SECTION XLVI. NIRVANA‐MOKSHA
The few sentences given in the text from one of Gautama Buddha’s secret teachings show how uncalled for is the epithet of “Materialist” when applied to One Whom two‐thirds of those who are looked upon as great Adepts and Occultists in Asia recognize as their Master, whether under the name of Buddha or that of Shankarâchârya. The reader will remember the just‐quoted words are what Buddha Sanggyas (or Pho) is alleged by the Tibetan Occultists to have taught: there are three eternal things in the Universe—the Law, Nirvâna, and Space. The Buddhists of the Southern Church claim, on the other hand, that Buddha held only two things as eternal—Âkâsha and Nirvâna. But Âkâsha being the same as Aditi,(700) and both being translated “Space,” there is no discrepancy so far, since Nirvâna as well as Moksha, is a state. Then in both cases the great Kapilavastu Sage unifies the two, as well as the three, into one eternal Element, and ends by saying that even “that One is a Mâyâ” to one who is not a Dang‐ma, a perfectly purified Soul.
The whole question hangs upon materialistic misconceptions and ignorance of Occult Metaphysics. To the man of Science who regards Space as simply a mental representation, a conception of something existing pro formâ, and having no real being outside our mind, Space per se is verily an illusion. He may fill the boundless interstellar space with an “imaginary” ether, nevertheless Space for him is an abstraction. Most of the Metaphysicians of Europe are so wide of the mark, from the purely Occult standpoint, of a correct comprehension of “Space,” as are the Materialists, though the erroneous conceptions of both of course differ widely.
If, bearing in mind the philosophical views of the Ancients upon this question, we compare them with what is now termed exact physical Science, it will be found that the two disagree only in inferences and names, and that their postulates are the same when reduced to their most simple expression. From the beginning of the human Æons, from the very dawn of Occult Wisdom, the regions that the men of Science fill with ether have been explored by the Seers of every age. That which the world regards simply as cosmic Space, an abstract representation, the Hindu Rishi, the Chaldæan Magus, the Egyptian Hierophant held, each and all, as the one eternal Root of all, the playground of all the Forces in Nature. It is the fountain‐head of all terrestrial life, and the abode of those (to us) invisible swarms of existences—of real beings, as of the shadows only thereof, conscious and unconscious, intelligent and senseless—that surround us on all sides, that interpenetrate the atoms of our Kosmos, and see us not, as we do not either see or sense them through our physical organisms. For the Occultist “Space” and “Universe” are synonyms. In Space there is not Matter, Force, nor Spirit, but all that and much more. It is the One Element, and that one the Anima Mundi—Space, Âkâsha, Astral Light—the Root of Life which, in its eternal, ceaseless motion, like the out‐ and in‐breathing of one boundless ocean, evolves but to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it. As said of the Universe in Isis Unveiled, it is:
The combination of a thousand elements and yet the expression of a single Spirit—a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.
Such were the views upon the subject of all the great ancient Philosophers, from Manu down to Pythagoras, from Plato to Paul.
When the dissolution [Pralaya] had arrived at its term the great Being [Para‐Âtmâ, or Para‐Purusha], the Lord existing through himself, out of whom and through whom all things were, and are, and will be, ... resolved to emanate from his own substance the various creatures.(701)
The mystic Decad [of Pythagoras] (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10) is a way of expressing this idea. The One is God;(702) the Two, matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad and partaking of the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection, expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the entire Cosmos.(703)
Plato’s “God” is the “Universal Ideation,” and Paul saying “Out of him, and through him, and in him, all things are,” had surely a Principle—never a Jehovah—in his profound mind. The key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the key to every great Philosophy. It is the general formula of unity in multiplicity, the One evolving the many and pervading the All. It is the archaic doctrine of Emanation in a few words.
Speusippus and Xenocrates held, like their great Master, Plato, that:
The Anima Mundi (or “world‐soul”) was not the Deity, but a manifestation. Those philosophers never conceived of the One as an animate nature. The original One did not exist, as we understand the term. Not till he (it) had united with the many emanated existences (the Monad and Duad), was a being produced. The τίμιον (“honoured”), the something manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only the reflection of the Deity—the World‐Soul. In this doctrine we find the spirit of Esoteric Buddhism.(704)
And it is that of Esoteric Brâhmanism and of the Vedântin Adwaitîs. The two modern philosophers, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, teach the same ideas. The Occultists say that:
The psychic and ectenic forces, the “ideo‐motor” and “electro‐ biological powers,” “latent thought,” and even “unconscious cerebration” theories can be condensed in two words: the Kabalistic Astral Light.(705)
Schopenhauer only synthesized all this by calling it Will, and contradicted the men of Science in their materialistic views, as von Hartmann did later on. The author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious calls their views “an instinctual prejudice.”
Furthermore, he demonstrates that no experimenter can have anything to do with matter properly so termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby that that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic forces, to express which the word “matter” is used; outside of that, for science, matter is but a word void of sense.(706)
As much, it is to be feared, as those other terms with which we are now concerned, “Space,” “Nirvâna,” and so on.
The bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer’s works differ widely from those of the majority of our orthodox scientists.(707) “In reality,” remarks this daring speculator, “there is neither Matter nor Spirit. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in the human brain.... If matter can—no one knows why—fall to the ground, then it can also—no one knows why—think.... As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable adhesion, gravitation, and so on we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the will and thought in man: we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible, for such is every force in nature. Where is, then, that matter which you all pretend to know so well, and from which—being so familiar with it—you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to it all things?... That which can be fully realized by our reason and senses is but the superficial; they can never reach the true inner substance of things. Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to a stone. If your dead and utterly‐passive matter can manifest a tendency toward gravitation or, like electricity, attract and repel and send out sparks then as well as the brain it can also think. In short, every particle of the so‐called spirit we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of matter replace with spirit.... Thus, it is not the Christian division of all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically exact; but only if we divide them into will and manifestation, which form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes everything: all that which is in the first instance real and objective—body and matter—it transforms into a representation, and every manifestation into will.”(708)
The matter of science may be for all objective purposes a “dead and utterly‐passive matter”; to the Occultist not an atom of it can be dead—“Life is ever present in it.” We send the reader who would know more about it to our article, “Transmigration of Life‐Atoms.”(709) What we are now concerned with is the doctrine of Nirvâna.
A “system of atheism” it may be justly called, since it recognizes neither God nor Gods—least of all a Creator, as it entirely rejects creation. The Fecit ex nihilo is as incomprehensible to the Occult metaphysical Scientist as it is to the scientific Materialist. It is at this point that all agreement stops between the two. But if such be the sin of the Buddhist and Brâhman Occultist, then Pantheists and Atheists, and also theistical Jews—the Kabalists—must also plead “guilty” to it; yet no one would ever think of calling the Hebrews of the Kabalah “Atheists.” Except the Talmudistic and Christian exoteric systems there never was a religious Philosophy, whether in the ancient or modern world, but rejected à priori the ex nihilo hypothesis, simply because Matter was always co‐ eternalized with Spirit.
Nirvâna, as well as the Moksha of the Vedântins, is regarded by most of the Orientalists as a synonym of annihilation; yet no more glaring injustice could be done, and this capital error must be pointed out and disproved. On this most important tenet of the Brâhmo‐Buddhistic system—the Alpha and the Omega of “Being” or “Non‐Being”—rests the whole edifice of Occult Metaphysics. Now the rectification of the great error concerning Nirvâna may be very easily accomplished with relation to the philosophically inclined, to those who,
In the glass of things temporal see the image of things spiritual.
On the other hand, to that reader who could never soar beyond the details of tangible material form, our explanation will appear meaningless. He may comprehend and even accept the logical inferences from the reasons given—the true spirit will ever escape his intuitions. The word “nihil” having been misconceived from the first, it is continually used as a sledge‐hammer in the matter of Esoteric Philosophy. Nevertheless it is the duty of the Occultist to try and explain it.
Nirvâna and Moksha, then, as said before, have their being in non‐being, if such a paradox be permitted to illustrate the meaning the better. Nirvâna, as some illustrious Orientalists have attempted to prove, does mean the “blowing‐out”(710) of all sentient existence. It is like the flame of a candle burnt out to its last atom, and then suddenly extinguished. Quite so. Nevertheless, as the old Arhat Nâgasena affirmed before the king who taunted him: “Nirvâna is”—and Nirvâna is eternal. But the Orientalists deny this, and say it is not so. In their opinion Nirvâna is not a re‐absorption in the Universal Force, not eternal bliss and rest, but it means literally “the blowing‐out, the extinction, complete annihilation, and not absorption.” The Lankavatara quoted in support of their arguments by some Sanskritists, and which gives the different interpretations of Nirvâna by the Tîrthika Brâhmans, is no authority to one who goes to primeval sources for information, namely, to the Buddha who taught the doctrine. As well quote the Chârvâka Materialists in their support.
If we bring as an argument the sacred Jaina books, wherein the dying Gautama Buddha is thus addressed: “Arise into Nirvi [Nirvâna] from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent.... Ascend into thy former abode, O blessed Avatâra”; and if we add that this seems to us the very opposite of nihilism, we may be told that so far it may only prove a contradiction, one more discrepancy in the Buddhist faith. If again we remind the reader that since Gautama is believed to appear occasionally, re‐descending from his “former abode” for the good of humanity and His faithful congregation, thus making it incontestable that Buddhism does not teach final annihilation, we shall be referred to authorities to whom such teaching is ascribed. And let us say at once: Men are no authority for us in questions of conscience, nor ought they to be for anyone else. If anyone holds to Buddha’s Philosophy, let him do and say as Buddha did and said; if a man calls himself a Christian, let him follow the commandments of Christ—not the interpretations of His many dissenting priests and sects.
In A Buddhist Catechism the question is asked:
Are there any dogmas in Buddhism which we are required to accept on faith?
A. No. We are earnestly enjoined to accept nothing whatever on faith, whether it be written in books, handed down from our ancestors, or taught by sages. Our Lord Buddha has said that we must not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor rumours, as such; nor writings by sages, because sages wrote them: nor fancies that we may suspect to have been inspired in us by a Deva (that is, in presumed spiritual inspiration); nor from inferences drawn from some haphazard assumption we may have made; nor because of what seems an analogical necessity; nor on the mere authority of our teachers or masters. But we are to believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness. “For this,” says he in concluding, “I taught you not to believe merely because you have heard, but when you believed of your consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly.”(711)
That Nirvâna, or rather, that state in which we are in Nirvâna, is quite the reverse of annihilation is suggested to us by our “reason and consciousness,” and that is sufficient for us personally. At the same time, this fact being inadequate and very ill‐adapted for the general reader, something more efficient may be added.
Without resorting to sources unsympathetic to Occultism, the Kabalah furnishes us with the most luminous and clear proofs that the term “nihil” in the minds of the Ancient Philosophers had a meaning quite different from that it has now received at the hands of Materialists. It means certainly “nothing”—or “no‐thing.” F. Kircher, in his work on the Kabalah and the Egyptian Mysteries(712) explains the term admirably. He tells his readers that in the Zohar the first of the Sephiroth(713) has a name the significance of which is “the Infinite,” but which was translated indifferently by the Kabalists as “Ens” and “Non‐Ens” (“Being” and “Non‐Being”); a Being, inasmuch as it is the root and source of all other beings; Non‐Being because Ain Soph—the Boundless and the Causeless, the Unconscious and the Passive Principle—resembles nought else in the Universe.
The author adds:
This is the reason why St. Denys did not hesitate to call it Nihil.
“Nihil” therefore stands—even with some Christian theologians and thinkers, especially with the earlier ones who lived but a few removes from the profound Philosophy of the initiated Pagans—as a synonym for the impersonal, divine Principle, the Infinite All, which is no Being or thing—the En or Ain Soph, the Parabrahman of the Vedânta. Now St. Denys was a pupil of St. Paul—an Initiate—and this fact makes everything clear.
The “Nihil” is in esse the Absolute Deity itself, the hidden Power or Omnipresence degraded by Monotheism into an anthropomorphic Being, with all the passions of a mortal on a grand scale. Union with That is not annihilation in the sense understood in Europe.(714) In the East annihilation in Nirvâna refers but to matter: that of the visible as well as the invisible body, for the astral body, the personal double, is still matter, however sublimated. Buddha taught that the primitive Substance is eternal and unchangeable. Its vehicle is the pure, luminous ether, the boundless, infinite Space,
Not a void resulting from the absence of forms, but on the contrary, the foundation of all forms.... [This] denotes it to be the creation of Mâyâ, all the works of which are as nothing before the uncreated Form [Spirit], in whose profound and sacred depths all motion must cease for ever.(715)
Motion here refers only to illusive objects, to their change as opposed to perpetuity, rest—perpetual motion being the Eternal Law, the ceaseless Breath of the Absolute.
The mastery of Buddhistic dogmas can be attained only according to the Platonic method: from universals to particulars. The key to it lies in the refined and mystical tenets of spiritual influx and divine life.
Saith Buddha:
Whosoever is unacquainted with my Law,(716) and dies in that state must return to earth until he becomes a perfect Samano [ascetic]. To achieve this object he must destroy within himself the trinity of Mâyâ.(717) He must extinguish his passions, unite and identify himself with the Law [the teaching of the Secret Doctrine], and comprehend the philosophy of annihilation.(718)
No, it is not in the dead‐letter of Buddhistical literature that scholars may ever hope to find the true solution of its metaphysical subtleties. Alone in all antiquity the Pythagoreans understood them perfectly, and it is on the (to the average Orientalist and the Materialist) incomprehensible abstractions of Buddhism that Pythagoras grounded the principal tenets of his Philosophy.
Annihilation means with the Buddhistical Philosophy only a dispersion of matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be, for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later perish, i.e., change that shape; therefore, as something temporal, though seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, Mâyâ; for as eternity has neither beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some particular form passes, as it were, like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we have the time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone and passed for ever; hence even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis. When the spiritual Entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvâna. He exists in Spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely annihilated, and thus will die no more, for Spirit alone is no Mâyâ, but the only Reality in an illusionary universe of ever‐passing forms.
It is upon this Buddhist doctrine that the Pythagoreans grounded the principal tenets of their philosophy. “Can that Spirit which gives life and motion, and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced to nonentity?” they ask. “Can that sensitive Spirit in brutes which exercises memory, one of the rational faculties, die and become nothing?” And Whitelock Bulstrode in his able defence of Pythagoras expounds this doctrine by adding:
“If you say they [the brutes] breathe their Spirits into the air, and there vanish, that is all that I contend for. The air indeed is the proper place to receive them, being according to Laertius full of souls; and according to Epicurus full of atoms, the principles of all things; for even this place wherein we walk and birds fly has so much of a spiritual nature that it is invisible, and therefore may well be the receiver of forms, since the forms of all bodies are so; we can only see and hear its effects; the air itself is too fine and above the capacity of the age. What then is the ether in the region above, and what are the influences of forms that descend from thence?” The Spirits of creatures, the Pythagoreans hold, who are emanations of the most sublimated portions of ether—emanations, breaths, but not forms. Ether is corruptible—all philosophers agree in that;—and what is incorruptible is so far from being annihilated when it gets rid of the form that it lays a good claim to immortality.
“But what is that which has no body, no form; which is imponderable, invisible, and indivisible—that which exists, and yet is not?” ask the Buddhists. “It is Nirvâna,” is the answer. It is nothing—not a region, but rather a state.(719)
SECTION XLVII. THE SECRET BOOKS OF “LAM‐RIN” AND DZYAN
The Book of Dzyan—from the Sanskrit word “Dhyân” (mystic meditation)—is the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven secret folios of Kiu‐ te, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name. Thirty‐five volumes of Kiu‐te for exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen may be found in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa Lamas, in the library of any monastery; and also fourteen books of Commentaries and Annotations on the same by the initiated Teachers.
Strictly speaking, those thirty‐five books ought to be termed “The Popularised Version” of the Secret Doctrine, full of myths, blinds, and errors; the fourteen volumes of Commentaries, on the other hand—with their translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of Occult terms, worked out from one small archaic folio, the Book of the Secret Wisdom of the World(720)—contain a digest of all the Occult Sciences. These, it appears, are kept secret and apart, in the charge of the Teshu Lama of Tji‐gad‐je. The Books of Kiu‐te are comparatively modern, having been edited within the last millennium, whereas, the earliest volumes of the Commentaries are of untold antiquity, some fragments of the original cylinders having been preserved. With the exception that they explain and correct some of the too fabulous, and to every appearance, grossly‐ exaggerated accounts in the Books of Kiu‐te(721)—properly so‐called—the Commentaries have little to do with these. They stand in relation to them as the Chaldæo‐Jewish Kabalah stands to the Mosaic Books. In the work known as the Avatumsaka Sûtra, in section: “The Supreme Âtman [Soul] as manifested in the character of the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas,” it is stated that:
Because from the beginning all sentient creatures have confused the truth and embraced the false, therefore there came into existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijñâna.
“Who is in possession of the true knowledge?” is asked. “The great Teachers of the Snowy Mountain,” is the response.
These “great Teachers” have been known to live in the “Snowy Range” of the Himâlayas for countless ages. To deny in the face of millions of Hindus the existence of their great Gurus, living in the Âshrams scattered all over the Trans‐ or the Cis‐Himâlayan slopes is to make oneself ridiculous in their eyes. When the Buddhist Saviour appeared in India, their Âshrams—for it is rarely that these great Men are found in Lamaseries, unless on a short visit—were on the spots they now occupy, and that even before the Brâhmans themselves came from Central Asia to settle on the Indus. And before that more than one Âryan Dvija of fame and historical renown had sat at their feet, learning that which culminated later on in one or another of the great philosophical schools. Most of these Himâlayan Bhante were Âryan Brâhmans and ascetics.
No student, unless very advanced, would be benefited by the perusal of those exoteric volumes.(722) They must be read with a key to their meaning, and that key can only be found in the Commentaries. Moreover there are some comparatively modern works that are positively injurious so far as a fair comprehension of even exoteric Buddhism is concerned. Such are the Buddhist Cosmos, by Bonze Jin‐ch’on of Pekin; the Shing‐Tau‐ki (or The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathâgata), by Wang Puk—seventh century; Hisai Sûtra (or Book of Creation), and some others.
SECTION XLVIII. AMITA BUDDHA KWAN‐SHAI‐YIN, AND KWAN‐YIN.—WHAT THE “BOOK OF DZYAN” AND THE LAMASERIES OF TSONG‐KHA‐PA SAY.
As a supplement to the Commentaries there are many secret folios on the lives of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and among these there is one on Prince Gautama and another on His reincarnation in Tsong‐Kha‐pa. This great Tibetan Reformer of the fourteenth century, said to be a direct incarnation of Amita Buddha, is the founder of the secret School near Tji‐ gad‐je, attached to the private retreat of the Teshu Lama. It is with Him that began the regular system of Lamaic incarnations of Buddhas (Sang‐ gyas), or of Shâkya‐Thub‐pa (Shakya‐muni). Amida or Amita Buddha is called by the author of Chinese Buddhism, a mythical being. He speaks of
Amida Buddha (Ami‐to Fo) a fabulous personage, worshipped assiduously—like Kwan‐yin—by the Northern Buddhists, but unknown in Siam, Burmah, and Ceylon.(723)
Very likely. Yet Amida Buddha is not a “fabulous” personage, since (a) “Amida” is the Senzar form of “Âdi”; “Âdi‐Buddhi” and “Âdi‐Buddha,”(724) as already shown, existed ages ago as a Sanskrit term for “Primeval Soul” and “Wisdom”; and (b) the name was applied to Gautama Shâkyamuni, the last Buddha in India, from the seventh century, when Buddhism was introduced into Tibet. “Amitâbha” (in Chinese, “Wu‐liang‐sheu”) means literally “Boundless Age,” a synonym of “En,” or “Ain‐Suph,” the “Ancient of Days,” and is an epithet that connects Him directly with the Boundless Âdi‐Buddhi (primeval and Universal Soul) of the Hindus, as well as with the Anima Mundi of all the ancient nations of Europe and the Boundless and Infinite of the Kabalists. If Amitâbha be a fiction of the Tibetans, or a new form of Wu‐liang‐sheu, “a fabulous personage,” as the author‐compiler of Chinese Buddhism tells his readers, then the “fable” must be a very ancient one. For on another page he says himself that the addition to the canon, of the books containing the
Legends of Kwan‐yin and of the Western heaven with its Buddha, Amitâbha, was also previous to the Council of Kashmere, a little before the beginning of our era,(725)
and he places
the origin of the primitive Buddhist books which are common to the Northern and Southern Buddhists before 246 B.C.
Since Tibetans accepted Buddhism only in the seventh century A.D., how comes it that they are charged with inventing Amita‐Buddha? Besides which, in Tibet, Amitâbha is called Odpag‐med, which shows that it is not the name but the abstract idea that was first accepted of an unknown, invisible, and Impersonal Power—taken, moreover, from the Hindu “Âdi‐ Buddhi,” and not from the Chinese “Amitâbha.”(726) There is a great difference between the popular Odpag‐med (Amitâbha) who sits enthroned in Devachan (Sukhâvatî), according to the Mani Kambum Scriptures—the oldest historical work in Tibet, and the philosophical abstraction called Amida Buddha, the name being passed now to the earthly Buddha, Gautama.
SECTION XLIX. TSONG‐KHA‐PA.—LOHANS IN CHINA
In an article, “Reincarnation in Tibet,” everything that could be said about Tsong‐Kha‐pa was published.(727) It was stated that this reformer was not, as is alleged by Pârsî scholars, an incarnation of one of the celestial Dhyânis, or the five heavenly Buddhas, said to have been created by Shâkyamuni after he had risen to Nirvâna, but that he was an incarnation of Amita Buddha Himself. The records preserved in the Gon‐pa, the chief Lamasery of Tda‐shi‐Hlumpo, show that Sang‐gyas left the regions of the “Western Paradise” to incarnate Himself in Tsong‐Kha‐pa, in consequence of the great degradation into which His secret doctrines had fallen.
Whenever made too public, the Good Law of Cheu [magical powers] fell invariably into sorcery or “black magic.” The Dwijas, the Hoshang [Chinese monks] and the Lamas could alone be entrusted safely with the formulæ.
Until the Tsong‐Kha‐pa period there had been no Sang‐gyas (Buddha) incarnations in Tibet.
Tsong‐Kha‐pa gave the signs whereby the presence of one of the twenty‐five Bodhisattvas(728) or of the Celestial Buddhas (Dhyân Chohans) in a human body might be recognized, and He strictly forbade necromancy. This led to a split amongst the Lamas, and the malcontents allied themselves with the aboriginal Bhons against the reformed Lamaism. Even now they form a powerful sect, practising the most disgusting rites all over Sikkhim, Bhutan, Nepaul, and even on the borderlands of Tibet. It was worse then. With the permission of the Tda‐shu or Teshu Lama,(729) some hundred Lohans (Arhats), to avert strife, went to settle in China in the famous monastery near Tien‐t’‐ai, where they soon became subjects for legendary lore, and continue to be so to this day. They had been already preceded by other Lohans,
The world‐famous disciples of Tathâgata, called the “sweet‐voiced” on account of their ability to chant the Mantras with magical effect.(730)
The first ones came from Kashmir in the year 3,000 of Kali Yuga (about a century before the Christian era),(731) while the last ones arrived at the end of the fourteenth century, 1,500 years later; and, finding no room for themselves at the lamasery of Yihigching, they built for their own use the largest monastery of all on the sacred island of Pu‐to (Buddha, or Put, in Chinese), in the province of Chusan. There the Good Law, the “Doctrine of the Heart,” flourished for several centuries. But when the island was desecrated by a mass of Western foreigners, the chief Lohans left for the mountains of ——. In the Pagoda of Pi‐yun‐ti, near Pekin, one can still see the “Hall of the Five‐hundred Lohans.” There the statues of the first‐ comers are arranged below, while one solitary Lohan is placed quite under the roof of the building, which seems to have been built in commemoration of their visit.
The works of the Orientalists are full of the direct landmarks of Arhats (Adepts), possessed of thaumaturgic powers, but these are spoken of—whenever the subject cannot be avoided—with unconcealed scorn. Whether innocently ignorant of, or purposely ignoring, the importance of the Occult element and symbology in the various Religions they undertake to explain, short work is generally made of such passages, and they are left untranslated. In simple justice, however, it should be allowed that much as all such miracles may have been exaggerated by popular reverence and fancy, they are neither less credible nor less attested in “heathen” annals than are those of the numerous Christian Saints in the church chronicles. Both have an equal right to a place in their respective histories.
If, after the beginning of persecution against Buddhism, the Arhats were no more heard of in India, it was because, their vows prohibiting retaliation, they had to leave the country and seek solitude and security in China, Tibet, Japan, and elsewhere. The sacerdotal powers of the Brâhmans being at that time unlimited, the Simons and Apolloniuses of Buddhism had as much chance of recognition and appreciation by the Brâhmanical Irenæuses and Tertullians as had their successors in the Judæan and Roman worlds. It was a historical rehearsal of the dramas that were enacted centuries later in Christendom. As in the case of the so‐ called “Heresiarchs” of Christianity, it was not for rejecting the Vedas or the sacred Syllable that the Buddhist Arhats were persecuted, but for understanding too well the secret meaning of both. It was simply because their knowledge was regarded as dangerous and their presence in India unwelcome, that they had to emigrate.
Nor were there a smaller number of Initiates among the Brâhmans themselves. Even to‐day one meets most wonderfully‐gifted Sâddhus and Yogîs, obliged to keep themselves unnoticed and in the shadow, not only owing to the absolute secresy imposed upon them at their Initiation but also for fear of the Anglo‐Indian tribunals and courts of law, wherein judges are determined to regard as charlatanry, imposition, and fraud, the exhibition of, or claim to, any abnormal powers, and one may judge of the past by the present. Centuries after our era the Initiates of the inner temples and the Mathams (monastic communities) chose a superior council, presided over by an all‐powerful Brahm‐Âtmâ, the Supreme Chief of all those Mahâtmâs. This pontificate could be exercised only by a Brâhman who had reached a certain age, and he it was who was the sole guardian of the mystic formula, and he was the Hierophant who created great Adepts. He alone could explain the meaning of the sacred word, AUM, and of all the religious symbols and rites. And whosoever among those Initiates of the Supreme Degree revealed to a profane a single one of the truths, even the smallest of the secrets entrusted to him, had to die; and he who received the confidence was put to death.
But there existed, and still exists to this day, a Word far surpassing the mysterious monosyllable, and which renders him who comes into possession of its key nearly the equal of Brahman. The Brahmâtmâs alone possess this key, and we know that to this day there are two great Initiates in Southern India who possess it. It can be passed only at death, for it is the “Lost Word.” No torture, no human power, could force its disclosure by a Brâhman who knows it; and it is well guarded in Tibet.
Yet this secresy and this profound mystery are indeed disheartening, since they alone—the Initiates of India and Tibet—could thoroughly dissipate the thick mists hanging over the history of Occultism, and force its claims to be recognized. The Delphic injunction, “Know thyself,” seems for the few in this age. But the fault ought not to be laid at the door of the Adepts, who have done all that could be done, and have gone as far as Their rules permitted, to open the eyes of the world. Only while the European shrinks from public obloquy and the ridicule unsparingly thrown on Occultists, the Asiatic is being discouraged by his own Pandits. These profess to labour under the gloomy impression that no Bîga Vidyâ, no Arhatship (Adeptship), is possible during the Kali Yuga (the “Black Age”) we are now passing through. Even the Buddhists are taught that the Lord Buddha is alleged to have prophesied that the power would die out in “one millennium after His death.” But this is an entire mistake. In the Dîgha Nikâya the Buddha says:
Hear, Subhadra! The world will never be without Rahats, if the ascetics in my congregations well and truly keep my precepts.
A similar contradiction of the view brought forward by the Brâhmans is made by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, and there is further the actual appearance of many Sâddhus and miracle‐workers in the past, and even in the present age. The same holds good for China and Tibet. Among the commandments of Tsong‐Kha‐pa there is one that enjoins the Rahats (Arhats) to make an attempt to enlighten the world, including the “white barbarians,” every century, at a certain specified period of the cycle. Up to the present day none of these attempts has been very successful. Failure has followed failure. Have we to explain the fact by the light of a certain prophecy? It is said that up to the time when Pban‐chhen‐rin‐po‐ chhe (the Great Jewel of Wisdom)(732) condescends to be reborn in the land of the P’helings (Westerners), and appearing as the Spiritual Conqueror (Chom‐den‐da), destroys the errors and ignorance of the ages, it will be of little use to try to uproot the misconceptions of P’heling‐pa (Europe): her sons will listen to no one. Another prophecy declares that the Secret Doctrine shall remain in all its purity in Bhod‐yul (Tibet), only to the day that it is kept free from foreign invasion. The very visits of Western natives, however friendly, would be baneful to the Tibetan populations. This is the true key to Tibetan exclusiveness.
SECTION L. A FEW MORE MISCONCEPTIONS CORRECTED
Notwithstanding widespread misconceptions and errors—often most amusing to one who has a certain knowledge of the true doctrines—about Buddhism generally, and especially about Buddhism in Tibet, all the Orientalists agree that the Buddha’s foremost aim was to lead human beings to salvation by teaching them to practise the greatest purity and virtue, and by detaching them from the service of this illusionary world, and the love of one’s still more illusionary—because so evanescent and unreal—body and physical self. And what is the good of a virtuous life, full of privations and suffering, if the only result of it is to be annihilation at the end? If even the attainment of that supreme perfection which leads the Initiate to remember the whole series of his past lives, and to foresee that of the future ones, by the full development of that inner, divine eye in him, and to acquire the knowledge that unfolds the causes(733) of the ever‐ recurring cycles of existence, brings him finally to non‐being, and nothing more—then the whole system is idiotic, and Epicureanism is far more philosophical than such Buddhism. He who is unable to comprehend the subtle, and yet so potent, difference between existence in a material or physical state and a purely spiritual existence—Spirit or “Soul‐ life”—will never appreciate at their full value the grand teachings of the Buddha, even in their exoteric form. Individual or personal existence is the cause of pains and sorrows; collective and impersonal life‐eternal is full of divine bliss and joy for ever, with neither causes nor effects to darken its light. And the hope for such a life‐eternal is the keynote of the whole of Buddhism. If we are told that impersonal existence is no existence at all, but amounts to annihilation, as was maintained by some French reincarnationists, then we would ask: What difference can it make in the spiritual perceptions of an Ego whether he enter Nirvâna loaded with the recollections only of his own personal lives—tens of thousands according to the modern reincarnationists—or whether, merged entirely in the Parabrâhmic state it becomes one with the All, with the absolute knowledge and the absolute feeling of representing collective humanities? Once that an Ego lives only ten distinct individual lives he must necessarily lose his one self, and become mixed up—merged, so to say—with these ten selves. It really seems that so long as this great mystery remains a dead‐letter to the world of Western thinkers, and especially to the Orientalists, the less the latter undertake to explain it the better for Truth.
Of all the existing religious Philosophies, Buddhism is the least understood. The Lassens, Webers, Wassiljows, the Burnoufs and Juliens, and even such “eye‐witnesses” of Tibetan Buddhism as Csoma de Köros and the Schlagintweits, have hitherto only added perplexity to confusion. None of these has ever received his information from a genuine Gelugpa source: all have judged Buddhism from the bits of knowledge picked up at Tibetan frontier lamaseries, in countries thickly populated by Bhutanese and Leptchas, Bhons, and red‐capped Dugpas, along the line of the Himâlayas. Hundreds of volumes purchased from Burats, Shamans, and Chinese Buddhists, have been read and translated, glossed and misinterpreted according to invariable custom. Esoteric Schools would cease to be worthy of their name were their literature and doctrines to become the property of even their profane co‐religionists—still less of the Western public. This is simple common‐sense and logic. Nevertheless this is a fact which our Orientalists have ever refused to recognize: hence they have gone on, gravely discussing the relative merits and absurdities of idols, “sooth‐saying tables,” and “magical figures of Phurbu” on the “square tortoise.” None of these have anything to do with the real philosophical Buddhism of the Gelugpa, or even of the most educated among the Sakyapa and Kadampa sects. All such “plates” and sacrificial tables, Chinsreg magical circles, etc., were avowedly got from Sikkhim, Bhutan, and Eastern Tibet, from Bhons and Dugpas. Nevertheless, these are given as characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism! It would be as fair to judge the unread Philosophy of Bishop Berkeley after studying Christianity in the clown‐worship of Neapolitan lazzaroni, dancing a mystic jig before the idol of St. Pip, or carrying the ex‐voto in wax of the phallus of SS. Cosmo and Domiano, at Tsernie.
It is quite true that the primitive Shrâvakas (listeners or hearers) and the Shramanas (the “thought‐restrainers” and the “pure”) have degenerated, and that many Buddhist sects have fallen into mere dogmatism and ritualism. Like every other Esoteric, half‐suppressed teaching, the words of the Buddha convey a double meaning, and every sect has gradually come to claim to be the only one knowing the correct meaning, and thus to assume supremacy over the rest. Schism has crept in, and has fastened, like a hideous cancer, on the fair body of early Buddhism. Nâgârjuna’s Mahâyâna (“Great Vehicle”) School was opposed by the Hînayâna (or “Little Vehicle”) System, and even the Yogâchârya of Âryâsanga became disfigured by the yearly pilgrimage from India to the shores of Mansarovara, of hosts of vagabonds with matted locks who play at being Yogîs and Fakirs, preferring this to work. An affected detestation of the world, and the tedious and useless practice of the counting of inhalations and exhalations as a means to produce absolute tranquillity of mind or meditation, have brought this school within the region of Hatha Yoga, and have made it heir to the Brâhmanical Tîrthikas. And though its Srotâpatti, its Sakridâgâmin, Anâgâmin, and Arhats,(734) bear the same names in almost every school, yet the doctrines of each differ greatly, and none of these is likely to gain real Abhijñâs (the supernatural abnormal five powers).
One of the chief mistakes of the Orientalists when judging on “internal (?) evidence,” as they express it, was that they assumed that the Pratyeka Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, and the “Perfect” Buddhas were a later development of Buddhism. For on these three chief degrees are based the seven and twelve degrees of the Hierarchy of Adeptship. The first are those who have attained the Bodhi (wisdom) of the Buddhas, but do not become Teachers.(735) The human Bodhisattvas are candidates, so to say, for perfect Buddhaship (in Kalpas to come), and with the option of using their powers now if need be. “Perfect” Buddhas are simply “perfect” Initiates. All these are men, and not disembodied Beings, as is given out in the Hînayâna exoteric books. Their correct character may be found only in the secret volumes of Lugrub or Nâgârjuna, the founder of the Mahâyâna system, who is said to have been initiated by the Nâgas (fabulous “Serpents,” the veiled name for an Initiate or Mahâtmâ). The fabled report found in Chinese records that Nâgârjuna considered his doctrine to be in opposition to that of Gautama Buddha, until he discovered from the Nâgas that it was precisely the doctrine that had been secretly taught by Shâkyamuni Himself, is an allegory, and is based upon the reconciliation between the old Brâhmanical secret Schools in the Himâlayas and Gautama’s Esoteric teachings, both parties having at first objected to the rival schools of the other. The former, the parent of all others, had been established beyond the Himâlayas for ages before the appearance of Shâkyamuni. Gautama was a pupil of this; and it was with them, those Indian Sages, that He had learned the truths of the Sungata, the emptiness and impermanence of every terrestrial, evanescent thing, and the mysteries of Prajñâ Pâramitâ, or “knowledge across the River,” which finally lands the “Perfect One” in the regions of the One Reality. But His Arhats were not Himself. Some of them were ambitious, and they modified certain teachings after the great councils, and it is on account of these “heretics” that the Mother‐School at first refused to allow them to blend their schools, when persecution began driving away the Esoteric Brotherhood from India. But when finally most of them submitted to the guidance and control of the chief Âshrams, then the Yogâchârya of Âryâsanga was merged into the oldest Lodge. For it is there from time immemorial that has lain concealed the final hope and light of the world, the salvation of mankind. Many are the names of that School and land, the name of the latter being now regarded by the Orientalists as the mythic name of a fabulous country. It is from this mysterious land, nevertheless, that the Hindu expects his Kalki Avatâra, the Buddhist his Maitreya, the Pârsî his Sosiosh, and the Jew his Messiah, and so would the Christian expect thence his Christ—if he only knew of it.
There, and there alone, reigns Paranishpanna (Gunggrub), the absolutely perfect comprehension of Being and Non‐Being, the changeless true Existence in Spirit, even while the latter is seemingly still in the body, every inhabitant thereof being a Non‐Ego because he has become the Perfect Ego. Their voidness is “self‐existent and perfect”—if there were profane eyes to sense and perceive it—because it has become absolute; the unreal being transformed into conditionless Reality, and the realities of this, our world, having vanished in their own nature into thin (non‐existing) air. The “Absolute Truth” (Dondam‐pay‐den‐pa; Sanskrit: Paramârthasatya), having conquered “relative truth” (Kunza‐bchi‐den‐pa; Sanskrit: Samvritisatya), the inhabitants of the mysterious region are thus supposed to have reached the state called in mystic phraseology Svasamvedanâ (“self‐analyzing reflection”) and Paramârtha, or that absolute consciousness of the personal merged into the impersonal Ego, which is above all, hence above illusion in every sense. Its “Perfect” Buddhas and Bodhisattvas may be on every nimble Buddhist tongue as celestial—therefore unreachable Beings, while these names may suggest and say nothing to the dull perceptions of the European profane. What matters it to Those who, being in this world, yet live outside and far beyond our illusive earth! Above Them there is but one class of Nirvânîs, namely, the Chos‐ku (Dharmakâya), or the Nirvânîs “without remains”—the pure Arûpa, the formless Breaths.(736)
Thence emerge occasionally the Bodhisattvas in their Prul‐pai‐ku (or Nirmânakâya) body and, assuming an ordinary appearance, they teach men. There are conscious, as well as unconscious, incarnations.
Most of the doctrines contained in the Yogâchârya, or Mahâyâna systems are Esoteric, like the rest. One day the profane Hindu and Buddhist may begin to pick the Bible to pieces, taking it literally. Education is fast spreading in Asia, and already there have been made some attempts in this direction, so that the tables may then be cruelly turned on the Christians. Whatever conclusions the two may arrive at, they will never be half as absurd and unjust as some of the theories launched by Christians against their respective Philosophies. Thus, according to Spence Hardy, at death the Arhat enters Nirvâna:
That is, he ceases to exist.
And, agreeably to Major Jacob, the Jîvanmukta,
Absorbed into Brahma, enters upon an unconscious and stonelike existence.(737)
Shankarâchârya is shown as saying in his prolegomena to the Shvetâshvatara:
Gnosis, once arisen, requires nothing farther for the realization of its result: it needs subsidia only that it may arise.
The Theosophist, it has been argued, as long as he lives, may do good and evil as he chooses, and incur no stain, such is the efficacy of gnosis. And it is further alleged that the doctrine of Nirvâna lends itself to immoral inferences, and that the Quietists of all ages have been taxed with immorality.(738)
According to Wassilyew(739) and Csoma de Köros,(740) the Prasanga School adopted a peculiar mode of
Deducing the absurdity and erroneousness of every esoteric opinion.(741)
Correct interpretations of Buddhist Philosophy are crowned by that gloss on a thesis from the Prasanga School, that
Even an Arhat goes to hell in case he doubt anything,(742)
thus making of the most free‐thinking religion in the world a blind‐faith system. The “threat” refers simply to the well‐known law that even an Initiate may fail, and thus have his object utterly ruined, if he doubt for one moment the efficacy of his psychic powers—the alphabet of Occultism, as every Kabalist well knows.
The Tibetan sect of the Ngo‐vo‐nyid‐med par Mraba (“they who deny existence,” or “regard nature as Mâyâ”)(743) can never be contrasted for one moment with some of the nihilistic or materialistic schools of India, such as the Chârvâka. They are pure Vedântins—if anything—in their views. And if the Yogâchâryas may be compared with, or called the Tibetan Vishishtadwaitîs, the Prasanga School is surely the Adwaita Philosophy of the land. It was divided into two: one was originally founded by Bhavya, the Svantatra Madhyamika School, and the other by Buddhapâlita; both have their exoteric and esoteric divisions. It is necessary to belong to the latter to know anything of the esoteric doctrines of that sect, the most metaphysical and philosophical of all. Chandrakirti (Dava Dagpa) wrote his commentaries on the Prasanga doctrines and taught publicly; and he expressly states that there are two ways of entering the “Path” to Nirvâna. Any virtuous man can reach by Naljorngonsum (“meditation by self‐ perception”), the intuitive comprehension of the four Truths, without either belonging to a monastic order or having been initiated. In this case it was considered as a heresy to maintain that the visions which may arise in consequence of such meditation, or Vishnâ (internal knowledge), are not susceptible of errors (Namtog or false visions), for they are. Alaya alone having an absolute and eternal existence, can alone have absolute knowledge; and even the Initiate, in his Nirmânakâya(744) body may commit an occasional mistake in accepting the false for the true in his explorations of the “Causeless” World. The Dharmakâya Bodhisattva is alone infallible, when in real Samâdhi. Âlaya, or Nying‐po, being the root and basis of all, invisible and incomprehensible to human eye and intellect, it can reflect only its reflection—not Itself. Thus that reflection will be mirrored like the moon in tranquil and clear water only in the passionless Dharmakâya intellect, and will be distorted by the flitting image of everything perceived in a mind that is itself liable to be disturbed.
In short, this doctrine is that of the Râj‐Yoga in its practice of the two kinds of the Samâdhi state; one of the “Paths” leading to the sphere of bliss (Sukhâvatî or Devachan), where man enjoys perfect, unalloyed happiness, but is yet still connected with personal existence; and the other the Path that leads to entire emancipation from the worlds of illusion, self, and unreality. The first one is open to all and is reached by merit simply; the second—a hundredfold more rapid—is reached through knowledge (Initiation). Thus the followers of the Prasanga School are nearer to Esoteric Buddhism than are the Yogâchâryas; for their views are those of the most secret Schools, and only the echo of these doctrines is heard in the Yamyangshapda and other works in public circulation and use. For instance, the unreality of two out of the three divisions of time is given in public works, namely (a) that there is neither past nor future, both of these divisions being correlative to the present; and (b) that the reality of things can never be sensed or perceived except by him who has obtained the Dharmakâya body; here again is a difficulty, since this body “without remains” carries the Initiate to full Paranirvâna, if we accept the exoteric explanation verbally, and can therefore neither sense nor perceive. But evidently our Orientalists do not feel the caveat in such incongruities, and they proceed to speculate without pausing to reflect over it. Literature on Mysticism being enormous, and Russia, owing to the free intercourse with the Burats, Shamans, and Mongolians, having alone purchased whole libraries on Tibet, scholars ought to know better by this time. It suffices to read, however, what Csoma wrote on the origin of the Kâla Chakra System,(745) or Wassilyew on Buddhism, to make one give up every hope of seeing them go below the rind of the “forbidden fruit.” When Schlagintweit is found saying that Tibetan Mysticism is not Yoga—
That abstract devotion by which supernatural powers are acquired,(746)
as Yoga is defined by Wilson, but that it is closely related to Siberian Shamanism, and is “almost identical with the Tântrika ritual”; and that the Tibetan Zung is the “Dhâranîs,” and the Gyut only the Tantras—pre‐Christian Tantra being judged by the ritual of the modern Tântrikas—one seems almost justified in suspecting our materialistic Orientalists of acting as the best friends and allies of the missionaries. Whatever is not known to our geographers seems to be a non‐existent locality. Thus:
Mysticism is reported to have originated in the fabulous country, Sambhala.... Csoma, from careful investigations, places this [fabulous?] country beyond the Sir Daria [Yaxartes] between 45° and 50° north latitude. It was first known in India in the year 965 A.D., and was introduced ... into Tibet from India, viâ Kashmir, in the year 1025 A.D.(747)
“It” meaning the “Dus‐kyi Khorlo,” or Tibetan Mysticism. A system as old as man, known in India and practised before Europe had become a continent, “was first known,” we are told, only nine or ten centuries ago! The text of its books in its present form may have “originated” even later, for there are numerous such texts that have been tampered with by sects to suit the fancies of each. But who has read the original book on Dus‐Kyi Khorlo, re‐written by Tsong‐Kha‐pa, with his Commentaries? Considering that this grand Reformer burnt every book on Sorcery on which he could lay his hands in 1387, and that he has left a whole library of his own works—not a tenth part of which has ever been made known—such statements as those above‐quoted are, to say the least, premature. The idea is also cherished—from a happy hypothesis offered by Abbé Huc—that Tsong‐Kha‐pa derived his wisdom and acquired his extraordinary powers from his intercourse with a stranger from the West, “remarkable for a long nose.” This stranger is believed by the good Abbé “to have been a European missionary”; hence the remarkable resemblance of the religious ritual in Tibet to the Roman Catholic service. The sanguine “Lama of Jehovah” does not say, however, who were the five foreigners who appeared in Tibet in the year 371 of our era, to disappear as suddenly and mysteriously as they came, after leaving with King Thothori‐Nyang‐tsan instructions how to use certain things in a casket that “had fallen from heaven” in his presence precisely fifty years before, or in the year A.D. 331.(748)
There is generally a hopeless confusion about Eastern dates among European scholars, but nowhere is this so great as in the case of Tibetan Buddhism. Thus, while some, correctly enough, accept the seventh century as the date of the introduction of Buddhism, there are others—such as Lassen and Koeppung, for instance—who show on good authority, the one, the construction of a Buddhist monastery on the slopes of the Kailas Range so far back as the year 137 B.C.,(749) and the other, Buddhism established in and north of the Punjab, as early as the year 292 B.C. The difference though trifling—only just one thousand years—is nevertheless puzzling. But even this is easily explained on Esoteric grounds. Buddhism—the veiled Esotericism of Buddha—was established and took root in the seventh century of the Christian era; while true Esoteric Buddhism, or the kernel, the very spirit of Tathâgata’s doctrines, was brought to the place of its birth, the cradle of humanity, by the chosen Arhats of Buddha, who were sent to find for it a secure refuge, as
The Sage had perceived the dangers ever since he had entered upon Thonglam (“the Path of seeing,” or clairvoyance).
Amidst populations deeply steeped in Sorcery the attempt proved a failure; and it was not until the School of the “Doctrine of the Heart” had merged with its predecessor, established ages earlier on the slope facing Western Tibet, that Buddhism was finally engrafted, with its two distinct Schools—the Esoteric and the exoteric divisions—in the land of the Bhon‐ pa.
SECTION LI. THE “DOCTRINE OF THE EYE” & THE “DOCTRINE OF THE HEART,” OR THE “HEART’S SEAL.”
Prof. Albrecht Weber was right when he declared that the Northern Buddhists
Alone possess these [Buddhist] Scriptures complete.
For, while the Southern Buddhists have no idea of the existence of an Esoteric Doctrine—enshrined like a pearl within the shell of every religion—the Chinese and the Tibetans have preserved numerous records of the fact. Degenerate, fallen as is now the Doctrine publicly preached by Gautama, it is yet preserved in those monasteries in China that are placed beyond the reach of visitors. And though for over two millennia every new “reformer,” taking something out of the original has replaced it by some speculation of his own, still truth lingers even now among the masses. But it is only in the Trans‐Himâlayan fastnesses—loosely called Tibet—in the most inaccessible spots of desert and mountain, that the Esoteric “Good Law”—the “Heart’s Seal”—lives to the present day in all its pristine purity.
Was Emanuel Swedenborg wrong when he remarked of the forgotten, long‐lost Word:
Seek for it in China; peradventure you may find it in Great Tartary.
He had obtained this information, he tells his readers, from certain “Spirits,” who told him that they performed their worship according to this (lost) ancient Word. On this it was remarked in Isis Unveiled that
Other students of Occult Sciences had more than the word of “spirits” to rely upon in this special case: they have seen the books
that contain the “Word.”(750) Perchance the names of those “Spirits” who visited the great Swedish Theosophist were Eastern. The word of a man of such undeniable and recognised integrity, of one whose learning in Mathematics, Astronomy, the natural Sciences and Philosophy was far in advance of his age, cannot be trifled with or rejected as unceremoniously as if it were the statement of a modern Theosophist; further, he claimed to pass at will into that state when the Inner Self frees itself entirely from every physical sense, and lives and breathes in a world where every secret of Nature is an open book to the Soul‐eye.(751) Unfortunately two‐ thirds of his public writings are also allegorical in one sense; and, as they have been accepted literally, criticism has not spared the great Swedish Seer any more than other Seers.
Having taken a panoramic view of the hidden Sciences and Magic with their Adepts in Europe, Eastern Initiates must now be mentioned. If the presence of Esotericism in the Sacred Scriptures of the West only now begins to be suspected, after nearly two thousand years of blind faith in their verbatim wisdom, the same may well be granted as to the Sacred Books of the East. Therefore neither the Indian nor the Buddhist system can be understood without a key, nor can the study of comparative Religion become a “Science” until the symbols of every Religion yield their final secrets. At the best such a study will remain a loss of time, a playing at hide‐ and‐seek.
On the authority of a Japanese Encyclopædia, Remusat shows the Buddha, before His death, committing the secrets of His system to His disciple, Kâsyapa, to whom alone was entrusted the sacred keeping of the Esoteric interpretation. It is called in China Ching‐fa‐yin‐Tsang (“the Mystery of the Eye of the Good Doctrine”). To any student of Buddhist Esotericism the term, “the Mystery of the Eye,” would show the absence of any Esotericism. Had the word “Heart” stood in its place, then it would have meant what it now only professes to convey. The “Eye Doctrine” means dogma and dead‐letter form, church ritualism intended for those who are content with exoteric formulæ. The “Heart Doctrine,” or the “Heart’s Seal” (the Sin Yin), is the only real one. This may be found corroborated by Hiuen Tsang. In his translation of Mahâ‐Prajnâ‐Pâramitâ (Ta‐poh‐je‐King), in one hundred and twenty volumes, it is stated that it was Buddha’s “favourite disciple Ânanda,” who, after his great Master had gone into Nirvâna, was commissioned by Kâsyapa to promulgate “the Eye of the Doctrine,” the “Heart” of the Law having been left with the Arhats alone.
The essential difference that exists between the two—the “Eye” and the “Heart,” or the outward form and the hidden meaning, the cold metaphysics and the Divine Wisdom—is clearly demonstrated in several volumes on “Chinese Buddhism,” written by sundry missionaries. Having lived for years in China, they still know no more than they have learned from pretentious schools calling themselves esoteric, yet freely supplying the open enemies of their faith with professedly ancient manuscripts and esoteric works! This ludicrous contradiction between profession and practice has never, as it seems, struck any of the western and reverend historians of other peoples’ secret tenets. Thus many esoteric schools are mentioned in Chinese Buddhism by the Rev. Joseph Edkins, who believes quite sincerely that he has made “a minute examination” of the secret tenets of Buddhists whose works “were until lately inaccessible in their original form.” It really will not be saying too much to state at once that the genuine Esoteric literature is “inaccessible” to this day, and that the respectable gentleman who was inspired to state that
It does not appear that there was any secret doctrine which those who knew it would not divulge,
made a great mistake if he ever believed in what he says on page 161 of his work. Let him know at once that all those Yû‐luh (“Records of the Sayings”) of celebrated teachers are simply blinds, as complete—if not more so—than those in the Purânas of the Brâhmans. It is useless to enumerate an endless string of the finest Oriental scholars or to bring forward the researches of Remusat, Burnouf, Koeppen, St. Hilaire, and St. Julian, who are credited with having exposed to view the ancient Hindu world, by revealing the sacred and secret books of Buddhism: the world that they reveal has never been veiled. The mistakes of all the Orientalists may be judged by the mistake of one of the most popular, if not the greatest among them all—Prof. Max Müller. It is made with reference to what he laughingly translates as the “god Who” (Ka).
The authors of the Brâhmanas had so completely broken with the past, that, forgetful of the poetical character of the hymns and the yearning of the poets after the Unknown God, they exalted the interrogative pronoun itself into a deity, and acknowledged a god Ka (or Who?)... Wherever interrogative verses occur the author states that Ka is Prajâpati, or the Lord of Creatures. Nor did they stop here. Some of the hymns in which the interrogative pronoun occurred were called Kadvat, i.e., having Kad or Quid. But soon a new adjective was formed, and not only the hymns but the sacrifice also offered to the god were called Kaya, or “Who”‐ish.... At the time of Pânini this word acquired such legitimacy as to call for a separate rule explaining its formation. The Commentator here explains Ka by Brahman.
Had the commentator explained It even by Parabrahman he would have been still more in the right than he was by rendering It as “Brahman.” One fails to see why the secret and sacred Mystery‐Name of the highest, sexless, formless Spirit, the Absolute,—Whom no one would have dared to classify with the rest of the manifested Deities, or even to name during the primitive nomenclature of the symbolical Panthenon, should not be expressed by an interrogative pronoun. Is it those who belong to the most anthropomorphic Religion in the world who have a right to take ancient Philosophers to task for even an exaggerated religious awe and veneration?
But we are now concerned with Buddhism. Its Esotericism and oral instruction, which is written down and preserved in single copies by the highest chiefs in genuine Esoteric Schools, is shown by the author San‐ Kian‐yi‐su. Contrasting Bodhidharma with Buddha, he exclaims:
“Julai” (Tathâgata) taught great truths and the causes of things. He became the instructor of men and Devas. He saved multitudes, and spoke the contents of more than five hundred works. Hence arose the Kiau‐men, or exoteric branch of the system, and it was believed to be the tradition of the words of Buddha. Bodhidharma brought from the Western Heaven [Shamballa] the “Seal of Truth” (true seal) and opened the fountain of contemplation in the East. He pointed directly to Buddha’s heart and nature, swept away the parasitic and alien growth of book‐instruction, and thus established the Tsung‐men, or Esoteric branch of the system containing the tradition of the heart of Buddha.(752)
A few remarks made by the author of Chinese Buddhism throw a flood of light on the universal misconceptions of Orientalists in general, and of the missionaries in the “lands of the Gentiles” in particular. They appeal very forcibly to the intuition of Theosophists—more particularly of those in India. The sentences to be noticed are italicized.
The common [Chinese] word for the esoteric Schools is dan, the Sanskrit Dhyâna.... Orthodox Buddhism has in China slowly but steadily become heterodox. The Buddhism of books and ancient traditions has become the Buddhism of mystic contemplation.... The history of ancient schools springing up long ago in the Buddhist communities of India can now be only very partially recovered. Possibly some light may be thrown back by China upon the religious history of the country from which Buddhism came.(753) In no part of the story is aid to the recovery of the lost knowledge more likely to be found than in the accounts of the patriarchs, the line of whom was completed by Bodhidharma. In seeking the best explanation of the Chinese and Japanese narrative of the patriarchs, and the seven Buddhas terminating in Gautama, or Shâkyamuni, it is important to know the Jain traditions as they were early in the sixth century of our era, when the Patriarch Bodhidharma removed to China....
In tracing the rise of the various schools of esoteric Buddhism it must be kept in mind that a principle somewhat similar to the dogma of apostolical succession belongs to them all. They all profess to derive their doctrines through a succession of teachers, each instructed personally by his predecessor, till the time of Bodhidharma, and so further up in the series to Shâkyamuni himself and the earlier Buddhas.(754)
It is complained further on, and is mentioned as a falling away from strict orthodox Buddhism, that the Lamas of Tibet are received in Pekin with the utmost respect by the Emperor.
The following passages, taken from different parts of the book, summarise Mr. Edkins’ views:
Hermits are not uncommonly met with in the vicinity of large Buddhist temples ... their hair being allowed to grow unshorn.... The doctrine of metempsychosis is rejected. Buddhism is one form of Pantheism on the ground that the doctrine of metempsychosis makes all nature instinct with life, and that that life is the Deity assuming different forms of personality, that Deity not being a self‐conscious, free‐acting Self‐Cause, but an all‐ pervading Spirit. The esoteric Buddhists of China, keeping rigidly to their one doctrine,(755) say nothing of the metempsychosis, ... or any other of the more material parts of the Buddhist system.... The Western paradise promised to the worshippers of Amida Buddha is ... inconsistent with the doctrine of Nirvana [?].(756)... It promises immortality instead of annihilation. The great antiquity of this School is evident from the early date of the translation of the Amida Sûtra, which came from the hands of Kumârajîva, and the Ku‐liang‐sheu‐King, dating from the Han dynasty. Its extent of influence is seen in the attachment of the Tibetans and Moguls to the worship of this Buddha, and in the fact that the name of this fictitious personage [?] is more commonly heard in China than that of the historical Shâkyamuni.
We fear the learned writer is on a false track as to Nirvâna and Amita Buddha. However, here we have the evidence of a missionary to show that there are several schools of Esoteric Buddhism in the Celestial Empire. When the misuse of dogmatical orthodox Buddhist Scriptures had reached its climax, and the true spirit of the Buddha’s Philosophy was nearly lost, several reformers appeared from India, who established an oral teaching. Such were Bodhidharma and Nâgârjuna, the authors of the most important works of the contemplative School in China during the first centuries of our era. It is known, moreover, as is said in Chinese Buddhism, that Bodhidharma became the chief founder of the Esoteric Schools, which were divided into five principal branches. The data given are correct enough, but every conclusion, without one single exception, is wrong. It was said in Isis Unveiled that—
Buddha teaches the doctrine of a new birth as plainly as Jesus does. Desiring to break with the ancient Mysteries, to which it was impossible to admit the ignorant masses, the Hindu reformer, though generally silent upon more than one secret dogma, clearly states his thought in several passages. Thus, he says: “Some people are born again; evil‐doers go to hell [Avitchi]; righteous people go to heaven [Devachan]; those who are free from all worldly desires enter Nirvâna” (Precepts of the Dhammapada, v. 126). Elsewhere Buddha states that “it is better to believe in a future life, in which happiness or misery can be felt: for if the heart believes therein it will abandon sin and act virtuously; and even if there is no resurrection [rebirth], such a life will bring a good name and the reward of men. But those who believe in extinction at death will not fail to commit any sin that they may choose, because of their disbelief in a future.” (See Wheel of the Law.)
How is immortality, then, “inconsistent with the doctrine of Nirvâna?” The above are only a few of Buddha’s openly‐expressed thoughts to his chosen Arhats; the great Saint said much more. As a comment upon the mistaken views held in our century by the Orientalists, “who vainly try to fathom Tathâgata’s thoughts,” and those of Brâhmans, “who repudiate the great Teacher to this day,” here are some original thoughts expressed in relation to the Buddha and the study of the Secret Sciences. They are from a work written in Chinese by a Tibetan, and published in the monastery of Tientaï for circulation among the Buddhists
Who live in foreign lands, and are in danger of being spoiled by missionaries,
as the author truly says, every convert being not only “spoiled” for his own creed, but being also a sorry acquisition for Christianity. A translation of a few passages, kindly made from that work for the present volumes is now given.
No profane ears having heard the mighty Chau‐yan [secret and enlightening precepts] of Vu‐vei‐Tchen‐jen [Buddha within Buddha],(757) of our beloved Lord and Bodhisattva, how can one tell what his thoughts really were? The holy Sang‐gyas‐ Panchhen(758) never offered an insight into the One Reality to the unreformed [uninitiated] Bhikkus. Few are those even among the Tu‐fon [Tibetans] who knew it; as for the Tsung‐men(759) Schools, they are going with every day more down hill.... Not even the Fa‐ siong‐Tsung(760) can give one the wisdom taught in real Naljor‐ chod‐pa [Sanskrit:(761) Yogâchârya]: ... it is all “Eye” Doctrine, and no more. The loss of a restraining guidance is felt, since the Tch’‐an‐si [teachers] of inward meditation [self‐contemplation or Tchung‐kwan] have become rare, and the Good Law is replaced by idol‐worship [Siang‐kyan]. It is of this [idol‐ or image‐worship] that the Barbarians [Western people] have heard, and know nothing of Bas‐pa‐Dharma [the secret Dharma or doctrine]. Why has truth to hide like a tortoise within its shell? Because it is now found to have become like the Lama’s tonsure knife,(762) a weapon too dangerous to use even for the Lanoo. Therefore no one can be entrusted with the knowledge [Secret Science] before his time. The Chagpa‐Thog‐mad have become rare, and the best have retired to Tushita the Blessed.(763)
Further on, a man seeking to master the mysteries of Esotericism before he had been declared by the initiated Tch’‐an‐si (teachers) to be ready to receive them, is likened to
One who would, without a lantern and on a dark night, proceed to a place full of scorpions, determined to feel on the ground for a needle his neighbour has dropped.
Again:
He who would acquire the Sacred Knowledge should, before he goes any farther “trim his lamp of inner understanding,” and then “with the help of such good light” use his meritorious actions as a dust‐cloth to remove every impurity from his mystic mirror,(764) so that he should be enabled to see in its lustre the faithful reflection of Self.... First, this; then Tong‐pa‐nya,(765) lastly; Samma Sambuddha.(766)
In Chinese Buddhism a corroboration of these statements is to be found in the aphorisms of Lin‐tsi:
Within the body which admits sensations, acquires knowledge, thinks, and acts, there is the “true man without a position” Wu‐ wei‐chen‐jen. He makes himself clearly visible; not the thinnest separating film hides him. Why do you not recognise him?... If the mind does not come to conscious existence, there is deliverance everywhere.... What is Buddha? Ans. A mind clear and at rest. What is the Law? Ans. A mind clear and enlightened. What is Tau? Ans. In every place absence of impediments and pure enlightenment. These three are one.
The reverend author of Chinese Buddhism makes merry over the symbolism of Buddhist discipline. Yet the self‐inflicted “slaps on the cheek” and “blows under the ribs” find their pendants in the mortifications of the body and self‐flagellation—“the discipline of the scourge”—of the Christian monks, from the first centuries of Christianity down to our own day. But then the said author is a Protestant, who substitutes for mortification and discipline—good living and comfort. The sentence in the Lin‐tsi,
The “true man, without a position,” Wu‐wei‐chen‐jen, is wrapped in a prickly shell, like the chestnut. He cannot be approached. This is Buddha—the Buddha within you,
is laughed at. Truly
An infant cannot understand the seven enigmas!
SOME PAPERS ON THE BEARING OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE
NOTE.
Papers I. II. III. of the following were written by H. P. B. and were circulated privately during her lifetime, but they were written with the idea that they would be published after a time. They are papers intended for students rather than for the ordinary reader, and will repay careful study and thought. The “Notes of some Oral Teaching” were written down by some of her pupils and were partially corrected by her, but no attempt has been made to relieve them of their fragmentary character. She had intended to make them the basis for written papers similar to the first three, but her failing health rendered this impossible, and they are published with her consent, the time for restricting them to a limited circle having expired.
ANNIE BESANT.
Paper I. A Warning
There is a strange law in Occultism which has been ascertained and proven by thousands of years of experience; nor has it failed to demonstrate itself, almost in every case, during the years that the Theosophical Society has been in existence. As soon as anyone pledges himself as a “Probationer,” certain Occult effects ensue. Of these the first is the throwing outward of everything latent in the nature of the man; his faults, habits, qualities or subdued desires, whether good, bad or indifferent.
For instance, if a man be vain or a sensualist, or ambitious, whether by atavism or by karmic heirloom, those vices are sure to break out, even if he has hitherto successfully concealed and repressed them. They will come to the front irrepressibly, and he will have to fight a hundred times harder than before, until he kills all such tendencies in himself.
On the other hand, if he be good, generous, chaste and abstemious, or has any virtue hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out as irrepressibly as the rest. Thus a civilized man who hates to be considered a saint, and therefore assumes a mask, will not be able to conceal his true nature, whether base or noble.
THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW IN THE DOMAIN OF THE OCCULT.
Its action is the more marked, the more earnest and sincere the desire of the candidate, and the more deeply he has felt the reality and importance of his pledge.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The ancient occult axiom, “Know Thyself,” must be familiar to every student; but few if any have apprehended the real meaning of this wise exhortation of the Delphic Oracle. You all know your earthly pedigree, but who of you has ever traced all the links of heredity, astral, psychic and spiritual, which go to make you what you are? Many have written and expressed their desire to unite themselves with their Higher Ego, yet none seem to know the indissoluble link connecting their “Higher Egos” with the One Universal SELF.
For all purposes of Occultism, whether practical or purely metaphysical, such knowledge is absolutely requisite. It is proposed, therefore, to begin these papers by showing this connection in all directions with the worlds: Absolute, Archetypal, Spiritual, Mânasic, Psychic, Astral, and Elemental. Before, however, we can touch upon the higher worlds—Archetypal, Spiritual and Mânasic—we must master the relations of the seventh, the terrestrial world, the lower Prakriti, or Malkuth as in the Kabalah, to the worlds or planes which immediately follow it.
OM.
“OM,” says the Âryan Adept, the son of the Fifth Race, who with this syllable begins and ends his salutation to the human being, his conjuration of, or appeal to, non‐human PRESENCES.
“OM‐MANI,” murmurs the Turanian Adept, the descendant of the Fourth Race; and after pausing he adds, “PADME‐HUM.”
This famous invocation is very erroneously translated by the Orientalists as meaning, “Oh the Jewel in the Lotus.” For although, literally, OM is a syllable sacred to the Deity, PADME means “in the Lotus,” and MANI is any precious stone, still neither the words themselves, nor their symbolical meaning, are thus really correctly rendered.
In this, the most sacred of all Eastern formulas, not only has every syllable a secret potency producing a definite result, but the whole invocation has seven different meanings and can produce seven distinct results, each of which may differ from the others.
The seven meanings and the seven results depend upon the intonation which is given to the whole formula and to each of its syllables; and even the numerical value of the letters is added to or diminished according as such or another rhythm is made use of. Let the student remember that number underlies form, and number guides sound. Number lies at the root of the manifested Universe: numbers and harmonious proportions guide the first differentiations of homogeneous substance into heterogeneous elements; and number and numbers set limits to the formative hand of Nature.
Know the corresponding numbers of the fundamental principle of every element and its sub‐elements, learn their interaction and behaviour on the occult side of manifesting Nature, and the law of correspondences will lead you to the discovery of the greatest mysteries of macrocosmical life.
But to arrive at the macrocosmical, you must begin by the microcosmical, i.e., you must study MAN, the microcosm—in this case as physical science does—inductively, proceeding from particulars to universals. At the same time, however, since a key‐note is required to analyze and comprehend any combination of differentiations of sound, we must never lose sight of the Platonic method, which starts with one general view of all, and descends from the universal to the individual. This is the method adopted in Mathematics—the only exact science that exists in our day.
Let us study Man, therefore; but if we separate him for one moment from the Universal Whole, or view him in isolation, from a single aspect, apart from the “Heavenly Man”—the Universe symbolized by Adam Kadmon or his equivalents in every Philosophy—we shall either land in Black Magic or fail most ingloriously in our attempt.
Thus the mystic sentence, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” when rightly understood, instead of being composed of the almost meaningless words, “Oh the Jewel in the Lotus,” contains a reference to this indissoluble union between Man and the Universe, rendered in seven different ways, and having the capability of seven different applications to as many planes of thought and action.
From whatever aspect we examine it, it means: “I am that I am”: “I am in thee and thou art in me.” In this conjunction and close union the good and pure man becomes a God. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he will bring about, or innocently cause to happen, unavoidable results. In the first case, if an Initiate (of course an Adept of the Right‐hand Path alone is meant), he can guide a beneficent or a protecting current, and thus benefit and protect individuals and even whole nations. In the second case, although quite unaware of what he is doing, the good man becomes a shield to whomsoever he is with.
Such is the fact; but its how and why have to be explained, and this can be done only when the actual presence and potency of numbers in sounds, and hence in words and letters, have been rendered clear. The formula, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” has been chosen as an illustration on account of its almost infinite potency in the mouth of an Adept, and of its potentiality when pronounced by any man. Be careful, all you who read this: do not use these words in vain, or when in anger, lest you become yourself the first sacrificial victim, or, what is worse, endanger those whom you love.
The profane Orientalist, who all his life skims mere externals, will tell you flippantly, and laughing at the superstition, that in Tibet this sentence is the most powerful six‐syllabled incantation and is said to have been delivered to the nations of Central Asia by Padmapâni, the Tibetan Chenresi.(767)
But who is Padmapâni, in reality? Each of us must recognize him for himself, whenever he is ready. Each of us has within himself the “Jewel in the Lotus,” call it Padmapâni, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, or whatever name we may give to our Divine Self. The exoteric story runs thus:
The supreme Buddha, or Amitâbha, they say, at the hour of the creation of man, caused a rosy ray of light to issue from his right eye. The ray emitted a sound and became Padmapâni Bodhisattva. Then the Deity allowed to stream forth from his left eye a blue ray of light, which, becoming incarnate in the two virgins Dolma, acquired the power to enlighten the minds of living beings. Amitâbha then called the combination, which forthwith took up its abode in man, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” “I am the Jewel in the Lotus and in it I will remain.” Then Padmapâni, “the One in the Lotus” vowed never to cease working until he had made Humanity feel his presence in itself and had thus saved it from the misery of rebirth. He vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding that, in case of failure, he wished that his head should split into numberless fragments. The Kalpa closed; but Humanity felt him not within its cold, evil heart. Then Padmapâni’s head split and was shattered into a thousand fragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re‐formed the pieces into ten heads, three white, and seven of various colours. And since that day man has become a perfect number, or TEN.
In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOUR, and NUMBER is so ingeniously introduced as to veil the real Esoteric meaning. To the outsider it reads like one of the many meaningless fairy‐tales of creation; but it is pregnant with spiritual and divine, physical and magical meaning. From Amitâbha—no colour, or the white glory—are born the seven differentiated colours of the prism. These each emit a corresponding sound, forming the seven of the musical scale. As Geometry, among the Mathematical Sciences, is specially related to Architecture, and also (proceeding to Universals) to Cosmogony, so the ten Jods of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made to symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had also to be divided into ten points. For this Nature herself has provided, as will be seen.
But before this statement can be proved and the perfect correspondences between the Macrocosm and the Microcosm demonstrated, a few words of explanation are necessary.
To the learner who would study the Esoteric Sciences with their double object: (a) of proving Man to be identical in spiritual and physical essence with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature; and (b) of demonstrating the presence in him of the same potential powers as exist in the creative forces in Nature—to such a one a perfect knowledge of the correspondences between Colours, Sounds, and Numbers is the first requisite. As already said, the sacred formula of the far East, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” is the one best calculated to make these correspondential qualities and functions clear to the learner.
In the allegory of Padmapâni, the Jewel (or Spiritual Ego) in the Lotus, or the symbol of androgynous man, the numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, as synthesizing the Unit, Man, are prominent, as I have already said. It is on the thorough knowledge and comprehension of the meaning and potency of these numbers, in their various and multiform combinations, and in their mutual correspondence with sounds or words, and colours or rates of motion (represented in physical science by vibrations), that the progress of a student in Occultism depends. Therefore we must begin with the first, initial word, OM, or AUM. OM is a “blind.” The sentence “Om Mani Padme Hum” is not a six‐ but a seven‐syllabled phrase, as the first syllable is double in its right pronunciation, and triple in its essence, A‐UM. It represents the for ever concealed primeval triune differentiation, not from but in the ONE Absolute, and is therefore symbolized by the 4, or the Tetraktys, in the metaphysical world. It is the Unit‐ray, or Âtman.
It is the Âtman, this highest Spirit in man, which, in conjunction with Buddhi and Manas, is called the upper Triad, or Trinity. This Triad with its four lower human principles, is, moreover, enveloped with an auric atmosphere, like the yolk of an egg (the future embryo) by the albumen and shell. This, to the perceptions of higher Beings from other planes, makes of each individuality an oval sphere of more or less radiancy.
To show the student the perfect correspondence between the birth of Kosmos, a World, a Planetary Being, or a Child of Sin and Earth, a more definite and clear description must be given. Those acquainted with Physiology will understand it better than others.
Who, having read say the Vishnu or other Purâna, is not familiar with the exoteric allegory of the birth of Brahmâ (male‐female) in the Egg of the World, Hiranyagarbha, surrounded by its seven zones, or rather planes, which in the world of form and matter become seven and fourteen Lokas; the numbers seven and fourteen reäppearing as occasion requires.
Without giving out the secret analysis, the Hindus have from time immemorial compared the matrix of the Universe, and also the solar matrix, to the female uterus. It is written of the former: “Its womb is vast as the Meru,” and
The future mighty oceans lay asleep in the waters that filled its cavities, the continents, seas and mountains, the stars, planets, the gods, demons and mankind.
The whole resembled, in its inner and outer coverings, the cocoanut filled interiorly with pulp, and covered externally with husk and rind. “Vast as Meru,” say the texts.
Meru was its Amnion, and the other mountains were its Chorion,
adds a verse in Vishnu Purâna.(768)
In the same way is man born in his mother’s womb. As Brahmâ is surrounded, in exoteric traditions, by seven layers within and seven without the Mundane Egg, so is the embryo (the first or the seventh layer, according to the end from which we begin to count). Thus, just as Esotericism in its Cosmogony enumerates seven inner and seven outer layers, so Physiology notes the contents of the uterus as seven also, although it is completely ignorant of this being a copy of what takes place in the Universal Matrix. These contents are:
1. Embryo. 2. Amniotic Fluid, immediately surrounding the Embryo. 3. Amnion, a membrane derived from the Fœtus, which contains the fluid. 4. Umbilical Vesicle, which serves to convey nourishment originally to the Embryo and to nourish it. 5. Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo in the form of a closed bag, which spreads itself between 3 and 7, in the midst of 6, and which, after being specialized into the Placenta, serves to conduct nourishment to the Embryo. 6. Interspace between 3 and 7 (the Amnion and Chorion), filled with an albuminous fluid. 7. Chorion, or outer layer.
Now, each of these seven contents severally corresponds with, and is formed after, an antetype, one on each of the seven planes of being, with which in their turn correspond the seven states of Matter and all other forces, sensational or functional, in Nature.
The following is a bird’s‐eye view of the seven correspondential contents of the wombs of Nature and of Woman. We may contrast them thus:
(1) Cosmic Process: The mathematical Point, called the “Cosmic Seed,” the Monad of Leibnitz; which contains the whole Universe, as the acorn the oak. This is the first bubble on the surface of boundless homogeneous Substance, or Space, the bubble of differentiation in its incipient stage. It is the beginning of the Orphic or Brahmâ’s Egg. It corresponds in Astrology and Astronomy to the Sun.
Human Process: The terrestrial Embryo, which contains in it the future man with all his potentialities. In the series of principles of the human system it is the Âtman, or the super‐ spiritual principle, just as in the physical Solar System it is the Sun.
(2) Cosmic Process: The vis vitæ of our solar system exudes from the Sun. Human Process: The Amniotic Fluid exudes from the Embryo.
(a) Cosmic Process: It is called, when referred to the higher planes, Âkâsha. Human Process: It is called, on the plane of matter, Prâna.(769)
(b) Cosmic Process: It proceeds from the ten “divinities,” the ten numbers of the Sun, which is itself the “Perfect Number.” These are called Dis—in reality Space—the forces spread in Space, three of which are contained in the Sun’s Âtman, or seventh principle, and seven are the rays shot out by the Sun.
Human Process: It proceeds, taking its source in the universal One Life, from the heart of man and Buddhi, over which the Seven Solar Rays (Gods) preside.
(3) Cosmic Process: The Ether of Space, which, in its external aspect, is the plastic crust which is supposed to envelope the Sun. On the higher plane it is the whole Universe, as the third differentiation of evolving Substance, Mûlaprakriti becoming Prakriti.
Human Process: The Amnion, the membrane containing the Amniotic Fluid and enveloping the Embryo. After the birth of man it becomes the third layer, so to say, of his magneto‐vital aura.
(a) Cosmic Process: It corresponds mystically to the manifested Mahat, or the Intellect or Soul of the World. Human Process: Manas, the third principle (counting from above), or the Human Soul in Man.
(4) Cosmic Process: The sidereal contents of Ether, the substantial parts of it, unknown to Modern Science, represented as follows. Human Process: Umbilical Vesicle, serving, as Science teaches, to nourish the Embryo originally, but, as Occult Science avers, to carry to the Fœtus by osmosis the cosmic influences extraneous to the mother.
(a) Cosmic Process: In Occult and Kabalistic Mysteries, by Elementals. Human Process: In the grown man these become the feeders of Kâma, over which they preside.
(b) Cosmic Process: In physical Astronomy, by meteors, comets, and all kinds of casual and phenomenal cosmic bodies. Human Process: In the physical man, his passions and emotions, the moral meteors and comets of human nature.
(5) Cosmic Process: Life currents in Ether, having their origin in the Sun: the canals through which the vital principle of that Ether (the blood of the Cosmic Body) passes to nourish everything on the Earth and on the other Planets: from the minerals, which are thus made to grow and become specialized, from the plants, which are thus fed, to animal and man, to whom life is thus imparted.
Human Process: The Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo, which spreads itself between the Amnion and Chorion; it is supposed to conduct the nourishment from the mother to the Embryo. It corresponds to the life‐principle, Prâna or Jîva.
(6) Cosmic Process: The double radiation, psychic and physical, which radiates from the Cosmic Seed and expands around the whole Kosmos, as well as around the Solar System and every Planet. In Occultism it is called the upper divine, and the lower material, Astral Light.
Human Process: The Allantois is divided into two layers. The interspace between the Amnion and the Chorion contains the Allantois and also an albuminous fluid.(770)
(7) Cosmic Process: The outer crust of every sidereal body, the Shell of the Mundane Egg, or the sphere of our Solar System, of our Earth, and of every man and animal. In sidereal space, Ether proper; on the terrestrial plane, Air, which again is built in seven layers.
Human Process: The Chorion, or the Zona Pellucida, the globular object called Blastodermic Vesicle, the outer and the inner layers of the membrane of which go to form the physical man. The outer, or ectoderm, forms his epidermis; the inner, or endoderm, his muscles, bones, etc. Man’s skin, again, is composed of seven layers.
(a) Cosmic Process: The primordial potential world‐stuff becomes (for the Manvantaric period) the permanent globe or globes. Human Process: The “primitive” becomes the “permanent” Chorion.
Even in the evolution of the Races we see the same order as in Nature and Man.(771) Placental animal‐man became such only after the separation of sexes in the Third Root‐Race. In the physiological evolution, the placenta is fully formed and functional only after the third month of uterine life.
Let us put aside such human conceptions as a personal God, and hold to the purely divine, to that which underlies all and everything in boundless Nature. It is called by its Sanskrit Esoteric name in the Vedas, TAT (or THAT), a term for the unknowable Rootless Root. If we do so, we may answer these seven questions of the Esoteric Catechism thus:
(1) Q.—What is the Eternal Absolute?
A.—THAT.
(2) Q.—How came Kosmos into being?
A.—Through THAT.
(3) Q.—How, or what will it be when it falls back into Pralaya?
A.—In THAT.
(4) Q.—Whence all the animate, and suppositionally, the “inanimate” nature?
A.—From THAT.
(5) Q.—What is the Substance and Essence of which the Universe is formed?
A.—THAT.
(6) Q.—Into what has it been and will be again and again resolved?
A.—Into THAT.
(7) Q.—Is THAT then both the instrumental and material cause of the Universe?
A.—What else is it or can it be than THAT?
As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm,(772) are ten, why should we divide Man into seven “principles”? This is the reason why the perfect number ten is divided into two: in their completeness, i.e., super‐spiritually and physically, the forces are TEN: to wit, three on the subjective and inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in mind that I am now giving you the description of the two opposite poles: (a) the primordial Triangle, which, as soon as it has reflected itself in the “Heavenly Man,” the highest of the lower seven—disappears, returning into “Silence and Darkness”; and (b) the astral paradigmatic man, whose Monad (Âtmâ) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to become a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes. The purely terrestrial man being reflected in the universe of Matter, so to say, upside down, the upper Triangle, wherein the creative ideation and the subjective potentiality of the formative faculty resides, is shifted in the man of clay below the seven. Thus three of the ten, containing in the archetypal world only ideative and paradigmatical potentiality, i.e., existing in possibility, not in action, are in fact one. The potency of formative creation resides in the Logos, the synthesis of the seven Forces or Rays, which becomes forthwith the Quaternary, the sacred Tetraktys. This process is repeated in man, in whom the lower physical triangle becomes, in conjunction with the female One, the male‐female creator, or generator. The same on a still lower plane in the animal world. A mystery above, a mystery below, truly.
This is how the upper and highest, and the lower and most animal, stand in mutual relation.
Diagram I
1st—Macrocosm and Its 3, 7, or 10 Centres of Creative Forces
A. B. C. The Unknowable A. Sexless, Unmanifested Logos B. Potential Wisdom C. Universal Ideation a. Creative Logos b. Eternal Substance c. Spirit
a. b. c. This is Pradhâna, undifferentiated matter in Sânkhya philosophy, or Good, Evil and Chaotic Darkness (Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas), neutralizing each other. When differentiated, they become the Seven Creative Potencies: Spirit, Substance and Fire stimulating Matter to form itself.
D. The Spiritual Forces acting in Matter
2nd.—Microcosm (the Inner Man) and his 3, 7, or 10 Centres of Potential Forces
(ÂTMAN, although exoterically reckoned as the seventh principle, is no individual principle at all, and belongs to the Universal Soul; 7 is the AURIC EGG, the Magnetic Sphere round every human and animal being.)
1. BUDDHI, the vehicle of ÂTMÂ.
2. MANAS, the vehicle of BUDDHI.
3. LOWER MANAS (the Upper and Lower MANAS are two aspects of one and the same principle) and
4. KÂMA RÛPA, its vehicle.
5. PRÂNA, Life, and
6. LINGA SHARIRA, its vehicle
I. II. III. are the Three Hypostases of ÂTMAN, its contact with Nature and Man being the Fourth, making it a Quaternary, or Tetraktys, the Higher self.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. These six principles, acting on four different planes, and having their AURIC ENVELOPE on the seventh (vide infra), are those used by the Adepts of the Right‐Hand, or White Magicians.
3rd.—Microcosm (the Physical Man) and his 10 Orifices, or centres of Action
1. (BUDDHI) Right Eye
3. (LOWER MANAS) Right Ear
5. (LIFE PRINCIPLE) Right Nostril
7. The Organ of the CREATIVE LOGOS, the Mouth
8. 9. 10. As this Lower Ternary has a direct connection with the Higher Âtmic Triad and its three aspects (creative, preservative and destructive, or rather regenerative), the abuse of the corresponding functions is the most terrible of Karmic Sins—the Sin against the Holy Ghost with the Christians.
2. (MANAS) Left Eye
4. (KÂMA RÛPA) Left Ear
6. (LIFE VEHICLE) Left Nostril
7. The Paradigm of the 10th (creative) orifice in the Lower Triad.
These Physical Organs are used only by Dugpas in Black Magic.
In this diagram, we see that physical man (or his body) does not share in the direct pure waves of the divine Essence which flows from the One in Three, the Unmanifested, through the Manifested Logos (the upper face in the diagram). Purusha, the primeval Spirit, touches the human head and stops there. But the Spiritual Man (the synthesis of the seven principles) is directly connected with it. And here a few words ought to be said about the usual exoteric enumeration of the principles. At first an approximate division only was made and given out. Esoteric Buddhism begins with Âtmâ, the seventh, and ends with the Physical Body, the first. Now neither Âtmâ, which is no individual “principle,” but a radiation from and one with the Unmanifested Logos; nor the Body, which is the material rind, or shell, of the Spiritual Man, can be, in strict truth, referred to as “principles.” Moreover, the chief “principle” of all, one not even mentioned heretofore, is the “Luminous Egg” (Hiranyagarbha), or the invisible magnetic sphere in which every man is enveloped.(773) It is the direct emanation: (a) from the Âtmic Ray in its triple aspect of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer (Regenerator); and (b) from Buddhi‐ Manas. The seventh aspect of this individual Aura is the faculty of assuming the form of its body and becoming the “Radiant,” the Luminous Augoeides. It is this, strictly speaking, which at times becomes the form called Mâyâvi Rûpa. Therefore, as explained in the second face of the diagram (the astral man), the Spiritual Man consists of only five principles, as taught by the Vedântins,(774) who substitute, tacitly, for the physical this sixth, or Auric, Body, and merge the dual Manas (the dual mind, or consciousness) into one. Thus they speak of five Koshas (sheaths or principles), and call Âtmâ the sixth yet no “principle.” This is the secret of the late Subba Row’s criticism of the division in Esoteric Buddhism. But let the student now learn the true Esoteric enumeration.
The reason why public mention of the Auric Body was not permitted was on account of its being so sacred. It is this Body which, at death, assimilates the essence of Buddhi and Manas and becomes the vehicle of these spiritual principles, which are not objective, and then, with the full radiation of Âtmâ upon it ascends as Manas‐Taijasi into the Devachanic state. Therefore is it called by many names. It is the Sûtrâtmâ, the silver “thread” which “incarnates” from the beginning of Manvantara to the end, stringing upon itself the pearls of human existence, in other words, the spiritual aroma of every personality it follows through the pilgrimage of life.(775) It is also the material from which the Adept forms his Astral Bodies, from the Augoeides and the Mâyâvi Rûpa downwards. After the death of man, when its most ethereal particles have drawn into themselves the spiritual principles of Buddhi and the Upper Manas, and are illuminated with the radiance of Âtmâ, the Auric Body remains either in the Devachanic state of consciousness, or, in the case of a full Adept, prefers the state of a Nirmânakâya, that is, one who has so purified his whole system that he is above even the divine illusion of a Devachanî. Such an Adept remains in the astral (invisible) plane connected with our earth, and henceforth moves and lives in the possession of all his principles except the Kâma Rûpa and Physical Body. In the case of the Devachanî, the Linga Sharîra—the alter ego of the body, which during life is within the physical envelope while the radiant aura is without—strengthened by the material particles which this aura leaves behind, remains close to the dead body and outside it, and soon fades away. In the case of the full Adept, the body alone becomes subject to dissolution, while the centre of that force which was the seat of desires and passions, disappears with its cause—the animal body. But during the life of the latter all these centres are more or less active and in constant correspondence with their prototypes, the cosmic centres, and their microcosms, the principles. It is only through these cosmic and spiritual centres that the physical centres (the upper seven orifices and the lower triad) can benefit by their Occult interaction, for these orifices, or openings, are channels conducting into the body the influences that the will of man attracts and uses, viz., the cosmic forces.
This will has, of course, to act primarily through the spiritual principles. To make this clearer, let us take an example. In order to stop pain, let us say in the right eye, you have to attract to it the potent magnetism from that cosmic principle which corresponds to this eye and also to Buddhi. Create, by a powerful will effort, an imaginary line of communication between the right eye and Buddhi, locating the latter as a centre in the same part of the head. This line, though you may call it “imaginary,” is, once you succeed in seeing it with your mental eye and give it a shape and colour, in truth as good as real. A rope in a dream is not and yet is. Moreover, according to the prismatic colour with which you endow your line, so will the influence act. Now Buddhi and Mercury correspond with each other, and both are yellow, or radiant and golden coloured. In the human system, the right eye corresponds with Buddhi and Mercury; and the left with Manas and Venus or Lucifer. Thus, if your line is golden or silvery, it will stop the pain; if red, it will increase it, for red is the colour of Kâma and corresponds with Mars. Mental or Christian Scientists have stumbled upon the effects without understanding the causes. Having found by chance the secret of producing such results owing to mental abstraction, they attribute them to their union with God (whether a personal or impersonal God they know best), whereas it is simply the effect of one or another principle. However it may be, they are on the path of discovery, although they must remain wandering for a long time to come.
Let not Esoteric students commit the same mistake. It has often been explained that neither the cosmic planes of substance nor even the human principles—with the exception of the lowest material plane or world and the physical body, which, as has been said, are no “principles,”—can be located or thought of as being in Space and Time. As the former are seven in ONE, so are we seven in ONE—that same absolute Soul of the World, which is both Matter and non‐Matter, Spirit and non‐Spirit, Being and non‐Being. Impress yourselves well with this idea, all those of you who would study the mysteries of SELF.
Remember that with our physical senses alone at our command, none of us can hope to reach beyond gross Matter. We can do so only through one or another of our seven spiritual senses, either by training, or if one is a born Seer. Yet even a clairvoyant possessed of such faculties, if not an Adept, no matter how honest and sincere he may be, will, through his ignorance of the truths of Occult Science, be led by the visions he sees in the Astral Light only to mistake for God or Angels the denizens of those spheres of which he may occasionally catch a glimpse, as witness Swedenborg and others.
These seven senses of ours correspond with every other septenate in nature and in ourselves. Physically, though invisibly, the human Auric Envelope (the amnion of the physical man in every age of life) has seven layers, just as Cosmic Space and our physical epidermis have. It is this Aura which, according to our mental and physical state of purity or impurity, either opens for us vistas into other worlds, or shuts us out altogether from anything but this three‐dimensional world of Matter.
Each of our seven physical senses (two of which are still unknown to profane Science), and also of our seven states of consciousness—viz.: (1) waking; (2) waking‐dreaming; (3) natural sleeping; (4) induced or trance‐sleep; (5) psychic; (6) super‐psychic; and (7) purely spiritual—corresponds with one of the seven Cosmic Planes, develops and uses one of the seven super‐senses, and is connected directly, in its use on the terrestro‐spiritual plane, with the cosmic and divine centre of force that gave it birth, and which is its direct creator. Each is also connected with, and under the direct influence of, one of the seven sacred Planets.(776) These belonged to the Lesser Mysteries, whose followers were called Mystai (the veiled), seeing that they were allowed to perceive things only through a mist, as it were “with the eyes closed”; while the Initiates or “Seers” of the Greater Mysteries were called Epoptai (those who see things unveiled). It was the latter only who were taught the true mysteries of the Zodiac and the relations and correspondences between its twelve signs (two secret) and the ten human orifices. The latter are now of course ten in the female, and only nine in the male; but this is merely an external difference. In the second volume of this work it is stated that till the end of the Third Root‐Race (when androgynous man separated into male and female) the ten orifices existed in the hermaphrodite, first potentially, then functionally. The evolution of the human embryo shows this. For instance, the only opening formed at first is the buccal cavity, “a cloaca communicating with the anterior extremity of the intestine.” These become later the mouth and the posterior orifice: the Logos differentiating and emanating gross matter on the lower plane, in Occult parlance. The difficulty which some students will experience in reconciling the correspondences between the Zodiac and the orifices can be easily explained. Magic is coëval with the Third Root‐Race, which began by creating through Kriyâshakti and ended by generating its species in the present way.(777) Woman, being left with the full or perfect cosmic number 10 (the divine number of Jehovah), was deemed higher and more spiritual than man. In Egypt, in days of old, the marriage service contained an article that the woman should be the “lady of the lord,” and real lord over him, the husband pledging himself to be “obedient to his wife” for the production of alchemical results such as the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher’s Stone, for the spiritual help of the woman was needed by the male Alchemist. But woe to the Alchemist who should take this in the dead‐letter sense of physical union. Such sacrilege would become Black Magic and be followed by certain failure. The true Alchemist of old took aged women to help him, carefully avoiding the young ones; and if any of them happened to be married they treated their wives for months both before and during their operations as sisters.
The error of crediting the Ancients with knowing only ten of the zodiacal signs is explained in Isis Unveiled.(778) The Ancients did know of twelve, but viewed these signs differently from ourselves. They took neither Virgo nor Scorpio singly into consideration, but regarded them as two in one, since they were made to refer directly and symbolically to the primeval dual man and his separation into sexes. During the reformation of the Zodiac, Libra was added as the twelfth sign, though it is simply an equilibrating sign, at the turning point—the mystery of separated man.
Let the student learn all this well. Meanwhile we have to recapitulate what has been said.
(1) Each human being is an incarnation of his God, in other words, one with his “Father in Heaven,” just as Jesus, an Initiate, is made to say. As many men on earth, so many Gods in Heaven; and yet these Gods are in reality ONE, for at the end of every period of activity, they are withdrawn, like the rays of the setting sun, into the Parent Luminary, the Non‐Manifested Logos, which in its turn is merged into the One Absolute. Shall we call these “Fathers” of ours, whether individually or collectively, and under any circumstances, our personal God? Occultism answers, Never. All that an average man can know of his “Father” is what he knows of himself, through and within himself. The Soul of his “Heavenly Father” is incarnated in him. This Soul is himself, if he be successful in assimilating the Divine Individuality while in his physical, animal shell. As to the Spirit thereof, as well expect to be heard by the Absolute. Our prayers and supplications are vain, unless to potential words we add potent acts, and make the Aura which surrounds each one of us so pure and divine that the God within us may act outwardly, or in other words, become as it were an extraneous Potency. Thus have Initiates, Saints, and very holy and pure men been enabled to help others as well as themselves in the hour of need, and produce what are foolishly called “miracles,” each by the help and with the aid of the God within himself, which he alone has enabled to act on the outward plane.
(2) The word AUM or OM, which corresponds to the upper Triangle, if pronounced by a very holy and pure man, will draw out, or awaken, not only the less exalted Potencies residing in the planetary spaces and elements, but even his Higher Self, or the “Father” within him. Pronounced by an averagely good man, in the correct way, it will help to strengthen him morally, especially if between two “AUMS” he meditates intently upon the AUM within him, concentrating all his attention upon the ineffable glory. But woe to the man who pronounces it after the commission of some far‐ reaching sin: he will only thereby attract to his own impure photosphere invisible Presences and Forces which could not otherwise break through the Divine Envelope.
AUM is the original of Amen. Now, Amen is not a Hebrew term, but, like the word Halleluiah, was borrowed by the Jews and Greeks from the Chaldees. The latter word is often found repeated in certain magical inscriptions upon cups and urns among the Babylonian and Ninevean relics. Amen does not mean “so be it,” or “verily,” but signified in hoary antiquity almost the same as AUM. The Jewish Tanaïm (Initiates) used it for the same reason as the Âryan Adepts use AUM, and with a like success, the numerical value of AMeN in Hebrew letters being 91, the same as the full value of YHVH,(779) 26, and ADoNaY, 65, or 91. Both words mean the affirmation of the being, or existence, of the sexless “Lord” within us.
(3) Esoteric Science teaches that every sound in the visible world awakens its corresponding sound in the invisible realms, and arouses to action some force or other on the Occult side of Nature. Moreover, every sound corresponds to a colour and a number (a potency spiritual, psychic or physical) and to a sensation on some plane. All these find an echo in every one of the so‐far developed elements, and even on the terrestrial plane, in the Lives that swarm in the terrene atmosphere, thus prompting them to action.
Thus a prayer, unless pronounced mentally and addressed to one’s “Father” in the silence and solitude of one’s “closet,” must have more frequently disastrous than beneficial results, seeing that the masses are entirely ignorant of the potent effects which they thus produce. To produce good effects, the prayer must be uttered by “one who knows how to make himself heard in silence,” when it is no longer a prayer, but becomes a command. Why is Jesus shown to have forbidden his hearers to go to the public synagogues? Surely every praying man was not a hypocrite and a liar, nor a Pharisee who loved to be seen praying by people! He had a motive, we must suppose: the same motive which prompts the experienced Occultist to prevent his pupils from going into crowded places now as then, from entering churches, séance rooms, etc., unless they are in sympathy with the crowd.
There is one piece of advice to be given to beginners, who cannot help going into crowds—one which may appear superstitious, but which in the absence of Occult knowledge will be found efficacious. As well known to good Astrologers, the days of the week are not in the order of those planets whose names they bear. The fact is that the ancient Hindus and Egyptians divided the day into four parts, each day being under the protection (as ascertained by practical magic) of a planet; and every day, as correctly asserted by Dion Cassius, received the name of the planet which ruled and protected its first portion. Let the student protect himself from the “Powers of the Air” (Elementals) which throng public places, by wearing either a ring containing some jewel of the colour of the presiding planet, or else of the metal sacred to it. But the best protection is a clear conscience and a firm desire to benefit Humanity.
The Planets, The Days of the Week and Their Corresponding Colours and Metals.
[Transcriber’s Note: This table was a wide pull‐out insert into the book, with more columns than modern readers can display. It has been reformatted into several tables of more manageable width.]
These Correspondences are from the Objective, Terrestrial Plane.
Âtman is no Number, and corresponds to no visible Planet, for it proceeds from the Spiritual Sun; nor does it bear any relation either to Sound, Colour, or the rest, for it includes them all.
As the Human Principles have no Numbers per se, but only correspond to Numbers, Sounds, Colours, etc., they are not enumerated here in the order used for exoteric purposes.
NUMBERS METALS. PLANETS. 1 and 10. Physical Iron. Mars. The Planet of Man’s Key‐note. Generation. 2. Life Spiritual Gold. The Sun. The Giver and Life Physical. of Life physically. Spiritually and esoterically the substitute for the inter‐Mercurial Planet, a sacred and secret planet with the ancients. 3. Because Buddhi is Mercury. Mixes with Mercury. The (so to speak) Sulphur, as Buddhi Messenger and the between Âtmâ and is mixed with the Interpreter of the Manas, and forms Flame of Spirit (See Gods. with the seventh, or Alchemical Auric Envelope, the Definitions.) Devachanic Triad. 4. The middle Lead. Saturn. principle—between the purely material and purely spiritual triads. The conscious part of animal man. 5. Tin. Jupiter. 6. Copper. When alloyed Venus. The Morning becomes Bronze (the and the Evening dual principle). Star. 7. Contains in Silver. The Moon. The Patent itself the of the Earth. reflection of Septenary Man.
NUMBERS _THE HUMAN DAYS OF THE WEEK. PRINCIPLES._ 1 and 10. Kâma Rûpa. The Tuesday. _Dies vehicle or seat of Martis_, or Tiw. the Animal Instincts and Passions. 2. Prâna or Jîva. Life. Sunday. _Dies Solss_, or Sun. 3. Buddhi. Spiritual Wednesday. _Dies Soul, or Âtmic Ray; Mercurii_, or Woden. vehicle of Âtmâ. Day of Buddha in the South, end of Woden in the North—Gods of Wisdom. 4. Kâma Manas. The Saturday. _Dies Lower Mind, or Saturns_, or Saturn. Animal Soul. 5. Auric Envelope. Thursday. _Dies Jovis_, or Thor. 6. Manas. The Higher Friday. _Dies Mind, or Human Soul. Veneris_, or Friga. 7. Linga Sharîra. The Astral Double of Man, the Parent of the Physical Man.
NUMBERS COLOURS. SOUND. MUSICAL SCALE.. 1 and 10. 1 Red. Sa or Do. 2. 2 Orange. Ri or Re. 3. 3. Yellow. Ga or Mi. 4. 4. Green. Ma or Fa. 5. 5. Blue. Pa or Sol. 6. 6. Indigo or Dark Da or La. Blue. 7. 7. Violet. Ni or Si.
In the accompanying diagram the days of the week do not stand in their usual order, though they are placed in their correct sequence as determined by the order of the colours in the solar spectrum and the corresponding colours of their ruling planets. The fault of the confusion in the order of the days revealed by this comparison lies at the door of the early Christians. Adopting from the Jews their lunar months, they tried to blend them with the solar planets, and so made a mess of it; for the order of the days of the week as it now stands does not follow the order of the planets.
Now, the Ancients arranged the planets in the following order: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, counting the Sun as a planet for exoteric purposes. Again, the Egyptians and Indians, the two oldest nations, divided their day into four parts, each of which was under the protection and rule of a planet. In course of time each day came to be called by the name of that planet which ruled its first portion—the morning. Now, when they arranged their week, the Christians proceeded as follows: they wanted to make the day of the Sun, or Sunday, the seventh, so they named the days of the week by taking every fourth planet in turn; e.g., beginning with the Moon (Monday), they counted thus: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars; thus Tuesday, the day whose first portion was ruled by Mars, became the second day of the week; and so on. It should be remembered also that the Moon, like the Sun, is a substitute for a secret planet.
The present division of the solar year was made several centuries later than the beginning of our era; and our week is not that of the Ancients and the Occultists. The septenary division of the four parts of the lunar phases is as old as the world, and originated with the people who reckoned time by the lunar months. The Hebrews never used it, for they counted only the seventh day, the Sabbath, though the second chapter of Genesis seems to speak of it. Till the days of the Cæsars there is no trace of a week of seven days among any nation save the Hindus. From India it passed to the Arabs, and reached Europe with Christianity. The Roman week consisted of eight days, and the Athenian of ten.(780) Thus one of the numberless contradictions and fallacies of Christendom is the adoption of the Indian septenary week of the lunar reckoning, and the preservation at the same time of the mythological names of the planets.
Nor do modern Astrologers give the correspondences of the days and planets and their colours correctly; and while Occultists can give good reason for every detail of their own tables of colours, etc., it is doubtful whether the Astrologers can do the same.
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To close this first Paper, let me say that the readers must in all necessity be separated into two broad divisions: those who have not quite rid themselves of the usual sceptical doubts, but who long to ascertain how much truth there may be in the claims of the Occultists; and those others who, having freed themselves from the trammels of Materialism and Relativity, feel that true and real bliss must be sought only in the knowledge and personal experience of that which the Hindu Philosopher calls the Brahmavidyâ, and the Buddhist Arhat the realization of Âdibuddha, the primeval Wisdom. Let the former pick out and study from these Papers only those explanations of the phenomena of life which profane Science is unable to give them. Even with such limitations, they will find by the end of a year or two that they will have learned more than all their Universities and Colleges can teach them. As to the sincere believers, they will be rewarded by seeing their faith transformed into knowledge. True knowledge is of Spirit and in Spirit alone, and cannot be acquired in any other way except through the region of the higher mind, the only plane from which we can penetrate the depths of the all‐pervading Absoluteness. He who carries out only those laws established by human minds, who lives that life which is prescribed by the code of mortals and their fallible legislation, chooses as his guiding star a beacon which shines on the ocean of Mâyâ, or of temporary delusions, and lasts for but one incarnation. These laws are necessary for the life and welfare of physical man alone. He has chosen a pilot who directs him through the shoals of one existence, a master who parts with him, however, on the threshold of death. How much happier that man who, while strictly performing on the temporary objective plane the duties of daily life, carrying out each and every law of his country, and rendering, in short, to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, leads in reality a spiritual and permanent existence, a life with no breaks of continuity, no gaps, no interludes, not even during those periods which are the halting‐places of the long pilgrimage of purely spiritual life. All the phenomena of the lower human mind disappear like the curtain of a proscenium, allowing him to live in the region beyond it, the plane of the noumenal, the one reality. If man by suppressing, if not destroying, his selfishness and personality, only succeeds in knowing himself as he is behind the veil of physical Mâyâ, he will soon stand beyond all pain, all misery, and beyond all the wear and tear of change, which is the chief originator of pain. Such a man will be physically of Matter, he will move surrounded by Matter, and yet he will live beyond and outside it. His body will be subject to change, but he himself will be entirely without it, and will experience everlasting life even while in temporary bodies of short duration. All this may be achieved by the development of unselfish universal love of Humanity, and the suppression of personality, or selfishness, which is the cause of all sin, and consequently of all human sorrow.
Paper II. An Explanation
In view of the abstruse nature of the subjects dealt with, the present Paper will begin with an explanation of some points which remained obscure in the preceding one, as well as of some statements in which there was an appearance of contradiction.
Astrologers, of whom there are many among the Esotericists, are likely to be puzzled by some statements distinctly contradicting their teachings; whilst those who know nothing of the subject may perhaps find themselves opposed at the outset by those who have studied the exoteric systems of the Kabalah and Astrology. For let it be distinctly known, nothing of that which is printed broadcast, and available to every student in public libraries or museums, is really Esoteric, but is either mixed with deliberate “blinds,” or cannot be understood and studied with profit without a complete glossary of Occult terms.
The following teachings and explanations, therefore, may be useful to the student in assisting him to formulate the teaching given in the preceding Paper.
In Diagram I. it will be observed that the 3, 7, and 10 centres are respectively as follows:
(a) The 3 pertain to the spiritual world of the Absolute, and therefore to the three higher principles in Man.
(b) The 7 belong to the spiritual, psychic, and physical worlds and to the body of man. Physics, metaphysics and hyper‐physics are the triad that symbolizes man on this plane.
(c) The 10, or the sum total of these, is the Universe as a whole, in all its aspects, and also its Microcosm—Man, with his ten orifices.
Laying aside, for the moment, the Higher Decad (Kosmos) and the Lower Decad (Man), the first three numbers of the separate sevens have a direct reference to the Spirit, Soul and Auric Envelope of the human being, as well as to the higher supersensual world. The lower four, or the four aspects, belong to Man also, as well as to the Universal Kosmos, the whole being synthesized by the Absolute.
If these three discrete or distributive degrees of Being be conceived, according to the Symbology of all the Eastern Religions, as contained in one Ovum, or EGG, the name of that EGG will be Svabhâvat, or the ALL‐BEING on the manifested plane. This Universe has, in truth, neither centre nor periphery; but in the individual and finite mind of man it has such a definition, the natural consequence of the limitations of human thought.
In Diagram II., as already stated therein, no notice need be taken of the numbers used in the left‐hand column, as these refer only to the Hierarchies of the Colours and Sounds on the metaphysical plane, and are not the characteristic numbers of the human principles or of the planets. The human principles elude enumeration, because each man differs from every other, just as no two blades of grass on the whole earth are absolutely alike. Numbering is here a question of spiritual progress and the natural predominance of one principle over another. With one man it may be Buddhi that stands as number one; with another, if he be a bestial sensualist, the Lower Manas. With one the physical body, or perhaps Prâna, the life principle, will be on the first and highest plane, as would be the case in an extremely healthy man, full of vitality; with another it may come as the sixth or even seventh downward. Again, the colours and metals corresponding to the planets and human principles, as will be observed, are not those known exoterically to modern Astrologers and Western Occultists.
Let us see whence the modern Astrologer got his notions about the correspondence of planets, metals and colours. And here we are reminded of the modern Orientalist, who, judging by appearances credits the ancient Akkadians (and also the Chaldæans, Hindus and Egyptians) with the crude notion that the Universe, and in like manner the earth, was like an inverted, bell‐shaped bowl! This he demonstrates by pointing to the symbolical representations of some Akkadian inscriptions and to the Assyrian carvings. It is, however, no place here to explain how mistaken is the Assyriologist, for all such representations are simply symbolical of the Khargakkurra, the World‐Mountain, or Meru, and relate only to the North Pole, the Land of the Gods. Now, the Assyrians arranged their exoteric teaching about the planets and their correspondences as follows:
Diagram II.
Numbers. Planets. Metals. Colours. _Solar Days of Week._ 1. Saturn. Lead. Black. Saturday. (Whence Sabbath,(781) in honour of Jehovah.) 2. Jupiter. Tin. White, but Thursday. as often Purple or Orange. 3. Mars. Iron. Red. Tuesday. 4. Sun. Gold. Yellow‐ Sunday. golden. 5. Venus. Copper. Green or Friday. Yellow. 6. Mercury. Quicksilver. Blue. Wednesday. 7. Moon. Silver. Silver‐ Monday. white.
This is the arrangement now adopted by Christian Astrologers, with the exception of the order of the days of the week, of which, by associating the solar planetary names with the lunar weeks, they have made a sore mess, as has been already shown in Paper I. This is the Ptolemaic geocentric system, which represents the Universe as in the following diagram, showing our Earth in the centre of the Universe, and the Sun a Planet, the fourth in number.
And if the Christian chronology and order of the days of the week are being daily denounced as being based on an entirely wrong astronomical foundation, it is high time to begin a reform also in Astrology built on such lines, and coming to us entirely from the Chaldæan and Assyrian exoteric mob.
But the correspondences given in these Papers are purely Esoteric. For this reason it follows that when the Planets of the Solar System are named or symbolized (as in Diagram II.) it must not be supposed that the planetary bodies themselves are referred to, except as types on a purely physical plane of the septenary nature of the psychic and spiritual worlds. A material planet can correspond only to a material something. Thus when Mercury is said to correspond to the right eye, it does not mean that the objective planet has any influence on the right optic organ, but that both stand rather as corresponding mystically through Buddhi. Man derives his Spiritual Soul (Buddhi) from the essence of the Mânasa Putra, the Sons of Wisdom, who are the Divine Beings (or Angels) ruling and presiding over the planet Mercury.
In the same way Venus, Manas and the left eye are set down as correspondences. Exoterically, there is, in reality, no such association of physical eyes and physical planets; but Esoterically there is; for the right eye is the “Eye of Wisdom,” i.e., it corresponds magnetically with that Occult centre in the brain which we call the “Third Eye”;(782) while the left corresponds with the intellectual brain, or those cells which are the organ on the physical plane of the thinking faculty. The kabalistic triangle of Kether, Chokmah and Binah shows this. Chokmah and Binah, or Wisdom and Intelligence, the Father and Mother, or, again, the Father and Son, are on the same plane and reäct mutually on one another.
When the individual consciousness is turned inward, a conjunction of Manas and Buddhi takes place. In the spiritually regenerated man this conjunction is permanent, the Higher Manas clinging to Buddhi beyond the threshold of Devachan, and the Soul, or rather the Spirit, which should not be confounded with Âtmâ, the Super‐Spirit, is then said to have the “Single Eye.” Esoterically, in other words, the “Third Eye” is active. Now Mercury is called Hermes, and Venus, Aphrodite, and thus their conjunction in man on the psycho‐physical plane gives him the name of the Hermaphrodite, or Androgyne. The absolutely Spiritual Man is, however, entirely disconnected from sex. The Spiritual Man corresponds directly with the higher “coloured circles,” the Divine Prism which emanates from the One Infinite White Circle; while physical man emanates from the Sephiroth, which are the Voices or Sounds of Eastern Philosophy. And these “Voices” are lower than the “Colours,” for they are the seven lower Sephiroth, or the objective Sounds, seen, not heard, as the Zohar shows,(783) and even the Old Testament also. For, when properly translated, verse 18 of chapter xx. Exodus would read: “And the people saw the Voices” (or Sounds, not the “thunderings” as now translated); and these Voices, or Sounds, are the Sephiroth.(784)
In the same way the right and left nostrils, into which is breathed the “Breath of Lives”(785) are here said to correspond with Sun and Moon, as Brahmâ‐Prajâpati and Vâch, or Osiris and Isis, are the parents of the natural life. This Quaternary, viz.: the two eyes and two nostrils, Mercury and Venus, Sun and Moon, constitutes the Kabalistic Guardian‐ Angels of the Four Corners of the Earth. It is the same in the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, which, however, adds that the Sun is not a planet, but the central star of our system, and the Moon a dead planet, from which all the principles are gone, both being substitutes, the one for an invisible inter‐Mercurial planet, and the other for a planet which seems to have now altogether disappeared from view. These are the Four Mahârâjahs,(786) the “Four Holy Ones” connected with Karma and Humanity, Kosmos and Man, in all their aspects. They are: the Sun, or its substitute Michael; Moon, or substitute Gabriel; Mercury, Raphael; and Venus, Uriel. It need hardly be said here again that the planetary bodies themselves, being only physical symbols, are not often referred to in the Esoteric System, but, as a rule, their cosmic, psychic, physical and spiritual forces are symbolized under these names. In short, it is the seven physical planets which are the lower Sephiroth of the Kabalah, and our triple physical Sun whose reflection only we see, which is symbolized, or rather personified, by the Upper Triad, or Sephirothal Crown.(787)
Then, again, it will be well to point out that the numbers attached to the psychic principles in Diagram I. appear the reverse of those in exoteric writings. This is because numbers in this connection are purely arbitrary, changing with every school. Some schools count three, some four, some six, and others seven, as do all the Buddhist Esotericists. As said before,(788) the Esoteric School has been divided into two departments since the fourteenth century, one for the inner Lanoos, or higher Chelâs, the other for the outer circle, or lay Chelâs. Mr. Sinnett was distinctly told in the letters he received from one of the Gurus that he could not be taught the real Esoteric Doctrine given out only to the pledged disciples of the Inner Circle. The numbers and principles do not go in regular sequence, like the skins of an onion, but the student must work out for himself the number appropriate to each of his principles, when the time comes for him to enter upon practical study. The above will suggest to the student the necessity of knowing the principles by their names and their appropriate faculties apart from any system of enumeration, or by association with their corresponding centres of actions, colours, sounds, etc., until these become inseparable.
The old and familiar mode of reckoning the principles, given in the Theosophist and Esoteric Buddhism, leads to another apparently perplexing contradiction, though it is really none at all. The principles numbered 3 and 2, viz.: Linga Sharîra and Prâna, or Jîva, stand in the reverse order to that given in Diagram I. A moment’s consideration will suffice to explain the apparent discrepancy between the exoteric enumeration, and the Esoteric order given in Diagram I. For in Diagram I. the Linga Sharîra is defined as the vehicle of Prâna, or Jîva, the life principle, and as such must of necessity be inferior to Prâna, not superior as the exoteric enumeration would suggest. The principles do not stand one above the other, and thus cannot be taken in numerical sequence; their order depends upon the superiority and predominance of one or another principle, and therefore differs in every man.
The Linga Sharîra is the double, or protoplasmic antetype of the body, which is its image. It is in this sense that it is called in Diagram II. the parent of the physical body, i.e., the mother by conception of Prâna, the father. This idea is conveyed in the Egyptian mythology by the birth of Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, although, like all sacred Mythoi, this has both a threefold spiritual, and a sevenfold psycho‐ physical application. To close the subject, Prâna, the life principle, can, in sober truth, have no number, as it pervades every other principle, or the human total. Each number of the seven would thus be naturally applicable to Prâna‐Jîva exoterically as it is to the Auric Body Esoterically. As Pythagoras showed, Kosmos was produced not through or by number, but geometrically, i.e., following the proportions of numbers.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
To those who are unacquainted with the exoteric astrological natures ascribed in practice to the planetary bodies, it may be useful if we set them down here after the manner of Diagram II., in relation to their dominion over the human body, colours, metals, etc., and explain at the same time why genuine Esoteric Philosophy differs from the astrological claims.
Planets. Days. Metals. _Parts of Colours. the Body._ Saturn. Saturday. Lead. Right Ear, Black.(789) Knees and Bony System. Jupiter. Thursday. Tin. Left Ear, Purple.(790) Thighs, Feet and Arterial System. Mars. Tuesday. Iron. Forehead Red. and Nose, the Skull, Sex‐ function and Muscular System. Sun. Sunday. Gold. Right Eye, Orange.(791) Heart and Vital Centres. Venus. Friday. Copper. Chin and Yellow.(792) Cheeks, Neck and Reins and the Venous System. Mercury. Wednesday. Quicksilver. Mouth, Dove or Hands, Cream.(793) Abdominal Viscera and Nervous System. Moon. Monday. Silver. Breasts, White.(794) Left Eye, the Fluidic System, Saliva, Lymph, etc.
Thus it will be seen that the influence of the solar system in the exoteric kabalistic Astrology is by this method distributed over the entire human body, the primary metals, and the gradations of colour from black to white; but that Esotericism recognizes neither black nor white as colours, because it holds religiously to the seven solar or natural colours of the prism. Black and white are artificial tints. They belong to the Earth, and are only perceived by virtue of the special construction of our physical organs. White is the absence of all colours, and therefore no colour; black is simply the absence of light, and therefore the negative aspect of white. The seven prismatic colours are direct emanations from the Seven Hierarchies of Being, each of which has a direct bearing upon and relation to one of the human principles, since each of these Hierarchies is, in fact, the creator and source of the corresponding human principle. Each prismatic colour is called in Occultism the “Father of the Sound” which corresponds to it; Sound being the Word, or the Logos, of its Father‐Thought. This is the reason why sensitives connect every colour with a definite sound, a fact well recognized in Modern Science (e.g., Francis Galton’s Human Faculty). But black and white are entirely negative colours, and have no representatives in the world of subjective being.
Kabalistic Astrology says that the dominion of the planetary bodies in the human brain also is defined thus: there are seven primary groups of faculties, six of which function through the cerebrum, and the seventh through the cerebellum. This is perfectly correct Esoterically. But when it is further said that: Saturn governs the devotional faculties; Mercury, the intellectual; Jupiter, the sympathetic; the Sun, the governing faculties; Mars, the selfish; Venus, the tenacious; and the Moon, the instincts;—we say that the explanation is incomplete and even misleading. For, in the first place, the physical planets can rule only the physical body and the purely physical functions. All the mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual faculties, are influenced by the Occult properties of the scale of causes which emanate from the Hierarchies of the Spiritual Rulers of the planets, and not by the planets themselves. This scale, as given in Diagram II., leads the student to perceive in the following order: (1) colour; (2) sound; (3) the sound materializes into the spirit of the metals, i.e., the metallic Elementals; (4) these materialize again into the physical metals; (5) then the harmonial and vibratory radiant essence passes into the plants, giving them colour and smell, both of which “properties” depend upon the rate of vibration of this energy per unit of time; (6) from plants it passes into the animals; (7) and finally culminates in the “principles” of man.
Thus we see the Divine Essence of our Progenitors in Heaven circling through seven stages; Spirit becoming Matter, and Matter returning to Spirit. As there is sound in Nature which is inaudible, so there is colour which is invisible, but which can be heard. The creative force, at work in its incessant task of transformation, produces colour, sound and numbers, in the shape of rates of vibration which compound and dissociate the atoms and molecules. Though invisible and inaudible to us in detail, yet the synthesis of the whole becomes audible to us on the material plane. It is that which the Chinese call the “Great Tone,” or Kung. It is, even by scientific confession, the actual tonic of Nature, held by musicians to be the middle Fa on the keyboard of a piano. We hear it distinctly in the voice of Nature, in the roaring of the ocean, in the sound of the foliage of a great forest, in the distant roar of a great city, in the wind, the tempest and the storm; in short, in everything in Nature which has a voice or produces sound. To the hearing of all who hearken, it culminates in a single definite tone, of an unappreciable pitch, which, as said, is the F, or Fa, of the diatonic scale. From these particulars, that wherein lies the difference between the exoteric and the Esoteric nomenclature and symbolism will be evident to the student of Occultism. In short, kabalistic Astrology, as practised in Europe, is the semi‐esoteric Secret Science, adapted for the outer and not for the inner circle. It is, furthermore, often left incomplete and not infrequently distorted to conceal the real truth. While it symbolizes and adapts its correspondences on the mere appearances of things, Esoteric Philosophy, which concerns itself pre‐eminently with the essence of things, accepts only such symbols as cover the whole ground, i.e., such symbols as yield a spiritual as well as a psychic and physical meaning. Yet even Western Astrology has done excellent work, for it has helped to carry the knowledge of the existence of a Secret Wisdom throughout the dangers of the Mediæval Ages and their dark bigotry up to the present day, when all danger has disappeared.
The order of the planets in exoteric practice is that defined by their geocentric radii, or the distance of their several orbits from the Earth as a centre, viz., Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. In the first three of these we find symbolized the celestial Triad of supreme power in the physical, manifested universe, or Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva; while in the last four we recognize the symbols of the terrestrial quaternary ruling over all natural and physical revolutions of the seasons, quarters of the day, points of the compass, and elements. Thus:
Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Morning. Noon. Evening. Night. Youth. Adolescence. Manhood. Age. Fire. Air. Water. Earth. East. South. West. North.
But Esoteric Science is not content with analogies on the purely objective plane of the physical senses, and therefore it is absolutely necessary to preface further teachings in this direction with a clear explanation of the real meaning of the word Magic.
What Magic Is, In Reality.
Esoteric Science is, above all, the knowledge of our relations with and in Divine Magic,(795) inseparableness from our divine Selves—the latter meaning something else besides our own higher Spirit. Thus, before proceeding to exemplify and explain these relations, it may perhaps be useful to give the student a correct idea of the full meaning of this most misunderstood word “Magic.” Many are those willing and eager to study Occultism, but very few have even an approximate idea of the Science itself. Now, very few of our American and European students can derive benefit from Sanskrit works or even their translations, as these translations are, for the most part, merely blinds to the uninitiated. I therefore propose to offer to their attention demonstrations of the aforesaid drawn from Neo‐Platonic works. These are accessible in translation; and in order to throw light on that which has hitherto been full of darkness, it will suffice to point to a certain key in them. Thus the Gnosis, both pre‐Christian and post‐Christian, will serve our purpose admirably.
There are millions of Christians who know the name of Simon Magus, and the little that is told about him in the Acts; but very few who have even heard of the many motley, fantastic and contradictory details which tradition records about his life. The story of his claims and his death is to be found only in the prejudiced, half‐fantastic records about him in the works of the Church Fathers, such as Irenæus, Epiphanius and St. Justin, and especially in the anonymous Philosophumena. Yet he is a historical character, and the appellation of “Magus” was given to him and was accepted by all his contemporaries, including the heads of the Christian Church, as a qualification indicating the miraculous powers he possessed, and irrespective of whether he was regarded as a white (divine) or a black (infernal) Magician. In this respect, opinion has always been made subservient to the Gentile or Christian proclivities of his chronicler.
It is in his system and in that of Menander, his pupil and successor, that we find what the term “Magic” meant for Initiates in those days.
Simon, as all the other Gnostics, taught that our world was created by the lower angels, whom he called Æons. He mentions only three degrees of such, because it was and is useless, as we have before explained, to teach anything about the four higher ones, and he therefore begins at the plane of globes A and G. His system is as near to Occult Truth as any, so that we may examine it, as well as his own and Menander’s claims about “Magic,” to find out what they meant by the term. Now, for Simon, the summit of all manifested creation was Fire. It was, with him as with us, the Universal Principle, the Infinite Potency, born from the concealed Potentiality. This Fire was the primeval cause of the manifested world of being, and was dual, having a manifested and a concealed, or secret, side.
The secret side of the Fire is concealed in its evident [or objective] side, and the objective is produced from the secret side,(796)
he writes, which amounts to saying that the visible is ever present in the invisible, and the invisible in the visible. This was but a new form of stating Plato’s idea of the Intelligible (Noêton) and the Sensible (Aisthêton), and Aristotle’s teaching on the Potency (Dunamis) and the Act (Energeia). For Simon, all that can be thought of, all that can be acted upon, was perfect intelligence. Fire contained all. And thus all the parts of that Fire, being endowed with intelligence and reason, were susceptible of development by extension and emanation. This is our teaching of the Manifested Logos, and these parts in their primordial emanation are our Dhyân Chohans, the “Sons of Flame and Fire,” or higher Æons. This “Fire” is the symbol of the active and living side of Divine Nature. Behind it lay “infinite Potentiality in Potentiality,” which Simon named “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” or permanent stability and personified immutability.
From the Potency of Thought, Divine Ideation thus passed to Action. Hence the series of primordial emanations through Thought begetting the Act, the objective side of Fire being the Mother, the sacred side of it being the Father. Simon called these emanations Syzygies (a united pair, or couple), for they emanated two‐by‐two, one as an active, and the other as a passive Æon. Three couples thus emanated (or six in all, the Fire being the seventh), to which Simon gave the following names: “Mind and Thought; Voice and Name; Reason and Reflection,”(797) the first in each pair being male, the last female. From these primordial six emanated the six Æons of the Middle World. Let us see what Simon himself says:
Each of these six primitive beings contained the entire infinite Potency [of its parent]; but it was there only in Potency, and not in Act. That Potency had to be called forth [or conformed] through an image in order that it should manifest in all its essence, virtue, grandeur and effects; for only then could the emanated Potency become similar to its parent, the eternal and infinite Potency. If, on the contrary, it remained simply potentially in the six Potencies and failed to be conformed through an image, then the Potency would not pass into action, but would get lost,(798)
in clearer terms, it would become atrophied, as the modern expression goes.
Now, what do these words mean if not that to be equal in all things to the Infinite Potency the Æons had to imitate it in its action, and become themselves, in their turn, emanative Principles, as was their Parent, giving life to new beings, and becoming Potencies in actu themselves? To produce emanations, or to have acquired the gift of Kriyâ‐shakti.(799) is the direct result of that power, an effect which depends on our own action. That power, then, is inherent in man, as it is in the primordial Æons and even in the secondary Emanations, by the very fact of their and our descent from the One Primordial Principle, the Infinite Power, or Potency. Thus we find in the system of Simon Magus that the first six Æons, synthesized by the seventh, the Parent Potency, passed into Act, and emanated, in their turn, six secondary Æons, which were each synthesized by their respective Parents. In the Philosophumena we read that Simon compared the Æons to the “Tree of Life.” Said Simon in the Revelation:(800)
It is written that there are two ramifications of the universal Æons, having neither beginning nor end, issued both from the same Root, the invisible and incomprehensible Potentiality, Sigê [Silence]. One of these [series of Æons] appears from above. This is the Great Potency, Universal Mind [or Divine Ideation, the Mahat of the Hindus]; it orders all things and is male. The other is from below, for it is the Great [manifested] Thought, the female Æon, generating all things. These [two kinds of Æons] corresponding(801) with each other, have conjunction and manifest the middle distance [the intermediate sphere, or plane], the incomprehensible Air which has neither beginning nor end.(802)
This female “Air” is our Ether, or the kabalistic Astral Light. It is, then, the Second World of Simon, born of Fire, the principle of everything. We call it the ONE LIFE, the Intelligent, Divine Flame, omnipresent and infinite. In Simon’s system this Second World was ruled by a Being, or Potency, both male and female, or active and passive, good and bad. This Parent‐Being, like the primordial infinite Potency, is also called “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” so long as the manifested Kosmos shall last. When it emanated in actu and became like unto its own Parent, it was not dual or androgyne. It is the Thought (Sigê) that emanated from it which became as itself (the Parent), having become like unto its image (or antetype); the second had now become in its turn the first (on its own plane or sphere). As Simon has it:
It [the Parent or Father] was one. For having it [the Thought] in itself, it was alone. It was not, however, first, though it was preëxisting; but manifesting itself to itself from itself, it became the second (or dual). Nor was it called Father before it [the Thought] gave it that name. As, therefore, itself developing itself by itself, manifested to itself its own Thought, so also the Thought being manifested did not act, but seeing the Father hid it in itself, that is, (hid) that Potency (in itself). And the Potency [Dunamis, viz.: Nous] and Thought [Epinoia] are male‐female. Whence they correspond with one another—for Potency in no way differs from Thought—being one. So from the things above is found Potency, and from those below, Thought. It comes to pass, therefore, that that which is manifested from them, although being one, yet is found to be twofold, the androgyne having the female in itself. So is Mind in Thought, things inseparable from each other which though being one are yet found dual.(803)
He [Simon] calls the first Syzygy of the six Potencies and of the seventh, which is with it, Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth: the male looks down from on high and takes thought for his Syzygy [or spouse], for the Earth below receives those intellectual fruits which are brought down from Heaven and are cognate to the Earth.(804)
Simon’s Third World with its third series of six Æons and the seventh, the Parent, is emanated in the same way. It is this same note which runs through every Gnostic system—gradual development downward into Matter by similitude; and it is a law which is to be traced down to primordial Occultism, or Magic. With the Gnostics, as with us, this seventh Potency, synthesizing all, is the Spirit brooding over the dark waters of undifferentiated Space, Nârâyana, or Vishnu, in India; the Holy Ghost in Christianity. But while in the latter the conception is conditioned and dwarfed by limitations necessitating faith and grace, Eastern Philosophy shows it pervading every atom, conscious or unconscious. Irenæus supplements the information on the further development of these six Æons. We learn from him that Thought, having separated itself from its Parent, and knowing through its identity of Essence with the latter what it had to know, proceeded on the second or intermediate plane, or rather World (each of such Worlds consisting of two planes, the superior and inferior, male and female, the latter assuming finally both Potencies and becoming androgyne), to create inferior Hierarchies, Angels and Powers, Dominions and Hosts, of every description, which in their turn created, or rather emanated out of their own Essence, our world with its men and beings, over which they watch.
It thus follows that every rational being—called Man on Earth—is of the same essence and possesses potentially all the attributes of the higher Æons, the primordial Seven. It is for him to develope, “with the image before him of the highest,” by imitation in actu, the Potency with which the highest of his Parents, or Fathers, is endowed. Here we may again quote with advantage from the Philosophumena:
So then, according to Simon, this blissful and imperishable [principle] is concealed in everything in potency, not in act. This is “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” viz., that which has stood above in ingenerable Potency; that which stands below in the stream of the waters generated in an image; that which will stand above, beside the blissful infinite Potency, if it makes itself like unto this image. For three, he says, are they that stand, and without these three Æons of stability, there is no adornment of the generable which, according to them [the Simonians], is borne on the water, and being moulded according to the similitude is a perfect and celestial (Æon), in no manner of thinking inferior to the ingenerable Potency. Thus they say: “I and thou [are] one; before me [wast] thou; that which is after thee [is] I.” This, he says, is the one Potency, divided into above and below, generating itself, nourishing itself, seeking itself, finding itself; its own mother, father, brother, spouse, daughter and son, one, for it is the Root of all.(805)
Thus of this triple Æon, we learn the first exists as “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” or the uncreate Power, Âtman; the second is generated in the dark waters of Space (Chaos, or undifferentiated Substance, our Buddhi), from or through the image of the former reflected in those waters, the image of Him, or It, which moves on them; the third World (or, in man, Manas) will be endowed with every power of that eternal and omnipresent Image if it but assimilates it to itself. For,
All that is eternal, pure and incorruptible is concealed in everything that is,
if only potentially, not actually. And
Everything is that image, provided the lower image (man) ascends to that highest Source and Root in Spirit and Thought.
Matter as Substance is eternal and has never been created. Therefore Simon Magus, with all the great Gnostic Teachers and Eastern Philosophers, never speaks of its beginning. “Eternal Matter” receives its various forms in the lower Æon from the Creative Angels, or Builders, as we call them. Why, then, should not Man, the direct heir of the highest Æon, do the same, by the potency of his thought, which is born from Spirit? This is Kriyâshakti, the power of producing forms on the objective plane through the potency of Ideation and Will, from invisible, indestructible Matter.
Truly says Jeremiah,(806) quoting the “Word of the Lord”:
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee,
for Jeremiah stands here for Man when he was yet an Æon, or Divine Man, both with Simon Magus and Eastern Philosophy. The first three chapters of Genesis are as Occult as that which is given in Paper I. For the terrestrial Paradise is the Womb, says Simon,(807) Eden the region surrounding it. The river which went out of Eden to water the garden is the Umbilical Cord; this cord is divided into four Heads, the streams that flowed out of it, the four canals which serve to carry nutrition to the Fœtus, i.e., the two arteries and the two veins which are the channels for the blood and convey the breathing air, the unborn child, according to Simon, being entirely enveloped by the Amnion, fed through the Umbilical Cord and given vital air through the Aorta.(808)
The above is given for the elucidation of that which is to follow. The disciples of Simon Magus were numerous, and were instructed by him in Magic. They made use of so‐called “exorcisms” (as in the New Testament), incantations, philtres; believed in dreams and visions, and produced them at will; and finally forced the lower orders of spirits to obey them. Simon Magus was called “the Great Power of God,” literally “the Potency of the Deity which is called Great.” That which was then termed Magic we now call Theosophia, or Divine Wisdom, Power and Knowledge.
His direct disciple, Menander, was also a great Magician. Says Irenæus, among other writers:
The successor of Simon was Menander, a Samaritan by birth, who reached the highest summits in the Science of Magic.
Thus both master and pupil are shown as having attained the highest powers in the art of enchantments, powers which can be obtained only through “the help of the Devil,” as Christians claim; and yet their “works” were identical with those spoken of in the New Testament, wherein such phenomenal results are called divine miracles, and are, therefore, believed in and accepted as coming from and through God. But the question is, have these so‐called “miracles” of the “Christ” and the Apostles ever been explained any more than the magical achievements of so‐called Sorcerers and Magicians? I say, never. We Occultists do not believe in supernatural phenomena, and the Masters laugh at the word “miracle.” Let us see, then, what is really the sense of the word Magic.
The source and basis of it lie in Spirit and Thought, whether on the purely divine or the terrestrial plane. Those who know the history of Simon have the two versions before them, that of White and of Black Magic, at their option, in the much talked of union of Simon with Helena, whom he called his Epinoia (Thought). Those who, like the Christians, had to discredit a dangerous rival, talk of Helena as being a beautiful and actual woman, whom Simon had met in a house of ill‐fame at Tyre, and who was, according to those who wrote his life, the reincarnation of Helen of Troy. How, then, was she “Divine Thought”? The lower angels, Simon is made to say in Philosophumena, or the third Æons, being so material, had more badness in them than all the others. Poor man, created or emanated from them, had the vice of his origin. What was it? Only this: when the third Æons possessed themselves, in their turn, of the Divine Thought through the transmission into them of Fire, instead of making of man a complete being, according to the universal plan, they at first detained from him that Divine Spark (Thought, on Earth Manas); and that was the cause and origin of senseless man’s committing the original sin as the angels had committed it æons before by refusing to create.(809) Finally, after detaining Epinoia prisoner amongst them and having subjected the Divine Thought to every kind of insult and desecration, they ended by shutting it into the already defiled body of man. After this, as interpreted by the enemies of Simon, she passed from one female body into another through ages and races, until Simon found and recognized her in the form of Helena, the “prostitute,” the “lost sheep” of the parable. Simon is made to represent himself as the Saviour descended on Earth to rescue this “lamb” and those men in whom Epinoia is still under the dominion of the lower angels. The greatest magical feats are thus attributed to Simon through his sexual union with Helena, hence Black Magic. Indeed, the chief rites of this kind of Magic are based on such disgusting literal interpretation of noble myths, one of the noblest of which was thus invented by Simon as a symbolical mark of his own teaching. Those who understood it correctly knew what was meant by “Helena.” It was the marriage of Nous (Âtmâ‐Buddhi) with Manas, the union through which Will and Thought become one and are endowed with divine powers. For Âtman in man, being of an unalloyed essence, the primordial Divine Fire (or the eternal and universal “that which has stood, stands and will stand”), is of all the planes; and Buddhi is its vehicle or Thought, generated by and generating the “Father” in her turn, and also Will. She is “that which has stood, stands and will stand,” thus becoming, in conjunction with Manas, male‐female, in this sphere only. Hence, when Simon spoke of himself as the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and of Helena as his Epinoia, Divine Thought, he meant the marriage of his Buddhi with Manas. Helena was the Shakti of the inner man, the female potency.
Now, what says Menander? The lower angels, he taught, were the emanations of Ennoia (Designing Thought). It was Ennoia who taught the Science of Magic and imparted it to him, together with the art of conquering the creative angels of the lower world. The latter stand for the passions of our lower nature. His pupils, after receiving baptism from him (i.e., after Initiation), were said to “resurrect from the dead” and, “growing no older,” became “immortal.”(810) This “resurrection” promised by Menander meant, of course, simply the passage from the darkness of ignorance into the light of truth, the awakening of man’s immortal Spirit to inner and eternal life. This is the Science of the Râja Yogîs—Magic.
Every person who has read Neo‐Platonic Philosophy knows how its chief Adepts, such as Plotinus, and especially Porphyry, fought against phenomenal Theurgy. But, beyond all of them, Jamblichus, the author of the De Mysteriis, lifts high the veil from the real term Theurgy, and shows us therein the true Divine Science of Râja Yoga.
Magic, he says, is a lofty and sublime Science, Divine, and exalted above all others.
It is the great remedy for all.... It neither takes its source in, nor is it limited to, the body or its passions, to the human compound or its constitution; but all is derived by it from our upper Gods,
our divine Egos, which run like a silver thread from the Spark in us up to the primeval divine Fire.(811)
Jamblichus execrates physical phenomena, produced, as he says, by the bad demons who deceive men (the spooks of the séance room), as vehemently as he exalts Divine Theurgy. But to exercise the latter, he teaches, the Theurgist must imperatively be “a man of high morality and a chaste Soul.” The other kind of Magic is used only by impure, selfish men, and has nothing of the Divine in it. No real Vates would ever consent to find in its communications anything coming from our higher Gods. Thus one (Theurgy) is the knowledge of our Father (the Higher Self); the other, subjection to our lower nature. One requires holiness of the Soul, a holiness which rejects and excludes everything corporeal; the other, the desecration of it (the Soul). One is the union with the Gods (with one’s God), the source of all Good; the other intercourse with demons (Elementals), which, unless we subject them, will subject us, and lead us step by step to moral ruin (mediumship). In short:
Theurgy unites us most strongly to divine nature. This nature begets itself through itself, moves through its own powers, supports all, and is intelligent. Being the ornament of the Universe, it invites us to intelligible truth, to perfection and imparting perfection to others. It unites us so intimately to all the creative actions of the Gods, according to the capacity of each of us, that the soul having accomplished the sacred rites is consolidated in their [the Gods’] actions and intelligences, until it launches itself into and is absorbed by the primordial divine essence. This is the object of the sacred Initiations of the Egyptians.(812)
Now, Jamblichus shows us how this union of our Higher Soul with the Universal Soul, with the Gods, is to be effected. He speaks of Manteia, which is Samâdhi, the highest trance.(813) He speaks also of dream which is divine vision, when man re‐becomes again a God. By Theurgy, or Râja Yoga, a man arrives at: (1) Prophetic Discernment through our God (the respective Higher Ego of each of us) revealing to us the truths of the plane on which we happen to be acting; (2) Ecstacy and Illumination; (3) Action in Spirit (in Astral Body or through Will); (4) and Domination over the minor, senseless demons (Elementals) by the very nature of our purified Egos. But this demands the complete purification of the latter. And this is called by him Magic, through initiation into Theurgy.
But Theurgy has to be preceded by a training of our senses and the knowledge of the human Self in relation to the Divine SELF. So long as man has not thoroughly mastered this preliminary study, it is idle to anthropomorphize the formless. By “formless” I mean the higher and the lower Gods, the supermundane as well as mundane Spirits, or Beings, which to beginners can be revealed only in Colours and Sounds. For none but a high Adept can perceive a “God” in its true transcendental form, which to the untrained intellect, to the Chelâ, will be visible only by its Aura. The visions of full figures casually perceived by sensitives and mediums belong to one or another of the only three categories they can see: (a) Astrals of living men; (b) Nirmânakâyas (Adepts, good or bad, whose bodies are dead, but who have learned to live in the invisible space in their ethereal personalities); and (c) Spooks, Elementaries and Elementals masquerading in shapes borrowed from the Astral Light in general, or from figures in the “mind’s eye” of the audience, or of the medium, which are immediately reflected in their respective Auras.
Having read the foregoing, students will now better comprehend the necessity of first studying the correspondences between our “principles”—which are but the various aspects of the triune (spiritual and physical) man—and our Paradigm, the direct roots of these in the Universe. In view of this, we must resume our teaching about the Hierarchies directly connected and for ever linked with man.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Enough has been said to show that while for the Orientalists and profane masses the sentence, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” means simply “Oh the Jewel in the Lotus,” Esoterically it signifies “Oh my God within me.” Yes; there is a God in each human being, for man was, and will re‐become, God. The sentence points to the indissoluble union between Man and the Universe. For the Lotus is the universal symbol of Kosmos as the absolute totality, and the Jewel is Spiritual Man, or God.
In the preceding Paper, the correspondences between Colours, Sounds, and “Principles” were given; and those who have read our second volume will remember that these seven principles are derived from the seven great Hierarchies of Angels, or Dhyân Chohans, which are, in their turn, associated with Colours and Sounds, and form collectively the Manifested Logos.
In the eternal music of the spheres we find the perfect scale corresponding to the colours, and in the number, determined by the vibrations of colour and sound, which “underlies every form and guides every sound,” we find the summing‐up of the Manifested Universe.
We may illustrate these correspondences by showing the relation of colour and sound to the geometrical figures which(814) express the progressive stages in the manifestation of Kosmos.
But the student will certainly be liable to confusion if, in studying the Diagrams, he does not remember two things: (1) That, our plane being a plane of reflection, and therefore illusionary, the various notations are reversed and must be counted from below upwards. The musical scale begins from below upwards, commencing with the deep Do and ending with the far more acute Si. (2) That Kâma Rûpa (corresponding to Do in the musical scale), containing as it does all potentialities of Matter, is necessarily the starting‐point on our plane. Further, it commences the notation on every plane, as corresponding to the “matter” of that plane. Again, the student must also remember that these notes have to be arranged in a circle, thus showing how Fa is the middle note of Nature. In short, musical notes, or Sounds, Colours and Numbers proceed from one to seven, and not from seven to one as erroneously shown in the spectrum of the prismatic colours, in which Red is counted first: a fact which necessitated my putting the principles and the days of the week at random in Diagram II. The musical scale and colours, according to the number of vibrations, proceed from the world of gross Matter to that of Spirit thus:
Principles. Colours. Notes. Numbers. _States of Matter._ Chhâyâ, Violet. Si. 7. Ether. Shadow or Double. Higher Manas, Indigo. La. 6. Critical Spiritual State, Intelligence. called Air in Occultism. Auric Blue. Sol. 5. Steam or Envelope. Vapour. Lower Manas, Green. Fa. 4. Critical or Animal State. Soul. Buddhi, or Yellow. Mi. 3. Water. Spiritual Soul. Prâna, or Orange. Re. 2. Critical Life State. Principle. Kâma Rûpa, Red. Do. 1. Ice. the Seat of Animal Life.
Here again the student is asked to dismiss from his mind any correspondence between “principles” and numbers, for reasons already given. The Esoteric enumeration cannot be made to correspond with the conventional exoteric. The one is the reality, the other is classified according to illusive appearances. The human principles, as given in Esoteric Buddhism, were tabulated for beginners, so as not to confuse their minds. It was half a blind.
Colours, Sounds and Forms.
To proceed:
The Point in the Circle is the Unmanifested Logos, corresponding to Absolute Life and Absolute Sound.
The first geometrical figure after the Circle or the Spheroid is the Triangle. It corresponds to Motion, Colour and Sound. Thus the Point in the Triangle represents the Second Logos, “Father‐Mother,” or the White Ray which is no colour, since it contains potentially all colours. It is shown radiating from the Unmanifested Logos, or the Unspoken Word. Around the first Triangle is formed on the plane of Primordial Substance in this order (reversed as to our plane):
A.
(a) The Astral Double of Nature, or the Paradigm of all Forms.
(b) Divine Ideation, or Universal Mind.
(c) The Synthesis of Occult Nature, the Egg of Brahmâ, containing all and radiating all.
(d) Animal or Material Soul of Nature, source of animal and vegetable intelligence and instinct.
(e) The aggregate of Dhyân Chohanic Intelligences, Fohat.
(f) Life Principle in Nature.
(g) The Life Procreating Principle in Nature. That which, on the spiritual plane, corresponds to sexual affinity on the lower.
Mirrored on the plane of Gross Nature, the World of Reality is reversed, and becomes on Earth and our plane:
B.
(a) Red is the colour of manifested dual, or male and female. In man it is shown in its lowest animal form.
(b) Orange is the colour of the robes of the Yogîs and Buddhist Priests, the colour of the Sun and Spiritual Vitality, also of the Vital Principle.
(c) Yellow or radiant Golden is the colour of the Spiritual, Divine Ray in every atom; in man of Buddhi.
(d) Green and Red are, so to speak, interchangeable colours, for Green absorbs the Red, as being threefold stronger in its vibrations than the latter; and Green is the complementary colour of extreme Red. This is why the Lower Manas and Kâma Rûpa are respectively shown as Green and Red.
(e) The Astral Plane, or Auric Envelope in Nature and Man.
(f) The Mind or rational element in Man and Nature.
(g) The most ethereal counterpart of the Body of man, the opposite pole, standing in point of vibration and sensitiveness as the Violet stands to the Red.
The above is on the manifested plane; after which we get the seven and the Manifested Prism, or Man on Earth. With the latter, the Black Magician alone is concerned.
In Kosmos, the gradations and correlations of Colours and Sounds, and therefore of Numbers are infinite. This is suspected even in Physics, for it is ascertained that there exist slower vibrations than those of the Red, the slowest perceptible to us, and far more rapid vibrations than those of the Violet, the most rapid that our senses can perceive. But on Earth, in our physical world, the range of perceptible vibrations is limited. Our physical senses cannot take cognizance of vibrations above and below the septenary and limited gradations of the prismatic colours, for such vibrations are incapable of causing in us the sensation of colour or sound. It will always be the graduated septenary and no more, unless we learn to paralyze our Quaternary and discern both the superior and inferior vibrations with our spiritual senses seated in the upper Triangle.
Now, on this plane of illusion, there are three fundamental colours, as demonstrated by Physical Science, Red, Blue and Yellow (or rather Orange‐ Yellow). Expressed in terms of the human principles they are: (1) Kâma Rûpa, the seat of the animal sensations, welded to, and serving as a vehicle for the Animal Soul or Lower Manas (Red and Green, as said, being interchangeable); (2) Auric Envelope, or the essence of man; and (3) Prâna, or Life Principle. But if from the realm of illusion, or the living man as he is on our Earth, subject to his sensuous perceptions only, we pass to that of semi‐illusion, and observe the natural colours themselves, or those of the principles, that is, if we try to find out which are those that in the perfect man absorb all others, we shall find that the colours correspond and become complementary in the following way:
Violet. (1) Red Green. (2) Orange Blue. (3) Yellow Indigo. Violet.
A faint violet, mist‐like form represents the Astral Man within an oviform bluish circle, over which radiate in ceaseless vibrations the prismatic colours. That colour is predominant, of which the corresponding principle is the most active generally, or at the particular moment when the clairvoyant perceives it. Such man appears during his waking states; and it is by the predominance of this or that colour, and by the intensity of its vibrations, that a clairvoyant, if he be acquainted with correspondences, can judge of the inner state or character of a person, for the latter is an open book to every practical Occultist.
In the trance state the Aura changes entirely, the seven prismatic colours being no longer discernible. In sleep also they are not all “at home.” For those which belong to the spiritual elements in the man, viz., Yellow, Buddhi; Indigo, Higher Manas; and the Blue of the Auric Envelope will be either hardly discernible, or altogether missing. The Spiritual Man is free during sleep, and though his physical memory may not become aware of it, lives, robed in his highest essence, in realms on other planes, in realms which are the land of reality, called dreams on our plane of illusion.
A good clairvoyant, moreover, if he had an opportunity of seeing a Yogî in the trance state and a mesmerized subject, side by side, would learn an important lesson in Occultism. He would learn to know the difference between self‐induced trance and a hypnotic state resulting from extraneous influence. In the Yogî, the “principles” of the lower Quaternary disappear entirely. Neither Red, Green, Red‐Violet nor the Auric Blue of the Body are to be seen; nothing but hardly perceptible vibrations of the golden‐ hued Prâna principle and a violet flame streaked with gold rushing upwards from the head, in the region where the Third Eye rests, and culminating in a point. If the student remembers that the true Violet, or the extreme end of the spectrum, is no compound colour of Red and Blue, but a homogeneous colour with vibrations seven times more rapid than those of the Red,(815) and that the golden hue is the essence of the three yellow hues from Orange Red to Yellow‐Orange and Yellow, he will understand the reason why: he lives in his own Auric Body, now become the vehicle of Buddhi‐Manas. On the other hand, in a subject in an artificially produced hypnotic or mesmeric trance, an effect of unconscious when not of conscious Black Magic, unless produced by a high Adept, the whole set of the principles will be present, with the Higher Manas paralyzed, Buddhi severed from it through that paralysis, and the red‐violet Astral Body entirely subjected to the Lower Manas and Kâma Rûpa (the green and red animal monsters in us).
One who comprehends well the above explanations will readily see how important it is for every student, whether he is striving for practical Occult powers or only for the purely psychic and spiritual gifts of clairvoyance and metaphysical knowledge, to master thoroughly the right correspondences between the human, or nature principles, and those of Kosmos. It is ignorance which leads materialistic Science to deny the inner man and his Divine powers; knowledge and personal experience that allow the Occultist to affirm that such powers are as natural to man as swimming to fishes. It is like a Laplander, in all sincerity, denying the possibility of the catgut, strung loosely on the sounding‐board of a violin producing comprehensive sounds or melody. Our principles are the Seven‐Stringed Lyre of Apollo, truly. In this our age, when oblivion has shrouded ancient knowledge, men’s faculties are no better than the loose strings of the violin to the Laplander. But the Occultist who knows how to tighten them and tune his violin in harmony with the vibrations of colour and sound, will extract divine harmony from them. The combination of these powers and the attuning of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm will give the geometrical equivalent of the invocation “Om Mani Padme Hum.”
This was why the previous knowledge of music and geometry was obligatory in the School of Pythagoras.
The Roots Of Colour And Sound.
Further, each of the Primordial Seven, the first Seven Rays forming the Manifested Logos, is again sevenfold. Thus, as the seven colours of the solar spectrum correspond to the seven Rays, or Hierarchies, so each of these latter has again its seven divisions corresponding to the same series of colours. But in this case one colour, viz., that which characterizes the particular Hierarchy as a whole, is predominant and more intense than the others.
These Hierarchies can only be symbolized as concentric circles of prismatic colours; each Hierarchy being represented by a series of seven concentric circles, each circle representing one of the prismatic colours in their natural order. But in each of these “wheels” one circle will be brighter and more vivid in colour than the rest, and the wheel will have a surrounding Aura (a fringe, as the physicists call it) of that colour. This colour will be the characteristic colour of that Hierarchy as a whole. Each of these Hierarchies furnishes the essence (the Soul) and is the “Builder” of one of the seven kingdoms of Nature which are the three elemental kingdoms, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the kingdom of spiritual man.(816) Moreover, each Hierarchy furnishes the Aura of one of the seven principles in man with its specific colour. Further, as each of these Hierarchies is the Ruler of one of the Sacred Planets, it will easily be understood how Astrology came into existence, and that real Astrology has a strictly scientific basis.
The symbol adopted in the Eastern School to represent the Seven Hierarchies of creative Powers is a wheel of seven concentric circles, each circle being coloured with one of the seven colours; call them Angels, if you will, or Planetary Spirits, or, again, the Seven Rulers of the Seven Sacred Planets of our system, as in our present case. At all events, the concentric circles stand as symbols for Ezekiel’s Wheels with some Western Occultists and Kabalists, and for the “Builders” or Prajâpati with us.
DIAGRAM III.
The student should carefully examine the following Diagram.
[Diagram III]
Thus the Linga Sharîra is derived from the Violet sub‐ray of the Violet Hierarchy; the Higher Manas is similarly derived from the Indigo sub‐ray of the Indigo Hierarchy, and so on. Every man being born under a certain planet, there will always be a predominance of that planet’s colour in him, because that “principle” wall rule in him which has its origin in the Hierarchy in question. There will also be a certain amount of the colour derived from the other planets present in his Aura, but that of the ruling planet will be strongest. Now a person in whom, say, the Mercury principle is predominant, will, by acting upon the Mercury principle in another person born under a different planet, be able to get him entirely under his control. For the stronger Mercury principle in him will overpower the weaker Mercurial element in the other. But he will have little power over persons born under the same planet as himself. This is the key to the Occult Sciences of Magnetism and Hypnotism.
The student will understand that the Orders and Hierarchies are here named after their corresponding colours, so as to avoid using numerals, which would be confusing in connection with the human principles, as the latter have no proper numbers of their own. The real Occult names of these Hierarchies cannot now be given.
The student must, however remember that the colours which we see with our physical eyes are not the true colours of Occult Nature, but are merely the effects produced on the mechanism of our physical organs by certain rates of vibration. For instance, Clerk Maxwell has demonstrated that the retinal effects of any colour may be imitated by properly combining three other colours. It follows, therefore, that our retina has only three distinct colour sensations, and we therefore do not perceive the seven colours which really exist, but only their “imitations,” so to speak, in our physical organism.
Thus, for instance, the Orange‐Red of the first “Triangle” is not a combination of Orange and Red, but the true “spiritual” Red, if the term may be allowed, while the Red (blood‐red) of the spectrum is the colour of Kâma, animal desire, and is inseparable from the material plane.
The Unity Of Deity.
Esotericism, pure and simple, speaks of no personal God; therefore are we considered as Atheists. But, in reality, Occult Philosophy, as a whole, is based absolutely on the ubiquitous presence of God, the Absolute Deity; and if IT Itself is not speculated upon, as being too sacred and yet incomprehensible as a Unit to the finite intellect, yet the entire Philosophy is based upon Its Divine Powers as being the Source of all that breathes and lives and has existence. In every ancient Religion the ONE was demonstrated by the many. In Egypt and India, in Chaldæa and Phœnicia, and finally in Greece, the ideas about Deity were expressed by multiples of three, five and seven; and also by eight, nine and twelve great Gods, which symbolized the powers and properties of the One and Only Deity. This was related to that infinite subdivision by irregular and odd numbers to which the metaphysics of these nations subjected their ONE DIVINITY. Thus constituted, the cycle of the Gods had all the qualities and attributes of the ONE SUPREME AND UNKNOWABLE; for in this collection of divine Personalities, or rather of Symbols personified, dwells the ONE GOD, the GOD ONE, that God which, in India, is said to have no Second.
O God Ani [the Spiritual Sun], thou residest in the agglomeration of thy divine personages.(817)
These words show the belief of the ancients that all manifestation proceeds from one and the same Source, all emanating from the one identical Principle which can never be completely developed except in and through the collective and entire aggregate of Its emanations.
The Pleroma of Valentinus is absolutely the Space of Occult Philosophy; for Pleroma means the “Fullness,” the superior regions. It is the sum total of all the Divine manifestations and emanations expressing the plenum or totality of the rays proceeding from the ONE, differentiating on all the planes, and transforming themselves into Divine Powers, called Angels and Planetary Spirits in the Philosophy of every nation. The Gnostic Æons and Powers of the Pleroma are made to speak as the Devas and Siddhas of the Purânas. The Epinoia, the first female manifestation of God, the “Principle” of Simon Magus and Saturninus, holds the same language as the Logos of Basilides; and each of these is traced to the purely esoteric Alêtheia, the TRUTH of the Mysteries. All of them, we are taught, repeat at different times and in different languages the magnificent hymn of the Egyptian papyrus, thousands of years old:
The Gods adore thee, they greet thee, O the One Dark Truth.
And addressing Ra, they add:
The Gods bow before thy Majesty, by exalting the Souls of that which produces them ... and say to thee, Peace to all emanations from the Unconscious Father of the Conscious Fathers of the Gods.... Thou producer of beings, we adore the souls which emanate from thee. Thou begettest us, O thou Unknown, and we greet thee in worshipping each God‐Soul which descendeth from thee and liveth in us.
This is the source of the assertion:
Know ye not that ye are Gods and the temple of God.
This is shown in the “Roots of Ritualism in Church and Masonry,” in Lucifer for March, 1889. Truly then, as said seventeen centuries ago, “Man cannot possess Truth (Alêtheia) except he participate in the Gnosis.” So we may say now: No man can know the Truth unless he studies the secrets of the Pleroma of Occultism; and these secrets are all in the Theogony of the ancient Wisdom‐Religion, which is the Alêtheia of Occult Science.