All over the world to-day the sun in rising has seen in country after country men and women gathering together to bear in memory those who have passed onward through the gate of death, but who, in passing through the gate, have remained even more living than they were when they carried the burden of the flesh; men and women who have left their names behind them as workers for the Ancient Wisdom in its modern dress, and whose memories remain dear and precious because of the work they did, because of the message they spread.
We have listened this evening to verses from the Bhagavad-Gītā, to lines from The Light of Asia. In India, on the early morning of to-day, words were read from that same sacred Scripture of the eastern land, spoken there in its ancient tongue, the Sanskrit. In town after town, village after village, the memory of those same lives is kept in mind. There also The Light of Asia has been read, and the sacred memory of the Buddha has been recalled. And all over India, from the Northern Himalayas down to the South, thousands of the poor have been fed by the branches of our Society in memory of those who lived, of those who passed away, some of whom have come back to earth again. And as the sun came onwards along its western path, it lighted up other countries also, which kept the same memory, used the same books, spoke the same names, and so across Italy, and Russia, and Germany, and then in France, and now here, and a few hours hence across the Atlantic, in America, the same memories will be recalled, the same books will be read, the same thoughts will be spoken and will spread from heart to heart. For all round the globe this day is kept sacred in memory of those who died, as men say, amongst us, but who live to carry on the mighty work that here they took up for the brief day of mortal life. And we think of our dead, our truly living, not with sorrow, not with mourning, but with glad hearts and thankful lips, for we know that death is nothing but a passing from one world to another, a dropping of one body for the more effective wearing of a subtler, finer, more powerful one than that which, outworn, is cast away. For we have learned, and some of us know practically, that that is true which is written in that same Eastern Scripture of which we heard some verses to-day, that the Dweller in the body throws aside the outworn body as a man throws aside garments outworn; and as the man takes new garments for his wearing, so does the Dweller in the body take new bodies for his wearing, for new days of a never-ending, an immortal life.
And we think of those who have gone onward to-day—not only of our greatest, but of all who have worked and striven for the same great cause. And perhaps it is fitting that first in that great roll we should send message of love to the one who has left us last, who laboured so long and so faithfully in France—Dr. Pascal—the General Secretary there, who only a few weeks since passed to the rest so well deserved. A weary time had he in the passing; years of weakness, of suffering, of ever-decreasing strength. And many ask, when they see so long an illness and so much of pain, when they see a life that was bright and helpful and full of service set to this world in so long a twilight of sadness and suffering, sometimes they ask: “Why should one who served so well have so long and so sad a passing to the other side?” But people do not always understand that, when a man has worked well and done good service, ere he goes to his rest for a little time on the other side, it is well for him to pay the debts incurred, which otherwise would hamper the new life when it comes back to earth; and that there can be no better karma—sad as it may seem to the outward sight—than when these ties of the past are fully paid before the day of passing comes, so that the new birth is unshadowed by the shadows of the past, and debt is paid which otherwise would be demanded when the new life is born. So that in a life like that, which has ended sadly, as men say, with body failing and brain failing, looking at that with seeing eyes we see the preparing for a better birth, a greater service, and we know that it is well that the debt was paid, and that the new life shall come unencumbered with the sad heritage of the past. And so to our friend to-night we send messages of love and gladness that the debt is paid, thankfulness that he has passed over, so that he may come back again to work under conditions fairer, nobler, more full of promise than those in which he worked so bravely and so nobly through the life that now has closed.
And as we look back we see the faces of many friends, all of whom we commemorate—some of our own country, some of other lands, some near at hand, and some far off, who have passed to the other side in order that they may return. For you remember that it is written: “Certain is death to the born, and certain is birth to the dead.” And those who have passed onward are some of them turning their faces earthward once again, because the times demand fresh workers, and much is to be done in the years that are dawning upon us.
And one man stands out strongly in the minds of all, our President, the President-Founder, who passed away only two brief years since, and who is residing in his Master’s home, but not altogether resting as men call rest, inasmuch as he is ever eagerly working for the Movement he loved and loves, and longing for the day when he shall be permitted to take again a body to do once more the work to which for many lives he has been devoted.
And there rises the greatest name of all, H. P. Blavatsky, the name of her who threw down the body she was wearing on this 8th of May, which, for her dear sake, was chosen as the day of commemoration of all our workers who have passed onward—her name dearest and nearest to our hearts, the Messenger of the Lodge, she who was chosen to bring back to a world in darkness the light which she carried so bravely and unflinchingly through a life of suffering and toil. And strange is her recompense, that she, round whom so many quarrels arose, she who was a sign of storm and dispute through the warrior life that she led, she who saw the Society well-nigh crumble round her in those days of the Coulomb plot, when all over the world it seemed that Theosophy was doomed to popular contempt, and deserted by most who at one time had welcomed it; she who, wherever she went, met storm and trouble, who perhaps was more loved and more hated than anyone of our own time, she has now the recompense that hers is the one name which is everywhere beloved through the great Society of which she and her colleague were the founders, and also among those who have gone out of it through the past years, those who left it in the Judge secession, those who have gone out since; hers is the one name that unifies, to whom all look back as teacher and as friend. And a great and a beautiful lesson grows out of that, that although life separates, death unifies; and those who in life went away, as it seemed, from the movement that she made, look back to her as founder, and round her name, among the prominent people inside and outside the Society, there runs to-day absolute unanimity, and a peace without one ripple of dissent.
And to me that seems a very beautiful thing, that the name that was the name of strife and of combat has become the one name which is recognised as the foundation of the Movement everywhere, no matter by what passing changes that Movement may have been affected. And it carries with it a valuable lesson. These changes that we think so much of do not matter; all the storms and troubles are of no account; on this great advancing tide of truth and light, it matters not what apparent storms may come, what rocks may be in the way, what angry waves may rise and break, what feelings may be expressed—the whole of it vanishes in the face of the great unifier, Death; and those who were rent asunder because they thought more of personalities than of principles, they catch sight again of the principle when death has smoothed away the difficulties of the persons over whom they quarrelled. And so, looking back to her to-day, we can see in her life and death a presage of the future. None of the storms matter, and none of the secessions and divisions count in the great work. They are all mere trivial incidents of passing days, and the one great Life rolls on, only the richer for the divergence, only the fuller for the differences which it catches up and blends into one.
And on this day, looking backward to those who have gone through death’s portal, shall we not also look forward to those who are coming back through birth’s portal to work in the Movement in the future as they worked in the Movement in the past? How far has it struck you, during the days of storm and stress through which you have been passing, that to those who believe in Reincarnation and Karma there is no possibility of real separation, no possibility of lasting discord? For those who went far away apparently from the Movement, or who left it by the gateway of death, see on the other side the fundamental unity, even though on this side, for a while, they may have been blinded by the superficial differences, and join together in the work from which, on this side perhaps, for the moment, they had let themselves slip away for some trivial discord, some passing divergence of opinion. Take that great man amongst us round whom raged the last great struggle, the one before the struggle which is now nearing its close—W. Q. Judge—one of the greatest and noblest workers in our Movement, even though in the last days of his life he made the great rent in the Theosophical Society which cost us for the time pretty well the whole Society in America. He again, winning clearer vision on the other side after something of difficulty and something of struggle (for the man was strong, and was not easy to move or change even when the physical body had been cast away), he after a while worked his way through the mistake that had been made, and has again thrown his life force, his enormous energy into the Movement of which the outer partial manifestation here is the Theosophical Society, and into that Theosophical Society also. For remember that the Theosophical Society is only the partial manifestation of that great stream of Life which is flowing in the other worlds, and of which some appears here. This great Theosophical stream is like one of those rivers which flows underground, and then bubbles up above the ground so that all can see. And the river of the Ancient Wisdom, with its source in the Great Lodge of the Masters, is out of sight for the greater part of its course, in worlds greater and higher than this, and then comes up above the earthly surface and shows itself partially in what we call the Theosophical Society; and into that River of Ages lives which have passed onward throw their energy from the other worlds, so that they are working in the same Movement and strengthening the same current, and are not apart from us, but with us all the time.
And then there are some others to whose return amongst us we have the right to look forward. One whom I may remind you of, who has not passed through death’s gateway, although out of sight for so long, is that faithful chelā of H. P. Blavatsky—Damodar—who left India after the great Coulomb struggle, went up into the Himālayan region, and found his way to his Master’s home near far-off Shigatze. He has been living and working there ever since, and is now a man of middle age, but his return ere very long we may without fear look forward to. He will come back to us with all the gained knowledge that he has won during these many years’ training in the presence of the Teachers Themselves; he has already shown himself in India, not physically, but preparing to come back when the Movement is ready for his work, and the getting ready of it is the work which we have to do in the few years in front. For ere many years have gone we may look for his coming as a leader and teacher amongst us.
And of those who passed through death’s gateway some have already come back, H. P. Blavatsky amongst them; so that in the years that come many of you will see that strong life again manifested amongst us to take share in the working of the Society, for which he is working now as ever before. Remember how a Master said of him: “The brother whom you know as H. P. Blavatsky, but we—otherwise.” One who was spoken of in such words by the Master M. does not leave the work to which he has put his hand because the worn-out body was thrown aside for the time—the brother whom we know as H. P. Blavatsky, but They otherwise, the great and strong disciple will again come amongst us to work more powerfully than in the woman’s body that last time he wore. And others, too, who worked with him in the earlier days—Subba Rao, whose name many yet know; he is now a lad of nearly fifteen, in the Indian body once more, born in fact in the same family (using the word “family” in the wider Indian sense), a lad of fifteen, very soon to be ready again to take up his work.
And there are others, less well known, who have been reborn, and who are preparing to take part in the great forward movement which is so soon to begin. But before that work could begin it was necessary to have the shaking through which we have been passing during the last three years. I have told you often that from time to time these shakings recur, and are necessary before a great time of onward progress. Few of you probably will remember the progress that was made after the Coulomb trouble, but many of you will remember the spring forward which the Society took after the American secession. History repeats itself in small cycles as well as in large ones, and before the great forward movement could take place it was necessary that the shaking should occur once more, to shake out for the moment those who were not ready to go forward.
What is the great difficulty before the world? When those who know more and are able to teach are to come forward and live among the men and women of the time, and bring to them the treasures they have harvested of the Wisdom of the ancient days, the one thing that stands in the way of their reception is the spirit which is not able to recognise greatness when it sees it, but meets it with suspicion, doubt, slander, calumny; which ever supplies evil motives where there is no understanding of the reasons for action, and so paralyses those who know, and builds up barriers which even they cannot overstep. You saw it in the life of H. P. Blavatsky. Look back to that life of hers; see how her efforts, her endeavours to teach and spread the Wisdom, the message with which she was charged, were everywhere frustrated. And that has been so now for very many centuries. When the greatest of all Teachers came, that mighty Teacher whom in the East we call the Bodhisattva, whom in the West we call the Christ, when He came—mightiest of spiritual Teachers, the very spirit of Wisdom and love incarnate—He could not live three years in this world ere He became so insupportable to the people of His day that they slew Him, while His love for the Father was denounced as blasphemy, His teaching denounced as coming from the devil. And that same spirit has been seen ever since. The great teachers have ever been met with the same spirit, and we have to change it. The chief mission of the Society at the moment is to prepare the way of the Lord, and the only preparation that can be made is to substitute reverence for greatness instead of suspicion and hatred. And because that is the immediate work which lies before us, it was necessary to shake out of the Society those whose spirit was rather suspicion of greatness than acceptance of it when seen. For the immediate work is the preparing of the world for the coming of greater Ones, in order that the new impulse may be given when the new sub-race and Root Race are to be born.
That is the immediate work, the preparation for the coming of some of those whom I have been mentioning—Damodar, Subba Rao, H. P. Blavatsky—not, remember, with flourish of trumpets, or with anyone declaring “this is so-and-so” and “this is someone else,” with the exception, perhaps, of the first named (Damodar), who went as a boy to his Master, and is now middle-aged, but will be recognised by old Indian friends. But others will be coming in new bodies, unknown, with no proof of who they are. They will have to make their way, they will have to prove their apostolate, and probably their views of things will be very different from the views of many of those in the Theosophical Society. Inevitably so; for people whose eyes are opened to more than one world cannot see things, as those see them whose eyes are blind save to one; those who see the wider horizon will have different thoughts from those who are cabined in by the life and conventions of their day. And that is why the great Ones are always misunderstood, for They must be other than those to whom They come, else how could They teach? And that is where your General Secretary spoke very truly in saying that the mind often misleads, and the things we “think” cover over the things we “know.” Now the things you know, you know by the light of the Spirit which is within you; by that intuition which is the voice of the pure, not the impure reason, speaking above the mind and through the mind, but very often in contradiction to the mind. And in order to hear that voice of intuition, so far as I know, there is only one way, that when once you see the Light shine out through any human being, you hold to that human being, no matter what the mind may say. That is what spells success, and that was pre-eminently the case with H. P. Blavatsky, for anyone more confusing to the ordinary mind you could not possibly come across—awkward, athwart one’s conventions in every way; in speech, manner, actions, the very reverse of all that you would expect. When I first met her and saw in her the power of the Master, from that day to this I have never challenged and never doubted her. And very, very largely because of that have come the knowledge and power that I have won not by reasoning and arguing—“Was she right or wrong?” “Would it not have been better if she had been different from what she was?”—but having once seen in her the Light of Truth, refusing to see anything else except the Messenger of the Master.
And that is what you need in the coming days, that is what some of you have been winning through the storms of the last three years—to realise that when once you have known a teacher to be a teacher you shall cling to that knowledge, no matter what clouds for a time surround, no matter what storms for a time may hide; for that means intuition, which is above the concrete mind; it means the testimony of the God within you to the God without you, and that cannot lie. And we have to spread that through the whole Society in order to make the way possible for those who will be coming amongst us during the next few years, and the greater Ones who will come later if we can welcome the Messengers, but not otherwise. Our years of mortal life are not those by which time is reckoned in the great cycles of the occult world. It is true that we say: “Probably between thirty and forty years hence a great Teacher will come back, the greatest Teacher, the Teacher of Gods and men.” But a date like that, which is counted by the revolutions of the world, is always a doubtful thing from the occult standpoint; for time there is measured by consciousness, and not by the turning of the sun. Efforts may shorten or failure may retard the date, and hence it is always rather vaguely put; and if, when these less great ones came we were not able to receive them, if we are repelled by the superficial appearance and have not the intuition to recognise the Messengers, that will inevitably delay the coming of the greater Ones.
At different times different virtues are wanted. To know the virtue of the time and to develop it, that is wisdom. At one time courage is the great thing wanted; at another time recognition of spiritual greatness, and the power to hold to it, and that is the virtue wanted now. Not in order that you and I as individuals may take part in this great work, but in order that the world may be prepared, that the way of the Lord may be made straight, so that He may come. For He cannot come to be a curse to the world instead of a blessing, as He would be if the world were wholly unprepared. And so greater and greater Ones will be coming in order that the greatest of all may be welcomed when He appears amongst us.
Some of you think, but you think mistakenly, that you would recognise, say, a Master, or even a Christ, if He appeared. Are you so sure? They never have been recognised by the people of their time save by a small minority, and why should we be different? The Christ was not recognised when He came last; His Messengers have not been recognised since, save by a minority. They are so different from the people of their time that there is much to get over before you can recognise them. And it is a good practice sometimes to throw yourself back to those days in Judea when the Son of Man trod the earth. Realise what He would have seemed to you then, not what he seems to you now through the vista of centuries of the adoration of millions of men. What would he have seemed as the vagabond travelling about on foot, with a number of half-educated people round Him, disturbing the peace of society, antagonistic to the respectabilities of His day, looked down upon by the aristocracy of the time? See Him as they saw Him, and ask yourself: “Should I have recognised the Christ?” And that is where the test has been, right through these last three years, and where it will be as the people I have been speaking of gradually come amongst us again. If you would recognise them when they come, try to cultivate the power which answers to greatness without, by cultivating greatness within, remembering that spiritual recognition is the recognition of all those who are kindred to yourself. If you have the virtue in you of the spiritual man you will know spiritual men when you meet them; but if you cannot answer to Him, then He will pass you by unknown, and probably disliked.
Now our work is clear before us: to try to change the public opinion of the world into the attitude which is sometimes called disparagingly hero-worship, which is essentially the thing we need at the present time—the power to know the hero when we see him. “No man is a hero,” it is said, “to his valet.” And people think that that means that he is small when seen close by. Not so; but that the small soul which is typified by the word “valet” cannot appreciate the greatness of the hero near whom he stands. The servant soul does not recognise the greatness of the hero, and therefore the hero is no hero to him. Only the heroic recognises the hero; and if you can develop that in yourself which is like a Master, then, and then alone, will you know a Master when He comes. And the best way to cultivate it is for a time to let go that spirit of criticism which makes people so superior to those around them. Cultivate the faculty of admiration rather than that of criticism. Try, when you meet a person or when you read a book, to see the good things in the book or person, and not the faults. And the faults in the people around you, these are no business of yours; and if you would once understand that and live it, your path would be so much easier. So many of you are so anxious to get other people out of their faults that you really have no time to look after your own steps and put them in the right way. The faults of the other people will work out through karma, and they are not your business—a hard but true lesson. Of course, if you are a master or a teacher, and have others in your charge, their faults are then yours to correct; but you are not, generally speaking, masters or guardians, and you have no responsibility to criticise or put others right. Take out of your friends the value of the good and let the faults go. You need not say they are virtues, you need not pretend that you think wrong right; but you can say: “That part of the man is not my business; let me help the God in him to manifest, and let the other side in him wear out in its own way.” If you can do that you will be more useful now than in any other spirit, and it is that lesson I would ask you to take with you. Think of H. P. Blavatsky and of those who have passed away in the spirit that they helped us, and not in the spirit that would blind our eyes to their value, and then carry that spirit on to the people around you, and in every one round you try to see the God, and let the rest go. Admire the admirable, and leave aside the regrettable; for in doing it you will help them more to conquer their faults than by criticism.
Seeing the God in them, and loving and trusting, that will help them to grow out of the limitations, of the blunders and errors that are hindering the divine manifestation. And remember that is what is wanted now, not for yourselves only but for every one around you, so that when the Teachers come They may be able to remain in the world amongst us. They dare not come yet, because even in the Theosophical Society They would not be welcomed. A Master who came amongst you now would not for the most part be very much liked by you; His ways, His views, His thoughts would be so different, He would raise suspicion and dislike. We saw it in the earlier days when They came out more, and were met by judgment and criticism, until one of Them said, in the fashion in which They look at ignorant criticism; “The standard of the Adept is not kept at Simla, it is kept at Shamballah and I try to accommodate myself to that.” There is a great lesson in that for all of us. The standard of those who are passing onward into the higher life is not the standard of the judgment of the people around them, but the standard that the Masters hold up before them, to which they are ever trying to conform. Think of that in your attitude to the people around you; remember that on you, and on people like you everywhere, depends the success or the failure of the next great manifestation of the divine life on the earth; that this Theosophical Society, spread everywhere over the world, is literally the John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of the Christ; to fill that part is your work and duty—and need I say, your privilege, your highest honour?
To leave the Society now, in the days which are just dawning, surely it is bad karma enough, and you should only feel the tenderest thoughts of pity towards any who go out from us in the days when to belong to the movement is the greatest crown that can be given for any nobility of past life that any one of us may have had. No words of harshness or of condemnation, nothing that will make it harder for them to return, but everywhere gentlest and most tolerant speech—this is our duty to our immediate brethren; and to the world what I have told you.
And so from this White Lotus Day look forward more than backward, rather to the work that is coming than to the difficulties that are now well-nigh over. Remember, for your strengthening, that the only great shaking has been here and in America, nowhere else. You can count on your fingers practically in other countries those who have been shaken out. You have had the struggle and have come out well. It is practically over now. There may be some slight effort made now to make things difficult, but what does it matter, with such hopes before us, with such strength behind us, with such knowledge within us? Why should we allow ourselves to be ruffled by anything that can take place in this outer world of men? We have been through many such struggles in past lives, shall have to go through many greater ones in lives to come; why make too much of present-day trouble? Those whose lives are in eternity need not be troubled with even what seem to be great difficulties to the men and women of the world. And so to you I would say: Gather together on the Day of Memory, but turn it now more into day of looking forward. Let the past go; it has done its work, it is over. Turn your eyes to the work that is opening before us, more splendid than any work of the past. And remember it is not the Messengers who may stand in front who are the strength of the Society, but that the life comes from the Masters and the strength from the Lodge. Knowing that, you need not mind even if those of us who are well known in the world make mistakes, are attacked, or evil spoken of. Never yet a Messenger of the Lodge that went through life without being evil spoken of, and you need not grudge us the sign of our apostolate; for such has ever been the sign of the Messengers through all ages. Rather rejoice with us that the stress for the time is over, and the days of going forward are upon us; do not let the remnant of the trouble shake any one of you, but know that the Masters are with us, and where they are no failure can come.
Delivered to the Christo-Theosophical Society, at the invitation of Sir Richard and Lady Stapley, Tuesday, May 25, 1909.
It is with pleasure that I find myself amongst you, as I have often found myself before. I think my membership in the Theosophical Society is of about the same length as the life of your Society. We both began our careers, so to speak, about the same time, in the same year.
The subject that I have taken is in many ways a difficult one, and one that may very naturally arouse differences of feeling. It is, however, one which is being discussed very much in the Christian Church at the present time, and it is for that reason that it seemed to me that it might be useful if we could exchange thoughts on a subject of enormous importance. I also want to make certain suggestions which I think may be welcomed in regard to an idea to be found in the East, which perhaps is not quite familiar over here; and which presages a unity greater and profounder than could be reached, I think, in any other way. Naturally, I am putting only my own views, and they commit no one but myself. These questions that touch alike the intellect and the heart must always be treated reverently by those who realise the Brotherhood of man, and they are also ideas of the profoundest importance with regard to the future of religion and of civilisation.
In the Hibbert Journal of January last the subject that I have taken for our talk was to some extent discussed from the standpoint of one who I suppose would be called an extremely liberal Christian. The writer is the Rev. R. Roberts, Congregational minister, of Bradford; his name is still in the Congregational Year-book, but I heard that he was not at present ministering in any pulpit. I take his view as my starting-point this afternoon. The title of his article is at first sight a little startling from the ordinary Christian standpoint, “Jesus or Christ?” and he distinctly puts forward the view, and argues for it with a good deal of ability, that we have to do at once with one supposed to be a historical person, and then apparently with what he could only regard as a Mystical Ideal.
So far as I can gather from what he says, he does not regard the Christ as historical, though he does not very clearly draw the line as to how he would separate, historically, the Jesus of the Gospels from that Ideal which he names “The Christ.” He says that he and many other people find themselves beset by certain difficulties: “Are the claims to be presently set forth made on behalf of a spiritual ‘Ideal’ to which we may provisionally apply the word ‘Christ,’ or are they predicated of Jesus?” Then he goes on to say that insistence on limitations of knowledge, restrictions of outlook, evasions of issues, and disillusionments of experience, true enough of a historic Jesus, may not be wholly relevant to a spiritual “Christ Ideal,” expanding and enriching through the ages into “the Christ that is to be.” Then he says it would be still less applicable to one who is regarded as the “fulness of Godhead,” “Very God of very God.” That, practically, is his thesis, and he tries to show in this article that very many difficulties might be avoided if Christians were willing to recognise a Christ Ideal side by side with the historical Jesus. In that way they might evade some of the difficulties which are pressed against the conception of Jesus as the Christ by large numbers of people who find their faith challenged and themselves in difficulties by these objections which are put to them both inside and outside the Church. He quotes Dr. Fairbairn, writing on Christ in Modern Theology. “If He knows as God while He speaks as man, then His speech is not true to His knowledge, and within Him a bewildering struggle must ever proceed to speak as He seems and not as He is. If He had such knowledge, how could He remain silent as He faced human ignorance, and saw reason wearied with the burden of all its unintelligible mysteries? If men could believe that once there lived on this earth One who had all the knowledge of God, yet declined to turn any part of it into science for man, would they not feel their faith in His goodness taxed beyond endurance?” That view (which appears to be adopted by Mr. Roberts) does not seem to me necessarily at all a sound one, and it is by no means certain that a man speaking in a particular age to people among whom great limitations of knowledge existed, and with a particular object before Him—not to enlarge the bounds of science, but to deepen spirituality and lay a strong foundation of morals—that such a Teacher, however highly illuminated, however much speaking as the very Spirit of God, would say all that He knew with regard to external facts and external phenomena, with the certainty of making very difficult the reception of His message on points enormously important—on points, in fact, of vital and essential need for the higher spiritual progress of man. Hence it does not appear to me that Dr. Fairbairn’s issue is at all well taken. Every great teacher—not for the moment considering the special divinity of Christ or Jesus—who is speaking to people less instructed than himself is under a similar difficulty. If on matters of ordinary scientific knowledge he is illuminated where they are not, the very fact that he presses that upon them would bewilder and confuse. You cannot enable the human intellect to evolve at what might be called a supernatural rate. It is capable of growth, and often of rapid growth, but if you try to force it beyond the rapid natural growth, you will only perplex, bewilder, and confuse; and if your aim is not, broadly, to increase scientific knowledge, which man will inevitably find out for himself after a time, but to help him to the things which need spiritual illumination in order that he may receive them, then such a difficulty as is put here as to the inner bewilderment which would be felt by the speaker to speak as he seems, and not as he is, would not be bewilderment at all, but a quite deliberate limitation of what he said, with a view to the effectiveness of his work, and that which he desired to give to the people of his time. That is true necessarily of every great prophet, of every highly inspired man; and the greatness of the inspiration would chiefly be shown, not in the amount of physical knowledge which he might give, but rather in his avoidance of certain difficulties which, when the race grew more learned, might come in their way and complete their ideas. That is to say, he would evade the scientific difficulty as far as he possibly could, and would do it deliberately, knowing that that was not his particular work, and that he could not do his own work if he turned aside in this direction. So that, as far as I am personally concerned, looking on this from the standpoint of the Theosophist and Occultist, these difficulties to me do not exist. I realise that they must always be found where one who is superhuman—I object to the word supernatural—comes in any age of the world’s history in order to teach a new conception of religion, and in order to adapt what he is giving to the civilisation which he intends to influence.
It appears to me that it is a perfectly rational and necessary thing that the growth of knowledge from the ordinary standpoint should be left to work its way out along the lines of intellectual development; anything less than that will check intellectual growth inevitably, for intellectual growth can only come about by the freest of thought, the freest of discussion, the most absolute liberty to challenge everything and to controvert anything which appears to be illogical. The condition of intellectual growth is that of complete freedom, and any sort of limitation which is put upon it by the knowledge of a great teacher will only check that intellectual evolution which is essential for the future growth of man. Many similar difficulties, of course, are made with regard to all inspired Scriptures, and for that reason it seems to me that it is well that we distinguish definitely between the spiritual work of the spiritual teacher and the scientific investigation of the scientific student; that it should be realised that these two departments of human activity work under different laws to a very great extent, and that that which is spiritually known cannot always be justified to the intellect until that intellect becomes spiritually enlightened—that is, that you have to deal in man with a being who is fundamentally a spiritual being, in whom the divine Spirit becomes incarnate, embodied, but in whom that divine Spirit is going to unfold along three great lines of unfoldment which we find in all human consciousness, which we recognise as in the divine nature itself. It has to unfold to an ordered Activity which should be truly in harmony with the laws of nature, which are the expression of the divine nature in this manifested form. It has to unfold along the Intellectual line, and that unfoldment must be left utterly unfettered. It has also to evolve along that line which in its lowest stages is emotion, in its higher stages is religion; and that spiritual unfolding, the highest characteristic of Spirit showing itself out as Will, has to be developed from above more than from below, to come downward by illumination more than to climb upward by reasoning. Unless we can understand this complicated nature of man in whom divinity is gradually unfolding and mastering matter at every stage of its unfolding, mastering, purifying it, ultimately spiritualising it; in all its earlier stages limited by the matter that it has yet failed to master, gradually making it plastic and ductile, and then in its higher stages having utterly subdued it to its own purposes—unless we can understand that that is a rough outline of human evolution, we shall constantly find ourselves in difficulties between the intellectual growth and the spiritual unfolding. Hence whenever a man comes to earth in whom divinity is far more manifestly unfolded than in his fellow-men, he can only shed down upon them illumination from the spiritual region, stimulate their aims, but not control their intellect. If that be realised, then the whole of these difficulties, which are being made at the present time about the obvious limitations outwardly of the knowledge of the supreme Christian Teacher, will entirely fall out of court, and you will see that He was speaking to the people of His day in the way that He could best affect them in order to help forward their evolution from the standpoint where they were, and was not the least intent on showing out His enormous knowledge, which would only have crushed rather than assisted.
Suppose for the moment you can take that way of looking at human evolution—and it seems to me the most rational way of looking at it—then we come to deal with this special manifestation of the Teacher who was the Founder of Christianity, a Hebrew speaking to Hebrews, and having to reconcile the speaking to the people of His day with the speaking to people of generations after generations, through centuries and perhaps millennia to come, then we should be perfectly able to realise that we are here face to face with one of those supreme divine manifestations, and that in studying it we must be ready to separate between the Teacher of religion and the man speaking to the men of His day, and accepting their limitations in order that He might reach them effectively. I want to carry you very much further than that in what I say; all that might very well be accepted by any rational and intelligent Christian, especially if he finds himself able to realise that what is said of the divinity of Jesus is true at a very much lower level of all His brethren, that all men are fundamentally and essentially divine; that that which was said by the great teacher S. Paul: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” and that which was answered by Jesus Himself, when he was challenged for calling Himself the Son of God: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods, and ye are all the children of the Highest?” is literally true. If you realise all that is implied in that statement, that He is the first among many brethren, you will see that every Son of Man is potentially, and will hereafter be actually, a Son of God, meaning by that that Deity will unfold within him, and that a manifestly divine humanity is the natural goal of evolution.
One realises, in looking at an article like this, that by the mystic Christ—that is what the writer means—he means that in the Epistles a somewhat different view is taken from that of the Gospels, the one dealing specially with an historical person, the other with an indwelling Spirit. He realises that when the Apostle Paul declares to his converts that he is travailing in birth for them until Christ be formed in them, when he says in another passage that they are to develop to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, he is holding up before them a picture of the birth in the soul of this divine Spirit that he spoke of as Christ, and the gradual unfolding of that into the perfection of divine manhood. That is perhaps the most inspiring ideal that can well be put before Christian people, that not only outside them but within them, not only as an outer helper but as an indwelling Spirit, this idea of the Christ is to be realised, and that that unfolding of the Christ in man is a real fact in religious consciousness, making that highest stage of human evolution when the man becomes perfect, and there only remains before him the superhuman evolution after the human is finished.
But I want to put to you rather a different idea of this relation between Jesus and Christ. I recognise to the full the value of that mystic ideal, I have not one word to say against it; in fact it is one that, when I am speaking to Christians, I constantly proclaim—the absolute necessity of that indwelling presence. But there is another view of this great Being which may be less familiar to you, which is the view taken by those who are sometimes called Occultists, in a very special sense of the term. Let me put it to you quite baldly for the moment, and then work it out a little more. The view that we take of that great Teacher who came to the world some two thousand years ago is, that the child who was born and who grew up into manhood until the time of the Baptism was a man of marvellous purity, of extraordinary spiritual intuition, but a man that we should call a disciple; that it was his to train and guard that pure body in preparation for the incoming of the indwelling Christ, and that in the Gospel story it is the event of the Baptism which marks the coming of the Christ. Let me just recall the words to you for a moment: “When Jesus went down into the water, the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God came down upon Him like a dove, and abode upon Him. And a voice was heard from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved Son; hear ye Him.’” Now it is clear that that event, marked out so distinctly in the Gospel story, must connote something of enormous importance. There was no need, as it were, for Him who was to be the Teacher to be baptised, and to receive the downcoming Spirit of the Most High, unless in that there was hid some profound spiritual truth, unless something was there afterward that was not there before; and it is then, from the occult point of view, that the Jesus became the Christ. But let me put it to you even a little more closely. Here, of course, is where the point of difference will probably arise in the minds of many in regard to what I am saying, for all might be willing to recognise that that might imply a great downflow of spiritual energy, of divine life. From our standpoint Jesus the Hebrew, the individual, the spiritual man, stepped out of the body that he had been dwelling in through all those years and preparing for the coming of his Lord, giving it over as a holy temple for the incoming of the supreme Teacher, so that the body became the habitation of the supreme Teacher for the three years of the ministry. Now that view, as many of you who have studied Christian history will know, was very widely held in the early Church; although it was condemned later as the Gnostic heresy, none the less it was quite orthodox until its formal condemnation within the Catholic Church, until the time that it was expelled. You find it in many of the early writings of the learned Christian teachers, you find it warred against by some others of the Christian teachers and doctors and bishops of the time, but none the less it was a view which had very wide prevalence in the early Church; it was accepted by large numbers of profoundly learned men; and although ultimately condemned as a heresy in the forms in which it was put, it might none the less not be improbable, even from the standpoint of the orthodox, that some truth was hidden in it in the broad sense, even if the form in which it was put forward in the Church of those days was justly condemned. My own view is that they were right, not in all the details of the way in which they put it, but in the fundamental fact. Let us suppose for a moment that they were so; then the question would necessarily arise—who is the Christ? And it is there that, as I said, there was one view that might be unfamiliar to you in the West, yet which, it seems to me, should be to the Christian a view full of beauty and full of hope for the future. There is only one Supreme Teacher of mankind. There is a great office above all those whom we Theosophists speak of as Masters—a Master of Masters, so to speak—the one Supreme Teacher. In Christendom you speak of him by the Greek name, a name which, as you know, was taken from the Grecian mysteries, of which a particular grade of initiation bore the name of the Christos, and the Adept who reached that grade was spoken of as the Christos. That was the name which was adopted in the early Church, according to the account in the Acts, to designate this great Teacher who had come to the world, and we should say, rightly adopted. It is an instance of spiritual insight recognising a great truth.
But now, supposing I ask you to go to the people of other religions for a moment, the ancient religions that we find in the eastern world. Suppose I ask a member of the most ancient of those, the Hindū faith: “Do you recognise in your religion one supreme World-Teacher above all religions, and not belonging to one exclusively—a universal Teacher?”—he would say, “of Gods and men”; over here you would say, “of Angels and men,” because the word there, Deva, is equivalent to your word Angel. He would at once say: “Why, yes; of course we recognise one Supreme Teacher at the head of all spiritual life and impulse, and we call him (pardon me if I use for the moment their name) the Jagat-Guru—the World-Teacher.” Supposing I went to another great religion there—the Buddhist—and I asked a member the same question: “Do you recognise in your religion a Supreme Teacher?” his answer would at once be, “Why, of course we do. There is only one who holds the place of Teacher over all Gods and all men; one Teacher only who is the Teacher of the world. We call Him the Bodhisattva—the Wisdom-Truth.” No nobler name could be given to Him; He is the Wisdom and the Truth; not the Buddha, as you may have expected me to say; He was not the Teacher. When He reached Buddhahood He passed away from earth. It is while He is going onwards to Buddhahood that He is known by this name of Wisdom-Truth, or Boddhisattva. During the whole of that period of teaching He has this name; and then when the supreme illumination comes to Him his office is finished, and He passes away from earth. Of course, as we know, the last Buddha remained in his body for some time, still teaching, but none the less the office of the Teacher is not to the Buddhist the Buddha, but he who is to be the Buddha—what you would call the Christ glorified and ascended, not the Christ on earth teaching and suffering. It is interesting to notice how in the various religions these same points arise and these same differences are seen under different names, so that we see that in these two greatest of eastern religions a Supreme Teacher is recognised. Now, from the occult standpoint, it is that Teacher who came as the Christ; and, supposing that all Christian people recognised that fact, they would reach the hearts of the eastern world far better than they do now, if, instead of telling them they must worship the Christ, they would say to them, “You are already worshipping Him under a different name,” which is supremely true; for it is the same Being who holds that office through all these thousands of years, the same supreme Perfection. He only comes into manifestation in order to help His younger brethren; He leaves that body when its utility for the moment is over; when, being so great in comparison with the people to whom He came, they could no longer tolerate His presence.
Now that is the view of the nature of the Christ which you would find among, say, Occultists or well-instructed Theosophists. They recognise in the Christ of Christendom the Supreme Teacher of the world, but they do not admit that He will come only once to the world; they reverence and honour Him now as still the Supreme World-Teacher, but they do not identify Him with the great disciple who took the Jewish name as Jesus, and who is now amongst us as the Master who is the Guide and Helper of the Christian Church. There is the point where the difference would come in. The orthodox Christian would claim Him as supreme over all religions, but he would hardly recognise difference between the disciple who has become the Master with the special Christian Church in His charge, and the Supreme Teacher who, while He certainly ever sends His benediction upon Christianity, sends it also upon the other great religions of the world. This is where I feel the difference might come in between myself and many of you. To us the great Master Jesus, who is, as you would also acknowledge—those of you, at least, who are members of the Church of England—thus still dwelling in a human body, still embodied literally, has that power which the Master on the higher planes of being has, of being spiritually in touch with all who call upon Him, with all who look to Him for guidance, but none the less still possesses a physical body. This is a point of enormous importance (although not as important as spiritual omnipresence), for it means to us, and it means to many Christians who think with us, and are Theosophists with us, a possibility of a close and personal relation, as of a disciple to a Master, which goes somewhat beyond the spiritual communion which every true Christian has with his great Teacher. How should I put that to convey exactly what I mean in clear and definite language? I must put it, I think, by giving a general principle with regard to these great Beings whom we speak of as Masters, divine men, men made perfect, which works through the whole of that great Brotherhood. They have many ways of working in the world; through their own subtle, spiritual bodies they work, sending out floods of blessing over the whole world; but, in addition to that spiritual impulse and spiritual blessing which flow into every heart that opens itself to receive them, with an ever present and potent power, there is an even closer and more specialised communion between the Spirit as embodied and those who are still wearing human bodies themselves, a possibility which the saints have realised of that personal and individual and specialised communion with their Master where they saw Him, heard Him; where to them He became, not only a spiritual presence, but an individualised Teacher, and even Friend; where they knew themselves as disciples, and knew Him as Master, which is the great mark, after all, of those who are specifically called the saints. For that close and intimate and specialised relationship the body is necessary; and hence, although sceptics have very often challenged that Article of the Church of England where it says that “He did truly take again His body, with flesh and bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,” it does convey a fundamental and essential truth: the great Teacher is not only a spiritual Presence, He is a human though divine Being, who can be specifically and personally known. And if this latest impulse of Divine Wisdom which we call Theosophy is to be of use to Christendom, it will be along these lines of gradually winning Christians back to a conception that has been very largely lost—that their touch with their Divine Master must be much closer and more realised in the brain and human heart as contact of disciple and Teacher, than when they are thinking of Him as Deity, when they are regarding Him as the second Person in the Trinity. How far that will commend itself to many of you it is, of course, impossible for me to say; but let the outline, at least, be clear, so that it may be definitely understood. It is the conception of a Christ for whom a body was prepared, and prepared by His own well-loved disciple, who guarded, tended, trained it through the years of childhood, of youth, and of early manhood; a body surrendered to the incoming mighty Personage, who is the Supreme Teacher of the world, incoming at the point marked by the Baptism, worn until the time of the death, so that through the whole of that teaching, the ministerial life, it was not Jesus but the Christ who was the Teacher who founded Christianity. That body is laid aside, but He is still Lord of all religions, and He gives to His well-beloved disciple who became the Master Jesus this religion specifically as his charge, his work in the world. Other religions would have other Masters, but only one Supreme; others would look to other divine men made perfect, but would recognise beyond them this Master of Masters; and hence all religions draw together in the Supreme Teacher, and find there unity in that greatest and mightiest of all. So that every religion looks up to the one Teacher through Masters who specifically belong to the various faiths of the world. That is the view which is very generally held in the Theosophical Society, although none is bound to accept it, inasmuch as we impose no dogmas upon anyone; it is the view which is taken by those who have been most thoroughly instructed in this matter; and it seems to me that it is one of extreme interest to thoughtful people, even if they do not find themselves able to accept it.
That is, then, the view of the nature of Christ that I would submit to you; and if you look at it you will see that the whole of the criticisms to which I have referred fall to pieces, and no longer need disturb the hearts or consciences of any; for it would be recognised that you have here a manifestation of the same great Being, but not a unique manifestation, who adapts Himself to the needs of His time, gives out so much of His wisdom and truth as He thinks can be accepted by the people of His day and generation, but who, in giving it, gives with it an inspiring Spirit, which enables future generations to find more and more in that teaching, and as they themselves develop spiritually, to find ever greater depths in the teaching which had been given by the Christ. You will see how naturally that view passes on into the future, and why it is that many of us, believing that a new civilisation is dawning upon earth, also believe that the same Supreme Teacher will again be manifested, again to tread the earth as He trod it in Judæa, again to enlighten the world with spiritual wisdom, again to strike the keynote of a new civilisation, gathering all the religions of the world under that supreme teaching of His own, so that we look forward to a coming Christ as well as backward to a Christ in His last manifestation on the earth.
A Lecture delivered to the British Convention of the Theosophical Society, July 4th, 1909
Friends: Those who seriously take up the study of Theosophy should not be satisfied with the mere reading of the voluminous theosophical literature poured out into the world through the centuries of the past, and continuing to flow into it in our own days. They should, in addition, if they have any innate faculty for such investigation, prepare to develop the faculties by which they may verify for themselves that which they are told by others. But in all cases much theoretical study is desirable before passing on into the practical, and in most cases it may not be possible to develop the subtler senses within the limits of the present incarnation, although a good foundation may be laid for such development in the next. Hence theoretical study must form a large part of the training of every theosophical student, and his attitude towards such study is a matter of serious importance. He needs to discriminate between the books he reads, and to suit his attitude to the type of the book; he must seek to understand what is meant by Revelation, what by Inspiration, and to distinguish revealed from inspired literature, and both from the records of observations.
Some Scriptures which are regarded as authoritative lie at the back of all the great religions. Thus Hindūism has the Veda. The word means knowledge, and this knowledge is of that which is eternally true. It is the knowledge of the Logos, the knowledge of the Lord of a universe; the knowledge of what is, not of what seems; the knowledge of realities, not of phenomena. This abides ever in the Logos; it is part of Himself. In its manifested form, as revealed for the helping of man, it becomes the Vedās, and in this form goes through many stages, until finally little of the original remains. All Hindū schools of philosophy acknowledge the supreme authority of the Vedas; but after this formal acknowledgment is made, the intellect is allowed to range freely at its will—to inquire, to judge, to speculate. Rigid as Hindūism is in its social polity, it has ever left the human intellect free; in philosophy, in metaphysic, it has ever realised that truth should be sought, and no penalty inflicted on error; error being sufficiently penalised by the fact that it is error, and breeds misfortunes under natural laws. Even to-day that ancient liberty is maintained, and a man may think and write as he will provided that he follows in practise the social customs of his caste. The Hindū divides all knowledge into two types—the supreme and the lower. In the lower he places all his sacred books—following in this the dictum of an Upanishad[5]—together with all other literature, all science, all instruction; in the category of the supreme he places only “the knowledge of Him by whom all else is known.” There you have Hindūism in a nutshell. When once supreme knowledge has been attained and illumination has been experienced, all Scriptures become useless. This is asserted plainly and boldly in a well-known passage in the Bhagavad Gītā: “All the Vedas are as useful to an enlightened Brāhmana as is a tank in a place covered over with water.”[6] What need of a tank when water is everywhere? What need of Scriptures when the man is enlightened? Revelation is useless to the man to whom the Self is revealed.
In the early days of Buddhism the Vedas held high place, for the Lord Buddha, as Dr. Rhys Davids says, “was born and brought up, and lived and died a Hindū.”[7] But the charter of intellectual freedom for Buddhists is contained in the wise advice of their Teacher: “Do not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor in traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor in rumours, as such; nor in writings by sages, merely because sages wrote them … nor on the mere authority of your own teachers or masters. But we are to believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness. For this I have taught you: not to believe merely because you have heard; but when you believed of your own consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly.”[8] Even revelation, for the Buddhist, must be brought to the touchstone of reason and consciousness; there must be a response to it from within, the interior witness of the Self, ere it can be accepted as authoritative.
In the Christian and Muhammadan faiths—both largely influenced by Judaism—the authoritative nature of revelation is carried further than in any earlier faith. In modern days the yoke of a revealed Scripture has been much lightened for Christianity by the growth of the critical spirit and by the researches of scholars. The modern Christian student is little more hampered by his revelation than is the Hindū by his. A conventional reverence is yielded, a lifting of the hat, and then the student goes freely on his way.
What is Revelation? It is a communication from a Being superior to humanity of facts known to Himself, but unknown to those to whom He makes the revelation—facts which they cannot reach by the exercise of the powers that they have so far evolved. These facts can be verified at any time by one who has climbed to the level of the Revealer, who may be an Avatāra, a Rishi, a Founder of a religion. They “speak with authority,” the authority of knowledge, the one authority to which all sane men bow. We do not find that these great Beings wrote down Their teachings Themselves; They taught, but They did not record. Some follower, some disciple, it may be after the lapse of many years, even of centuries, wrote down what he or his forefathers had heard; hence the revelation—and to this rule there is probably no exception—is inevitably to some extent coloured, narrowed, distorted by the transcriber. That which was heard originally by those round the divine Teacher exists indeed in the ākāshic records, and may ever be recovered thence by those who have developed the inner senses by which those records may be read. In many cases true records will have been made at the time by highly qualified persons; but such precious books are kept securely in the custody of their chosen guardians, in secret temples, in rock libraries, available for the study of high Occultists, but of none other.
The Muhammadans would claim that in the case of their sacred book there is more certainty that the very words of their Prophet were preserved. And doubtless to this is due the overwhelming authority of Al Qurān in the minds of the faithful of Islām.
What should be the attitude of the Theosophical Student towards revelation? He should treat the Scriptures of the world with reverence, remembering their origin, but none of them with submission, remembering that they are transmitted to him by varied channels. He should call to his aid the best scholarship, should gain all the light he can from archæological and historical researches, and use his best critical judgment in separating the essential truth revealed from all the accretions that may have grown up around it. If he has developed his higher psychic qualities, he should try to trace and disentangle the ancient from the modern, search the ākāshic records for comparison, confirmation, or contradiction of the revelation as it has come into his hands. How immense might be the services of such Theosophical Students as they become more numerous and better equipped for this gigantic task. And without this external equipment much may be done by inner unfoldment; he may unfold within himself his own spiritual powers; he may seek in profound meditation the truth which shines in the revelation beneath many a veil of ignorance and misconstruction; he may so purify his life that his bodies will become translucent of the light of the spirit within him, will illumine the written words. “The things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.” But that Spirit dwells in every child of man; and as His light shines out, the divine things are revealed to the pure in heart. Until the inner Spirit thus responds to the revealed teachings and statements, the Theosophical Student must hold his judgment in suspense before the claims of any revelation. It is not true for him until he can re-echo it in the voice of his own Spirit, his deepest Self. Useful and beautiful it may be; worthy of profoundest study and reverent research are the world’s Bibles. But until they are affirmed by the Spirit within submission cannot be yielded, lest that should be given to the errors of men which is due only to the divine Spirit.
What is Inspiration? The raising of the normal human faculties by some extraneous influence through grade after grade of intellectual, moral, and spiritual power, up to the point where the extraneous influence may even expel the man from his body and use it for the expression of another individual; where the new possessor is a Being at a height utterly transcending man, inspiration may pass into revelation. Some may think the word should be restricted to the raising of the powers of the subject from above their normal capacity to the highest point of their possible exercise, short of the expulsion of their owner and his replacement by another individual greater than himself.
The lower grades of inspiration are within the experience of very many. Have you never felt, when listening to a speaker whose knowledge and power transcended your own, that your mental faculties were lifted to a higher level than that to which you could rise unaided? On such occasions you grasp questions that hitherto have eluded you; you see plainly, where before there had been obscurity; the field of thought becomes illumined, and objects are seen in hitherto undreamed-of relations—you feel that you know. On the following day you desire to share with a friend the treasures you acquired, and you begin to recount the luminous exposition, to describe the great horizons which opened before you. You fail: where is the light, where the far-off scenes over which your eyes had swept? Your mind has sunk again to its normal level; the inspiration has passed away. As with the intellectual, so with the moral faculties. You had seen an unknown beauty, had felt an overwhelming admiration for the lofty and the pure: what has become of the warmth, the ardour? Are the cold ashes of the intellectual approval all that remains of the throbbing heart, the passionate delight in the moral ideal? Why does it now look so cold, so grey, so unattractive? You were raised to a higher level than you can reach unassisted; but none the less has the moral ideal and its power been shown to thee “in the Mount,” and the fact that you have once experienced its all-compelling power will render you more susceptible to it in the future, and the day will come when that which you felt when inspired by another shall become the normal exercise of your own moral faculties.
Coming to higher grades of inspiration, we may know, some of us, what it is to stand in the presence of the Masters, and to feel the marvellous uplift of Their presence. There is no need for words, no need for teaching; Their presence is enough. From that presence we go out again into the ordinary world, to feel the difference of its atmosphere from that of the Holy One. But, we have known, and the memory remains an abiding power.
Those who have written or spoken under inspiration have been thus uplifted, their own intellectual and moral faculties have thus been stimulated, and raised far above their normal level. It is still they who write or speak, and their own characters and temperaments colour what they say, leave their own impress on what they write. But they write and speak far more nobly, far more powerfully than they could do unassisted.
And so we may rise from grade to grade of inspiration until we reach the stage at which the mind and emotions of the man no longer sway his body, but the body is wholly taken possession of and used by One greater than himself. Then it is no longer the man himself who speaks, but “the Spirit of” his “Father who speaketh in” him; his own limitations are struck away, his own idiosyncrasies vanish, and the inspired utterances flow forth unsullied. Then inspiration may range into revelation.
The process of all this is a very simple one. We know that by the correlation between changes in consciousness and vibrations of matter, each change in consciousness is accompanied by a vibration of the matter appropriated by the consciousness and forming its body; each vibration of the matter of a body is accompanied by a change in the embodied consciousness. Either one of the pair may be the initiator; the other ever responds. When two or more people are together, one more evolved than the other or others, the more evolved person, thinking, desiring, acting, sets up in his own bodies, mental, astral, and physical, a series of vibrations which corresponds to the changes in his consciousness; these vibrations cause similar vibrations in the mental, astral, and physical matter intervening between himself and the less advanced person or persons present. These vibrations in the intervening matter cause similar vibrations in the neighbouring body or bodies. These vibrations are immediately answered by corresponding changes in the embodied consciousness or consciousnesses, and the person or persons concerned, thus placed en rapport with one more advanced, think, desire, act on a higher level than would be possible for them on their own initiative. They are able to understand more keenly, to feel more warmly, to act more nobly than they could do unassisted. When the stimulus is removed they gradually sink back to their normal level, but memory is left, and they remember that they “have known.” Moreover, it is more easy for them to respond a second time, and so on and on, until they establish themselves on the higher level permanently. Hence the value of companionship with those more advanced than ourselves, of living “in their atmosphere.” Words are not necessary; little speech may pass; but insensibly the subtle body is tuned to a higher key, and only, perhaps, when the companionship is interrupted do the younger become conscious of the change which has thus been brought about by contact with the elder.
Similar results may be brought about by reading the writings of those who are more evolved than we are. A similar series of changes is set up, though less powerfully than by the living presence. Moreover, intent and reverent study may attract the attention of the writer whether he be in or out of the body, and may draw him to the student, and thus cause the latter to be enveloped in his atmosphere quite as potently as though he were physically present. Hence the value of reading noble literature: we are keyed up to its level for the time, and such reading, steadily persevered in, will lift us to a higher level and establish us thereon. Hence the value of a brief reading before meditation, lifting us into an air more favourable to the work of meditation than we can start from unassisted. Hence the value also of “holy places” for such meditation, places where the atmosphere is literally vibrating at a higher rate than our own; and hence the advice so often given by the instructed, to keep, if possible, a room or closet set apart for meditation, such a place soon gaining an atmosphere purer and subtler than that of the surrounding world. It is of little use for the theosophical student to be acquainted with these laws if he does not utilise them to his own helping, and to the helping of those around him.