Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The matter for reflexion and study which the present chapter contains is in continuation of the general theme dealt with in the preceding chapter. It is of paramount importance that the student, or the interested reader, understand that behind and within the outer or exoteric literatures of each and every great religion and philosophy, there is a heart or core of more mystical teaching, which, indeed, is the real substance, clothed and all too frequently hid by the outer exoteric literary garment or veil. This is, in fact, the body of esoteric teaching which is never promulgated publicly -- a reticence or a reserve not inspired by motives arising in spiritual or intellectual selfishness, nor because the part withheld differs in the slightest degree from the parts given out publicly as regards authenticity or actuality, but simply because, without some adequately prolonged study, no one could properly understand this secret portion, which is from this fact of necessity held for the use of students who are willing to devote, and do devote, the necessary time and sacrifice of personal interests to understand it.
Yet any honest man or woman, especially one who is a member of the Theosophical Society and who thereby has at his hand the keys for understanding this Secret Doctrine, may unveil it by due and proper intellectual application, especially if such student lead the life necessary for the clarifying or thinning of the inner veils of consciousness, thus exemplifying the old adage: "It is necessary to live the life if ye will know the Doctrine."
The fact of a body of esoteric teaching which is held private for the study and use of those who prove themselves to be worthy and well qualified, is nothing new in the history of religion and philosophy. It is, in fact, one of the commonplaces of knowledge that the great ancient religions and philosophies had and in some cases still have an esoteric side -- that is to say, a system of secret teachings given only to those who have proved themselves worthy and fit to receive and to understand. Even the Syrian Sage, Jesus the Avatara, according to the allegation found in the Christian New Testament, is said to have taught certain things to his disciples in private, whereas to the multitude the same truths, or at least parts of them as the case may have been, were taught not openly, that is to say, in an unveiled manner, but in parable and mystical symbol. This procedure is a matter of actual necessity, as a few moments of reflexion will show to anyone, for it is not possible to teach one unacquainted with the elements of a study the deeper reaches thereof until he has fitted himself by at least a modicum of moral and intellectual training to understand them.
Particularly is this the case when the doctrines to be communicated in private, deal with the profoundest religious, scientific, and philosophical truths. These doctrines are not withheld from public knowledge merely because they are in themselves perilous either to intellectual sanity or to moral stability. On the contrary, they are most wonderfully helpful, in every respect illuminating and inspiring; but to those who are not fit to receive them, and who in turn would give them out indiscriminately to all and sundry at any time and in any place and without due preparation, it is only right to state that they could indeed possibly work a very real mischief, because of the unprepared state of such minds into which these teachings would be received.
Who has not heard of religious fanatics, and the mischiefs and wrongs that they have wrought upon their fellow-men? This single instance, as an example in point, demonstrates what ill-digested and often misunderstood religious and indeed philosophical thought can and usually does do in and upon weak or unprepared minds. If a man do not understand a noble teaching properly and with relative fulness, its very beauty, its very profundity, may so fascinate and distort his unprepared judgment, that he may be swept from his normal mental moorings in ordinary principles of ethics, so to say. The stream of such an unprepared man's emotions, sympathetically and automatically following the lead and urge that these teachings give to him, might readily at some moment of mental or moral weakness cause him to do a psychological injury to another, quite apart from more common mischief, thereby readily becoming the cause to such man of intellectual ethical damage of no small magnitude, as the history of religious fanaticism shows us clearly; and such a condition of affairs all students of the Esoteric Tradition are strictly enjoined to avoid becoming participators in.
Yet some of the religious and philosophical teachings given out publicly in our own age, were esoteric in past times, and were then taught under the veil of allegory and mystical symbol. It is not easy for men and women of our pragmatical and matter-of-fact age to understand why such reticence should be had in religious, philosophical, and scientific matters, because today a common saying is that truth is a sacred thing and at all times and in all places can do only good; or again, that facts of Nature are the common property of mankind, and that there is no possible danger in the communication of knowledge by one who has it to others who have it not; yet surely a more fantastic fallacy, or a greater untruth, does not exist. Who does not know that knowledge can be and often is most abominably abused and misused by selfish or self-seeking individuals? Even our scientists today are beginning to see that the communication of all the truths of Nature to everybody, without certain preparatory safeguards erected in the first instance, is a course of proceeding which is fraught with perilous and hid dangers of its own not only to individuals but to the masses of mankind.
Two of the teachings now promulgated publicly by the Theosophical Movement, but which were esoteric or secret in certain eras of past time, are the doctrines of Karman and Reimbodiment. Karman is a word used briefly to describe those majestic and quasi-automatic operations of Nature, the so-called 'laws of Nature,' which are briefly set forth in the famous saying of Paul, the Christian Apostle: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (19) It is, as modern Theosophists phrase it, the doctrine of consequences, of results following thought and action inevitably, ineluctably, and with absolute justice, whether such consequences or results be immediately forthcoming in time or be postponed to a later period. (20)
Reincarnation, as the next example of an esoteric doctrine now become public in its more or less adequate explanation, really comes under the more general doctrine of Reimbodiment of which it is a 'special case' as the mathematicians say. It is the teaching that the human ego returns to earth at some future time after the change men call death, and also after a more or less long period of rest in the invisible realms, in what the Theosophical teachings call the Devachan; such reincarnation taking place in order that the ego may learn new lessons on our Earth, in new times, in new environments; and taking up again on this plane, and on this Earth, the old links of sympathy and of friendship, of hatred and dislike, as the case may be, which were apparently ruptured by the hand of death when the ego-soul left our spheres.
The foregoing two very brief statements of two teachings once held secret, or which were openly promulgated in a more or less imperfect or emasculated form, are two examples of the manner in which from age to age and for good and sufficient reasons, and when the need arises for so doing, esoteric teachings are openly developed with far more adequate explanation of their inner significance by the Brotherhood of Sages and Seers, whom the modern Theosophists more commonly call the Mahatmans. There are many such doctrines which at one time it was considered improper openly to promulgate; with changing times the need for reticence or reserve in this or that instance, or with regard to this or that particular teaching, vanishes; and then some teachings taught anew to a bewildered and perhaps hopeless generation, breathe their refining and inspiring influence into the minds and hearts of men. Such teachings profoundly modify civilization because they profoundly change human psychology and the spiritual and intellectual vision of mankind. Few people realize, it would seem, the enormous but always invisible and quiet psychological leverage that new ideas have upon human consciousness; and this is especially so with regard to teachings of a spiritual or intellectual type or character and which are part of the treasury of Wisdom of the Esoteric Tradition. All these teachings are replete with the divine conceptions of the gods who first gave Truth to men; and this is the secret of the immense sway that Religion per se -- apart from mere degenerate religions -- has upon human intellect.
It was the archaic imbodying of these divine conceptions of the gods in ancient mystery-rites and stories that brought about the formal institution on earth and among ancient peoples of various kinds of ceremonial initiations, of which men in the world have heard a great deal and concerning which they know naught. Every nation, every people, every race, had its own variety or exemplification of the same body of fundamental verities, which after all, is but another way or manner of saying 'the divine conceptions of the gods who first gave truth to men.' The Greeks had their own Mysteries, which from earliest times were functions of the State, and carried on under the sanctions of law, such as the initiatory institutions of Eleusis and Samothrace and of other places in the various Greek Republics.
The Jews likewise had their own particular variety of a system of mystical research and investigation, which in a more or less complete degree is imbodied in the Qabbalah, a Hebrew word meaning 'tradition' -- the traditional teaching handed down from teacher to pupil, who in his turn graduated and became a teacher, then handing it to his pupils as a sacred, secret charge communicated from the 'Fathers'; and so forth. Even among the Christians there remain rumors which have reached our own age of the former existence in primitive Christian communities of a body of secret doctrine or teaching. Jerome, for instance, one of the most respected of the Church-Fathers, mentions the fact, although indeed with his sense of strong orthodox loyalty, he speaks of it with contempt -- a proof, if nothing else existed, of his ignorance of the heart of the teaching of his Master Jesus.
It is also common knowledge that the great religions of Hindusthan all had their respective secret schools or esoteric bodies, in which the fitter, abler, and more trustworthy students of these different religions received and later passed on the Noble Wisdom.
Even so-called savage or barbarous tribes, as our European anthropologists have shown us, have each one its peculiar and secret tribal mysteries -- fearfully degenerated memories in most cases from the days when their forefathers formed the leading and most civilized races of the globe.
This necessity for keeping secret a certain amount of the Esoteric Tradition, accounts for the symbolic imagery, often beautiful, but in some cases almost repulsive, in which all the old literatures have been cast. The same natural difficulty of delivery to untrained ears and minds, was as operative in the early days of the Christian Church, for instance, as it has been to other races and in all other times. One may find many of the early Church-Fathers writing about the so-called Kingdom of Christ, which was to come. They evidently enough did not tell all that they believed about this, doubtless for very good reasons of their own. Many books have been written about this matter in later times also, in which a good deal of guessing occurs as to the meaning of the early Patristic writings; and it has occupied the thought of many people in Christendom, because there is an instinct in the human heart which tells us that the world is not perfect in its present state, and that it might be very much better, a far nobler place to live in than it is. Dare anyone say that man is a perfect being, or that the universe in which he lives could not be better: that there is nothing superior in the infinite spaces that surround us than this globe of stone and mud upon which we pass our lives?
A Christian witness to the existence of an esoteric teaching in primitive Christian communities, was Origen, one of the broadest-minded Fathers of the Christian Church, the condemnation of a portion of whose doctrines at Constantinople in the early part of the sixth century has already been alluded to. (21) Origen, who in his way was really a great man, wrote as follows, on the subject of an esoteric doctrine as existent in the non-Christian religions even of his own time:
In Egypt, the philosophers have a most noble and secret Wisdom concerning the nature of the Divine, which Wisdom is disclosed to the people only under the garment of allegories and fables. . . . All the Eastern nations -- the Persians, the Indians, the Syrians -- conceal secret mysteries under the cover of religious fables and allegories; the truly wise [the initiated] of all nations understand the meaning of these; but the uninstructed multitudes see the symbols only and the covering garment. (22)
The wording here reminds one strongly of a similar statement contained in the Zohar of the Qabbalah. (23)
This was said by Origen in his attempt at rebuttal of the attack made against the Christian system by many 'Pagans' to the effect that Christianity was but a compost or a rehash of misunderstood Pagan mythological fables. Origen claimed that in Christianity there was, as there was indeed in all other religions, a similar, indeed an identic, esoteric system; and he was right, so far as that one argument goes; but while he was right in the argument, one fails to see that it was a successful plea in extenuation of the charge that the Christians of the day claimed the only real knowledge of things in religious matters that there was then to be had by inquisitive, thinking, and earnest minds.
Turning to the Jews, one may find in the Zohar -- a Hebrew word meaning 'splendor,' which is perhaps the greatest text-book of the Jewish Qabbalah, and which has been mentioned before -- a statement to the effect that the man who understands the Hebrew Bible in its literal meaning is a fool. "Every word of it," says the Zohar in this connexion, "has a secret and sublime sense, which the wise [that is, the initiated] know."
One of the greatest of the Jewish Rabbis of the Middle Ages, Maimonides, who died in 1204, writes:
We should never take literally what is written in the Book of the Creation, nor hold the same ideas about it that the people hold. If it were otherwise, our learned ancient sages would not have been to so great labor in order to conceal the real sense, and to hold before the vision of the uninstructed people the veil of allegory which conceals the truths that it contains. Taken literally, that work contains the most absurd and far-fetched ideas of the Divine. Whoever can guess the real sense, ought to guard carefully his knowledge not to divulge it. This is a rule taught by our wise men, especially in connexion with the work of the six days. . . . (24)
It is quite possible that many things will be met with that at first sight may not please the inquirer in searching these old literatures of by-gone times. Whose is the fault? That of the literatures, which is equivalent to saying that of the great men who cast them into that form, belonging to and appropriate to the day in which they taught; or is it our own fault, who do not know how to read correctly the meaning of what these great men wrote?
Hence, before forming final conclusions adverse to what we do not understand, is it not wiser to withhold judgment, and instead of saying that the ancients were a pack of ignorant, or silly, or sensuous dolts in writing as they did sometimes write, to say instead: "Perhaps it is I who do not understand what they meant to say; or I understand it perhaps only in part." The present writer in his own studies has found that in ordinary fairness and in order to reach the inner sense of these old literatures it is necessary to take this mental attitude, and to withhold judgment; and he has been well repaid for nearly a lifetime passed in this most wonderful and indeed sublime study of ancient esoteric mystical wisdom.
Let us not, therefore, mistake the garment in which these old teachings are clothed for the sublimity of the meanings which form their core, and the substance of sense around which the clothing is thrown.
Some of the veils and garments in which the old teachings are inwrapped may seem at times ludicrous to us of our sophisticated modern era; yet some of these garments themselves often are really sublime in their significant harmony and symmetrical outline, while on the other hand, some, to our modern eye, are actually gross in expression and offensive in suggestion. But the fault perhaps -- and the writer affirms that this is actually the case from his own experience -- is as much in us as it may be to some extent in the method of setting forth what those great men of ancient times needed to set forth, because we neither grasp the spirit which dictated those particular forms of expression, nor understand clearly the conditions under which they were enunciated -- the circumstances which those great men had to take into consideration when they taught after that manner.
For instance, turn to the Christian New Testament. Therein one finds a statement to the effect that Jesus, the Syrian Initiate and Avatara, said: "I come not to bring peace but a sword." (25) An amazing speech for the 'Prince of Peace,' is it not -- if taken literally! Shall we then accept it at its face-value? Or does not our instinct, does not our intuition, do not all the faculties which we have within us, tell us, whisper to us, that there is a meaning behind the verbal framework, behind and within the mere words, which has not yet been clearly seen?
The Church-Father, St. Clement, said that Jesus, once having been asked when his 'kingdom' would come, replied: "It will come when two and two make one; when the outside is like the inside; and when there is neither male nor female." (26) Many people have exercised their minds over this enigma, and no Christian, as far as the writer knows, has found an explanation of Clement's meaning. A Theosophical student will turn to Theosophy, to the 'Interpreter' as many love to call it, for an explanation of this exceedingly interesting parable, if we may give to it that name; and in applying this wonderful Theosophical touchstone, we obtain the following result: that this parable sets forth in actual prophetic strain what Theosophy says will some time in the future come to be.
Taking it clause by clause: 'When two and two make one.' The human being is divided into seven principles, seven elements if you like, which we may distribute as follows: an uppermost duad, which we call the spiritual Monad, because its parts are really inseparable, and dual only in manifestation; and an intermediate or psychological duad; and a lower ternary; this lower ternary is the purely physical human being, composed of his body, his vital essence, and of what is called the model-body, or astral body, the Linga-sarira, around which the physical body is built or framed from conception till death. This ternary, or these three principles last enumerated, all undergo complete dissolution at death, pass away, leaving the inner two duads, which may be looked upon, for more easy understanding, each one as a unit -- the spiritual nature and the psychological nature. Now in time to come, in the far distant future, these two duads, through the processes of evolutionary growth, will become one entity: that is to say, the psychological or intermediate nature will be so improved, so developed, will become so perfect and fit a vehicle for the manifestation of the upper duad or the inner spiritual god within, that it will coalesce with the latter and thus become one intrinsic unitary being.
Men who in our own and in past times have succeeded in accomplishing this unification of the two duads -- 'when the two and two make one' -- are what may be called Christs, adopting a term from the Christian system. The Buddhists call such a human being a Buddha, 'an awakened one,' an 'enlightened one'; and other religions have appropriate names for the same exalted human beings. This then, very briefly explained, is the substantial meaning of this first clause: 'When two and two make one.'
We pass on to the next clause: 'When the outside is like the inside.' The human body was not always as it now is -- an opaque, hard, coarse, physical instrument, through which the most delicate forces of the soul and of the spirit must play, if they are to express themselves at all; and, as our teachings tell us, this difficulty in expression of the inner faculties and powers will not be so great in the distant future as it now is; because as the inner man evolves, so also does his physical encasement evolve: the latter becomes more refined, more delicately balanced, a more sensitive and more quickly responsive instrument upon which the god within him plays the divine melodies of the spirit. This increase in responsiveness and subtilty of the lower parts of man is very largely achieved through evolution, which also works constantly towards thinning out the gross compactness of the material, and thus causing it to approximate ever more closely to the substantial fabric of the sheaths of consciousness of the inner man.
Thus it is that the outer in evolutionary time will become like the inner, because the outer continuously, albeit slowly, evolves nobler and higher attributes and qualities. 'When the outside is like the inside,' therefore simply means when the living, conscious, exterior instrument or encasement becomes more and more like unto its inner god which it inshrines; becomes fitter to express more and more easily the divine and spiritual faculties of that inner luminary.
Yes, the time is coming in the far distant future, the new condition is coming as surely as that future itself, so our teachings say, when the physical human encasement, the 'outside,' will no longer be the opaque, dense, compact physical vehicle that it now is, but will be relatively transparent or diaphanous and luminous -- an ethereal body of actually condensed light. 'The inner then shall be like the outer,' because the outer shall have become the inner, coalescing with it almost entirely, thus becoming the relatively perfect and adequate transmitter of the god-like Powers within.
Now for the third clause: 'When there is neither male nor female.' It is one of the Theosophical teachings that the present state of the human race as divided into men and women, into beings of opposite sexes, was not always thus in the past, nor will it be thus in the far distant aeons of the future. The time is coming when both 'men' and 'women' as such shall have disappeared; and there then will be neither 'men' nor 'women,' but human beings only, in those distant aeons of the future; for sex, like many other attributes of the human entity, is a transitory evolutionary stage through which the race is now passing; once sex did not exist; at present the sexual state exists; in the future it will again not exist, for the human race shall then have evolved out of this manner of expressing the positive and negative qualities of the psychological economy of the human being. When this shall have taken place -- when sex shall have disappeared, when there shall no longer be either male or female, but simply human beings dwelling in bodies of luminous light -- then the inner god, the inner Christos, the Christ Immanent, or as the Oriental mystics of High Asia express it, the Dhyani-Bodhisattva, will be able to express itself and its powers and faculties with relative perfection; and when all human beings shall thus be 'Christs' in greater or less degree, then the 'Kingdom of Christ,' of which the early Christian Mystics spoke and wrote so much, shall have arrived.
A study of the Theosophical teachings will prove the existence of a great wisdom lying behind these mystical parables, and not only in the Christian system, but likewise in all the great philosophical and religious literatures of whatever race of the globe. These parables and mystical teachings given under the veil of metaphor and allegory are in no sense merely invented mystical imaginings, but actually symbolic or pictorial representations of events which have occurred in the past history of the human race, or, mayhap, they are prophetic visionings of events which will arrive in the future history of the human race. The rapidly advancing knowledge of physical science gives us today a great many hints of what is to be, if we are only alert enough and sufficiently intuitive to understand these hints, and it tells us a good deal by way of suggestion along the same line as to what the human race shall one day become; but naturally these scientific hints and suggestions are couched in the pragmatic and matter-of-fact style so dear to the scientific heart, and in this differ radically from the always mystical, invariably metaphorical, and often mythological style of these ancient allegorical parables.
Another example of the mystical method of teaching with which this chapter specifically deals, is taken from the writings of the early Church-Father, Irenaeus, born in Gaul. He wrote a book called 'Against Heresies.' These early Church-Fathers, by the way, were very fond of writing against the notions or ideas of people who did not hold the particular religious views favored in the Patristic literature, and whom these Church-Fathers very consistently and always unkindly called 'heretics'; and the Gallic Irenaeus was no exception to this amiable and then universally common Christian custom.
In this work he says that Papias, a disciple, as alleged, of John the Apostle and Evangelist, heard the following parable or allegory from John's own lips, to wit:
The Lord taught and said that the time will come when vines shall grow, each having ten thousand branches, and each branch shall have ten thousand branchlets, and each branchlet of a branch shall have ten thousand tendrils, and each tendril will have ten thousand bunches of grapes, and each bunch shall contain ten thousand grapes, and each grape, when pressed, will yield twenty-five gallons of wine; and when any one of the saints shall take hold of any bunch, another bunch will exclaim, 'I am a better bunch; take me; and bless the Lord by me!' (27)
We prosaic Occidentals find it more than difficult to forgo a certain sense of conscious amusement when we hear tales or allegories so quaintly simple in their blind trust; but, doubtless, large numbers in those early Christian times believed these tales as true prophetic forecasts of future events, and, doubtless, likewise believed that they contained a great truth under a mystical garment. Any such allegory or parable proffered to them, with an accompanying statement that it was handed down as one of the sayings of the great Syrian Sage, their Lord Jesus, was accepted by them either at face-value, or as containing some deeply hid mystic verity; and, indeed, the latter belief was very often valid, and was a true intuition. It was the custom in those days, even as it was the custom in many other countries, to clothe difficult scientific, religious, or philosophical doctrines under the guise of allegories or parables, or even to cast such doctrines into the form of what is modernly called fairytales.
It is perhaps interesting to venture upon a brief interpretation of this remarkable 'History of the Vine and the Grapes,' with the help of Theosophy, the Interpreter. Jesus in The Gospel according to John, who is this same Apostle, is alleged to have said:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. . . . I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that remaineth in me and I in him, he bringeth forth much fruit, but cut off from me [the Vine] ye produce nothing. If a man remain not in me, he as a branch is cut off, and withers; and men gather such and throw them into the fire and they are burned [destroyed]. Remain in me and I will remain in you. As the branch produceth no fruits unless it remain in the vine, so ye cannot unless ye remain in me. (28)
This is the beautiful Christian New Testament parable of the 'Vine and the Branches.' In it is the direct statement that the Vine is the spiritual nature of man; and in the allegory from Irenaeus these various branches and branchlets and tendrils and individual grapes are evidently intended to represent the disciples, great and small, of the Teachers of men, such as Jesus was. These brief comments, therefore, summarize the essential meaning of this quaint and instructive and truly esoteric parable or allegory. With the Theosophical key, it is as easy as can be to understand the meaning of it. It no longer is a yarn exciting merely amusement, but is seen to contain a substantial meaning which is at once profound and beautiful.
The early Christians, as has already been stated, were not the only ones who used this mystical or metaphorical method of teaching secret verities in their literature. On the contrary, the method was common to all nations, and the Christians in this case were the copyists and very wisely adopted the universal custom. The Jews, for instance -- and in this case reference is more particularly made to the Talmudic writings of the Jewish Rabbis in their mediaeval artlessness -- are well known for what modern ecclesiastical scholars of matter-of-fact minds, who do not understand what was meant, call 'a love of exaggeration.' But it is to be remembered that perhaps it is we ourselves who are exercising our imagination and giving play to our phantasy in seeing things which do not really exist. It is a quite common failing of human nature to think itself very wise; albeit this is almost invariably a mark of ignorance; and that our own understanding is the infallible touchstone of truth; and because we do not understand a thing, this common failing drives us to say: "The thing is but foolish imagination, extravagant exaggeration, mere play of fancy." The man who says this and applies it universally without discrimination, is unwise; other men have lived in past time, possessing an understanding in no respects inferior to the critic -- perhaps having much more understanding than he has. Criticism is by no means the mark of superiority. Indeed, one is inclined to think that the quick and ready critic is precisely the one who speaks from ignorance and understands often the least. The truly wise man knows too much to allow himself easily to criticize.
There is one thing that every scholar knows and none dare deny, and it is this: that all ancient religious, and indeed, philosophical teaching also, was given under the guise or garment of symbol and allegory, of veil and parable, of metaphor and other figures of speech. It was so in all nations of the world; and the man who, knowing this, deliberately turns his back on what he knows to be a fact, and proceeds to embark upon a critical argument destined to illustrate his own supposititious wisdom at the expense of far greater men than he, is, probably, simply a fool. It is one of the commonest bits of knowledge today, recognised by really great scholars, that mystical writings inshrine secret or hid truths; and that all the great World-Teachers, probably without one exception that is known, taught their more esoteric doctrines after that fashion.
The Buddha, the Christ, Plato, Apollonius of Tyana, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Zoroaster of Persia, all thus taught. One could continue citing names and making a long list of the great men who have set forth truly wonderful thoughts in allegory, in parable, in symbol, in mystical allusion, but all conveying profound truths based on the structure and operations of Nature -- not physical nature alone, but Universal Nature, which is Nature all inclusive and both visible and invisible.
Yes, even the racially pragmatical-minded Jewish Rabbis write in the same allegorical and veiled strain. They inform us, for instance, that there will be 60,000 towns in the hills of Judaea, and that each of these towns will contain 60,000 inhabitants; likewise they say that when their Messiah shall come, Jerusalem will be a city of immense extent: that it will then have 10,000 towns within its purlieus and 10,000 palaces; while Rabbi Simeon ben Yachia declares that there will be in the city 180,000 shops where nothing but perfumes will be sold, and that each grape in the Judaean vineyards will yield thirty casks of wine!
This example of Jewish mystical allegory is taken from Bartolocci's Bibliotheca Rabbinica. So it is evident that among the Jews there was the same use of allegorical symbolism, and that in the particular instance cited, the allegory employs the same images that the Christian allegory does, of the vine and the grape and the wine, with, doubtless, the same essential or secret meaning.
Without the Key to interpretation, much in the various ancient world-systems remains not only paradoxical to modern scholarship, but usually inexplicable. To illustrate the point further let us turn to two very interesting passages in the New Testament referring to Jesus, the Syrian Sage and Avatara, and consider them as Theosophy teaches us the inner meaning of them. In The Gospel 'according to' Matthew (29) occurs the following:
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a great voice, saying: 'Eli! Eli! lama shabahhthanei!' which is: 'God of me! God of me! Why hast thou forsaken me?' And certain of those standing there, having heard, said that 'This man calls upon Elias.' (30)
In The Gospel 'according to' Mark occurs the following:
And in the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a great voice: 'Eloi! Eloi! lama shabahhthanei!' which, interpreted, is: 'The God of me, unto what hast thou forsaken me?' And certain of those standing, having heard, said: 'See, he calls upon Elias.' (31)
These two writers obviously suggest that the witnesses standing around the cross, according to the legend, thought that the cry was made to Elias: in other words, that the witnesses misunderstood the Hebrew, Eli, Eli, meaning 'God of me, God of me,' to be the name 'Elias.' This gives a curious idea with regard to these two Gospel-writers, for the witnesses of the crucifixion, apart from the Roman guard alleged to have been there, must have spoken Aramaic as their mother-tongue, which is one of the Shemitic dialects, even as Hebrew is, and therefore ought to have understood the Shemitic root 'el of such wide and common currency in the Shemitic dialects. This strongly suggests that the two Gospel-writers themselves either lacked reflexion or did not understand the proper meaning of the quoted Hebrew cry, which indeed both of them mistranslate.
However this may be, there are some other curious things in this jumbled matter, besides the very awkward and actual mistranslation by the writers of the Gospels 'according to' Matthew and 'according to' Mark.
It should be stated in passing that of course Theosophists do not accept the mediaeval idea of a word-for-word divine inspiration controlling the original writers of the Christian New Testament, nor again the inspiration, divine or otherwise, of the translators of the so-called 'English authorized version' of King James of England; Theosophists look upon the mystical story of Jesus as it exists in the Christian New Testament as a vaguely symbolic history of initiation, in which Jesus, later called the Christ, is figurated as the exemplar or type of any Great Man undergoing the various trials of the initiatory cycle: in other words he, Jesus, therein is a type-figure. This does not mean that such a Sage as Jesus did not exist. It is true that such a great Sage did exist in a period somewhat earlier than the supposed beginning of the Christian Era. The idea therefore is that the Christian New Testament sets forth a symbolic picture, a symbolic history, of the initiation of a sage therein bearing the name of Jesus; but this particular symbolic picture, or symbolic history, was written according to the type or method of initiation followed in that part of the world, and in form and in method differed from the form and type of initiation followed in other parts of the world, such as in Greece or in Egypt or in India, or elsewhere. The fundamentals of the idea, however, were the same all over the world.
Now, these words 'Eloi! Eloi! lama shabahhthanei!' are Hellenized Hebrew so far as the New Testament spelling goes. It is usually said by biblical apologists that they are Aramaic words, and therefore that the alleged mistranslation of the Gospel-writers is probably imaginary; but this explanation is no explanation at all, and seems to the Theosophist to be itself purely imaginary and a forced attempt to explain the otherwise inexplicable; for the words are good Hebrew and also virtually good Chaldaic, and contain a sense violently different from the translation as given in these two extracts, as will be shown. It is interesting to note here also that Aramaic is a common name for the various kindred dialects spoken in Syria, and, therefore of course spoken in Palestine during the times when Jesus is alleged to have lived. The apologetic suggestion that these are Aramaic words seems to rest on no foundation of any fact whatsoever, and as far as the present writer knows, the suggestion has never been substantiated. The apology seems to arise out of a wish to 'save the face' of these two scriptural writers by the device of alleging an Aramaic origin of these words without producing the Aramaic words in proof thereof.
The meaning of this Hebrew sentence is not 'God of me! God of me! Why hast thou forsaken me?' but 'God of me! God of me! Why givest thou me such peace?' or also, as the Hebrew verb shabahh could be translated: 'Why glorifiest thou me so greatly!' The Hebrew word shabahh means to 'praise,' to 'glorify,' also to 'give peace to.' Surely this correct translation, outside of the original words being good and true Hebrew, is more concordant with the story of the Gospel itself according to the Christians' own interpretation, in other words, nearer to the story of Jesus as the Christians themselves give it to us! What earthly reason could have made these two Gospel-writers mistranslate something, which mistranslation, on the face of it, stood against themselves, and imparted into the sense an apparently inexplicable enigma? Why should the 'Son of God,' according to the Christian teachings (but not the Theosophical), who was likewise the human vehicle of one of the three inseparable persons of their Trinity, therefore an inseparable part of the Godhead itself according to the Christian teachings, exclaim in his passion in words of agony from the Cross, according to the legend, 'My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?'
To turn to the Old Testament: in one of the Psalms occurs this: "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?" (32) The first Hebrew words here are: "Eli Eli Lamahh 'azabtani" and are correctly translated. The Hebrew word 'azab as used in this Psalm means 'to forsake,' 'to leave,' 'to abandon,' and is a very natural exclamation for David, or whoever was the writer of the Psalms, to make in view of the situation that then supposedly existed with him, and in view of the thoughts supposedly in his mind, and is a very human cry, a cry uttered in despair, which any man might have made under stress of great spiritual and intellectual trial. All this is reasonable and true enough.
But here in the New Testament we have the 'Son of God,' the second person of the Trinity itself, according to the Christian teachings, saying: 'My God! My God! Why hast thou abandoned me?' And when we look at the words which the two New Testament writers themselves give, we find that they mean nothing of the sort, but mean, on the contrary, an exclamation of ecstasy: 'My God! O God within me! How thou dost glorify me!' Or, if you like: 'How thou dost give me peace!'
The suggestiveness involved in the hints of an esoteric significance contained in this tangled New Testament episode is so important in a way that it would seem to merit here a little more elaboration in the light that Theosophy casts upon ancient thought whether of a religious or philosophical character. A short attempt, therefore, briefly to explicate the meaning of this extraordinary enigma found in the New Testament, follows: If, as some have suggested, the writers 'according to' Matthew and 'according to' Mark, had this first verse of Psalm xxii in their minds when they made this mistranslation, we only ask why they did it, since they were supposedly two men who understood Aramaic and Hebrew better than modern scholars do, for Aramaic, ex hypothesi, was their mother-tongue; and, on the other hand, if these two Gospels were written in Alexandria, as is indeed probable, the situation remains the same because Alexandria then had a very large and learned Hebrew colony. It would seem that any such attempt to explain the enigma is entirely impermissible, because the Hebrew word 'azab used in Psalm xxii, verse 1, and meaning 'to abandon' or 'to forsake,' is not the Hebrew word used by these two Gospel-writers in their respective Gospels, for this word so used is shabahh, which means 'to praise,' 'to glorify,' 'to give peace to.'
But -- and just here is the point that it is attempted now to explain -- the writer 'according to' Matthew and the writer 'according to' Mark, actually writing as they did of this 'suffering' -- to use this ancient term for the initiation of one undergoing his glorification, his raising into temporary divinity in other words -- used exactly the proper word therefor; for there comes a moment, we are told, in this initiation-cycle, a moment which approaches the supreme test, the supreme trial, when the initiant has to face the worst that in himself is, and the worst that the world of matter can bring against him, and pass through this severest of trials successfully; and in that solemn moment, when no inner light seems present to strengthen, to assist, and to illuminate: when, according to the prearranged mechanism itself of the initiatory rite, which was both spiritual and psychologic, working on the suffering man, he was temporarily divorced from all the help that his own spiritual-divine nature could give him: he was then obliged to stand alone as a man in his sole but nevertheless highly trained human nature, and, facing the worst, to come through the test successfully as a man, and to achieve the self-conscious reunion with his inner god, then and there. Success spelt glory such as human consciousness can never experience greater. It was at this supreme moment of reunion with the glory of the living god within that the man, thus successful and surmounting in his sole manhood the fearful trial before him, cried in both ecstasy and inexpressible spiritual relief: 'O my God! O my God within me! How thou dost glorify me!'
How many times in that solemn hour must not the cry of agony also have gone forth from that human heart: 'O my Inner God! Why hast thou forsaken me?' for to the sole manhood of the man the temporary separation from the guiding inspiration of the divinity within seems like being forsaken by the inner divinity. Yet these two Gospel-writers used a wrong translation or term for the Hebrew word which they gave: they used the term signifying glorification and not the Hebrew word meaning forsaking, thereby achieving a contradiction in terms which nevertheless gives the key to the initiatory mystery -- the mystical key showing that in this temporary divorce of the man's inner constitution, i. e., of the higher from the lower, during the trial of the human being thus temporarily separated from his inner God, there lie the seeds of the glorification in reunion which is to come afterwards, if the aspirant in his humanhood be successful in the test.
It is quite possible, indeed it is almost certain, that these two writers, respectively 'according to' Matthew and Mark, may have themselves been copying from an older and still more mystical doctrine, imbodied or written in some earlier document then under their hands, and, either from deliberation or from error may have omitted words or passages which were intermediate between the Hebrew sentence they gave and the mistranslation of it which they either themselves made or quoted. What was this older and now lost source?
However, it is also true that in this complex and tangled manner, as thus exemplified in this New Testament enigma, was all or most of mystical literature written in ancient times; and it is precisely this complication of ideas and mingling of mystical thoughts cheek by jowl, so to say, that has made the ancient mystical literatures dealing with the initiation-cycle so difficult -- if not utterly incomprehensible -- for moderns to understand. But just here is it that the wondrous Theosophical teachings give to the thoughtful and persevering student the keys to it all and enable him to interpret, so to say, to wrench from the whirlpool of ideas, the real meaning; enable him to point out the apparent contradictions or faults and the why of these apparent verbal contrarieties and tangles. In the present instance taken from the New Testament and now here in discussion, we find a deliberate mixing in explanatory terms and in a highly mystical sense, of the facts contained in the most sublime moment that can come to a disciple. Later, when the test has been successfully passed, when the victory has been won 'on the cross' -- for the cross is not a Christian symbol alone, but belongs to ancient so-called pagan symbology, as every scholar knows: later, when the 'suffering' on the cruciform couch of initiation is ended, when the victory finally has been won, and the inner Light has come: in other words when the reunion with the inner god has been made again, then the victor can cry in ecstasy: 'O God of me! O God of me! How thou dost give me peace and glorify me!'
The average man whose mind and whose thinking apparatus have been uninjured and unspoiled by some predominating mental or other vice may discover these supernal truths for himself, and then there will be no need to take any other man's word for it, because he from his own experience will know the truth; but to do so of course he will need the training imperatively necessary for the bringing of understanding.
For this training, the teaching of a competent instructor is extremely helpful to and perhaps needed by every man whose mind is not so warped by egoism as to prevent him from accepting a verity when he hears it. Nevertheless, and although the aid of a true spiritual teacher is for a time a necessity which cannot be obviated, any man or woman may reach truth for himself or for herself, although when working alone and unaided the attainment is minor and the revelation is less great; and the method of so doing is cleanliness of mind and of heart, impersonal sincerity in service to the world, combined with study and honest abiding by the results of the convictions which follow upon that study and bear upon life.
The grossness, at least verbal, of some of the imagery of the ancient allegories or symbols in religious and philosophical matters has already been pointed out. In one sense one may fully agree with the fastidious and difficult to please, and admit that this form of imbodying a great truth is unfortunate, but assuredly no such offense was in the intention of the formulators. The Persian Sufi mystics, for instance, who were adherents of what may be called the Theosophy of Persian Mohhammedanism, wrote of the flowing wine-cup and of the pleasures of the tavern, and spoke of the unalloyed joy and the transcendent bliss that they experienced in company with their Beloved. These mystics employed all the amorous imagery of the love-song; and yet, most emphatically their writings were the precise opposite in meaning and intent of the sensuous imagery or suggestiveness of the lower human love. The Persian Mystic, Abu Yazid who lived in the ninth century, wrote:
I am the wine I drink, and the cup-bearer of it.
The wine-cup, for these mystical writers, symbolized in general the 'Grace of God' as Christians might say, the influences and workings of the spiritual powers infilling the Universe. The same Sufi writer said also:
I went from god to god until they cried from me, in me, "O! Thou, I!"
What graphic language is this! It is as though the soul of the poet were attempting to wash itself clean of all personality, and striving to say that his own Inmost was the Inmost of the All -- which is the exact truth.
Anyone who reads carefully the profound poems of some at least of the Sufi mystics, and is conscious of the delicate spirituality of many of these wonderful Sufi poems, knows, unless he be insane or rendered foolish by prejudice, that the writing was wholly symbolic. Turn but to the quatrains of Omar Khayyam, as an instance in point; or as another example, to an extract from the Diwan of Jalalu'd-Din Rumi, which an English scholar, Nicholson, has beautifully translated as follows:
Lo, for I to myself am unknown; now in God's name what must I do?
I adore not the cross nor the Crescent, I am not a Giaour or a Jew,
East nor West, land nor sea is my home, I have kin nor with angel nor gnome,
I am wrought not of fire nor of foam, I am shaped not of dust nor of dew.
I was born not of China afar, not in Saqsin and not in Bulghar;
Not in India, where five rivers are, nor Iraq nor Khurasan I grew.
Not in this world nor that world I dwell, not in Paradise neither in Hell;
Not from Eden and Ridwan I fell, not from Adam my lineage I drew.
In a place beyond uttermost Place, in a tract without shadow or trace,
Soul and body transcending I live in the soul of my Loved One anew! (33)
Of what is this Sufi poet singing here? What does his delicate spiritual sense tell him of, in the words in which he has tried to convey it to us? It is the Divine Source of which he sings, the Divine, the Source of us all, and the ultimate Home of us all, when we shall finally have run our evolutionary journey successfully.
The Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible contains the same suggestive sensual imagery as that employed by many Sufi mystics, although these Sufi mystics had the excuse for their language that under the then fear of the strong arm of the Moslem Government, they dared not write what this government would certainly have considered to be unorthodox teachings, and thus they were obliged to write under some other form and in consequence chose that of the love-song, which had the appearance of innocuousness -- as if suggestively sensuous thoughts were not infinitely more harmful to the moral sense than any amount of theological speculation!
For grossness of physical imagery the Song of Solomon probably has few parallels. Apparently it describes naught but the physical charms of the most beloved of the Hebrew King; and yet anyone who has some knowledge of this figurative method of symbolic writing, easily reads beneath the lines and seizes the inner thought.
Let us leave the setting sun of the West and turn our faces to the rising sun, to the Far Orient; and here we shall come upon things so delicately beautiful, so spiritually fine, that it will take all our inner faculties of intuition to understand them even a little at our first reading. Then, as the student pursues his studies, the marvelous thoughts contained in the philosophical and theological systems of the Far East grow on him. They become in time life of his life, heart of his heart; they remain with him in the silences of the night-time as an inspiration and peace-bringing balm, and when awake they recur to his mind like a blessing. When they are once understood, at least in part, he will find his heart beating in sympathy with the universal human heart, of which these noble writings imbody so much that is noblest and best in philosophy and in religion.
To particularize. The Chinese, as a rule, are considered to be and probably rightly so, among the most matter-of-fact, pragmatic, common-sense, so-called 'sensible' people to be found anywhere on our globe. Yet, despite this well-known 'sensible' trait of the Chinese character, and when turning to the beautiful poesie that has been written by some of their great men, and likewise to the various religious and philosophical systems of thought that they have given birth to, one will be amazed at the revelations of the human spirit that are to be found there in the various branches of ancient Chinese literature, mystical, religious, and philosophic.
One of the greatest teachers of China was Lao-Tse, who was the founder or rejuvenator of Taoism, one of the noblest religions and philosophical systems of China, and, it may be said, of the entire world. According to the legends which have gathered about his personality, he was conceived before birth in a supernatural fashion, as so many others of the great World-Teachers are alleged to have been also. His mother, according to these legends, carried him for seventy-two years before he was born, so that when at last he saw physical light, his hair was white, as if with age -- at least so the legend runs; and it is supposed that from this mythological or mystical fact, he was known in after times by the name 'the old son,' or 'the old boy.' His biographers tell us that when his life-work was done, he left China, traveling westwards towards Tibet, and finally disappeared on the western frontier of China; and, as his biographers rather pathetically say, it is not known where and when he died.
This great Chinese Sage is one of the least understood of all the great Brotherhood of Initiates or Adept-Teachers who from time to time appear among men, giving teachings or systems of doctrine which inspire and enlighten their age, and then -- usually disappear. Following the few facts which seem to be authentic, and setting aside the mass of mythological material which has been woven around his name and personality, he would appear to have been one of those periodic incarnations of a ray of what in the Esoteric Tradition is mystically called Maha-Vishnu, or in other words an Avatara. There seems to be no doubt whatsoever that he was one of the periodic Envoys or Messengers from the Holy Brotherhood who, as previously stated, send out representatives from among themselves in order to introduce an impulse or urge towards spirituality, and to bring about an intellectual awakening in the different parts of the world and in the respective races to which these Envoys are sent.
His great literary work is called the Tao-Teh-Ching, a Chinese title-phrase meaning 'The Book of the Doing of Tao.' Tao means the 'Way,' or the 'Path,' among other very mystical significances. Teh means 'virtue.' But Tao, while meaning the Way or the Path, also means the wayfarer, or he who travels on the Path. As Jesus is alleged to have said: "I am the Way and the Life." This truly great sage of China wrote as follows:
It is the Way of Tao not to act from any personal motive; to conduct affairs without feeling the trouble of them; to taste without being aware of the flavor; to account the great as small and the small as great; to repay injury with kindness. (34)
The last sentence of this really remarkable book is cast in the following strain:
It is the Tao [the Way] of Heaven, to benefit and not to injure; it is the Tao [the Way] of the Sage to do and not to strive. (35)
The meaning of these logical opposites is: Make no unnecessary ado about being and doing; fret not at all; worry not at all; but simply be and do! Here most graphically expressed is the difference between the undeveloped understanding of the ordinary man and the spiritual wisdom of the Sage. The latter knows that individual men, as units in a common humanity, contain within themselves, i. e., in their constitution, all that wherever is; everything the Universe contains is in man, because man is its inseparable offspring, an inseparable part of the Cosmic Whole; and a man stands in his own light, hinders his own progress, by contentious striving and striving and by constantly tensing his spiritual and intellectual and mental and physical muscles, as it were, and thus wearing out his strength in vain and futile notions. Lao-Tse said: "Be what is within you. Do what that which is within you tells you to do." This is the secret of Tao.
Thus far the mystical thought of ancient China as exemplified in the teachings regarding the Tao from the soul of the great Lao-Tse. It is to be regretted that lack of space forbids illustrating further strata of Chinese mystical thought by drawing examples from other Chinese sources such as are imbodied in the really wonderful Mahayana Buddhism as developed by native Chinese and foreign thinkers in the Flowery Kingdom. Chinese Buddhistic literature alone is a mine of profound mystical philosophy, and doubtless no part of it lacks the same undercurrent of esoteric teaching which has been universal in all lands and among all peoples.
But it is to India, the so-called 'Motherland of religions and philosophies' -- a title more or less based on fact -- that one should turn to find probably the best and most open examples of the systems of that part of the archaic Esoteric Tradition which during the last three or four millennia has spread its pervasive influence not only throughout the Asia of these eras, but since the time of Anquetil Duperron has been affecting more strongly with each passing century the great peoples of the West. Yet even in India, as history shows to be the case in all other ancient lands, the modern representatives of the old religious philosophies or philosophical religions have degenerated from what one may with justice call their pristine purity and vigor of propaganda. If China and Tibet may be called mines of esoteric lore to be unearthed by the intuitive and inquisitive researcher, still more aptly may this qualification be given to the magnificent philosophical and religious literatures of ancient Hindusthan. Possibly some of the noblest of archaic Indian mystical and esoteric thought is imbodied in those remarkable literary documents, relics of a now almost forgotten past, which are called the Upanishads, and which, with the remainder of the cycle of Vedic literature of which the Upanishads themselves are a portion, have been the fountain-head of the great systems of religion and philosophy which later times gave birth to in the peninsula. In the Upanishads, just as much as elsewhere, the inner or esoteric teaching is carefully hid from superficial scrutiny; for in these noble philosophical documents, gems of unparalleled beauty and of pure esoteric derivation are hid under the habiliments or garments of veil and allegory, parable and symbol, that cloak the teachings of the same Esoteric Tradition in other lands -- albeit the lineaments or outlines of these veils and allegories differed and varied in each ancient race.
It would be a genuine pleasure to quote in these pages extensive passages conveying fragments of the Lost Word of antiquity, i. e., of the archaic Esoteric Tradition; but this delightful and profitable occupation may be freely left to the intuitive research of the reader himself. Let us content ourselves, therefore, with pointing to the Upanishads as being a veritable mine of ancient wisdom, and draw therefrom one single instance of mystical teaching which will likewise illustrate the method of imparting information in public works that the ancient Sages adopted.
Here we have the case, actual or imaginary, of an ancient teacher called Uddalaka-Aruni, one of the great Brahmana-teachers of this portion of the cycle of the Vedic literature. Uddalaka-Aruni is teaching his son, Swetaketu, who asks him for knowledge:
"Fetch me from that spot a fruit of the Nyagrodha-tree."
"Here it is, Sir!"
"Break it open."
"It is now broken open, Sir!"
"What do you see there?"
"These seeds, exceeding small."
"Break open one of them."
"One is broken open, Sir."
"What do you see there?"
"Nothing at all, Sir!"
The father then said: "My child, that very subtil essence which you do not see there, of that very essence this huge Nyagrodha-tree exists. Believe it, my child. That which is this subtil essence -- in it all that exists has its self. It is the Real; it is the Self; and you, O Swetaketu are it!"
"Please, Sir, tell me yet more," said the child.
"Be it so, my son," the father answered. "Place this salt in water, and then come to me in the morning."
The child did as he was ordered to do. [In the morning] the father said to him: "Bring me the salt which you put in the water last night."
The child looked for it and found it not, for it was melted. The father then said: "Taste the water at the top. How is it?"
The son answered: "It is salty."
"Taste it from the middle layer. How is it?"
The son answered: "It is salty."
"Taste it from the bottom. How is it?"
The child answered: "It is salty."
The father then said: "You may throw it away, and then return to me." The boy did so; yet the salt remained always as before.
Then said the father: "Just so in this person you do not see the Real, my child; yet there in very truth It is. That which is this subtil essence -- in it all that is has its Self. It is the Real; it is the Self; and you, O Swetaketu, are It!
"If someone were to strike at the root of this great tree before us, it would bleed, but it would live. If he were to strike at its trunk, it would indeed bleed, yet it would live. If he were to strike at its top, it would indeed bleed, yet it would live. Permeated by the living Self the tree stands strong drinking in its food and rejoicing.
"But if the life [which is the living Self] depart from a branch of it, that branch dies; if it leave another branch, that also dies. If it abandon a third, that third dies also. If it leave the whole tree, the entire tree dies. After just this manner, O my child, know the following." Thus spoke the father again.
"This body indeed withers and dies when the living Self abandons it; but the living Self dies not.
"That which is its subtil essence -- in it all that exists has its self. It is the Real. It is the Self, and you, O Swetaketu, are it."
"Please, Sir, teach me yet more," said the child.
"Be it so, my son," the father answered. (36)
The different religious and philosophical systems of Hindusthan all merit careful study by the student in search of philosophical proof of the existence of the Esoteric Tradition as the background of archaic Wisdom which has inspired the greatest literary works of the civilized world of past ages. Here it is necessary merely to point to the six Darsanas or 'Visions,' i. e., systems of philosophy which the metaphysical and philosophical genius of the Hindu mind has given birth to at different times in the past. Chief among these six systems of faith on account of its metaphysical esoteric profundity and also because of the fact that it is, chronologically speaking, one of the most recent to appear, although far older than the Christian era in the West, is the Vedanta in its three several schools; and chiefest and noblest of these three schools is the Adwaita-Vedanta. The three schools or divisions of the Vedanta are respectively: the Adwaita or non-Dualistic, of which the Avatara, Sankaracharya was the chiefest and loftiest exponent; the Dwaita, or Dualistic, the philosophical converse, so to speak, of the former; and the Visishta-Adwaita, or modified non-Dualistic.
The word Vedanta itself means 'end of the Vedas,' not signifying the mechanical end of a unitary literary effort, nor the last in chronological sequence of a series of philosophical and religious documents; but meaning the philosophical completion in the sense of philosophical perfection of the cycle of the Upanishadic philosophic and religious thought that preceded it: its full completion or fullest and noblest elaboration. Yet with all the intrinsic majesty and deep philosophical and religious merit of these various 'Visions' of ancient India, not one of them, not even excepting the great Adwaita-Vedanta of Sankaracharya, rises to higher levels of genuine esoteric teaching, than the amazingly subtil, profound and mystical thought imbodied in the system bearing the name of its great Founder, Buddhism. Probably no system known to the modern student is so wide in its sympathies, so appealing to the human heart, so cosmic in its philosophical range and so replete with esoteric doctrine -- all when properly understood -- as is the teaching of that greatest of human Sages and Seers in recorded history, Siddhartha-Sakyamuni, Gautama the Buddha. Whether one search into the literature of the Southern School of Buddhism, commonly called the Hinayana, or whether one turn to the more mystical elaboration of the Lord Buddha's teaching as found in Central and Northern Asia, and called the Mahayana, in either case the researcher discovers with each new spiritual and intellectual effort of his mind in research, new visions of Reality, and whatever Occidental Orientalists may have to say in denial of there having been, or of there now being, an esoteric Buddhism -- or an esoteric and secret teaching in Buddhism -- these objections are seen to be valueless and without substantial foundation by any careful student of the Esoteric Tradition who cares to pursue his researches into the deeper meaning underlying the outward form of the doctrines of the schools into which Buddhism is divided. The statement is made unqualifiedly that Buddhism, particularly in its northern Branch or School, has as strong and vital an inner meaning or recondite sense of an esoteric character imbodied in its various scriptural writings as has any other one of the great world-religions.
However this may be, and excluding for the moment the veils and allegories which inshrine and hide the Esoteric Tradition which is the living substance of any form of Buddhism or of Hinduism, the fact remains that so intuitive and urgent is the human mind in its higher strivings to attain Truth, that it makes contact, as it were, in such cases with underlying cosmic verities, and thus, through the minds of those outstanding examples of human philosophical and religious genius, their teachings converge often closely, thus again providing a proof of the statement that behind veil and within allegory, or symbol or parable, the fundamental ideas are identical in all the great systems of religious and philosophical thought.
As an example in illustration, one may point to the fact that the adherents of the Adwaita-Vedanta, mainly derivative from the teachings of the great Sankaracharya, are called by their critical opponents Buddhists in disguise, Chhanna-Bauddhas; while in an exactly similar fashion, the adherents of the more metaphysical and mystical school of the Mahayana Buddhist systems are called by their Buddhist critics, Vedantists in disguise. Both these criticisms when taken from either side are fallacious when considered from the standpoint of their makers; but true, if the criticism merely means that at bottom the Adwaita-Vedantists and the mystical Mahayana Buddhists teach fundamentally doctrines which are identic and common to both systems. So strong, thus, is the influence of the Esoteric Tradition, which is but another way of saying the natural intuitions and the workings of the human spirit in its visions of essential verities, that it expresses identic truths at all times and among all races of men, albeit often in widely differing structural frameworks of veil or allegory.
From the substance of this chapter, therefore, the student should readily see that veil and allegory, parable and symbol, while enclosing and hiding still more sublime truths, nevertheless have their universal functions to perform in the delivery of philosophical and religious teaching. Some of these veils and allegories in expression or in form are often crude, possibly even repulsive to the Occidental eye, as has hereinbefore already been stated; but this feeling of strangeness or displeasing crudity arises, at least in a very large degree, in our automatic mental rejection of what is unfamiliar and therefore unpleasant to us in religious or philosophical thought.
What symbol or emblem or metaphor, after all, could be more displeasing to most Occidental minds than that of the serpent or the snake as so crudely if not coarsely set forth in the Hebrew Genesis for instance? Yet the Hebrew scriptures are not singular in their employment of the serpent as a symbol of a spiritual Teacher, because Hindu literature has instances almost without number where the snake or serpent called either Naga or Sarpa stands as a name or metaphorical appellation for Great Teachers, Wise Men, Spirits of Light as well as of Darkness. Indeed, the inhabitants of Patala -- which signifies both a 'hell' and also the regions which are the antipodes of the Hindu peninsula -- are called Nagas or 'snakes' alias 'serpents'; and Arjuna, the hero of the episode in the Mahabharata called the Bhagavad-Gita is shown traveling to Patala and there marrying Ulupi, the daughter of Kauravya, King of the Nagas in Patala. (37)
Why should the serpent, or the snake, in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, have been called a 'liar,' 'deceiver,' and that pathetic mythical figure of early and late mediaeval theology, the Devil, be called by the name of 'the tempting serpent' and also the 'Father of Lies'? Why should it have been thought that the Serpent in the Garden of Eden which tempted the first human pair to evil-doing, according to the Hebrew mythology, was an imbodiment of or the symbol of Satan? Why should the serpent have become the symbol of insinuating evil, of crafty evil-doing, or of deceitful craft? Or on the other hand, why should the silent, creeping serpent with its slow sinuous progress have been taken as the symbol of Wisdom as well as being used as an appellation for an Initiate, as in the expression attributed to a very lofty source, Jesus the Christos himself, in the Christian New Testament: "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves"? (38)
The answer is simple enough. Just as the forces of Nature are neutral in themselves, and become what humans call 'good' or 'bad' because of their use or misuse by individuals, just exactly so a natural entity when employed as a figure or type-figure in symbolology becomes usable in either a good or a bad sense. Such use as a symbol, or metaphorical appellation or title, always depends upon certain characteristics or qualities possessed by the natural entity and which the human mind by force of association of ideas, chooses or separates off from other characteristics or qualities, and employs in a symbolologic or metaphorical sense in order to depict either abstract or concrete ideas. This fact is shown for instance in the Sanskrit language, where Initiates of both kinds, i. e., of both the Right-Hand Path and of the Left-Hand Path, are referred to in words conveying serpentine ideas or characteristics. The former kind, otherwise called the Brothers of Light, are more properly designated in Sanskrit as Nagas; whereas the Brothers of Darkness or of the Shadows are perhaps more properly designated as Sarpas, this latter word being derived from the Sanskrit verbal root srip, meaning 'to crawl,' 'to creep,' in sly and stealthy manner, and hence metaphorically 'to deceive' by craft or insinuation.
We see here the main reason why the serpent or snake has, in probably all countries, and certainly in all times, been used as a symbol or emblem on the one hand of the Brothers of Light and their servants, and on the other hand of the Brothers of Darkness and their slaves. The reason is obvious, because both the Brothers of Light and the Sons of the Darkness are focuses of power, of subtil thought and action, of wisdom and energy, in the former case righteously and lawfully applied for sublime and compassionate ends, and therefore belonging to the 'right-hand'; and in the other case, of wisdom and energy wrongly or evilly applied to the uses of the 'left-hand.' The use applies to the cases of Initiates, because both the Initiates of the right-hand and of the left-hand are alike in one thing: they employ subtilty and the forces of Nature, and secret powerful wisdom, or rather secret knowledge combined with power. The same forces of Nature are employed by both -- one class using these powers for impersonal and holy ends; the other class using these same powers and energies for unholy and evil ends. One class, as just said, we may perhaps call the Nagas, i. e., the spiritual 'serpents' of Wisdom and Light, to whom Jesus alluded, who are very subtil, very benevolent, very wise, and endowed with the spiritual power to cast off the physical garment, i. e., the 'skin' or body, when the Initiate has grown old, and to assume another fresher, younger, and stronger human body at will. This noble class of Great Men are all infinitely kindly, perpetually engaged in works of human benevolence and beneficence, and yet are still and secret in their operations, among other reasons in order to avoid the plaudits and adoration of foolish men.
The other class are insinuating, worldly-wise, worldly-shrewd, deceitful, venomous in motive and action, therefore very dangerous; and yet using the same powers as the former class, but for evil ends.
Thus it is that on the one hand we find in all the greater of the old world-scriptures, 'serpents' spoken of as symbols of wisdom, as a metaphorical name for the Sons of Light, all possessing power, wisdom, knowledge, love, and splendor, as being Sons of the Sun; and, on the other hand, we see why other 'serpents,' 'snakes,' are spoken of as being symbols of the Dark, often called the Black, Brothers, who are essentially wrongdoers from Nature's own standpoint, and all too often succeeding in their diabolic work by means of lies and misrepresentations. Hence it is that Jesus said: "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
In this usage of the displeasing figure and characteristics of the serpent or snake as the veil of a secret sense, and the elaboration of the serpentine characteristics in the form of allegory and story, the ancient habit or manner of disguising natural truths is clearly seen.
FOOTNOTES:
19. Galatians, vi, 7. (return to text)
20. Karman -- all that total of a soul, which is itself, brought into present being by its own willing and thinking and feeling, working upon the fabric and the substance of itself, and thus preparing its future destiny, as its present existence was the destiny prepared for itself by its own past lives. The basis, or root, or essence, or, may we not say the law of itself -- Karman -- rises in the 'heart' of the Universe which is immortal, impersonal, infinite, LIFE itself, Divine Harmony, whence spring into active operation all the so-called 'Laws' of Nature that make the Mighty Mother what she is in all her septenary or denary constitution. As H. P. Blavatsky says in her The Voice of the Silence, Section 'The Two Paths,' pp. 34-5 (orig. ed.):
"Learn that no efforts, not the smallest -- whether in right or wrong direction -- can vanish from the world of causes. E'en wasted smoke remains not traceless. 'A harsh word uttered in past lives, is not destroyed but ever comes again.' (Precepts of the Prasanga School.) The pepper plant will not give birth to roses, nor the sweet jessamine's silver star to thorn or thistle turn.
"Thou canst create this 'day' thy chances for thy 'morrow.' In the 'Great Journey' ('Great Journey' or the whole complete cycle of existences, in one 'Round'), causes sown each hour bear each its harvest of effects, for rigid justice rules the World. With mighty sweep of never erring action, it brings to mortals lives of weal or woe, the Karmic progeny of all our former thoughts and deeds.
"Take then as much as merit hath in store for thee, O thou of patient heart. Be of good cheer and rest content with fate. Such is thy Karma, the Karma of the cycle of thy births, the destiny of those, who, in their pain and sorrow, are born along with thee, rejoice and weep from life to life, chained to thy previous actions. . . .
"Act thou for them to 'day,' and they will act for thee, 'to morrow.'"
Or again as H. P. Blavatsky describes this ineffably just Principle of Universal Nature, guided by Infinite Compassion, but inflexibly just in all its operations, whether upon star or glow-worm or man, which the Esoteric Tradition calls Karman -- in her The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 642-644:
"In the West, since Pagan Wisdom has been repudiated as having grown from and been developed by the dark powers supposed to be at constant war and in opposition to the little tribal Jehovah -- the full and awful significance of the Greek NEMESIS (or Karma) has been entirely forgotten. . . . Nemesis is without attributes; that while the dreaded goddess is absolute and immutable as a Principle, it is we ourselves -- nations and individuals -- who propel her to action and give the impulse to its direction. KARMA-NEMESIS is the creator of nations and mortals, but once created, it is they who make of her either a fury or a rewarding Angel. . . . unwise they, who believe that the goddess may be propitiated by whatever sacrifices and prayers, or have her wheel diverted from the path it has once taken . . . begotten by ourselves. There is no return from the paths she cycles over; yet those paths are of our own making, for it is we, collectively or individually, who prepare them. Karma-Nemesis is the synonym of PROVIDENCE, minus design, goodness, and every other finite attribute and qualification, so unphilosophically attributed to the latter. An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this, as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer -- aye, even to his seventh rebirth. So long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma -- an eternal and immutable decree -- is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we, who reward or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or -- break them.
"Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways -- which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism; and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them -- would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause. . . . Were no man to hurt his brother, Karma-Nemesis would have neither cause to work for, nor weapons to act through. . . . We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life. If one breaks the laws of Harmony, . . . one must be prepared to fall into the chaos one has oneself produced. . . .
". . . Karma-Nemesis is no more than the (spiritual) dynamical effect of causes produced and forces awakened into activity by our own actions."
In the above flowing and majestic paragraphs from the Great Theosophist, H. P. Blavatsky, one finds the best and most comprehensive definition of that never-erring, universal, and never-resting Principle, or 'Law,' of Cosmic Being, which is briefly and technically expressed by the Esoteric Tradition in the one word KARMAN. It is an utterly erroneous notion to suppose on the one hand that Karman is fatalism, and that human beings are under its blind and fortuitous action, the victims of an inscrutable, unmoral, destiny of blind chance; and equally erroneous on the other hand to suppose that Karman is the creation or created law of action of some Cosmic Entity, different from and apart from the Universe itself, and therefore extra-Cosmic. It is equally erroneous to suppose that whatever happens to a man in his endless series of lives in time and space, in the worlds visible and invisible, during the aeons-long course of his peregrinations, is in strict accuracy 'unmerited,' or that events in any particular, or in general, happen unto him apart from his own original causative action. It is necessary to emphasize this because one or two otherwise excellent Theosophists are under the impression derived from certain passages of H. P. Blavatsky's that there is such a thing as 'unmerited Karman'; forgetting that in order properly to understand the Great Theosophist's teaching, one must include every statement by her on this topic, ignoring none. There is, indeed, relative injustice, or relative 'unmerited suffering' in the world, brought about by the interaction of the various parts of man's complex constitution, the higher principles of his constitution, such as the Reincarnating Ego, frequently in the course of karmic destiny bringing upon the merely personal man events which that personal man in any one life is not himself directly and absolutely responsible for. But the Reincarnating Ego was fully responsible, although its lower vehicle, the astral or personal man, through which the Reincarnating Ego works, does not recognise the justice of the misfortunes and sufferings and karmic destiny caused in other lives -- and therefore to this astral or personal man these blows of destiny seem to be both unmerited and unjust. Yet, in very truth, as H. P. Blavatsky so nobly says in the above paragraphs, "there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day, or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life."
This, with her other statements, is conclusive; and it is but insufficient study and lack of intellectual realization of the subtil logic of the teaching which could ever bring any man to suppose that what he undergoes in suffering or sorrow or pain in any one life, he himself is not responsible for. He himself in former lives set in action the causes which later, by rigid karmic justice, bring about the effects which he in the present life complains of and calls 'unmerited.' This same mistake in misunderstanding the rigid logic and the delicate and subtil reasoning of the teaching, caused, in early Christianity, that first fatal departure from the recognition of infinite and automatic Justice in the world, to the idea, that because man's sufferings seemed inexplicable, they were therefore unmerited and were due to the inscrutable wisdom of Almighty God, whose decrees man should accept in humility without questioning the wisdom of the Providence thus erected in explanation. (return to text)
21. Origen mentions this really esoteric teaching especially in his book, Contra Celsum ('Against Celsus'). Celsus was a Greek philosopher who disputed the claims of the Christian teachers of his day to have pretty nearly all the truth that the world contained. (return to text)
22. Origen: Contra Celsum, Bk. I, chap. xii. (return to text)
23. See supra, chapter 1, note 16 and quote (return to text)
24. More Nevochim, (Guide of the Perplexed), part II, chapter xxix. (return to text)
25. Matt., x, 34. (return to text)
26. 'The Second Epistle of Clement,' chap. xii. (return to text)
27. Contra Haereses, Bk. V, chap. xxxiii. (return to text)
28. John, xv, 1-6. (return to text)
29. Here the significant phrase according to obviously signifies that the writer is not Matthew, but someone who wrote or who claimed to write 'according to' Matthew's teachings. (return to text)
30. Matt., xxvii, 46-7. (return to text)
31. Mark, xv, 34-5. The reader is requested to note that in the two extracts from the Christian New Testament, respectively from Matthew and Mark, the author of the present work has himself made the translation into English from the original Greek, and consequently the Hebrew sentence which appears in both these extracts is transliterated into English characters in such fashion as to give as closely as possible the phonetic pronunciation of the original Hebrew. The Greek manuscripts vary among themselves as to the spelling of this Hebrew sentence, and this is the fact not only in the different Greek manuscripts of Matthew, but likewise in the different Greek manuscripts of Mark. Yet in no case are the variations more than different attempts by the Greek writers to spell in Greek characters the Hebrew words of this sentence. Hebrew has certain sounds which Greek has not, and consequently the Greek writers had to choose such Greek alphabetic characters as seemed to be closest in sound to the Hebrew.
On precisely the same grounds the present writer has chosen such English alphabetic characters as would give the original Hebrew sounds as closely as possible. This explanation is made in order to forestall the entirely wrong objection that any liberty has been taken with these Hebrew words.
The really important point is, that these are unmistakable Hebrew words which anyone knowing both Greek and Hebrew will easily understand the need of properly transliterating in order to approximate to the sounds of the original Hebrew vocables. Whatever the transliteration of the Hebrew may be, the meaning is perfectly clear, and both Matthew and Mark have mistranslated the Hebrew to mean something that the Hebrew words do not contain. Such mistranslation arose either from ignorance or from deliberation; and the reason for this the present writer has attempted to explain in the paragraphs of the text which follow the New Testament extracts given above. (return to text)
32. Psalm xxii, 1. (return to text)
33. Cited in E. G. Browne's A Literary History of Persia. (return to text)
34. Tao-Teh-Ching, section lxiii. (return to text)
35. Section lxxxi. (return to text)
36. The example chosen is one which was likewise employed by the present writer in his volume Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, and is taken from the Chhandogya-Upanishad, vi, 11-13. (return to text)
37. Adiparva, slokas 7788-9. (return to text)
38. Matt., x, 16. (return to text)