Theosophy: A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom
Alvin Boyd Kuhn
Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
THEOSOPHY IN ETHICAL PRACTICE
The Secret Doctrine set forth the basic conceptions of Theosophy; there remained for Madame Blavatsky one more task of large proportions--to make an application of the principles she had expounded to the problem of practical living. This was done to a large extent in a work which occupied her during a portion of the three or four years of life left her after the completion of her major effort. The Key to Theosophy was put out by her in response to much questioning as to how the vast body of knowledge outlined in her works could be related more closely to common understanding. It is done in the form of a dialogue between a questioner and a Theosophist, Madame Blavatsky herself. The work shows as much of the author's dynamic mind as do her other publications, but there is no attempt to make a further display of scholarship. It was an endeavor to bring out the intent and meaning of the doctrines, to ease difficulties, and to clarify and reënforce some earlier presentations. It was intended to serve as a manual, but it is far from elementary in parts. In it are two now notable items; her warning against Spiritualism in the early section, and near the end her seemingly prophetic statement that there would later develop an irresistible trend among her successors, in spite of her clarion warnings, to make a church out of her Society.
Reflection, her own experience, and her observations of the behavior of many Theosophists, who were figuratively staggering about under the intoxicating spell of so strong a stimulant, deeply impressed her with the necessity of placing a far greater emphasis upon the relation of occult philosophy and ethics and spirituality. Her own performances of extraordinary psychic feats, she saw, had helped to create
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the peril that lay in an overemphasis on the desirability of unfolding the latent powers of the soul. Madame Blavatsky was thus made keenly aware of her responsibility in giving out freely what supposedly had been wisely guarded.
Her solicitude was particularly aroused by the rush of many new devotees into the cultivation of the psychic senses, a feature implicit in the esoteric teachings. The persistent presupposition that psychic abilities were the infallible badge of lofty spirituality, soon showed its presence. Then, too, the subtle temptation to regard one's predisposition to Theosophy and one's connection with it as evidence that one has been singled out by the great Masters as uniquely worthy, or that one is far on in the line of evolution, was certain to come to the surface. Madame Blavatsky could be charitable to ordinary human frailties in these directions, but shallow spiritual pretension bought forth her lash.
We are prepared, then, to understand the vehemence with which she uttered her first official statement on this subject through the editorial pages of her new magazine, Lucifer, May 15, 1888. The article had the suggestive title: "Occultism versus the Occult Arts." It is prefaced with a triad from Milton:
"I have oft heard, but ne'er believed till now,
There are who can by potent magic spells
Bend to their crooked purpose Nature's laws."
She minces no words.
"Will these candidates to wisdom and power feel very indignant if told the plain truth? It is not only useful, but it has now become necessary to disabuse most of them and before it is too late. The truth may be said in a few words: There are not in the West half a dozen among the fervent hundreds who call themselves 'Occultists' who have even an approximately correct idea of the nature of the science they seek to master. With a few exceptions they are all on the highway to Sorcery. Let them restore some order in the chaos that reigns in their minds, before they protest against this statement. Let them first learn the true relation in which the occult sciences stand to occultism, and the difference between the two, and then feel wrathful if they still think themselves right. Mean-
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while let them learn that Occultism differs from magic and other secret sciences as the glorious sun does from the rushlight, . . . as the immortal Spirit of Man . . . differs from the mortal clay . . . the human body."
She then enumerates four kinds of Esoteric Knowledge or Sciences:
1. Yajna-Vidya:1 Occult powers awakened by ceremonies and rites.
2. Mahavidya:2 The Great Knowledge, the magic of the Kabalists and the Tantrika worship, often sorcery of the worst description.
3. Guhya-Vidya:3 Knowledge of the mystic powers residing in sound; mantras and hymns, rhythm and melody; also knowledge of the forces of nature and their correlation.
4. Atma-Vidya:4 Knowledge of the Soul, called true wisdom by the Orientalists, but means much more.
It is the last of these that constitutes the only real Occultism that a genuine Theosophist ought to seek after. "All the rest are based on things pertaining to the realm of material Nature, however invisible that essence may be, and however much it has hitherto eluded the grasp of science."
The article continues:
"Let him aspire to no higher than he feels able to accomplish. Let him not take a burden on himself too heavy for him to carry.
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1 Yajnavidya in Sanskrit means "knowledge of (or through) sacrifice;" but in the Vedanta and the Upanishads it ranks low in the scheme of wisdom. Madame Blavatsky in the Glossary gives Yajna as meaning "sacrifice" and describes it as "one of the forms of Akasa within which the mystic Word (or its underlying 'sound') calls it into existence. Pronounced by the Priest-Initiate or Yogi this word receives creative powers and is communicated as an impulse on the terrestrial plane through a trained Will-Power."
2 In Sanskrit mahavidya means "great or exalted knowledge;" it ranks high in the scheme of wisdom. Madame Blavatsky calls it the great esoteric science and says that the highest Initiates alone are in possession of it. It embraces almost universal knowledge.
3 In Sanskrit this term means "knowledge to be hidden, esoteric knowledge," especially of the use of incantations and spells. Madame Blavatsky so describes it in the Glossary.
4 Atma (Sanskrit "breath, soul") and Vidya. The term connotes knowledge of the Soul or Supreme Spirit in man. This is in agreement with Madame Blavatsky's use of the term.
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Without ever becoming a Mahatma, a Buddha, or a Great Saint, let him study the philosophy and the science of the Soul, and he can become one of the modest benefactors of humanity, without any superhuman 'powers.' Siddhis (or the Arhat powers) are only for those who are able to 'lead the life,' to comply with the terrible sacrifices required for such a training, and . . . to the very letter. Let them know at once and remember always that true Occultism, or Theosophy, is the 'Great Renunciation of Self,' unconditionally and absolutely, in thought as in action. It is Altruism, and it throws him who practices it out of calculation of the ranks of the living altogether. 'Not for himself but for the world he lives,' as soon as he has pledged himself to the work. Much is forgiven during the first years of probation. But no sooner is he accepted than his personality must disappear, and he has to become a mere beneficent force in Nature. There are two poles for him after that, two paths, and no midward place of rest. He has either to ascend laboriously step by step, often through numerous incarnations and no Devachanic break, the golden ladder leading to Mahatmaship, or--he will let himself slide down the ladder at the first false step and roll down into Dugaship."
In another Lucifer article near the same time entitled "Practical Occultism," she defines a Theosophist as follows:
"Any person of average intellectual capacities and a leaning towards the metaphysical; of pure unselfish life, who finds more joy in helping his neighbor than in receiving help himself; one who is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake of other people; and who loves Truth, Goodness and Wisdom for their own sake, not for the benefit they may confer--is a Theosophist.
"It is impossible to employ spiritual forces if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator. For unless the intuition is entirely unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it. The powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart--and this is Divine Magic."
The article proceeds to set forth a list of conditions requisite for the practice of the soul science. The necessary con-
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ditions are eleven, taken from a list of seventy-three which she says are prescribed for Eastern neophytes. They are: suitable magnetic conditions of the spot selected (for meditation); membership in a company of harmonized students; a mind at peace and purified; a sense of unity with all that lives; renunciation of all vanities; obliteration of a sense of separateness or superiority; avoidance of impurely magnetized contacts; the blunting of the mind to terrestrial distractions; abstention from all animal foods, spirits, opium; expression of good will in thought, speech, and act; and oblivion of self. These precepts form much of the basis of Theosophic cult practice.
The result of such decisive utterances from the leader was to give pause to the fast-growing Society membership in its haste to enter upon the Occult Path. Enthusiasm was chilled. As the nature of the Master Science was revealed and its hardships and scant earthly rewards envisioned, the high qualities demanded and the perils depicted frightened many from the deliberate attempt to enroll as spiritual candidates. Yet there were aspirants both sincere and resolute. The needs of these had to be met, at the same time that the folly of the rash had to be rebuked.
To serve both purposes Madame Blavatsky issued many articles through the pages of Lucifer in London, from 1888 onward. And along with them came a booklet of one hundred and ten small pages which has since taken its place as one of the most beautiful expressions of Oriental spirituality now extant. This was The Voice of the Silence. The Preface states that it is a translation of a portion of the slokas or verses from The Book of the Golden Precepts, one of the works put into the hands of students in the East.5 She had learned many of these Precepts by heart, a fact which made translation a relatively easy task for her. The Book of the Golden Precepts formed part of the same series as that from which the "Stanzas of Dzyan" were taken, on which The Secret Doctrine is based. The Voice of the Silence may be said to be
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5 "The knowledge of them is obligatory in that School the teachings of which are accepted by many Theosophists."--From the Preface.
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the ethical corollary of the cosmic and anthropological teachings of The Secret Doctrine. Its maxims form part of the basic system of the Yogacharya school of Mahayana Buddhism. Of the ninety distinct little treatises which The Book of the Golden Precepts contains, Madame Blavatsky states that she had learned thirty-nine by heart years before. The remainder is omitted.
"To translate the rest," says the Preface, "I should have to resort to notes scattered among a too large number of papers and memoranda collected for the last twenty years and never put in order, to make it by any means an easy task. Nor could they be all translated and given to a world too selfish and too much attached to objects of sense to be in any way prepared to receive such exalted ethics in the right spirit. . . . Therefore it has been thought better to make a judicious selection only from those treatises which will best suit the few real mystics in this country and which are sure to answer their needs."
The opening sentence says:
"These instructions are for those ignorant of the dangers of the lower Iddhi," or psychic faculties.
The second page holds two short sentences which have ever since rung in the ears of occult students:
"The Mind is the great slayer of the Real. Let the disciple slay the Slayer."
We must still the restless outgoing mind before we can hope to see into the depths of the reality within. We must strive with our unclean thoughts and overpower them, or they will dominate us. Our deepest sympathies must be linked with all that lives and breathes, we must lend our ears to every cry of mortal pain, or we can not hope to merge our consciousness into the Universal Soul. It is better to trust the heart than the head, for "even ignorance is better than head-learning with no Soul-wisdom to illuminate and guide it." Asceticism is a Via Dolorosa; it is not by self-torture that the lower self can be lifted to union with the higher. Homiletic morality breathes in the following: "Sow kindly acts and
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thou shalt reap their fruition." But stinging rebuke to negative righteousness echoes in the next sentence, one that has assumed large proportions in Theosophic ethics: "Inaction in a deed of mercy becomes an action in a deadly sin." The basis of much Theosophic morality, as of equanimity and serenity, is found in this text as well as in its corollary, which assures us that no efforts--not the smallest--whether in right or wrong direction, can vanish from the world of causes. "If sun thou canst not be, then be the humble planet" is our admonition to stay modestly within the sphere of our capabilities, and not strain after things unmeet for us. We should humble ourselves before those greater than ourselves in wisdom, seek earnestly their counsel and strive to tread the high path they have traversed. At the same time we must not withhold the blessing of what knowledge we have acquired from the circle of lesser evolved souls who may come within our influence. We must be humble if we would learn; we will be humbler still when knowledge has begun to dawn. Reward for patient striving is held out to all devotees. The holy germs that took root in the disciple's soul will expand and send out shoots under the influence of steady spiritual zeal; the stalks will wax stronger at each new trial, they may bend like reeds, but will never break; and when the time of harvest comes, they blossom forth. When the persevering soul has crossed the seventh path "all nature thrills with joyous awe." But does the victorious pilgrim then enter selfishly into the enjoyment of his hard-won guerdon of bliss, forgetful of his fellows who have toiled less successfully than he? Is selfishness justified in nature? The verses ask, "Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt though be saved and hear the whole world cry?" The answer is the key to all Theosophic ethic: the Nirmanakaya (literally, the "possessor of a transformation-body"), even he, facing his natural right to enter upon a higher state of being in the upper cycle where he will be free from limitation, turns back to aid the "great orphan humanity." He takes his place in that high Brotherhood whose members form a "Guardian
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Wall" about mankind. He joins the Society of the Masters of Compassion who by spiritual masonry build the wall "raised by their tortures, by their blood cemented, protecting him (man) from further and far greater misery and sorrow." This is the Great Renunciation of Self, the mighty sacrifice, itself typical of the cosmic sacrifice of Deity in its self-limitation under the cross of matter, and again typified by every symbolic sacrificial rite of the religions. But the universal life can not restrain a thrill of gladness as the prodigal's long exile in the worlds of matter is ended, and he returns to the Father's house. For "Hark . . . from the deep unfathomable vortex of that golden light in which the Victor bathes, all Nature's wordless voice in thousand tones ariseth to proclaim: A New Arhan is Born."
Such is The Voice of the Silence. Its verses ripple on in a rhythmic cadence aptly suited to assist the feeling of mystical devotion. Like other of the Oriental books it consists of ethico-spiritual maxims, which hardly so much attempt to give a systematic exposition of moral principles, as to reduce the spiritual essence of these principles to a mantric form capable of exerting a magical potency when used ritually. But it is not difficult to discover in the book the mainspring of much of that distrust of the purely psychic which marks Theosophy so distinctively among the modern cults. To carry a heart "heavy with a whole world's woe" is accounted a far more substantial merit than to bend some of the etheric and electric forces of nature to one's will.
What The Voice of the Silence aims to do is to strike the spiritual keynote of the ancient science of mystic union or Yoga as essentially a spiritual technique and not a system of magical practices. It is not at all a text-book of the great Yoga philosophy and its art, although it may be said that it in no way clashes with the general Oriental teachings on the subject of Yoga. Madame Blavatsky did not find it needful to formulate a distinctive technique of her own for the cultivation of the great science.
The Theosophical science of Yoga will be found delineated
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in three or four books which, along with The Voice of the Silence, are: the Bhagavad Gita, Light on the Path (a small collection of precepts alleged to have been dictated mystically by a Master to Mabel Collins in London about 1885), and the several commentaries on the Yoga Aphorisms (or Sutras) of Patanjali, written, according to Vyasa, perhaps 10,000 B.C., according to scholars, a few centuries B.C. Portions of the New Testament, when given esoteric interpretation, are accepted as descriptive of Yoga development. Light on the Path is highly mystico-spiritual in tone, a companion work to The Voice of the Silence. It is couched in allegorical and figurative language, depicting forms of nature as symbolical of spiritual truth. The Bhagavad Gita, or Lord's Lay, is a portion of the Mahabharata, and is by now so widely disseminated among Western students as to need no description or comment in this connection. It enjoys perhaps the place of foremost popularity among all the Oriental religious dissertations. But the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali come perhaps nearest to being a definite text-book of Theosophic devotional discipline. It is therefore important to look carefully at the features of the physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual regimen prescribed in this ancient text for the cultivation of the highest Theosophic virtue.
It is a handbook for the practice of the Science of Yoga. Yoga, in brief, means union,6 having specific reference to the eventual merging of the individual Soul or Monad into the Universal or World Soul, and in a larger view the absorption of all finite souls into the Absolute. Its rules and injunctions are the natural outgrowth of a philosophy which holds that man is an ensemble of several separate entities or principles, whose harmonious evolution postulates a cultus demanding the unification under one central control of the different
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6 The term Yoga is commonly taken to mean union and its root is the same as that of our word yoke. However, Sanskrit dictionaries give other meanings of the word, several of which have relevance to its use to denote a system of spiritual practice. So far as the use of the word in Indian philosophy goes, it is a matter of dispute whether yoga is union of the individual soul with Brahma or the subjection of the human senses and emotions. Madame Blavatsky characterizes it as the practice of meditation as leading to spiritual liberation.
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individualities which, till that harmonization is effected, live together at odds and cross purposes within the same organism. To mollify that discordance it is requisite first of all that man should rise above the delusion that he is essentially his body, or his feelings, or even his mind. He must first learn through an inner realization that he, in his true Self, is none of these, but that he, the real inner man, uses these as his servants. He must recognize himself as the divine imperishable Ego, the Jivatma,7 and in so doing he will cease to commit the error of identifying himself with those temporary and transient aspects of himself which he so long mistook for his real being. This orientation of himself from his lower manifestations into his true plane of Selfhood will release him from all the pain and distress that attends his illusion that he is the impermanent lower self.
This in brief is the general aim of Eastern occult practices; but its complete rationale involves an understanding of the details of a labyrinthine science of soul unfoldment that in its intricacy staggers the psychological neophyte in the West. It is necessary in some degree to go into this psychological technology for a better comprehension of the theme.
Its adept devotees in the East tell us that Yoga is no mere cult, but an exact and complex science, with precise rules, very definite stages, and a quite scientific methodology.
There are several types or forms of Yoga practice, which must first be differentiated. The most definite forms are: (1), Karma Yoga; (2), Bhakti Yoga; and (3), Raja Yoga. Karma Yoga is the path of active exertion (Karma meaning "action"), by which the man at an early stage of evolution learns to acquire control of his physical organism and his sense apparatus for the purposes of an energetic bodily career in the world. It has been subdivided into two types, called Hatha Yoga and Laya Yoga. The first, or "forceful," gives control over the physical mechanism of the body;
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7 In Sanskrit jivatman means "the living or personal or individual soul" as distinguished from paramatma, the universal soul. By Theosophists, too, it is applied only to the individual.
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the second, or "inactive," governs the emotional or etheric component of man. In this process there are gradually brought into active operation the four force centers, wheels or chakras, which lie below the diaphragm. Karma Yoga is supposed to have been employed by the Lemurian or Third Race people, to enable them to perform their appropriate functions in the line of earthly racial evolution. It is not to be practiced by us.
Bhakti ("Love") Yoga, the second type, awakens the heart and throat centers in the etheric body, which latter is achieved by the exercise of devotion and affectional qualities. Love, affection, loyalty, attachment to personality, are the powerful stimuli that rouse the centers above the diaphragm to active functioning. It is the path of feeling and emotion, using the astral body. Its use was credited to the Atlanteans, or Fourth Race folk, as their most appropriate type of evolutionary expression, and is no longer our task.
Raja ("King") Yoga, type three, is the specific discipline for our Fifth Race, the Aryan. It is designed to awaken the centers in the head (the pineal gland and the pituitary body) crowning the work of the two earlier Yogas in the development of the functions of the etheric body. It is consequently the path of mentality, which is the Fifth principle in man; and hence it becomes the appointed task of the Fifth or Aryan Race to unfold it. As the work of Yoga is to unify the various principles in man into harmonious accord, it will be seen that, as Karma Yoga arouses the four lower centers, and Bhakti Yoga unites them with the two middle centers (the heart and throat), so it is the purpose of Raja Yoga to link the ascending forces with the centers in the head (the brain and the two glands mentioned above), and to use this uppermost station as the controlling and distributing center for all the energies of the unified personality.8
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8 Raja Yoga is thus characterized in The Light of the Soul, a commentary on the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali, by Alice A. Bailey: "Raja Yoga stands by itself and is the king science of them all; it is the summation of all the others, it is the climax of the work of development in the human kingdom. It is the science of the mind and the purposeful will, and brings the higher of man's sheaths under the subjection of the inner Ruler. This science coördinates the entire lower threefold man, forcing
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There are many stages in the long process of Yoga development. First the physical must be brought under control. Then the etheric centers must be quickened and linked with the head centers. Then the mind must be linked with the true soul, and eventually the latter with the common Soul of all things. According to Mrs. Bailey, Raja Yoga is a system giving the rules and means whereby,
1. Conscious contact can be made with the soul, the second aspect of the Christ within.
2. Knowledge of the Self can be achieved and its control over the Not-Self maintained.
3. The power of the Ego or Soul can be felt in daily life, and the soul powers manifested.
4. The lower psychic nature can be subdued and the higher psychic faculties developed.
5. The brain can be brought en rapport with the soul and the messages from the latter received.
6. The "light in the head" can be increased so that a man becomes a living Flame.
7. The Path can be found, and man himself becomes that Path.
The initial work of Raja Yoga is the recognition of the true nature of the Self as distinct from the illusory character of man's life in the three lower worlds--the difference between the Man himself and his lower vestures. This is achieved by a long course of meditation, with thought turned inward, until one empirically learns that he is not either his body, or his feelings, or his sensations, or even his thoughts; that all these belong to the world of evanescent things, and that he himself is the entity, the point of conscious being, which abides in unaffected permanence at the center of this changing world of experience. This is his first task--to learn to distinguish that which comes into being and goes out from that which abides. And the work involves more than a merely mental grasp of the fact; it requires that one should act, feel, and think, and at the same time learn to stand aside from the act, the feeling, the thought, and remain unaffected
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him into a position where he is nothing but the vehicle for the soul, or the God within. It includes the other Yogas and profits by their achievements. It synthesizes the work of evolution and crowns man as king."
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by them. For ages during his preceding evolution, before the scales of illusion were torn from his eyes, the man was under the delusion that he was the lower objective self, as reported by his senses. This identification of himself with what is in reality but his outer clothing, is the cause of all the pain that besets his path. For this thinking himself to be the vestures which he wears subjects him to the vicissitudes which they themselves must undergo. He thus prescribes physical and sensuous limits to his destiny. He puts himself at the mercy of the fate which befalls his outward life. Before serenity can be achieved he must learn to detach himself from his vehicles, so that he can sit unaffected in the midst of changing fortunes. Ere long he must realize himself as part of the whole of being, yet as detached from it, free from the dominance of the world of form and the impressions of the senses. He must learn to use them, and no longer let them use him. His dominance over matter is achieved by a mastery of the subtle forces resident in the atom. This is done by developing a conscious control over what are called the Gunas, the three qualities of matter, which are Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas; or rhythm, action or mobility, and inertia. In Indian philosophy, however, these three terms mean, rather, "goodness, passion, and darkness," or "virtue, foulness, and ignorance." Therefore it is necessary to understand the theosophic interpretation of Gunas. Eventually the disciple must be able to command the wind and the waves by instituting the proper balance between the rhythmic and the inert qualities of matter. Thus he learns to know of a surety that he is not those forms but a dynamic entity immeasurably greater than them. The acquirement of this knowledge is a part of the process necessary to the realization of his true character as a living spirit, and to the gradual withdrawing of himself from his entanglement in the world of matter. The five elements, earth, water, fire, air, and ether, and the five senses, as well as the distinctive forms of mental action, are the specific results of the interplay of the three Gunas in the world of material forces. But back of these external manifestations there are the "unspecific" or
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subjective forms of ethereal force; and eventually the disciple has to touch these unseen elements and control them.
To help detach himself from the influence of visible forms, the seeker must aim to actualize the unseen force which operates behind every form, and thus look through and beyond the form, which is but the effect of some cause, to that cause itself. The crucial operation in every Yoga practice is to work back from effects, which are material and secondary, to causes, which are spiritual and primary; from the material periphery of life in to its spiritual core. This he believes possible by virtue of the theory that "the whole world of forms is the result of the thought activity of some life; the whole universe of matter is the field for the experience of some existence."9
All objective forms are frozen thoughts of some mind, which gives its own coloring to both the objective and the subjective worlds presented to it. Hence, one of the first things the Ego has to do in seeking Yoga is to take the mind in charge and render it a perfect instrument for the Soul's higher vision. The central aim of the great discipline of meditation is summed up in the phrase "to still the modifications of the thinking principle." The mind's proper function, in the Yoga system, is to serve as a sublimated sixth sense, transcending yet supplementing all the others. Through persistent practice it is to be rendered into a finely poised spiritual sense, to become the organ of the Soul's acquisition of the higher knowledge. This is the use for which it is destined in the unfolding economy of nature; but it has hitherto failed to reveal this purpose because it has not been subjected--in the West--to the necessary discipline. In preceding aeons of evolution it subserved nature's intent by growing facile and mobile. It displayed the Rajas Guna, or mobility, to an advanced degree. But when spirit begins the long process of retirement from the thraldom of the form, this quality of the mind becomes more and more a hindrance. Its incessant activity must be poised. It must be brought under the sway of the Sattva Guna,--rhythm.
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9 Alice A. Bailey, The Light of the Soul, p. 164.
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Hitherto the mind has been the slave of every lower sense. This was its proper service at the Lemurian or Karma Yoga stage. It is so no longer. It must be made blind and deaf to the insistent cry of the outer world, so that it may become prepared to picture forth, like a clear lens, the realities of an inner world, whose impressions it was never focused to reflect heretofore.
As it turns away from the clamorous din of sense contacts, it finds itself in a realm, first, where only emotions are left to be dwelt upon. The material world shut out, there is nothing but astral or feeling impulses to absorb its attention. Next all passional content must be rejected, leaving only intellectual material to deal with. At last even abstract thought must be stilled, until the mind is utterly emptied of content. It dwells in pure abstraction, in a state void of anything concrete. Or it may take an object, concrete and substantial, and by a supreme effort, successful after long trial, lose sight of its materiality and finally see it as a thing of pure spiritual construction. The actual substance of things disappears and only the noumenal concept of it is seen. The mind approaches nearer and nearer to sheer vacuity. Is Yoga thus to end in a blank of empty abstraction, with all concreteness gone from experience?
For a time it may seem so. But suddenly when the persevering devotee has at last succeeded in holding the mind calm and still as the placid surface of a lake, there ensues an experience of the light that never was on land or sea. With the increasing glow of the light there pours down into consciousness knowledge, mystic vision, and clear illumination, as the vibratory energies of the Augoeides, or Spiritual Soul, flood down into the brain. The mind now serves as the luminous pathway between the inner realm of spiritual light and the physical brain, and over that bridge the individual human soul may advance into a direct knowledge of the interior heart of nature.
"When a man can detach his eyes from all that concerns the physical, emotional and mental, and will raise his eye and direct them away from himself, he will become aware of 'the overshadow-
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ing cloud of spiritual knowledge,' or the 'raincloud of knowable things.'"
The human soul empties itself of earthly content, in order that it may be filled with heavenly light and wisdom.
The perfecting of the mind as a sublimated sense instrument thus enables the Seer to do three important things:
1. To see the world of spiritual causation, as the eye sees the physical world.
2. To interpret that causal world in terms of the intellect.
3. To transmit this high knowledge to the physical brain.
The advance to this superior consciousness is made through the gateway of a number of Initiations, or specific stages in the expansion of conscious capacity. The training requisite to unify the soul with its organism constitutes the first stage called the Probationary Path. Stage two brings one to the Third Initiation, when the union of the mind with the Ego on his own plane is completed. The third stage accomplishes the union of the whole lower personality with the Monad, and covers the final steps on the Path of Initiation.
These stages of the Path are further symbolized in the literature of occultism by three halls through which man passes as he ascends: the Hall of Ignorance; the Hall of Learning; and the Hall of Wisdom. While he is in the realm of purely human life and identified with the phenomenal world, he is said to be in the Hall of Ignorance. The termination of his residence there brings him to the entrance to the Probationary Path. He then enters the Hall of Learning, wherein he follows the path of discipleship and instruction. This is the Mystic Life. At its end he passes by another initiation into the Occult Life and dwells within the Hall of Wisdom. Here he attains realization, undergoes heightened expansion of his consciousness, and identifies himself with the spiritual essence of his being.
The central features of occult discipline from the standpoint of the novitiate is the oft-mentioned "stilling of the senses and the mind." In the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna, the disciple, remonstrates with Krishna, the Lord, that he can not ac-
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cept the Yoga teaching as to the steadfastness of the controlled mind. It is hard to tame he says, as the prancing horse or the fitful wind. Krishna answers:
"Well sayest thou, O Prince, that the mind is restless and as difficult to restrain as the winds. Yet by constant practice, discipline and care may it be mastered. . . . The Soul, when it has recognized the master-touch of the real Self, may attain unto true Yoga by care and patience, coupled with firm resolution and determination."
A little later he adds:
"Close tightly those gates of the body which men call the avenues of the senses. Concentrate thy mind upon thine inner self. Let thine 'I' dwell in full strength within its abode, not seeking to move outward. . . . He who thinketh constantly and fixedly on Me, O Prince, letting not his mind ever stray toward another object, will be able to find Me without overmuch trouble,--yea, he will find Me, will that devoted one."
There is a law of esotericism which governs the operation of all these psychic forces in mind and body. It is likewise the guarantee of the Soul's ultimate hegemony among the principles making up man's life. It is the occult law that "energy follows thought." It was this law which brought the universe into existence out of the Unmanifest; it is this law by which man has himself fashioned the instruments for his objective expression on the outer planes in the lower worlds. He, like the macrocosmic Logos before him, sent forth thought-waves, which, vibrating and impacting upon cosmic matter, moulded it to forms commensurate with the type of their activity. Thus he has built his own universe, which, however, binds him while it gives him expression. Now the same law must, in reverse motion, so to say, be utilized to release him from the trammels of flesh and sense, of feeling and mind-wandering. With energy flowing in the grooves marked by thought, he must cease to send thought outward to the periphery of life, the material world. Essentially a psychic being, he must concern himself not with things but with psychic states. He must withdraw his attention
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from sense contacts, whether pleasurable or painful, and end his subjection to the pairs of opposites, joy and sorrow, delight and anguish. He must cease to set his affections on things of desire; he must restrain wayward streams of thought. Refusing to direct further energies outward to these spheres, he invokes the law to terminate his further creations of form that will bind him to the world of the Not-Self.
The mind-stuff is susceptible to vibrations both from the lower bodies and from the Soul above. Man's destiny is in his own hands; it is daily decreed by the direction in which he turns his mind. As a man changes the nature and direction of his desires he changes himself.
Mind-control is acquired through two lines of endeavor: tireless effort and non-attachment. The first requirement explains why the Yoga student must be virtually a religious devotee. From no other source than religious devotion to the Way of Attainment can the necessary persistence spring to carry the candidate through to eventual success. The second prerequisite, non-attachment, is often spoken of as "renunciation of the fruits of action." It signifies that attitude toward things and toward the life of the personality which enables the Soul or Ego to regard the events that touch these with a sense of equanimity or nonchalance. It is the sublimation of Stoic ataraxia, and is called vairagya in Sanskrit. Our term indifference does not convey the correct significance of the concept. It connotes a combination of positive and negative attitudes practically unknown to the West. Krishna explains to Arjuna the seeming paradox in his injunction to service through action, which is coupled with a similar abjuration to ignore the fruits of action. The devotee is enjoined to perform right action for the sake of dharma, or duty, as the West has it, but at the same time to renounce the fruits of the action. In our vernacular this would mean to act with the zeal born of an interesting objective, but to leave the results with God. If one binds himself to the fruits of his actions, he creates ever new Karma for future expiation. He must act, and act resolutely; yet without thought of reward. Says the Bhagavad Gita:
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"The wise man, setting himself free, mentally, from actions and their results, dwelleth in the Temple of the Spirit, even that which men call the body, resting calmly therein, at peace, and neither desiring to act nor causing to act, and yet always willing to play well his part in action, when Duty calleth him."10
Krishna clarifies the contradictory demands of duty and renunciation in the following:
". . . he who performeth honorably and to the best of his ability, such Action as may appear to him to be plain and righteous Duty, remembering always that he has nought to do with the reward or fruits of the Action, is both a Renouncer of Action, and also a Performer of the Service of Right Action. More truly is he an Ascetic and Renouncer than he who merely refuses to perform Actions; for the one hath the spirit of the doctrine, while the other hath grasped merely the empty shell of form and letter. Know thou such Intelligent Right Action as Renunciation; and also that the best of Right Action without Intelligent understanding of the renunciation of results is not Right Action at all."11
On the road to Seership, the aspirant advances by two stages. First there is the long Path of Probation; later the Path of Discipleship. He passes over many steps, commencing with the aspiration, entering upon Discipline, leading to Purification, followed by Initiation, Realization, and final union with the Over-soul. There are said to be seven major modifications of the thinking principle, or seven states of consciousness, as follows: desire for knowledge; desire for freedom; desire for happiness; desire to perform duty; sorrow; fear; and doubt. These seven basic yearnings severally reach their fulfillment as illumination ensues upon strenuous effort. These are called the seven stages of bliss, or the seven stations on the Way of the Cross.
The practice of Yoga involves the employment of what are known as the Eight Means. These are:
1. Yama: self-control, restraint; it relates to the disciple's contacts with others and with the outside world.
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10 Page 65.
11 Ibid., p. 60.
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2. Nyana: right observances; the keeping of the Five Commandments and the Five Rules.
The Five Commandments are:
(a) Harmlessness: the aspirant must use the physical forces in the spirit of beneficence to all that lives. He hurts no thing.
(b) Truth: precise and straightforward speech, expressing inward truth. The voice must have lost the power to injure.
(c) Abstention from theft: rendering each his due; not using more than one's share; making one's maintenance cost no more than is right; not taking what others need.
(d) Abstention from incontinence: control of the relation between the sexes; unloosing of the Soul from too strong attachment to any physical or sense expression.
(e) Abstention from avarice: covetousness is theft on the mental plane.
The Five Rules enjoin:
(a) Magnetic purity: internal and external purity of the three bodies; unhindered flow of Prana through the system.
(b) Contentment: mind at rest; not a state of inertia, but one of poise and balance of energies.
(c) Fiery aspiration: a sine qua non before a disciple is accepted. Zeal to win through is a primary qualification.
(d) Spiritual reading: power to discern things in their spiritual, not physical, aspects; inner vision.
(e) Devotion to Ishvara: consecration of the lower man to the service of the higher. Devotion to God, or the Divine Spark within us.
3. Asana: right poise; correct physical, emotional and mental attitudes. It coördinates the three principles of the lower man into a perfect instrument.
4. Pranayama: breath control; control of the subtle energies of the inner sheaths; leads to organization of the etheric or vital body.
5. Pratyahara: abstraction; withdrawal of the Soul from the interests of the outer life.
6. Dharana: concentration; fixation of the mind; leads to coordination of the mind as the sixth sense of the Soul.
7. Dhyana: meditation; development of the capability of the Soul to transmit to the brain its higher ideas.
8. Samadhi: contemplation; dwelling consciously upon the "things of God"; leads to full illumination. It is the final stage of
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mystic vision, when the individual Ego looks upon the full splendor of the spiritual universe.
As the purification of the three lower vehicles proceeds, certain physical changes are said to occur within the head, following the awakening of the "lotus centers" below. "The vital airs" are organized to flow in regular currents up and down the two channels in the spinal cord; they rise to the head, circulate around the temples and pass inward to touch and arouse to active functioning the pineal gland and the pituitary body, located close to each other near the center of the cranium. This is the Kundalini or Serpent Fire, typified in may symbolisms of the ancients. Its play of force fills the whole body with light. It is so high-powered a current of etheric energy that its stirring to activity is attended with much danger, and, Theosophists say, should only be undertaken with the help of a Master.
No bizarre style of ascetic living is demanded of a Yogi. "Celibacy is not enjoined. Self-control is." If we may use Mrs. Bailey's words once more,
"The right use of the sex principle, along with entire conformity to the law of the land, is characteristic of every true aspirant."12
The basic principle of personal conduct is subsumed under the one rule: "Let every man attend to his own Dharma." The meddler, the reformer, the uplifter is looked upon askance in the Orient. The individual's kingdom to conquer is within. When he becomes master there he will be given larger worlds to subdue to law and harmony.
An interesting development at a later stage is the Yogi's increasing power to create on the mental plane by the use of the word or of sounds. He becomes a magician--a white one if his motive is pure and selfless. This power is achieved through continence, pure living, and clean thinking, and not through any perversions of the occult, such as sex magic, as emphasized by some so-called schools of occultism. The latter are on the black path, which does not lead to the portals of initiation.
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12 The Light of the Soul, p. 234.
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There are four types of purity to be achieved, one for each vehicle: external (for the physical body); magnetic (of the etheric body); psychic (of the astral body); and mental (of the mental body). All kinds require refinement of the matter of which each body is composed. The law of synchronous and asynchronous vibrations attends to this, pure thoughts sifting out coarser particles from the bodies and building in finer ones. This is what is meant by burning out the dross.
Mrs. Bailey tells us that
"in this cycle the interest of the hierarchy is being largely centered on the question of psychic purity, and this is the reason for the trend of the occult teaching at present developing. It is away from what is commonly understood as psychic development, lays no emphasis on the lower psychic powers and seeks to train the aspirant in the laws of the spiritual life."13
"The pure heart shall see God,"--who is the higher inner principle which suddenly manifests itself to the open-visioned seeker.
It is most necessary--Mrs. Bailey agrees with Madame Blavatsky--that students should follow the means of Yoga in the order laid down by Patanjali, and should thence see to it that the purificatory process, the discipline of the inner and the outer life, and one-pointedness of mind, should be undertaken prior to attempting the regulation of the etheric principle through breathing. The premature awakening of the centers is attended with positive danger, as before noted. The natural barriers between this world and the astral may be broken down before the pupil is ready to deal with the forces thus released. The untimely development of the lower psychism is regarded as the cause of insanity in many cases.
One must be a mystic before he becomes an occultist. The mystic rises to God through the path of feeling; the occultist through the path of knowledge. Each person must become both, but more fittingly the mystic first.
The eight final siddhis or powers are given as:
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13 Ibid., p. 241.
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1. Minuteness: the ability to enter the infinitely small, the atom.
2. Magnitude: ability to expand the vision to embrace the cosmos.
3. Gravity: the ability to use the law of gravity.
4. Lightness: power to counteract gravity, and cause levitation.
5. Attainment of one's objective: the ability to gain one's purpose.
6. Irresistible will: sovereignty over the forces of nature.
7. Creative power: art of combining and recombining the elements.
8. Power to command: power of the word to organize matter into form.
At this stage we are at last dowered with some of the powers of gods. For "God meditated, visualized, spoke, and the worlds were made," and when our Christ principle is awakened to full functioning we become joint heirs of his power. At the final stage knowledge becomes possible even without the use of the senses, though these have themselves been refined to ethereal sensitivity and continue to serve the Ego in various capacities.
In the end spirit is victor over matter, because the long struggle eventuates in three attainments, described as:
1. The inability of matter and form to hold the Yogi confined.
2. The powerlessness of substance to prevent the Yogi cognizing any aspect of life he desires.
3. The helplessness of matter to withstand the will of the Yogi.
Freedom from the limitations of matter forms the basis of all white magic. Through his transcendent powers the Yogi now transforms the very vehicles into instruments of more expanded efficiency. The Soul and its vehicles now form a unit, and the Son of God can function unrestrictedly on earth, on any plane. The human Ego has become what he was all along, but had not demonstrated till now,--a God. His life is now hid with the Christos in the bosom of God, and for him humanity is transcended, and he needs no further rebirth as a mortal. The Spirit has then transcended space and time. Matter can no longer imprison him. He dwells consciously in the timeless Now.
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A beautiful passage in the Bhagavad Gita may fittingly summarize this entire regimen of Yoga, which is the ideal of the Theosophist:14
"Having purified his mind and cleared his understanding; having mastered his personal self by firm resolution and having forsaken the objects of sense; having delivered himself from desire, dislike and passion; worshipping with intelligent discretion and understanding; eating with moderation and temperance; with controlled speech, body and mind; being well practiced in meditation and concentration; being dispassionate; having freed himself from ostentation, egotism, tyranny, vain-glory, lust, anger, avarice, covetousness and selfishness--possessing calmness and peace amidst the feverish unrest of the world around him--such a man is fitted to enter into the consciousness of the Universal Life."
How naturally unfitted Occidentals are to undertake the rigid discipline is evidenced by Madame Blavatsky's statement that hardly half a dozen of her followers faced any fair prospects of success in mastering the difficulties of the thorny path. Her own warming words disillusioned those whose hopeful and enthusiastic efforts had not already reaped for them a harvest of barren result. Leading the occult life was seen not to be at all the sensational and spectacular road to a magical victory. On the contrary it presented rather a drab and dreary prospect.
Thus while the life of a Yogi is the ultimate Theosophic ideal, the accepted code of morality and devotion, like many another body of ideal teaching, it is seldom actualized in performance. It is too intense for the average sincere person in the West. And perhaps, too, its practice and exemplification would mark the practitioner as eccentric.
The outcome of this disparity between goal and achievement is that the cult practice of Theosophy has become a sort of compromise; and the "life Theosophic" may be said to have been reduced for the rank and file of the membership to one or other, or all, of the following lines of endeavor: (1), the performance of one's dharma; (2), living the life of
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14 Bhagavad Gita, p. 177.
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brotherhood; (3), practicing meditation; (4) dietary regulation; (5), a general effort to progress by reading, study, and service, to grow by enlarging the knowledge of life.
This menu is interesting as affording concrete demonstration of just how far the cult of Oriental subjectivism can be carried out in real life by a large segment of sincere and intelligent persons in our Western milieu.
Many Theosophic students at one time or another have seriously contemplated attacking the whole problem of spiritual attainment with all its obligations. But for the greater part they have elected the winding, if longer, road up the mountain, rather than challenge the rigors and the perils of the straight steep path. The latter course entails the "challenging of one's entire block of past evil Karma"; one undertakes to climb to the Mount of Transfiguration carrying the whole bundle of one's former wrongdoing. It is the testimony of hundreds of Theosophic idealists that their first virginal enthusiasm for a trial of the higher life of renunciation has in reality operated upon them in this way, so that they have been disposed by the severity of their experience to relinquish the harder method and be content with more gradual progress.
Yet in truth the compromise is regarded more as the consequence of want of resolute purpose than as a necessity occasioned by untoward circumstances. The claim is made that quiet and leisure are by no means indispensable conditions of success; that one can as well cultivate the fruits of the spirit amid the noise of modern life as in sequestered solitudes. The voice of the silence can be detected and heeded above the roar of traffic. The asceticisms which the Buddha decried are in no wise essential to the conquest of the inner nature. It is not outward circumstance but inner resolution that determines achievement or failure.
The five specified forms of leading the life of Theosophic culture may now be touched upon. The first one is the performance of one's dharma, one of the several translations of which is our "duty." For many Theosophists this covers their entire practice of occultism. Dharma is not quite the
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same thing as Karma, but it is taken to mean the obligations and duties incumbent upon one by virtue of one's karmic situation. It is equivalent to the Right Action spoken of by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. It is the performance of our duty in that particular place, time, and circumstance in which our lot is cast.
It has often been objected against Theosophic belief in reincarnation that its influence would be to narcotize earthly ambition and effort. On the presupposition that many more lives are to come, endeavor will be less strenuous, it is argued. But no Theosophist would concede the validity of this reasoning. He will contend that the effect of his philosophy is to energize his activities. A definite amount of work has to be done, and the sooner the better. Further, evolution couples its own peculiar penalties to wasted opportunity. Therefore the Theosophist will strive to be diligent in business and fervent in spirit, he will not be thrown off his balance by the urge to feverish haste which the one-life theory may engender. From his vastly extended perspective he may derive that calmness which comes from living in the spirit of eternity instead of in that of the temporal flux. An event which perturbs the mind of another as being absolute good or ill, is accepted by him in an equable mood, as it is seen to be but temporary and relative.
Contributing to his attitude of mental poise also is the doctrine that each fling of adverse fortune is the final rendering of some particular account, the last payment on some old claim, which, if borne with some patience, will soon be scratched off his slate. Physical ills are regarded as the eventual outcropping of spiritual faults on the material plane; they are therefore on their way out. Each stroke of ill is thought of as one more debt paid off. The debtor rejoices that he is thus one step nearer freedom.
To keep striving in the line of regular duty under every stress and strain is therefore a primary virtue. It makes Theosophists good, loyal, and dependable citizens of the
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state. Their native membership in any particular society is looked upon as entailing certain obligations laid upon them by the hand of Karma.
Along with racial, national, and professional dharma there is that other, especially sacred to the Theosophist, the family dharma. The relation of helpfulness in the family weighs with considerable impressiveness upon Theosophists. This function may be assumed from necessity, from the bare force of the idea of dharma, or from the belief that it may pay exceptional rewards for meritorious service to humanity.
The tenets of Theosophy likewise dispose their practitioners to the happy procedure of minding their own business, in the main. The Bhagavad Gita is insistent that one's dharma, insignificant as it may seem, is energy productively expended, while the effort to perform that dharma of another is a fruitless waste. Theosophy believes that charity begins at home, and "know thyself" is the main call to duty. To render oneself whole and lovely is the finest--ultimately the only--service one can do for the world. The world can ask no more from you than this, and to it you should devote yourself chiefly, using social contacts as in part the means of growth. "One's own dharma is good; the dharma of another is bad"--for you.
But humanity forms a brotherhood and the relation entails upon the Theosophist--who proclaims it as his central theme and only creedal requirement--a distinctive course of behavior toward his fellowmen. As Theosophy is an effort at scientific altruism, the conduct of members must involve no element that either positively harms, or, negatively, withholds good from a fellow mortal. "Do not hurt to any creature,"--this to insure peace and safety and good will as the basic condition of fraternity among mankind. Harmlessness is one of the Five Commandments, as we have seen. Abstinence from theft is another; and this is a further-reaching prohibition than it may seem at first sight. It means that one should not take from the common store more than one needs, lest another suffer privation. This places a ban on all
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ostentation, luxury, extravagance, which is living at the expense of others' labor.15
And herein is seen a most important aspect of Theosophic morality, one that sets a sharp contrast between the cult and others that have fed on its fundamental occult principles. There is in Theosophy an absence of that preachment concerning the "demonstration of prosperity," success, material well-being, which has been the bait held out by so many cults especially in America. Theosophists are taught that service to one's fellows, and not demonstrations of superiority over them, or ability to tax their labors, is the truest demonstration of godly power and the most direct way to put one's shoulder to evolution's wheel. To demonstrate prosperity is but to demonstrate selfishness, unless prosperity is rigidly made utilitarian to brotherhood. The cults in question regard Theosophy as partaking too strongly of Oriental non-aggressiveness in these respects, and they have attempted to supply to Eastern occultism the desirable quality of Yankee thrift, which the originators of the science were so thoughtless as to leave out. But Theosophy, with Ruskin, affirms that true spirituality demands neither your prosperity nor your poverty, is not signalized by either, but may utilize either or both for its ends. On the whole the possession of spirituality has been marked throughout history by demonstrations of poverty rather than by a parade of material wealth. Though there is no necessary relation of cause and effect between the two, poverty has probably engendered more spirituality than has success. Prosperity is no criterion of success, and may be the road to spiritual ruin. A man may gain the world and lose his soul. So Theosophy is no party to the "how to get what you want" ballyhoo, and is so loyal to the true spiritual ideal of service that it does not hesitate to characterize New Thought, Christian Science, Unity, Applied Psychology, and the others as forms of sorcery, and gray, if not quite black, magic.
Much the same considerations restrain occultists from
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15 John Ruskin, English art critic and economist, labored to impress this theory on modern attention.
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rushing into the healing cults, which have added therapy to the lure of "prosperity." Theosophy has paused long enough to reflect that there may be ethical factors in the matter of healing. It is inclined to feel that there is a breach of both natural and moral law in the use of spiritual energies to heal bodily diseases. If one is ill as the result of intemperance in living, eating, or as a consequence of wrong thinking, the disturbance is to be remedied by a rectification of ill-advised habits, not by resort to spiritual affirmation. Human welfare is to be achieved and promoted by obedience to the laws of life on all planes, not by jugglery of so-called spiritual forces. To use spiritual power as a means of escaping the penalties of violated physical laws is a perversion of high energies to base ends. Furthermore, it is a deduction from the technology of life on the several planes that a physical ill is the working out on the physical level of causes engendered on the inner planes, and that if ceremonial, or theurgical, or psychological powers are invoked to prevent its full deploying into the realm of the body on its way out to a final dispersion of its energies, it will be driven back into the inner bodies, only to emerge at some favorable time in the future with more pain than now. Mental healing but drowns the symptoms, which are the effects, and does not cause or prevent its discovery. Theosophists tell us that there are infinitely deeper laws governing the processes of healing than either materia medica or cult therapy dreams of, and it is foolish for uninstructed zealots to rush into this field. The program of Theosophy in the face of the blatant cry for healing directed at every sect and cult, is to learn the basic laws of life, on all planes. Obedience to them will obviate the necessity for the special intervention of exceptional forces. Moreover, disease is needed by nature as a means to apprise us of our errors, and hence to enlighten our ignorance. Were it not for pain we could not grow in knowledge. It is more important that the laws of life be mastered than that some pains be removed.
Likewise not even happiness is made the criterion of
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Theosophical ethical idealism. Mankind has the right to happiness, to be sure, since Ananda (bliss) is the ultimate nature of the All. In the end, the abundant life, with happiness as its concomitant, will be the fruit of effort, and one of the marks of attainment. But in the present status of evolution, happiness is for the most part only tentative, or epiphenomenal, as transient as pain. Then, too, pain if often likely to be a more certain guide to progress than is joy. The primary task is to master the laws of life; and the processes of learning may not be the happiest experience. Dharma overshadows mere happiness.
Those Theosophists, then, who lay stress upon the dharmic aspect of ethical teaching may be said to live their faith through the practice of a sort of Karma Yoga. They follow neither the path of mysticism nor those of occultism and devotion in their purely psychological phases. They seek to build character through right action and to reach the inner kingdom through "meritorious deeds." They live Theosophy in conduct rather than in thinking.
A second type of occult practice is that which grows out of the emphasis laid upon the principle of Brotherhood.
One of the first and most striking forms in which this spirit emerges into practical conduct is the control of speech in the avoidance of gossip. New students of Theosophy have often been surprised at the emphasis laid in the ethical literature of the cult on the primary importance of this item of behavior. It is therein regarded as one of the most direct forms of sin against the law of love, the law of brotherhood, since the victim is not present to defend himself. It is the subterfuge of weakness and baseness. It foments discord and strife.
It is but the simplest sort of homiletic wisdom to realize that the exercise of brotherhood demands the obliteration of such harsh and gross emotions as anger, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, avarice, brutality. They all spring from "the heresy of separateness" and feed on the sense of self as isolated from the common weal.
But perhaps the highest virtue in the way of human soli-
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darity in the occultist's catalogue is that of tolerance. Theosophists are asked to exemplify tolerance because it is a prima facie fundamentum of any scheme of social friendliness whatever.
Esoterically the Theosophical Society was organized to form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood, to bring under a common stimulus a group of men and women who should endeavor to manifest perfect unity on the basis of that one principle, who should constitute a node of spiritual force giving vitality to the evolution of the unified racial consciousness. Tolerance was the indispensable element in this enterprise.
The third road to Yoga followed by many in the movement is that of meditation. The degree of its actual employment by members of the Society is a variable quantity. Meditation was a requirement of the discipline in the Esoteric Section to the minimum extent of fifteen minutes a day. But outside that section few students held themselves to any set schedule. Its practice is intermittent and irregular, when undertaken at all. Avid beginners often bind themselves to a course of daily meditation, with fair results. But the task seems in most cases to prove irksome or to be attended with unsatisfactory consequences of one kind or another. It many cases it is eventually given up. The influences militating against its fruitful continuance are not entirely clear. Whether the pressure of the actual in our Western life is too heavy for steady progress in the art, or whether our nervous systems are not sufficiently receptive of the forces which would take us deeper into the core of consciousness, we are unable to determine.
This systematic character of spiritual exercise under a technique that has the sanction of hoary antiquity is one of the features of Theosophy that commends it to earnest folk in contrast with the loose indefinite procedure of most Christian practice. The occult system provides a regimen of definite discipline, with the promise of growth in the conscious spiritualization of life. It does not leave one in the atmosphere of a vague idealism, but furnishes the formulae
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of an exact science. Certain definite results are promised, in the event of sustained effort.
Most Theosophic meditation consists in concentrating upon a certain virtue of a lofty nature that the student desires to embody in his character. Working upon the theory that "a man becomes that upon which he thinks," he labors to implant new elements into his personality by the steady contemplation of desirable qualities. The keynote of the whole process is concentration. To focus consciousness in a steady stream upon one item of knowledge or one phase of virtue is tremendously to enhance the mental product. The effort of mind and will is supplemented here by the law of automatism, brought into operation by repetition. It is a variant of the old law of habit formation, and is regarded by the occultists as the only direct method of soul-culture that can be consciously applied, with safety, by the individual.
The objects of contemplation may vary from those which are concrete to those which are personal, or intellectual, or abstract. One may think of virtue as impersonal or as personally embodied. It is an aid in the earlier stages to visualize virtue, beauty, nobility, wisdom, truth as exemplified in some strong character. But eventually the aim is to absorb the spirit of those qualities in their pure or impersonal form. As Adeptship is reached and some of the loftier ranges of spirituality are attained, meditation tends to empty the mind of all content, whether intellectual or rhapsodic, and to bring into consciousness the cognition of sheer pure Being itself.
The fourth avenue of occult progress leads through a régime of bodily purification by means of diet. It grows out of the recognition of the relation between body and spirit, between the indwelling life and its various sheaths. Hence progress in the occult life is held to be materially conditioned by the dietary régime one follows.
The occultist is concerned with his food, then, with reference to its purity and its magnetic qualities, in addition to its general agency in sustaining life. It is a question of kind and quality first, and secondly of quantity. Theosophists
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long ago talked of the magnetic properties of foods. Certain ones tended to make one sluggish, as they contained heavier earthy elements. Others built coarse and sensuous fibre into the tissue and blood. Others heightened nervous instability. Some coarsened, others refined, the body. As the bodies of animals were attached to undeveloped intelligences, and were in the first place organized by the far slower vibrations of the soul of the beast, their edible flesh was indubitably permeated with the elemental constituents of sensuality and bestiality. To partake of it would be to introduce an inherent disposition to animal coarseness into the human vehicle, which would thus give freer course to the sensual impulses. The elemental qualities of the animal cells would stimulate the lower energies of the astral body. Meat would be a force retarding evolution, holding the man closer to the animal characteristics, which it is his task now to transcend. Hence it became catalogued as a definite enemy of the higher life, and was taboo.
Very many Theosophists have discarded it utterly from their diet for periods ranging from months to a score of years. Many have abandoned its use in their homes, but indulge when eating with others who use it. Thousands partake of it only in the most sparing degree. There are few who have not cut into their consumption of it drastically. Its total abandonment was once an obligatory requirement in certain degrees of the Esoteric Section. But members are under no compulsion in the matter. If the student eats no meat it is his own voluntary action, though it may have been determined by the suggestion of some one regarded as a leader. Some of these utterances have gone so far as to declare that spiritual progress beyond a certain point was impossible if one ate meat. Mr. C. W. Leadbeater listed eggs as hardly less detrimental.
Vegetable foods, fruits, nuts, plants, are regarded as best adapted for human use, as being most Sattvic in quality. But it is a mistake to classify Theosophists generally as vegetarians. Few in fact are. Most of them have eliminated meat in all forms, but such animal product foods as milk, cheese,
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eggs, butter, lard, still figure in the diet. With large numbers of Theosophists strict adherence to a non-meat régime is tempered by the countervailing influence of that other precept of good occult behavior, which says that any conduct becomes discordant with the brotherhood platform if it makes of one a spectacle of eccentricity. To render oneself "queer" in the eyes of others is largely to defeat one's usefulness in the rôle of a promoter of human solidarity. So it is often regarded as better to eat meat than to bring occultism into disrepute as an oddity.
It is quite well to reiterate, before dismissing this topic, that there is no prescribed regimen of life for Theosophists, and that many of the peculiarities of dietary habit observed here and there--and hardly more patently among Theosophists than among members of other sects--are to be assigned largely to individual whims.
There remains the last of our subdivisions of cult activity,--the constant effort to progress in the line of occult knowledge and wisdom. It is perhaps too broad an aim to be thus particularized, but it embraces the main currents in the drift of the average Theosophic life. Chiefly it consists in the steady endeavor to learn more of the occult version of life by continuous reading and study. It is primarily an intellectual enterprise. Its instrumentalities are study classes, addresses, magazines, and books, with the recent addition of correspondence courses. Originally captivated by the large cosmic graph which the system outlines, the disciple sets himself sedulously to the great task of mastering the complexities of the vast science. A few years will not complete it. It is the intellectual attempt to square oneself with the universe and with life by means of the rationale which the elaborate scheme of Theosophic ideology unfolds. This entails for the earnest student ever more reading, more study, more reflection. Then as the outlines are grasped and the basic doctrines assimilated into the thinking, there follows the serious problem of making a readjustment of both theoretical and practical attitudes toward a world that is now differently rationalized. The first practical outcome of the
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study of so large a cosmic picture is a certain relaxation of life strain, with the acquisition of poise, steadiness, patience, and eventually tolerance, all framed against a background of non-attachment. The long vista of an infinite evolution to higher states, replaced the hurry and flurry of a one-life conception, tends to ground the life firmly in complacency. There is a decided approach to philosophic calm. From the assurance of the general beneficence of the evolutionary plan there arises a broader charity, a pervading kindliness and deep psychic sympathy, all of which dispose to equanimity.
There is a brief statement of the general aim and spirit of Theosophy that has been used for years by Lodges of the Society printed on leaflets for the benefit of inquirers. It might well have served as the text for this analysis.
"The Theosophical Society is composed of students, belonging to any religion in the world or to none, who are united in their approval of the three objects (brotherhood, psychism and eclecticism) by their wish to remove religious antagonisms and to draw together men of good will whatsoever their religious opinions, and by their desire to study religious truths and to share the results of their studies with others. Their bond of union is not the profession of a common belief, but a common search and aspiration for truth. They hold that any truth should be sought by study, by reflection, by purity of life, by devotion to high ideals, and they regard truth as a prize to be striven for, not as a dogma to be imposed by authority. They consider that belief should be the result of individual study or intuition, and not its antecedent, and should rest on knowledge, not on assertion. They extend tolerance to all, even to the intolerant, not as a privilege they bestow, but as a duty they perform, and they seek to remove ignorance, not to punish it. They see every religion as an expression of the Divine Wisdom, and prefer its study to its condemnation, and its practice to its proselytism. Peace is their watchword as truth is their aim."
Perhaps no one has translated the ethics of this philosophy into its practical expressions better than has Madame Blavatsky herself. Her digest of Theosophic morality, highly treasured by her followers, is given in the little work of hers entitled Practical Occultism:
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"A clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for all, a readiness to give and receive advice and instruction, a courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defence of those who are unjustly attacked, a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the sacred science depicts--these are the golden stairs up the steps of which the learner must climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom."
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