chapter iv

. Says the Avatâra:

Many births of mine have passed, as also of yours, O Arjuna! All those I know, but you do not know yours, O harasser of your enemies.

Although I am unborn, with exhaustless Âtmâ, and am the Lord of all that is; yet, taking up the domination of my nature I am born by the power of illusion.(649)

Whenever, O son of Bhârata, there is decline of Dharma [the right law] and the rise of Adharma [the opposite of Dharma] there I manifest myself.

For the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness, for the establishment of the law, _I am born_ in every yuga.

Whoever comprehends truly my divine birth and action, he, O Arjuna, having abandoned the body does not receive re‐birth; he comes to me.

Thus, all the Avatâras are one and the same: the Sons of their “Father,” in a direct descent and line, the “Father,” or one of the seven Flames becoming, for the time being, the Son, and these two being one—in Eternity. What is the Father? Is it the absolute Cause of all?—the fathomless Eternal? No; most decidedly. It is Kâranâtmâ, the “Causal Soul” which, in its general sense, is called by the Hindus Îshvara, the Lord, and by Christians, “God,” the One and Only. From the standpoint of unity it is so; but then the lowest of the Elementals could equally be viewed in such case as the “One and Only.” Each human being has, moreover, his own divine Spirit or personal God. That divine Entity or Flame from which Buddhi emanates stands in the same relation to man, though on a lower plane, as the Dhyâni‐Buddha to his human Buddha. Hence monotheism and polytheism are not irreconcilable; they exist in Nature.

Truly, “for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness,” the personalities known as Gautama, Shankara, Jesus and a few others were born each in his age, as declared—“I am born in every Yuga”—and they were all born through the same Power.

There is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are outside and beyond the cycle of general re‐births. Rebirths may be divided into three classes: the divine incarnations called Avatâras; those of Adepts who give up Nirvâna for the sake of helping on humanity—the Nirmânakâyas; and the natural succession of rebirths for all—the common law. The Avatâra is an appearance, one which may be termed a special illusion within the natural illusion that reigns on the planes under the sway of that power, Mâyâ; the Adept is re‐born consciously, at his will and pleasure;(650) the units of the common herd unconsciously follow the great law of dual evolution.

What _is_ an Avatâra? for the term before being used ought to be well understood. It is a descent of the manifested Deity—whether under the specific name of Shiva, Vishnu, or Âdi‐Buddha—into an illusive form of individuality, an appearance which to men on this illusive plane is objective, but is not so in sober fact. That illusive form, having neither past nor future, because it had neither previous incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma, which has therefore no hold on it.

Gautama BUDDHA was born an Avatâra in one sense. But this, in view of unavoidable objections on dogmatic grounds, necessitates explanation. There is a great difference between an Avatâra and a Jîvanmukta: one, as already stated, is an illusive appearance, Karma‐less, and having never before incarnated; and the other, the Jîvanmukta, is one who obtains Nirvâna by his individual merits. To this expression again an uncompromising, philosophical Vedântin would object. He might say that as the condition of the Avatâra and the Jîvanmukta are one and the same state, no amount of personal merit, in howsoever many incarnations, can lead its possessor to Nirvâna. Nirvâna, he would say, is actionless; how can, then, any action lead to it? It is neither a result nor a cause, but an ever‐present, eternal _Is_, as Nâgasena defined it. Hence it can have no relation to, or concern with, action, merit, or demerit, since these are subject to Karma. All this is very true, but still to our mind there is an important difference between the two. An Avatâra _is_; a Jîvanmukta _becomes_ one. If the state of the two is identical, not so are the causes which lead to it. An Avatâra is a descent of a God into an illusive form; a Jîvanmukta, who may have passed through numberless incarnations and may have accumulated merit in them, certainly does not become a Nirvânî because of that merit, but only because of the Karma generated by it, which leads and guides him in the direction of the Guru who will initiate him into the mystery of Nirvâna and who alone can help him to reach this abode.

The Shâstras say that from our works alone we obtain Moksha, and if we take no pains there will be no gain and we shall be neither assisted nor benefited by Deity [the Mahâ‐Guru]. Therefore it is maintained that Gautama, though an Avatâra in one sense, is a true human Jîvanmukta, owing his position to his personal merit, and thus more than an Avatâra. It was his personal merit that enabled him to achieve Nirvâna.

Of the voluntary and conscious incarnations of Adepts there are two types—those of Nirmânakâyas, and those undertaken by the probationary chelâs who are on their trial.

The greatest, as the most puzzling mystery of the first type lies in the fact, that such re‐birth in a human body of the personal Ego of some

## particular Adept—when it has been dwelling in the Mâyâvi or the Kâma Rûpa,

and remaining in the Kâma Loka—may happen even when his “Higher Principles” are in the state of Nirvâna.(651) Let it be understood that the above expressions are used for popular purposes, and therefore that what is written does not deal with this deep and mysterious question from the _highest_ plane, that of absolute spirituality, nor again from the highest philosophical point of view, comprehensible but to the very few. It must not be supposed that anything can go into Nirvâna which is not eternally there; but human intellect in conceiving the Absolute must put It as the highest term in an indefinite series. If this be borne in mind a great deal of misconception will be avoided. The content of this spiritual evolution is the material on various planes with which the Nirvânî was in contact prior to his attainment of Nirvâna. The plane on which this is true, being in the series of illusive planes, is undoubtedly not the highest. Those who search for that must go to the right source of study, the teachings of the _Upanishads_, and must go in the right spirit. Here we attempt only to indicate the direction in which the search is to be made, and in showing a few of the mysterious Occult possibilities we do not bring our readers actually to the goal. The ultimate truth can be communicated only from Guru to initiated pupil.

Having said so much, the statement still will and must appear incomprehensible, if not absurd, to many. Firstly, to all those who are unfamiliar with the doctrine of the manifold nature and various aspects of the human Monad; and secondly to those who view the septenary division of the human entity from a too materialistic standpoint. Yet the intuitional Occultist, who has studied thoroughly the mysteries of Nirvâna—who knows it to be identical with Parabrahman, and hence unchangeable, eternal and no Thing but the Absolute All—will seize the possibility of the fact. They know that while a Dharmakâya—a Nirvânî “without remains,” as our Orientalists have translated it, being absorbed into that Nothingness, which is the one real, because Absolute, Consciousness—cannot be said to return to incarnation on Earth, the Nirvânî being no longer a he, a she, or even an it, the Nirmânakâya—or he who has obtained Nirvâna “with remains,” _i.e._, who is clothed in a subtle body, which makes him impervious to all outward impressions and to every mental feeling, and in whom the notion of his Ego has not entirely ceased—can do so. Again, every Eastern Occultist is aware of the fact that there are two kinds of Nirmânakâyas—the natural, and the assumed; that the former is the name or epithet given to the condition of a high ascetic, or Initiate, who has reached a stage of bliss second only to Nirvâna; while the latter means the self‐sacrifice of one who voluntarily gives up the absolute Nirvâna, in order to help humanity and be still doing it good, or, in other words, to save his fellow‐creatures by guiding them. It may be objected that the Dharmakâya, being a Nirvânî or Jîvanmukta, can have no “remains” left behind him after death, for having attained that state from which no further incarnations are possible, there is no need for him of a subtle body, or of the individual Ego that reincarnates from one birth to another, and that therefore the latter disappears of logical necessity; to this it is answered: it is so for all exoteric purposes and as a general law. But the case with which we are dealing is an exceptional one, and its realization lies within the Occult powers of the high Initiate, who, before entering into the state of Nirvâna, can cause his “remains” (sometimes, though not very well, called his Mâyâvi Rûpa), to remain behind,(652) whether he is to become a Nirvânî, or to find himself in a lower state of bliss.

Next, there are cases—rare, yet more frequent than one would be disposed to expect—which are the voluntary and conscious reincarnations of Adepts(653) on their trial. Every man has an Inner, a “Higher Self,” and also an Astral Body. But few are those who, outside the higher degrees of Adeptship, can guide the latter, or any of the principles that animate it, when once death has closed their short terrestrial life. Yet such guidance, or their transference from the dead to a living body, is not only possible, but is of frequent occurrence, according to Occult and Kabalistic teachings. The degrees of such power of course vary greatly. To mention but three: the lowest of these degrees would allow an Adept, who has been greatly trammelled during life in his study and in the use of his powers, to choose after death another body in which he could go on with his interrupted studies, though ordinarily he would lose in it every remembrance of his previous incarnation. The next degree permits him, in addition to this, to transfer the memory of his past life to his new body; while the highest has hardly any limits in the exercise of that wonderful faculty.

As an instance of an Adept who enjoyed the first mentioned power some mediæval Kabalists cite a well‐known personage of the fifteenth century—Cardinal de Cusa; Karma, due to his wonderful devotion to Esoteric study and the _Kabalah_, led the suffering Adept to seek intellectual recuperation and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of Copernicus. _Se non e vero e ben trovato_; and the perusal of the lives of the two men might easily lead a believer in such powers to a ready acceptance of the alleged fact. The reader having at his command the means to do so is asked to turn to the formidable folio in Latin of the fifteenth century, called _De Docta Ignorantia_, written by the Cardinal de Cusa, in which all the theories and hypotheses—all the ideas—of Copernicus are found as the key‐notes to the discoveries of the great astronomer.(654) Who was this extraordinarily learned Cardinal? The son of a poor boatman, owing all his career, his Cardinal’s hat, and the reverential awe rather than friendship of the Popes Eugenius IV., Nicholas V., and Pius II., to the extraordinary learning which seemed innate in him, since he had studied nowhere till comparatively late in life. De Cusa died in 1473; moreover, his best works were written before he was forced to enter orders—to escape persecution. Nor did the Adept escape it.

In the voluminous work of the Cardinal above‐quoted is found a very suggestive sentence, the authorship of which has been variously attributed to Pascal, to Cusa himself, and to the _Zohar_, and which belongs by right to the Books of Hermes:

The world is an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

This is changed by some into: “The centre being nowhere, and the circumference everywhere,” a rather heretical idea for a Cardinal, though perfectly orthodox from a Kabalistic standpoint.

The theory of rebirth must be set forth by Occultists, and then applied to special cases. The right comprehension of this psychic fact is based upon a correct view of that group of celestial Beings who are universally called the seven Primeval Gods or Angels—our Dhyân Chohans—the “Seven Primeval Rays” or Powers, adopted later on by the Christian Religion as the “Seven Angels of the Presence.” Arûpa, formless, at the upper rung of the ladder of Being, materializing more and more as they descend in the scale of objectivity and form, ending in the grossest and most imperfect of the Hierarchy, man—it is the former purely spiritual group that is pointed out to us, in our Occult teaching, as the nursery and fountain‐ head of human beings. Therein germinates that consciousness which is the earliest manifestation from causal Consciousness—the Alpha and the Omega of divine being and life for ever. And as it proceeds downward through every phase of existence descending through man, through animal and plant, it ends its descent only in the mineral. It is represented by the double triangle—the most mysterious and the most suggestive of all mystic signs, for it is a double glyph, embracing spiritual and physical consciousness and life, the former triangle running upwards, and the lower downwards, both interlaced, and showing the various planes of the twice‐seven modes of consciousness, the fourteen spheres of existence, the Lokas of the Brâhmans.

The reader may now be able to obtain a clearer comprehension of the whole thing. He will also see what is meant by the “Watchers,” there being one placed as the Guardian or Regent over each of the seven divisions or regions of the earth, according to old traditions, as there is one to watch over and guide every one of the fourteen worlds or Lokas.(655) But it is not with any of these that we are at present concerned, but with the “Seven Breaths,” so‐called, that furnish man with his immortal Monad in his cyclic pilgrimage.

The Commentary on the _Book of Dzyan_ says:

_Descending on his region first as Lord of Glory, the Flame (or Breath), having called into conscious being the highest of the Emanations of that special region, ascends from it again to Its primeval seat, whence It watches __ over and guides Its countless Beams (Monads). It chooses as Its Avatâras only those who had the Seven Virtues in them_(_656_)_ in their previous incarnation. As for the rest, It overshadows each with one of Its countless beams.... Yet even the __“__beam__”__ is a part of the Lord of Lords._(657)

The septenary principle in man—who can be regarded as dual only as concerns psychic manifestation on this gross earthly plane—was known to all antiquity, and may be found in every ancient Scripture. The Egyptians knew and taught it, and their division of principles is in every point a counterpart of the Âryan Secret Teaching. It is thus given in _Isis Unveiled_:

In the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded on philosophy, man was not merely ... a union of soul and body: he was a trinity when Spirit was added to it. Besides, that doctrine made him consist of Kha (body), Khaba (astral form or shadow), Ka (animal soul or life‐principle), Ba (the higher soul), and Akh (terrestrial intelligence). They had also a sixth principle, named Sah (or mummy), but the functions of this one commenced after the death of the body.(658)

The seventh principle being of course the highest, uncreated Spirit was generically called Osiris, therefore every deceased person became Osirified—or an Osiris—after death.

But in addition to reiterating the old ever‐present fact of reincarnation and Karma—not as taught by the Spiritists, but as by the most Ancient Science in the world—Occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary reincarnation: that kind of re‐birth, mysterious and still incomprehensible to many who are ignorant of the world’s history, which was cautiously mentioned in _Isis Unveiled_. A general re‐birth for every individual with interlude of Kâma Loka and Devachan, and a cyclic conscious reincarnation with a grand and divine object for the few. Those great characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind like Siddârtha BUDDHA and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual, and Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great in the realm of physical conquests are but the reflected images of human types which had existed—not ten thousand years before, as cautiously put forward in _Isis Unveiled_, but for millions of consecutive years from the beginning of the Manvantara. For—with the exception of real Avatâras, as above explained—they are the same unbroken Rays (Monads), each respectively of its own special Parent‐ Flame—called Devas, Dhyân Chohans, or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, or again, Planetary Angels, etc.—shining in æonic eternity as their prototypes. It is in their image that some men are born, and when some specific humanitarian object is in view, the latter are hypostatically animated by their divine prototypes reproduced again and again by the mysterious Powers that control and guide the destinies of our world.

No more could be said at the time when _Isis Unveiled_ was written; hence the statement was limited to the single remark that

There is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose prototype we cannot find in the half fictitious and half real traditions of bygone religions and mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in a historical retrospect.

But now that so many publications have been brought out, stating much of the doctrine, and several of them giving many an erroneous view, this vague allusion may be amplified and explained. Not only does this statement apply to prominent characters in history in general, but also to men of genius, to every remarkable man of the age, who soars beyond the common herd with some abnormally developed special capacity in him, leading to the progress and good of mankind. Each is a reincarnation of an individuality that has gone before him with capacities in the same line, bringing thus as a dowry to his new form that strong and easily re‐ awakened capacity or quality which had been fully developed in him in his preceding birth. Very often they are ordinary mortals, the Egos of natural men in the course of their cyclic development.

But it is with “special cases” that we are now concerned. Let us suppose that a person during his cycle of incarnations is thus selected for special purposes—the vessel being sufficiently clean—by his personal God, the Fountain‐head (on the plane of the manifested) of his Monad, who thus becomes his in‐dweller. That God, his own prototype or “Father in Heaven,” is, in one sense, not only the image in which he, the spiritual man, is made, but in the case we are considering, it is that spiritual, individual Ego himself. This is a case of permanent, life‐long Theophania. Let us bear in mind that this is neither Avatârism, as it is understood in Brâhmanical Philosophy, nor is the man thus selected a Jîvanmukta or Nirvânî, but that it is a wholly exceptional case in the realm of Mysticism. The man may or may not have been an Adept in his previous lives; he is so far, and simply, an extremely pure and spiritual individual—or one who was all that in his preceding birth, if the vessel thus selected is that of a newly‐born infant. In this case, after the physical translation of such a saint or Bodhisattva, his astral principles cannot be subjected to a natural dissolution like those of any common mortal. They remain in our sphere and within human attraction and reach; and thus it is that not only a Buddha, a Shankarâchârya, or a Jesus can be said to animate several persons at one and the same time, but even the principles of a high Adept may be animating the outward tabernacles of common mortals.

A certain Ray (principle) from Sanat Kumâra spiritualized (animated) Pradyumna, the son of Krishna during the great Mahâbhârata period, while at the same time, he, Sanat Kumâra, gave spiritual instruction to King Dhritarâshtra. Moreover, it is to be remembered that Sanat‐Kumâra is “an eternal youth of sixteen,” dwelling in Jana Loka, his own sphere or spiritual state.

Even in ordinary _mediumistic_ life, so‐called, it is pretty well ascertained that while the body is acting—even though only mechanically—or resting in one place, its astral double may be appearing and acting independently in another, and very often distant place. This is quite a common occurrence in mystic life and history, and if this be so with ecstatics, Seers and Mystics of every description, why cannot the same thing happen on a higher and more spiritually developed plane of existence? Admit the possibility on the lower psychic plane, then why not on a higher plane? In the cases of higher Adeptship, when the body is entirely at the command of the Inner Man, when the Spiritual Ego is completely reünited with its seventh principle even during the life‐time of the personality, and the Astral Man or personal Ego has become so purified that he has gradually assimilated all the qualities and attributes of the middle nature (Buddhi and Manas in their terrestrial aspect) that personal Ego substitutes itself, so to say, for the spiritual Higher Self, and is thenceforth capable of living an independent life on earth; when corporeal death takes place the following mysterious event often happens. As a Dharmakâya, a Nirvânî “without remains” entirely free from terrestrial admixture, the Spiritual Ego cannot return to reincarnate on earth. But in such cases, it is affirmed, the personal Ego of even a Dharmakâya can remain in our sphere as a whole, and return to incarnation on earth if need be. For now it can no longer be subject, like the astral remains of any ordinary man, to gradual dissolution in the Kâma Loka (the _limbus_ or purgatory of the Roman Catholic, and the “Summer‐land” of the Spiritualist); it cannot die a second death, as such disintegration is called by Proclus.(659) It has become too holy and pure, no longer by reflected but its own natural light and spirituality, either to sleep in the unconscious slumber of a lower Nirvânic state, or to be dissolved like any ordinary astral shell and disappear in its entirety.

But in that condition known as the Nirmânakâya [the Nirvânî “with remains,”] he can still help humanity.

“Let me suffer and bear the sins of all [be reincarnated unto new misery] but let the world be saved!” was said by Gautama BUDDHA: an exclamation the real meaning of which is little understood now by his followers. “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”(660) asks the astral Jesus of Peter. “Till I come” means “till I am reincarnated again” in a physical body. Yet the Christ of the old crucified body could truly say: “I am with my Father and one with Him,” which did not prevent the astral from taking a form again nor John from tarrying indeed till his Master had come; nor hinder John from failing to recognize him when he did come, or from then opposing him. But in the Church that remark generated the absurd idea of the millennium or chiliasm, in its physical sense.

Since then the “Man of Sorrows” has returned perchance, more than once, unknown to, and undiscovered by, his blind followers. Since then also, this grand “Son of God” has been incessantly and most cruelly crucified daily and hourly by the Churches founded in his name. But the Apostles, only half‐initiated, failed to tarry for their Master, and not recognizing him, spurned him every time he returned.(661)

SECTION XLII. THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES.

The “Mystery of Buddha” is that of several other Adepts—perhaps of many. The whole trouble is to understand correctly that other mystery: that of the real fact, so abstruse and transcendental at first sight, about the “Seven Principles” in man, the reflections in man of the seven powers in Nature, physically, and of the seven Hierarchies of Being, intellectually and spiritually. Whether a man—material, ethereal, and spiritual—is for the clearer comprehension of his (broadly‐speaking) triple nature, divided into groups according to one or another system, the foundation and the apex of that division will be always the same. There being only three Upâdhis (bases) in man, any number of Koshas (sheaths) and their aspects may be built on these without destroying the harmony of the whole. Thus, while the Esoteric System accepts the septenary division, the Vedântic classification gives five Koshas, and the Târaka Râja Yoga simplifies them into four—the three Upâdhis synthesized by the highest principle, Âtmâ.

That which has just been stated will, of course, suggest the question: “How can a spiritual (or semi‐spiritual) personality lead a triple or even a dual life, shifting respective ‘Higher Selves’ _ad libitum_, and be still the one eternal Monad in the infinity of a Manvantara?” The answer to this is easy for the true Occultist, while for the uninitiated profane it must appear absurd. The “Seven Principles” are, of course, the manifestation of one indivisible Spirit, but only at the end of the Manvantara, and when they come to be re‐united on the plane of the One Reality does the unity appear; during the “Pilgrim’s” journey the reflections of that indivisible One Flame, the aspects of the one eternal Spirit, have each the power of action on one of the manifested planes of existence—the gradual differentiations from the one unmanifested plane—on that plane namely to which it properly belongs. Our earth affording every Mâyâvic condition, it follows that the purified Egotistical Principle, the astral and personal Self of an Adept, though forming in reality one integral whole with its Highest Self (Âtmâ and Buddhi) may, nevertheless, for purposes of universal mercy and benevolence, so separate itself from its divine Monad as to lead on this plane of illusion and temporary being a distinct independent conscious life of its own under a borrowed illusive shape, thus serving at one and the same time a double purpose: the exhaustion of its own individual Karma, and the saving of millions of human beings less favoured than itself from the effects of mental blindness. If asked: “When the change described as the passage of a Buddha or a Jîvanmukta into Nirvâna takes place, where does the original consciousness which animated the body continue to reside—in the Nirvânî or in the subsequent reincarnations of the latter’s ‘remains’ (the Nirmânakâya)?” the answer is that _imprisoned_ consciousness may be a “certain knowledge from observation and experience,” as Gibbon puts it, but _disembodied_ consciousness is not an effect, but a cause. It is a part of the whole, or rather a Ray on the graduated scale of its manifested activity, of the one all‐pervading, limitless Flame, the reflections of which alone can differentiate; and, as such, consciousness is ubiquitous, and can be neither localized nor centred on or in any

## particular subject, nor can it be limited. Its effects alone pertain to

the region of matter, for thought is an energy that affects matter in various ways, but consciousness _per se_, as understood and explained by Occult philosophy, is the highest quality of the sentient spiritual principle in us, the Divine Soul (or Buddhi) and our Higher Ego, and does not belong to the plane of materiality. After the death of the physical man, if he be an Initiate, it becomes transformed from a human quality into the independent principle itself; the conscious Ego becoming Consciousness _per se_ without any Ego, in the sense that the latter can no longer be limited or conditioned by the senses, or even by space or time. Therefore it is capable, without separating itself from or abandoning its possessor, Buddhi, of reflecting itself at the same time in its astral man that was, without being under any necessity for localizing itself. This is shown at a far lower stage in our dreams. For if consciousness can display activity during our visions, and while the body and its material brain are fast asleep—and if even during those visions it is all but ubiquitous—how much greater must be its power when entirely free from, and having no more connection with, our physical brain.

SECTION XLIII. THE MYSTERY OF BUDDHA.

Now the mystery of Buddha lies in this: Gautama, an incarnation of pure Wisdom, had yet to learn in His human body and to be initiated into the world’s secrets like any other mortal, until the day when He emerged from His secret recess in the Himâlayas and preached for the first time in the grove of Benares. The same with Jesus: from the age of twelve to thirty years, when He is found preaching the Sermon on the Mount, nothing is positively said or known of Him. Gautama had sworn inviolable secrecy as to the Esoteric Doctrines imparted to Him. In His immense pity for the ignorance—and as its consequence the sufferings—of mankind, desirous though He was to keep inviolate His sacred vows, He failed to keep within the prescribed limits. While constructing His Esoteric Philosophy (the “Eye‐Doctrine”) on the foundations of eternal Truth, He failed to conceal certain dogmas, and trespassing beyond the lawful lines, caused those dogmas to be misunderstood. In His anxiety to make away with the false Gods, He revealed in the “Seven Paths to Nirvâna” some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arûpa (formless) World. A little of the truth is often worse than no truth at all.

Truth and fiction are like oil and water: they will never mix.

His new doctrine, which represented the outward dead body of the Esoteric Teaching without its vivifying Soul, had disastrous effects: it was never correctly understood, and the doctrine itself was rejected by the Southern Buddhists. Immense philanthropy, a boundless love and charity for all creatures, were at the bottom of His unintentional mistake; but Karma little heeds intentions, whether good or bad, if they remain fruitless. If the “Good Law” as preached resulted in the most sublime code of ethics and the unparalleled philosophy of things external in the visible Kosmos, it biassed and misguided immature minds into believing there was nothing more under the outward mantle of the system, and its dead‐letter only was accepted. Moreover, the new teaching unsettled many great minds which had previously followed the orthodox Brâhmanical lead.

Thus, fifty odd years after his death “the great Teacher”(662) having refused full Dharmakâya and Nirvâna, was pleased, for purposes of Karma and philanthropy, to be reborn. For Him death had been no death, but as expressed in the “Elixir of Life,”(663) He changed

A sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter light.

The shock of death was broken, and like many other Adepts, He threw off the mortal coil and left it to be burnt, and its ashes to serve as relics, and began interplanetary life, clothed in His subtle body. He was reborn as Shankara, the greatest Vedântic teacher of India, whose philosophy—based as it is entirely on the fundamental axioms of the eternal Revelation, the Shruti, or the primitive Wisdom‐Religion, as Buddha from a different point of view had before based His—finds itself in the middle‐ground between the too exuberantly veiled metaphysics of the orthodox Brâhmans and those of Gautama, which, stripped in their exoteric garb of every soul‐vivifying hope, transcendental aspiration and symbol, appear in their cold wisdom like crystalline icicles, the skeletons of the primeval truths of Esoteric Philosophy.

Was Shankarâchârya Gautama the Buddha, then, under a new personal form? It may perhaps only puzzle the reader the more if he be told that there was the “astral” Gautama inside the outward Shankara, whose higher principle, or Âtman, was, nevertheless, his own divine prototype—the “Son of Light,” indeed—the heavenly, mind‐born son of Aditi.

This fact is again based on that mysterious transference of the divine ex‐ personality merged in the impersonal Individuality—now in its full trinitarian form of the Monad as Âtmâ‐Buddhi‐Manas—to a new body, whether visible or subjective. In the first case it is a Manushya‐Buddha; in the second it is a Nirmânakâya. The Buddha is in Nirvâna, it is said, though this once mortal vehicle—the subtle body—of Gautama is still present among the Initiates; nor will it leave the realm of conscious Being so long as suffering mankind needs its divine help—not to the end of this Root Race, at any rate. From time to time He, the “astral” Gautama, associates Himself, in some most mysterious—to us quite incomprehensible—manner, with Avatâras and great saints, and works through them. And several such are named.

Thus it is averred that Gautama Buddha was reincarnated in Shankarâchârya—that, as is said in _Esoteric Buddhism_:

Shankarâchârya simply _was_ Buddha in all respects in a new body.(664)

While the expression in its mystic sense is true, the way of putting it may be misleading until explained. Shankara was a Buddha, most assuredly, but he never was a reincarnation of the Buddha, though Gautama’s “Astral” Ego—or rather his Bodhisattva—may have been associated in some mysterious way with Shankarâchârya. Yes, it was perhaps the Ego, Gautama, under a new and better adapted casket—that of a Brâhman of Southern India. But the Âtman, the Higher Self that overshadowed both, was distinct from the Higher Self of the translated Buddha, which was now in Its own sphere in Kosmos.

Shankara was an Avatâra in the full sense of the term. According to Sayanâchârya, the great commentator on the _Vedas_, he is to be held as an Avatâra, or direct incarnation of Shiva—the Logos, the Seventh Principle in Nature—Himself. In the Secret Doctrine Shri Shankarâchârya is regarded as the abode—for the thirty‐two years of his mortal life—of a Flame, the highest of the manifested Spiritual Beings, one of the Primordial Seven Rays.

And now what is meant by a “Bodhisattva”? Buddhists of the Mahâyâna mystic system teach that each BUDDHA manifests Himself (hypostatically or otherwise) simultaneously in three worlds of Being, namely, in the world of Kâma (concupiscence or desire—the sensuous universe or our earth) in the shape of a man; in the world of Rûpa (form, yet supersensuous) as a Bodhisattva; and in the highest Spiritual World (that of purely incorporeal existences) as a Dhyâni‐Buddha. The latter prevails eternally in space and time, _i.e._, from one Mahâ‐Kalpa to the other—the synthetic culmination of the three being Âdi‐Buddha,(665) the Wisdom‐Principle, which is Absolute, and therefore out of space and time. Their inter‐ relation is the following: The Dhyâni‐Buddha, when the world needs a human Buddha, “creates” through the power of Dhyâna (meditation, omnipotent devotion), a mind‐born son—a Bodhisattva—whose mission it is after the physical death of his human, or Manushya‐Buddha, to continue his work on earth till the appearance of the subsequent Buddha. The Esoteric meaning of this teaching is clear. In the case of a simple mortal, the principles in him are only the more or less bright reflections of the seven cosmic, and the seven celestial Principles, the Hierarchy of supersensual Beings. In the case of a Buddha, they are almost the principles _in esse_ themselves. The Bodhisattva replaces in him the Kârana Sharira, the Ego principle, and the rest correspondingly; and it is in this way that Esoteric Philosophy explains the meaning of the sentence that “by virtue of Dhyâna [or abstract meditation] the Dhyâni‐Buddha [the Buddha’s Spirit or Monad] creates a Bodhisattva,” or the astrally clothed Ego within the Manushya‐Buddha. Thus, while the Buddha merges back into Nirvâna whence it proceeded, the Bodhisattva remains behind to continue the Buddha’s work upon earth. It is then this Bodhisattva that may have afforded the lower principles in the apparitional body of Shankarâchârya, the Avatâra.

Now to say that Buddha, after having reached Nirvâna, returned thence to reïncarnate in a new body, would be uttering a heresy from the Brâhmanical, as well as from the Buddhistic standpoint. Even in the Mahâyâna exoteric School in the teaching as to the three “Buddhic” bodies,(666) it is said of the Dharmakâya—the ideal formless Being—that once it is taken, the Buddha in it abandons the world of sensuous perceptions for ever, and has not, nor can he have, any more connection with it. To say, as the Esoteric or Mystic School teaches, that though Buddha is in Nirvâna he has left behind him the Nirmânakâya (the Bodhisattva) to work after him, is quite orthodox and in accordance with both the Esoteric Mahâyâna and the Prasanga Mâdhyâmika Schools, the latter an anti‐esoteric and most rationalistic system. For in the _Kâla Chakra_ Commentary it is shown that there is: (1) Âdi‐Buddha, eternal and conditionless; then (2) come Sambhogakâya‐Buddhas, or Dhyâni‐Buddhas, existing from (æonic) eternity and never disappearing—the _Causal_ Buddhas so to say; and (3) the Manushya‐Bodhisattvas. The relation between them is determined by the definition given. Âdi‐Buddha is Vajradhara, and the Dhyâni‐Buddhas are Vajrasattva; yet though these two are different Beings on their respective planes, They are identical in fact, one acting through the other, as a Dhyâni through a human Buddha. One is “Endless Intelligence;” the other only “Supreme Intelligence.” It is said of Phra Bodhisattva—who was subsequently on earth Buddha Gautama:

Having fulfilled all the conditions for the immediate attainment of perfect Buddhaship, the Holy One preferred, from unlimited charity towards living beings, _once more_ to reincarnate for the benefit of man.

The Nirvâna of the Buddhists is only the threshold of Paranirvâna, according to the Esoteric Teaching: while with the Brâhmans, it is the _summum bonum_, that final state from which there is no more return—not till the next Mahâ‐Kalpa, at all events. And even this last view will be opposed by some too orthodox and dogmatic Philosophers who will not accept the Esoteric Doctrine. With them Nirvâna is absolute nothingness, in which there is nothing and no one: only an unconditioned All. To understand the full characteristics of that Abstract Principle one must sense it intuitionally and comprehend fully the “one permanent condition in the Universe,” which the Hindûs define so truly as

The state of perfect unconsciousness—bare Chidâkâsham (field of consciousness) in fact,

however paradoxical it may seem to the profane reader.(667)

Shankarâchârya was reputed to be an Avatâra, an assertion the writer implicitly believes in, but which other people are, of course, at liberty to reject. And as such he took the body of a southern Indian, newly‐born Brâhman baby; that body, for reasons as important as they are mysterious to us, is said to have been animated by Gautama’s astral personal remains. This divine Non‐Ego chose as its own Upâdhi (physical basis), the ethereal, human Ego of a great Sage in this world of forms, as the fittest vehicle for Spirit to descend into.

Said Shankarâchârya:

Parabrahman is Kartâ [Purusha], as there is no other Adhishtâthâ,(668) and Parabrahman is Prakriti, there being no other substance.(669)

Now what is true of the Macrocosmical is also true of the Microcosmical plane. It is therefore nearer the truth to say—when once we accept such a possibility—that the “astral” Gautama, or the Nirmânakâya, was the Upâdhi of Shankarâchârya’s spirit, rather than that the latter was a reincarnation of the former.

When a Shankarâchârya has to be born, naturally every one of the principles in the manifested mortal man must be the purest and finest that exist on earth. Consequently those principles that were once attached to Gautama, who was the direct great predecessor of Shankara, were naturally attracted to him, the economy of Nature forbidding the re‐evolution of similar principles from the crude state. But it must be remembered that the higher ethereal principles are not, like the lower more material ones, visible sometimes to man (as astral bodies), and they have to be regarded in the light of separate or independent Powers or Gods, rather than as material objects. Hence the right way of representing the truth would be to say that the various principles, the Bodhisattva, of Gautama Buddha, which did not go to Nirvâna, re‐united to form the middle principles of Shankarâchârya, the earthly Entity.(670)

It is absolutely necessary to study the doctrine of the Buddhas esoterically and understand the subtle differences between the various planes of existence to be able to comprehend correctly the above. Put more clearly, Gautama, the human Buddha, who had, exoterically, Amitâbha for his Bodhisattva and Avalokiteshvara for his Dhyâni‐Buddha—the triad emanating directly from Âdi‐Buddha—assimilated these by his “Dhyâna” (meditation) and thus become a Buddha (“enlightened”). In another manner this is the case with all men; everyone of us has his Bodhisattva—the middle principle, if we hold for a moment to the trinitarian division of the septenary group—and his Dhyâni‐Buddha, or Chohan, the “Father of the Son.” Our connecting link with the higher Hierarchy of Celestial Beings lies here in a nutshell, only we are too sinful to assimilate them.

Six centuries after the translation of the human Buddha (Gautama) another Reformer, as noble and as loving, though less favoured by opportunity, arose in another part of the world, among another and a less spiritual race. There is a great similarity between the subsequent opinions of the world about the two Saviours, the Eastern and the Western. While millions became converted to the doctrines of the two Masters, the enemies of both—sectarian opponents, the most dangerous of all—tore both to shreds by insinuating maliciously‐distorted statements based on Occult truths, and therefore doubly dangerous. While of Buddha it is said by the Brâhmans that He was truly an Avatâra of Vishnu, but that He had come to tempt the Brâhmans from their faith, and was therefore the evil aspect of the God; of Jesus the Bardesanian Gnostics and others asserted that He was Nebu, the false Messiah, the destroyer of the old orthodox religion. “He is the founder of a new sect of Nazars,” said other sectarians. In Hebrew the word “Naba” means “to speak by inspiration,” (נבא, and נבו is Nebo, the God of wisdom). But Nebo is also Mercury, who is Buddha in the Hindu monogram of planets. And this is shown by the fact that the Talmudists hold that Jesus was inspired by the Genius (or Regent) of Mercury confounded by Sir William Jones with Gautama Buddha. There are many other strange points of similarity between Gautama and Jesus, which cannot be noticed here.(671)

If both the Initiates, aware of the danger of furnishing the uncultured masses with the powers acquired by ultimate knowledge, left the innermost corner of the sanctuary in profound darkness, who, acquainted with human nature, can blame either of them for this? Yet although Gautama, actuated by prudence, left the Esoteric and most dangerous portions of the Secret Knowledge untold, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty—the Esoteric Doctrine says one hundred—years, dying with the certainty of having taught its essential truths, and of having sown the seeds for the conversion of one‐third of the world, He yet perhaps revealed more than was strictly good for posterity. But Jesus, who had promised His disciples the knowledge which confers upon man the power of producing “miracles” far greater than He had ever produced Himself, died, leaving but a few faithful disciples—men only half‐way to knowledge. They had therefore to struggle with a world to which they could impart only what they but half‐ knew themselves, and—no more. In later ages the exoteric followers of both mangled the truths given out, often out of recognition. With regard to the adherents of the Western Master, the proof of this lies in the very fact that none of them can now produce the promised “miracles.” They have to choose: either it is they who have blundered, or it is their Master who must stand arraigned for an empty promise, an uncalled‐for boast.(672) Why such a difference in the destiny of the two? For the Occultist this enigma of the unequal favour of Karma or Providence is unriddled by the Secret Doctrine.

It is “not lawful” to speak of such things publicly, as St. Paul tells us. One more explanation only may be given in reference to this subject. It was said a few pages back that an Adept who thus sacrifices himself to live, giving up full Nirvâna, though he can never lose the knowledge acquired by him in previous existences, yet can never rise higher in such borrowed bodies. Why? Because he becomes simply the vehicle of a “Son of Light” from a still higher sphere, Who being Arûpa, has no personal astral body of His own fit for this world. Such “Sons of Light,” or Dhyâni‐ Buddhas, are the Dharmakâyas of preceding Manvantaras, who have closed their cycles of incarnations in the ordinary sense and who, being thus Karmaless, have long ago dropped their individual Rûpas, and have become identified with the first Principle. Hence the necessity of a sacrificial Nirmânakâya, ready to suffer for the misdeeds or mistakes of the new body in its earth‐pilgrimage, without any future reward on the plane of progression and rebirth, since there are no rebirths for him in the ordinary sense. The Higher Self, or Divine Monad, is not in such a case attached to the lower Ego; its connection is only temporary, and in most cases it acts through decrees of Karma. This is a real, genuine sacrifice, the explanation of which pertains to the highest Initiation of Gñâna (Occult Knowledge). It is closely linked, by a direct evolution of Spirit and involution of Matter, with the primeval and great Sacrifice at the foundation of the manifested Worlds, the gradual smothering and death of the spiritual in the material. The seed “is not quickened except it die.”(673) Hence in the Purusha Sûkta of the _Rig Veda_,(674) the mother‐ fount and source of all subsequent religions, it is stated allegorically that “the thousand‐headed Purusha” was slaughtered at the foundation of the World, that from his remains the Universe might arise. This is nothing more nor less than the foundation—the seed, truly—of the later many‐formed symbol in various religions, including Christianity, of the sacrificial lamb. For it is a play upon the words. “Aja” (Purusha), “the unborn,” or eternal Spirit, means also “lamb,” in Sanskrit. Spirit disappears—dies, metaphorically—the more it gets involved in matter, and hence the sacrifice of the “unborn,” or the “lamb.”

Why the BUDDHA chose to make this sacrifice will be plain only to those who, to the minute knowledge of His earthly life, add that of a thorough comprehension of the laws of Karma. Such occurrences, however, belong to the most exceptional cases.

As tradition goes, the Brâhmans had committed a heavy sin by persecuting Gautama BUDDHA and His teachings instead of blending and reconciling them with the tenets of pure Vaidic Brâhmanism, as was done later by Shankarâchârya. Gautama had never gone against the _Vedas_, only against the exoteric growth of preconceived interpretations. The Shruti—divine oral revelation, the outcome of which was the _Veda_—is eternal. It reached the ear of Gautama Siddartha as it had those of the Rishis who had written it down. He accepted the revelation, while rejecting the later overgrowth of Brâhmanical thought and fancy, and built His doctrines on one and the same basis of imperishable truth. As in the case of His Western successor, Gautama, the “Merciful,” the “Pure,” and the “Just,” was the first found in the Eastern Hierarchy of historical Adepts, if not in the world‐annals of divine mortals, who was moved by that generous feeling which locks the whole of mankind within one embrace, with no petty differences of race, birth, or caste. It was He who first enunciated that grand and noble principle, and He again who first put it into practice. For the sake of the poor and the reviled, the outcast and the hapless, invited by Him to the king’s festival table, He had excluded those who had hitherto sat alone in haughty seclusion and selfishness, believing that they would be defiled by the very shadow of the disinherited ones of the land—and these non‐spiritual Brâhmans turned against Him for that preference. Since then such as these have never forgiven the prince‐ beggar, the son of a king, who, forgetting His rank and station, had flung widely open the doors of the forbidden sanctuary to the pariah and the man of low estate, thus giving precedence to personal merit over hereditary rank or fortune. The sin was theirs—the cause nevertheless Himself: hence the “Merciful and the Blessed One” could not go out entirely from this world of illusion and created causes without atoning for the sin of all—therefore of these Brâhmans also. If “man afflicted by man” found safe refuge with the Tathâgata, “man afflicting man” had also his share in His self‐sacrificing, all‐embracing and forgiving love. It is stated that He desired to atone for the sin of His enemies. Then only was He willing to become a full Dharmakâya, a Jivanmukta “without remains.”

The close of Shankarâchârya’s life brings us face to face with a fresh mystery. Shankarâchârya retires to a cave in the Himâlayas, permitting none of his disciples to follow him, and disappears therein for ever from the sight of the profane. Is he dead? Tradition and popular belief answer in the negative, and some of the local Gurus, if they do not emphatically corroborate, do not deny the rumour. The truth with its mysterious details as given in the Secret Doctrine is known but to them; it can be given out fully only to the direct followers of the great Dravidian Guru, and it is for them alone to reveal of it as much as they think fit. Still it is maintained that this Adept of Adepts lives to this day in his spiritual entity as a mysterious, unseen, yet overpowering presence among the Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond, far beyond, the snowy‐capped Himâlayas.

SECTION XLIV. “REINCARNATIONS” OF BUDDHA.

Every section in the chapter on “Dezhin Shegpa”(675) (Tathâgata) in the Commentaries represents one year of that great Philosopher’s life, in its dual aspect of public and private teacher, the two being contrasted and commented upon. It shows the Sage reaching Buddha‐hood through a long course of study, meditation, and Initiations, as any other Adept would have to do, not one rung of the ladder up to the arduous “Path of Perfection” being missed. The Bodhisattva became a Buddha and a Nirvânî through personal effort and merit, after having had to undergo all the hardships of every other neophyte—not by virtue of a divine birth, as thought by some. It was only the reaching of Nirvâna while still living in the body and on this earth that was due to His having been in previous births high on the “Path of Dzyan” (knowledge, wisdom). Mental or intellectual gifts and abstract knowledge follow an Initiate in his new birth, but he has to acquire phenomenal powers anew, passing through all the successive stages. He has to acquire Rinchen‐na‐dun (“the seven precious gifts”)(676) one after the other. During the period of meditation no worldly phenomena on the physical plane must be allowed to enter into his mind or cross his thoughts. Zhine‐Ihagthong (Sanskrit: Vipashya, religious abstract meditation) will develop in him most wonderful faculties independently of himself. The four degrees of contemplation, or Sam‐tan (Sanskrit: Dhyâna), once acquired, everything becomes easy. For, once that man has entirely got rid of the idea of individuality, merging his Self in the Universal Self, becoming, so to say, the bar of steel to which the properties inherent in the loadstone (Âdi Buddha, or Anima Mundi) are imparted, powers hitherto dormant in him are awakened, mysteries in invisible Nature are unveiled, and becoming a Thonglam‐pa (a Seer) he becomes a Dhyâni‐Buddha. Every Zung (Dhâranî, a mystic word or mantra) of the Lokottaradharma (the highest world of causes) will be known to him.

Thus, after His outward death, twenty years later, Tathâgata in His immense love and “pitiful mercy” for erring and ignorant humanity, refused Paranirvâna(677) in order that He might continue to help men.

Says a Commentary:

_Having reached the Path of Deliverance [Thar‐lam] from transmigration, one cannot perform Tulpa_(_678_)_ any longer, for to become a Paranirvânî is to close the circle of the Septenary Ku‐Sum._(_679_)_ He has merged his borrowed Dorjesempa [Vajrasattva] into the Universal and become one with it._

Vajradhara, also Vajrasattva (Tibetan: Dorjechang and Dorjedzin, or Dorjosampa), is the regent or President of all the Dhyân Chohans or Dhyâni Buddhas, the highest, the Supreme Buddha; personal, yet never manifested objectively; the “Supreme Conqueror,” the “Lord of all Mysteries,” the “One without Beginning or End”—in short, the Logos of Buddhism. For, as Vajrasattva, He is simply the Tsovo (Chief) of the Dhyâni Buddhas or Dhyân Chohans, and the Supreme Intelligence in the Second World; while as Vajradhara (Dorjechang), He is all that which was enumerated above. “These two are one, and yet two,” and over them is “Chang, the Supreme Unmanifested and Universal Wisdom that has no name.” As two in one He (They) is the Power that subdued and conquered Evil from the beginning, allowing it to reign only over willing subjects on earth, and having no power over those who despise and hate it. Esoterically the allegory is easily understood; exoterically Vajradhara (Vajrasattva) is the God to whom all the evil spirits swore that they would not impede the propagation of the Good Law (Buddhism), and before whom all the demons tremble. Therefore, we say this dual personage has the same _rôle_ assigned to it in canonical and dogmatic Tibetan Buddhism as have Jehovah and the Archangel Mikael, the Metatron of the Jewish Kabalists. This is easily shown. Mikael is “the angel of the face of God,” or he who represents his Master. “My face shall go with thee” (in English, “presence”), before the Israelites, says God to Moses (_Exodus_, xxxiii. 14). “The angel of my presence” (Hebrew: “of my face”) (_Isaiah_, lxiii. 9), etc. The Roman Catholics identify Christ with Mikael, who is also his ferouer, or “face,” mystically. This is precisely the position of Vajradhara, or Vajrasattva, in Northern Buddhism. For the latter, in His Higher Self as Vajradhara (Dorjechang), is _never_ manifested, except to the seven Dhyân Chohans, the primeval Builders. Esoterically, it is the Spirit of the “Seven” collectively, their seventh principle, or Âtman. Exoterically, any amount of fables may be found in _Kâla Chakra_, the most important work in the Gyut [or (D)gyu] division of the Kanjur, the division of mystic knowledge [(D)gyu]. Dorjechang (wisdom) Vajradhara, is said to live in the second Arûpa World, which connects him with Metatron, in the first world of pure Spirits, the Briatic world of the Kabalists, who call this angel El‐ Shaddai, the Omnipotent and Mighty One. Metatron is in Greek ἄγγελος (Messenger), or the Great Teacher. Mikael fights Satan, the Dragon, and conquers him and his Angels. Vajrasattva, who is one with Vajrapâni, the Subduer of the Evil Spirits, conquers Râhu, the Great Dragon who is always trying to devour the sun and moon (eclipses). “War in Heaven” in the Christian legend is based upon the bad angels having discovered the secrets (magical wisdom) of the good ones (Enoch), and the mystery of the “Tree of Life.” Let anyone read simply the exoteric accounts in the Hindu and Buddhist Pantheons—the latter version being taken from the former—and he will find both resting on the same primeval, archaic allegory from the Secret Doctrine. In the exoteric texts (Hindu and Buddhist), the Gods churn the ocean to extract from it the Water of Life—Amrita—or the Elixir of Knowledge. In both the Dragon steals some of this, and is exiled from heaven by Vishnu, or Vajradhara, or the chief God, whatever may be his name. We find the same in the Book of _Enoch_, and it is poetized in St. John’s _Revelation_. And now the allegory, with all its fanciful ornamentations, has become a dogma!

As will be found mentioned later, the Tibetan Lamaseris contain many secret and semi‐secret volumes, detailing the lives of great Sages. Many of the statements in them are purposely confused, and in others the reader becomes bewildered, unless a clue be given him, by the use of one name to cover many individuals who follow the same line of teaching. Thus there is a succession of “living Buddhas’” and the name “Buddha” is given to teacher after teacher. Schlagintweit writes:

To each human Buddha belongs a Dhyâni‐Buddha, and a Dhyâni‐ Bodhisattva, and the unlimited number of the former also involves an equally unlimited number of the latter.(680)

[But if this be so—and the exoteric and semi‐exoteric use of the name justify the statement—the reader must depend on his own intuition to distinguish between the Dhyâni Buddhas and the human Buddhas, and must not apply to the great BUDDHA of the Fifth Race all that is ascribed to “the Buddha” in books where, as said, blinds are constantly introduced.

In one of these books some strange and obscure statements are made which the writer gives, as before, entirely on her own responsibility, since a few may sense a meaning hidden under words misleading in their surface meaning.](681) It is stated that at the age of thirty‐three, Shankarâchârya, tired of his mortal body, “put it off” in the cave he had entered, and that the Bodhisattva, that served as his lower personality, was freed

With the burden of a sin upon him which he had not committed.

At the same time it is added:

At whatever age one puts off his outward body by free will, at that age will he be made to die a violent death against his will in his next rebirth.

Now, Karma could have no hold on “Mahâ Shankara” (as Shankara is called in the secret work), as he had, as Avatâra, no Ego of his own, but a Bodhisattva—a willing sacrificial victim. Neither had the latter any responsibility for the deed, whether sinful or otherwise. Therefore we do not see the point, since Karma cannot act unjustly. There is some terrible mystery involved in all this story, one that no uninitiated intellect can ever unravel. Still, there it is, suggesting the natural query, “Who, then, was punished by Karma?” and leaving it to be answered.

A few centuries later Buddha tried one more incarnation, it is said, in * * *, and again, fifty years subsequent to the death of this Adept, in one whose name is given as Tiani‐Tsang.(682) No details, no further information or explanation is given. It is simply stated that the last Buddha had to work out the remains of his Karma, which none of the Gods themselves can escape, forced as he was to bury still deeper certain mysteries half revealed by him—hence misinterpreted. The words used would stand when translated:(683)

Born fifty‐two years too early as Shramana Gautama, the son of King Zastang; then retiring fifty‐seven years too soon as Mahâ Shankara, who got tired of his outward form. This wilful act aroused and attracted King Karma, who killed the new form of * * * at thirty‐three,(684) the age of the body that was put off. [At whatever age one puts off his outward body by free will, at that age will he be made to die in his next incarnation _against his will_—Commentary.] He died in his next (body) at thirty‐two and a little over, and again in his next at eighty—a Mâyâ, and at one hundred, in reality. The Bodhisattva chose Tiani‐Tsang,(685) then again the Sugata became Tsong‐Kha‐pa, who became thus Dezhin‐ Shegpa [Tathâgata—“one who follows in the way and manner of his predecessors”]. The Blessed One could do good to his generation as * * * but none to posterity, and so as Tiani‐Tsaug he became incarnated only for the “_remains_” [of his precedent Karma, as we understand it]. The Seven Ways and the Four Truths were once more hidden out of sight. The Merciful One confined since then his attention and fatherly care to the heart of Bodyul, the nursery‐ grounds of the seeds of truth. The blessed “remains” since then have overshadowed and rested in many a holy body of human Bodhisattvas.

No further information is given, least of all are there any details or explanations to be found in the secret volume. All is darkness and mystery in it, for it is evidently written but for those who are already instructed. Several flaming red asterisks are placed instead of names, and the few facts given are abruptly broken off. The key of the riddle is left to the intuition of the disciple, unless the “direct followers” of Gautama the Buddha—“those who are to be denied by His Church for the next cycle”—and of Shankarâchârya, are pleased to add more.

The final section gives a kind of summary of the seventy sections—covering seventy‐three years of Buddha’s life(686)—from which the last paragraph is summarized as follows:

Emerging from ——, the most excellent seat of the three secrets [Sang‐Sum], the Master of incomparable mercy, after having performed on all the anchorites the rite of ——, and each of these having been cut off,(687) perceived through [the power of] Hlun‐ Chub(688) what was his next duty. The Most‐Illustrious meditated and asked himself whether this would help [the future] generations. What they needed was the sight of Mâyâ in a body of illusion. Which?... The great conqueror of pains and sorrows arose and proceeded back to his birthplace. There Sugata was welcomed by the few, for they did not know Shramana Gautama. “Shâkya [the Mighty] is in Nirvâna.... He has given the Science to the Shuddhas [Shûdra],” said they of Damze Yul [the country of Brâhmans: India].... It was for that, born of pity, that the All‐Glorious One had to retire to ——, and then appear [karmically] as Mahâ Shankara; and out of pity as ——, and again as ——, and again as Tsong‐Kha‐pa.... For, he who chooses in humiliation must go down, and he who _loves not_ allows Karma to raise him.(689)

This passage is confessedly obscure and written for the few. It is not lawful to say any more, for the time has not yet come when nations are prepared to hear the whole truth. The old religions are full of mysteries, and to demonstrate some of them would surely lead to an explosion of hatred, followed, perhaps, by bloodshed and worse. It will be sufficient to know that while Gautama Buddha is merged in Nirvâna ever since his death, Gautama Shâkyamuni may have had to reincarnate—this dual inner personality being one of the greatest mysteries of Esoteric psychism.

“The seat of the three secrets” refers to a place inhabited by high Initiates and their disciples. The “secrets” are the three mystic powers known as Gopa, Yasodhara, and Uptala Varna, that Csomo de Köros mistook for Buddha’s three wives, as other Orientalists have mistaken Shakti (Yoga power) personified by a female deity for His wife; or the Draupadî—also a spiritual power—for the wife in common of the five brothers Pândava.

SECTION XLV. AN UNPUBLISHED DISCOURSE OF BUDDHA.

(It is found in the second _Book of Commentaries_ and is addressed to the Arhats.)

Said the All‐Merciful: Blessed are ye, O Bhikshus, happy are ye who have understood the mystery of Being and _Non‐Being_ explained in Bas‐pa [Dharma, Doctrine], and have given preference to the latter, for ye are verily my Arhats.... The elephant, who sees his form mirrored in the lake, looks at it, and then goes away, taking it for the real body of another elephant, is wiser than the man who beholds his face in the stream, and, looking at it, says, “Here am I.... I am I”: for the “I,” his Self, is not in the world of the twelve Nidânas and mutability, but in that of Non‐ Being, the only world beyond the snares of Mâyâ.... That alone, which has neither cause nor author, which is self‐existing, eternal, far beyond the reach of mutability, is the true “I” [Ego], the Self of the Universe. The Universe of Nam‐Kha says: “I am the world of Sien‐Chan”;(690) the four illusions laugh and reply, “Verily so.” But the truly wise man knows that neither man, nor the Universe that he passes through like a flitting shadow, is any more a real Universe than the dewdrop that reflects a spark of the morning sun is that sun.... There are three things, Bhikshus, that are everlastingly the same, upon which no vicissitude, no modification can ever act: these are the Law, Nirvâna, and Space,(691) and those three are One, since the first two are within the last, and that last one a Mâyâ, so long as man keeps within the whirlpool of sensuous existences. One need not have his mortal body die to avoid the clutches of concupiscence and other passions. The Arhat who observes the seven hidden precepts of Bas‐pa may become Dang‐ma and Lha.(692) He may hear the “holy voice” of ... [Kwan‐yin],(693) and find himself within the quiet precincts of his Sangharama(694) transferred into Amitâbha Buddha.(695) Becoming one with Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi,(696) he may pass through all the six worlds of Being (Rûpaloka) and get into the first three worlds of Arûpa.(697)... He who listens to my secret law, preached to my select Arhats, will arrive with its help at the knowledge of Self, and thence at perfection.

It is due to entirely erroneous conceptions of Eastern thought and to ignorance of the existence of an Esoteric key to the outward Buddhist phrases that Burnouf and other great scholars have inferred from such propositions—held also by the Vedântins—as “my body is not body” and “myself is no self of mine,” that Eastern psychology was all based upon non‐permanency. Cousin, for instance, lecturing upon the subject, brings the two following propositions to prove, on Burnouf’s authority, that, unlike Brâhmanism, Buddhism rejects the perpetuity of the thinking principle. These are:

1. Thought or Spirit(698)—for the faculty is not distinguished from the subject—appears only with sensation and does not survive it.

2. The Spirit cannot itself lay hold of itself, and in directing attention to itself it draws from it only the conviction of its powerlessness to see itself otherwise than as successive and transitory.

This all refers to Spirit embodied, not to the freed Spiritual Self on whom Mâyâ has no more hold. Spirit is no body; therefore have the Orientalists made of it “nobody” and nothing. Hence they proclaim Buddhists to be Nihilists, and Vedântins to be the followers of a creed in which the “Impersonal [God] turns out on examination to be a myth”; their goal is described as

The complete extinction of all spiritual, mental, and bodily powers by absorption into the Impersonal.(699)

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

[Illustration: Triangle with A B C]

A. B. C. The Unknowable A. Sexless, Unmanifested Logos B. Potential Wisdom C. Universal Ideation

[Illustration: Circle with a through g]

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

[Illustration: Circle with 1 through 6]

(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

[Illustration: Circle with 1 through 10]

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.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

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