Theosophy - What's It All About

'Theosophy - What's it all about?' - Contents, Preface & Introduction by Geoffrey Farthing 'A brief summary of a wonderfully exciting and vitally important subject.'

CONTENTS Foreword

vii

1

Introducing Theosophy

1

2

Fundamentals and Origins

8

3

The Purpose of Life?

16

4

The Total Make-up of Man

22

5

Life After Death

30

6

The Law

37

7

Reincarnation or The Continuity of Life

44

8

Evolution by Self-Effort

50

9

Scientific and Esoteric Knowledge

59

10

The Way to Understanding

68

11

Theosophy and Religion

75

Bibliography

83

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - Foreword

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vii If one is in almost any gathering of people and is asked what one's interests are and one says Theosophy, the next question will almost certainly be, What's that? Apart from a very few no one has ever heard of it, let alone knows anything about it. It is hoped that when you have read this little book you will find that state of affairs hard to believe. Theosophy is probably the most important single thing that mankind could or should know about. It deals with the very nature of man's existence in every aspect and at every level of being. And he will see that there are more of these levels than are normally dreamed of. A knowledge of them is fundamental to a proper understanding of what makes us, and our Cosmos 'tick', to use a common expression. We all have T.V. nowadays. Occasionally there are programmes dealing with E.S.P., with ghosts, with the paranormal generally and with reincarnation and what happens after death. For all their opinions, some of them very learned, and their beliefs, do we get the impression that either the laymen or the 'experts' really know what they are talking about? Is it not all speculation, except for the facts of the phenomena? The events seem real enough but what about the explanations, are they really credible? Then there are the fields of psychology and religion. In the first, by way of some work done by men with extra- ordinary experience and insight, progress is being made into some aspects of the field of mental activity and derangement. But in spite of the wonderful findings of the neurologists and brain surgeons as to what parts of the brain do what, are we any further towards discovering what orders our brain functions and what determines what we shall viii think? Does anyone know how it is that a non-physical impulse, say to move a limb, activates the brain so that a signal is sent to the appropriate muscles? We all know how the eye works and how signals are sent to a special part of the brain to be turned into images of which we become aware, but what is really the instrument of perception, what is this consciousness which can register these visual impressions? Who knows? What is an emotion? Is it something we feel as a result of a surplus or deficiency of some chemical affecting some part of our brain? It is known that emotional states can be so produced but could not an emotional impulse from our inner being produce naturally the chemical change in our bodies which we feel? Similarly. are thinking and memory really functions of the physical brain? May it not be that the physical brain registers some subtle impulses from an inner plane of being and transmits them to waking physical consciousness? Again what is life? What is the essential difference between a very newly dead body and a live one? Is it not that there is nothing co-ordinating the activity of the various organs, regulating the function of the ductless glands to adjust their inter-action? What stops a particular plant or animal from growing to twice the normal size of the species? What

programmes the genes of living things so that within narrow limits their physical characteristics stay the same? Talking of characteristics, whence the distinctive individual character of even the youngest child? Further is man just a naked but intelligent ape? Whence the life-force which seems to pervade and manifest through all living things? How comes it that planets spin on their axes? How are the places of the heavenly bodies determined? Is there a God to whom we can and should pray? Does anyone know the answers to these questions? The ordinary student of Theosophy fairly soon learns, however, that there are answers. And that the answers together make up a consistent scheme of knowledge such that each aspect relates harmoniously to all others. The Universe is a living whole, as also is a man, with all its divers constituents ix marvellously ordered. The total process manifests one LAW, itself the product of experienced intelligence, without some modicum, greater or lesser, of which, there is nothing in the whole of Nature. How does all this affect you or me? It gives us understanding, whereas before there was obscurity and mystery .We understand the processes of life and our part in the process. We discover our relationship to Cosmos, even in its depths. We learn the 'mysteries' of life and death, and what we are here for. We learn the grand object of all existence. It is not the intention to deal with all these things in this little book but to introduce some ideas to enlarge our outlook in general. It is hoped to say enough to create an appetite for more. There are some 'secrets' to learning Theosophy. One of them is that real knowledge of it is born of effort, the effort to acquire the data, so to speak, the effort to understand and the effort to persevere. All this changes our very being, our faculties. More significantly perhaps we are, as it were, taken out of ourselves. Consciousness is liberated from the confines of our personal selves and their immediate interests. Better, may be, than all this even, is that we begin to sense a unity with all life and especially with humanity, we sense its essential brotherhood, its common aims, its common pains, its inherent capacity for affection, for love, but we also come to realise its immaturity, its follies and cruelties, its ignorance, its superstitions, leading to untold strife and misery. We sense its helplessness, too, and then begin to want to help. Last we realise how even a little of the 'eternal verities' of Theosophy could indeed be a universal panacea, as the basis, at least, for a long term course of treatment, which in the end could not fail. Perhaps, after reading this book you may see something of the vision and want to enter on the voyage of discovery, and feel you have a part to play in helping others to see. The purpose of this book is to let it be known that such a thing as Theosophy exists, and to say something of what it's all about. GAF 28.6.83 Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 1 Introducing Theosophy

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - Chapter 1 Introducing Theosophy

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-1In these days of atom bombs, space rockets and nuclear energy, of ever-increasing material prosperity and of all the distractions of modern life, both entertaining and otherwise, it is hard even to stop and think where all this activity and wealth is leading us. The opportunities of having more and more of everything seem to increase daily with the flood of technical inventions that makes man's productivity greater and greater. Already in some Western countries not only are man's basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, light and heat amply met for the majority, but most people have many of the things such as radios, televisions, washing machines, automatic cookers, automobiles and so on, which are designed to make life easier and more pleasant. There is talk of an ever shorter working week. Ina generation or so, given peace, when the massive productive capacity of those now engaged on military enterprises could become available for civil purposes, there might be a 10-hour week; or a vast number of unemployed. What is happening in the West is only an indication of what can and surely will happen in time in the rest of the world. True, there are still millions of people without the bare necessities of life, but is it not only a matter of time before these deficiencies are made good? What then of humanity? Will Utopia really have arrived? We can imagine otherwise surplus labour resources being employed on great civil engineering projects, on schools, universities, public buildings, dwelling accommodation and so on, but to what ultimate end? What shall we do with all these amenities and adjuncts to living and with our leisure? An easy answer is that we shall return to the arts, and no doubt leisure will increase our sensibilities and appreciation; but history relates that small sections of the -2population have been in this fortunate position before, and although they have left us things of beauty and fine literature, legal systems and learning, how much more fundamentally happy or how much better morally have they left mankind? This look into the future might appear cynical and depressing, but it does appear that up to now mankind, except in the short term of a lifetime and in the purely material sense, has had no truly satisfying and really fulfilling goal. It appears that liberation from the chores of life leads eventually to boredom, to mischief and to degeneration. This has undeniably happened in the past. After a period of peace and plenty, men simply have not known what to do with themselves. Can it be that there is not something more fundamentally purposive, more really significant, to which we can give our attention and bend our energies? Is there no long-term objective, no grand scheme being worked out in which each of us can play some worthwhile part? What of the world religions, do they provide us with the answer? Christianity for example, has its Kingdom of Heaven to be established sometime here on earth and it offers us individual everlasting life in Heaven as a reward for righteous living now. Even if we believe this, what it means to us really is somewhat conjectural and nebulous. We have to face the fact that in modern society these consummations are not impelling factors in our lives. Eastern religions tell of a culminating state of liberation and eternal bliss to be aimed at through many lives of individual effort. What does such liberation and bliss mean to us? Are these inducements to the good life

satisfactory long-term objectives either for us singly or for humanity as a whole? Even if our religions do supply answers to this problem, how are they faring in the world today, particularly in the West? Is religion not becoming outmoded and making ever less and less of an appeal? Are not men growing intellectually to the point where what does not satisfy reason does not promote faith or inspire confidence? The simple ethics and codes of decent behaviour of our religions are, maybe -3because the religious backing seems to ordinary thinking men to be incomprehensible mystery , taken for granted in part but also scorned and ignored in part. Common sense demands that a code of ethics and morals should be observed for the continued existence of organized society and it must be admitted that our religions do provide us with these important basic restraints. They also remind us of the finer qualities in our natures and tell us how, if we gave expression to them, our lives would be the fuller and happier; but we do not respond. Our interest is not aroused. Our imaginations are not fired. The authoritarian nature of doctrine and dogma, based on established and conventional interpretations of much-translated scriptural writings, in many cases of obscure origin, is now unacceptable. Where faith does exist, is it not in spite of and not because of the dicta and practices of religions? The exponents of our religions have failed to hold our respect. Why do we feel this way? Is it not because we cannot follow their theological arguments and justifications? Maybe we form the opinion, secretly within ourselves, that our teachers do not really know what they are talking about. How much of Christianity's dogma is not founded on conjecture and superstition? For information about such fundamental questions as, for example, what life is, what the origins of things, what the nature of consciousness and so on, we look to science and not to religion. We look to religion to tell us what spirit is, what God is, what happens after death, but do we get really satisfactory answers and why anyway is there this division in knowledge? Why do we concede knowledge to science but not to religion, at least not in the same sense? In religion we seem to have to resort to and to accept, at any rate in large areas, the vagaries of belief. Does not religion deal with facts in nature too? If it does, why do so few of its exponents seem to know about them? Should there really be this distinction between so-called scientific facts and religious ones? Is this difference due only to our ignorance? These questions are asked in order to stimulate questioning into matters that most of us have probably considered -4too sacred to be subjected to bold and, if necessary, destructive inquiry. They are asked because before progress can be made at all, the ground has to be cleared and rubbish seen to be rubbish, however glamorised in our imaginations it has become. This process of questioning has already started within some of the branches of Western Christianity. The great fear that lurks in many a heart when this process of deep inquiry is begun, is, if we do remove the props of the faith we have been brought up in and are used to, what would there be left? At this point there is usually the vehement affirmation 'But there must be a GOD!" The question is of tremendous importance to those who have found satisfaction, help, comfort or other benefit, in considerable measure from their religion, or to those who by means of it have been able to help others. To the extent that this is their experience, they feel their religion is valid. Much however depends on what we regard as

validity. Itseems that far too commonly it is not the truth that is sought or wanted but a confirmation of cherished beliefs. Is this not particularly and pathetically the case with many a professional exponent of religion to whom we ought to be able to look for guidance and enlightenment? Some inadequacy is now admitted by the braver and more honest clergy - witness the interrogatory and 'agnostic' books by churchmen. It appears to many in the West, where we are concerned particularly with practical and not mystical or deep meta- physical thinking, that religious instruction is based on fundamental ignorance. We can, for example, make little or nothing of the doctrine of vicarious atonement. The mental gymnastics required to justify that very important part of Christian Church logic is altogether too much for us. Who can give us an explanation of the Book of Genesis that does not completely bewilder us? These two examples are from Christian sources, but others of like nature, either in doctrine or practice, can be found in most other religions as they now exist. Even among the general laity this ignorance in their spiritual leaders is felt, if only subconsciously. The result is that religion, as taught, is discredited so that even what -5is valuable in the teaching and disciplines is disregarded. May this not be the reason for the small and decreasing impact made by religion nowadays throughout the world? Is there then nothing that can ever appeal to our increasing intellects? Is there, in fact, no substance of real truth behind the words of our religions? Is there nothing other than that which those who have a leaning that way, can make the words mean to them by way of their beliefs and feelings? If there is such a substance, how are we to come to know it? Did anyone ever know it? Does in fact anyone know it now? If there is such knowledge, how does it affect us and fit in with our institutions and relate to the facts of science? How would or does it tie in with our general health and well-being, with our personal, group and national relationships? Does the scheme of things contain any comprehensive grand plan for the growth, development or even the future of this and possibly other worlds, in which we can be concerned? If there is a plan, this would provide us with our long-term aim but what can we do to further it? What powers and opportunities for doing so have we got? These questions are all of vital importance. The very nature of the questions demands, however, a high degree of open-mindedness and a willingness on the part of the reader to look at them in a really unprejudiced way if we are to get any worthwhile answers. We must be prepared not to reject out of hand anything that conflicts, or even appears to conflict, with any preconceived ideas we may have even if those ideas seem at the outset to be sacred and inviolable. An open examination of these things will surely give rise to much controversy and contention, but this is good. The exercise will test and challenge some maybe preciously held and strongly guarded views which nevertheless may not be so valuable or so tenable as we held them to be. It might be asked why if it is possible to know the fundamental facts in and secrets of Nature as is here implied, they are not already generally known? The short answer is that many are known but they are ignored. Many others, though, relate essentially to realms of being not -6accessible to our ordinary five senses and their existence cannot be deduced by the processes of ordinary reason. The higher faculty of intuition has to be cultivated so that a different form of

'seeing' and 'hearing' is available to us, but more of this later . We can come at such knowledge for ourselves directly if, and only if, we want it sufficiently. Even if what follows does not inspire the reader to make the attempt for himself, it will at least, it is hoped, provide food for healthy thought. The ideas given, even though they remain hypothetical, provide a framework into which will fit all the facts of experience derived from ordinary living and observation. This in itself should give some validity to what is here set forth. The foundation material for the general thesis is contained in the 'basic' literature of the original Theosophical Society, principally in The Key to Theosophy and The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky. These works were written towards the end of the nineteenth century and from what is contained in them many movements of 'theosophical' nature have sprung up. Their fundamental content was by no means new, as its author plainly states: there is a tradition of the knowledge of Nature's secrets, of 'Gnosis', coming down from time immemorial. There has also been a great wealth of literature treating of the nature of existence and man's relationship to the Universe, which was largely destroyed; what persists is mostly from the Middle Ages and in obscure symbolic terms. Without the oral keys possessed by the teachers in the various systems it is nearly meaningless to the ordinary man. The literature of H. P. Blavatsky and her Initiate Teachers propounds these ancient teachings in a more-or- less modern idiom and adds much material, quite explicit, not till then available to the general public. Italso quotes the ancient and traditional systems and symbols for comparison and example, and relates the so-called secret doctrine to the findings and tenets of science as they were in the latter part of nineteenth century. Itis noteworthy that in spite of the tremendous expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, The Secret Doctrine, where it treats of the same -7matters, is fully justified. Inmany cases much of what was then said appears now as fulfilled prophecy. Much of the content of The Secret Doctrine is "strong meat", and not for "babes or sucklings". This is not to say that the basic teachings are not understandable, but that their broader and deeper ramifications are necessarily set out in a language and style demanding close concentration and perseverance and that to realize their meaning fully, our inner perceptive faculties must be quickened and developed. Beginners in the subject are advised, therefore, to start their studies with more elementary and summary type books of which The Key to Theosophy is probably the best, but even that will stand careful reading and prolonged study. The rationale behind our ever being able to have any comprehension of the deep universal workings of Nature and the secrets of Being, is that man is in himself a reflection in miniature of the whole Universe. His essential nature and constitution is the same as that of the Cosmos. By acquiring knowledge of his essential Self, he thus knows of the SELF behind all being and manifestation. This knowledge is Theosophy. Theosophy treats of the whole of Life, as a Whole. Goodness and Beauty are of its nature; Devotion and Mysticism are its ways. Contact with only the fringes of one's own essential inner being gives certain knowledge, as part of oneself, of something of the boundless, inexhaustible allembracing Love of the One Life we share. Theosophy has been described as the "science of sciences". As spiritual science it is religion of the highest order but is not expressed exclusively in the terms of any one religion. Itis not a religion,

but is religion itself, from which all religions, in their pristine purity, have been, are, or will be derived. It was said of The Secret Doctrine by its writer that "it contains just as much as can be received by the World during this coming (20th) century" ..."this "World" (i.e. man living in the personal nature) will find in the two volumes of the S.D. all that its utmost comprehension can grasp". What a challenge! Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 2 Fundamentals and Origins

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - Chapter 2 Fundamentals and Origins

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-8No matter what our ideas or beliefs on origins, it is obvious and beyond argument that there is a physical universe of which we, so far as our bodies are concerned, and our world, are parts. It must be obvious, too, that everything that has existence must have had a beginning. All things persist for a while. In terms of our time, it may be a very short while or it may be incalculable ages. Things also exist in a state of change. The bodies of living things, for example, change with the process of metabolism. Organic and inorganic substances change with time and with the conditions that surround them. Even rocks suffer from weather erosion. In these changes we see the impermanence of all things and the inevitability of their ultimate end. If we think about this process of constant change, we are led to the realization that motion is a universal principle. Throughout all Nature there is motion and movement. In the grand phenomena of Nature for example, in the wind, in the rain and the oceans, it is obvious. At the other end of the scale there is motion within the very particles of matter itself. Nothing is still, absolutely still, even for an instant of time. This ceaseless movement of and within all things introduces another idea, that of energy. We know of the vast amounts of energy locked up in atoms. We know how to release some of that energy. Energy is the ultimate basis of the existence of all things in manifestation. Without it there would be no existence for anything. We are now familiar with the idea that energy and matter are forms of the same thing. Now movement, as perceived and thought of by us, is necessarily associated with time. It is only by the movement -9of something that we are conscious of the passage of time. It is by the movement of the hands of watches or the passage of the sun through the heavens that we measure time for ordering the events of our lives. There are some interesting aspects of movement and time. One is that rates of movement and of the passage of time are always relative quantities. For instance, if we could move at the velocity of an electron, the speed of other electrons travelling in our direction would appear to us quite slow, assuming we could see them, even though they and we were travelling with respect to something else at a speed approaching that of light. While we are thinking on these lines, we must see also that movement and space are inseparable. Things must have room to be and move in. Space, therefore, is a prerequisite of existence. Some ideas on the nature of space will be given later and from them we shall see that we may have to revise our commonly held ideas that space is always to be regarded as the mere empty extension of nothing in three dimensions. Having introduced these fundamental ideas of motion, energy, space and time, let us see in brief what use Theosophy can make of them. First as to origins; here we must proceed with some caution because of the ideas on this subject most of us have been brought up with and are conditioned to. We shall have to be very careful not

to let our preconceptions intrude if we would see what is now meant. A cursory reading, in the manner of reading a news item for example, will yield nothing. Dwell and think deeply on and around what is written. No belief is asked for, but an open and fearless look at what is said, and a firm intention to understand is needed. To most of us and to begin with, the ideas given will be mere theories, hypotheses, but let us see whether or not they can explain or fit in with the facts of our existence of which we are aware and so earn our reasonably acceptance. Theosophy makes Three Fundamental Propositions. The first postulates that the universe is a unity, a unity stemming from and having its being in an inconceivable, indescribable -10Absolute, unconditioned, unlimited in any way whatsoever. This Absolute is always unmanifest, eternal, infinite, and with no attributes. Possibly the only positive thing that can be said about it is that it IS, and that it is All Potentiality. The Absolute is Reality. It is the All. It is not an entity, and is utterly impersonal. It is, and always will be, quite unknowable, beyond all thought and speculation. This proposition says additionally that the highest thing that can possibly be conceived of, and that only in the sense that we can get an idea of it for purposes of thinking and talking, is one remove from the Absolute in the chain of causation of manifested existence, and that is a symbolic Duality, in itself a Unity, the ONE. The two aspects of this Duality are absolute abstract Space and absolute abstract Motion. These two are highly metaphysical concepts which are in themselves nearly meaningless to us, but they act as a foundation on which to build a comprehensible structure. Abstract Space is that which we cannot "exclude from any conception or conceive of by itself". It is the universal matrix within and out of which what we call matter can arise. It is the "rootless root" of the passive, limiting, confining principle in the universe which makes possible existence in any form. This abstract Space is not the three- dimensional extension we know but, so to say, is the 'essence' of it. This is a very difficult concept but the idea can perhaps be seen if space itself is regarded as something. Nowhere is there absolutely nothing. Abstract Motion on the other hand is 'the rootless root' of energy, the active generative force in creation. It is not the energy itself but that of which energy, as we know it, is a derivative or manifestation. Now these two aspects, of abstract Motion and abstract Space, give us the elements of the primary duality of subjectivity and objectivity necessary when, we begin to think in terms of incipient Consciousness as we must now do. Consciousness, as we know it, does not exist at this 'highest' level of Being, but the essentials necessary for the duality of a knower and something to be known are there. -11Absolute abstract Motion can be regarded as 'Unconditioned Consciousness'. Itis the origin of what we shall come to talk of as Spirit. Itis important to remember we are here still talking of a Unity, the ONE. Motion and Space, subject and object, Spirit and Matter are inseparables, dual aspects only of the ONE. Neither aspect of each of these dualities can have any being in isolation, any more than can the inside and outside of a container. There cannot be one without the other. Together they form "the basis of conditioned Being", to quote The Secret Doctrine. "This Absolute and its aspects of Space and Motion as a Triad (symbolized by finite intelligence as the theological Trinity)

... "is the origin" of force and of all individual consciousness and supplies the guiding intelligence in the vast scheme of cosmic Evolution ... just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is "that" which links spirit to matter, subject to object." This 'link' (called Fohat in the literature) is the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation. Itis the means by which the fruits of the past are impressed as seed imprints on the nascent matter of future things, as archetypal forms and as the laws of Nature. Thus from Spirit comes consciousness and from root Matter "come the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualized and attains to self - or reflective consciousness" and, as a "mysterious link between Mind and Matter, we have the animating principle electrifying every atom with life". This principle operates at all levels of being and is in fact that which manifests as electricity in the physical world. From this fundamental trinity of Spirit-Matter-Energy is derived the whole manifested universe, in all its diversity of condition, material, organism and form. To anyone who has not met these ideas before they will no doubt appear as abstruse. Possibly there will not appear to be much connection between them and life as we know it in our ordinary circumstances, but if carefully studied -12 over a period, with thought and in the light of what follows, they will lead to an understanding that would be very unlikely to have arisen spontaneously without them. Perseverance yields wonderful results. Now that we have a few 'cornerstones', let us see if we can come a stage 'more down to earth', even though the going may still not be too easy. One of the big difficulties in this vast but wonderful subject of Theosophy is that we are dealing with a story that has no beginning and no end. We have to start in the middle. The big basic ideas we have so far touched on are literally universal. They apply to the whole Universe and it is necessary to look at the two remaining universal Propositions before we try to cover more familiar ground. One of these Propositions is that all being, that is, everything in manifestation, is subject to and operates according to universal Law. This Law has a number of aspects. One of them is that everything proceeds in cycles, periods of rest and activity typified by days and nights, summers and winters, waking and sleeping, in-breathing and out- breathing and so on. There are little cycles within big ones and big ones within bigger ones. Breathing is a little one within the bigger one of waking and sleeping. Waking and sleeping are small ones within the greater cycle of birth and death. Within the races of mankind there are the lives of individuals, of the generations of families, that come and go; there are the births and deaths of tribes, of nations and of the races themselves. Another aspect of the Law is that everything is, and is as it is, as a result of what went before. The Third Proposition is derived from our Spirit-Matter thesis and our first Proposition, the Universal Unity. Itis that just as Spirit cannot be without Matter, so consciousness cannot be without a vehicle or vessel of matter in some state, in which to operate. The active interplay between Spirit and Matter is Life. There are planes of existence, which we will discuss later, in each of which consciousness can function if it has a 'body' of substance appropriate to the particular plane. A physical body is necessary to it in our everyday world.

Consciousness as it manifests in individuals is a spark derived, from but never entirely separate from the -13Universal Consciousness. Further, the vehicles or bodies that individual consciousness uses are subject to the cyclical law of being and non-being. Periodically therefore, individual consciousness must withdraw from the vehicle it has been using and, for its next period of activity, must take on a new one. Coupled with this successive occupation of new vehicles is another aspect of the Law of periodicity, of ebb and flow, etc. , that of progression, of growth, of expansion, of unfoldment. No natural cycle returns precisely to its starting-point. It progresses along the axis of the greater cycle of which it forms part. In this way during the life of a man-bearing globe, 'consciousness' can occupy vehicles in all the kingdoms of nature, expanding as it goes until it becomes individualized in Man when the faculty of self-consciousness is born. Thereafter, as a result of what efforts he makes during his incarnation, Man can further his evolution and pass into 'super-human' states of being. But more of this later. As consciousness expands it unfolds faculty. Faculty is the ability to function in a particular way. Each of our senses is a faculty, emotional feeling, thinking and other functions of the mind, are faculties and so are intuition and will. Each of these faculties is only possible because of certain qualities in nature. These faculties are, so to say, powers or activities of spirit for which means of response and action have been developed. These means of response are possible because of and to the extent of the development of the qualities of the materials, structures, forms and bodies that has so far taken place in evolution. These powers and qualities are what have so far been 'actualized' from the All Potentiality during the life of our solar system, which itself will of course have derived much from other and preceding systems. These powers and qualities are 'rayed' forth from the ONE LIFE in a number of streams as the rays of light of different colours stream from a prism which is itself in a beam of white light. Each ray passes through all levels of being from the highest to the lowest, and the powers and -14qualities in each ray are characterized by the ray's dominant character. For example, each ray would have a representative colour on the physical plane. It may have different colours on other planes but these colours would always be peculiar to that ray on a particular level. Each of our senses and other faculties has its ray and corresponding colour and 'sound' too. Each ray has its fundamental note. Different levels of being have corresponding notes in different 'octaves'. The various personality qualities, roughly classified by the old philosophers as sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic, are ray qualities, or mixtures of them. These ray characteristics pervade all Nature and everything is an admixture of them. All the natural elements, plants and animals could be grouped and classified according to them if we knew enough about their essential qualities. Each ray 'power' typifies a certain aspect of life or force and each quality a corresponding matter or form quality. For example, sight is a power or faculty operating through a material but living eye.

The permutations and combinations, in varying degrees, of these characteristic powers and qualities give us the infinite variety of sorts, conditions and capabilities of all that constitutes Nature for us. We have now given some thoughts and ideas on fundamentals and origins. Perhaps it can already be seen from these that not only is the stage of Man's life very big but that in them we have a vista of existence to satisfy the longest long-term purposeful objective for individual man, and for mankind as a whole. What is meant by purposeful we will try to explain as we go on. It may be objected that we have intellectualised too much a subject that must embrace all aspects of life and include the intensely human, personal situation. So far we have not had regard to such of our qualities as love and devotion which, when dealing with human existence, are ultimately the only ones that really matter. But we set out to appeal to modern thinking man, and are trying to provide him with some explanations. We will deal with, or -15at least touch on, these 'feeling' sides of life at appropriate places later on. To summarize, we have postulated an Absolute, the Causeless Cause, All Potentiality, the Unknowable, the Perfect, the Eternal. We have said that the highest we can conceive of in the chain of manifestation is the ONE as a prime Duality giving rise to the spirit-matter, subject-object combinations which, passing down through all the levels of being, bring us ultimately to the dualities of force and form in the manifested Universe in all its wonderful diversity with which we are familiar . We have enunciated the Proposition of the Law of Cycles, of periodicity and of cause and effect and that of the essential identity (because of the ultimate Unity) of all individual consciousness with the One Consciousness, of the periodical, successive incarnations of individual consciousness into appropriate vehicles. Inthis we mentioned the law of growth, of progression, etc. which is behind all evolutionary processes. We have said something about the nature and qualities of things so far developed during these processes up to date on this planet. We said earlier that this great story had no beginning and no end. The significance of that is that our world and our solar system are the result of what went before. When the great awakening came, after a vast period of rest, the germs of what was to be were already present. So will the fruits of the present existence and life of our world scheme be gathered into the Unmanifest for a vast period of rest, to be breathed out again as the seeds of all that shall be at the next great awakening. Creation in the ordinary sense, has no place in this philosophy. There is, therefore, no Creator in the generally accepted sense. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 3 The

Purpose of Life?

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER III The Purpose of Life?

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-16To try to answer this question might appear presumptuous, but if this book is to have any meaning it is a question that must be looked into. We are all aware of the common activities of living things and the stock answer as to the purpose of these activities is the apparently fundamental one of the preservation of the life of individuals and of the species they comprise. If the question is pressed further, another apparently fundamental answer would be that the individuals of one species must be preserved to provide food for the individuals of another species, usually a higher one on the evolutionary scale. It is obvious that everything in nature is composed of or is sustained by something else. It will be remembered, however, from the three basic Propositions of Theosophy that Unity underlies the whole Universe, and that It appears in the chain of causation as a duality with the aspects of abstract Space and abstract Motion. These reflect in manifestation as the duality of substance and spirit, and ultimately into our plane of existence as form and life, and as matter and mind, or consciousness. These dualities are linked by what is called Fohat, the energizing principle that manifests variously on all planes of being and appears as the electric quality in all physical matter. It is that which, as a derivative of Power, an aspect of Spirit, becomes the dynamic principle in the Universe and, acting in conjunction with substance, and ultimately matter, gives rise to what we recognize as life in the biological sense, that is where there is animation or consciousness. Inherent in all matter there is motion. In the elements of physical matter there is motion. Within the atoms, there is the motion of the electrons and other parcels of energy -17known by various names. In organisms consisting of molecules, the motion can manifest as growth, from a centre outwards. In higher organisms it can be the movement of the whole organism. The extent and complexity of motion or movement increases as we go up the scale of being, from that of mere locomotion to actions for the purpose of getting and absorbing food, for procreation, in both animals and man, until we get the exercise of skills of increasing refinement of many kinds. In the basic Propositions of Theosophy are found the answers to many questions that hitherto may have perplexed us. For instance, there is no such thing as dead matter. Life is inherent in everything; there is therefore no need to seek for the origins of living things. This relieves us of the search for the mysterious something which makes an agglomeration of molecules into cells and the cells into a specialized individual form, a living thing. The problem now becomes another one, that of the reconciliation of the fact of the numerous lives of the individual cells in an organism with that of the individual life of the organism as a whole. As we have seen, the interaction made possible by Fohat between spirit and matter is life, that is also consciousness, varying from what we know as consciousness in us, downwards through the ever-decreasing awareness and responsiveness of the lower kingdoms of Nature, the animal, vegetable and mineral; then upwards again through the human kingdom and, if the evolutionary

processes are continuous, beyond our human state to superhuman states of ever-expanding consciousness, until we reach the all embracing 'Consciousness' which has the whole Universe for its 'body'. We have also seen that consciousness stems from the fundamental duality of spirit and matter. These two aspects of the same existence are never found separately - matter as well as spirit is necessary for consciousness. That is to say, spirit needs the vehicle of matter for consciousness to arise. Descending the levels of being, matter becomes increasingly consolidated until it becomes what we know it to be in our physical world. In this progressive consolidation -18it correspondingly limits and confines the spiritual consciousness or, simply, the spirit contained in it. Just, however, as there are levels of consciousness from the bare rudimentary responsiveness of the mineral to the unimaginable fully unfolded unrestricted consciousness of the Universal One Life, so there are as many corresponding states of substance on the various planes or levels of being. They vary from what appear to us to be the densest solids of our world to the ultimate tenuousity of the primeval homogenous root Substance, synonymous with Space, from which everything emanates. Another concept which enriches our understanding is that of the One Life manifesting in the diversity of the multitudinous lives of the physical plane. We have also been postulating levels of being on this descent from the One, the all-embracing Unity, in which everything ultimately has its being, down to the world we know. The evolutionary process in the physical world with its development of forms from the simple to the complex reflects the descent of 'being' from the 'high' to the 'low'. In this descent comes ever greater complexity with the increasing diversity in function, and this reflects into form with its infinite variety, shape, size, composition, ability and so on. This descent can be represented figuratively as a cone with the One Life at its apex and below that a series of levels, each level demonstrating a fuller unfoldment of life's potentialities and representing a hierarchy of intelligent entities, each hierarchy increasing in number of its constituent units as the cone broadens towards its base. But there is only one Life, shared by all according to their capacity. There is only one Mind shared by all according to their power to respond. This One Mind can be represented as Divine Ideation in which are the archetypes of all that has been, is or will be in the whole universe. The units of consciousness, the individuals composing the hierarchies, require as previously explained, vehicles or organisms of matter more or less developed and refined according to their grade, in which to function on their respective plane or level of being. One of these hierarchies is Humanity as a whole. InMan, in physical existence, his vehicle of -19consciousness is his body. In beings higher on the evolutionary scale than Man the need for a vehicle of consciousness on the physical plane has been transcended. The need for it has been outgrown. These beings are the superhuman spiritual entities referred to earlier, which compose the hierarchies of beings higher up the cone of being than Man. Below Man, on the descending scale, the spiritual life is not individualized, in the sense that there is no functioning unit of selfconsciousness as found in Man, for every form. These, aspects of Life, sometimes referred to as Monads, are so to say, gaining experience in lion bodies, in mouse bodies, and all other kinds of animal bodies and in the various species of plants and so on. The life dwelling in anyone form at any time is focused in that form during its period of life. When the life withdraws, the form loses its power of cohesive functioning and disintegrates. It is important to note that each thing living or

otherwise has it's own distinct components of being on the inner realms. (See Chapter IV.) So we get Life functioning from or in two directions. One at the bottom of the ladder of being, in every single atom and particle of matter, where it might be described as elemental; the other, where it uses more or less complex organisms, themselves composed of simpler units of life, cells and organs, in which it gains experience during the lifetime of the organism, the body. This experience modifies both the form and the indwelling life. Incipient faculty is developed. Response grows. Consciousness grows. As consciousness unfolds, life requires organisms, vehicles or bodies of increasing sensitivity and aptitude. This process of development continues until we get the highest bodies so far evolved by Nature, human bodies, inhabited by Man with his unique faculty of mind and in whom self-awareness and self-determinism has been attained. We have now enough postulated information to enable us to have a look at the purpose of life in a new way. It appears that that purpose can be summed up in the one word Evolution. But it is necessary now to add to the meaning of that word two important concepts not normally ascribed to it. One is the progressive unfoldment of consciousness -20as Life journeys through vast periods of time, through the basic elements of matter, through the mineral kingdom and thence through the developing forms of the organic kingdoms of plant and animal, culminating, So far as this physical world is concerned, in Man. The other Concept following from this, is that of the 'education' of the matter comprising the vehicle or body being used for the time being as a result of its use by the indwelling life. The higher the organism the more intense is the life activity and therefore the experience. The result of this education takes the form of increasing refinement and susceptibility to stimulus. To start with, response is mere reaction, but with time a memory element enters, desire is born and then response is conditioned by desire. The ability to effect these transformations in the qualities of matter grows as life unfolds its powers. Man by his creative powers can consciously undertake and quicken this transformation for himself, if he so wills. The whole mighty process derives its impulse from the dynamism of the 'intelligent' energy {Fohat), inherent in everything, which is itself directly related to and is a function of the One Life in its consciousness aspect as Universal Mind. The purpose of life then is to live. Living involves change and this change, as we shall see later, is cyclical but always on an expanding progressive scale, growth. Spirit or life on the one hand is descending into manifestation in the physical world, and on the other it is ascending by gradually improving forms through ever-unfolding consciousness, until the stage when Man endowed with mind achieves true self-consciousness. The activities of Spirit in physical forms give rise to the production and multiplication of individualized self-conscious units of Itself, human and ultimately super-human beings, each eventually returning to its source with its harvest of unique experience, attributes and power. Life, in short, is a journey to perfection. This progressive unfoldment of consciousness by evolutionary development, the attainment of selfconsciousness, and self-determinism through will, the multiplication of such self-conscious entities and their gradual perfecting, is what we can call the Plan, for our Earth. -21Included in a greater plan is the larger and grander cycle of development of the entities comprising the superhuman kingdoms. With the development of human beings, as units below them in the evolutionary chain, these super human beings too grow in consciousness and power. We humans are, so to speak, the 'cells' of their bigger being. As we progress so we grow into and share their

fuller life. This process is endless and unspeakably wonderful in its majesty and might. This return to the ONE, this synthesizing process that leads life from rudimentary consciousness in the particles of the very elements of matter to an ultimate return, fully self-conscious, with all the experience of its journey of countless ages through all the kingdoms of Nature, back to its source in the ONE Life whence it issued at the dawn of time, is, so far as we can see it in human terms, the purpose of life. We have obviously not dealt with all the questions that can arise as to the ultimate purpose of life, but some answers have been given which can satisfy most of us for many lives to come. To go beyond this, at this stage, even if we could, would, to use the words of the Buddha, be "profitless speculation". Man's particular role in this great process of unfoldment of the powers of Nature as they concern him individually and how it is achieved is dealt with in Chapter VIII. But Mankind as a Kingdom, and each of the hierarchies above him, have a creative function. The high orders direct the form building aspects of nature, according to the plan and Universal Law, of which they are the direct agents. They are the 'Creators' of our world scheme. The hierarchies of lives below man carry out, so to say, their directions. This is a matter of one level of life responding according to its capacity to do so, to the more developed entities at the higher levels. Every thing and creature is fulfilling in both the inner and outer realms of being, some function in the grand scheme of things. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 4 The

Total Make-Up of Man.

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER IV The Total MakeUp of Man.

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-22We are familiar with the constitution of man given us by St. Paul of body, soul and spirit. Theosophy elaborates on this basic framework and defines precisely what it means by the terms. It says that man is sevenfold in his constitution. He has his physical body and six other principles, each of a specific nature and with a specific function. Here we are introduced to the idea of levels of being and the necessity for spirit to have a vehicle in which to operate on each level. We have also seen something of the relationship between spirit and matter and how in the last analysis they cannot be separated, though to us at the physical level of being they appear to be, and indeed are, the very opposite poles of existence. The one is the positive principle and the other the negative confining, limiting principle. Matter being that which contains spirit in any form or thing in existence, restricts the activities of spirit to the extent to which the forms have not yet been developed or educated to respond to its potentialities. The vehicles necessary for spirit to function in are sometimes called 'bodies' in some theosophical literature. But only in certain circumstances are they distinct things. It is better to think of them as inter-related elements or principles of man’s total being, by which he functions on the various inner levels of being. It is now necessary to say something about the planes or levels of being mentioned earlier. First, let us see whether in ordinary life there is anything that would lead us to suspect their existence and by which we could know something about them. We are aware of our normal everyday surroundings in which what we ordinarily regard as 'ourselves' play their parts, and which include other people. We know that all the things in these surroundings are composed of physical matter in its three states of solid, -23liquid and gas We are aware of our surroundings only through our physical senses, by way of our eyes, ears, skin (touch), mouths and noses. Messages arc received from the outside world, from anything to which organs of sense can respond, and are transmitted via our telegraphic nervous systems to that wonderful terminus, the seat of our waking consciousness, the brain The first level of existence, the physical, we arc used to. What about the others? Let us notice that when we become aware of things, including other people, our feelings arc often aroused These feelings vary from simple likes and dislikes to strong affections and hatred, from mere attraction to passion, and so on through the whole range of what we call emotion. These emotions impress our memories. The memory of having had or having done things we have enjoyed arouses the desire to repeat the experience. If something has been painful or if we have not liked it, we become averse to it and want to avoid a repetition of the experience. A great part of our life is thus composed of and conditioned by feeling, inner feeling as well as by physical sensation and sense impressions Memory records our experience, some of which we can recall to mind at will We arc now

introduced to another element in our lives, that of mental activity. In this we include memory, recollection, imagination and thinking. All these are of an order of inner activity different from feeling but closely associated with it. These inner activities of emotion and mind are distinct areas of consciousness and can be used as a basis for categorizing two of the levels of our being as humans. We can now say that we have the emotional and mental levels of being in addition to the physical. By definition we have said that for consciousness to arise or for there to be response of any kind, there must be a vehicle, responsive at the right level of being, for life or spirit to operate in. We must therefore have an emotional vehicle or body and a mental vehicle, both somehow in close association with each other and with our physical bodies so that our physical brain registers their activity. We can thus be aware of activity at all three levels. Inwaking consciousness, our awareness of -24sensation, emotion, or mentation is referred to the physical brain. So accustomed are we to this that it is very hard indeed even to conceive the idea of consciousness being possible without a physical brain This great difficulty gives rise to the ideas of materialism, that is that there cannot be conscious existence without a physical body. An idea which some of us hold so strongly and apparently so justifiably. In the field of mind, we have mentioned its fundamental functions of memory , imagination and thinking, which is a mind activity involving memory and imagination plus some training by experience or otherwise in logic. These are the mind activities familiar enough to us in the ordinary workaday way but there are others which transcend the three mentioned. These are typified by intelligence, by spontaneous 'common sense' born of perceived but unlearned principles; and mind operations concerned with abstract ideas, with comprehensive concepts and conscience. We can call these latter, higher mind functions, and distinguish them from the former which we could call the lower mind functions, those so closely associated with our feelings Our physical bodies and our emotional and lower mind principles are of a personal nature and constitute all that we regard as a man's 'personality’. This is an important definition which we will use precisely in this sense. The activities of higher mind are by definition to do with broad principles and abstractions and cannot therefore be of the same personal nature as those of the lower mind. They will not evince personal characteristic or content. They are, however, still unique and individual to a particular man and they are, like the others, mind activities. The mental principle, therefore, has two aspects, a higher and a lower. The lower is by definition a component of the man's personality and the other represents his unique ‘individuality’ as distinct from his personality This distinction between personality and individuality is very important and must be borne in mind. There are certain other inner activities of which most of us, in some degree or another, have some experience in a -25lifetime. They can be described as direct cognitions, clear insights usually sudden, really deep understanding by a kind of detached but sympathetic feeling. This is intuition, using the word in its strict sense of 'tuition' from 'within'. Intuition is to be distinguished from hunches, premonitions and the like, which are psychic experiences - that is, experiences arising within our lower mind and emotional principles. Intuition can be known by its quality, the joy of enlightenment or the

compassion that wells up in us, or a combination of these, which accompanies the experience. Another important distinction between an intuitive experience and a psychic experience is that intuition teaches us in terms of principles and is never personal, whereas psychic hunches are always of a personal nature, usually with an emotional content concerning either ourselves or other people. These intuitional activities are said to arise from within a spiritual vehicle or body which is not really ours in the sense that our physical or other bodies are. It is the vehicle of Spirit in the general Cosmic sense. It becomes ours only by reason of its association with our higher mind principle, wherein our individual consciousness arises. Itis in these high levels of our being that all that we think of as Wisdom, arises. Lastly, there is the realm of pure Spirit, the Unity in manifestation - the Source of our being and all other being and beings. This Divine Spirit is not private to anyone; individual lives are sparks lit at its flame and of its nature. It is therefore not a principle of Man, but a universal principle, which operates through all units of life. Counting the mental principle as one in spite of its dual nature, and counting the Universal Spirit as one of man's principles as it is in every way the Source and inmost Essence of his being, he has seven principles or vehicles of consciousness which are set out very clearly in The Key to Theosophy, and they are as follows: 1.) The physical body; this is the vehicle for his lifetime in the physical world, for all his other principles to manifest through in so far as they are developed and functioning, and as far as it is capable of responding to the activities of -26his inner principles. The anatomy and physiology of his body we are not concerned with here, but we should notice that it is composed of subservient lives as cells and organs within its constitution, all acting harmoniously for the proper functioning of the indwelling entity and for its overall well-being. Linking this body, so to speak, with the inner planes of being are two other principles. They are also responsible for its co-ordinating vitality. They are principles 2 and 3 as follows: 2.) The astral double; this is a non-physical principle on the inner plane of being next to our gross material one. It is normally invisible but is not insubstantial. This double is said to be a counterpart of the physical body, with a similar organization and organs corresponding to those in our bodies. It is the pattern or mould on which the physical body is built and it has senses corresponding to our normal five. These act as links between our outer sense organs and our organ of consciousness, so that we can be aware of what we are seeing and hearing and so on. When these inner senses are developed so as to be able to function independently of the outer ones, their possessor becomes clairvoyant and/or clairaudient or otherwise psychic. This principle also acts as a reservoir for the universal life-force. 3.) Life-force or vitality; this is the force in nature which bestows co-ordinating life to an organism. It is the animating principle without which a cell, organ or body is dead. It must, however, not be thought of as energy even though it is a dynamic function. Physical energy in living things comes from the food they eat and the air they breath. The vital principle (Prana) has, however, often been referred to as the breath of life. All our principles except the highest are quickened by it.

4.) The desire or emotion vehicle; this is a principle in man which reflects the energy aspect of the One Life. It is the seat of our feelings which impel us to action and of our passional nature. As a vehicle of our desires and so on, it is being created by each one of us during our life-time but does not become a separate entity until after our death. Emotional feeling and desire are referred to in the literature as Kama. (Note, not, Karma). -275.) The mind principle; this is the principle in which, as its name implies, are all those of our faculties that we regard as mental, arise. It is a dual principle with an upper and lower aspect. The lower aspect is in close association with the emotion principle such that the two are often thought of together as a mento-emotional complex. This combination is the personal soul, the psyche, sometimes thought of as the animal soul and, as we shall see, it is mortal. The higher aspect of mind is regarded as that human principle in which the unit of consciousness arises; it is herein that the man feels himself as 'I am I'. Together with the remaining two principles, this higher mind is, as already mentioned, known as the individuality, as opposed to the personality composed of his lower mind and other principles. This distinction is stressed in Theosophy. The three upper principles constitute man's essential divinity. They are immortal. They are referred to as the Ego (usually with a capital E), and sometimes as the Higher Self. The principle of mind in the books is known as Manas, a Sanskrit word from which our term man is derived. Man in this sense means thinker. 6.) This principle is a universal one and cannot properly be regarded as a human one except that it, as a vehicle for or that which gives expression to Highest Spirit, must enter into the constitution of every manifest thing. Like Prana, however, which needs the second principle of a living being to operate in and through and thereby can be thought of as a principle of that being, this vehicle of Universal Spirit can be regarded as a principle of man when specifically associated with his higher mental principle, which, as we have seen, is individual to him. This sixth principle is commonly termed Buddhi, again using a Sanskrit word. 7.) The Universal Spirit; the ultimate dynamic whence comes all power and consciousness in manifested Cosmos. Again this cannot properly be regarded as a principle of man but again no being could be, so to speak, without this Spiritual Essence as an element of its being, no matter how obscured it may be by the vehicles through which it must operate at the various levels of being. Spirit is commonly called Atma. -28Relating these seven principles to the three-fold constitution of man of Saint Paul, we have, first, corresponding to body, a lower trinity of the physical body and its vital principles of the double and Prana. Then second, corresponding to soul, we have a middle duad of the emotion principle and lower mind, constituting the psyche or ordinary ego of the psychologist, the mortal soul. Lastly, we have, the upper triad of Atma, Buddhi and higher Manas, as spirit. It is important to note that according to the ancient teaching, each of these principles of man has a direct correspondence to a distinct level of being in Cosmos, commonly called a plane. Further, to

each plane there is a mode or state of consciousness, and, as we have already mentioned, corresponding to each plane there is a hierarchy of beings where each hierarchy is at a corresponding level of evolutionary development. This development has been achieved in past aeons, some of which, so we are told, go back even to previous world systems. It is, however, these hierarchies who, having developed certain faculties themselves, can endow those who come after them with them. It is said that this is how man became the possessor of mind. He did not acquire it in the slow processes of evolution. This seven-fold constitution of man is one, perhaps the most important, of the things that Theosophy teaches us. In itself it summarises the salient points of the whole teaching and, in terms of correspondences, runs like a thread through the immense and magnificent structure of esoteric science. There are two other aspects of this subject of the principles of man. One is the manner of their coming into being at the beginning of the world. The other is their development throughout its vast history. We have already mentioned that the activities of nature proceed from 'within outwards'. This means that the impulse to action always comes from an inner higher level of being. For example, man is moved to action by his desires. This principle applies also to growth and the development of forms. As to the nature or shape of forms there is, as it were, a design in the mental and a formative pattern or 'mould' in the astral worlds to -29which the organic growth conforms. These designs and patterns result from what has been worked out in previous evolutionary periods on this or other worlds in accordance with the Universal law that every effect proceeds from an antecedent cause. Forms are affected by their environment. To a degree they respond and react to it. These responses are impressed on to the 'memory' of the inner plane of being which can modify the mental pattern. That in its turn can modify the 'astral' mould and this can, for example, effect mutations in the germ plasm (genes) in animals and plants. Forms are then modified in later generations. The Secret Doctrine deals particularly and in some detail with the development of human bodies and relates this development to the changing conditions of environment during the development of our globe. It tells also of the orders of beings that grew up and developed on other and prior series of globes. From these remote ancestors we have inherited not only physical bodies, but our emotional and mental principles. The Secret Doctrine tells us of various races and sub-races of humanity which have been, are, and will be on this earth. It tells of the development of the particular characteristics and qualities of these peoples. It also tells of how at the end of our world period, the individuals who have completed their allotted development, the successful souls, will become men complete, full-grown, in every department of their being. Concurrently with the development of our vehicles at their particular levels, is the growth of consciousness to full active operation on those levels. With this expansion of consciousness comes power, the power of the forces and qualities of nature peculiar to those planes. Man thus eventually moves into a new, a superhuman, state. He has then fulfilled his destiny completely on this planet. The time scales in this process are immense. Man can, however, if he so wills, hasten his progress towards this grand consummation and in doing so fit himself to help his brothers along the long, long road home. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 5 Life After Death

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER V Life After Death

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-30We all have to die sometime. We must all speculate on what is going to happen to us in the 'hereafter'. From what has been written so far, it will have been gathered that there is in fact no question of there not being life after death of the physical body. There is no possibility of there not being! What is now of concern to us is what manner of life it is and what it may be like for us. An important fact to notice about our waking life, and sometimes our dreaming life, is that during it we are continually receiving impressions. If any scene, event, action, spoken or written word, noise, does not impress us, that is register in consciousness, then, for us, it does not exist or did not happen and so forms no part of our lives, although certain subliminal impressions may affect our behaviour. Another fact is that there are two distinct sorts of impression. There are those which come to us from outside via our senses and there are those that arise inside us as feelings or mental pictures such as occur during dreams. These impressions may provoke us to action. In waking life such actions usually affect environment and other people can see what we do or at least the results of it. These actions may be reflexive or instinctive, like blinking our eyes if some sudden danger threatens them, or they may be voluntary and under our control. In dreams action is usually inconsequential and irrational. It is neither instinctive nor voluntary, but we seem to be motivated in some way by vague fears or desires and what we do in our dream is not observable by anyone else. Dream experiences are subjective and our actions not normally under our control. We are mostly irrational in them. For us to affect the course of our dreams intentionally we have, as it were, to wake up in them and realize we are -31dreaming. Then sometimes we can decide to do something and in our dream to do it, without waking up. These various shades of awareness and volition are important when considering our after-death states. There are many descriptions of the next world and the post-mortem states. Every religion has its beliefs and the spiritualists have provided us with many accounts. There is much in ancient literature on the subject too. The account which follows, in that it takes notice of much popular lore and in that it includes and reconciles all the more factual 'evidence', seems to deserve our acceptance above all others. Regarded objectively, the processes of dying, as opposed to being killed, are as follows: with the malfunctioning of a vital organ or even at the will of the ensouling entity, the process of death is started. Life begins to withdraw from the body, starting at the extremities. It withdraws slowly into the head until eventually, so the seers tell us, the soul leaves the physical body. The soul is the

astral double together with, at this stage, all the other vehicles or principles of the man. The astral double as previously described, can under suitable circumstances be seen soon after death as the ghost of the departed. This ghost, normally closely associated with the physical body in ordinary circumstances, can only be seen by the clairvoyant. In a sleeping person it can become detached from the physical body but it is always attached to it by a 'silver cord' of ethereal substance. In death, after the separation of the bodies, the silver cord breaks. When this has occurred there is no possibility of the soul re-entering the body. The freed astral double soon disintegrates. The vital principle leaves it and dissipates. Soon after this a 'death struggle' takes place between the personality vehicles and those constituting the individuality. If there is enough really spiritual content in the life just lived, the individuality wins and the processes of postmortem state continue. Only in rare cases is the balance tipped the other way and the life just lived is then as if it had never been. It is a page missing from the great 'Book of Life' of that Ego. Then after a long period in a dormant -32state within the mento-emotional vehicles, the life withdraws from them, leaving a psychic corpse behind. When this withdrawal is complete a so-called second death occurs and the individual is free from the last of what it once felt to be its personality. The individuality now has as its vehicle of being only its higher triplicity, that is, its higher thought principle, its intuitional vehicle and its purely spiritual principle. During the disintegration period of its earthly personality vehicles, the spiritual content or residue of the life just closed is 'distilled' from them and assimilated by the higher mind principle, the spiritual Ego. It is this 'distillation' accumulated from many past lives that gives the Ego its particular individual qualities. After a period of existence as a purely Egoic entity, and this is usually, by earth time, said to be a very long time, up to hundreds of years, a wonderful process of quickening takes place. The Ego gathers magnetically around itself mento-emotional materials to form new vehicles on those planes, and when ready waits for the right kind of physical body to suit its needs and, so far as possible, to fulfil its future destiny. The embryo body to which it attaches itself is eventually born. The soul principles then takes possession of the new body and as an infant with its dawning consciousness, the Ego sees the light of another ordinary earth life. As a new person it proceeds to go through all the stages of growing up, manifesting its inherited bodily characteristics, but with a lot of its own inherent qualities gradually showing forth in the unfolding personality. This is a very shortened and simplified version of the life story of a human being after death and it does not tell us much of what we as individuals experience during the process, but the next part of this story does. It tells what the experience of an ordinary man is at death and after, that is of one who dies naturally, of old age in his bed after an ordinary life. There are variations on this theme, depending on the development of the individual and on the circumstances of his past life and of his death, but they constitute exceptions to the rule. In the later stages of the withdrawal of life from the body, when death has apparently occurred, memory -33dislodges from the physical brain and the events of the past life are reviewed and evaluated. This requires concentration and quietness in the death chamber is very desirable. As soon as this review is finished, the silver cord breaks and unconsciousness intervenes. The person's perceptive faculties now cease for ever. The Ego now enters a 'gestation' period, unconscious, while the

process of 'distillation', mentioned above, of the spiritual content of the life just finished, proceeds. At the onset of this process the 'deathstruggle' takes place. If there was no spiritual content to be assimilated into the spiritual soul of the man, the life just lived is void and all trace of it is lost. But this is not the normal case. After the period of gestation during which the spiritual aroma of the life is conveyed to or absorbed by the higher mind principle of the individuality, there is another review of the past life, and a so-called second death. Consciousness then slowly returns and the Ego finds himself in just those surroundings in which he had thought he would be after death or where he would most like to be. They are so just because he makes them so. The man is in a subjective, purely spiritual state, a very vivid dream condition, but he does not know he is dreaming. It is the perfect dream, without any disturbing thoughts or any knowledge of what is happening to his family, business or possessions on earth to mar it. In other words, he is receiving no impressions from outside himself. All the things he loved to do or would have loved to do are there and he can do them. All the people he knew and loved, friends and family are there too. All the places, real or imaginary , where he longed to be are there for him to visit and enjoy. This is the great healing experience, the recompense in full measure for the injustices of the world, the soothing restorative, the great, great sleep of nature knitting up "the ravell'd sleeve of care". His time in this state of bliss is long but, as with all things, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It has as it were its seasons of spring, of summer and autumn and finally of winter. The man then has had his fill of this heavenly world. The desire for the hard experience of concrete physical existence begins to stir in his being and -34eventually he 'dies' to his heavenly world, subsides into unconsciousness again and waits his turn to be born again on earth. It is important to notice that in this normal case there is no question of any punishment after death. Karmic redress takes place on the plane of being where it is incurred. In his heaven state our man did not know he was dreaming. His activity was all subjective. He would therefore not be able to do anything that would affect his surroundings objectively. If he had been able to know he was dreaming he might have been able to exercise his own volition and alter intentionally the course of the dream. In other words, he might have become self-consciously active on that plane of existence. We said that a man's experience after death depended on his development, a development attainable only during earth life, that is, in the world of causes. The next world, for the great majority of us, is a world of effects only, a subjective mental state. By this development we mean that it is possible for a man to develop his astral 'senses'. It is possible for him to develop his powers and to retain consciousness on the inner planes. If he can do this he becomes a living freeacting entity on those planes, a causative agent on them. This is relatively an advanced stage depending on the level on which one can be active. If such a stage of development has not been reached then, when the Egoic life has withdrawn from the mento-emotional vehicles, only a residual elemental life persists in them for a time and they have only a dim shadow consciousness of their own. They become, as said, previously, psychic corpses, kama-manasic 'shells', but in them for a time resides the habitual motivating characteristics and mind memories of the departed. It is these shells which, when enlivened by the 'life' energy of a medium, use the medium's physical vehicle to speak or act through and so evince the mannerisms, knowledge, tricks of speech and so on, of the departed. But the departed is not there, he is either unconscious or in his dream heaven world. Usually this contact in normal cases can occur only when the Ego has left the shell and awakened to his blissful but dream

-35heaven state. With accidents it is different. Only the physical vehicle is lost; all other principles are intact. Such persons can communicate through mediums, but for the sake of the persons and the mediums this is to be discouraged. Can we contact our loved ones after their death? Only by raising ourselves to their level of consciousness. They cannot and do not under any normal circumstances 'come down' to us. If they could they would disturb their recompensing dream and know the pangs of earth life again. A contentious point that must be touched on is that of purgatory. The word seems to be used of a state of being in the after-life when 'the soul' is purged of its carnal desires and it is inferred this could not be effected if the Ego were unconscious. But there is a confusion here between punishment and purging. There is, with rare exceptions, no punishment after death. This purgatorial condition seems to apply in cases of premature death, as for instance in accidents, as just mentioned, in lusty youth or manhood when all physical appetites are at their height. In such cases the person is only deprived of a physical body. All his other principles and vehicles are complete and operating. He therefore retains consciousness. He would not know he was dead. Now, because he has no physical body he cannot fulfil his carnal desires. This state has to be endured until either the subject goes unconscious and sleeps until such time when he would have died anyway, when the normal processes of death commence, or his passions subside through lack of satisfaction. As we explained at the beginning of this chapter, there are many variations on the basic theme. The executed murderer repeats his crime, sees his victim and suffers remorse over and over again. The suicide repents out his normal span and so on. It is realized that many questions concerning the afterlife are left unanswered. We are aiming, however, only to put over some of the fundamental points to assist in a general understanding. A large number of questions arise from psychic phenomena. For example, who or what are the likenesses of dead people seen by the clairvoyant in certain circumstances? Some answers are deducible from what has -36gone before. A clairvoyant seer may be seeing the soul form of a 'dead' person. In other cases he may be seeing his own mental creations or those of others. The creative powers of the mind are wonderful indeed. For a proper appreciation and understanding of this great subject much study with a freedom from emotion, from wishful thinking, from preconception and from fear, is a necessity. The teaching adds that this round of birth and death is not everlasting. Our lives are given us so that we may learn. We can learn the secrets of life however only while we are alive. The real Adepts have done just that. They have so developed all their vehicles of consciousness that in any circumstance, or on any plane of being they can retain full self-consciousness and be masters of their environment. This is a relative immortality and is for all of us, who achieve it - some day. But true immortality comes only when we have remerged our being with the ONE whence originally, at the beginning of our time, we emerged. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 6 The

Law

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER VI The Law

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-37Everyone who reads theosophical or indeed Eastern religious literature must inevitably come across the word, Karma, often referred to as the Law of Karma. It is commonly defined as the law of action and reaction, and one of its expressions is the natural tendency of any manifestation of forces to come to and remain in a state of equilibrium. During manifestation this is never quite achieved or an inert static condition would result. The Law is an ordering, balancing tendency, in and between things and events. The Law makes existence possible. Without it chaos would reign. Atoms would burst their bounds. Heavenly bodies would fly off their courses. There would be no certainty in scientific knowledge. There could be no predictable behaviour for anything. The Law is that every effect is the result of some cause. This may appear axiomatic and obvious, but if it is fully appreciated and accepted, any idea, for instance, of the possibility of creation in the sense of something being produced from nothing, is immediately untenable. There must have been something to react to the act of creation and of course even the Creator must have had antecedent origins. It is true, from the point of view of our ordinary minds, that the chain of causation must eventually terminate in mystery. In the ordinary way of religious teaching the ultimate mystery is very close. If anything occurs of real importance in our lives that we do not understand and for which we can see no reason, we can only attribute it to the will and act of God. We can account for almost anything, even the presence of the universe and the world in this way. Theosophy, however, removes that final mystery a very, very long way away and fills the space previously occupied by it with something comprehensible but so great -38and magnificent as to require the utmost from our mental capabilities to embrace it in its completeness. In Chapter II we mentioned two aspects of the Law. One was the rhythmic, cyclical nature of all existence and activities. The other was its causative aspect. We have given some emphasis to the idea of spirit as an equal partner to matter in the scheme of things, and every bit as important. It is as it were, the positive pole of the battery of existence, with matter as the negative pole. So far as we are concerned spirit is closely associated with our consciousness. Let us see if we can use our own consciousness to come to some understanding directly of some of the things we have been saying. The Secret Doctrine says it is not possible to conceive of any existence without space. It says that all-potentiality is always and everywhere present in Space. It also says that the essential character of Space is that of a primeval, homogenous, undifferentiated, abstract root 'Substance' in which fundamental atoms (not physical atoms) of life-matter arise during periods of manifestation as vortices of energy. Let us give our minds something a bit more concrete to work on. Earlier we used the imagery of a cone to illustrate the levels of being and the hierarchies of intelligences in descending order of greatness from the One Life. Now let us imagine, in a similar way, that manifested being is a great sphere. The surface of the sphere we could liken to the plane of physical existence, the realm of

innumerable multitudes of infinitely diverse forms. One remove back from the surface, towards the centre, consciousness would be aware of the ethereal, astral patterns of forms created at the mental level, many fewer than the forms themselves. Another remove inwards, nearer to the centre, the higher mental planes would bring us to the realm of creative ideas, of general type designs, and farther in still, to the archetypes rayed out from the source of all Ideation at the very centre. In this move into the centre, consciousness would be becoming more concentrated, less concerned with detailed forms and appearances and more with a feeling of the qualities of the life being expressed in them. At the same time it would be becoming more comprehensive, more -39embracing in its scope of response until, at the very centre, it would comprehend all. Now let us have another look at Space and stretch our imagination again to get the idea of the sphere's surface being infinitely remote from the centre, and then get the idea of that centre, or an infinite number of centres, being everywhere in space with their respective surfaces nowhere. If we can do this, we can then sense that there is no such thing as empty space, as that term ordinarily implies. Everywhere present is the One Life which indwells in every 'atom' on all planes of being, arid is indeed the life in all natural things and beings. Always and everywhere present in it is the potentiality of all conditions, shapes, qualities, powers and so on. Now for another exercise. Close the eyes and get the feeling of you as a point of being. Then, while still trying to keep this feeling of concentrated 'you-ness', clear, if you can, your field of mental vision. You, or that point of consciousness which is really you, will now seem to be the centre of a sphere. Still keeping your physical eyes closed, look from that centre out into your field or sphere of consciousness and see if you can find its farthest limits. Does it have any? Where is what seems to be your centre of consciousness; does it have a location? Where in fact is that total 'you-ness', that concentrated essential you? It is where in fact you are now, in your own 'mental' space which in Theosophy is called subjective Space and which is regarded as substantial, i.e., it is not nothing. This exercise may give some feasibility mentioned in The Secret Doctrine of a Point of All Potentiality with no location in space, but which is everywhere. It may also give a new concept of Space. When you survey your sphere or field of consciousness with its seemingly endless extension, does it not appear, as in fact, vast space? But is it? Is it not all within, that is completely contained in, that point of consciousness which now seems to be you and for which you can find no dimension? We have spent some time on this idea of the Universal Point of All Potentiality because it is important in understanding something of initial causation. Do yet another -40exercise. Close the eyes and then make an orange or a banana in the mind's eye. Now notice that whereas, before, your mental field was a blank, if indeed you could make it so, now it contains something. Something you can see. This something must be something. It cannot be nothing or your internal vision would not register it. This thing occupies 'space', your mental Space. You can make it as big or as small as you like. With practice you can make it exist for as long as you decide it shall. Where did it come from? Did it not come from you? Was it not some energy manifestation that appeared because you willed it to? In this way, is it not possible to conceive that the Space aspect of the One Unmanifest could itself

be a Causeless Cause? Because of the exceedingly limited scale of our operation this may not be a very convincing experiment nor the conclusion wholly valid, but it does serve to illustrate something that otherwise, in words only, would have been difficult to convey and would possibly have had little or no meaning. Our look at this subjective kind of Space and the idea of Cause being self-existent and conterminous with and within it, may give us a glimpse of something like the initiating process behind and yet contained in the life of a Universe or any part of it. Life and living are inseparable. Living is action. Karma is the vast endlessly flowing river of the rhythmic action of life, with all its ramifications. This general action includes all the kinds of motion and movement we have mentioned before. History is an example of a great stream of action in human affairs. Geology indicates a stream of action in aeons of time in the mineral kingdom. Evolution is a stream of action in the other kingdoms. It is the process whereby the potentialities of spirit become unfolded, given expression in the entities that comprise all the levels of being. Within and between the streams there is interaction. Behind the whole process there is Power, and regulating it there is Law. The Law can however never be codified. It has its root in intelligence. We have seen that intelligence is one of the spiritual qualities potentially available to and partially developed in man. This intelligence derives from a Cosmic -41counterpart, as individual consciousness does from Cosmic Consciousness. Intelligence in this sense is inherent in everything. Every unit of life, every organism and every organ of a complex organism is imbued with this Intelligence. It is the regulating factor in everything. The operation of this Intelligence, in the immeasurable vastness of being throughout inconceivably long periods of time and in the tiniest microscopic occurrence lasting only milliseconds, is the Law. The Law works on the cosmic level and on the level of our little lives. We are causative agents on all the levels of being on which we can operate. We are creators by our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds, and our inner life and activity reflect into our outer existences. We originate actions that give rise to effects. By the Law, in its equilibrium restoring aspect, those effects reflect back to their source, that is to us as their cause. At any given time, however, we, as manifested beings, are also effects. By the Law we are effects of our own causes. By this law then, we are essentially responsible for what we are. Is this not the real and deep meaning of "As a man sows, so shall he reap"? On the face of it, and in the light of much of our immediate experience this will probably be difficult to accept, but it must be remembered that time must enter our consideration. Effects may be delayed. In terms of our time sometimes they may be delayed for an immensely long time. But is the Law not perfectly just? Consequence is inherent in every act. The next chapter explains how the consequence may come "after many days" and even be carried forward from life to life. Some have seen this law of Karma as the instrument of inexorable and fixed destiny but surely this view disallows the flexibility necessary to the love aspect inherent in perfect justice, which must take account of strengths and weaknesses, opportunity, motive, degree of maturity and so on. If to our way of thinking the Law is not merciful, it is not cruel. It is constructive, not destructive. It is educative, not punitive. Equilibrium can be restored in an infinity of ways. A voluntary sacrifice, a moment of compassion, may prevent a period of apparently -42inevitable suffering. Karma equally rewards us with good health, good friends, pleasant

circumstances, physical beauty and in many other ways. Loving service may earn a rich and fearless nature. If we really knew this Law, how different would our lives be! It is from ignorance of it that we suffer. Have we not wanted to remain children and to believe wishfully that we could be forgiven the consequences of our acts? There can be no forgiveness in the ordinary sense of the word. Equally though at the spiritual levels of being, there is no one to offend or be offended. There is none then to be appeased or propitiated. We make our peace with our essential Selves. Our inner and real Self is our guardian or our avenging angel, our only Divinity. It is to that we must be true. Full maturity demands that we accept full responsibility for ourselves and for our circumstances. They too reflect back to us what we are and what we have done. This may be very hard to accept. We can see however that another man, say of more ability and determination, in our place, would soon alter the circumstances in which we find ourselves. He would react quite differently, have different considerations and a different sense of values. He would make different decisions and do different things. We can now see the meaning of the saying "character is destiny". The Law in one thing is merciful. It grants us as many opportunities and as long as we require to square all our accounts. Life provides us with the necessary experience for learning and growing. Theosophy teaches that all our Karmic accounts must be balanced and all our deficiencies and weaknesses worked out before we can become fully liberated beings. Now we know something of the Law. Do we also know how to live according to it? We do if we want to. All the great world teachers have told us how. One of the greatest teachers said:, "Love the Lord thy God" and "thy neighbour as thyself'. This in stark simplicity is all the Law requires of us. We have only to obey. But we do have to know in our hearts who or what God and our neighbour is. This is something we have to discover for ourselves and -43we have to know what love is, but there may be some hints to help us to these discoveries, in places in this book. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 7 Reincarnation or the Continuity of Life

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER VII Reincarnation or the Continuity of Life

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-44So far we have touched on a number of subjects and have left many loose ends. There is some important detail to add to the story of life after death. We have to see the way in which Karma provides us with the many chances we need to 'make good', that is, to complete our evolution as human beings. These are the elements of a fascinating and wonderful story. We have seen something, in general and perhaps in rather high-level terms, of the long-term purpose of life. We have seen how spirit involves itself in matter progressively down through the planes of being until it reaches our physical world. Here spirit is so confined in matter that it can manifest virtually nothing of itself - so much so that matter in the ordinary sense seems to us quite dead. Something of life begins to appear in what we call organic compounds, where we get what we agreed is the basis of living things or forms. In terms of these forms we can define life as animate or vegetative existence. It has also a certain mobility, takes in food and excretes waste. We get a ladder of life, with the simple organisms of plant and animal life at the bottom but increasing in complexity, specialization of organs and parts, and usually increasing in size as they go upwards. We can observe the processes of growth of life forms. From the fission of tiny seed-like cells, through many stages of multiplication, we see the growth of the individual creature through to maturity. We then see the diminution of life energy in the individual till death takes place and the creature, as such, ceases to be. We know that the physical characteristics of all organisms, whether plant or animal, are transmitted from one generation to the next by means of microscopically small structures, DNA, genes and chromosomes, -45present in the nucleus of every cell of the parent stock. We know that these structures transmit faithfully the essentially characteristic qualities of a given species through countless generations. Within the limits of the principal characteristics, variations of a secondary nature take place at intervals. Theosophy teaches that, although the physical mechanism of inherited characteristics is by means of DNA, and genes, the essential form pattern of anything is fixed at a higher level of being, as we briefly saw in chapter IV. The 'patterns', so to speak, exist at the mental level and the 'moulds' at the astral level. These moulds are filled by matter, beginning with that at the astral level then passing to ordinary gaseous and liquid and solid matter. The ultimate sizes of plants and animals is, within fairly narrow limits, fixed by these moulds. All sorts of other mysteries such as, why certain species cannot be crossed with others, are explicable in terms of the essential nature and qualities of the various streams of life coming into physical existence through the inner and subtler realms of being. The life with its particular characteristics and patterns rayed out from the mental levels along great divergent streams is guided by lofty intelligences, themselves aspects of the One Life at their level of being and with their own various natures. Sometimes when life 'natures' are not too different, crosses between individuals of differing kinds can be made and the offspring may be the beginnings of a new strain, but sometimes the offspring are sterile or are not true breeding.

It has been said that we can imagine that in the astral level of being there is a fluidic plastic 'life' medium for each of our innumerable families of forms, constituting, as it were, a field of force, something like that which surrounds a magnet and to the shape of which iron filings conform when placed in it. This field will determine, for example, the pattern of growth of crystals or the fernlike patterns that freezing moisture on the window-pane will assume. It is important to notice that in these two examples there is apparently nothing of the nature of physical genes and chromosomes operating, yet the characteristic nature of the -46forms assumed is preserved. Not only are the characteristic forms preserved but all the other characteristics and properties too. Would it then be too much to say that between the appearance of successive forms there is something on the inner planes of being approximating to a continuous life thread, not affected by time, running through the forms? Mutations in germ plasm could not then occur unless some prior modification were to take place in the inner life field, or if they did they would produce sports and be abortive. Might it not be that nuclear radiation, itself a manifestation of life energy, is capable of affecting under certain circumstances modifications of this field and so of the forms associated with it? This, in fact, seems to occur. It also seems that other apparently purely physical things like food and environment can be factors in mutations. We have earlier touched on, somewhat obliquely, the law of periodicity as it applies to materials and forms. They come and go, but their characteristic life persists. This process applies to human beings but with something of a major difference. We have said earlier that humans are individualized. They feel themselves to be 'I', each with an exclusive self-consciousness. We explain this self-consciousness, 'I-ness', by the fact that in the human, or spiritual soul, as opposed to the animal soul, there is the individual higher mind element in which is focused the two higher cosmic principles, of Spirit and it’s vehicle of manifestation. This Egoic, higher mind consciousness enables man to be aware of his 'awareness'; that is, of the functioning of his lower mind, emotions and sensations which can be objective to him. We have seen that during the processes of death the life energy withdraws from all the vehicles of personality when unconsciousness intervenes and remains until the higher mind is freed from the trammels of personality. We stopped there, but the process does not. We said that the spiritually significant results of the life just lived were ingested into the higher mind principle. They then become, so to speak, condensed into a sort of memory residue of profitable experience by being transformed into faculty, abilities, tendencies and so on. These become the accumulated characteristics -47of the individuality. This process of gestation cannot go on for ever, as indeed no process of Nature can. The cyclical law of periodicity always operates. The ordinary man, after his long period of heavenly restorative and healing dreams, falls unconscious again and a period of dreamless sleep follows. The process of gestation that preceded the heaven experience now changes to another one of assimilation. When at long last all the content of the past life has been transmuted, and after a suitable period of rest, the thirst for physical life begins to reassert itself, the life centre becomes, as it were, energetic again. The magnetic field begins to expand and attract into itself matter of the lower planes to form its lower mental principle and astral body. The characteristics of the 'magnetic' field are the result not only of the immediate past life, but of the 'balance' or resultant of all previous lives. Any imperfections in this field will manifest as imbalance and

weaknesses in the next personality, impressing the newly forming lower mental and emotional and astral principles of the new personality. When this process is complete, the new personality is ready to take over a new physical body. The inexorable operations of the Law, working at physical level, now begin to affect the course of events and, again by a process of 'magnetic' attraction the new personality gets the parents, the kind of body, and the circumstances of early life, to which it is entitled and which will provide it with the further experiences it needs, with the means of discharging its karmic debts, reaping its karmic rewards, and with the opportunities of doing what it has to do in the new life to come. It might be well to emphasize certain points to prevent serious misconceptions and to look at the question of our lack of memory of our past lives. Why do we not normally have this memory? The short answer is that all that comprised the vehicles of the previous personal life, i.e., the vehicles of consciousness at the physical, mental and emotional levels are dispersed during the long dying process. Now it should be noticed that whereas we have learned to operate to a considerable extent in fully waking consciousness in our physical bodies, we have not yet -48learned to function self-consciously at the emotional and mental levels of being and we have hardly quickened our vehicle of consciousness at the higher mental level at all, our consciousness there being germinal. It is, however, at that relatively high level of being that the impressions of our previous lives, together with all the past, are available to us. We do not have access to this record until we have organized our higher mental vehicle and learned to operate in it in full selfconsciousness. This is the generality and it is not to say that in some particular cases and circumstances, some knowledge of previous lives cannot be impressed on our ordinary waking consciousness and felt as intuitions or seen subjectively. This can and does happen and many checkable instances have been recorded. The common misconceptions about reincarnation are those that arise from the idea that personality persists from life to life. It does not; it disintegrates. The individuality only, with its acquired innate characteristics, persists. All that was left of detailed physical emotion and normal mental experience is dissipated at death together with the personality vehicles. This detailed experience once occasioned in us some self-concern. If we were successful in life we were proud (maybe discreetly). If we were unsuccessful we consoled ourselves with our psychological compensations. The number of Cleopatras and Pharaohs we hear about as past lives of so many people might be connected with this compensatory process! There is no doubt it has helped to bring the idea of reincarnation into discredit. Some serious thinking as to what is left of us after the dissolution of the personality is a salutary exercise. Another misconception is that we can be reincarnated into animals. For various technical reasons this is not possible. Once man, always man, even though the circumstances of individual lives may markedly deteriorate. The truth about reincarnation and the operation of the Law is far grander and more wonderful than the ideas commonly held about it would lead us to believe. No wonder the very idea is so often scorned by the serious minded! It is, however, reincarnation and Karma that can give us a real long-term interest in living. Ourselves and -49our lives here and now are seen to be single experiences only in a long, long chain of such experiences, each with its growing strength, consciousness and power unfolding to an, as yet, undreamt-of glory and perfection to which we are heirs if only we are prepared to work for it. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 8 Evolution by Self-Effort

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER VIII Evolution by Self-Effort

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-50We have earlier considered a little of the metaphysics of Being. We have seen that everything proceeds in cycles of a duration from the infinitely small, microseconds to the infinitely large, of millions of years. There is a universal rhythm, or infinite series of rhythms depending on what we are considering, of activity and rest. There is the inconceivably great cycle of the involvement of Spirit into the Matter down through (or out through) all the states, levels or grades of existence, into the infinitely diverse and more and more complex. This involvement proceeds by stages through matter as such, to its association with forms, as organisms, from the simplest animalcule to the most highly specialized, the human body. The energy inherent in everything is Life energy. There is only One Life in the Universe. This is the subjective centre of everything and this Life is, to use the only suitable if misleading word available to us, intelligent. 'Creation’ proceeds from the Universal Centre by way of orders of intelligences, beings or entities of and at the various grades of being, out from the more subjective realms when regarded from our everyday characteristic point of view, into the physical world. We have seen something of the, 'education' and development of matter and form during it use by units of life indwelling in them for the time being. Some of these orders of beings or creative hierarchies have been responsible for the development, in long past ages, of the vehicles of perception and action of present day Man. This means that his physical, emotional and mental principles were prepared for him during the aeons while the life waves moved up through the kingdoms of nature. The process of man's assuming these principles however, is gradual and proceeds according to the cyclic -51law. Over vast periods of time, the units of spirit, sometimes called monads, eventually to become fully developed men, work their way, so to speak, by usage into these vehicles. As they do this they become more and more conscious on the levels on which for the time being they are operating. Inthe small cycle this process is the one whereby Egos periodically take possession of a body at birth and then discard it at death. This is the process of reincarnation as previously described. In the big cycle the process is that, spread over millions of years, of which coming into birth after a 'heavenly' rest between lives, is a very rapid recapitulation. In the very early stages the monads assume amorphous and unorganised 'bodies' of astral material which is unaffected by the severe climatic conditions of an earth in its later cooling stages. Organization and densification of these ethereal 'bodies' slowly takes place and eventually a physical body is acquired, with a method of reproduction reminiscent of plants and single celled animals. This develops into a sexually reproduced body, primitive, and of an animal-like appearance. This in its turn, in long ages of time, becomes the human body as we know it now. During this lengthy process and for a very long time, the animal soul and the spiritual or human soul were separate. Man lacked the bridge of mind and all that that means. He was irresponsible. (He was still in Eden.) Soon after reproduction had become sexual (Adam and Eve), he was

endowed with mind by great beings who possessed it. (He had eaten the apple.) He became then a complete man but his faculties were largely latent. It needed the experience and effort of many lives to bring them even to our present day stage of unfoldment. This descent of human monads into bodies corresponds to the even longer and larger process of the involvement of Spirit into Matter. So far as humanity as a whole on our globe, the Earth, is concerned, this process of involvement reached its nadir or lowest point when what in Theosophy is termed the Fourth Root Race reached its point of highest development (it is said that the high cheek boned, Mongolian peoples, are the physical type descendants of this race). At this -52 point, in human history, the lowest point of materiality was reached. Spirit was as "cabin'd and confined" in physical bodies as much as it is ever going to be. The process of involvement or involution for mankind on our Earth was complete. In terms of the life span of our globe, we are not far from that time, but another process has now begun. It is that of the evolution of man as a spiritual being. This means the gradual growth of the spiritual qualities of intelligence, wisdom, love and will, and their increasing expression in his lives as he develops. This process is accompanied by the unfoldment of consciousness on to, or into, the higher levels of being. As this happens the man's powers of action, response and comprehension grow and he is aware of this slow growth. The word evolution now has two meanings for us. One is the gradual development in time of materials and forms to provide ever more responsive and effective vehicles for the indwelling life, and the other is the gradual unfoldment of the powers of that indwelling life. Until the 'man' stage is reached, the former process is that more or less, of Darwinian evolution. The expression 'until the man stage is reached' should not be thought of in terms of time but of development. On any lifebearing globe during its period of activity, various lines of development are taking place simultaneously. The story of man's development, that is of his vehicles, is as old as or older than that of our Earth. The archetype of his body, developed by the creative Hierarchies on a previous globe, existed from the formation of our physical earth, on the astral plane, and became the pattern for, and preceded all mammalian forms on our planet. This archetype is the familiar one of a head, two arms, a trunk and two legs, common to all our mammals. Whether the two arms are used as fore legs or the spine is elongated to form a tail, is not of primary significance. It is well known that the embryonic development of a human body recapitulates during its gestation period all the basic stages in the evolution of animal life. It really does more than this. It passes through the whole process of the development of form, that is through the plant kingdom as well as the animal. As the embryo grows through the various -53 stages it also recapitulates the various ways of reproduction used by the more primitive organisms and creatures, i.e., those of fission, budding and egg-laying, all of which in the remote past of man's history have been used by him too. The remote past here means periods of time not yet normally ascribed by science to man's development and it should not be taken to refer to him in his physical, present type of body. It is interesting to note that this theory completely opposes the more conventional and generally accepted one. We now see the pithecoid forms as being derived from the man-form archetype and at some stage separating away from the main stream of development. It was not the other way round, so it looks as if the search for a missing link has no meaning. There is no missing link. The story of how the apes and monkeys came to be is told in The Secret Doctrine. It is too long to go in

to here. Only very briefly and in a rudimentary way are the wonderful and vast processes of involution and evolution touched on here, but it gives a slight foretaste of the scope and depth of, and an insight into, the tremendous field of operations of the One Life in a Universe. So far we have been looking at the processes of nature in which the ordinary man is necessarily passive and about which he can do nothing. He inherits his body and takes for granted his inner life of emotion and thought. He, as an individual has up to this point been quite unaware of the long formative processes that have gone to make him as he is. He has willy-nilly been subjected to all these great cyclical processes which have evolved him to what he is now. At this stage it is worth reviewing what he now is. He is an entity, self-conscious at the physical level of being, with vehicles of consciousness more or less organized and active at the physical, emotional and mental levels. In rare cases he experiences by way of unusual inspiration, comprehension and compassion, some flashes of operation at the higher levels of being. He has moments of illumined understanding and deep insight. His powers on these latter levels are more latent than actual. Nevertheless he does possess -54the means, that is all the vehicles and powers necessary, whether organized and active or latent and germinal, for him to operate in full consciousness from the lowest to the very highest level of Being. In this he is different from all the animals. In them the bridge of mind between the lower principles and the higher spiritual ones is unformed. Man has, as it were, a 'Jacob's Ladder' to Heaven with all the rungs in place. It is up to him to use it if he wants to. The title for this section is 'Evolution by Self-Effort' but we have seen that man has so far been passive to the process. He has not known what has been occurring to him. Where then does selfeffort come in? It comes in by way of the development of his faculties and the consequent unfolding of consciousness. This needs closer examination and some explanation. Earlier we have said that the indwelling life 'educates' matter, forms and bodies by its use of them. This use is what constitutes living, for our purposes particularly living in a physical world, and living necessarily means experience. Much of this experience gathered in many lives and 'digested' between them, manifests as instinct, as an innate inborn sense dictating the natural behaviour in animals and man. Instinct comprises much of what in man has come to be called by psychologists the subconscious. In its place in this category of our unconscious functions comes the regulation of internal bodily functions, which are automatic, and also that instinctive behaviour such as our self preserving immediate reactions to sudden dangerous external stimuli. Together with these subconsciously prompted actions and reactions, we also have reactions to the events and circumstances of ordinary life which impress themselves on our personal memories and condition us to certain behaviour patterns. In other ways we are compelled to those basic actions which are necessary to provide food and shelter for the survival of ourselves and those dependent on us. In yet other cases we are compelled to action by desire or aversion. So, if we are living and wish to remain -55so, and maybe enjoy ourselves or do some good, we must act.

Now every action demands some effort. Effort here is used to cover every kind of striving or action, no matter how it arises. It includes the internal effort of making a decision, overcoming laziness, the initiation and sustaining a course of action until the envisaged end is attained. The word effort is used in a psychological sense as well as that of the expenditure of physical or mental energy or the doing of work, which is a manifestation of the result of effort. Effort does not necessarily involve strain. Strain arises from wrong attitude, maybe towards some unsuspected resistance, whether from within ourselves or externally. Internal obstacles can arise from some conflict within ourselves. External resistance can come from other people opposing our projects or from difficulties and problems inherent in what we have set ourselves to do. If we are going to get, do or be what we want then we must make a sufficiently strong effort and maintain it as long as is necessary. The words desire, determination and effective action and perseverance summarize what we have been talking about. The chief motivator to action is desire in anyone of its many forms. When we come however to the matter of evolution by self-effort, a higher prompter, the Will, becomes operative. Will can be regarded as sublimated desire. The Will can check desireprompted action. It is the basis of real self control. It is the highest of our divine faculties. Desires provide the energy for their accomplishment. The Will empowers us to achieve our ends. So we see then the exigencies of worldly life call forth effort from us. We see that the putting forth of effort develops the strength of the abilities that are being used. The ends of evolution as they relate to the growth of our abilities and the development of our faculties are being furthered. Society also advances by the efforts of its members. Witness the great intellectual advances, particularly in the scientific, productive and commercial fields now taking place at an unprecedented rate, on an unprecedented scale. This development stems from the efforts men are -56making to raise their standard of living, but in general it is only the material standard of living they are concerned with. There is a great growth of intellectual powers as a result of the effort too, but a negligible moral one. We examined this development and its long-term ramifications in the first chapter. We saw that this exclusive preoccupation with material wealth and amenities led to progress in that one direction but it omitted altogether what we could now call spiritual development. This exclusive attention to things material reflects into our relationships with people in the sense that we regard them, too often coldly, in the nature of things, sometimes as possessions. Do we not tend to exploit them for companionship, for affection, encouragement, amusement and so on? So much so that if we are deprived of them we become lonely. People provide us with diversion and with problems both agreeable and disagreeable, but they fill our time for the most part. The ordinary business of life, of working, eating and sleeping occupy most of the rest. We need people, possessions and something to do, in an almost compulsive way. To a very large extent life 'lives' us instead of our living life. We are, so to speak, so involved in it as to be hypnotized by it. Our responses to it are automatic in the sense that we react to people and events according to how we have been conditioned by experience. We act according to type, according to our natures or character. Our efforts produce their effects in, so to speak, the horizontal plane and we stay there so long as we do not know any differently or are content to stay there. There is, however, the vertical direction in which we not only can but, for our full development according to the evolutionary plan, must proceed. Ordinary life efforts help only incidentally in this. How then do we proceed, if we would hasten our evolution? Why should we attempt to hurry on what in the long run we shall accomplish anyway? What prevents our starting?

To take the last question first, it is our ignorance not only of the processes but of the very possibility of spiritual evolution that prevents our giving the matter any attention or doing anything about it. As to why we should make the -57attempt, surely the answer is in one word, suffering. There is a staggering weight of suffering in the world. All of it could surely be attributed ultimately to ignorance, ignorance of the nature of life, of the Law, of evolution, of salvation by self-effort. This ignorance unfortunately is not only of the masses of peoples but of our leaders. It would take too long to deal here with the urgent need for a full realization of these truths and an assumption of full personal responsibility. The world situation shows up some of the effects of this ignorance, exemplified in our present-day competitive nationalism and commercialism, and all it means. The general boredom and loneliness of old people is another quite different result. The effect of ignorance and superstition in religion is still another. This is instanced by the bloody dissensions and riots which accompany so many political quarrels, ostensibly on religious grounds. The inhuman atrocities of the gas chambers and concentration camps of the last war period with their consequent immeasurable suffering are further examples of incredible ignorance and resulting callousness. So the tale of woe on a stupendous scale goes on. In the small scale of individual life, the worry of attaining and maintaining a place in the commercial race and the striving for security all come within our meaning of suffering. Even elementary school examinations are a grave anxiety and pain, not only to some children but also to their parents. The world is not kind. Ignorance and greed account for most of our troubles. They are responsible for that scourge of society we call competition. Our purpose in citing these examples is to justify the case for making some effort to become more understanding, and, out of real regard for our fellows, co-operative instead of competitive. Any effort so made is in line with the long-term plan for mankind. It must have its alleviating effects however small, and we just start with and on ourselves. The majority of mankind is still more or less on the downward arc of involution touched on earlier. What is written here will at best be a matter of interest only for them, if that. It is primarily written for the relative few who are on -58 the ascending arc, for those who are beginning to grow in the vertical direction and who are able and willing really to think. In the hope that when once they know in what direction to make the effort they will want to do so and so help to reduce humanity's intolerable burden of suffering. This may sound very big talk and although some few who read this may make the effort, it may initially be only to benefit themselves, but their growing perceptions and deeper insights, so developed, will soon lead them to be aware of the larger field of activity needing their effort. They will then be only too willing to make it. From what has previously been said about the Law, it will be obvious that men must make this evolutionary effort, individually by, if not for, themselves. No one else can do it for them. What must we do? Surely, first familiarize ourselves with this all embracing, mentally satisfying philosophy of Truth we call Theosophy. Such a study will not in itself present us with Truth but it will develop faculties not otherwise used. It will enlarge and unfold consciousness. From the depths of consciousness and being will come, each to himself, the guiding light of what he must do. Eventually the Will will begin to function and the Will enables a man to assume control of his

vehicles so that they operate to his bidding effectively. We all have access within ourselves to the Truth. Potentially we are all centres of light and sources of enlightenment in an otherwise spiritually dark and benighted world. Surely it is a great work to help bring to fruition the great plan for our stage of evolution. We can at least try. Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 9 Scientific and Esoteric Knowledge

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER IX Scientific and Esoteric Knowledge

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-59It is necessary for a proper understanding of Theosophy to distinguish between scientific and esoteric knowledge because they are quite different. The one relates to objectivity and the other to inner subjectivity. There is an objective and a subjective aspect to Theosophy. For the purposes of this chapter esoteric knowledge is subjective Theosophy. The dictionary meaning of the word "esoteric" is "meant for the initiated". The word "initiate" has two meanings "to begin or start" and "to admit into secrets or mysteries". This could be the introduction of someone into a society and the imparting to him of some facts or tricks of the trade or order of ceremony, passwords and so on, not made known to outsiders. The mere joining of a Society like that of the Theosophical Society, the then availability of its library facilities and the enjoyment of the company of likeminded members would satisfy this definition. In the case of Theosophy, however, simple admission to the Society cannot give a knowledge of Theosophy in the esoteric sense. The word from which "science" is derived means simply "to know". Science, however, has come to mean not only knowledge in the fields of the various sciences, of physics, chemistry, astronomy, archaeology, etc. but a particularly disciplined method of reasoning. We must, however, look to see what knowledge really is. Knowledge as we ordinarily regard it is remembered experience or information we get from the spoken or written word. Knowledge gained from experiment or other direct observation comes into the category of experience. The conclusions derived from deductive or inductive reasoning are not really knowledge until they are proven, then they too come within the scope of experience. Knowledge derived from experience is always related to -60and affected by the observer. All individual experience is coloured by our feelings, our prejudices and the limits of our powers of observation. All these will affect what we receive in consciousness and thus what is available to memory. This applies particularly to the generality of everyday experience in familiar surroundings. Inthe case of scientific observation, training in strict method reduces this coloration to a minimum. The very nature of the training however might introduce the danger, in some cases, of not seeing the Wood for the trees. All ordinary knowledge comes to us via our five senses, and in mankind all of these are very limited. We can see only a limited range of colours and we can see things only down to a certain size. We can hear only sounds within a relatively narrow frequency band. Our sense of smell appears dull when compared with that of dogs. Our impressions received from touch are very inexact. We can tell a warm thing from a cold thing, but something too hot will burn us. Something too cold will freeze the part of the body it touches, rendering it numb. Some things are too heavy for us to handle. Some people have an acute, refined palate, others a Coarse insensitive one. The fields of sight and hearing can be considerably extended by instruments but even their registrations must be referred in some way to our senses for them to have any meaning for us. We know about things therefore largely only by what we can perceive of their qualities, that is their mass, colour, texture, temperature or their taste and the sounds or smells they emit. Ineach of

these departments our means of perception is limited, So that our knowledge of anything by these means is always limited. We can never know from sense impressions all about anything. There are also wide areas of knowledge such as rates of vibratory radiation, chemical affinities, how other people feel, what prompts their particular actions, with which our normal senses are quite inadequate to deal. In these areas we have to try to imagine and to sympathize. So much for knowledge by experience. What about knowledge gained from words? Words come to us via our senses too. Written words come by way of -61sight, spoken words by way of sound. Words are symbols. Written words are marks or impressions of recognizable form, and spoken words are sounds comprising consonants and vowels, but also of recognizable form. How do these symbols come to have any meaning for us? The short answer is that we put the meaning into them for ourselves, mostly by association. "Cat" is associated with our remembered or present-time experience of a furry four-legged creature with certain recognizable, consistent characteristics. Word symbols commonly come to have a meaning for us in terms of our experience. If, however, the word relates to something outside our experience, we have to supply a meaning out of our imagination. Ifwe happen to ascribe a meaning to a word which other people have ascribed to it, we get agreement. We thus get some confidence in our ascribed meaning and feel we know what the word means. To the extent that the meaning is agreed on we can communicate. This confidence is also often well placed when the word relates to something in someone else's experience, even if we have not enjoyed the experience ourselves. Such confidence is belief. Even though some of us may not have been to foreign lands we believe what we are told about them if we consider the witness reliable. The position, however, with words used about things like heaven, hell, God, the Spirit and the levels of being we have been talking about, is quite different, because these relate to things outside of normal experience. Largely they are ideas. Let us look at belief again. Inthe case of our traveller to foreign lands, when we accept what he tells us about something outside our experience, we have to imagine in terms of something within our experience what he is trying to say. In other words, we put our own meaning into his words by our imaginations. It is important that we should be aware of this process, particularly when we come to words dealing with abstract ideas such as those instanced above which constitute the fundamentals of religions, of philosophies, theologies, doctrines and dogmas. The meaning we ascribe to many words used in them is entirely drawn from our imagination. This meaning must be entirely peculiar and private to each of us. -62Some of us may have had some direct experiences that we should describe as religious. The mystics have spoken of the joy and bliss they have experienced. We can only know what they are talking about if we have had similar experience. If we have not, the best we can do. is to try to imagine what they have felt, in terms of our own experience of what we know as joy and bliss. Purely subjective experience is not communicable by words. This is what was meant when we said that admission to the Theosophical Society could not impart Theosophy. Information providing a wealth of ideas and food for thought is available. This is objective Theosophy. When this has been assimilated a student will have knowledge of the subject of the same kind as any student can gain of any other subject. But such is not esoteric knowledge or what we have now called subjective Theosophy. This brings us again to the difference between scientific and esoteric knowledge.

It is easy to see from the foregoing what scientific knowledge is. What of esoteric knowledge? The definition of it included the word 'initiated'. What meaning other than that of being given access to information otherwise held secret can that word have? We have said that there is a class of experience not communicable by words. This is inner subjective experience which somehow registers in consciousness. Initiation is then taken to mean here the beginning of self-conscious functioning on each of the levels of being, and the eventual union of the lower with the higher, Egoic, principles. There are grades of such experience varying from our ordinary inner feelings and awareness, through degrees of psychic experience to the attainment of great insight, understanding and wisdom. It is apparent from this that there are two kinds of extended experience. One kind derives from the extension of the senses faculties we already possess, like seeing and hearing into the other levels of being, i.e. psychism, and the other the development of faculties not yet operating faculties of a higher order. These latter are our spiritual faculties of higher intelligence, intuition, compassion (pure love) and will. Regarding the first kind we must all have heard of people -63who experience things that we do not. They can 'see' apparitions; they can 'hear' voices; some have remarkable visions; some become aware of events taking place at a distance or even that have not yet happened. We say in theosophical parlance that these people have perceptive faculties functioning on the astral level and, with thought transference, maybe on the mental level. The working of these faculties is mostly involuntary and spasmodic, as in the case of’ second sight, and of common telepathy. Some people can voluntarily put themselves into a trance-like state and can, for example, receive messages from the 'other side'. Itshould be noted that, in these cases, of mediumship, the medium is in a passive state, is usually unaware of what is coming through and cannot control it or determine which 'spirit' shall speak. There are other sensitives who, by being in the presence of a person or being given something belonging to that person, can in the ordinary waking state surprisingly give details of that person's life and circumstances. This is psychometry. There are some important things to notice about these apparent gifts. One is that they must involve the use of faculties or aspects of faculties not functioning in most of us. Another is that although they are perceptions of things not normally physical, what is experienced does relate to the personality level of being. This gives us a clue to the plane on which the sensitive is operating. It may be up to the lower mental, but usually it is on the astral level. The difference between the voluntary and involuntary nature of these experiences is important. This difference is dependent on the centre of perception that happens to be functioning. There are various centres in our astral double which act as vital links between that body, and our emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. These centres are associated with and correspond in position to various major nerve ganglia or ductless glands in our physical bodies. These are at the base of the spine, in the sex organs, in the solar plexus, heart, throat, pineal and pituitary glands. When humanity was on the downward arc in involution the centre at the solar plexus was quickened into life as the journey downwards through the inner planes was being -64made. In most of us our consciousness passed down through the astral plane and was for a long time centred in it. Next we became located in and identified with our physical bodies. In some few,

however, the solar plexus centre remained 'psychically' operative and so we get the folk with second sight and so on. Similarly most of the mediums who contact passively, but cannot function consciously on, the astral plane have the necessary centre functioning but usually not under their control. In most of us the functioning of our solar plexus is as a nerve centre and has become automatic. It does not normally affect our consciousness and is better left that way. To requicken it would be a retrograde step. On the other hand, the power to use clairvoyance and clairaudience voluntarily comes by the development of other centres. This quickening though usually comes incidentally after a person has taken up his evolutionary training and should, we are advised, not be separately undertaken. It is important to notice that experience even on the psychic and mental planes is still objective, capable of translation into knowledge of the ordinary kind as remembered experience. In considering the second kind of extended experience we are brought back to the consideration of esoteric knowledge. Is it not now beginning to be clear that, apart from some of the facts given here which might be regarded as esoteric in that they are not generally known, esoteric knowledge should not really be regarded as knowledge in the ordinary sense of 'things' experienced and remembered? Esoteric knowledge proper is the conscious functioning of our inner faculties particularly of the higher ones. As mentioned before, at higher levels it manifests in us as spontaneous understanding, as pure love, as strength, as blissful joy and wisdom. These become the activities of our own inner being. They are of our individuality, our Ego, not of our personality. True esotericism or occultism, is no process of self-aggrandisement, rather is it the reverse. The personality becomes subservient to the higher self. Esoteric knowledge or knowing is real subjectivity, an expansion -65of consciousness to include the functioning, in full self-determined awareness, on the inner planes. As we progress, awareness or active, as opposed to dreamlike passive, consciousness is preserved to us, according to our ability, if and when we move on to the other planes. It is said that we all ordinarily operate on the astral, emotional and mental planes but normally we are not conscious there of ourselves in our actual surroundings but only in our self-created ones. Our dreams may be some occurrences in which we are involved in these states, being impressed, mostly incoherently, on our physical brain consciousness. The majority of us are not really awake, in the full sense of the word, even in our so-called waking life. We are too identified with our bodies. Our consciousness is shut in. It is even more shut in on the astral and mental planes. A good example of the sort of thing we are trying to convey is the person in a state of complete preoccupation or a 'brown study'. We say he is not with us, and neither is he. To a greater or lesser extent we are all in this 'brown study' state most of our lives. The esotericism we are trying to describe is a move into an increasingly free state of consciousness, of liberation. This is a state of full awareness of ourselves in our surroundings in the ever-present now. Everyone would say that he is aware in the ever-present now, but normally consciousness is too often of the 'shut in' type, in our heads or in our feelings. We cannot, of course, be aware at any time other than now, neither a second in the past nor a second in the future. We can remember the past or look towards the future, but we cannot be at any time other than now - neither can we be anywhere but here, wherever we are. The simple act of waking up to this fact, to a real realization of it, might produce a significant experience. Try it. This talk about awareness and the present moment leads us to a word which may now have a somewhat expanded meaning. It is 'knowing', knowing, so to speak, in the instant now, and this is

always the instant of our being. Knowing in this sense is the functioning of faculty, indeed of being. It is the awareness of the operation of faculty. In -66a more significant sense it is the awareness of the functioning of our higher faculties. It is something other than a knowledge of, or remembered information about, things. It is important to note the way the word 'knowing' has just been used. It has nothing to do with the mind as the seat of the mental process of recall (memory), thinking or imagining. This mind is part of the mentoemotional complex, the defects and derangements of which are the subject of the present-day science of psychology. The functioning of the higher faculties is never subject to derangement. It is sanity of the highest order. In closing we can now touch on two words about which there is endless conjecture -Truth and Reality. Reality is obviously that which is real to us at the level of being where we are conscious. We have seen however that manifestation stems from the dual fundamental of Spirit-Matter. We have seen that these are the elements of what we now know as consciousness - the subjective and the objective. Reality then, as well as having the familiar objective aspect it presents to our normal senses, has its subjective aspect. It is this aspect of reality which usually we completely ignore in all our considerations about it. All objective reality is relative and temporal, but subjective reality is of the nature of Being. It always is. It is relative only in the degree or to the extent of our being. It is therefore essential to see that we can only come at Reality proper subjectively, that is by way of our higher faculties, aspects themselves of the Spirit, the very nature or being of which stems from, nay basically is, in each of us, consciousness itself. This final reference point of all being, the ultimate subjectivity, is Truth. In this sense Truth and final Reality are synonymous. To finish let us come back to initiation. It seems now that any candidate for true esoteric knowledge or knowing must develop faculty and he must start the process for himself. In The Secret Doctrine, it is stated that the candidate must "make progress ... first by natural impulse, and then by selfinduced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas (mind) up to the holiest archangel". It was also said by Madame Blavatsky, -67apropos the study of The Secret Doctrine, "This mode of thinking is what the Indians call Jnana Yoga. 'As one progresses in Jnana Yoga, one finds conceptions arising which, though one is conscious of them, one cannot express nor yet formulate into any sort of mental picture. As time goes on the conceptions will form into mental pictures. This is a time to be on guard and refuse to be deluded with the idea that the new found and wonderful picture must represent reality. It does not. As one works on, one finds the once admired picture growing dull and unsatisfactory and finally fading out or being thrown away. This is another danger point because for the moment one is left in a void without any conceptions to support one, and one may be tempted to revive the castoff picture for want of a better to cling to. The true student will, however, work on unconcerned, and presently further formless gleams come, which again in time give rise to a larger and more beautiful picture than the last. But the learner will now know that no picture will ever represent the TRUTH. This last splendid picture will grow dull and fade like the others. And so the process goes on, until at last the mind and its pictures are transcended and the learner enters and dwells in the World of NO FORM, but of which all forms are narrowed reflections." Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 10 The

Way to Understanding

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER X The Way to Understanding

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-68The beginning of the way to understanding is the desire for it. This of course applies to anything. If we really want something we do what is necessary to get it. Understanding has a number of meanings but what we are concerned with is to "perceive the significance or explanation or cause or nature of', and the meanings given to perception include "intuitive recognition (of truth, aesthetic quality etc.)". These definitions give an idea of the aspect of under- standing we shall try to deal with. First, then, how does a desire for understanding arise? Probably two words answer this, observation and thought. From these arise questioning and the will to seek for answers. Until questioning has arisen within us, answers that we might come by in books or conversation will either go unheeded or be of incidental interest only. We may be stimulated to interest by someone who can fire our imaginations by scintillating talk or a mastery of his subject but, unless the urge to know for ourselves wells up inside us to the point of compelling us to some action, our interest will die when the stimulation is removed. The subject would have no more significance than it would have as a topic of ordinary conversation. Unless our interest is strong enough for us to make sacrifices in time and effort for it, we shall get little. We cannot by any magical means come by understanding. We cannot, for instance, hope to know Theosophy by merely reading what is here set forth in digest form. The answers to many potential questions may have been given, but unless thought and real interest have been aroused it is all no more than a story, maybe an unusually provocative one, but little more. While true understanding uses faculties higher than the mind, these higher faculties are developed by mental efforts - 69to understand. The mind as an organ grows like any other with use. Thinking is a function of the mind. So we must learn to think. To think we must have something to think about. A study of a subject of interest like The Secret Doctrine will provide the necessary food for thought. An important distinction we must make now is that between intellect and intelligence. This distinction is not easy, but from the words themselves we can almost feel the difference. Intellect is a kind of machine-like thing, devoid of feeling, in itself a 'dead' thing, however developed and brilliant it may be. Intelligence .is live, fluent, perceptive, open, creative. The one can bog us down in sterile argument, complexity, maybe mere cleverness, sometimes cunning; and it is concerned with ideas and the 'letter of the law', as if these were realities. The other in its degree is simple, direct and candid, concerned with real situations, with the true nature of things. It admits sympathy. Even though we are drawing a wide distinction between intellect and intelligence without some of the one we cannot have the other. The intellect is, however, a sort of mental machine, albeit often of great capacity. Its possessor can become identified with it to the exclusion or neglect of the other aspects of his nature. On the other hand, intelligence might be regarded as enlivened and illuminated intellect with which the man is not identified. Itis a faculty which functions freely for him sometimes, even surprising him with its direct insight, accuracy and economy of expression.

All things in nature have their form side and life or spirit side. Intellect is of the form side. Intelligence is a spiritual faculty, of the life side. Intelligence underlies understanding. Understanding might be said to be of three kinds, intellectual understanding, understanding by sympathy arising from identification, and understanding by sympathy but with detachment. Intellectual understanding comes from a perception of the nature of and relationships between things known to, or forming part of, intellectual knowledge. Sympathy by identification is the kind of understanding most of us have when for instance, we identify ourselves -70with the characters in a film or play. Our emotions are aroused sometimes even to the point of uncontrollability as when we weep in the moving scenes. We are not at all concerned that what we are actually seeing is a counterfeit of real life, maybe a mere shadow on a screen. Sympathy with detachment is sympathy that arises when we know from experience or through some quickened responsive faculties what the feelings of others are but we do not identify ourselves with them. We maintain our awareness of ourselves and, while we may feel pity or compassion, we are not moved to the point of losing self- possession; we retain control. Imagination plays its part in understanding. If we cannot sympathize from our own experience, we can use our imagination. Now the development of this ability to sympathize by imagination is, in spite of what we said earlier about putting the meaning into words, a powerful quickener of understanding. It works in this way. When a person thinks, changes take place in the matter of the mental plane such that another person operating on that plane can 'see' what the original thinker is thinking about. Imagination also makes forms in this mental matter which have a being and persist according to the strength and definition of the imagined image. Now there are some images, like religious symbols, that occupy the minds of many people. These become charged, so to say, with the thought forms of the people using them and also with associated emotion, so that another person dwelling long and intensely enough on that symbol can become aware of what has been inbuilt into it, that is all the ideas and feelings associated with it. National flags and anthems and school songs, regimental colours and so on, are examples of these charged symbols. So are the effigies and names of deities and saints. The symbols of Jung's "collective unconscious" are also of this kind. In magical rites such symbols are knowingly used. The practitioners dwell on the symbols of the 'power' they wish to contact. By their response to feelings and awareness so evoked in themselves they build the qualities of the evoked 'power' into their own characters. This is, in the more -71reputable and traditional systems, a means of progressively modifying the consciousness of the 'magician' until he can operate at very high levels of being. The system. based on the ancient Kabalah is such a one. There is yet another factor of primary importance on the way to understanding, and that is devotion, devotion to the goal we set ourselves. We shall obviously set our target very high. The highest is Truth itself. Ifwe associate this with Reality, that is that Reality in and behind everything,

including our very selves, as we showed earlier, there can be nothing higher for us to aspire to. We cannot possibly know absolute Truth, but we can become its devotees. We can feel towards it. We can engender a love for it, for its own sake. We can dare to aspire towards it. This devotional aspiration after Truth applies equally whether what we are after is so-called scientific truth, sociological truth, psycho- logical truth, philosophical truth or religious truth. All real truths synthesize into the One Truth. This brings us to the last important point. If we would avoid on this path the innumerable dangers, delaying byways and much suffering, we must never forget the absolute necessity of loving Truth and aspiring after it for its own sake. This means we do not seek for any personal gain that it may bring us. If our motive is pure this will not enter our heads. The extent to which our own selfadvancement does enter our heads is a measure of our unfitness for Truth and Power. These may seem hard words before we have even started and they may even rob us of all incentive to start, but they must be said. This does not mean that the following of the path to the best of our ability does not bring great happiness and its own rewards. It does, but those should not be the motives. What then should be our motive? None other than love if we can attain to that. If we cannot, we can remember the welter of suffering in the world and the ages for which it has persisted. We can cultivate the will to be a means of alleviating that condition a bit. We will find that this quest for Truth will in itself pull our lives straight and into some- thing of a state of real sanity. Many fears and psychological -72limitations can be shed, but this in turn demands the courage to be ourselves and to be free. Before we leave this subject of the way to understanding we must say something more about what we called individuality. We said this arose from the association of our higher mental (or manasic) principle with the intuitive principle (Buddhi) and ultimately thereby with the Spirit. Now Cosmically, the intuitional vehicle is the Universal Soul, the World Soul for us. It is the vehicle of Spirit. When, in us, it is associated with our higher Manas, it is our Spiritual Soul. We said earlier that higher mind was the realm of abstract ideas whence sprang the comprehension of underlying principles. The distinction between its operation and those of the lower mind is that the lower mind deals in things, things of form and matters relating to the personality, whereas those of the higher mind are formless and impersonal in essence. Intuition is the source of those flashing insights of certainty, of direct synthesizing knowing. The dawning of its entering our consciousness is accompanied by moments of exquisite calmness, peace, joy and feeling of powerful and all embracing Love. It is the plane of Love and Wisdom. Pure Spirit is the plane of Will and Power. Higher Manas is the realm of 'pure' Thought. The way to understanding is then also the way into these lofty levels of consciousness which are those of the faculties of our own essential Being, our individuality, our Self. Paradoxically one of the ways to knowledge of the Self is through the mind. There is an immediate difficulty here. The mind has been called "the slayer of the Real". So it is, it throws up its own conceptions. It is full of information, data, remembered impressions from experience. It is conditioned by precept and pain. It is full of preconception and prejudice. These contents of the mind, obscure, nay completely shut out, Truth which, for present purposes, can be regarded as synonymous with our subjective higher Selves. These contents of mind are our psychological riches that we must psychologically part with if we are to open up a way for consciousness to ascend to the higher realms of our being. The opening up of this way is, so far as we consciously

-73are concerned, a lower mind function, but a higher mind response is aroused and this totally eclipses the reasonings and doubts of the lower mind. Then we know and are free. Now Buddhi is 'above' even higher mind. It is the realm of compassion; for us this means love consciousness. Hence the inestimable value of love for our fellow beings, even if it not at first of the highest, and also of our love for Truth. It may be difficult at the start to love Truth when it must seem to be merely an abstraction. The use of symbols at this stage is legitimate, but it must never be forgotten that our object of devotion is in fact a symbol and that we must eventually outgrow and discard it. To cling to it, however sacred it may become to us, will retard further progress. It is said "The Truth shall make you free". If we want Truth we must dare to be free. Let us now introduce a word not used here before, occultism. This frightens some, but the occult is that which, for the time being, is hidden from us. This word is used in the following quotation from one of H. P. Blavatsky's writings. "This last word (occultism) is certainly misleading, translated as it stands from the compound word meaning 'Secret Knowledge'. But the knowledge of what? ... There are four kinds of Esoteric Knowledge or Sciences given ... There is ... ( 1) knowledge of the occult powers awakened in Nature by the performance of certain religious ceremonies and rites. (2) the 'great knowledge', the magic of the Kabalists and of the Tantrika worship, often Sorcery of the worst description. (3) knowledge of the mystic powers residing in Sound (Ether), hence in the Mantras (chanted prayers or incantations), and depending on the rhythm and melody used; in other words, a magical performance based on knowledge of the Forces of Nature and their correlation. And (4) ... 'Knowledge of the Soul', true Wisdom … but which means far more. This last is the only kind of Occultism that any Theosophist … who would be wise and unselfish, ought to strive after. All the rest is some branch of the 'Occult Sciences', i.e. arts based on the knowledge of the ultimate essence of all things in the Kingdoms of Nature- such as minerals, plants and animals - hence of -74things pertaining to the realm of material nature, however invisible that essence may be, and howsoever much it has eluded the grasp of Science". All the other arts "may be mastered and results obtained, whether good, bad or indifferent; but 'true Wisdom' sets small value on them. It includes them all and may even use them occasionally, but it does so after purifying them of their dross, for beneficent purposes, and taking care to deprive them of every element of selfish motive." This may sound a counsel of perfection, and indeed it is, for Theosophy ultimately is that and in the limit it demands no less. The aspirant who would attain it is required to sublimate all the urges of his lower nature, his personal self. If, all at once, he cannot aspire to this, can he not go on? Indeed he can. Says H. P. Blavatsky in the same article, "Let him aspire to no higher than he feels able to accomplish. Let him not take a burden upon himself too heavy for him to carry. Without ever becoming a 'Mahatma', a Buddha, or a Great Saint, let him study the philosophy and the 'Science of the Soul', and he can become one of the modest benefactors of humanity, without any 'superhuman' powers." Theosophy - what's it all about? > Next Page Chapter 11 Theosophy

and Religion

'THEOSOPHY - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?' - CHAPTER XI Theosophy and Religion

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-75Religion is a word with many meanings but essentially it has to do with Deity, and our relationship with Deity, with real mysticism and spiritual development, and with all that may mean to us by way of discipline, worship and prayer. It has to do with the founders of the individual religions. The great religions, that is those with the most adherents, are Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. The word religion for most people, however, also includes the forms and practices of ceremonial used and it includes priestcraft, buildings, paraphernalia, traditional customs, authentic scriptures with their secondary literature of commentaries, theologies, history, symbolism, music, great personages and ordinary adherents. We should notice particularly about the great religions that the original teachers, Shri Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus and others very seldom wrote down their teaching; one notable exception is Mohammed. They taught ab initio, from first principles, and used scripture and background traditions as then existing only by way of allusion or illustration. They may have used existing temples or other established religious meeting places, but they were independent of them and taught anywhere that circumstance required. They were generally without possessions. They themselves established little or no ceremonial forms or orders of service. They had followers who spread and carried on the teachings, and they too were unpaid. From a study of the teachings, as and when expressed in the teachers' own words as reported, it is clear that they all taught essentially the same things. The ethical principles they put forth for men to follow are identical and they all taught that men could only arrive at Truth from within themselves, but each of them laid stress on different aspects -76of their teachings. Shri Krishna dwelt on devotion and sacrifice. The Buddha taught in terms of enlightenment by self effort and of the cause of suffering and its eradication. Jesus laid stress on love, humility and self-sacrifice. There seems no doubt that all these great teachers, had they ever come together, would have been in perfect accord, each appreciating to the full what the others were trying to do. Whence then the disastrous, controversial carping and sometimes bitter differences that have arisen between the adherents not only of the religions themselves but even between those of the numerous sects within most of them? The short answer is ignorance, and opinions or beliefs based on that ignorance, held too strongly. For this ignorance those in authority, the teachers and leaders in the movements must be held responsible. Any new religion seems to be superimposed on and to incorporate eventually much of the religious usage and tradition pre-existing in its country of origin. This usage and tradition vests primarily in the established professional priesthood, which usually bitterly resents the new teacher and his followers. In order to free our minds from some possibly deep-seated preconceptions, it may be worth while to have a look at the possible origins of priesthood and priestcraft. This is meant as a purely

objective look and not in any way to be offensive and certainly not to decry the service rendered to humanity by many generations of devoted men and women who have given their lives in the utmost sincerity, within their lights, to furthering the cause they have had and have so dearly at heart and to serving their fellowmen. It must not be overlooked, however, that sincerity can be consistent with ignorance and that they are but human with all the limitations and weaknesses of human beings. There is the simple theory of the more knowledgeable and powerful members of a community banding together to lead and guide the less favoured members and to minister to them or exploit them, probably a bit of both, according to the character of those concerned. This theory could of course apply to the purely temporal operations like secular -77government and not apply to anything to do with religion. It is worth noting, however, that whereas the office of priest has usually been distinct from that of the temporal ruler, the clergy have often exerted considerable influence over the lay leaders. So this theory, while not complete, may be at any rate partly true. Another theory is that the Gods (in the past) have needed to be propitiated and supplicated and this could only be done effectively by the specially qualified, that is by those who professed knowledge of the ways and means of so doing. All other priestly practices of soul-saving and service to their flock have grown out of the idea of priests' special relationship to their God. Some priests have been and are good, altruistic and kind men, others lamentably just the reverse. This latter theory seems to be the more likely one. Let us look at it further and expand on it in the light of some of the things we have said in earlier chapters. We said that the process of involution of Spirit into Matter applied to humanity. We said that in the fourth Root Race that process for humanity in general was completed but that there were many individuals in whom it was not. Psychic powers would then have been more common. It is said that this was, in fact, the case and that these powers latterly became much abused. The forms of religion then centred round psychic phenomena, the evocation of spirits for proclamation and prophecy. As genuine psychic power declined, aids were introduced. Blood sacrifices were made; the emanations from newly-shed blood greatly facilitate the ectoplasmic materialization of forms. So degeneration and cruelty entered into religion and among many primitive peoples have persisted almost to the present day. The ability to evoke god-forms eventually disappeared, but the sacrifice still persisted as propitiation or to meet the so-called demands of the gods. All this is on the dark, degenerate side. On the other side, there is a long tradition of mystery schools where secret training in the development of man's inner faculties was given. Some of these, especially in countries to the east of the Mediterranean and in Egypt, were associated with the religion of the country, and the priests -78were initiates in the mysteries. Itseems that these religions did not degenerate to the degrading, bestial levels of the more primitive religions, but that changing world conditions, politics and wars weakened them as institutions. Itseems that the real power of knowledge of the priesthood disappeared too. Human weakness intervened. The priests remained and the temples remained but the real power and life departed leaving the shell and form only. Inthe absence of the giving light of Truth, the symbols and the rituals lost their inner meaning and superstition and materialism took its place. The letter of the law became the dead letter, for example, as with the Scribes and Pharisees of early Christian time, so we are told.

With ignorance fear is born. Inan established priesthood this fear shows in a number of ways. There is the fear of the new, the unaccustomed, there is fear of the other religions or sects ("They ought to be put down!"). There is the fear of the real knower, the real man of God, the mystic, the true occultist. Out of these fears has arisen fanatical persecution, heresy hunting, the Inquisition, and something of these still exists. Itis said that for a few centuries after the passing of Jesus there were some Gnostics (Knowers) and something of their literature remains. Itis said that in the vast libraries of ancient Alexandria was stored a wealth of knowledge of the Ancient Wisdom but this was all destroyed. This ruthless suppression of enlightened societies, like the Essenes possibly, and enlightened men who could have threatened the power of thrones and certainly that of formalized religion, has been a feature of written history. No wonder we went through what are called the Dark Ages. The Renaissance and the advent of science generally did much to remove the shadow of superstition and fear, and with it the power of religions declined and is still declining, and nothing is now taking their place. The Law of Karma applies universally, not only to individual men but to nations, organizations and societies. As they sow, so they reap. Each gets its deserts. Ifa religion ceases to serve its real function it is removed. Today we have a world in which large sections of the population of many countries are mostly free from religious -79superstitions. This is so particularly in the West and is becoming more and more so in the East. Formal religions persist but they make comparatively little impact and their leaders are worried and perplexed. Not that there is anything wrong with their original basic teachings, but there is much wrong with their theologies and dogmas, and the life has gone out of them. We are left with the forms of practice and service, crystallized, set, unchangeable. What is written here will be unacceptable to many religious people, leaders and adherents alike, but in the main the truth of it is inescapable. Within every religion are the devoted, faithful and unquestioning few. They are completely sincere workers and missionaries. To these few who have got all they want these remarks are not addressed. They are asked, however, not to be unreasoningly vehement in defence of their faiths. It only leads to quarrelling and converts no one. We desperately need a religious renaissance. In any case most people and society need some discipline for their full happiness. This was, and to some extent still is, provided or inspired by every religion, mostly in its best form, self-discipline. We need an influx of new life into religion so that the world's populations can have something they sense is true and can respect, to help them in their living, or in the light of which they can be guided to a full and mature responsibility for themselves and their own spiritual progress. Belief in an outside saving agency will not do this and it tends to be weakening. Most people urgently need something to which they can wholeheartedly subscribe and by which they can confidently and with purpose order their lives. What has been outlined in these chapters is Religion its very self. It is not a religion but it is that eternal Wisdom which is the origin and basis of all the true religions that have ever been or ever will be. It all centres round the one basic truth, the Unity of the Universe, the One Life manifesting in Diversity. This is where Theosophy comes in. There is nothing fundamentally new that any world teacher who may come could say. The thesis outlined here embraces all knowledge, religious, scientific and philosophical. It gives a sound basis for such new sciences as -80psychology to proceed on. It does not gainsay and is not at enmity with any of the fundamentally

essential principles of any existing religion. Rather does it amplify and explain them and make them sensible. It reconciles them to all recently discovered knowledge and above all, to each other. In its light the true dicta of science and the true dicta of religion become the same thing but with one, in the main, dealing with the form side of things and the other with the life side. It is free, open, fearless and will stand any questioning, challenge and research. All the phenomena of the spiritualists and of spiritual healing, all the experiences of the mystics are embraced in it. All the facts and laws of Nature on all planes of being are encompassed in it. The destiny and purpose, at least in general outline, of every race and sub-race that has been or will be on our globe are discovered and included in it. This is big talk, but any man may study it for himself and see its truth. It is not provable by any other means but surely that is as it should be. Before we close we should refer again to certain things hinted at but not said clearly. They concern the individual man's progress, the way ahead for the aspirant. We have said if he would become even a modest benefactor of humanity, let him study this philosophy, the "science of the soul". We have also said that there is no such thing as empty space in a manifested Universe. This may seem a very unrelated fact, but it means that every minute particle of matter or energy is a manifestation of the One Life, with (at any level below that of the Absolute which is quite unknowable) its two aspects of Spirit and Matter. Every form is imbued with a focused ray of that One Life. Man's conscious being stems from it and he has all the qualities, vehicles, faculties and powers necessary for him to climb by his own efforts only, in consciousness to the very Highest. To a large extent these attributes of his are dormant, unused and unorganised, particularly the higher ones. But as he uses his mind and develops his inner feelings by earnest aspiration and with the slow unfolding of his capacity for love by devotion, the aspirant will feel, in the course of time, the slow expansion of his consciousness. His almost exclusive interest in his personality and all that is -81related to it will fade gradually in intensity His ordinary self will become increasingly objective to him and he will feel that quite apart from it he has a permanent being He will be able increasingly to use his personality instead of having his actions dictated by it. He will not be so prone to the ups and downs of its moods He moves by glimpses and for short periods only at first into a new state of self possession and control, with a new confidence. His mind becomes clearer, less restless, and to his surprise at times it seems to operate from within itself with confidence and good judgment. The desire and certainly the need for stimulants, excitement and sensation will gradually fall away. His life will be fulfilling enough without them The processes of his mind will deepen and he will be conscious of his growing understanding. Occasionally there will come other experiences as his perceptions awaken and these will fill him with joy and wonder. He will have flashes of insight into the very nature of Being. As step by step, by this self-initiating process, he bursts the bounds which previously hemmed in his consciousness he will know, by feeling, more and more the meaning of freedom and of life Awareness can then soar into these regions where the sensc of "I-ncss" and separation are forgotten The aspirant and his higher Self are becoming One. He is beginning to meet his "Master", his real Self, in the sanctuary of his soul. He feels himself to be the prodigal son returning to the love of his Father after his long, long sojourn in the lands of earthly life and sensation, far away from the very centre of his being whence springs all Life, Light, Consciousness and Love For the majority of us this great journey of return cannot be accomplished in one earthly life or even in many, but we can always start by turning our faces homeward. None can earnestly set out on this road without becoming aware of thc rightness of it. Little by little, faith and understanding grow. In the light of these the aspirant begins to know for himself, from the depths of his being, what he must do. In this way every man becomes his own teacher. Others can only interest and

stimulate and, in so far as they themselves have attained, lend a helping hand They can be to us as -82examples; they can outline the philosophy and the broad principles, but each man by his own life must turn these principles into experience. Every man within himself is the Way ... Let him therefore be true to his own Self. While we are caught in the toils of personality, with the difficulties and doubts that our emotions and minds create for us, the meaning of this advice will be obscure and might even lead us into trouble because our minds can justify almost anything that we, at personality level, may want to do, but this is obviously not what is meant. Deep inside us is a Wisdom of Simplicity which, if we will give it room, will come in silence into our lives. Only a little time each day devoted to it will guide us through the dense woods of ignorance and complexity in which we are lost, out into the joyous light and freedom of SELF-realization. There is no religion higher than Truth. Let us seek it with all our might! EPILOGUE Although some beliefs may have been put in jeopardy by this book, nothing in it gainsays anything of real significance in any true religion. This being so, a wonderful contribution to world unity, peace and understanding could be made if the leaders of our great religions would spread their respective messages against a background of the knowledge touched on in these pages.

'Theosophy - What's it all about?' - Contents, Preface & Introduction by Geoffrey Farthing 'A brief summary of a wonderfully exciting and vitally important subject.'

Biography

Bibliography 1 THE FIELD OF THEOSOPHY by Christmas Humphreys. A short outline of the scope of the subject 2 THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY by H P Blavatsky. Deals authoritatively with the main aspects of thc subject from the point of view of an initial enquirer 3 TWELVE MANUALS OF THEOSOPHY by various authors. Each deals with one principle aspect of Theosophy giving basic principles and their relevance to ordinary life. published by Point Loma Publications, Inc 4 AN ABRIDGEMENT OF THE SECRET DOCTRINE by Christmas Humphreys and Elizabeth Preston. A selection of passages from the original work to give a student an overall view of the main teachings without much explanatory material and context references to ancient religions, current science (late 19th century), ancient and modern philsophers, etc 5 THE DIVINE PLAN by Geoffrey Barborka. A commentary on The Secret Doctrine arranging systematically and commenting on the information in it. 6 THE SECRET DOCTRINE DIGEST by Ernest Wood An epitome of the teachings from a trained thinker's and teacher's point of view. 7 THE SECRET DOCTRINE by H P Blavatsky.The great source book for the serious and more advanced student 8 THE MAHATMA LETTERS TO A P SINNETT edited by A T Barker. Letters from two Masters of the Wisdom containing much material of inestimable value to the aspiring student, set among much personal and historical matter relating to tbe early years of tbe Theosophical Society. 9 THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE by H P Blavatsky. A book of guidance and inspiration for the sincere student of the spiritual and the mystical. By the same author; WHEN WE DIE An outline of the account of the dying and after death processes, as given in the Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett. EXPLORING THE GREAT BEYOND Explanations of spiritualistic and psychic phenomena, and of ESP, the paranormal gcncrally, in the light of the teachings of Theosophy.