knows that they
are the wisest and most suitable at any given time. There is certain work to do
and there are certain lessons to learn, and it is remarkable how our circumstances
and conditions provide the necessary scope and opportunity. As has been said,
this peace is no cessation of inner or outer conflict; trials and difficulties arise
from without, from contact with the world, and temptations assail one from
within, through the mind and imagination, where the battle-ground really lies.
But in spite of all, there is this peace and strength, which enable a man to face
confidently, with poise and without fear, whatever may come to him.
Perhaps we now see that “the minding of the flesh is death”, and that “the
minding of the spirit is life and peace”. The former is a life of self-indulgence
with all its attendant e\dls. It unfits man for his work and degrades him.
Selfishness is truly a living death. The minding of the spirit is a life of service
and wise helpfulness; a life of infinite expansion. As a man strives to be, to
embody his knowledge, his life and thought become much more valuable to
his fellows, and his influence for good is greatly increased. Such a life is life,
for it reaches to the higher realms of being, and realizes, in ever increasing degree,
the beauty and grandeur of the universe, and man’s purpose and place in it. Such
a Ijfe is peace, for it is life lived from the spirit; it depends not on worldly struggle
or natural advantage, but on Divine Law. It accepts whatever is its lot with
genuine faith and detachment. It is, therefore, a life lived as an Immortal, true
to its real nature, true to its God, one that alone makes possible the vision of the
Gates of Gold and the ability one day to pass through them.
We have doubtless made our choice as to these two courses of action; it but
remains for us the more vigorously to pursue our pathway.
“Remember, moreover, that only to those who are deaf is life a cry;—it is a
song; and if this be true of life in general, it is also true of life in particular, of
your life and of theirs. We are closest to the heart of things when we are happy!
—when in spite of trials and adversities a fountain of joy and gladness springs
within us. The trials are ephemeral and will pass; the joy is immortal and divine,
and endures for ever. And when I say ‘accept’, I mean no passive ccmcyiion,
but rather what St. Paul implied, when he said, 'Let us lay aside every zt'e^||Rnd
press toward the mark’ ” (Fragments, Vol. I, p. 31).
“There is but one way that a man shall live, and it is this: to face the cir¬
cumstances of his life, whatever they may mean of sorrow, pain, or renunciation,
and in the midst of them courageously and cheerfully to fulfil his duty and carve
out his destiny. Upon the footsteps of such a man the angels wait, and all the
divine powers of the universe acknowledge his commands. When a man has
been able to master his own heart, and at the behest of duty has put aside that
which is dearest, that man has conquered the world” (Fragments, Vol. II, p. 129).
“As that star blazes out on the night sky, so should your life shine in the
material world about you; pointing the way, for those who can see it, to where
the Christ may be found” (Fragments, Vol. II, p. 130).
E. Howard Lincoln.
WITHOUT CENSOR
V.
HE distance from Brest to Bordeaux was something under four hundred
miles by rail, but the journey took us two days and two nights. The
regiment travelled in several sections. The men were packed in the
usual box-cars, each marked “40 Hommes-8 Chevaux”, and were very crowded,
it not being possible for all the men in a car to lie down at the same time. We
distributed the officers among the various trains, the ranking officer on board
being the commanding officer of each train. The Colonel and his staff travelled
on the last section. The travel ration had been issued to all ranks, drinking-
water bottles had been filled, and the men had provided themselves in one way
or another with various unauthorized additions to the ration; but the only hot
nourishment they had during the trip was the coffee which the French Red
Cross served whenever we stopped at one of the larger towns. Sanitary and
washing facilities on the trip were non-existent. The men were so cramped in
their box-cars, our progress was so leisurely and there seemed to be so little
hurry, that two or three times a day we would have the train stopped between
towns, send back a guard along the track to flag anything coming up in our
rear, and turn the troops out for twenty minutes or so in the fields to stretch
their legs. Each one of these stops was the subject of violent expostulations
from our French engineer. He would leave his engine, come back along the
track to the Colonel’s carriage, and break into a torrent of excited and voluble
French. The Colonel, who could not understand a word of what was said, would
inquire what it was all about, and when told that the engineer was concerned
lest we should be run into by another train from behind, this fear being the con¬
stant and predominant one at each stop, would tell us to quiet the man down
again, remarking that, if everything else on the line travelled as slowly as we did,
there was not the slightest danger of an accident, adding with some heat that
personally he would be inclined to get out and walk the rest of the way, were
it not for the fact that he was not expected before the arrival of the train.
The Colonel and his staff were not much better off on the trip than the enlisted
men, except in the matter of food. There were six of us all told, and we occupied
an old railway carriage that was meant to hold four with some crowding, and
which had no upper berths. Four of us managed to sleep on the two seats, by so
arranging ourselves that our feet overlapped in the middle; this necessitated a
skilful preservation of balance, as the seats were narrow, and no abrupt change
of position was possible without kicking one’s bunkmate. The remaining two
slept on the floor between the seats, where as a matter of fact they were really
more comfortable. During the day the train stopped at almost every town
and village for some minutes, and once we realized that this was a regular custom,
we took advantage of it, when we became unbearably hungry, to rush across in
300
WITHOUT CENSOR
301
turns to the estaminet —there was invariably one directly opposite the railway
station at each stop—hastily bolting an omelet and some hot coffee, after having
first thrown out a guard to prevent the men from leaving their cars, and after
having placed another guard over the engineer to make sure that he did not
go on without us.
The real purpose, however, of the guard at the stations, was to prev^ent the
troops from mingling with the crowd at every stop, and from becoming scattered
in their warm response to the friendly and enthusiastic greetings which we
received from the French all along the line. We should never have collected
them, had they been allowed off, when we started again, and should have been
sure to have left some of them behind at each place. We were travelling on a
Saturday and a Sunday, and the Saturday was a Saint’s Day, and consequently
a holiday. Our earlier sections had already gone through before us, and word
had been passed about in the towns that Americans were coming in force;
indeed, it is easy to see that even one regiment, distributed among several
trains, would create an impression, however unwarranted, of several times their
actual number. Consequently, the entire population of each town had appa¬
rently come en masse to the railway station, and had spent the day there to
see the Americans. Women and children predominated; almost all of them were
in black; there were only a few old men. They received us in a most moving
way. As we drew slowly into a station, we would hear the strains of the Mar¬
seillaise being sung, and would be struck by the preponderance of women’s
voices and the high treble of children; the deeper note was missing. As we
stopped, the singing would die away, and they would cheer us with real emotion,
and with a brave waving of the tri-colour and of handkerchiefs. Once we were
stationary, the crowd would break, surging around the box-cars, stretching out
their hands to grasp the hands of our men; offering them, of their scanty store,
fruit and flowers and even chocolate; trying, in spite of the difficulties of lan¬
guage, to tell us, to make us feel, how glad they were that we were there. Our
men would sit in the opening of the cars, and lift the children on their knees
and hold them, while the older ones crowded around close, until surroun^g
each “door” there was a solid mass of people, rapidly cementing the most fnapiy
relations, commenting favourably upon the youth and vigour and froshiwfe of
our men. The very sight of us brought them a new strength and hope, and
brought as well many sad reminders. Tears were running down the faces of
many of the women, and I saw tears in the eyes of many of our men. It was a
royal progress that we made, something far above and beyond anything that
either we or our country had deserved; and yet it was well that it was so, for it
brought to us all, as nothing else possibly could have done, what the War had
meant and still meant to these people who were welcoming us with their whole
hearts. It brought, as well, a fresh resolve and a new consecration.
During the first day, the journey was enlivened by one of the lieutenants, who
became ill and delirious, and who was obviously running a high temperature.
The two Regimental Medical Officers were both on sections in advance of us;
but I sent a telegram ahead, and one of them dropped off at his next stop and
302
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
awaited our arrival there; and by the time we reached Bordeaux at about
I a. m. on the morning of April nth, our patient had almost recovered. Our
Senior Major, who had gone overseas with the advance party from Division
Headquarters, and who had been spending the intervening time making the
necessary arrangements for our arrival at Camp Souge, met us in the railway
station at Bordeaux in the middle of the night, and we found there, as well as
on various sidings, our advance sections which had preceded us. After being
shunted about the rest of the night, we finally disentrained at a little village
west of Bordeaux, formed the regiment in column, and marched three or four
miles to the Camp itself and took possession of our new quarters.
Camp Souge was half way between Bordeaux and the sea, in that flat and
sandy stretch of country called the Landes, and was an immense affair, a perma¬
nent instruction camp, and capable of accommodating two brigades of artillery.
We found already there the three artillery regiments comprising the 152d
Artillery Brigade, of the 77th Division; our divisional infantry were on the
British front, technically in support and reserv^e, but actually receiving their
final instruction and training; later on, we were all to join up together again
in a quiet sector in the Vosges, so that the Division could undergo, as a unit,
its first experience in holding a part of the line. We had been sent so far south
in order that our artillery, after actually receiving their guns (there had only
been two or three field pieces available for training purposes for the entire
Artillery Brigade, during all that long period at Camp Upton) might have inten¬
sive training in their use, and also the experience of actually firing them on the
artillery range at Souge under simulated combat conditions. A short distance
inside the main gateway of the Camp, which was constantly guarded, were the
officers’ quarters for our entire Brigade, a collection of one-story huts in a grove
of trees, each housing three or four officers in separate rooms; and nearby were
the Officers’ Mess and the Camp Hospital. A long, sandy road led to the main
part of the Camp, half a mile away, where were the men’s barracks, each build¬
ing holding a company or a battery, and each regiment having its own area.
There the men lived under the command of their non-commissioned officers.
The barracks were large, airy, and cool, which was important, as we had come
into distinctly warm weather so far south. Twenty-four hours saw us settled,
after the usual appearance of turmoil and confusion, which is so misleading in
the Army, for throughout it things are always rapidly being accomplished.
The first two or three weeks were busy ones for me. We got our instructions
direct from our own Artillery Brigade Commander, so we did not have to present
ourselves officially this time to the American General commanding the Base
Post of Bordeaux. But, through our Brigade Headquarters, a steady stream of
orders, instructions and memoranda poured in, from General Headquarters, A.
E. F.; from the French, under whose direct supervision we were; from the City
of Bordeaux, in regard to certain civic laws and regulations. All of these had to
be adapted for regimental use, or otherwise complied with, and regimental
orders had to be issued explaining them and directing this compliance. New
local rules and regulations covering the Camp and our own regimental area
WITHOUT CENSOR
303
had to be issued. The great docks on the Garonne, which the American Engineers
had assisted in building, were covered with war materiel of all kinds, and the
Ammunition Train received, with a minimum of delay, the ammunition trucks,
caissons, and various wagons and vehicles to which we were entitled, and with
which, up to now, we had only been familiar on paper. The work of obtaining
these devolved largely upon the Colonel and the Supply Officer, but, once
acquired, more regimental orders were issued in regard to their use and the
training which they necessitated. There seemed no end, at first, to the paper¬
work in which I was involved. It tapered off, however, after a while; and once
the training, which included the working out of tactical firing problems with our
artillery, and the actual supplying of ammunition during the problem, got
well under way, it devolved mainly upon our battalion and company com¬
manders, so that my principal share in it was to accompany the Colonel on
horseback, while he observed and criticized what was done. We attended a
number of lectures, by French and American instructors, not only on the handling
of the different kinds of shells, but also, in conjunction with the Artillery officers,
upon strictly technical points in connection with their arm of the Service.
While we really acquired thereby a very considerable general knowledge of
the functions of the artillery, it by no means made us competent to act as
artillery officers; and we were consequently thrown into consternation to learn
that every Ammunition Train which had so far arrived in France had been
officered by men commissioned in the Artillery, and that there was every likeli¬
hood of our being transferred in a body to that arm and re-commissioned in the
same grades. The theory in the old Regular Army had been that, once a Captain,
an officer was competent to function, as a Captain, in any branch of the Service.
This was true in so far as graduates of West Point were concerned. But it was
far from being true in this War in respect to men fresh from civil life, with no
previous military experience; men who had had only a few months training in
their particular arm of the Service. We were filled with forebodings as to what
would happen if we were called upon, as artillery officers, ten days after being
re-commissioned, to fire a battery in action, knowing no more about the technique
of the artillery and its practical operation than we did. We were worrM^inot
about ourselves and about personal failure, but because of the inevitabi^nef-
ficiency which we should display, and the effect it would have upon the lives of
other men. I began to realize that an Ammunition Train was neither one thing
nor the other, neither infantry nor artillery; and I commenced, from that time
on, definitely to turn my mind and attention to the consideration of ways in
which I might work myself out of my present assignment, into a larger sphere of
action. Up to the time when I was finally transferred from the Ammunition
Train some weeks later, no such re-commissioning as had been suggested had
taken place; what happened after my departure, I never learned.
One of my duties had been to read and to censor the letters written home by
the men of the Headquarters Company. Some of these letters were pathetic
and revealing, and it was often possible to do something, indirectly or otherwise,
to meet the need which had been disclosed. But many of them contained nothing
304
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
but stuff and nonsense; the writers were obviously trying to “put it over big
with the folks at home and prove that they were heroes. I remember one letter
from a soldier to his best girl, in which he explained that, although the shells
were shrieking overhead, he was faithfully writing to her just the same, in spite
of the great danger. The shells were shrieking overhead, but it was merely the
artillery firing over the Camp and on to the range, in a practice problem. A
friend in New York sent me a clipping from the Evening Sun, containing extracts
from letters from two sergeants in companies of the 302d Ammunition Train,
which painted “a vivid picture of a train rushing to the gun pits with a supply
of ammunition. No matter how much shell fire is sweeping the roads, the wagons
go. The real praise belongs to the horses, who become terrified when the firing
starts, and in many cases they race to their destination only because of their
fright.” When all this balderdash was written, these two men were safely at
Camp Souge, and had never been nearer the front than Brest. I had already
become very tired of acting as censor, but this kind of thing was the last straw.
I conceived a really brilliant idea as to how to rid myself of this chore, and
suggested to the Colonel that, after all, the Chaplain was the one to censor the
Headquarters’ letters, because, through reading them, he would become more
familiar with the spiritual needs of the men and so be better able to minister to
them. The Colonel heartily approved; so I told the Chaplain that the Colonel
had decided upon this in order to extend his sphere of usefulness, and the good
man was delighted, and so was I.
I have said that the powers that be, had, in their wisdom, seen fit to assign
us a Roman Catholic priest as Chaplain, probably because we had so many
Protestants and Jews in our organization. The usual method seemed to be to
try to pick out a Chaplain of a different denomination from the majority of his
flock; I heard of one regiment, composed largely of Roman Catholics, who had
a Christian Scientist as their spiritual director. However, we were fortunate in
the man assigned to us, as he was a thoroughly good sort, did excellent work,
and was liked and respected by the men. He had proved so useful to me over
censoring letters, that I began to cast about in my mind for other ways in which
he could be of service. A great many cases arose among the men which required
drastic disciplinary action, not possible for the company commanders to take.
Each of these cases was tried by a Special Court Martial, which consisted of
five members, and was less cumbersome and quicker in action than a General
Court Martial. Even so, these Courts took a great deal of my time; and in
order to expedite matters, I suggested to the Colonel that the Chaplain should
be appointed permanent counsel for the defence in all Special Courts. The
Colonel approved, and from then on the administration of justice ran on greased
wheels. The Chaplain would talk beforehand with the accused, and, whenever
he found extenuating circumstances, was usually so delighted and surprised
that he brought the facts out at once at the trial. If, however, the Chaplain
began to talk in general terms about the accused’s previous good record, and
what a good son he had been to his old mother at home, we knew that there was
nothing more to be said for him, shut the Chaplain off with two or three sharp
WITHOUT CENSOR
305
questions, and awarded a speedy sentence. As good a way as any; and justice
was usually done.
As the training of the Regiment progressed, and the initial flood of paper¬
work subsided and became a routine flow, I found that I had more spare time on
my hands than I liked. It was too much like Camp Upton all over again, in a
French setting, and was not at all my idea of getting on with the war. Not
that many days were not pleasant enough. Every morning either my horse,
or a motorcycle side-car, would be waiting for me at the officers’ quarters after
breakfast. After proceeding to Regimental Headquarters in the Camp itself,
and after completing my duties there, I had time for a ride around the range,
which covered several miles, if the artillery were not firing; if they were, one
could ride out to observe, and to hear the criticisms of the French officers. The
dry grass on the range caught fire from bursting shells about once a day in the hot
weather, and men had to be hastily packed into trucks and rushed to the spot
to put it out. In the late afternoons we would practise with the pistol; several
of us wangled a lot of pistol ammunition, and borrowed an Ordnance Sergeant from
one of the companies, who set up targets for us in an isolated corner of the
range, and called the shots. When gas masks were issued, we not only practised
wearing them for short stretches in what we called the lethal chamber, which
was filled with either phosgene or chlorine gas, but also wore them, on and off,
for several hours at a time while we were performing our routine duties, in order
to become entirely at home in them. I can remember wearing mine on horseback,
and while driving a motorcycle over the Landes, and again while sitting at my
table at Regimental Headquarters, this last being a great bore. About this time
friction developed between the Colonel and one of the Majors, and as Adjutant
it became necessary to call upon all of such diplomatic attributes as I possessed
to keep the peace; it was a question of talking with each of them separately after
a ruction, of smoothing them down again, and of calling the attention of each
to the other’s good qualities; of saying the right thing at the right time in the
right way at Mess; of making each of them appear in a favourable light when the
other was present, and of creating a friendly atmosphere again. There were
other instances, too, when tact was needed. One of our Captains persis^tly
allowed his company mess-hall to become dirty and unsanitary. The Reg^Ktal
Medical Officer spoke to me about it more than once, but, in spite of rrT^'sug¬
gestions to the Captain, there was no improvement. Finally, the Medical
Officer said to me that, in his judgment, conditions were sufficiently menacing to
health to make it his duty to go to the Colonel without any further delay. This
I was anxious to avoid, as in all other respects this particular Captain was a very
efficient officer. So, after talking it over with the Medical Officer, I hit upon a
plan. Short conferences were about to take place three times a week between
the Colonel and the senior officers of the Regiment, in which we were to discuss
among ourselves, and to adapt, the instruction we had been receiving. I issued
the order for these conferences, and stated in it that they would be held in the
particular mess-hall which had been under criticism. I went to the first confer¬
ence with great eagerness, anxious to see how my plan had worked; the mess-
3o6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
hall was spotless, sweet, and clean, and smelt strongly of soap; one could have
eaten off the floor, and this pleasing condition continued from then on.
All this sort of thing was absorbing and interesting, and it was the keenest
pleasure, as well, to observe the highly satisfactory way in which the entire com¬
mand was responding to the thorough training which was being given; but
personally I did not feel that I was working at the high pressure which I had
anticipated and wanted. It became increasingly possible for me, with my motor¬
cycle side-car, to go into Bordeaux, sometimes during the week with messages
or dispatches for the Base Port Headquarters, upon which occasions I always
stayed as long as I could there, but more often on Saturday afternoons, when,
usually with several other officers, I would put up at an hotel for the night,
returning to Camp Souge on Sunday afternoon. Upon one of my first visits I
went to a coiffeur, to repair the ravages which lapse of time had made in my
personal appearance. It was a little shop, with a family atmosphere, presided
over by Madame la patronne, who sat at her desk by the door. I was duly
enveloped in a voluminous sort of winding sheet, and was undergoing a friction,
and trying to prevent the coiffeur from emptying every highly-perfumed lotion
in the shop upon my head, when my attention was diverted by a conversation
which was being carried on beside me, and I freed the nearest ear from its
wrapping of towels to listen. In the next chair was a French Colonel of Infantry,
apparently an intimate friend of the management, for Madame la patronne had
left her stool and was standing beside him in an attitude of absorbed attention.
It transpired from the conversation that the Colonel had had two sons killed in
the War, and the third had recently been captured by the Boche. Madame had
come over to inquire if there were any news of him. No, there was none. The
Colonel’s voice sounded tired and broken as he described his anxiety and his
grief. It became firmer and more vehement as he animadverted upon the Boche
in general, and upon several sale qualities which they possessed in particular,
in which Madame most heartily concurred with increasingly rapid interjections.
Finally, in a resounding voice, he exclaimed, “But, with the help of our friends,
the brave Americans, we shall beat them yet!’’, and, swathed as he was in
towels and sheets, and with lather on his face, he got down out of his chair and
advanced towards me with his hand outstretched. I rose to the occasion, and,
removing the towels from my head, descended to the floor, and grasping his hand,
assured him that we were going to do our best, and that such very sad and
painful experiences as I had just had the privilege of hearing him relate, only
made us all the more determined, and that we were happy to be here with the
French, whose courage we so greatly admired. At all events, that was what I
intended, and tried, to say; what actually was said, is another matter. Fortu¬
nately for me, we had quite an audience by this time, as we were surrounded by
the entire personnel of the shop, while a couple of friends had come in from the
street as well; and they were all commenting favourably upon the proceedings
at the same time, which had the effect of somewhat obscuring my remarks. It
must have been an extraordinary sight—we two, swathed in towels and trim¬
mings, with our right hands clasped, each with his left hand on the other’s
WITHOUT CENSOR
307
shoulder. I have laughed about it often since, but never without a tug at the
heart at the same time. That splendid Colonel was so typical of the best of
France,—of all that she had been willing to offer, of all that she had endured,
of all that she was ready and willing still to give, of her brave and indomitable
spirit, of her gratitude to us for coming when she was so hard-pressed, we, who
had come so late!
A Captain, a great friend of mine whom I had known for years in New York,
and I, discovered simultaneously that our uniforms were commencing to show
signs of wear and hard usage. We decided that it would be the part of wisdom,
in view of the fact that we were near a large city where such work was possible*
for each of us to have a spare uniform made for use later on. Accordingly, we
repaired together the following Saturday afternoon to Bordeaux, and found a
tailor with quite an impressive establishment on one of the principal streets.
Upon entering, however, the usual state of affairs presented itself; the proprietor
and all his male assistants, being of military age, were at the front, and the busi¬
ness was being conducted in his absence by his wife and her sister, assisted by
one old man who was both cutter and fitter. Nothing daunted by this, in fact
all the more resolved in view of the circumstances to give them a helping order,
we examined cloths, which were of excellent quality. While measurements were
being taken, the conversation became quite general. From where, from what
part of the United States, were we? Were we always of the Army? No? Were
we, then, of the draft? No? Ah! then, engages volontaires! And of what ages
were we? Did we have families? Enthusiasm was rapidly mounting. Our call
began to take on the aspect of an extremely friendly social visit. Two or three
friends who looked in were urged to enter, and it was explained to them that
these two Americans, far beyond draft age (we began to feel like octogenarians!),
with families and dependents, had volunteered to come and help France. Uni¬
forms were about to be ordered; that reminded them, for a moment or two, of
the business in hand, and measurements were resumed. But only intermittently;
for my friend had to tell them all about his four children, their names and their
ages, and to furnish a wealth of other detail in response to rapid questions.
We could not have escaped, unless we had been willing to relinquish the idea of
new uniforms, which we were not. It was impossible, in the face of this sp onr
taneous, warm-hearted interest, to be either hasty or abrupt. There we wjP
and there we remained for some time, until at last our orders were complrad
and arrangements had been made for fittings. Finally we effected our departure,
surrounded by beaming, kindly, smiling faces, and followed by good wishes called
to us from the doorway. We were old friends from then on; and we were sorry
that our own lack of time and the very efficient tailoring that was done, made our
later visits fewer than we could have wished.
Signs of mourning were everywhere in Bordeaux, in the streets, in the shops,
above all in the churches; four out of every five of the people that one met were
in black. It was heartrending, until we remembered, and took consolation from
the fact, that all this was, perhaps, less significant than it would have been at
home. Always, over there, even “in-laws” and remote cousins have gone into
3o8
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLV
streamers and things that look like widow’s weeds, when a family connection has
died. Nevertheless, it told the story of the toll which almost four years of war
had taken; of all that France had endured. It was in the churches that one
realized this most vividly, for there one would find gathered the real mourners,
the brokenhearted who had come to be healed. I spent all the time I could in the
Cathedral at Bordeaux, and I loved the place, because it was real, particularly
the Lady Chapel behind the High Altar. For there, in the half-light, were
gathered together those who had come to pray in secret, perhaps to weep in
secret: old women and young girls, come to lay for a time all that they were carry¬
ing at the foot of the Cross, before they took it up again and went bravely on;
soldiers cn permission, leaving soon to go back to the lines, there to commend
anew to Divine watchfulness and care those whom they were to leave behind,
to gain for themselves new courage and fresh strength; children to light a candle,
and to say a prayer for the soul of, perhaps, a father, before they went out again
to responsibilities far beyond their years, which they knew would be crushing
without this help. The angels seemed to be thick in that place, left there,
stationed there, because of real prayers. The atmosphere was alive; it must
have made it easy for Him to be present. Those people knew that He was present.
Faces, drawn and tired and stained with tears, were luminous and shining, as one
after another rose from their knees and walked quietly away. One realized, at
such times, all that France had endured. But one realized, too, all that France
could still endure, all of the fighting force and driving power still latent in a
people who had such faith and such devotion, to whom the unseen world was so
forceful and so living a reality.
It is commonly believed in the Army, and it is true, that association with
horses and mules has the peculiar effect of breaking down all reserves of language,
and of inducing in hitherto blameless individuals a freedom in conversation, and
an indulgence in continuous swearing, that becomes startling as that association
continues. When men of all kinds live together under conditions such as obtain
in the Army in war-time, it is inevitable that blasphemy should be almost uni¬
versal. The bars are down and the restraints of ordinary living conditions are
absent, and it was not our horses and mules alone which were responsible for
these expressions in our men, for many of them were fluent enough at the start
of their military careers. Nor was such talk confined to the enlisted men; that
sort of thing is catching, and officers were by no means blameless in this respect.
While at Camp Souge I received a letter from a friend in the Movement, in which
he said: “I was thinking the other day about the swearing, regretting it. I have
been reading that the English troops in particular hardly open their mouths
without blaspheming. But then I realized that by using the name of Jesus
as they do, as an expletive, as emphasis,—they unconsciously do Him honour,
because it’s the biggest and most ‘meaningful’ word they know. It is a recog¬
nition of His supremacy, of His greatness. One would wish for something better,
and for real recognition. But in any case they cannot ignore Him.” I wrote
my friend in reply, and told him that I must, without realizing it, have sensed
something of what he had expressed in his letter; that always I had felt that
WITHOUT CENSOR
309
unrestrained blasphemy was an unconscious evocation of a tremendous force,
called forth and turned loose as it were, a power for good or for evil depending
upon the conditions and circumstances. I told him that, since I had been in the
Army, I had trained myself, whenever men blasphemed, whenever a sacred name
was so spoken, instinctively to bow my head and to repeat that name inwardly,
as an act of devotion, of atonement, of extenuation, because I felt sure that in
some way this act of mine would not only counteract the potential evil in what
had been said, but would turn it into a constructive force, into something which
could be actually used in the inner world. Later in that summer my friend
replied,—“Certainly, whenever you do as you say about misuse of sacred names,
—that in itself would nullify the wrong done. It is one of the things that im¬
presses me most about ‘the Providence of God’: the way He uses evil, not only
for the increase of good, but as a way, through others, to convert evil.’’ This
confirmation was a great help. Had I needed other assurance of the power that is
unleashed through blasphemy, I could have found it in its effect upon those men.
Always it was as if virtue had gone out of them, as if a void were left within,
which had to be filled again.
Sometimes we would vary our week-ends by engaging a private motor, which
it was not easy to do in France in war-time, as there were very few private cars
which had not been requisitioned for military purposes, and there were restrictions
upon the use of petrol; but we were able to manage it occasionally, and motored
through the country around Bordeaux, either to some little village set in the vine-
covered hills, or to some resort on the coast. The coast resorts were later put
“off bounds’’, because of the suspected presence in them of German spies, who
were anxious to find out all about the American units training in the south of
France. We spent one delightful afternoon, visiting an artillery regiment of
another Division which was billeted in the country south of Bordeaux, waiting
until we had left to move into our Camp. The officers were quartered in a
chateau, owned by a French Countess of Irish birth; she entertained us at tea
under the trees on the lawn, and talked charmingly to us, a mixture of French and
English, in the use of which last she was (juite rusty, and with a delightful brogue I
But while this kind of thing was all very pleasant, it was not getting on with the
War. We did it because we had the time, and because we needed some relief
from the monotony of Camp; but we began to long for the everlasting lopiing to
be completed, and to get to the front. This feeling was accentuated H^he fact
that the great American Base Hospitals near Bordeaux began to receive men who
had been wounded in the fighting north of Paris; we would meet walking cases,
officers, in the streets of the city, and hear from them of the fine showing that the
American troops were already making, and of the progress of military events,
of which we, of course, were entirely ignorant, remote as we were, and seeing
only an occasional newspaper which had been carefully censored.
All this time I had been doing a good deal of serious thinking about my own
military future. I had definitely reached the conclusion, as I have said, that the
Ammunition Train was neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, and that to stay
in it, once I had gained a certain amount of military background and experience,
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
310
would simply mean doing hard work at the beck and call of all the other combat
units in the Division, without having any opportunity of really knowing what
was going on. I had been assisted in reaching this conclusion by the fact that the
Colonel was beginning to show certain signs of deterioration. The close prox¬
imity of Bordeaux, and its accessibility, now that we had at last received the
Dodge limousine to which we were entitled, proved too much for him, and he
spent a great deal too much of his time in the caf^s and hotels in the city. An
order had come through from General Headquarters, American Expeditionary
Forces, requiring all regimental commanders to report the names of officers
considered qualified for assignment as battalion commanders, and the Colonel
had sent my name forward with three others, recommending me for ^promotion.
Good enough, as far as it went. While we were at Camp Souge, the Colonel had
been advanced to a full Colonel, and one day, shortly after his promotion, he
called me in and told me that he had been informed that the promotion of
colonels in France was proceeding quite rapidly, and that he had reason to
believe that it would not be long before he received his star as a Brigadier
General; that then he would be given an Infantry Brigade; that when that
happened he would be in a position to move things about as he wanted, and that
he intended then to have me promoted to Major and to make me his Brigade
Adjutant. Of course, I thanked him warmly for his kindness and expressed my
delight at the prospect. But I decided on the spot that, if I was going to hitch
my wagon to a star, it was not going to be his star. It would have been one thing
to have commanded an Infantry Battalion under him as Colonel, as he had
suggested at Camp Upton, for he would have been restricted to some extent by
his Brigade Commander, and he would have relied largely upon the judgment
of his picked Battalion Commanders, just as he had always relied upon certain
officers in the Ammunition Train. But to run an Infantry Brigade under his
direction was quite another proposition. I realized that he did not know enough
about modem Infantry warfare to hold down the job, and that I did not either,
—after spending ten months, during which I ought to have been acquiring
experience as an Infantry officer, in helping him to run an Ammunition Train.
If things went right with his Infantry Brigade, he would get the credit; if,
however, they went wrong, as they certainly would, I should get the blame, and
then I should be sent back to the rear areas for re-classification, and given a job
counting crates on a wharf at some Base Port for the duration of the War! I got
quite worked up over this agreeable picture! However, things seemed to be on
the move again, and the whole current of events was clearly setting away from
the Ammunition Train, which was wholly to the good.
Things moved still further shortly afterwards. Another order came through
from General Headquarters, requiring regimental commanders to submit the
names of all officers in their commands qualified for Staff positions. This seemed
to present the opportunity for which I had been looking. I showed the order to
the Colonel, and asked him whether he thought I was qualified, and, if so,
whether he would recommend me. Somewhat to my surprise, he received the
idea with real enthusiasm, and not only sent my name forward, via Headquarters
WITHOUT CENSOR
3 ”
77th Division, but wrote as well a personal letter to the Chief of Staff of the
Division on my behalf. He also wrote personal letters about me to the Division
Judge Advocate and to the Assistant to the Division Chief of Staff, enclosing
copies of the letter which he had sent to the Chief of Staff himself. He could
not have been more complete in his effort for me or more generous in what he
said, and I began to be sorry for some of the rather harsh judgments which I had
been forming, and to dwell again upon his amiable qualities, which were many.
I was elated over all this, and felt that as a result something was really going to
happen. It did; but I was not to know it for three weeks, not until after we had
joined up with the rest of the Division in the sector at Baccarat in the Vosges.
Our time at Camp Souge was drawing to a close, and we began to arrange
things with a view to an early departure for the front. On the Fourth of July,
our 152d Field Artillery Brigade paraded in Bordeaux, as infantry and without
their guns, which would have been difficult to move into and out of the city,
and in the circumstances they made a very good showing. I viewed the pro¬
ceedings with the Colonel from the reviewing stand, and several French officers
and their wives made very kind and gratifying remarks about our march past.
Immediately thereafter we started inspections again, and repaired any slight
deficiencies in equipment, and were ready to move several days before our orders
came. Soon our artillery regiments entrained, one by one, and departed; as
usual, we were the last to go. We sent off first our motor trucks, which proceeded
by road in two convoys, in command of the two ranking captains. Our animals
and materiel took up a great deal of space, so that when the balance of the
command was finally entrained, five sections of about sixty cars each were
needed, each section, as before, having its commanding officer and a carefully
organized staff to assist him. Again the Colonel and I travelled in the last
section. We were waiting to pull out of the station in Bordeaux, on the 13th of
July, and were bemoaning the fact that again we had drawn a perfectly terrible
old railway carriage, when we happened to see on a siding near by a fine modem
carriage; we at once investigated its interior, and found that it had staterooms
and a shower-bath. We decided to travel in it, and sent for the Chef de Care.
He told us at some length that it would be perfectly impossible to chang^Ae
cars; but he changed his mind, and the cars too, for a financial consideraBR,
and we finally pulled out in the highest spirits. It had taken a long while to get
to the front, but we were bound there at last.
{To be continued)
Centurion.
TWO ANCIENT RECORDS
far back as we can grope our way in the history of earliest Egypt, we
come upon records (often, alas, mere fragments), which tell us of the
appearances from time to time, in the world of men, of great Beings
from higher spheres. Sometimes the account concerns a tradition only—a
tradition brought over from the far past; again it is a detailed description of an
event, written shortly after it had taken place, telling us in glowing, living
words just what had happened. Usually, though not always, the great “Shining
Ones” appeared in moments of impending national danger, or when some im¬
portant national decision was about to be made; usually also, it was to the
reigning Pharaoh that they revealed themselves, though simple peasants, pious
and devout, were occasionally vouchsafed a heavenly vision. In those won¬
derful days, the Lodge was very near to earth, and men’s hearts were so at¬
tuned that the Masters could easily be evoked; and in the late d3masties, when
written records were so numerous (we might almost say endless), we are con¬
tinually coming upon allusions to the appearance or command or intervention
of one of “the gods”—one of the Masters as we should now express it.^
Thus Hatshepsut, the great Queen of the XVIIIth Dynasty, tells us of con¬
versations with her “god” when she enters the sanctuary of the beautiful,
colonnaded temple which she had built for him, close under the towering, rugged
cliffs which, on the Lybian side, bound the vast plain of Thebes. She tells us
of the great temple garden which she had laid out and beautified with sunny
terraces of myrrh trees, brought for the purpose from the distant land of Punt—
“just as he commanded me”; and she adds, with a graphic touch: “It is large
for him, he walks abroad in it.”
One of the most celebrated and detailed of these ancient records (though
Egyptologists invariably seem to regard it as merely fiction) is on a votive stela
erected by Thothmes IV, immortalizing an experience which had come to him
when a young prince, long before he ascended the throne. It was an appear¬
ance of the god Ra-Horakhti, close beside the sphinx—the sphinx which had
been consecrated to him from of old; the sphinx which already, even in the time
of Thothmes IV, was half buried under the drifting desert sands. This vision
occurred in the full light, the blinding noon sunshine of an Egyptian day, yet
the light of the god as he stood there was so powerful that it dissipated the rays
of the sun, as the radiant splendour of dawn will scatter the dark shadows of
night. Tradition tells us that the Sun-god had already been seen (though at
long intervals), in this same place, which was a likely one for such visions, being
holy ground, set apart, sacred to Ra-Horakhti himself. The huge red granite
commemorative stela still stands on the very spot where the vision was seen,
directly in front of the sphinx, between the gigantic forepaws; and although the
» The translations of the texts used here, are those of Maspero or of Breasted.
312
TWO ANCIENT RECORDS
313
inscription, recording the event, is now so badly damaged that at least a third
of the narrative is lost, what has been preserved bears the unmistakable stamp
of reality and truth.
Thothmes IV was the son of Amenhotep II, of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and he
lived, roughly speaking, about 1430 b.c. He was not the heir-apparent at the
time of the vision, although later, owing to several deaths among his brothers,
he became King. As a boy he was headstrong, adventurous and brave; he was
much beloved by the entire army because of this, and he gave promise of some
of the remarkable physical strength for which his father, Amenhotep II, was so
celebrated. Devoted to the chase as to all other manly sports, he was often
seen racing across the desert sands in headlong pursuit of game, outstripping
all his attendants; he was not easily held in leash. The story on the stela runs
as follows:
When Thothmes was still quite a youth, “Behold he did a thing that gave
him pleasure, upon the highlands of the Memphite nome, upon its southern and
northern road, shooting at a target with copper bolts, hunting lions and wild
goats, coursing in his chariot, his horses being swifter than the wind; together
with two of his followers, while not a soul knew it.” And toward midday, when
the heat became overpowering, he halted in his sport for the purpose “of giving
rest to his followers”, and he himself, as was his wont on such occasions, re¬
tired into the cool shade “at the shoulder of Horakhti—he rested in the shadow
of the great god”, and there he fell asleep. Then “a vision seized him at the
hour when the sun was in the zenith”, and Thothmes heard, close beside him,
the voice of Ra-Horakhti, “speaking with his own mouth, as a Father speaks
to his son, saying: ‘Behold thou me! See thou me! my son Thothmes. I am
thy Father who will give thee my kingdom on earth at the head of the living.’ ”
As the boy lay there, intently listening, he must have been startled by this
prophecy, for at that time he had no royal expectations whatsoever. But the
heavenly voice continued, giving definite counsel for the future, telling him
what was expected of him when at last he sat upon the throne. The god’s com¬
mand was, of course, couched in allegorical form, as was always the case—he
spoke of Egypt’s need as he would speak of his own. “Thou shalt be to me a
protector, for it is as though I were ailing in all my limbs. The sand of the
desert upon which I am, has reached me; turn to me to have that done which I
desire, knowing that thou art my son, my protector.” Egypt had slipped away
from the ancient ideals upon which she had been founded; alreadj^pc was
buried under an accumulation, centuries old, of ever-increasing m^rialism,
piling up in mountainous drifts like the encroaching sands. She must be saved,
unearthed, set free to serve the gods, the Lodge, as in days of yore, and the
young Prince Thothmes was the one chosen by the gods to attempt this gigantic
task. A promise of heavenly assistance was quick to follow: “Behold I am with
thee, I am thy leader”, Thothmes is assured. The narrative then concludes:
“When he [Horakhti] had finished speaking, the King’s son awoke; he under¬
stood the words which the great one had spoken, and he kept them secret in
his heart.” But he hurried home to make a vow in the temple that if ever he
314
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
became Pharaoh he would remember and be true to his vision. He did become
King, but unfortunately he did not live long enough to accomplish all that had
been hoped. There can be no doubt, however, that the effort to clear Egypt of
that which was engulfing her, was definitely and consciously carried on by some
of the Pharaohs who followed, not so much perhaps by Amenhotep III, the son
of Thothmes, but certainly by Akhenaton his grandson, whose religious revolu¬
tion was one of the greatest protests against the lowering of ideals that Egypt
over saw.
For more than a century the fight went on, with varying success, few of the
Pharaohs who followed being of the calibre to make much headway against
the growing evil. In most cases each regarded his own glory as of more im¬
portance than the glory of Egypt; the old-time singleness of purpose had passed
away. Of course, there are records of the appearance and intervention of the
gods during this interval, but most of these records are rather academic, and
do not carry the hall-mark of actual experience. Then, with Rameses the Great
(1292-1225 B.C.), we come upon the last whole-hearted and sustained effort to
save Egypt from her approaching fate, and had a few more men of his stamp
succeeded him on the throne, the course of Egypt’s history would undoubtedly
have been much altered.
Rameses II came to the throne when still a very young man, and from the
first, his warrior qualities, his power, his force, manifested themselves, and
his long reign had hardly begun when he, carried along on the tide of his fiery
impetuosity, hurled himself upon the Hittites who were swarming in the north-
Syrian provinces, threatening to creep still farther south. The Battle of Kadesh
on the banks of the Orontes, is one of the great battles of the world, the first
of the world’s great battles of which we have any tactical details, and, thanks
to the records, we can follow the disposition of both armies all through it. We
owe our information to what is known as the “Poem of Pentaur’’—a poem
in rhymed strophes, very long and full of minutest particulars. Whoever the
true author of this poem was (for Pentaur was only the scribe who did the
copying), he must have been present during the entire campaign or have heard
all about it from Pharaoh himself, for even after the lapse of thirty centuries,
this epic is still vibrant with life. Briefly, the events immortalized in it were as
follows:
Toward the end of April, 1288 b.c., Rameses started north with an army of
veterans—approximately 20,000 men. This was composed of four divisions: of
Amon, Ra, Ptah and Sutekh. Pharaoh, at the head of his troops, led the way in
his glittering chariot of electrum, followed at a short distance by the division of
Amon which was under his immediate command. The other divisions marched
in the order given, with about four miles between them. This long line of troops
(a large army for that day), pressed steadily to the north, sometimes along the
Phoenician coast road, sometimes turning inland, and after a march of about a
month, the Egyptians reached the east bank of the upper Orontes—“the heights
to the south of Kadesh”—looking all the while for the enemy, but failing to
find any trace of him. Here they encamped.
TWO ANCIENT RECORDS
315
Kadesh, of great strategic importance, and then a garrison town of the Hit-
tites, was perched high above the valley of the Orontes, a fortress on a hilltop.
The banks of the river were both precipitous and lofty, and there was only
one narrow passage along which the Egyptian army, foot soldiers and chariots,
could pass, mostly in single file. It was therefore impossible to see the Hittite
forces which were waiting silently and expectantly on the plain beyond Kadesh
—the Pharaoh was in total ignorance of their whereabouts. He commanded his
officers to discover the position of the enemy, which they evidently failed to do,
reporting that, in terror at his approach, the Hittites had retreated to Aleppo.
Rameses was further misled by false information given him by two make-believe
deserters, sent out by order of the Hittite King for this express purpose, and,
believing himself to be in complete control of the situation and with a mis¬
placed sense of security, he rashly pushed on the next day, crossed the river
by the ford at Shabtuna, passed through the Forest of Bay on the left bank, and
far outstripping the main body of his army, and supported only by his body¬
guard, took up an advanced position on the plain to the north-west of Kadesh,
hoping thus to cut off all lines of communication between the town and the
enemy—the enemy which he thought to be a hundred miles away to the north.
He was followed at some distance by the division of Amon; the three other divi¬
sions (that of Ra in the van), came on at a slower pace with about four miles
distance between them.
The King’s sense of security does not, however, last very long for, in his
advance camp, “his majesty sitting in his tent upon his golden throne, sur¬
rounded by his staff’’, there arrives “a scout belonging to the service of his
majesty, bringing with him two captured enemy scouts’’. These being cross-
examined by the young King himself (so eager is he to learn, at first hand, the
truth of the situation), they tell him that, as a matter of fact, the Hittites “to¬
gether with many other countries’’, are only a few miles away. “See, they are
standing, drawn up for battle just behind Kadesh. . . . They are like the mul¬
titudes of the sands; they cover the valleys and mountains like grasshoppers.’’
This terrible news “fills the King’s tent with consternation’’, and Rameses
in a towering rage, turns upon his officers: “Look you, how ye have ^ed!
Ye have told Pharaoh that the enemy was in the land of Aleppo—thatJ®iad
fled before my majesty on learning of his approach! And this is what TTiear,
at this hour, from these scouts—that the enemy has come with men and horses
as numerous as the sands, and that he is drawn up behind Kadesh the Per¬
fidious. And my officers knew naught of it!’’ Then the officers, cowed and
terrified, begin to make excuses, putting the blame on others, but they are
indignantly cut short; there is not a moment to waste, and the Vizier is ordered
to send a messenger south, with the utmost speed, in order to hasten the arrival
of the rest of his majesty’s forces. On the temple reliefs (in Thebes) which
illustrate the Battle of Kadesh, a lonely horseman is seen at break-neck gallop,
going in search of the divisions which are still in the rear, and shouting as he
hails them: “Forward! Forward! Pharaoh your master is attacked!’’
While Rameses, in the royal tent, is holding his council of war, the division
3i6
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
of Amon comes up, and starts to encamp around the King, but the Hittites, no
doubt knowing all about what is going on, and realizing that their moment
for action has arrived, manoeuvre their chariotry around Kadesh to the east,
so that they still remain entirely hidden from the Egyptians—hidden behind
the hill on which Kadesh stands. Here, on the right bank of the Orontes, at
the ford a little to the south of the town, the Hittite chariots are massed for
the attack, and when the division of Ra is seen, on the left bank, emerging
from the Forest of Bay, 2,500 Hittite chariots, with three men in each, suddenly
come thundering across the shallow ford of the river and, like a whirlwind, fall
upon the right flank of the Egyptians “and cut in two the division of Ra, march¬
ing all unconscious and quite unable to reform its ranks”. The fugitive Egyp¬
tians, driven like autumn leaves before an on-rushing storm (the Hittite chariots
in hot pursuit), tumble headlong into the totally unprepared advance camp,
the result being frightful confusion, and a scattering to all sides of the force
already gathered there. Rameses in his tent, sees his defeated army fleeing
past in wildest disorder and dismay; he makes a desperate attempt to stay the
rout but is not heeded because his army has, for the moment, gone mad with
fear. His officers (perhaps in an effort to stem the tide of retreat—perhaps to
save themselves!), rush out of the royal presence, and the King sees the extended
wings of the enemy close around him—he is completely isolated, unattended,
solitary. All these changes have come about like the stroke of a hammer, and
we can only wonder that Rameses is not cut to pieces or, far worse, taken pris¬
oner then and there. One thing, however, saves the situation: when the Hit¬
tites realize that they are actually in Pharaoh’s camp, they think only of plunder,
and give themselves up to it riotously. Thus the King has time to re-adjust
himself and to act.
It is at this point that Rameses, seeing the desperate if not utterly hopeless
situation that he is in, turns to his god and, in a loud voice which “echoes as
far as distant Thebes”, invokes him imperiously, with a touch of reproach in
his words: “Who art thou then, my Father? A Father forgetful of his son? I
call upon Thee, O my Father! Behold me here in the midst of peoples so nu¬
merous that no man knoweth who are the nations leagued against me, and I
am all alone! None other is with me! My numerous soldiers have deserted me,
none of my chariot-fighters hath regarded me when I have called upon them;
not one of them hath heard my voice when I cried to them. But I know that
my Father is more to me than a million soldiers, than a hundred thousand
chariots, than a myriad brothers or young sons; for numbers of men count for
naught, but my Father prevaileth against them.”
The deafening noise of the conflict is going on all around him: the clash of
arms, the thunder of the horses’ feet as they sweep past, the shouts of the vic¬
tors, the cries of the wounded and dying. But he is not listening to these. His
ear is trained on sounds not of this world; he is listening intently for the answer
to his call. He hears it—just behind him, we are told—and wheeling sharply
he sees his god, in the guise of Amon-Ra, standing there in a flood of light, and
in full battle array: crested with tall plumes, the Sun-disc blazing on his fore-
TWO ANCIENT RECORDS
317
head, one arm raised high above his head, the hand grasping the curved sword
of the Egyptian warrior, the other hand stretched out to Rameses, while he
“utters a cry of joy” at the sight of the young King, forsaken but undaunted:
“See me here face to face with thee, Rameses Meriamon (my beloved!). I am
with thee! ’Tis I, thy Father! My hand is with thee, and I am worth more
to thee than hundreds of thousands. I, the Mighty One, who love valiance—I
have recognized a courageous heart, and My heart is satisfied.”
Rameses, his momentary uncertainty gone, regains his customary intrepid
initiative, and with his own hand (since there is not a soul in attendance), he
seizes “his adornments of battle, and arrays himself in his coat of mail ... he
betakes himself to his horses”, he goes in search of his own chariot, “being
alone by himself” he puts his horses into it with his own royal hands, and with¬
out a moment’s hesitation, clothed in the radiant power of his god, he charges
six times, furiously like a devouring flame, right into the thick of the fight,
smiting and slaying to right and left. He strikes such terror into the hearts
of the enemy (who think that he is Mentu, the god of war), that they flee for
life before him: “His majesty hurled them headlong, one upon another, into
the waters of the Orontes”, says the chronicle. Having now, by his contagious
and irresistible audacity, restored some order to his stunned and demoralized
troops, and the division of Ptah having come up, a united charge is made. In
one of the reliefs we see the Hittites and their allies struggling in the water, or
being dragged out of it by their comrades on the opposite shore; the enemy
perished by thousands in wounded, killed or drowned. Then at length, the
Hittite King, realizing that night was coming on, and fearing the possible ar¬
rival of the missing fourth division—that of Sutekh—retires within the walls
of Kadesh, leaving undisputed the field of battle to the Egyptians.
While the “Poem of Pentaur” continues for some time after the events just
recorded (for the campaign was not yet completed), Amon does not again ap¬
pear in the text. We are left to infer his protective, overshadowing presence
throughout the rest of the conflict, though he is not himself made visible to us.
But Rameses II lived to be a very old man, and his long and illustrious reign
was full of war and rumours of war—it was one long fight, his “god” being ever
present at his side. When at last the end of his life came and he died, it is not
too much to say that the gods seem to have departed with him. 'rhejj^^ere
yet many long centuries in the history of Egypt, but she was slowl^^ying
through all that time; the reign of Rameses the Great marked the last uncom¬
promising stand against the dark powers of evil. Many records have been
left to us of those later days; they are, however, mostly of a very inferior qual¬
ity; almost all.lack the living touch which is so striking in the earlier annals.
After Rameses II, the great “Shining Ones” seem more and more to have re¬
tired from the scenes of men: of the succeeding Pharaohs there was not one
spiritually strong enough to call them back, and the twilight of the gods crept
slowly over the “Beloved Land”.
Hetep-en-Neter.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
HE man who loses his nerve, or whose nerves are ‘shot to pieces’ as a
result of prolonged strain or crisis, is invariably a man whose belief in
a spiritual world is merely nominal. In any case, that is what my own
observation has taught me.”
It was the Engineer who volunteered this remark in the course of a conver¬
sation in which several of us took part. ‘‘I am speaking practically, from my
experience in business”, he continued, ‘‘and do not hesitate to say that almost any
kind of a faith, so it be real, is better than none. A man, for instance, faces the
possibility, even the probability, of financial ruin, with his wife and children
unprovided for; perhaps, in addition, he is responsible for the savings of others,
his friends, whose ruin would follow his own. To pretend that this is not a terrible
situation, humanly speaking, would be to condemn oneself as heartless and
insensible; but what should be the reaction to it? Self-pity? Clearly not. As
a matter of fact, while the fight is fast and furious, a man has no time for self-
pity; but if, during intervals of pause or rest, he allows a stock of that poison
to accumulate, it is almost inevitable that as soon as the crisis is over, or seems
to be over, whether for good or ill, he will cave in physically and nervously, as the
outer expression of his preceding inner and moral lack.”
‘‘But what ought to be his reaction?” someone asked.
‘‘The answer to that must depend upon the nature of his faith, of his con¬
victions. The reaction of a student of Theosophy would not be the same as
that of an orthodox Christian, or Mohammedan, or Buddhist, or Christian
Scientist; but in any case a taint of self-pity would be fatal—and it is astonishing
how rarely self-pity is recognized, not only as an enemy, but as a disgrace.
So long as we are mortal, we shall be subject to its attacks; but if we deal with it
as we might deal with thoughts admittedly vile, and passionately, or with
loathing, expel it,—we shall have turned such ‘insults of the devil’ (I love that
old-time phrase) into a moral victory, and therefore into moral strength.”
The questioner was not satisfied. ‘‘But if a student of Theosophy”, he per¬
sisted, ‘‘were situated as you have imagined, what ought to be his reaction?”
The Engineer laughed. “Again, it ‘all depends’ ”, he said. “It depends upon
the individual approach, and especially upon the degree of spiritual insight
which the individual possesses. It seems to me, however, that there are certain
fundamentals which are common to all ‘faiths’. One of these is the conviction
(and unless it be a conviction, it will be useless) that this life is a bridge, not to be
built on, but to be passed over,—to quote one of the sayings attributed to Jesus
by the Mohammedans; another is that the invisible world is more real, and
infinitely more lasting, than the visible; yet another is that so long as we con¬
scientiously strive to do our duty, as we see it, and in obedience to the divine
law, nothing really harmful can happen either to us, or, as a result of our action,
318
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
319
to those we love or would serve. But that is not all, for one of the most important
of fundamentals is the conviction that there exists a transcendent and indwelling
Light, which some would call God, others, the Atma or Higher Self, others,
Krishna or Christ, according to the Master or Avatar they recognize,—and that
this Light (‘the Masters and the inner light are not different’, as Judge said),—
that this Light is for us the embodiment of wisdom, love, and power,—truly a
‘Father in Heaven’.
“Many people say they believe in such things, and perhaps honestly think
they do; but, when the test comes, and their nerves get the better of them, what
further proof is needed that they have built on sand, instead of on rock? Their
faith, so-called, is unreal; they have not given it enough thought, enough atten¬
tion, from day to day, to turn it into a conviction; they have not put it to the
test in advance of their need. If they had, they would have found, from day to
day, cause for ceaseless thanksgiving, and then, through times of storm and
stress, would have found at least as much cause for it,—instead of an excuse for
self-pity, or for inner, ill-concealed trepidation. ... I repeat: for practical
purposes, for stability in times of crisis, for the stamina which lasts through a
period of strain and comes through on the other side, serene and smiling,—give
me a man with any kind of real faith, and pity the man who has none.’’
“But surely a man’s physical condition has much to do with it!’’ one of our
visitors exclaimed.
“Not in the least’’, the Engineer answered, uncompromisingly. “I am assum¬
ing a nervous, high-strung temperament to begin with. A nerveless man may be
able to go through a battle unmoved. I am not talking of such people; nor, as a
matter of fact, do I remember having met any. Unsound physical condition
may make a man feel ‘jumpy’ and irritable; lack of self-control may result in
showing this at times, which is gravely wrong (most of us, alas, must plead
guilty); but that is not the point. The point is: to what centre does a man
react,—to one of stillness or of turmoil? Does he automatically revert to some¬
thing above and greater than his worries, which (or who) sees the causes of his
worries more truly than he can, helping him to extract the sting of self from
them; or, for lack of the conviction that the ‘above and greater than’ himself
exists, and that it is his heart’s home, does he remain on the level of his wcjrip,
and merely try to divert his thoughts by reading a novel, by going t^Rrie
pictures’, or by similar means? The truth is that in hours of difficulty or danger,
many a bed-ridden man or woman, with real faith, has been the moral support
of all the able-bodied people within reach. Physical ill-health, instead of being
an obstacle to the inner poise of which I speak, has often helped to establish it,—
the need for support from within, tending to turn the attention and desire toward
the world from which it flows. ‘Demand creates supply’, let us remember; but
let us also remember that the supply of anything worth while takes time—that
rocks are not created in a day—and that a sudden howl to heaven from a man
who finds himself in a hole, cannot possibly give him that which only years of
thought, of meditation, of prayer, of experience, can make immovable. To begin
now, is the moral of it.’’
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
“What you have been saying,” remarked the Historian, “is strikingly in line
with some recent observations by General Weygand, one of the greatest soldiers
the Great War brought to the front,—a man as remarkable for his personal disin¬
terestedness and humility, as for his force and military genius. Interviewed
a few weeks ago, on the eve of his retirement as Commander-in-Chief of the
French armies, he was asked what he thought of the epoch through which we are
living. This was his reply:
It is rather disquieting. There are many people who are intelligent, many who have
talent. That is perhaps the worst of it, for they lead public opinion, and the intellectuals of
to-day turn all their intelligence into ‘research’. Their whole life is an investigation, and
the result, in a single word, is douht. Now it is perhaps interesting to doubt; I believe, even,
that it is useful for a country to have some who do the doubting. But not too many. If
everyone doubts, the country suffers from it, terribly.
“The editor of the paper in which I found this interview quoted, comments
that many of these so-called intellectuals spread their plague of doubt over
everything: is there any foundation in reason, they ask, for morality, for patri¬
otism, for self-sacrifice, for honour, for government, for believing, even, that man
really exists, or for believing in the past, or the future? This attitude percolates
down to the man-in-the-street who, with a minimum of understanding, takes it
for justification of anarchy, both inner and outer.
“Weygand’s statement of conditions is very temperate, but he evidently
realizes that the lack of inner conviction, lack of faith— doubt —is one of the
major contributing factors in the decay of the modem State, just as the same
lack deprives the individual of inner coherence and poise,—with the result of
which you were speaking: loss of nerve or of nervous control, in times of real
trial and trouble.”
“I am wondering”, said the Student at this point, “whether a man who was
completely masculine, would go to pieces at such times, even though devoid
of faith. My reason is that self-pity seems to me to be foreign to the truly
masculine temperament, and I believe, as the Engineer seems to believe, that
self-pity is the undermining factor in nervous collapse.”
“First find your man who is completely masculine”, laughed the Historian.
“There have been such men; doubtless there still are (I am not speaking of mem¬
bers of the Lodge who combine all the qualities in balanced perfection); but
you will agree, I think, that most of us, in this Age of Kali, are very far from
being one hundred per cent anything, and that we simply must have an antidote
within us if we are to survive the attacks of our own inherent weaknesses. In
other words, we must have some sort of faith, as the Engineer concluded.”
“I have been thinking of self-pity in another connection also”, the Engineer
now resumed; “that is, of the predominant part it plays in mourning for the
dead. There are exceptions always. I have known of people who suffered
agonies of remorse on the death of a relative or friend, blaming themselves
bitterly, sometimes with reason, sometimes with none, for their sins of omission
or commission where he had been concerned; and this was perhaps accompanied
by unspeakable regret that it was now too late, or seemed to be, to atone, or to
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
321
tell him of their repentance. I can respect that, though personally I believe we
can tell him of our repentance just as easily after he is ‘dead’, as before. It
certainly does not follow that because we cannot hear him, he cannot hear us.
On the contrary, I am afraid that in many cases the so-called dead, for some time
following their departure from this world, remain closely in contact with it, and
are deeply distressed by the grief of those they have left on earth, whom they
strive vainly to reassure and to console. What I cannot respect is the attitude of
those who declare their belief in a future life, and that it is a state of ‘refreshment
and rest’; who declare, further, that they have nothing with which seriously to
reproach themselves in their past behaviour to the dead, and who, none the less,
grieve as those only have a right to grieve who believe that death is the end of
life, the end of mutual love, the end of all things. I cannot respect their feeling
because, quite obviously, it is one of self-pity, and although none of us, at such
times, can hope to rise above it entirely, we might at least have the grace to be
ashamed of our weakness, instead of regarding it as a virtue or merit, as so many
people seem to do. We should brace ourselves against it; not give in to it;
and we should force ourselves, as soon as possible, not only to think but to speak
of our dead, lovingly, cheerfully, as we might speak of those who have preceded
us on a journey, and whose welcome when we join them is, as it were, just round
the corner.”
‘‘Self-pity doubtless accounts for a great deal”, the Philosopher commented,
'‘but I think there is an even more childish element involved in the behaviour
of many people who are supposed to be mourning their dead; that is, self-impor¬
tance,—the desire to feel important, and to be recognized as important by others.
Part of what we mean when we describe a person as common (very different
from being vulgar) is that he is undeveloped, elementary, childish; and we
know the lengths to which many small boys will go in their efforts to appear
important in the eyes of their fellows. ‘My father is dead’, will be announced
with more sense of importance than if the same small boy had won a prize at
school. I remember, on one occasion, over-hearing such an announcement met
with the counter-blast, ‘That ain’t nothing; I lost me father an’ mother an’
four brothers an’ three sisters’. ‘Liar’, shouted the other boy, ‘I seen your
father this morning.’ They tried to settle it with blows, but I did not w^iov
the decision. I do not think we allow sufficiently for the fact that thffarge
majority of people, including numbers who ought to know better, never out¬
grow such childishness. We make the fatal mistake, all the time, of treating
human appearances as human beings, when the truth is they are elementals,
harmless perhaps, but entirely devoid of soul. The mental processes of the
average man (incidentally, of ninety per cent of our voting population) are so
primitive, so fantastically inconsequential and infantile, so utterly unrelated to
truth in any form; his motives are so unblushingly those of a six-year-old boy,—
that it should be easy to understand why a country like ours is in the condition of
a nursery full of children, peevish, quarrelsome, noisy, miserable, without Elders
to look after them, and without sense enough even to wish that Elders would
look after them.”
322
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
“But we were talking about death”, complained one of our visitors, “and I
wanted to ask a question.”
“I did not change the subject!” the Philosopher smiled; “I enlarged upon
it. What was your question?”
“Do you believe in wearing mourning?” “Certainly I do”, was the reply.
“It is a very convenient way of saying, ‘Not at home’. Also it may be regarded
as a symbol of respect for the dead. But the wearing of mourning is a matter of
race, religion, class, period. There can be no universal or absolute rule.”
“The subject of death bores me”, the Sceptic suddenly interposed; “and
you will bore your readers. Some of us are interested in Life; most of us are
interested in how to get something for nothing, living or dead.”
The Philosopher took him up instantly. “But death is as much a prolongation
of life, as night is a prolongation of day”, he said. “Either for that reason, or from
an intense desire to postpone ‘the end’, the more interested you are in life, the
greater should be your interest in death. It is a fascinating subject, I assure
you.”
“Is that why you want to talk about it? Rather sudden, isn’t it?”
“No”, said the Philosopher, “not sudden. I am manifesting Cyclic Law!
Periodically—every ten years or so—I read some books on Spiritualism, just to
see how it is getting along; if it is learning anything; and I have just finished
the latest output. There was a noticeable revival of Spiritualism in England
and her Colonies, following the Great War, just as there was in America after
the Civil War. Innumerable sons, brothers, husbands, had been cut off in their
prime, and those who loved them, longed for definite assurance of their survival.
Too often, the consolation of the Churches was very vague, very uncertain,—
while, in many cases, the War itself had shattered what had been a merely
nominal faith; so grief, or distress, resulted in a rush to stances, the demand of
course creating a supply. A somewhat later result was the publication of books,
giving evidence of survival, some of it really striking, but all of it, without excep¬
tion, tending to confirm the theosophical explanation of such phenomena, and,
above all, to justify H.P.B’s. repeated warnings against participation in what
is fundamentally unwholesome, dangerous and wrong. I went to a stance once,
more than thirty years ago, and could not be hired to go to another, though I
saw things then which I still believe to have been genuine, and which were cer¬
tainly very remarkable.”
This was too much for the Sceptic, whose curiosity—like that of all sceptics
—is highly developed.
“What did you see?” he asked.
But the Philosopher was not easily diverted. “I have decided to talk about
Death,” he said, “and what I saw were phenomena not primarily intended to
throw light on the problem of survival; primarily they were exhibitions of what,
if I remember rightly, used to be called apport—tho, transportation of physical
objects, from a distance, through matter, by invisible means.”
This made things worse instead of better, and the Philosopher quickly realized
that the more important matters he wanted to discuss would receive no attention.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
323
from the Sceptic in any case, until the apport business had been described—and
side-tracked. After saying something to this effect, jokingly, he continued:
“I was in one of the big cities of Australia, where I happened to meet the
American Vice-Consul, a man of some wealth, and brother of a man whose
name was as well and as favourably known on the West Coast of our continent
as the name of Brown is known in Rhode Island. My new acquaintance told me
that he had visited Australia, on business, some forty years earlier, intending to
remain there only a few weeks, but he had been so terribly sea-sick during
the voyage, that nothing could have induced him to face such an ordeal again;
so there he was, an old bachelor, in a comfortable home, with hobbies to keep
him occupied and happy. He was a naturalist, and besides a large aviary, had
formed remarkable collections of botanical and geological specimens. But his
chief hobby was Spiritualism, though he did not mention this until he had met
me several times and had made sure I was ‘open-minded’. He then explained
that after long search and experiment, he had found a most satisfactory medium,
a man, whom he had every reason to believe was honest, and whom he had taken
into his exclusive employment. He had conducted stances with this medium
for several years before my arrival on the scene, with what he regarded as excel¬
lent results. In the first place, he had complete command of the situation, as
the stances were held invariably in his own home, with no one present except his
personal friends, and with ample opportunity to search the medium and to take
every other precaution against fraud. In the second place, he had become able,
in the course of time, to use his medium as a collector of botanical and other
specimens. The explanation was this: one of the medium’s ‘controls’ was said
to be an Indian yogi, a ‘wonder-worker’ in his own right as it were. My friend
would request this control to bring him, at their next meeting, a botanical speci¬
men from the Andes or Himalayas, or from some equally remote region. As the
‘control’ appeared to know very little English and no Latin, it was often exceed¬
ingly difficult to make him understand the nature and appearance of the plant
desired. On many occasions, wrong specimens would at first be brought, but
my friend assured me that almost without exception, as the reward of persistence,
the right one would at last be produced,—always a growing plant, with^ph
clinging to the roots. He had been careful, he said, to ask for plants whTOlie
had ascertained previously were not to be found in any of the Australian botani¬
cal gardens, so that, in his opinion, the ‘test’ he had devised was conclusive proof
of the genuineness of the phenomenon. I asked him if birds or fish or other
creatures had been brought in the same way, to which he replied in the affirma¬
tive, adding that as this had proved exhausting to the medium, he had very
rarely requested it. Finally he invited me to attend one of his stances. I did so.
The few other people present were strangers to me,—ordinary, respectable. There
was no suggestion of a religious purpose or atmosphere, though I am told that
at some stances, these are cultivated. The medium seemed to me anaemic,
negative, timid,—a man of about thirty. The room was darkened, although I
could still dimly see the forms of other ‘sitters’. The ‘control’ soon took pos¬
session. He talked English badly, like an uneducated native of British India
324
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
(I was familiar with their ‘lingo’). He appeared to be a typical, low-caste wonder¬
worker, hugely pleased with his importance, chuckling with delight at his own
performances. I was more interested in him than in what he did. It seemed
incredible that this ‘control’ could be a sub-conscious ‘layer’ of the medium’s
personality; I was much more inclined to believe that he actually was a Hindu,
as he said: but was he a disincamated ‘spook’, or was he the ‘astral’ of an
incarnated, embryonic black magician? The atmosphere was detestable.
“To his outstanding performance, because heralded some minutes in advance,
I gave my fullest attention: he announced that he would produce a live fish,
taken straight from the ocean,—and all I can say is that I suddenly saw a fish,
about fourteen inches long, curved like a bow, enveloped in water, dropping
onto the table from about three feet above it. The water was phosphorescent,
making the fish clearly visible as it fell with a loud thud, the water splashing the
sitters, myself included. The fish flopped and flapped around, while the ‘control’
showed childish but impish glee at our momentary discomfiture. This ended
the stance. Our host examined the fish, which he named as from tropical seas,
and then removed it, in the matter-of-fact way of a collector, and as if fish fell
around like that with the naturalness of rain.’’
“Could not the fish have been brought in a waterproof bag, concealed by the
medium?’’ someone asked.
“I can guarantee nothing’’, the Philosopher answered. “I did not examine the
medium. My host assured me that he invariably did so, as a matter of principle,
as well as for his own satisfaction. Let me say, however, that it was a very lively
fish—heavy too—and that, so far as I can see, it would certainly have struggled
against confinement in a bag with water in it, and that this would have made a
good deal of noise during the three-quarters of an hour preceding its release.
There was no such noise.’’
“What is your explanation?’’ asked the Sceptic, sternly.
The Philosopher laughed. “I leave that to you’’, he said. “I can vouch for
what I saw; no more. But the experience did not leave me with a desire to
investigate further; it tended, on the contrary, to confirm, like all my reading on
the subject, the warnings and explanations of H.P.B.
“In brief, if you want to learn something about the spiritual world, the world
of reality, do not turn to Spiritualism; but if you want to learn about Kama
Loka, the after-death state of earth-bound personalities, of the materially-
minded, then, do not go to stances, but read some Spiritualistic books. For this
purpose I can recommend Gone West, and A Subaltern in Spirit Land, by J. S. M.
Ward, ‘B.A., F.R.Econ.S., F.R.S.S., late scholar and prizeman of Trinity Hall,
Cambridge’. He is, it is said, a trade expert of high standing, and only inci¬
dentally an explorer of the ‘Unseen World’, which he can enter in full conscious¬
ness, he claims, from time to time. However that may be, his Gone West presents
one of the most vivid and realistic pictures of hell, which I have ever read,—by
which I mean, of course, a description of that state of consciousness commonly
called ‘hell’, but which students of Theosophy, adopting Eastern terminology,
would describe as Kama Loka on its lower levels.’’
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
325
Asked one of our visitors: “Can you recommend a book of a similar kind that
contains a description of heaven?”
“No such book exists”, the Philosopher answered. “How can it? Only
the heavenly-minded can appreciate heaven, or can rise to that plane; and
souls in that state of consciousness, whether in the body or out of it,
cannot communicate with those whose understanding is limited to material
conditions. Adepts can function on all planes, but Adepts know better
than to deoict spiritual states except in symbols and in parables. Read the
Bible, read^he Bhagavad Gita, for proof of that. Communications through
mediums and through psychics, invariably describe conditions which are just
as material, even though ‘astral’, as conditions on earth; and it must be
so in view of the fact that people do not suddenly change their natures,
or the nature of their interests, merely because physically they die. A recent
book, On the Edge of the Etheric, by J. Arthur Findlay, which has already reached
its thirtieth edition or so in England, and which conservative English newspapers,
such as the London Morning Post, have reviewed with high praise, gives an
admirable exposition of the whole theory and practice of Spiritualism. The
honesty, capability, and the sincerity of the author’s belief in Spiritualism, are
beyond question; further, all his explanations are ‘scientific’ (with much talk of
wave-lengths and so forth), and therefore most appealing to the modem mind.
But can any student of Theosophy fail to see the significance of Mr. Findlay’s
explanation of what he calls the Direct Voice,—fail to see that all the materiality
of this world is attributed, and rightly attributed, to the kind of future life, and
the only future life, which he has encountered? Listen to this: ‘spirits’, he says,
who wish to speak at a stance, ‘come down to earth and lower their vibrations by
gathering round their mouth-organs what is called ectoplasm taken from the
medium and the sitters'. Incidentally, can you wonder that H.P.B. advised us,
though in other words, to keep our ectoplasm to ourselves! Then he explains
that there must be co-operation between the ‘spirits’, as active agents, and the
medium and sitters who are passive. So far as those who work ‘beyond the veil’,
are concerned,—
A group of spirits expert in the handling of organic chemical substances work a^|e with
us. Immediately we assemble, they get to work to do their part. The group co^Fs of a
director of operations, one or more chemists [please see the point!], one who ™ves the
trumpet in the direction a spirit wishes to speak, one who gathers the substances from the
medium and the sitters by connecting them up with the chemist, who draws from them the
necessary material. This extends from the medium and the sitters to a central point, and
the substance drawn from them is gathered by the chemist into an etheric bowl into which
he also adds etheric substances of his own. Another of the group helps spirit newcomers to
speak, telling them what to do; others bring spirits into the circle, and Whitefeather [a
‘control’], to whom I have already referred, a Red Indian, considers himself the most impor¬
tant of all, as he is detailed off to give warning when a seance is to take place, so that all the
operators may be present and at their posts.
“After describing the difficulties to be overcome scientifically before the Direct
Voice can be produced, Mr. Findlay says that by a series of questions and
326 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
answers, over a period of time, he obtained from the ‘spirits’ the following
further explanation:
The chemist to whom I have already referred, after mixing the substances he obtains from
the medium and sitters with his own ingredients, takes the finished preparation, and with
it first materializes his hands, and then forms a rough mask in the likeness of a mouth and
throat. This, when finished, is placed in the most suitable part of the room, often in the
centre of the circle. The spirit wishing to speak then presses into this mask, slow in vibra¬
tion, and with it clothes or covers his mouth, throat, and tongue. These organs then take
on a thicker or heavier condition, the tongue requires more exertion to move, but with a
little practice it all becomes possible. The spirit then, for the time being, has taken on the
necessary conditions to make himself once more such as we are, so far as his capacity to form
words is concerned. He is again to this extent an inhabitant of matter, slow in vibration,
so that when he-speaks he produces the same effects on our atmosphere as we do when we
speak. He and we are in the same room, w ithin a few feet of each other, he standing speak¬
ing to us, and we sitting, answering. He hears us and we hear him.
“Can you imagine anyone who has lost, let us say, his mother, wishing to drag
her down into that ectoplasmic mess? The very idea is revolting.’’
“The whole thing is nonsense’’, said the Sceptic.
“No’’, the Philosopher replied; “you are wrong. I wish it were nonsense.
The worst of it is the truth it conveys,—the picture of the only way in which
‘dead’ men can think and act, after a life on earth, not necessarily bad—perhaps,
in the ordinary sense, very good—but none the less thoroughly material in
interest and purpose,—empty of spiritual aspiration, devoid of Light.’’
At this point the Student interjected a remark, and a very interesting illustra¬
tive story.
“We do not begin to realize, I suspect, how exclusively material most of our
interests are; how very few people die who are not ‘earth-bound’ in one way
or another, and how long it must take to shed, as it were, these layers of materi¬
ality from our consciousness.
“I have been reading the reminiscences of Mrs. Will Gordon. The book is
called Echoes and Realities. The author belongs to a distinguished Scotch
family, is highly educated, widely known, and knows nearly everybody who is
anybody. She has travelled extensively, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geograph¬
ical Society. ‘I have’, she writes, ‘what we Scots call the “sight’’, a sixth sense,
a faculty of sensing the course of events, a kind of instinctive insight into present
realities as well as future possibilities’. This means that her mind is not closed
to unusual occurrences. She relates the experience of an American friend, who
for some time before her marriage had been a pupil in Vienna of the famous
Letchetitsky. On one occasion, when Rubinstein came to Vienna, this Ameri¬
can girl was chosen from among Letchetitsky’s pupils to play before the Maestro.
It was decided that she was to play his 'Valse Allemande\ While studying it,
she found that it slightly resembled the popular Bavarian folk-song, ‘ 0 , Du
lieher Augustin'. This amused her, and she worked the well-known tune interest¬
ingly into the Valse. When the day came, she could not resist the sudden tempta¬
tion to play it to the composer in this way,—to the intense indignation of Let-
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
327
chetitsky. Rubinstein, however, was amused, and smilingly reassured her,
saying, ‘Ach, you make joke wid my music!’
“Several years after the death of Rubinstein, Mrs. Gordon’s friend was enter¬
taining at her country place near Washington, and played for her guests. She
played, among other things, the 'Valse Allemande\ and almost unconsciously
again worked into it the air of ‘ 0 , Du lieber Augustin'. While playing, she felt
as if something touched her, but she ignored it. Then, as she continued, it
seemed to her that a firm hand was laid on her shoulder. She stopped playing
abruptly, and closed the piano, to the bewilderment of her guests. One of them,
however, ‘a Miss Herbie, a well-known spiritualist, who had been brought to the
house by friends, and who was a perfect stranger to the hostess, came up to the
piano. “I can tell you’’, she said, “who touched you. It was Rubinstein, for I
saw him distinctly. He stood by your side, smiling, and he said: ‘Ach, you make
joke wid my music’.’’ ’
“Earth-bound; wedded to his music! not a ‘bad’ devotion in any sense, but
evidently, in his case, instead of a step toward something higher, something
eternal,—an end in itself. In other words, to revert to the saying which the
Mohammedans attribute to Jesus, quoted by the Engineer, Rubinstein built on
his ‘bridge’, instead of passing over it—and thus, to use language more in line
with modem understanding, became ‘all gummed up’ in his art, tied and bound
to its material expression.
“How many so-called Theosophists are similarly bound, I wonder,—by
interests, devotions, good in themselves, but which they treat, not as means to
divine and lasting ends, but, because good, as ends in themselves.’’
“Duties, sometimes real, more often imaginary’’, commented the Engineer,
sententiously. “Why will not people realize that even the most important of
their duties can be no more than ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual’ reality, without the recognition of which ‘they labour in vain’ who
perform it. It may seem far-fetched, but they remind me of some of the lesser
and more psychic of Roman Catholic saints, whose ‘visions’ of heaven centre
in the Eucharistic ceremonial conducted by St. John, St. Peter and others,
arrayed in the most gorgeous and elaborate of ecclesiastical vestments. Raafc
materialism, in both cases.’’
“Before we leave the topic of Spiritualism,’’ the Philosopher now said, “I
should like, if I may, to mention another of the books I have read recently
under that head. It is called, Open the Door! and is said to have been ‘tran¬
scribed’ by Edith Ellis. It has an introduction by Claude Bragdon, who praises
it to the skies. It is an American contribution to the same subject,—of interest
to us because proving once more that the leopard does not change his spots by
disincamating, but a contribution which, if read as a statement of fact, would
have to be condemned as iniquitous. The spook, calling himself Wilfred Bran¬
don, whose wisdom is ‘transcribed’, is an ardent Pacifist (the book is advertized
as ‘perhaps the most drastic arraignment of modem warfare ever written’).
Avowedly in order to terrify and thus obtain recmits for the cause of ‘the New
Dispensation of Brotherly Love, Fair Play, and World Peace’, the ‘author’
#
328 THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
undertakes to reveal the horrible fate of the millions who died in the World
War.
It isn’t over when the White Cross is set up to mark the grave of the young body whose
soul has been thrust out in a state of consciousness that makes his life a hell for years on this
plane. That fact alone, if widely understood, would make war an impossibility. No parent
would doom his or her son to such a fate. The pain, dirt, and misery of his life in war
would seem little in comparison to what follows. If only death ended the suffering. The
tragedy is that it is only the beginning of it. The mind brings over its strongest impression.
One can easily believe that war effaces almost every other impression on the consciousness.
Hate, fear, pictures of dead and wounded, memories of the unspeakably horrible sights and
sounds, the despair and profound sense of the cruelty of men are what they bring with them.
“Can you conceive of a more abominable and blasphemous misrepresentation?
The vicious spook is branding in their graves the very men who died that we
might live. No moral factor involved, according to him: a good man or a bad
man, a coward or a hero, of any nationality, granting that he dies in battle
instead of in an automobile accident or in the atmosphere of a surgical ward
(where most people now seem to die),—all, indiscriminately, spend years in hell.
And he tries to enforce his claim to knowledge by assuring his readers that he
has studied and worked in that other world—in his other world—for a hundred
and fifty-two years, ‘finally, in 1920, taking my degree as Master in the White
Brotherhood’. Rama, Rama, and the holy N 4 gas, as a real one is said to have
sworn!
“Well, I will set my poor vision against ‘Wilfred Brandon’s’ nightmare, and
will assert that many a man left his body in battle, in an ecstasy of joy, in a
blaze of splendour and of glory,—the reflection of a real Master’s radiant blessing.
“Even as propaganda, the book makes the lowest and vilest of appeals. If
there were nothing else to condemn the brood of Pacifists, this attempt to terror¬
ize the superstitious, to harrow and horrify those who mourn their dead, and to
impute to a soldier the destiny hereafter of a common criminal, ought to be
sufficient to show how unscrupulous and inhuman and despicable they are.’’
“Why don’t the Spiritualists themselves realize by this time’’, asked the
Historian, “that there are just as many liars in Kama Loka as there are on earth,
just as many devils among their ‘spirits’ as among incarnated men, just as
many braggarts, sensualists, idiots,—and that logically it must be so? Spirit¬
ualists admit that some of their mediums are fraudulent, but as soon as they
find one who seems to be honest, any sort of communication coming through him
is at once attributed to a ‘spirit’, with the inference that it must be true. They
seem to throw common-sense to the winds.’’
“Well’’, said the Philosopher, “enough of devils, of spooks and of Spiritualism.
Let us turn from earth, and from astral perversions of earth, to the world of
immortal youth and beauty. You promised” [this addressed to the Recorder]
“that more would be said on the subject of the next Lodge Messenger and fore¬
runner. You postponed it from the last issue of the Quarterly.”
“You are right”, the Recorder answered. “It was in the October, 1934, issue
that several communications from students were printed, giving replies to these
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
329
questions: ‘What do you think a Lodge forerunner or Messenger could do,
(i) for you; (2) for The Theosophical Society; (3) for the world,—and how?’
Letters received since then, show a good deal of misunderstanding, by the way,
in regard to the standing and function of a ‘forerunner’. Because, in the eight¬
eenth century, Saint-Germain appeared on the scene a number of years before
the official and outer Messenger, Mesmer (see H.P.B’s. Glossary), and because
Saint-Germain was a great Adept while Mesmer was nothing of the kind—was
merely an agent chosen to do certain limited, specified work—it has been inferred
that all forerunners, including the next, must be of Saint-Germain’s calibre. The
fact is that Saint-Germain not only appeared in advance of the others, but
remained on the scene, or behind it, longer than any of them. He was the
supervisor, so to speak, of the entire effort of the eighteenth century, in all its
ramifications. The next forerunner might conceivably have no other function
than to open a few selected minds to the idea of the Lodge and of a Lodge
representative,—possibly not working through the Society at all, but among
people whose position in life would give the Messenger, when he comes, immedi¬
ate access to those who, in a worldly sense, control the destinies of nations. Such
a forerunner would not necessarily have to be conscious of his mission. On the
other hand, it is equally possible that because The Theosophical Society and
its nucleus have survived so far into th’is century—nothing like it, as we know,
ever having happened before; and because the cycles have thus been con¬
siderably ‘telescoped’, the functions of forerunner and Messenger will be merged
in one individual, perhaps, in the Lodge hierarchy, as great or greater than
Saint-Germain himself. A wide-open mind is what my two possibilities are
intended to suggest. Verbum sat sapienti.
“Another misunderstanding which this correspondence reveals is that because
so many believe they would gladly die rather than fail the Movement, and are
sincere in their belief, it follows that such devotion is a guarantee of its continu¬
ance, and, presumably, of the continuance on earth of its spirit, soul, and pur¬
pose. But any old thing can die; dying is as easy as falling off a log; as was
said many years ago, ‘the difficulty lies in dying at fitting junctures only’. More
than that, to carry on the spirit and soul as well as the body of the Society, a
sufficient number of its members must have right understanding, rig^per-
ception, right impersonality; must be able to judge things and people wi®Dom-
plete detachment from personal feeling, must be able to act without a^nadow
of self-seeking. Finally, there must be those who are at least in conscious touch
with their own Master, whoever that may be, and, through him, with the Lodge.
A belief in Masters, no matter how sincere, is not enough. We must be aware of
mountain-tops within us if we would touch the heights where Masters dwell.
Very few people are born with a flair for these things. Devotion is the best of all
beginnings; it will lift us to ‘the terrace of enlightenment’—in time, that is to
say, in the course of several incarnations,—a prospect which the great St.
Theresa, after years of experience with nuns and novices, perhaps overlooked
when she declared that not even devotion could produce common-sense, without
which, in her opinion, piety might be good enough for heaven, but not for earth.
330
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
“One or two of the communications received by the editors, commenting on
the letters of reply printed in the October issue, suggested, not discouragement,
but an effort to avoid it. Another contained the statement that if the substance
of the writer’s will and nerve was ‘soft’; if, as had been suggested, his sixth
sense or inner perception was as yet dormant, he purposed to accept this warning
as an incentive for greater effort, and not as a door shut in his face, or in the face
of the Society.
“Naturally, reactions differed widely. Here is a letter from a man whose
membership goes back to Judge’s day, and who is not an officer of the Society.
If anyone finds his reaction depressing, I give it up,—while certainly he cannot
be counted among the ‘soft’.
“Possibly, if the subject should prove of interest to our readers, and they say so, it
might be ‘continued in our next’ ’’ (October, 1934, Quarterly).
It is not simply a matter of interest; it is a matter of concern; the advancing age of a
large number of members may well cause them to feel, “What of the future’’.?
The question and answer treatment of the subject of a “new Lodge Messenger’’ in the
October Quarterly shows that all believe more than they tell, hope for more than they
will ask, have a presentiment of things they may not wish to express, and that all—all
seem to fear to appear dogmatic, to venture an unqualified reply, to say something that
cannot be proved.
Let us do that. Because the attitude for the future is an unqualified assertion and
declaration for impersonality; a definite visualization and choice of alternatives, based
on the history and experience of The Theosophical Society.
If we could ask the Lodge the questions which have been put, might they not say some¬
thing like this.?—
“You are disturbed by your apprehensions.
“You know that you are leaving your life behind you; that your ‘leaders’ must pass
on, and that the objective and material means for sustaining the T. S. may be in jeopardy.
“Do not fear—do not worry.
“Place your apprehensions before you and look them square in the face—right there
you can see the real Theosophical Society as it was, as it is, as it will be. Think of the
unknown numbers who have gone before; of the many you do not know and of those
you did know—of the thousands and thousands who are to come.
“Be quiet, be patient.
“Think of the colossal eflForts made against almost insurmountable obstacles to found
the T. S. and keep it going. Do you imagine that the cost of that effort was incurred
without foresight, without anticipation of much more than that which fills you with
alarm?
“Learn to endure your cares and your worries by contrasting them with something
which makes them look trivial.
“If worldly, even narrow bigoted minds could, by patient research, persistent study
and investigation, make some of the, what you call marvellous predictions, long before
the events, of the World War, the depression, or what not, can you not be generous enough
to credit us with at least an equal, possibly clearer vision of events as you just now begin
to see them, or even as they may transpire long after you have gone.?
“You know what faith you have, and the quality of that faith.
“Can you believe that the literature, illuminating as never before the ancient mysteries
and religions, would have been given out without there being some good prospect of its
continuing to be attributed to the right source?
“Do not be intimidated by your apprehensions—be silent.
“If your minds must work, let them cogitate on the fact that we would never sit idly by.
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME 33 i
and permit those things which we all cherish in our innermost hearts, to fade and vanish,
without lifting a finger.
“The confusion round about you is appalling? Because you can hear, you do hear
and, being unremittingly distracted by the noise of the world, which incessantly rattles
on your brains, you seldom have a chance to listen—to listen to some of those things which
can only be heard without hearing.
“If you think of us, you can listen to us. You want help, sympathy, consolation,
encouragement? You—of all the people of the earth, dare you ask for anything for your¬
selves.^—while we beg you for unswerving patience and steadiness: to help those who,
except for you, might not be able to turn to us. ^
“You have learned a great deal about discipleship. \ou have studied the lives of
disciples. Have you ever considered that the races of the earth are disciples, that the
vicissitudes of the inexorable cycles are the trials and training of discipleship for men in
the mass, even though they know it not? That a cyclic period of great stress and dis¬
turbance is akin to a ceremony of initiation, when nil are called to choose as they have
chosen, to do as they have done, to be what they are and decide with their own decision?
“Be not confused by the siftings, shatterings, fragmentations.
“Some do see, understand and know; those will become and re-become if you only
realized how you could sustain them by your unswerving faithful prayers.
“VVe could answer those prayers a hundred, a thousand times sooner than if you prayed
for yourselves.
“Do not be frightened. Do not be swayed by your anxiety.
“You would be lifted and cheered by a sign of the ‘Messenger to come ? What of the
messengers you have? Are they not correctly posed in their own proper places? Would
you expect us to supersede them, set them aside before the very last one has come to the
last hour; before the last sand of the cycle, which they sustain, has run out?
“Once more—to the last minute of the eleventh hour, do not fear eventualities, do not
flinch.
“That our messengers are still there, is that not a sign?
“The name Theosophy has been covered with opprobrium? What things named for us
or by us have not been? If you changed all your names, changed your clothes, vvashed
yourselves from head to foot with carbolic acid and rose w’ater, you would go right out
and shake hands with opprobrium.
“Your everlasting faith and confidence—let that be as strong as the fear and hatred of
those who transgress our purposes.
“Do not be disconcerted by the furious roar of personality which deafens you to the
silent poise of impersonality.**
The accumulated tensions of much misapplication and misappropriation are now
exhausting themselves. Elemental forces and entities are flying around in heterogeneous
confusion, producing the objective effect of chaos—the concerted authority of othw days
has lost its grip.
The man or generation which acquires a material embodiment of spirituaM Wee by
industry, thrift, etc., and in doing that, attributes it to himself only, has tried in vain to
cheat the Lodge. “He only robs, but to render**.
A new Messenger, what would be his approach, his advance?
To endeavour to arouse men with an appeal to their faith in the abstract, to their piety,
their unrelated sense of obligation to some authority? The lights of the age of feudalism
are not entirely extinguished yet, but the prevailing characteristics of that period have
changed with the exaggerated acquisition of “learning and logic’* by men on the levels.
Would he not perhaps try, as a practical expedient, rather than to discredit intellect
and learning, or ask for a blind faith or a servile acceptance, to capitalize learning and
intelligence, and endeavour to persuade men to assign the powers and functions of the
mind and personality to an impersonal reality, and to realize that their salvation must
hinge, not on running away from themselves, but rather on consciously marshalling those
332
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
very human selves under an avowed and accepted standard of some Master of the Lodge?
—which is the only possible way of escape from mean, small, self-centred individualism.
The concerted and desperate efforts being made on all sides to get things back to where
they were in the ante-bellum days, are not the obstinate wilfulness of a people bent on
going bad, but a mistaken sense of values, a spiritual blindness, a too great faith in minds,
machines, test-tubes and file-cards. Do not the prospects for a new Messenger depend
on whether he can get a sufficient number of worth-while sincere men to perceive that
they have been worshipping false gods? We feel that the initial work and outpourings
incident to the development of the T.S. are based on an anticipation of such an eventuality.
Nevertheless, an ebbing tide cannot rise until it has run out.
“An admirable letter”, the Recorder commented when he had ceased reading;
“but no one ever wrote anything which was not open to misinterpretation, and
I am wondering if some will say, ‘Ha ha, what did we tell you! Look at this:
“You are disturbed by your apprehensions. ... Do not fear—do not worry.’ *
We are all right! All that talk about “softness” was pessimistic’.
“How I wish they were right, and there were not that fatal ‘softness’ among us!
I have known people before now who quoted scripture to justify their laziness
and to pass their responsibility to God. ‘Take no thought for the morrow’—
which, by the way, translated literally, means ‘Do not worry about the morrow’—
has been used as an excuse for leaving it to the ravens to feed you. Our members
are responsible for the future, since they are responsible for the material out of
which the Masters can mould the future. What is that material ? It is the honest,
strenuous, and persistent effort now to use all our energies for ends in harmony
with the purposes of the Lodge,—especially the effort to replace whatever is ‘soft’
in ourselves, with the grit and force and steel-like stuff that ought to be there.
“None the less”, the Recorder continued, “of one thing I am certain: that all
is well provided for, including ‘heavenly death’. Masters of Wisdom are not
caught napping. They plan for a hundred years ahead, and longer. Always
they have several plans in reserve. If possible avenues or instruments fail them,
they use others in their place. ‘Man is the creator of his own destiny’; so is a
nation; so is a civilization. Masters are not omnipotent; they help; they will
not, they cannot control. Their ability to help depends upon the genuineness
of our desire to be helped, and upon the motive which prompts our desire. In
the Golden Age, nations looked to Masters as children used to look to their
parents; but as self-will, self-satisfaction, and the gratification of appetites,
came to take first place, that ideal relationship ceased, just as family life is ceasing
among us. To-day, as we know, the Golden Age is regarded as a myth; nations
and individuals alike have forgotten that Masters exist, and would not tolerate
them or their ways or their guidance, even if that guidance were offered.
“All that the Lodge can do during these times of darkness, is to divert some
of the forces let loose by mankind, into spiritually constructive channels, while
periodically forcing upon men’s attention (as was done by H.P.B.) reminders
that the Ancient Wisdom exists, that true knowledge is obtainable, and that if
the blind lead the blind, it is not for lack of those who can see.”
“But what do you people hope to accomplish?” one of our visitors asked.
“To convert the world to Theosophy?”
ON THE SCREEN OF TIME
333
“Just that and no less”, the Philosopher undertook to answer. “But in some
millions of years,—yes, in some millions of years. Meanwhile, little people will
take little views, timid people, timid views, superstitious people, superstitious
views; so it will not matter much what they believe, although I agree that any
belief is better than none, so long as it gives people something besides this world
to think about. What we are striving for to-day is to find the few, the very Jew,
who are not little or timid or superstitious, who are not eaten up with self-love,
but who are humble of heart and firm of will, hungry for light, soldiers in spirit,
eager to serve the Warriors of God, once they recognize their existence, and who
have the intelligence to see that just as service in any army requires training,
so, if we would fight in this greater warfare without bringing shame on our cause,
and without injury to our fellows, we must work for skill in the use of every
earthly weapon, determined to wield it for the glory of those whose service is the
joy of life.”
“Earthly weapons!” exclaimed one of our visitors, whose interpretation had
evidently been literal. “What weapons?”
“Every weapon in sight”, the Philosopher answered, smiling. “Personally
I have never seen or heard of a faculty, talent, or ability which I am not deter¬
mined, someday, to possess. I want all the ‘fruits of the spirit’, as St. Paul lists
them; I want sympathy, tact, wisdom, eloquence, the utmost of literary and
artistic skill of every kind; I want the spiritual counterpart and synthesis of all
my physical senses,—and lots more. I do not mean for one moment to exclude
the weapons which our visitor had in mind; their use is extremely useful at times:
to be a first class horseman, a crack shot, a skilled mechanician (very necessary
in a mechanical age); to be physically strong and nervously inexhaustible, would
be of immense value when doing work in the world. No, I am not joking. None
the less, all of these things would be pitfalls, intelligence included, unless used
from the right centre, with the right motive.”
“And that is?”
“Each must answer that for himself”, the Philosopher replied. “But I do
not mind telling you what I wish to be my centre, my motive, now and always:
boundless love of my Master, without trace of desire for reward or gain.^I am
far from it, but someday, with his help, I shall get there. People whd^^not
know a Master, will not understand this; those who do, will. Master^^ one
of them wrote, are not desiccated pansies ‘between the leaves of a volume of
solemn poetry’. They are divinely human, with divinely human hearts, of
infinite generosity, incredibly grateful for such love as we are capable of giving
them; but, as I have said, they are the Warriors of God, they are Flames, and
they do not waste their energies. We must turn ourselves into something resem¬
bling realities before Immortals would be justified in spending themselves on us.
Yet, even to-day, if we have the courage, we can look up to them and claim our
birthright and declare ourselves their sons. Then, if we live as the sons of
Immortals should live, they will treat us as their own, and we shall know them,
and though darkness be around us, we shall never lose touch with their Light.
T.
A LAND OF MYSTERY
These are the first two of a series of four articles under the same title, written by
Madame Blavatsky, and printed in ''The Theosophist” {then published in Bombay)
in the March, April, June and August issues of 1880. To appreciate them at more
than their face value—though that in itself is great—it should be understood that
H.P.B. was preparing the way for the facts and figures which were not given out
until the publication of "The Secret Doctrine*' in 1888. She had to break, or in any
case soften, the "moulds of mind" of her readers, especially of those who had received
a scientific education, and whose preconceptions, therefore, were utterly foreign to
those glimpses of the Truth which the Lodge had decided to reveal to the world through
her. Even in 1880, many natives of India had been educated, either in Europe, or in
Indian colleges where the curriculum was European and materialistic. Agnosticism,
and contempt for their ancient religions and philosophies, were the fashionable pose
of the younger generation of Indians. So it was not only for the benefit of her Euro¬
pean and American readers that H.P.B. wrote; she was perhaps especially anxious
to wean these young Indians from their folly, and, by such articles as these, to prepare
their minds for the consideration, later, of their own Pur anas, which, when inter¬
preted in the light of occult knowledge, show that civilizations, in some ways far
more advanced than ours, existed in all parts of the world for some millions of years
before the beginning of our so-called historical period. Identifying herself with the
people of her day, appealing to their interests {amusingly in one respect, as she makes
a great point of "buried treasure"), she intimates clearly that more remained to be
said, and that those whom she represented were in possession of the key to the mystery,
the very existence of which the world had failed to recognize .— The Editors.
I
W HETHER one surveys the imposing ruins of Memphis or Palmyra;
stands at the foot of the great pyramid of Ghiz 6 ; wanders along the
shores of the Nile; or ponders amid the desolate fastnesses of the
long-lost and mysterious Petra; however clouded and misty the origin of these
prehistoric relics may appear, one nevertheless finds at least certain fragments
of firm ground upon which to build conjecture. Thick as may be the curtain
334
REPRINT
335
behind which the history of these antiquities is hidden, still there are rents here
and there through which one may catch glimpses of light. We are acquainted
with the descendants of the builders, and, however superficially, we also know
the story of the nations whose vestiges are scattered around us. Not so with the
antiquities of the New World of the two Americas. There, all along the coast of
Peru, all over the Isthmus and North America, in the canyons of the Cordilleras*
in the impassable gorges of the Andes, and, especially beyond the valley of
Mexico, lie, ruined and desolate, hundreds of once mighty cities, lost to the
memory of men, and having themselves lost even a name. Buried in dense
forests, entombed in inaccessible valleys, sometimes sixty feet underground, from
the day of their discovery until now they have ever remained a riddle to science»
baffling all inquiry, and they have been muter than the Egyptian Sphinx herself.
We know nothing of America prior to the Conquest—positively nothing. No
chronicles, not even comparatively modern ones survive; there are no traditions,
even among the aboriginal tribes, as to its past events. We are as ignorant of
the races that built these cyclopean structures, as of the strange worship that
inspired the antediluvian sculptors who carved upon hundreds of miles of walls,
of monuments, monoliths and altars, these weird hieroglyphics, these groups of
animals and men, pictures of an unknown life and lost arts—scenes so fantastic
and wild, at times, that they involuntarily suggest the idea of a feverish dream,
whose phantasmagoria at the wave of some mighty magician’s hand suddenly
crystallized into granite, to bewilder the coming generations for ever and ever.
So late as the beginning of the present century, the very existence of such a
wealth of antiquities was unknown. The petty, suspicious jealousy of the
Spaniards had, from the first, created a sort of Chinese wall between their
American possessions and the too curious traveller: and the ignorance and fanati¬
cism of the conquerors, and their carelessness as to all but the satisfaction of
their insatiable greediness, had precluded scientific research. Even the enthusi¬
astic accounts of Cortez and his army of brigands and priests, and of Pizarro and
his robbers and monks, as to the splendour of the temples, palaces, and cities of
Mexico and Peru, were long discredited. In his History of America, Dr. Robert¬
son goes so far as to inform his reader that the houses of the ancient Mexicpis
were “mere huts, built with turf, or mud, or the branches of trees, like of
the rudest Indians”;^ and, upon the testimony of some Spaniards, heaven
risked the assertion that “in all the extent of that vast empire”, there was not
“a single monument or vestige of any building more ancient than the Conquest” 1
It was reserved to the great Alexander Humboldt to vindicate the truth. In
1803 a new flood of light was poured into the world of archaeology by this eminent
and learned traveller. In this he luckily proved but the pioneer of future dis¬
coverers. He then described but Mitla, or the Vale of the Dead, Xochicalco,
and the great pyramidal Temple of Cholula. But, after him came Stephens,
Catherwood, and Squier; and, in Peru, D’Orbigny and Dr. Tschuddi. Since
then numerous travellers have visited and given us accurate details of many of
the antiquities. But, how many more yet remain not only unexplored, but even
*See Stephens' Central America.
336
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
unknown, no one can tell. As regards prehistoric buildings, both Peru and
Mexico are rivals of Egypt. Equalling the latter in the immensity of her Cyclo¬
pean structures, Peru surpasses her in their number; while Cholula exceeds the
grand pyramid of Cheops in breadth, if not in height. Works of public utility,
such as walls, fortifications, terraces, water-courses, aqueducts, bridges, temples,
burial-grounds, whole cities, and exquisitely paved roads, hundreds of miles in
length, stretch in an unbroken line, almost covering the land as with a net.
On the coast, they are built of sun-dried bricks; in the mountains, of porphyritic
lime, granite, and silicated sandstone. Of the long generations of peoples who
built them, history knows nothing, and even tradition is silent. As a matter of
course, most of these lithic remains are covered with a dense vegetation. Whole
forests have grown out of the broken hearts of the cities, and, with a few excep¬
tions, everything is in ruin. But one may judge of what once was by that which
yet remains.
With a most flippant unconcern, the Spanish historians refer nearly every
ruin to Inca times. No greater mistake can be made. The hieroglyphics which
sometimes cover from top to bottom whole walls and monoliths are, as they were
from the first, a dead letter to modem science. But they were equally a dead
letter to the Incas, though the history of the latter can be traced to the eleventh
century. They had no clue to the meaning of these inscriptions, but attributed all
such to their unknown predecessors; thus barring the presumption of their own
descent from the first civilizers of their country. Briefly, the Inca history runs
thus:—
Inca is the Quichua title for chief or emperor, and the name of the ruling and
most aristocratic race or rather caste of the land which was governed by them for
an unknown period, prior to, and until, the Spanish Conquest. Some place their
first appearance in Pern from regions unknown in 1021; others, also on conjecture,
at five centuries after the Biblical “flood”, according to the modest notions of
Christian theology. Still, the latter theory is undoubtedly nearer truth than the
former. The Incas, judged by their exclusive privileges, power, and “infalli¬
bility,” are the antipodal counterpart of the Brahminical caste of India. Like
the latter, the Incas claimed direct descent from the Deity, which, as in the case
of the Sflryavansa dynasty of India, was the Sun. According to the sole but
general tradition, there was a time when the whole of the population of the now
New World was broken up into independent, warring, and barbarian tribes.
At last, the “Highest” deity—the Sun—took pity upon them, and, in order to
rescue the people from ignorance, sent down upon earth, to teach them, his two
children, Manco Capac, and his sister and wife. Mama Ocollo Huaco—the
counterparts, again, of the Egyptian Osiris, and his sister and wife, Isis, as well
as of the several Hindu gods and demi-gods and their wives. These two made
their appearance on a beautiful island in Lake Titicaca—of which we will speak
further on—and thence proceeded northward to Cuzco, later on the capital of
the Incas, where they at once began to disseminate civilization. Collecting
together the various races from all parts of Pern, the divine couple then divided
their labour. Manco Capac taught men agriculture, legislation, architecture,
REPRINT
337
and arts; while Mama Ocollo instructed the women in weaving, spinning,
embroidery, and housekeeping. It is from this celestial pair that the Incas
claimed their descent; and yet, they were utterly ignorant of the people who
built the stupendous and now ruined cities which cover the whole area of their
empire, and which then extended from the Equator to over 37 degrees of Latitude,
and included not only the western slope of the Andes, but the whole mountain
chain with its eastern declivities to the Amazon and Orinoco. As the direct
descendants of the Sun, they were exclusively the high priests of the state religion,
and at the same time emperors and the highest statesmen in the land: in virtue
of which, they, again like the Brahmins, arrogated to themselves a divine superi¬
ority over ordinary mortals, thus founding, like the “twice-bom”, an exclusive
and aristocratic caste—the Inca race. Considered as the son of the Sun, every
reigning Inca was the high priest, the oracle, chief captain in war, and absolute
sovereign; thus realizing the double office of Pope and King, and long anticipating
the dream of the Roman Pontiffs. To his command the blindest obedience was
exacted; his person was sacred; and he was the object of divine honoims. The
highest officers of the land could not appear shod in his presence: this mark of
respect pointing again to an Oriental origin; while the custom of boring the ears
of the youths of royal blood, and inserting in them golden rings “which were
increased in size as they advanced in rank, until the distention of the cartilage
became a positive deformity”, suggests a strange resemblance between the
sculptured portraits of many of them that we find in the more modem ruins, and
the images of Buddha and of some Hindu deities, not to mention our contem¬
porary dandies of Siam, Burmah, and Southern India. In that, once more as in
India, in the palmy days of the Brahmin power, no one had the right either to
receive an education or study religion except the young men of the privileged
Inca caste. And, when the reigning Inca died, or as it was termed, “was called
home to the mansion of his father”, a very large number of his attendants and
his wives were made to die with him, during the ceremony of his obsequies, just
as we find in the old annals of Rajesthdn, and down to the but just abolished
custom of Sutti. Taking all this into consideration, the archaeologist cannot
remain satisfied with the brief remark of certain historians that “in this tradition
we trace only another version of the story of the civilization common t^U
primitive nations, and that imposture of a celestial relationship whereby desi^Bg
rulers and cunning priests have sought to secure their ascendency among men”.
No more is it an explanation to say that “Manco Capac is the almost exact
counterpart of the Chinese Fohi, the Hindu Buddha, the terrestrial Osiris of
Egypt, the Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, and Votanof Central America”; for all this
is but too evident. What we want to learn is how came these nations, so antip¬
odal to each other as India, Egypt, and America, to offer such extraordinary
points of resemblance, not only in their general religious, political, and social
views, but sometimes in the minutest details. The much-needed task is to find
out which one of them preceded the other; to explain how these people came to
plant at the four comers of the earth nearly identical architecture and arts, unless
there was a time when, as asserted by Plato and believed in by more than one
338
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
modern archaeologist, no ships were needed for such a transit, as the two worlds
formed but one continent.
According to the most recent researches, there are five distinct styles of archi¬
tecture in the Andes alone, of which the temple of the Sun at Cuzco was the
latest. And this one, perhaps, is the only structure of importance which, accord¬
ing to modern travellers, can be safely attributed to the Incas, whose imperial
glories are believed to have been the last gleam of a civilization dating back for
untold ages. Dr. E. R. Heath, of Kansas (U.S.A.), thinks that “long before
Manco Capac, the Andes had been the dwelling-place of races, whose beginnings
must have been coeval with the savages of Western Europe. The gigantic archi¬
tecture points to the Cyclopean family, the founders of the Temple of Babel, and
the Egyptian pyramids. The Grecian scroll found in many places is borrowed (?)
from the Egyptians; the mode of burial and embalming their dead points to
Egypt.” Further on, this learned traveller finds that the skulls taken from the
burial-grounds, according to craniologists, represent three distinct races: the
Chinchas, who occupied the western part of Peru from the Andes to the Pacific;
the Aymaras, dwellers on the elevated plains of Peru and Bolivia, on the southern
shore of Lake Titicaca; and the Huancas, who “occupied the plateau between
the chains of the Andes, north of Lake Titicaca to the gth degree of South Lati¬
tude.” To confound the buildings of the epoch of the Incas in Peru, and of
Montezuma and his Caciques, in Mexico, with the aboriginal monuments, is fatal
to archaeology. While Cholula, Uxmal, Quiche, Pachacamac, and Chichen
were all perfectly preserved and occupied at the time of the invasion of the
Spanish banditti, there are hundreds of ruined cities and works which were in the
same state of ruin even then; whose origin was unknown to the conquered Incas
and Caciques as it is to us; and which are undoubtedly the remains of unknown
and now extinct peoples. The strange shapes of the heads, and profiles of the
human figures upon the monoliths of Copdn are a warrant for the correctness of
the hypothesis. The pronounced difference between the skulls of these races,
and the Indo-European skulls, was at first attributed to mechanical means!
used by the mothers for giving a peculiar conformation to the heads of their
children during infancy, as is often done by other tribes and peoples. But, as the
same author tells us, the finding in “a mummy of a foetus of seven or eight months
having the same conformation of skull, has placed a doubt as to the certainty of
this fact”. And besides hypothesis, we have a scientific and unimpeachable proof
of a civilization that must have existed in Peru ages ago. Were we to give the
number of thousands of years that have probably elapsed since then, without
first showing good reasons for the assumption, the reader might feel like holding
his breath. So let us try.
The Peruvian guano (huano), that precious fertilizer, composed of the excre¬
ment of seafowls, intermixed with their decaying bodies, eggs, remains of seal, and
so on, which has accumulated upon the isles of the Pacific and the coast of South
America, and its formation, are now well known. It was Humboldt who first
discovered and drew the world’s attention to it in 1804. And, while describing
the deposits as covering the granite rocks of the Chincas and other islands to the
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339
depth of 50 or 60 feet, he states that the accumulation of the preceding joo years,
since the Conquest, had formed only a few lines in thickness. How many thousands
of years, then, it required to form this deposit 60 feet deep, is a matter of simple
calculation. In this connection we may now quote something of a discovery
spoken of in the “Peruvian Antiquities” “Buried 62 feet under the ground,
on the Chinca islands, stone-idols and water-pots were found, while 35 and 33
feet below the surface were wooden idols. Beneath the guano on the Guanapi
islands, just south of Truxillo, and Macabi just north, mummies, birds, and birds'
^ggs, gold and silver ornaments were taken. On the Macabi the labourers found
some large valuable golden vases, which they broke up and divided among
themselves, even though offered weight for weight in gold coin, and thus relics of
great interest to the scientist have been forever lost. He who can determine the
centuries necessary to deposit thirty and sixty feet of guano on these islands,
remembering that since the Conquest, three hundred years ago, no appreciable
increase in depth has been noted—can give you an idea of the antiquity of these
relics.”
If we confine ourselves to a strictly arithmetical calculation, then, allowing 12
lines to an inch, and 12 inches to a foot, and allowing one line to every century, we
are forced to believe that the people who made these precious gold vases lived
864,000 years ago! Leave an ample margin for errors, and give two lines to a
century—say an inch to every 100 years—and we shall yet have 72,000 years ago
a civilization which—if we judge by its public works, the durability of its con¬
structions, and the grandeur of its buildings,—equalled, and in some things cer¬
tainly surpassed, our own.
Having well defined ideas as to the periodicity of cycles, for the world as well
as for nations, empires, and tribes, we are convinced that our present modem
civilization is but the latest dawn of that which already has been seen an innu¬
merable number of times upon this planet. It may not be exact science, but it is
both inductive and deductive logic, based upon theories far less hypothetical
and more palpable than many another theory, held as strictly scientific. To
express it in the words of Professor T. E. Nipher, of St. Louis, “we are not the
friends of theory, but of truth”, and until truth is found, we welcome every ngw
theory, however unpopular at first, for fear of rejecting in our ignorance thq^Be
which may in time become the very corner-stone of the truth. “The crr^^of
scientific men are well nigh countless, not because they are men of science, but
because they are men", says the same scientist; and further quotes the noble
words of Faraday—“occasionally, and even frequently, the exercise of the
judgment ought to end in absolute reservation. It may be very distasteful and a
great fatigue to suspend a conclusion, but as we are not infallible, so we ought
to be cautious” {Experimental Researches, 24th Series).
It is doubtful whether, with the exception of a few of the most prominent ruins,
there ever was attempted a detailed account of the so-called American antiqui¬
ties. Yet, in order to bring out the more prominently a point of comparison,
such a work would be absolutely necessary. If the history of religion and of
* A paper published by Mr. E. R. Heath in the Kansas City Review of Science and Industry, November, 1878.
340
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
mythology and—far more important—the origin, development and final group¬
ing of the human species, are ever to be imravelled, we have to trust to archae¬
ological research, rather than to the hypothetical deductions of philology. We
must begin by massing together the concrete imagery of the early thought, more
eloquent in its stationary form than the verbal expression of the same, the latter
being but too liable, in its manifold interpretations, to be distorted in a thousand
ways. This would afford us an easier and more trustworthy clue. Archaeological
Societies ought to have a whole cyclopaedia of the world’s remains, with a colla¬
tion of the most important of the speculations as to each locality. For, however
fantastic and wild some of these hypotheses may seem at first glance, yet each has
a chance of proving useful at some time. It is often more beneficial to know
what a thing is not than to know what it is, as Max Muller truly tells us.
It is not within the limits of an article in oiu* paper that any such object could
be achieved. Availing ourselves, though, of the reports of the Government sur¬
veyors, trustworthy travellers, men of science, and even oiu: own limited experi¬
ence, we shall try in future issues to give to our Hindu readers, who possibly may
never have heard of these antiquities, a general idea of them. Our latest infor¬
mation is drawn from every reliable source; the survey of the Peruvian antiqui¬
ties being mostly due to Dr. Heath’s able paper, above mentioned.
II.
Evidently we, Theosophists, are not the only iconoclasts in this world of
mutual deception and hypocrisy. We are not the only ones who believe in cycles
and, opposing the Biblical chronology, lean towards those opinions which secretly
are shared by so many, but publicly avowed by so few. We, Europeans, are just
emerging from the very bottom of a new cycle, and progressing upwards, while
the Asiatics—Hindus especially—are the lingering remnants of the nations which
filled the world in the previous and now departed cycles. Whether the Aryans
sprang from the archaic Americans, or the latter from the prehistorical Aryans,
is a question which no living man can decide. But that there must have been an
intimate connection at some time between the old Aryans, the prehistoric inhabi¬
tants of America—whatever might have been their name—and the ancient
Egyptians, is a matter more easily proved than contradicted. And probably, if
there ever was such a connection, it must have taken place at a time when the
Atlantic did not yet divide the two hemispheres as it does now.
In his Peruvian Antiquities (see The Theosophist for March) Dr. Heath, of
Kansas City —rara avis among scientific men, a fearless searcher, who accepts
truth wherever he finds it, and is not afraid to speak it out in the very face of
dogmatic opposition—sums up his impressions of the Peruvian relics in the
following words:—“Three times the Andes sank hundreds of feet beneath the
ocean level, and again were slowly brought to their present height. A man’s
life would be too short to count even the centuries consumed in this operation.
The coast of Peru has risen eighty feet since it felt the tread of Pizarro. Sup¬
posing the Andes to have risen uniformly and without interruption, 70,000
years must have elapsed before they reached their present altitude.”
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341
“Who knows, then, but that Jules Verne’s fanciful idea^ regarding the lost
continent, Atlanta, may be near the truth? Who can say that, where now is the
Atlantic Ocean, there did not formerly exist a continent, with its dense popu¬
lation, advanced in the arts and sciences, who, as they found their land sinking
beneath the waters, retired part east and part west, populating thus the two
hemispheres? This would explain the similarity of their archaeological structur^
and races, and their differences, modified by and adapted to the character of their
respective climates and countries. Thus would the llama and the camel differ,
although of the same species; thus the algoraba and espino trees; thus the
Iroquois Indians of North America and the most ancient Arabs call the con¬
stellation of the ‘Great Bear’ by the same name; thus various nations, cut off
from all intercourse or knowledge of each other, divide the zodiac into twelve
constellations, apply to them the same names, and the Northern Hindus apply
the name Andes to their Himalayan mountains, as did the South Americans to
their principal chain.^ Must we fall in the old rut, and suppose no other means
of populating the Western Hemisphere except ‘by way of Behring’s Strait’?
Must we still locate a geographical Eden in the East, and suppose a land, equally
adapted to man and as old geologically, must wait the aimless wanderings of the
‘lost tribes of Israel’ to become populated?”
Go where we may to explore the antiquities of America—whether of Northern,
Central, or Southern America—we are first of all impressed with the magnitude
of these relics of ages and races unknown, and then with the extraordinary
similarity they present to the mounds and ancient structures of old India, of
Egypt, and even of some parts of Europe. Whoever has seen one of these
mounds, has seen all. Whoever has stood before the cyclopean structures of one
continent, can have a pretty accurate idea of those of the other. Only be it said
—we know still less of the age of the antiquities of America than even of those
in the Valley of the Nile, of which we know next to nothing. But their symbolism
—apart from their outward form—is evidently the same as in Egypt, India, and
elsewhere. As before the great pyramid of Cheops in Cairo, so before the great
mound, loo feet high, on the plain of Cahokia—near St. Louis (Missouri)—
which measures 700 feet long by 800 feet broad at the base, and covers upwards
of eight acres of ground, having 20,000,000 cubic feet of contents, and the mound
on the banks of Brush Creek, Ohio, so accurately described by Squier an 4 D|ps,
one knows not whether to admire more the geometrical precision, presci^^ by
the wonderful and mysterious builders in the form of their monuments, or the
hidden symbolism they evidently sought to express. The Ohio mound represents
a serpent, upwards of i ,000 feet long. Gracefully coiled in capricious curves, it
terminates in a triple coil at the tail. “The embankment constituting the effigy, is
upwards of five feet in height, by thirty feet base at the centre of the body, slightly
^This "idea" is plainly expressed and asserted as a fact by Plato in his Banquet; and was taken up by Lord
Bacon in his New Atlantis. , . , j , i
*"The name America", said I. in his Unveiled (Vol. 2. p. SQO.^tbree years ago. "may one day be found closely
related to Meru, the sacred mount in the centre of the seven continents". When first discovered, America was
found to bear among some native tribes the name of Atlanta. In the States of Central America we find the name
Amerih, signifying, like Meru, a great mountain. The origin of the Kamas Indians of America is also unknown.
342
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
diminishing towards the tail.”^ The neck is stretched out and its mouth wide
opened, holding within its jaws an oval figure. “Formed by an embankment four
feet in height, this oval is perfectly regular in outline, its transverse and con¬
jugate diameters being i6o and 8 feet respectively”, say the surveyors. The whole
represents the universal cosmological idea of the serpent and the egg. This is
easy to surmise. But how came this great symbol of the Hermetic wisdom of old
Egypt to find itself represented in North America? How is it that the sacred
buildings found in Ohio and elsewhere, these squares, circles, octagons, and other
geometrical figures, in which one recognizes so easily the prevailing idea of the
Pythagorean sacred nimierals, seem copied from the Book of Numbers? Apart
from the complete silence as to their origin, even among the Indian tribes, who
have otherwise preserved their own traditions in every case, the antiquity of
these ruins is proved by the existence of the largest and most ancient forests
growing on the buried cities. The prudent archaeologists of America have
generously assigned them 2,000 years. But by whom built, and whether their
authors migrated, or disappeared beneath victorious arms, or were swept out of
existence by some direful epidemic, or a universal famine, are questions, “prob¬
ably beyond the power of human investigation to answer”, they say. The
earliest inhabitants of Mexico, of whom history has any knowledge—more
hypothetical than proven—are the Toltecs. These are supposed to have come
from the North and believed to have entered Anahuac in the 7th century a.d.
They are also credited with having constructed in Central America, where they
spread in the eleventh century, some of the great cities whose ruins still exist.
In this case it is they who must also have carved the hieroglyphics that cover
some of the relics. How is it, then, that the pictorial system of writing of Mexico,
which was used by the conquered people and learned by the conquerors and their
missionaries, does not yet furnish the keys to the hieroglyphics of Palenque and
Copdn, not to mention those of Peru? And these civilized Toltecs themselves,
who were they, and whence did they come? And who are the Aztecs that suc¬
ceeded them? Even among the hieroglyphical systems of Mexico, there were
some which the foreign interpreters were precluded from the possibility of study¬
ing. These were the so-called schemes of judicial astrology “given but not
explained in Lord Kingsborough’s published collection”, and set down as purely
figurative and symbolical, “intended only for the use of the priests and diviners
and possessed of an esoteric significance.” Many of the hieroglyphics on the
monoliths of Palenque and Copdn are of the same character. The “priests and
diviners” were all killed off by the Catholic fanatics,—the secret died with them.
Nearly all the mounds in North America are terraced and ascended by large
graded ways, sometimes square, often hexagonal, octagonal or truncated, but in
all respects similar to the teocallis of Mexico, and to the topes of India. As the
latter are attributed throughout this country to the work of the five Pandus of
the Lunar Race, so the cyclopean monuments and monoliths on the shores of
Lake Titicaca, in the republic of Bolivia, are ascribed to giants, the five exiled
brothers “from beyond the mounts”. They worshipped the moon as their
• Smithsonian contributions to Knowledge, Vol. I.
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343
progenitor and lived before the time of the “Sons and Virgins of the 5 «n“. Here,
the similarity of the Aryan with the South American tradition is again but too
obvious, and the Solar and Lunar races—SQrya Vansa and the Chandra Vansa—
reappear in America.
This Lake Titicaca, which occupies the centre of one of the most remarkable
terrestrial basins on the whole globe, is “i6o miles long and from 50 to 80 broad,
and discharges through the valley of El Desagvadero, to the south-east into
another lake, called Lake Aullagas, which is probably kept at a lower level by
evaporation or filtration, since it has no known outlet. The surface of the lake
is 12,846 feet above the sea, and it is the most elevated body of waters of similar
size in the world.” As the level of its waters has very much decreased in the
historical period, it is believed on good grounds that they once surrounded the
elevated spot on which are found the remarkable ruins of Tiahuanaco.
The latter are without any doubt aboriginal monuments pertaining to an epoch
which preceded the Inca period, as far back as the Dravidian and other aboriginal
peoples preceded the Aryans in India. Although the traditions of the Incas
maintain that the great lawgiver and teacher of the Peruvians, Manco Capac—
the Manu of South America—diffused his knowledge and influence from this
centre, yet the statement is unsupported by facts. If the original seat of the
Aymara, or “Inca race” was there, as claimed by some, how is it that neither the
Incas, nor the Aymaras, who dwell on the shores of the Lake to this day, nor
yet the ancient Peruvians, had the slightest knowledge concerning their history?
Beyond a vague tradition which tells us of “giants” having built these immense
structures in one night, we do not find the faintest clue. And we have every
reason to doubt whether the Incas are of the Aymara race at all. The Incas
claim their descent from Manco Capac, the son of the Sun, and the Aymaras
claim this legislator as their instructor and the founder of the era of their civili¬
zation. Yet, neither the Incas of the Spanish period could prove the one, nor
the Aymaras the other. The language of the latter is quite distinct from the
Inichua —the tongue of the Incas; and they were the only race that refused to
give up their language when conquered by the descendants of the Sun, as Dr.
Heath tells us. ^
The ruins afford every evidence of the highest antiquity. Some are biMbn a
Pyramidal plan, as most of the American mounds are, and cover severa^cres;
while the monolithic doorways, pillars, and stone-idols, so elaborately carved,
are “sculptured in a style wholly diferent from any other remains of art yet
found in America”. D’Orbigny speaks of the ruins in the most enthusiastic
manner. “These monuments”, he says, “consist of a mound raised nearly 100
feet, surrounded with pillars—of temples from 600 to 1,200 feet in length, opening
precisely towards the east, and adorned with colossal angular columns—of porti¬
coes of a single stone, covered with reliefs of skilful execution, displaying sym¬
bolical representations of the Sun, and the condor, his messenger—of basaltic
statues loaded with bas-reliefs, in which the design of the carved head is half
Egyptian—and lastly, of the interior of a palace formed of enormous blocks of
rock, completely hewn, whose dimensions are often 21 feet in length, 12 in
344
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
breadth, and 6 in thickness. In the temples and palaces, the portals are not
inclined, as among those of the Incas, but perpendicular; and their vast dimen¬
sions, and the imposing masses of which they are composed, surpass in beauty
and grandeur all that were afterwards built by the sovereigns of Cuzco.” Like
the rest of his fellow-explorers, M. D’Orbigny believes these ruins to have been
the work of a race far anterior to the Incas.
Two distinct styles of architecture are found in these relics of Lake Titicaca.
Those of the Island of Coati, for instance, bear every feature in common with
the ruins of Tiahuanaco; so do the vast blocks of stone elaborately sculptured,
some of which, according to the report of the surveyors, in 1846, measure: ”3
feet in length by 18 feet in width, and 6 feet in thickness”; while on some of the
islands of the Lake Titicaca there are monuments of great extent, ‘‘but of true
Peruvian type, believed to be the remains of temples destroyed by the Span¬
iards’ ’. The famous sanctuary, with the human figure in it, belongs to the former.
Its doorway 10 feet high, 13 feet broad, with an opening 6 feet 4 inches, by 3
feet 2 inches, is cut from a single stone. ‘‘Its east front has a cornice, in the centre
of which is a human figure of strange form, crowned with rays, interspersed with
serpents with crested heads. On each side of this figure are three rows of square
compartments, filled with human and other figures, of apparently symbolic
design. ...” Were this temple in India, it would undoubtedly be attributed to
Shiva; but it is at the antipodes, where neither the foot of a Shaiva nor one of
the Naga tribe has ever penetrated to the knowledge of man, though the Mexican
Indians have their Nagal, or chief sorcerer and serpent worshipper. The ruins
standing on an eminence, which, from the water-marks around it, seems to have
been formerly an island in Lake Titicaca, and ‘‘the level of the Lake now being
135 feet lower, and its shores, 12 miles distant, this fact, in conjunction with
others, warrants the belief that these remains antedate any others known in
America.”^ Hence, all these relics are unanimously ascribed to the same ‘‘un¬
known and mysterious people who preceded the Peruvians, as the Tulhuatecas
or Toltecs did the Aztecs. It seems to have been the seat of the highest and most
ancient civilization of South America and of a people who have left the most
gigantic monuments of their power and skill.” . . . And these monuments are
all either Dracontias —Temples sacred to the Snake—or temples dedicated to the
Sun.
Of this same character are the ruined pyramids of Teotihuacan and the mono¬
liths of Palenque and Copdn. The former are some eight leagues from the city
of Mexico on the plain of Otumla, and considered among the most ancient in the
land. The two principal ones are dedicated to the Sun and Moon, respectively.
They are built of cut stone, square, with four stories and a level area at the top.
The larger, that of the Sun, is 221 feet high, 680 feet square at the base, and covers
an area of 11 acres, nearly equal to that of the great pyramid of Cheops. And
yet, the pyramid of Cholula, higher than that of Teotihuacan by ten feet accord¬
ing to Humboldt, and having 1,400 feet square at the base, covers an area of 45
acres!
*New American Cyclopaedia, Art. Teotihuacan.
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345
It is interesting to hear what the earliest writers—the historians who saw them
during the first conquest—say even of some of the most modem of these build¬
ings, of the great temple of Mexico, among others. It consisted of an immense
square area “surrounded by a wall of stone and lime, eight feet thick, with
battlements, ornamented with many stone figures in the form of serpents'', says
one. Cortez shows that 500 houses might be easily placed within its enclosure.
It was paved with polished stones, so smooth, that “the horses of the Spaniards
could not move over them without slipping”, writes Bemal Diaz. In connection
with this, we must remember that it was not the Spaniards who conquered the
Mexicans, but their horses. As there never was a horse seen before by this people
in America, until the Europeans landed it on the coast, the natives, though exces¬
sively brave, “were so awestruck at the sight of horses and the roar of the artil¬
lery”, that they took the Spaniards to be of divine origin and sent them human
beings as sacrifices. This superstitious panic is sufficient to account for the fact
that a handful of men could so easily conquer incalculable thousands of warriors.
According to Gomara, the four walls of the enclosure of the temple corre¬
sponded with the cardinal points. In the centre of this gigantic area arose the
great temple, an immense pyramidal stmcture of eight stages, faced with stone,
300 feet square at the base and 120 feet in height, truncated, with a level summit,
upon which were situated two towers, the shrines of the divinities to whom it
was consecrated—Tezcatlipoca and Huitzlipochtili. It was here that the sacri¬
fices were performed, and the eternal fire maintained. Clavigero tells us that
besides this great pyramid, there were forty other similar structures consecrated
to various divinities. The one called Tezcacalli was “the House of the Shining
Mirrors, sacred to Tezcatlipoca, the God of Light, the Soul of the World, the
Vivifier, the Spiritual Sun”. The dwellings of priests, who, according to Zarate,
amounted to 8,000, were near by, as well as the seminaries and the schools.
Ponds and fountains, groves and gardens, in which flowers and sweet smelling
herbs were cultivated for use in certain sacred rites and the decoration of altars,
were in abundance; and, so large was the inner yard, that “8,000 or 10,000 per¬
sons had sufficient room to dance in it upon their solemn festivities”—says Solis.
Torquemada estimates the number of such temples in the Mexican empire at
40,000 but Clavigero, speaking of the majestic Teocalli (literally, houses of God)
of Mexico, estimates the number higher.
So wonderful are the features of resemblance between the ancient shriOTS of the
Old and the New World that Humboldt remains tmequal to express his surprise.
“What striking analogies exist between the moniunents of the old continents
and those of the Toltecs who . . . built these colossal structures, truncated
pyramids, divided by layers, like the temple of Belus at Babylon! Where did
they take the model of these edifices?”—he exclaims.
The eminent naturalist might also have inquired where the Mexicans got all
their Christian virtues from, being but poor pagans. The code of the Aztecs,
says Prescott, “evinces a profound respect for the great principles of morality,
and as clear a perception of these principles as is to be found in the most culti¬
vated nations”. Some of these are very curious inasmuch as they show such a
346
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
similarity to some of the Gospel ethics, “He who looks too curiously on a woman,
commits adultery with his eyes”, says one of them. “Keep peace with all;
bear injuries with humility; God, who sees, will avenge you”, declares another.
Recognizing but one Supreme Power in Nature, they addressed it as the deity
“by whom we live, Omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts and giveth all gifts,
without whom man is as nothing; invisible, incorporeal, one of perfect perfection
and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence.” And, in
naming their children, says Lord Kingsborough, “they used a ceremony strongly
resembling the Christian rite of baptism, the lips and bosom of the infant being
sprinkled with water, and the Lord implored to wash away the sin that was given
to it before the foundation of the world, so that the child might be born anew.'*
“Their laws were perfect; justice, contentment and peace reigned in the kingdom
of these benighted heathen,” when the brigands and the Jesuits of Cortez landed
at Tabasco. A century of murders, robbery, and forced conversion, was
sufficient to transform this quiet, inoffensive and wise people into what they
are now. They have fully benefited by dogmatic Christianity; and he who has
ever been to Mexico, knows what that means. The country is full of blood¬
thirsty Christian fanatics, thieves, rogues, drunkards, debauchees, murderers,
and the greatest liars the world has ever produced! Peace and glory to your ashes,
O Cortez and Torquemada! In this case at least, you will never be permitted to
boast of the enlightenment your Christianity has poured out on the poor, and
once virtuous heathen!
Through the Arches of Time fly the Swallows of Time,—in threes, in fours, then
in threes again, making the seven and the sacred ten.
Thus nations pass, and races; continents rise and fall; the Days dawn and fade,
the Nights return.
Time, the mighty Illusion, raised these Arches; and, while Time exists, through
them fly the Swallows of Time, in threes, in fours, then in threes again.
Eternity holds them; verily. Eternity holds them all .— The Book of Birds.
The Lost Empires of the Itzaes and Mayas, by Theodore A. Willard; The
Arthur H. Clark Company, Glendale, California, 1933; price, S6.00.
The Conquest of the Maya, by J. Leslie Mitchell; Dutton, New York, 1935;
price, $3.75*
The Ancient Mayas: Adventures in the Jungles of Yucatan, by Robert B.
Stacy-Judd; Haskell-Travers, Inc., Los Angeles, California, 1934; price, S3.50.
Mr. Theodore Willard is well known to students of the civilization of the
Mayas. In his book. The City of the Sacred Well, he wrote of the excavations and
discoveries made by Edward Thompson at Chichen Itza. His new book gives an
excellent r^sum6 of what is known of the history of Yucatan before the Spanish
Conquest, and of the Conquest itself. There are imaginative descriptions of
Maya ceremonies and festivals which draw a picture of the life of that day, and
there is a “personally conducted” tour of the monuments of Chichen Itza, Uxmal,
and other ruined cities of the peninsula. Mr. Willard writes with enthusiasm and
sympathy for his subject, and he does not dogmatize. In his concluding chapter
on Facts, Theories and Conjectures, he discusses the various theories as to the
origin of the Maya, Atlantean or Mongolian. He touches mildly upon the
vexed question of whether the animals with long, curling snouts so frequently
represented on the monuments are elephants, macaws or tapirs. He calls atten¬
tion to the Oriental turbans of the personages on the Copdn altar. He presents
the speculations as to the downfall and disappearance of the race, and concludes
by saying, “The mystery lies not in the disappearance of its ancient peoples nor
in the diminished population of the peninsula. Rather, the unfathomable^ Q|pb-
lem concerns their origin. Someday, perhaps, some deeply-buried rccofl^ill
yield the secret, and this story without a beginning may be completed.”
Mr. J. Leslie Mitchell’s book is written for more serious readers. It brings
together a prodigious quantity of data from all the sources, from history, from
the scientists, ethnologists and archaeologists, and from the monuments them¬
selves. He has, however, little of the open-mindedness and modesty of Mr.
Willard. He has made up his mind as to what happened, and, of course, fits facts
into his theory.
Modem scientists nearly all agree that man was not indigenous in the Americas.
Most of them think he came over the Aleutian Islands from Asia. There are
some who will allow a migration from Europe by way of Greenland, and another
347
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THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
migration to the Pacific coast from Polynesia. Others, more rare and more
liberal, concede the existence of an Atlantean continent, and the possibility of an
Atlantean origin for some of the peoples. Mr. Mitchell has no use for Lemuria or
Atlantis. Also, he has a violent aversion to the idea that civilizations sprang up
simultaneously in all parts of the world, or that the nature of man leads him to
express himself in much the same way wherever he is. He says:
Modern evidences, as we have seen, demonstrate that the belief that cultures developed
independently at different points on the surface of the globe “through the similarity of
the innate disposition of the human mind” is a belief without objective foundation, a
theory not evolved from facts, but superimposed upon them. Civilization, culture, did
not arise independently at various points all over the earth: there was no slow upward
climb from primitive to savage, savage to barbarian, barbarian to civilized man, in the
ordering beloved of the older school of historians. Civilization rose from the midst of
primitive freedom, with comparative suddenness, revolutionizing human life and spreading
abroad the planet much as the technique of the Solutrian blade, from one accidental point
in the Old World. That accidental point was Ancient Egypt. . . . Chance and long
centuries of observation forced Agriculture upon the Ancient Egyptian. . . .Agriculture
gave birth to theology, the arts, and a multitude of handicrafts within the limited period
of a few hundred years in the Nile basin—this at no remote period in human history, but
probably between the years 50CX) B.c. and 4000 b.c.
Mr. Mitchell is as dogmatic as the late Bishop Usher, who, you will remember,
placed the creation of the world at b.c. 4004. This sudden development, accord¬
ing to our present author, was due to the fact that barley and millet grew wild
in the Nile valley. It is his theory that men, observing the fertilizing effects of the
Nile floods, developed an irrigating system and deified the “First Irrigator”,
and that this culture was carried gradually around the earth, even to the Ameri¬
cas. Mr. Mitchell does not think that this was accomplished all at once, but
that successive waves of immigrants followed each other, bringing with them their
cultures. He traces some Egyptian symbology in early Mayan monuments, for
he believes that all religions came from the fertility cult of Osiris, and that this
cult was developed by the Hindus into their highly complex systems. He finds
decided Hindu influences throughout the Maya and Mexican area. For him, the
snouts on the animal masks are the elephant trunk of the God Ganesha; the
Earth Monster is the Indian Makara, and the God in the jaws of the monster is
Indra in the coils of the serpent or Vishnu borne up by Sesha. He lays stress
upon the many obvious similarities between the Maya sculptures and those of
Angkor-Wat in Cambodia. Students of The Secret Doctrine will remember the
tradition that Arjuna went to Patala, or the antipodes, and there married the
daughter of the King of the Nagas. However, we should be inclined to ask:
is the God upon the Serpent Altar the Hindu Indra himself, or is he the Adept,
the Dragon of Wisdom, so called in all the great religions?
According to The Secret Doctrine, the history of civilized man is immensely
older than the archaeologists are willing to admit. Man did not painfully dis¬
cover for himself the sciences of astronomy, mathematics, architecture and
agriculture through long millenniums of experiment. Neither did he suddenly
invent them in the course of a few hundred years. At the beginning of his
REVIEWS
349
emergence into the human kingdom he was ruled over by divine Kings who
taught him these things. The “Stanzas of Dzyan” say: “Then the Builders,
having donned their first Clothing, descend on radiant Earth and reign over
Men—who are themselves.” Madame Blavatsky comments on this, and her
comments are so interesting that we cannot resist quoting them at some length.
The “Watchers” reign over men during the whole period of Satya Yuga and the smaller
subsequent Yugas, down to the beginning of the Third Root Race; after which it is the
Patriarchs, Heroes, and the Manes, as in the Egyptian Dynasties enumerated by the
priests to Solon, the incarnated Dhyanis of a lower order, up to King Menes and the
human kings of other nations. All were carefully recorded. In the views of symbologists
this Mythopoeic Age is of course regarded only as a fairy tale. But since traditions and
even chronicles of such Dynasties of Divine Kings, of Gods reigning over men, followed by
Dynasties of Heroes or Giants, exist in the annals of every nation, it is difficult to under¬
stand how all the peoples under the sun, some of whom are separated by vast oceans and
belong to different hemispheres, such as the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans, as well as
the Chaldeans, could have worked out the same “fairy tales” in the same order of events.
However, as the Secret Doctrine teaches history —which, although esoteric and traditional,
is, none the less, more reliable than profane history—we are entitled to our beliefs as much
as any one else, whether religionist or sceptic. And that Doctrine says that the Dhyani-
Buddhas of the two higher Groups, namely, the Watchers or the Architects, furnished the
many and various races with divine kings and leaders. It is the latter who taught human¬
ity their arts and sciences, and the former who revealed to the incarnated Monads that
had just shaken off their Vehicles of the lower Kingdoms, and who had, therefore, lost
every recollection of their divine origin, the great spiritual truths of the transcendental
Worlds {The Secret Doctrine^ ed. 1893, I, 287).
The great weakness of modem archreologists is that they see only the exterior,
—layers of lava, old bones, or a few dated stones. They have, practically without
exception, no understanding of the inner meaning of symbols throughout the
world. Most-of the investigators of the Maya are unable to interpret the signifi¬
cance of a work like the Popul Vuh. What does it mean when it says that when
the ancestors of the tribes, after long wanderings, came into the land, they
found giants there? The fact is that the origins of the civilizations of America
are lost in darkness, as most of the archaeologists admit, but they will not accept
the combined mass of tradition of all the races. As Madame Blavatsky says:
“It is the ignorance of our men of science, who will accept neither the tradition
that several Continents have already sunk, nor the periodical law which acts
throughout the Manvantaric Cycle—it is this ignorance that is the chief
of all the confusion.” The Secret Doctrine declares that physical man deva^ed
on this earth 18,000,000 years ago. The remains of his antediluvian cultures are
hidden under the oceans, for the most part. We are told of “the Lemurians in
their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of lava and stone. . . .
The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the last
sub-races of the Lemurians: and an Occultist, therefore, shows no surprise on
learning that the stone relics which are found on the small piece of land called
Easter Island ... are ‘very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or
the Ruins of Tia-Huanaco in Peru’, and also that they are in the Cyclopean
style”. The reviewer is well aware that the mins of Easter Island and Pern are
350
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
now declared by the scientists to have been constructed in the Christian era,
but their theories, when carefully examined and compared, seem as fantastic
to us as ours do to them, and far less logical and satisfactory.
Who were the Mound Builders? Where were the Seven Cities of Cibola? From
whence came the Ancestors of the Chimus? For example, it is significant to a
student of The Secret Doctrine that the Maya calendar should start arbitrarily
on a certain day, 4 Ahau, 8 Cumhu, or September fourth, 3113 b.c., according
to one system of reading the calendar. He will immediately recall that the pres¬
ent cycle of Kali Yuga started with the death of Krishna about 5000 years ago.
Mr. Stacey-Judd is a firm believer in the existence of Atlantis, and he thinks
that Mayan culture was derived essentially from Atlantean sources. His book.
The Ancient Mayas, is primarily an account of his own travels in Yucatan. He
is an architect and has an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of Maya art.
One frequently wonders why Mr. Mitchell bothers to write about people he
dislikes so much. Indeed, he rather wonders why himself. Mr. Stacy-Judd, on
the contrary, is full of admiration and sympathy which enable him to transmit
his enthusiasm to his readers. He succeeds in giving a living impression of the
splendours of the cities of Yucatan, where a much better writer, Mr. Mitchell,
fails and is decidedly vulgar. Mr. Stacy-Judd’s amiability evidently com¬
municated itself to those with whom he came in contact. His adventures in the
vast caves of Loltun, from which he was rescued by a centenarian Maya hermit,
will particularly delight the reader.
All three of these books are well illustrated with excellent photographs and
maps. The subject is one which must always be fascinating to those who are
interested in the civilizations of the past. St.C. LaD.
Prince Saionji, by Tosabuno Taketoshi, Member of the House of Peers;
Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan; price, 5 yen.
This life of Prince Saionji, written by one of his political disciples, gives a
vivid insight into the history of Japan in the nineteenth century. The first
part of the book tells of those days when the terrifying boom of Perry’s guns
was heard. The largest temple bell of the country was brought down to the
shore. Its sound would make the enemy’s blood curdle! We read a discussion
on training archers to confront the Western barbarians, and barely a few pages
further on, we find Japan a power engaged in world politics.
Prince Saionji is the last remaining Genro, that is. Elder Statesman, a special
adviser to the Emperor, appointed by Imperial rescript after his retirement as
Prime Minister. He is the head of a family founded in the tenth century by the
marriage of an Emperor’s daughter with a Minister of State. As a child, Saionji
was precocious and independent of spirit. At six, already given the responsi¬
bilities of chamberlain, he began the traditional studies of the Chinese Classics
and the arts of war. In 1868, when the war of the Restoration began, he was
only nineteen. The forces upon which the Emperor could count were very
uncertain. Because of his genuine loyalty and buoyant enthusiasm, Saionji
REVIEWS
351
was put at the head of a force of clansmen. “Dressed in green armour, with the
head-dress appropriate to his rank”, preceded by a banner of red cloth with the
sun and moon emblazoned upon it, in two short campaigns he defeated the
opposing forces of the Shogunate in the district of Echigo. His successes, his
frankness and his intelligence won him the favour of the Court, then surrounded
by intriguing officials and rough clansmen. After the country was pacified, he
was offered the post of Governor of the Provinces; but his mind was made up:
at a time when all were scrambling for positions, he preferred to ask for release
from military duty and for permission to go to France to study. Discarding his
mediaeval armour and his two swords for a suit of foreign clothes, he left for
Paris, the Paris of the Commune. Fourteen years ago, he returned to Paris to
sign the Versailles Treaty.
He found the clear Gallic spirit in harmony with his own. There is a bond
between the Japanese and the French which grows out of a similar appreciation
of the spiritual values of life. The French think, the Japanese feel; there lies
the difference. Saionji studied law, and also spent much time enjoying the
Bohemian life of the period in the literary circles where his charm made him
many friends. He collaborated with Gautier’s daughter, Madame Mend^s, in
the production of a play at the Od^on. He stayed ten years, and was thirty-
three when he returned to Japan, armed with some knowledge of law and of
life.
He suffered many bitter disappointments when, eager to act and serve, he
found himself blocked again and again, on one side by politicians, on the other
by traditions and by the will of an Emperor whom he desired to obey in spirit
and in letter. A bold attempt at the editing of a liberal newspaper was sup¬
pressed by Imperial order. After this, his political career began, first as senator,
then as Minister to Vienna and Berlin. Twice he was appointed Minister of
Education, and twice Prime Minister. His political career was uneventful. His
importance lies in his profound wisdom and integrity. The Emperor, and politi¬
cal friends and enemies alike, turned for advice to one so steeped in Chinese
wisdom and French culture. For instance, we may read in the newspaper that
the Prime Minister of the Empire is taking the train to Okitsu, there to b^ld
whether or not he should resign, and who should be appointed Mini^Wof
Education.
One feels throughout the book the attraction of Prince Saionji’s forceful
personality, free, frank, humorous, enthusiastic, poised and detached, yet
capable of very determined action. He does not spurn entertainments, and with
his literary friends frequents the tea houses. He enjoys music and poetry, and is
himself able to write verse. It is in some small unpretentious house that he
prefers to live, and it is there that his friends come to find him when he is needed
for some important mission. In spite of his horror of ostentation, he knows how
to give banquets where he tactfully brings together politicians and men of letters
at a time when considerations of rank and station make such a thing highly
difficult. The Prince, now eighty-four, lives in his villa at Okitsu, by the sea,
surrounded by terraced orange groves. There one can imagine him finding in
352
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
Natiire and in his Chinese Classics that poise on which his impartial judgment
and clear thinking are founded.
Prince Saionji served his country by contributing faith in liberty and tolerance,
while preserving intact the traditional belief in the ancient wisdom and the
observance of complete loyalty to the Emperor. The attitude of his countrymen
toward him is an example which Occidentals, for the most part, will be too vain
either to notice or to follow,—and recognition of the hierarchical principle pre¬
supposes at least the semblance of hmnility, while democracy damns humility,
and Nazi-ism double-damns it. Similarly, respect for the experience of age is
antagonistic to the “Ascendency of Youth” and to the “Experiment-at-other-
people’s-expense” systems, both of which are based upon contempt for what the
past should teach us. So long as the Japanese, whatever their faults, show their
superiority in these respects, they will have that much practical advantage over
us,—and will deserve it. N.R.
The Age of the Gods, A Study in the Origins of Culture in Prehistoric Europe and
the Ancient East, by Christopher Dawson; Sheed and Ward, New York, 1933;
price, S3.00.
This is not a new book, but a re-issue of one first published by John Murray,
London, in 1928, in a much more expensive form. Until now, therefore, it has
been less available to the general public than the book itself merits. It is the
first of a series of several volumes (some still in the making) which may be
summed up as a History of Culture, and is an attempt to show that culture
springs from and rests upon man’s spiritual attitude toward life. “What is a
culture?”, we read. “A culture is a common way of life—a particular adjust¬
ment of man to his natural surroundings and his economic needs. In its use
and modification it resembles the development of a biological species,”—it is,
in fact, an embryonic expression of group life. “But man is not merely plastic
under the influence of his material environment. He moulds it, as well as being
moulded by it. . . . It is true that three of the main influences which form
and modify human culture are the same as in the case of the formation of an
animal species”—race, environment, function and occupation. “But in addi¬
tion to these there is a fourth element: thought, which is peculiar to the human
species, and the existence of which frees man from the blind dependence on
material environment which characterizes the lower forms of life. It is this
factor which renders possible the acquisition of a growing capital of social tra¬
dition, so that the gains of one generation can be transmitted to the next, and
the discoveries or new ideas of an individual can become the common property
of the whole society.” We see in this statement a suggestion of the theosophical
law of correspondences, for may it not be said that this is one of the laws of
spiritual life on all planes, beginning in the Lodge itself? The property of one
is the property of all and, as Light on the Path admonishes: “Accumulate wealth
for that united spirit of life which is your only true self.”
“We cannot understand the present”, comments Mr. Dawson, “without a
REVIEWS
353
knowledge of the past, or the past without the whole.” To this the student of
Theosophy would heartily agree—since life is one—for he knows that we can¬
not separate a single historical event, no matter how insignificant it may appear,
from the great body of history or even of tradition, without, to a greater or
lesser degree, falsif5dng the whole. Contrary to the opinion of ethnologists and
anthropologists, Mr. Dawson does not believe that mankind should be classified
by races; he believes that the true classification is that of cultures and, as al¬
ready stated, he believes that all cultures have their origin in religion. “At
present, perhaps, the dominant fashion is to look to the racial factor as the
deus ex machina of the hirnian drama. Yet race is itself but the product of the
process of interaction that we have mentioned. . . . Every religion embodies
an attitude to life and a conception of reality, and any change in these brings
with it a change in the whole character of the culture, as we see in the case of
the transformation of ancient civilization by Christianity, or the transformation
of the society of Pagan Arabia by Islam. . . . Thus the great stages of world-
culture are linked with changes in man’s vision of Reality.”
The book covers a very wide field, starting with the Glacial Age and the so-
called beginnings of human life in Eiu*ope; through the later palaeolithic culture,
the dawn of the neolithic age, and on through the development of the Sumerian
civilization, with the rise of the Sacred City. There is the archaic culture of
Egypt and the growth of the Great State, and by well-graded steps we are taken
through Crete and the iEgean, the Nordic culture, the Age of Empire in the
near East, finally ending with Italy and the beginning of the Iron Age in
Europe.
It is true that Mr. Dawson appears to recognize (within certain limits), the
law of cycles; that evolution is not a smooth, undisturbed, undeviating up-grade
movement: “The history of the earth is not a simple, uniform development. It
has proceeded by a series of vast cyclic revolutions, true world ages, . . . the
whole process of terrestrial change is indeed governed by a kind of rhythmic
movement.” And he adds: ‘‘Behind the world that we know there lies a whole
series of other worlds, each with its own continents and seas, and its own types
of animal and vegetable life.” This last statement, which we find early im^e
book, leads the reader—if a student of Theosophy—to hope that theflMnll
also be definite recognition of a past so old that it is beyond all reckoning, with
our inheritance of resulting cultural and civilizing influences which we ascribe
to what may relatively be called the present; recognition, too, that the cyclic
life of man and of nature, its rise and fall which admittedly works forward from
a given point in the known evolutionary pageant, may also be thought of as
having been in operation vast ages before that arbitrary point. For no civiliza¬
tion can be justly gauged or valued without taking previous civilizations on this
globe into account, and humanity is far older than this book would give us to
believe. Therefore, deeply interesting as it is, the student of Theosophy will
be conscious of a lack throughout—not an unusual experience in books of to-day
on this and kindred subjects: a lack of recognition that all cultures, all civiliza¬
tions of which we have historical or even legendary knowledge are but a return
354
THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY
—with certain modifications—over the steep cyclic pathway of civilizations
long anterior to history as we know it; for we are to-day treading that path
which, under similar yet at the same time differing circumstances, humanity
trod aeons and aeons ago. In short, we wish Mr. Dawson were familiar with the
philosophy of Theosophy, for it would greatly deepen and enhance the wide
and brilliant sweep of his cultural knowledge and insight. T.D.
The History of Buddhist Thought, by Edward J. Thomas; Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 1933; price, $5.00.
As Dr. Thomas writes in his Preface: “A history of Buddhism in the sense
of a connected account of the chief events of all the Buddhist communities
throughout the centuries, is an ideal not yet attainable.” To a student of
Theosophy it seems impossible that such a history could ever be written without
a clear recognition of the esoteric basis of many of the ‘‘chief events”. Dr.
Thomas assumes without argument that the developments of the original teach¬
ing of the Buddha could not have been foreseen by the Master himself; that in
a certain sense they consisted of a series of deformations of the primitive nucleus
of thought from which Buddhism received its first impulse. This is partly
true, of course. The official Buddhist churches, like their Christian counterparts,
are productions of fallible human nature. They are and always have been
counterfeits of the true Order of Disciples which the great Indian Master laboured
to establish; and on occasion they have become monstrous perversions. But
the secret clue to the real power of Buddhism is to be sought, not in the exoteric
church, but in the esoteric Order.
According to an Eastern tradition, for instance, the Mahayana doctrine was
reserved for the Disciples before it was incorporated in the public teaching. If
this be true, the Mahayana has a significance very different from that attributed
to it by those who describe it as a belated addition to Buddhism, the work of a
few speculative metaphysicians. It is as truly part of the Buddha’s message as
any of the sermons preserved in the Pali texts. Moreover, the Mahayana scrip¬
tures stress a mystical fact which is confirmed by Theosophy but which the
Western mind, with its inherited materialistic tendencies, finds it particularly
hard to grasp. According to the Mahayana, the Buddha is a living Master; he
did not enter final Nirvana when his physical body died. No amount of ‘‘higher
criticism” can ever solve the mysteries of Buddhism or of Christianity, unless
these two postulates are accepted at least tentatively:—that at the head of every
world-religion there is a living Master, and that he continues to work in the
world through Disciples or groups of Disciples who may be wholly independent
of any official church bearing his name.
In our opinion. Dr. Thomas has written a very fragmentary and one-sided
history; but his book has real value, in so far as it illustrates a deepening under¬
standing of certain fundamental Buddhist doctrines by Orientalists. The fol¬
lowing passage would have been regarded as ‘‘heretical” by Rhys Davids and his
generation.
REVIEWS
3SS
It was unfortunate that Buddhism was once expounded by scholars who took a pleas¬
ure in describing it as agnostic atheism, and who even spoke of “the antinomy of an
entity or soul”. . . . Buddhism agrees with the other world-religions in recognizing an
ultimate eternal reality, but it nowhere describes this reality in positive language. . . .
The doctrine of rebirth made the non-atman theory a very different thing from what
to a Western mind is implied by a denial of the soul. . . . Ajita's doctrine of annihilation
at death was denied throughout the whole history of Buddhism. The individual being
had existed before, and he would exist again. He was only a bundle of changing skand-
has, changing from moment to moment, and from life to life, and it was only Nirvana
which could bring about their final dissolution. His personal identity remained the
same to such an extent that he could come to remember his former existences. . . .
The question of the dissolution of personality only becomes urgent when it is asked
what takes place with the cessation of rebirth. Naturally no one can give an answer to
that except the one who has reached that state. . . . The disputes and assertions and
misunderstandings that have taken place on this very point have given it an unneces¬
sary prominence. There is less need now for many words, for the literature is becoming
accessible which makes obsolete much that was written before the texts were understood
or even known (pp. 257-260). S.L.
Queen Alexandra, by Sir George Arthur; Chapman and Hall, London; price,
2 >s. 6 d.
Students of Theosophy should be students of history, able to compare epochs
in the lives of different nations as an aid to an understanding of themselves, of
human nature in general, and of cyclic law. The Victorian era—treated with
contempt by most modem writers because they resent its obvious superiority
to the present—^was one of the greatest in world history. “There were giants
in those days”, not only in England and in many other European countries,
but in America too. In Germany, for instance, while one detests Bismarck
and Hitler about equally, it must be obvious to everyone that, of the two men,
Bismarck was incomparably the bigger. Similarly in England, the statesmen
of to-day are pygmies in comparison with those of Queen Victoria’s reign. As
to America,—^but that is too painful.
This book brings to mind names great in history from about i860 onwards.
It is interesting, and may serve to stimulate a desire to learn more about the
many events and persons mentioned. The attitude of the author J^ard
Queen Alexandra (Princess of Wales for so many more years than QjpKi) is
very friendly, as it is to King Edward. He is not a muckraker, ano^nnoys
only because he cannot resist trying to show his superiority somehow— a, habit
which made his biography of Kitchener primarily an exhibition of his own
vanity. It is impossible for him, in this book, to mention Queen Victoria with¬
out sneering at her, or to refrain from intimating more than once that Queen
Alexandra was totally uneducated (in comparison, of course, with himself),—
a defect which he patronizingly condones as if patting her on the head with a
“Never mind, little girl; you are very pretty, so I forgive you’’. Apart from
this element, the book is worth reading. T.
Question No. 394 .—We are told that self is the great enemy which we must ceaselessly struggle
to conquer; is one then never to resent insults which are directed against the self?
Answer. —It is a question, for one thing, of the motive back of the insult. Why did that
person insult us? Was it deliberate, in order to arrest our attention, to wake us up? Or was
it merely the venting of irritation and ill-nature? Or did some real question of feeling and
principle lie back of the remark? An insult may imply deliberate intent of some kind. That
intent may show an habitual wrong attitude of mind towards us which has expressed itself,
or it may reveal qualities of lower nature, in the person who has insulted us, over which he
has lost control. Possibly that person has recognized in us, unerringly, his own greatest fault
or weakness, and, annoyed by it, has given way to his feeUng. If the insult includes others,
as well as ourselves, we may properly feel resentment—for those others—and say so. If we
feel resentment for ourselves alone, it is safe to assume that the resentment comes from our
own lower nature, and that there is an element of truth in the insult; we should do well to
examine it, and apply to ourselves the result of that examination. The nature of our response
must depend upon who it is that has insulted us, and upon the circumstances. Some people
may have no right, under any conditions, to speak to us in such a way. If they do so, it may
be our duty to put them in their place, positively, but not in anger. We should remember
that what has been said to us may represent a need, or a lack, in the person who has spoken,
and we should keep aware of this, and act in accordance with it. C.R.A.
Answer. —How are we ever to become able to conquer the great enemy—self—if we allow
ourselves to be swayed by what concerns it, whether in terms of praise, or of condemnation,
or insult? We must free ourselves from the bonds of the personality. One of the first steps
in that direction is the surrender of all idea of personal rights. Light on the Path points out
that impersonality must be understood; that “no man is your enemy: no man is your friend.
All alike are your teachers.” Real or fancied “insults” to the personality, therefore, should
be regarded as lessons to be learned. Insults, or untrue statements about others, or about a
Cause which we hold in reverence, are quite a different matter; these should never be allowed
to pass without, at least, a protest. G.H.M.
Answer. —We should never “resent” anything directed against ourselves. Why, merely
because someone else has said something, should we take into our own hearts and minds so
corrosive a thing as resentment, which, when harboured, is utterly destructive of all peace, hap¬
piness, and spiritual growth? “Small injuries shall go as they come, a great injury may dine
or sup with me; but none at all shall lodge with me.” If the “insults” hamper our work, or
reflect on others or on what we represent, it may be necessary to take whatever action is
required to have them stopped, and, perhaps, to have reparation made. This, however,
should be done quite impersonally, certainly without any personal resentment. It is far more
effective. The way to meet an insult is with dignity, and true dignity is always impersonal.
A great deal of what people tell themselves is resentment of an insult, is in reality their own
356
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
357
vanity lashing back at a hurt to itself. When one has done something that subjects him to
merited criticism, rebuke or rebuff, his lower nature is certain to create a smoke-screen of
resentment, in order to divert his attention and keep him from realizing that he ought to be
ashamed of himself,—a realization that vanity finds very painful. J.F.B.M.
Answer. —What is an “insult”? Is it not an “insult” only if we ourselves allow it to appear
so? For although a person may be guilty of what we know quite well to be an unbrotherly
action toward us, or an almost insufferable remark offered us, the results are entirely in our
own hands; everything depends upon our attitude and response. The force locked up in the
intended offence in reality reacts upon the one who has been responsible for it, as a boomerang
returns upon its course. Therefore the perpetrator is also the victim (we shall have learned
much if we realize this), and he is in need of our sympathy, not our “resentment”. When we
ourselves are guilty of unbrotherliness toward another, charity and not anger is what we
most hope for. The truly great of heart are not even conscious of “insults” purposely directed
against themselves (history is full of examples), although, until sincere and deep repentance is
manifest, they never forgive or forget an insult offered to their Master, to their Cause or to
their friends. That is all that need concern us. T.A.
Answer. —One way of viewing self is to see it as an insult. As a product of our self-will,
we defied divine law in creating it; its very existence is an affront to the Lords of Compassion.
The trouble is, that, having misapplied divine force in creating it, we have grown to icfentify
ourselves with it instead of with the real, permanent, or Higher Self. Once we get our identi¬
fication properly placed, so that we realize we are not this false self, and know it for what it is,
we shall have no problem about its being insulted; any more than we have, now, about a cat
being insulted because someone calls attention to its feline nature, or about a rat because
someone speaks of its rodent ways. In the case of self, when we have disentangled ourselves
sufficiently from its snares and delusions, as we must eventually, and have associated ourselves
with the Higher Self, we shall realize that it is impossible to insult that which, in itself, is an
insult. Until then, we shall have to grin and bear supposed insults as best we can.
G.M.W.K.
Answer. —It all depends upon your point of view. If you are trying to force your way
through a mob, or are slipping backward down a bank, you recognize that the friend who
presses you from behind is doing you a service. If you wish to stand still, the push becomes
an outrage. To “insult” means, literally, to “jump on”. We do not mind others jumping on
what we ourselves are trampling beneath our feet. But we are likely to object, or at least to
make inquiry, when the jump lands on our own toes. The question thus becomes one of right
self-identification. It would be hard to find an act which did not mingle good and evil, which
did not reveal the struggle, of which our whole life is compact, between the mean an d^^
noble, between the self and the greater than self: with which do we identify ourselvesMBe
two are at war, and in our sane moments we know that we cannot remain neutral or conHmie
friends with both. We must choose one and be at enmity with the other. Then we must
try to keep remembering which is which, and not mix them up as soon as anyone else also
takes sides,—which is what usually happens when we resent criticism or rebuke, as insult.
There is, however, another aspect of the question which we should not ignore. To resent
another’s act, is to make oneself negative to him, subservient to him, surrendering to him the
initiative and the control we should keep of our own feelings and moods. In resenting, in
“feeling against” another {re against, and sentire to feel), we are not ourselves acting, but
are merely re-acting, moving as he pulls the strings. If we remember this, the very pride, or
vanity, which prompts us to feel resentment, will move us to put it away. Resentment is
always weak. We should find within ourselves, not in others, the motives for our acts.
M.
NOTICE OF CONVENTION
The Theosophical Society
To the Branches of The Theosophical Society:
1. The Annual Convention of The Theosophical Society will be held at 64 Washington
Mew^ New York, on Saturday, April 27th, 1935. beginning at 10: 30 a. m.
2. Branches unable to send delegates to the Convention are requested to send proxies.
These may be made out to the Secretary T. S., or to any officer or member of the Society
who is resident in New York or is to attend the Convention. These proxies should state the
number of members in good standing in the Branch.
3. Branch Secretaries are asked to send their annual reports to the Secretary T. S. These
reports should cover the significant features of the year’s work and should be accompanied
by a complete list of officers and members, with the full name and address of each; also a
statement of the number of members gained or lost during the year; also a record of the place
and time of Branch meetings. These reports should reach the Secretary T. S. by April ist.
4. Members-at-large are invited to attend the Convention sessions; and all Branch mem¬
bers, whether delegates or not, will be welcome.
5. Following the custom of former years, the sessions of the Convention will begin at 10: 30
a. m. and 2: 30 p. m.
6. On Sunday, April 28th, at 4: 30 p. m., tea will be served at 64 Washington Mews, to
delegates, members, and their friends.
Isabel E. Perkins,
Secretary, The Theosophical Society,
P. 0 . Box 64, Station 0 , New York, N. Y.
February 15th, 1935.
NOTICE OF MEETINGS
The regular meetings of the New York Branch of The Theosophical Society are held on
alternate Saturday evenings, at 64 Washington Mews, which runs from the east side of Fifth
Avenue, midway between Eighth Street and Washington Square, North. No. 64 is the first
studio east of Fifth Avenue, on the north side of the Mews. The meetings begin at half-past
eight, and close at ten o’clock. There are meetings on,—
April 6th and 20th, May 4th.
Out-of-town members of the Society are invited to attend these meetings whenever they
are in New York. Visitors who may be interested in Theosophy are always welcome.
358
INDEX TO VOLUME XXXII
H P B .
XT D "R ’0 A/Tocccirr<a fn f^ntivAntinn iRni .
. 81
.15, 109, 197, 287
. 24, 132, 220, 300
Character and Fate; Stanley V. LaDow ..
Devotion and Understanding; Charles Johnston .
Divinity of the King in Ancient Egypt, The; Hetep-en-Neter.
. no
. 16
. 126
X'Uiill (liiU. i UllV^ L 1 V 711 , AV. ....
Fragments; Cav 6 .
.15,109,197,287
. 121
u r: .
F T H .
. 198
. no
m n . 108
G m' W K .
T.anH nf lVTv<itprv A .
Lay Sermon, A; E. Howard Lincoln .
Letters from W. Q. Judge; E.T. H .
Life’s Greatest Chemical; J. C .
T .’Tlp-rlp-Rmrirp • ^nuDCiPP. .
. 296
. 198
Lincoln, E. Howard .
Living Pictures; A. Woodby .
Managing the Personality; H. G .
J F B M .
. 296
. 289
Notes and Comments.
Modern Superstition; Anthropocentric Astronomy; A Fragment of
Occult Astronomy; Synthetic Supermen; Humanist Religion; The
Modernist Sin Against Nature; Protestantism and Materialism (5).
The Boundaries of the Earth; The Halo of a Planet; The Reversal of
the Time-Sense; Educational Follies; The Idea of Progress; True
Progress and Sacrifice; The Antiquity of Man; Early American Civili¬
zation; Natural Catastrophes (99). Facts and Fancies; Brutal Realism;
Magnesium and Social-Mindedness; Some Ideas Concerning Angels;
The Substitution of Emotion for Thought; Ecclesiastical Sentimen¬
tality; The End of War; The World-Picture of Modem Physics; Cm^
sciousness and the Intellect; The Bridge Between Spirit and Matj^
(187). A Neurologist’s View of Genius; Two Sources of Poetic In¬
spiration; Tme and Artificial Genius; Genius and Happiness; Innate
Ideas; Individualism and Collectivism; Social-Mindedness; The Forma¬
tion of Wholes; The Consciousness of a Congeries; The Last Phase of a
Cycle; Vulgar Religion; Machinism and Civilization; A Way of Libera¬
tion (275).
On the Screen of Time; T .33> iS4i 243> 3il
One Path to the Goal; J. C . 20(
Perchance He Sleepeth; L. S .
Questions and Answers .95i 183, 269, 351
3 S 9
Blavatsky, H. P. Isis Unvbilbd, Vc
Kbv to Theosophy
Secret Doctrine, fra'VoLs'.'i'i
^OSOPHICAL GlOSWR™“°“
Transactions of the BtAVAiisEY
VoiCT OF THE Silence.
Cave. Fragments, Volume i.
Volume II.
Gerard, John. Let^^^q Paffiiiis’
Hdlard, Katherine. Abridgment of '
Johnston, Charles. Bhagavad Gita. .
Jewel of Wisdom, The..
Volume t
Babbles OF the Kingdom. Tni
Patanjali s Yoga Sutras
Song of Life, The ... .
Jud^, William Q. Bhagavajd* Gita "
.
L.srs
wS; |V' Fcnction ,« Eio.
W of the White Lotus ,. .
Light on the Path,
ihrough the Gates of Gold........
the quarterly
INDEX TO VOLUME XXXII
.
,-'ian]ty and War
uondamnde k M
Conquest of the Maya 'The
Dawn of Consciei
Dogs of War!; F.
Escape from the {
Essays in Zen Buac
Essence of Plotinus,
French Royal
Muret .
God Mends; _
Gospel of the Hereafter TV,<I.' p '' r.
High Gods in North Am • ’
History of Buddhisf Th^Sht’ ’ '
Invisible Influence Th ff'’ j.
Orph.sm;7.E. WatmciigA. .
Transfonnation of ^ture Ph'Iosophy;'t
^ . ^ The; Ananda
vSrS ?sfa'^The”^L’'(^'' '
Richness of Life; /, f. B. jS .
SauvaQe. .
L.S . . .
Two A„d,„, ReocriV;/a,ap^'.A,„„.
R.E.T . .
V. u .. ...
Wayfarer . .
Woodhy, A . » -^Vi V, Centurion. . .
k .cloth, mo.oo
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.. 1.00
.boards, i.co
.. boards, 1.60
.boards, l.so
Secret Dwrind.^XSI s.ot
.Translated, aonotaled; cloth, 1*25
limp leather, i, 7 ff
.. 1,25
.cloth, 1 ,C 0
.paper, .60
.T^slated, annotated; cloth, 1.25
• paper, ,76
Edited; cloth, 1.25; leather. 1.50
•paper, ,25
•paper, .26
• cloth, 1.00
• cloth, 1.00
• cloth, 1.00
paper, ,20
paper, .50
t20| paper, .50
' • -paper, ,20
RDS Of
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TION-
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BOOK department,
p. a Box 64, Station O, New York. I
print: H. P. B.’„
A Land of
^lEws:
Age of the Gods,
Ancient May;
Christf
Stacy-Judd. .
lUnw-. >’ Johnston. . .
Thuliez ... ;''
■nee' Th'Cr Mitchell.'.
■ Henry Breasted
Tahana Tchernavin
OaisetzTeitaro Suzuki'.
list Dnof * • ^ Crace H. Turnhul
'■« Doctnnea s,„, tha Ravolution;
Henry Myers . . .
rSrt ave Hdinrf mI Jr®**' Fragment
FswtM *y IJ. P* Blavatsky at B«w *«tk to »W
S the world's reUgions »nd philosophtw w^
^‘“ r® ^common and ftindamentalprto^^^^
imderlvine thcic» tlwit ^^ipiritoiJ identity of all Sotili with the
which is the basis of true brotherho^t and ®»®T
S^th^ alsJ bSere that an appreciati^ of the finer W
2 iatwe Sd man will still further emphasrae the same tdea.
The organization is wholly onaectarian, with ®®
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5to w .x~«.a » ««»«•,*» •?«. I»IW« of oth.n «l»t
tolerance wwh they dcihe for thcit own.
The following proclamation /<*?P*fJ,** ConTen*
tion of the Society, held at Boston, April, »895i
"The Theosophlcal Society in Americaby its iklegateeand
members in Conrentlon assembled, does hereby proclaim
fcaternal good will and kindly feeling toward all students of
Theosophy and members of Theosophlcal Societies wherevw
and however situated. It further prodaims and avers ite
hearty sympathy and association with such persom aM
organisations in all theosophlcal matters except those or
government and administration, and invites thei* cor*
tespondence and co-operation. P
"To all men and women of whatever caste,ereeo,tace,o»
religious belief, who aim at the fostering of peace, gentlenei^
and unselfish regard bne for another, and the acquisition ot
Buch knowledge of men and nature as shall tend to the
tion and advancement of the human race, it sends most ftiendlf
greeting and freely proffers its services. . ^
"It }»in|« hands with all religions and religious bodiavmoie
efforts ate directed to the purification of men's thoughts and
the bettering of their ways, and it avows its harmony thctc>
-with* To all scientific societies and individual searchers after
wisdom upon whatever plane, and by whatever righteous
means pursued, it is and will be grateful for such discovery
and oubldment of Truth as shall serve to announce and con*
firm a ieUnUflc basis for effiics. ^
"And lastly, it invites to its membership those wluv suv
log a higher life hereafter, would learn to knowthepaftto
tread In this."
I A{^dicati(«s for membership should be addressed to the
I Secretary T. S., P. O. Box 64, Station O, New York,
J.-
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