Theosophical University Press Online Edition
Probably there is no single doctrine of the Esoteric Philosophy, no individual teaching of the Ancient Wisdom, which makes so quick and so instant an appeal to even the most unmystical of modern men and women, as does the promulgation of the fact of the present existence in the world of Wise Men, Mahatmans, Great Sages or Seers. It is probably the human side of us which joys in this fact, because it not only seems to be, but actually is, a concrete and not merely a philosophical and metaphysical reality; nor does this teaching, at least at its first presentation, seem to call forth in particular a spiritual and intellectual effort in understanding on the part of those who hear it.
Furthermore, in most unspoiled human minds there lies an intuition, call it an instinct if the reader will, that there really must be in the world human beings of far loftier spiritual capacity and of immensely more developed intellectual power than the ordinary run of men, and indeed than the greater men whom their fellows speak of as geniuses or as 'outstanding figures.' Those who hear this wonderful teaching for even the first time perhaps instantly and by instinct turn to those luminous spiritual and intellectual Figures of world-history, such as Gautama the Buddha, or Jesus the Syrian Avatara, Apollonius of Tyana, Lao-Tse, Krishna, Sankaracharya, etc.; and, at least among the more intuitive, almost the first intellectual reaction is: If such great figures have already existed in the world, why should they not exist again? Indeed, what the human race has already once brought forth in the shape of great Human Types, might appear in the world at any time, and for purposes of their own remain unknown of the multitude. Only later, if at all, do scientific and religious obscurantism and orthodoxy bring in their deadly work of attempting to shame the soul's intuitions.
Who, then, and what are these Luminous Figures, who, although born in one or in another of the human races of the planet actually belong to no especial human racial group but are the Children of Humanity, so to speak? They are the titanic Spiritual Intellectuals who have been the guides and guardians of mankind in past ages and who are at the present time the almost unknown Leaders and Inspirers of the human race; and, in one or another generation of men as the ages drift by into the past, it is they who have founded all the really great world-religions, world-philosophies, and world-sciences. At the present time, even as it was in former ages, they form a Brotherhood or Association whose ranks are recruited from time to time by their noblest disciples or chelas, when the latter through training and inner growth become fit and able to join their former Teachers as new members of the Brotherhood.
They are men who because of past ages of inner evolutionary growth in unfolding of the different parts of their constitution, have become what is called in usual language 'perfect men,' for, as a matter of fact, when once they have attained the lofty stage of mahatman-hood, they become Masters of human life, Sages possessed of the Wisdom of the ages, as well as being Adepts in the knowledge of the characteristic attributes and operations of their own being and of our Universal Mother, Great Nature herself. They have been in the past, likewise now are, and in the future will be, the interpreters and investigating and researching spiritual Scientists of the vast hierarchical ranges of the worlds and planes of the invisible Universe; and from time to time as the ages roll by, when it is wise so to do, they give unto mankind glorious proofs not only of the existence of these inner and to us humans invisible worlds, but of the many-sided relations of these worlds with our material sphere which is the physical garment or veil of the invisible and the intangible.(401)
The human race, ever since it became self-conscious and intellectually active as it now is, an event which took place at some indefinite period before the middle point of the Third Root-Race, and even before this far-past period of intellectual awakening, has been guided, as well as spiritually and intellectually protected and inspired, as far as it was possible to do so, by these great Men; because the lofty ideal of these Teachers is the spiritual and intellectual awakening and evolutionary unfolding of their fellow-men, including the teaching to mankind of high and inspiring ideas, not merely of thought and belief, but of conduct likewise. It is obvious that thought, however sublime, which has no proportionate effect on conduct is relatively barren.
There is enormous solace as well as spiritual and intellectual stimulation in knowing this fact, because it becomes clear enough, when the idea is understood, that mankind is no helpless or abandoned aggregate of human beings, left by a soulless and pitiless Nature to their own uninspired and hapless devices and wandering blindly along life's pathways, without guidance and without teaching, in a Universe which, according to all but the most recent scientific pronouncements perhaps, is built upon no consistent and coherent scheme, nor inspired from within by Luminous Cosmic Consciousness.
The Universe being, as it is, vast hierarchies of imbodied consciousnesses in all-various degrees or stages of evolutionary unfoldment, from the divine down to the physical, these great Sages are seen to be simply the inevitable and necessary representatives, appearing in the human race, of the workings of the Universal Logoic Wisdom which permeates all and everywhere. Furthermore, the fact that these Mahatmans are men, but Great Men, the Fine Flowers of the human race, who have attained their high spiritual and intellectual status on the ladder of life because of inner evolutionary unfolding or growth, is in itself a perennial source of inspiration to ordinary human beings, for we at once see that what they have attained, any human being who follows the Way of living that they have followed, and who is willing to undertake the training that they successfully undertook, has precisely the same chances of reaching, i. e., the sublime goal of mahatman-hood -- and what an immense, what an enormous, stimulation of the instinctual ethical sense in the human breast is this sublimely beautiful idea! Even the average man of the street who once grasps the fact of the existence of these Great Men, if he think at all, must realize that neither he himself nor mankind as a whole is a blindly driven and helpless creature of an inscrutable Fatality imbodied in Nature, but he understands that he can carve his own destiny into magnificent fulfilments and in never-ending reaches of constantly enlarging scenes, if he but take himself in hand to this end.
It is in following this wondrous pathway faithfully, undeviatingly, undiscouraged by the many errors and mistakes that are inevitable to imperfect beings, and with indomitable courage that nothing can daunt, that men in due course of time become Great Seers, Mahatmans, themselves. Who then are these Sages and Seers? Are they Gods? No. 'Kosmic Spirits'? No. They are Men, grand Men, evolved Men, high-minded Men, magnanimous Men, spiritual Men: Men in whom the god within each one of them shines forth much as the sun shines forth in his own Kingdom. They are what they are because they have become 'at one' each with his own essential spiritual inner nature, and the result of this union, steadily progressing through the ages into unity, is a Mahatman, a Great Sage, a Great Seer, a Teacher of men and of the world, a Leader of Men on the Pathway to the Gods, and likewise an Initiate in the wondrous and majestic lore of the Universe.
These Sages are sometimes called the 'Guardian-Wall,' for they form in fact a living, spiritual and intellectual 'wall' of protection around mankind, guarding men against whatever evils men themselves are unable, because of ignorance and stupidity, to ward off or to neutralize. Yet such guarding is always in strict accordance with, and always has in view, the dominant karman of humanity; for against this, the humanly racial karman, even the great Sages can no more work than against any one or against all of the other 'laws' of Nature. They are what they are because they are in utter fidelity the Servants of the Universal Mother in her spiritual, causative functions. They help men, they inspire, they protect, they succor, whenever they can, and in such fashion as their profound knowledge of the karmic chain of cause and effect in which humanity is entangled permits them to do. Thus it is that they serve the humanity over which they stand as Elder Brothers and Guides. This is their Great Work; this is their sublime Duty.
'Diamond-heart' is a technical term of the archaic Mysteries often used when speaking of these Mahatmans; and it has its particular and symbolic meaning, as signifying their crystal-clear consciousness reflecting all in the world: reflecting the misery of the world, receiving and reflecting the human call for help, reflecting with equal clearness the dawning Buddhic Splendor in the heart of every struggling human soul on earth; but yet as hard as is the diamond for all calls of the personality, the self-personality, and first of all of the Mahatmans' own personal nature -- for just because they are men they have their personal nature of course, although with them it is a willing and obedient instrument, and not as with most men the haughty, domineering, and cruel master.
There is probably nothing more stimulating, nothing more beautiful, than to look upon these Great Men as brother-men, very near to us but higher than we are. They are Brothers, tender-hearted Men, great-hearted Men, of magnificent spiritual and intellectual powers and faculties. They are what one might popularly call Soul-Men in human bodies, and thus feeling more or less as all men feel, understanding with a deep understanding all human woes and human sorrows, capable of cognising in sympathy and reacting in pity, because conscious of what human failings and human sin are, and therefore having human hearts moved with tender compassion and ineffable pity. They know also the need, when occasion for it arises, of the strong and directing hand. Some of us who have known life, know the value of a saving hand, strong and firm, when danger is near; know the value of a friendly warning, given, it may be, in terms of seeming severity to the selfish personal heart of the one whom the Mahatman is trying to help.
The Masters are human beings, although lofty ones, and it is just this that makes them so near and dear to our common humanity. Although among themselves existing in differing grades of advancement and power on the hierarchical scale, yet as a Body or Brotherhood they occupy the lowest stage of that lofty Spiritual Hierarchy of Intelligences which begins with man -- with the Mahatmans -- and ends with the Solar Gods.(402) They occupy the step or grade of this hierarchy which is immediately superior to ordinary humanity.
As said, there are many grades of these relatively perfected Men, as of course is only to be expected. The human race itself is composed of families differing among themselves as regards mental, psychical, and spiritual attributes and character, and, as we find the same interesting phenomenon of diversity and difference among the organic families of beings lower in the evolutionary scale than man is, even so should we expect to find beings on the hierarchical scale above men differing among themselves in power, wisdom, and in expansion of consciousness.
All this of course is just as it should be, and indeed just as it must be throughout Nature's wondrous realms of being. We find nowhere in Nature, not even in the apparent unism of the rocks, a dreary uniformity of universal sameness or identity, an arid and uninspiring lack of individuality among the beings that are. Nowhere indeed; but on the contrary, everywhere we see diversity, differentiation, difference, in short individuality, involving individual progress in evolutionary unfolding, with all that the word 'evolution' implies with regard to scale and difference and growth.
All this manifold diversity in universal nature around us, which is so obvious even to the relatively undiscerning eye, arises in the hierarchical complexity in fundamental unity of Universal Nature herself. In other chapters of the present work is set forth the teaching regarding cosmic hierarchies, and an exposition of the manner in which each hierarchy is enclosed within a larger hierarchy, and so forth in ever enlarging scale over the endless fields of kosmical Space. So that the kosmic structure is seen to be in fact a bewilderingly immense system of the less within the greater, the greater itself being the less to another still more great -- all interlinked and interwoven not only through the fields of physical space, but through ever-enlarging fields of greater ethereality, totally invisible and intangible to us humans, into the very bosom of the Boundless, the Parabrahman of Hindu philosophy.
It is a universally accepted fact that men do differ greatly among themselves not merely in body, which is perhaps the least noticeable field of differentiation, but more noticeably in psychological power, intellect, in spiritual consciousness, and in the moral sense. Men so differ not only in such obvious instances as in the complexion of the skin, or in the muscular proportions of the body, or in the shape of the head, etc.; but, as just stated, even more greatly in the mental, psychological, and moral factors of their being; and it is these very factors last mentioned which really most remarkably distinguish the different families of men from each other.
If men therefore differ among themselves, as they most certainly do, as regards racial families or so-called racial stocks, probably few students of Ethnology and of Anthropology -- indeed, no really observing eye -- can fail to note as a most interesting fact that men as individuals vary far more widely as among themselves than do the different families of men, one from another. This fact is observable even in the individuals of any one nation, to take what is often merely an artificial group. In other words, the evolutionary differences among men as affecting individuals are incomparably more profound and of greater psychological importance than the difference as among races: for instance, the differences which distinguish a Homer, a Dante, a Goethe, a Shakespeare, as contrasted with the differences which distinguish Greeks, Italians, Germans, or Englishmen.
It is evident enough that such men stand head and shoulders, each in his own particular manner, above the average of the race or even of the nation to which he belongs, and that no nation or race of Homers, or Dantes, or Goethes, or Shakespeares, is known on the globe. Such men are outstanding figures, what are commonly called geniuses, and similarly so are yet other men of the past and present time, whose natural aptitudes pursue other lines of differing activity. Nevertheless all such mere geniuses stand in the scale of evolutionary development as children when compared with others as much greater than they (nay, much greater) as they are above the average man of our most advanced human race.
It was once a Chinese custom, and a significant custom in its way, to divide the human host into three classes: the inferior men; the middling or average men who form the great bulk of the human stock; and superior men. Now the idea here is not that these three classes of human beings which fall so naturally into groups are separated from each other by evolutionally distinct compartments, so to say; not at all. The idea is simply that there is a scale or hierarchy of grades or degrees in human intelligence and in evolutionary development, which degrees nevertheless shade or grade off or blend into each other. The so-called 'superior men' we see at once are they in whom the lower human qualities or faculties or attributes, and their accompanying and respective powers, have been so much more largely unfolded or evolved, that the indwelling divinity of each such individual is enabled more easily to follow and to guide and to illumine the life, giving unusual ability both to know and to express their knowledge in representative action or activity. It is evident enough that these 'superior men' even as among themselves are not all of equal intellectual and spiritual ability and standing. They are actually differentiated as widely among themselves in inner power and in consequent ability as ordinary men are differentiated among their own particular groups.
The Superior Men whom the Chinese evidently referred to by this title are the various great World-Teachers, men whose names are actually household words, at least in most instances of civilized homes, and indeed in every home that is above the level of the mere savage's hut. They are in very truth the Fine Flowers of the human race, who have been referred to on other pages. In fact, they were so great that succeeding generations of men invented marvelous and in some cases even purely mythological tales concerning them, tales which sometimes were founded upon more or less of truth and fact that had been transmitted by tradition, whether verbal or imbodied in writing, but which tales often were the mere products of pious and reverent phantasy. In a few cases they were given a divine birth, a divine origin, and 'miracles,' so called, were supposed to have attended their various actions during their respective lives on earth; and it happened in some cases that after their death they were worshiped by the unthinking as having been incarnate gods -- which indeed they were in more senses than one, but assuredly not in the literal sense that reverence unguided by wisdom, and piety unilluminated by knowledge, have supposed.
Legends of many kinds have clustered about the lives of these Great Men, sometimes stating that celestial spirits or angels or the inferior gods (the legends varying according to the race in which these Great Ones appeared) announced in marvel and wonder either their conception or their birth on Earth; or that swans sang a dulcet melody proclaiming the advent of the divine being; all Nature was occasionally said to have trembled in joy at their coming, while the Great Mother of Men herself, the mighty Earth, moved with the intensity of her feeling in the form of earth-quakes. During their life they were sometimes said to have been tempted by evil powers, and to have conquered these temptations; but in all cases they passed their existence on earth in works of lofty benevolence and in labors of compassion, teaching to their fellow-men a sublime doctrine, and in anticipation of their own passing to inner worlds, training disciples to succeed them in spreading abroad the glad tidings given anew to the world.
Legends also tell us sometimes how they 'raised the dead,' reformed criminals, healed the sick, comforted the afflicted and heartbroken, and stayed the hand of vengeance and cruelty; and finally how they passed out of this life in different 'miraculous' ways. Such legends also tell us in some cases that at the respective deaths of these Great Men Nature again travailed: perhaps it was the sun which was shorn of its light, so that darkness fell upon all the earth, or there was a mighty earthquake, or the sheeted dead walked the streets.
Indeed, so many have been the various phenomena of wonderment that have been ascribed in certain cases to the passing of these Great Ones, that it would take pages to describe the various types of marvel that piety and simple credulity invented.
The thoughtful and reverent mind has no need of these legends, however interesting and suggestive they may be from the historical and legendary standpoints, in order to understand the spiritual and intellectual greatness of the Wonder-men in whose honor credulous piety gave birth to 'miracles.' Indeed, to the spiritually reverent mind such ideas are more often than not highly detrimental, because of their distorting of fact, and because they distract the thought away from the real facts and essential truths belonging to the life and to the teachings of these Great Ones. Still, it is but just and only fair to observe in passing, and making all intellectual reservations that may be necessary, that probably most of if not all these legendary tales and various mythoi have at least some basis of misunderstood, and therefore distorted, natural fact in them: some misapprehended or half-forgotten traditional memory of incidents which were warped by later minds out of accurate semblance to the reality.
But apart from this, there is one real value which these legends have, taking into account the immense impress made on the minds of succeeding generations of men by these Great Ones. This value lies in the witness or testimony that the mythoi or legends bear to the lofty spiritual and intellectual as well as psychical character and stature of the Great Men who have lived. This it is which it is desirable here to bring sharply to the reader's attention, brushing aside, once for all, all the glittering fabric of imagery and inventive fancy that simple faith unillumined by spiritual knowledge has woven around the traditional memory of these sublime and beautiful Characters.
From the immediately preceding paragraphs, the reader should at no time understand that any brief is here held for the reality of 'miracles' nor that the various legendary myths or mythical legends that have clustered about the characters and lives of these great Sages and Seers of ancient times are to be understood as historic albeit traditional events. There are no 'miracles,' nor have there ever been any, if by this word is meant the working of marvels contrary to natural law, or again by means of the temporary suspension of any of the laws of the Universe. To the truly scientific and religious student of the Esoteric Philosophy, such supposition would be thoroughly unphilosophical, unnatural, and therefore unscientific, as well as highly irreligious; and such Theosophist would doubtless aver that the belief in 'miracles' springs from ignorance of the inner constitution of the interlocking, interrelated, and interblending worlds of Spirit and Matter. On the other hand, and this statement cannot be made with too much emphasis, there are most certainly a great number of secrets and mysteries of Nature, and furthermore, there are as yet entirely unknown forces of Nature: forces and mysteries which nevertheless were known in past ages to the Great Brotherhood, and are with equally relative fulness known by the same Brotherhood of Perfected Men, to whom the various titles of Mahatmans, Masters, etc., have been given since the foundation of the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875. It is due to the great knowledge that these men have of the secret forces and powers and substances of Universal Nature that they can perform, aye at will, what to the ordinary men are wondrous marvels; but they very rarely if ever do so.
The spirit of man can work wonders on physical matter because the spirit of man is identic and therefore at one with the Spiritual Universe; and because of this fact, man's illuminated and trained will can work upon Nature both inwardly and outwardly and move it to action in chosen and determined directions. Even ordinary men work wonders, and do so daily, and would realize it clearly, were they only to pause a moment in the hurly-burly life that they live and to reflect upon some of their simplest acts. What a wonderful thing it is when a man says and wills to his arm: Up! -- Down! and the arm servilely rises and falls in strict obedience to the mandates of the willing intelligence. Cut the arm off, and it cannot move; but the man by his will, directed by his intelligence, can so use and direct the nerve-force of his body that he can cause this so-called lump of dead matter, his arm, to rise and to fall at will. Pause a moment in thought over so simple and everyday an act as this! The skilled workman can do wonders with his obedient fingers. The musician will perform a beautiful symphony with his flying fingers, and cast a vast audience under the spell of his musical power. Consider the making of a noble work of literature: a man sits at his table with pen and ink, or in our modern days he may use a typewriter. He composes a literary work which it is possible may move a portion of the world of thinking men, which may cause men perhaps to separate themselves into active and aggressive parties imbodying certain human ideas, which latter may even bring about war, or may bring about the blessings of peace. This is a true marvel, yet it among similar acts is so common and familiar to us that we do not pause to realize what a marvel it is.
Consider the savage. Bring him into one of our great Western cities: New York, London, Berlin, The Hague, Rome, Stockholm -- anywhere. Call his attention to some of the many things that take place around him. Go to the wall of your room and push a button. Presto, the apartment is flooded with a clear light! Talk into the microphone and your voice is instantaneously heard at a distance of hundreds or thousands of miles. Here we have a genuine marvel. The untutored savage, whatever he may say, doubtless is so moved by wonderment that in the recesses of his mind he thinks: "Verily, some of these white men are gods, for they work miracles." But there is no miracle at all here. It is all the intelligent use of the forces and substances of the Universe by intelligently inquisitive men who have found out how to do it; and, on a much larger and loftier plane, this is precisely what Jesus called the Christ did, what Gautama the Buddha, and many others did, to whom marvels are ascribed.
Take the case of Apollonius of Tyana, who, according to the testimony of multitudes of his day, worked marvels likewise; apparently raising the dead, appearing before the court of the Emperor in Rome, and the same afternoon appearing at Puteoli, Italy, a three days' journey from Rome. This last marvel was simply the projection in bodily form of the human mayavi-rupa, a thought-form temporarily created by the Adept.(403)
In all countries of the world wherein the existence of the great Sages has been believed in, in past times or in more recent centuries, there have been popular rumors or tales to the effect that the Mahatman or Sage can extend his portion of earth-life to a period far longer than that of average humanity. But this again is no 'miracle.' It is simply the practical application of a far larger knowledge of the laws of Nature than that which is possessed by average mankind. It is this larger knowledge of natural fact which, combined with wisdom applied in living, enables the Sage to extend far beyond the average the term of his earth-life, and to do so at will; but one may really question whether the majority of these Great Men ever care to live in the same body for an unusual term of years. Remembering that they can, likewise at will, enter into a new and young human vehicle when such seems appropriate and will forward the work they have in hand, there would seem little reason why they would prefer to remain in a single physical body which has become burdened with years and possibly somewhat enfeebled, however good its health may be.
There does indeed come a time in the evolution of a Superior Man, as described above, wherein he reaches such a point of spiritual and moral strength and active will-power, including an enlightened and comprehensive understanding -- and of universal sympathy also -- that he becomes not indeed superior to death (which is inevitable sooner or later to all composite beings and things), but becomes able to control to some extent the forces of Nature pretty much as he pleases; so that, among other things, he can, within certain defined limits, stave off the time of physical dissolution, thus attaining twice or possibly thrice the normal length of life in one physical human body that the ordinary man can attain.
Instances of physical longevity that have been attained by certain characters, which have been often cited, are sufficient evidence that there is nothing 'against' Nature's laws in these matters, and that provided one has sufficient knowledge, the life-term of any one physical body can be greatly lengthened.
Yet it matters very little indeed to a Mahatman what the mere age of his body is, for the reason that the Mahatman or Sage in the full exercise of his powers -- that is, in and through his body as a physical instrument of his spiritual will -- is really working in the self-conscious 'knot' or focus of his stream of consciousness through a mayavi-body, a mayavi-vehicle, which is continuously and instantly and always responsive to the mandates or commands of his spirit. By the term 'mayavi-body' or 'illusory-body,' it is certainly not meant that the body does not exist; it does exist. Reference is here made not to the mayavi-rupa, technically speaking, but to the complete subordination of the physical vehicle to the self-conscious focus of the inner constitution, so that the physical body itself, while having all the appearance and substances and attributes or qualities of ordinary physical bodies, nevertheless is a physical body of an unusual type, because of the unusual spiritual and psychic currents flowing through it, permeating it, and thus acting on the atoms and molecules of which it is composed. This makes even the physical body of the Mahatman, though presenting all the appearance of a finely formed and extremely healthy physical vehicle, to be yet something different from the ordinary, and thus such a physical body is not what it 'appears' to be, and hence is called in strict accuracy and in a certain sense a 'mayavi' or illusory body. The matter is not altogether easy to describe in a published work, but probably sufficient has been said to enable the intelligent reader to grasp the substantial significance of the statement made.
Furthermore, while the body of such a Great Man is a physical body, a body of flesh, yet in the ordinary course of human life, every normal physical body born can live only so long as its own source or fountain of inherent prana -- or of vitality -- is unexhausted, and thus fills the body with vital energy, and this is very rarely as much as one hundred years. The Mahatmans or Masters, however, if they wish to do so, can keep the 'same' body by certain occult methods for a life-term of more than a hundred years; probably as much as two or possibly even for three hundred years, more or less. However, as already briefly stated, this ability to keep a physical body alive and in good health beyond what would have been its normal span had it been the body of an ordinary human being, is, relatively speaking, a very small thing, and it is likewise highly probable that very few of the Masters care to do it. The reasons are obvious enough, among which is the fact that they do not like the expenditure of psycho-vital force flowing from the inner nature that is required to keep an old or a very old body fit and in good condition. They have the far greater and higher power of leaving at will one worn-out body, and of entering another physical vehicle, fresh and strong from Nature's hands, requiring incomparably less expenditure of psycho-spiritual energy to keep it well and fit; and thus by assuming body after body they carry on with scarcely a break in individual consciousness the Sublime Work to which their lives are wholly consecrated. (404)
It is of course obvious that these Great Teachers, despite their being more advanced in evolutionary stature and status than the ordinary run of men, are just as much subject to the laws that govern Universal Nature as is the humblest being or animate thing that is; except that their vast and comprehensive knowledge of Nature and of her laws and processes and secret mysteries, and their relatively perfect self-identity with those laws of Nature, give to these Great Men powers and faculties undreamed of by the average human being. Whatsoever knowledge of the laws of Universal Being they possess, they owe to the simple and easily understood fact that such knowledge and wisdom spring up wholly naturally within them, and this from a number of causes: first, from the vast experience gained and stored in the mystic volume of memory of their past lives; and second, their wisdom and knowledge are also due to the fact that they possess the means and the power not only to aid the development of wisdom and knowledge in themselves by intimate association with the other members of their Great Brotherhood, their fellow Great Ones, but also to the active and stimulating work in which they are engaged in assisting the growth of wisdom and knowledge in such individuals of the human race as they find to be ready for it, i. e., fit and worthy recipients of such aid from them. Herein lies a wonderful truth: that one of the quickest methods of achieving inner growth in faculty and power is by using what one already has of inner faculty and power in aiding others to grow, to unfold. This obviously is because of the exercise and consequent strengthening of such attributes and faculties and powers as one already possesses. But above and beyond all other causes is the fact that they are enabled to come into individual unity with those finest and most powerful forces in Universal Nature which actually control, because guiding, the working of the Cosmos. What are these Forces? They are, in their aggregate, speaking here not concretely but abstractly, pure consciousness; for consciousness is the highest manifestation of cosmic energy. It is a spiritual force so far as man is concerned. In fact, throughout Nature, and in all her departments both high and low as well as intermediate, the forces of Nature wherever found are forms of the working of consciousnesses and wills, and therefore ultimately are derivatives from the hierarchies of divine beings from whose substance the manifested universe flows forth.
There are indeed no 'miracles' possible in Nature, outside of anything else simply because there is no divine or spiritual entity which is able to set aside the structural and energic forces or powers of Boundless Kosmic Nature. However high a divinity may be, there is always infinitude around such divinity, in comparison with which such divinity or super-divinity is as insignificant, spacially and energically speaking, as is a mathematical point in boundless space -- and just as important and needed in boundless space as every mathematical point in space is.
The spirit of man in the last analysis is in itself a divine being, because a Spiritual Monad; and the great Sage, using the powers within him flowing from this spirit, can act upon the environing 'laws' of Nature to produce at the Sage's will what the average man would call wondrous phenomena. The Adept knows well the sources whence spring into our physical universe -- catapulting into it sometimes, as it were -- those vast exudations or emanations of cosmic energy which produce the marvels which sometimes occur, and which marvels often have blinded men to the real explanation of such phenomenal occurrences. When through the instrumentation of one of these Masters of life and compassionate wisdom, some marvel has been worked for a lofty end, or some expression of their power over physical Nature is shown, these phenomena have been called by the pious but ignorant by the name of 'miracles.'
Augustine of the Christians describes a 'miracle' as being something "contra naturam quae nobis est nota": against Nature as Nature is known to us; but Thomas Aquinas, one of the great theologians of the Latin Church, goes to the limit of orthodox Christian statement in his declaration that miracles are occurrences "praeter naturam," beyond Nature; and "supra et contra naturam," above and against Nature. These latter were the ideas which have prevailed almost universally in Christendom ever since the second or third centuries of the Christian Era, and were 'orthodox' beliefs of the most eminent Christian divines as well as of the Christian laity for the same centuries; but the ideas of Christian theologians, who still hold more or less and with individual differences of opinion to the miracle-working theory, have returned in recent times more or less to the views held by the earlier Christian writers on these matters who believed with Augustine.(405)
An early Christian Church-Father, Chrysostom, taught that "miracles are fit for vulgar minds only, which are lazy; men of good sense have no occasion for them; and they often carry untoward suspicions along with them."
Finally, a very interesting and quite racially typical condemnation of the whole miracle-business is to be found in Jewish literature. In the Talmud occurs an interesting story about miracle-working which though a bit long for these pages is worth quoting because of its intrinsic worth as showing the pure futility of miracle-mongering.
On that day, Rabbi Eli`ezer ben Orcanaz answered all the many questions put to him; but as his arguments were found to be inferior to his pretensions, the doctors of the Law who were present refused to admit his answers and condemned his conclusions, R. Eli`ezer then said to them: "My teaching is true; and this carob-tree here will show you how true my conclusions are." Obeying the command of R. Eli`ezer, the carob-tree arose out of the ground, and planted itself a hundred cubits away. But the Rabbis shook their heads, and said: "The carob-tree proves nothing at all." "What!" said R. Eli`ezer, "you resist so persuasive a testimony to my power? Then let this rivulet flow backwards, and thus attest the truth of my doctrine." Immediately the rivulet, obeying R. Eli`ezer's command, flowed backwards towards its spring. But the Rabbis continued to shake their heads, and said: "The rivulet proves nothing at all." "What," said R. Eli`ezer, "you fail to understand the power that I use, and yet you disbelieve the doctrine that I teach!" The Rabbis again shook their beads, and observed: "The Rabbis must understand before they believe." "Will you believe what I say," R. Eli`ezer then said, "if the walls of this house of study fall down at my order?" Then the walls of the building, obeying him, began to fall, when Rabbi Joshua' exclaimed: "By what right do these walls interfere in our discussion?" The walls then stopped falling, in honor of Rabbi Joshua', yet did not recover their upright position in honor of Rabbi Eli`ezer. (406)
The Talmud sarcastically observes that they are still leaning.
Then R. Eli`ezer, in a passion of anger, cried out: "Now in order to confound you, since you compel me to do this, let a voice out of heaven be heard!" At once the Bath-Qol, the voice from heaven, was heard high in the air, saying: "Although ye be so numerous, what are ye compared with R. Eli`ezer? What are your opinions all together worth, compared with his? When he has once spoken, his opinion ought to be accepted." Thereupon Rabbi Joshua` rose and said: "It is written: 'The Law is not in heaven' (Deut. xxx, 12); 'it is in thy mouth and in thy heart' (Deut. v, 16). It is likewise in your reason, for it is written: 'I have left you freedom to select between life and death and good and evil' (Deut. v, 15 and 9) and this is all in your conscience; for if ye love the Lord and obey his voice, that is the voice by which he speaks within you, ye will find happiness and truth. Why, then, does R. Eli`ezer bring into the argument a carob-tree, a rivulet, a wall, and a voice, to compose such differences and settle such questions? Further, what is the inevitable conclusion to draw from their actions, except that those who have studied the laws of Nature have mistaken the full reach of Nature's actions, which only means that henceforth we must admit that in certain given circumstances a carob-tree can uproot itself and transfer itself a hundred cubits away; that under certain conditions a rivulet can flow backwards towards its source; that in certain circumstances walls obey commands as the iron does the lodestone; and that in certain circumstances voices from heaven teach doctrines? Hence, what possible connexion is there between the facts of thusly observed natural history on the one hand, and the teachings of Rabbi Eli`ezer? What connexion, I say, is there between the roots of a carob-tree, a rivulet, stones of walls, voices from the air on the one hand, and logic on the other hand? Doubtless these marvels are extraordinary and have filled us with amazement; but to wonder at things is not answering questions; and what we require is true arguments, not mere phenomena. Therefore when Rabbi Eli`ezer shall have proved to us that carob-trees, rivulets, walls, and unknown voices, give to us arguments, by their strange movements, equaling in value that sublime reason which the Eternal puts within us in order to serve as our Guide in the exercise of our free will: then, and then alone, will we use such testimonies, and shall estimate the number of them and the value of their assertions. . . .
"No, Rabbi Eli`ezer, it is vain work for you to address your proof in such matters to our physical senses; our senses may deceive us; and if they affirm what our reason denies, and what our conscience repudiates, we ought to reject the evidence of our deceptive and weak senses, and listen alone to reason illumined by our conscience."(407)
It is a most wonderfully consoling thought and one which is filled with high inspiration to know the living reality on earth of these Great Teachers. It is a consoling thought to realize that the world is under the guidance and in a certain sense protected by the strong hands of men who in their higher grades are really god-men or demi-gods on earth, and who in their lower grades, or rather in the lower grades of the Great Brotherhood, are men but a few stages above the average run of humanity itself. The inspiration in it too, is very great, because the teaching shows so clearly that what these Great Ones are now, every son of man himself may become, if he live the life and develop the inner attributes and faculties and powers of his nature by such living. The averagely intuitive man welcomes the teaching of the existence of these great men and drinks in the fact that the teaching imbodies, as does the thirsty and parched earth drink in the soft summer rain; and the intellectual revolution that ensues is not one which in any wise upsets the moral balance or the intellectual stability of the average man, but on the contrary, strengthens both very greatly. It is such a relief to turn to this blessed truth from the guess-work and uninspired speculations of either science or religion, weakened as both these latter are in our modern days by indecision, doubt, and uncertainty; and among the greatest things that the teaching brings to men's hearts is the keen and living realization that humanity is no mere by-product of forces acting fortuitously on earth, but is in very truth the nursling of a great spiritual hierarchy whose lower and lowest representatives on our globe are comprised in the Great Brotherhood of the Mahatmans.
There is, however, room for a few words of caution as to the manner in which the Great Ones are to be understood. They are not gods, nor Kosmic Spirits, nor disembodied spirits of men who have passed on, but are verily men even as all other men are, only far greater than other men are; born as all men are, and themselves the disciples or pupils of others still greater than they. They are not 'miracle workers' in any sense of the term, nor do they ever work, in the great or in the small, in any wise contrary to Nature's laws, for precisely because Nature is a vast intermingling structure of hierarchies of beings, therefore the Masters are not working contrary to Nature but absolutely hand in hand with her, and thus forwarding, from Nature's spiritual and intellectual aspects, the immense Cosmic Labor in which all these hierarchies of Light are themselves engaged. As H. P. Blavatsky so nobly says in her The Voice of the Silence:
Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.(408)
However much abstruse myth, mystical legend, reverent worship and pious fancy, may have inwrapped these Sages of the Great Brotherhood, and in the different ages, in the garments and variegated habiliments of capricious phantasy; however much their true and exact lineaments of being and character may by such garments be thus hid from our eager scrutiny; so that the average man in trying to obtain exact knowledge of them and to observe the truth about them, seems to be wandering in the mazes and in the enchanted realms often of fantastic romance and of faery, yet behind all the illusory appearances which such phantasy has constructed, may nevertheless be sensed their real and living presence; and the persevering and undiscouraged student may know them, at least to some extent, for what they really are -- Great Souls, in history often appearing as titanic spiritual and intellectual Figures: truly Masters of the respective ages in which they have made their different appearances in the past. But the main thing to be understood about these Great Men is not so much that which might attract the public eye or obtain the public ear, but their real attributes and qualities as being, when compared with the average man, those of really far progressed spiritual and intellectual human beings. They stand, as the saying goes, not merely head and shoulders above their fellows, but because of the evolved or unfolded nature of their inner being, they tower over the average man in some cases by a whole plane of consciousness, as much so as even the ordinary human genius, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Dante, a Homer, a Galileo, a Bruno, a Newton, and all the other brilliant human array in the different walks of life, tower over the simple Australian Blackfellow. Yea, great as these ordinary human geniuses are, they are, both from the spiritual and intellectual standpoint, as far beneath the Mahatmans, as the Australian Blackfellow is beneath these human luminaries.
No student of human history, indeed no sane man, doubts the fact of the existence of at least some members of the Great Brotherhood, whatever he may think of the accretions of story and of legend that have almost hid the real nature and characteristics of these greatly Superior Men from our gaze. Such men as Gautama the Buddha, as Lao-Tse, as Jesus the Avatara, as Apollonius of Tyana, and others are known at least by name to everyone.(409) Now the Theosophist goes logically to the end of the fact of Nature as exemplified by the past existence of these greatly Superior Men, and points out that what has once been on earth not only can be again, but in all likelihood will be again, and, as our human race moves farther onwards towards the distant but splendid evolutionary goals of the future, such Figures must reappear more frequently than they have appeared in the past, such increasing frequency to come being due to the constant and unceasing evolutionary unfolding or enlargement in perfection of human attribute and faculty appearing in and through all manifested beings, and in the human race in particular.
Nor are the great Figures of the future always to be different from the great Figures of the past, because the same Figures reappear in incarnation on earth and do so at frequent intervals, and in addition the ranks of the Great Brotherhood are swelled in number as new recruits in the sublime array of human relative perfection take in due course of time the places awaiting them. Thus it is that the Great Brotherhood grows in number of its members as the disciples or chelas, of various ranks, of the Mahatmans evolve into the spiritual and intellectual stature of their present teachers.
A great natural truth is imbodied in this fact of disciples or chelas advancing from grade to grade, because what happens to one can happen to any man if he fulfil the conditions proper for its happening. There are no impassable limits existing which confine the evolutionary growth of souls, no barriers in Nature beyond which they cannot or indeed may not pass; but instead throughout Universal Nature there is constant growth of all beings in an ever-widening consciousness, and coincidently in an ever-deepening love for all that is.
The ideas of human perfectibility and of the constant unfolding of the soul of man and the unceasing growth of attribute and faculty and quality and power are in very fact nothing new, because the great thinkers and poets of the human race everywhere and in all ages have intuitively sensed these facts and taught them or sung them each in his own respective period. Some of these 'revealers' wrote and taught in philosophical guise; others of a religious and mystical bent imbodied their intuitions in religious form; while others again chose the medium of poetry for giving their thought to the world.
The lover of noble literature is familiar, or should be, with many or most of these revealings which the soaring spirit of intuitive men caught and imbodied in language; and one may say that all were more or less under the direct or indirect inspiration and guidance, in their work of 'revelation,' of one or other of the members of the Great Brotherhood of the Teachers. So true is this fact, at least when stated thus in a general sense, that the Theosophist by his studies has become keenly sensible that pearls of wisdom and gems of intellectual beauty may be found almost anywhere, for the Masters are no respecters of persons but seek out and encourage and foster not merely spiritual and intellectual genius as such, but more especially and particularly the budding spirituality of men wherever these rays of the Buddhic Splendor are discovered by the Masters to exist.
As an example one finds in the New England so-called Transcendentalist School some really great men in their own way, such as Emerson and even Thoreau -- these being examples of men who had many inklings of truth, as common expression might have it, but which inklings we may perhaps more truly call 'inspirations.' What does Emerson say as to the existence of men of surpassing spiritual and intellectual splendor in the world? In one of his beautiful poems he sings as follows:
From high to higher forces
The scale of power uprears,
The heroes on their horses,
The gods upon their spheres.(410)
In these few lines from Emerson there is no small deal of genuinely intuitive vision, for if we in thought divide our Kosmic Hierarchy, which in the present application of this phrase means our own Home-Universe, or the Galaxy, into two natural contrasting hierarchical extremes, we can point to these two extremes as being the material atom as we know it as the lower of the twain, on the one hand -- for the atom is an entity beginning its evolutionary progress upwards in this Hierarchy and learning in this particular scale of kosmic life -- and at the other extreme, we perceive the hierarchical Divinity: the Divine Hierarch of the Galaxy, in which thought we signify not merely, slightly to change Emerson's words, 'a god upon its sphere,' but that which includes all the gods of the Hierarchy, in Itself, as the sphere of the Galaxy includes all smaller lives that it contains in itself.
The peregrinating Monads, the evolving and revolving monadic pilgrims, pass from stage to stage, from solar system to solar system, from planet to planet, within the bounds and metes of any such particular Hierarchy, until they pass out of that particular Hierarchy upon graduation therefrom into a higher and more spiritual Hierarchy.
Sings Emerson, the intuitive and lofty-minded 'Sage of Concord,' again:
Roomy Eternity
Casts her schemes rarely,
And an aeon allows
For each quality and part
Of the multitudinous
And many-chambered heart.(411)
If one may be allowed to alter these lines a little, one would thus phrase the beautiful Emersonian thought that they contain:
Roomy Eternity
Casts her schemes rarely,
And an aeon allows
For each quality and role
Of the multitudinous
And many-chambered Soul.
For, indeed, the Spiritual Soul is, in one way by which we may vision it, a many-chambered thing, filled with all-variously haunting memories of an aeonic past, which memories are the recollections or reminiscences of lessons learned in lives it formerly had passed through, and which memories have been inbuilt into the fabric of its being by the spiritual alchemy of constructive and ever-evolving consciousness. The Spiritual Soul is indeed many-chambered in this sense; and how could it be otherwise in Nature's scheme? For every such Spiritual Soul, or to speak of it in more accurately technical phrase, every such Spiritual Monad is an embryo-divinity, destined as time flows on, to blossom forth into a divine Hierarchy on its own account, comprising within its vast cosmic boundaries hosts of lives and stars and globes interlinked in hierarchies innumerable, each one of which may be said in very truth to be an imbodied expression of one or another of the all-various haunting memories which fill, and echo in, the many-chambered recesses of its Consciousness Divine.
It is time, space, and interblending consciousnesses, which produce beings and things that are; and an Aeon, the Kosmic Aeon, allows for many things to fall out of its generative bosom -- the "heart," as Emerson truly says, using the ancient and esoteric and also Oriental word, 'heart' signifying the invisible Center or Core of things Kosmic. Verily the Spiritual Monad is indeed many-chambered, full of the multi-myriad haunting memories of far bygone stages of its former lives or existences; and this applies to all Monads, in all Hierarchies, and therefore includes likewise us humans and the stages of consciousness through which we, in our small respective spheres, have been and lived, and learned to be the receptacles or depositories of high-minded thought for the future, when we shall have evolved into -- yea, each one of us -- such a Kosmic Hierarch, the summit or apex of its own enclosing Hierarchy. Even ordinary man, as he now exists, exemplifies in the small this universal rule or law of Nature: that the greater comprises the smaller; for man himself is a hierarchy of lives, and in his own relatively minute sphere of consciousness and action -- minutely small when compared with a Divine Hierarchy -- man is a faithful copy of the Great, and the Overlord and Living Root of the multitudinous lives which compose his complex constitution.
One might dwell in silent and introspective thought for many hours upon the ideas just set forth, and do so with immense profit to his inner nature. In doing so he would before long come to the keen intellectual realization of the fact that the Great Brotherhood of the Masters or Mahatmans is not an arbitrary institution, i. e., not an artificial arrangement, which the Masters themselves have in different ages brought about in the world, but that this Brotherhood is but one link in an immense Cosmic Chain of Beings which the ancient Greeks called the Golden Chain of Hermes, or the Hermetic Chain, and which in the more mystical and recondite language of the Esoteric Philosophy is called the Hierarchy of Light or of Compassion. In other words, the Masters are links -- or their Great Brotherhood forms a link -- in this Golden Chain of Hermes, and therefore from this reflexion we see that their position and work in the world is a natural part of the cosmic structure.
Just as there are beneath man ranges of living things, or families of beings, existing on different levels of the Ladder of Life, so there are above mankind other Beings greater and far greater than men, who occupy their proper positions on levels of evolutionary development more advanced than that where man now stands. Let us consider for a few moments certain reflexions which the thoughts that previous paragraphs contain must have brought to mind.
In considering a universal or panoramic view of the immense hierarchical structure of the world of beings which surrounds us, any thoughtful student must be struck with one highly interesting fact, which is, that if we place Man as the highest known entity on earth, we find that as our survey leaves him and travels backwards along the descending scale of the evolutionary Ladder of Life, our attention is drawn from the more individual and particular towards unities or composites.
It has been said, and probably said with perfect truth, that no two leaves in a forest are exactly the same; for it is clear enough that if they were, they would not be two leaves but the same leaf. With how much greater force can this reflexion be made with respect to so highly individualized a being as Man! For despite the formal individualities even of the leaves in a forest of trees, they are so closely similar that they seem to be as a single entity when compared with the marvelous development of what is popularly called individuality as found in the human family.
There seems to be little doubt that the whole purpose of Nature, or in other words the entire running of evolutional unfolding, is the bringing forth into manifestation of characteristics lying latent in the invisible, as well as in the visible, fabric of living beings. In other words, it is the unquestioned 'tendency' in the living things of Nature to advance towards individuality and away from the perfect communism of the lowest forms of animal life, and from the simple unism of the rocks. Yet this is looking at the subject of our present study on its merely material side. How our ideas expand in this same direction when we study the psychical, mental, and spiritual attributes and functions of the human species! Here, among many other things not observable in the lowest forms of existence, and only slightly observable in the intermediate, we observe the 'struggle' to reconcile duty with desire, right with might, knowledge and power with abstract and concrete justice.(412)
Collating the ideas set forth in the few paragraphs immediately preceding, and deducing therefrom one or two of the salient features of the picture before the mind's eye, most important of these salient characteristics is the growth or rather progressive unfolding of individuality or individualized beings, as we ascend rung after rung or degree after degree of the Ladder of Life, that is perceptible even here on our Mother Earth. The relatively perfect unism of the rocks slowly passes into the growth of individuality which becomes faintly perceptible in the communism of the superior Kingdom of the plants; and as we leave the plant-world and follow the evolutionary picture as it ascends into the Beast-Kingdom, we notice the tendency towards individualization increasing steadily and even rapidly. When we reach the Human Kingdom which in the Esoteric Philosophy is considered a separate and entirely distinct kingdom from that of the Beasts, because of the typically human attributes which mark man so sharply off from the beasts, such as the moral sense, intellectual power, spirituality in its own ranges, etc., etc., we find that the rise towards individualization has resulted in the appearance of characteristically distinct Individuals, human beings, who, because of the spiritual and moral and intellectual faculties and attributes inherent in them, are at once distinct units in themselves, and yet equally distinct and self-conscious units in a social structure, which social structure is the more keenly and profoundly recognised in proportion as the human individual is the more developed.
Another salient point to note, of extreme interest, is that during this gradual rise on the evolutionary Ladder of Life, nothing of value is lost in the higher Kingdoms that the lower Kingdoms contained, but that whatever is of value in the lower Kingdoms is transmuted into greater values in the Human Kingdom plus the possession by human beings of new and extraordinarily valuable and powerful attributes and qualities and faculties which were and are certainly latent in the lower Kingdoms, but not yet manifest.
The point of these reflexions in the present connexions of thought, is that they persuade our logical sense very strongly and lead our intellect to the conclusion that higher than man there must be other beings as much greater than man is as he is greater than the black beetle, as the great English biologist, Huxley, once wrote; and, as the esotericist would say, between these higher beings, who must necessarily be of lofty spiritual status, and men, there must be intermediate or connecting links. It is the Great Men of whom the present chapter treats, who are these connecting links in the lower ranges of the intermediate hierarchy between man and the spiritual beings just mentioned. They are in very fact the Fine Flowers of the human race itself, and are in consequence no fortuitous or chance product of Nature in the sense of being 'sports' of the human evolutionary stream; but really are the forerunners of the bulk of the human race in the evolutionary pilgrimage that we are all undertaking.
The evolutionary 'tendency' in man at his present stage of development -- a tendency which will grow stronger and more perceptible with the passing of each century -- is to combine, to unite, with his fellows, which tendency when looked at from the ethical standpoint makes him to see and to find in other men parts of himself, as it were. All the foundations of genuine morals repose on this 'tendency' in human beings, and this 'tendency' itself is an expression in the human constitution of the Law of Harmony inherent in Universal Nature, and bringing about the marvelous orderliness, regularity, symmetry, and beauty which are observable everywhere. We instinctively know a man from his thoughts and acts, in other words, from the expressions of what is called his character, from the working in him of those forces and attributes and qualities which predominate over others. In all human beings certain psycho-mental energies are dominant over others, which latter are therefore recessive; and it is these dominant forces or energies of a psycho-mental type, which in our present stage of evolution show forth themselves most clearly in man's character. Indeed, when we say 'good' man, we mean one conscious of his duties to other beings, one who carries those duties out regardless of any temporary loss to himself, if such take place. This statement is, of course, an indirect declaration of the fundamental or spiritual unity of all beings.
The differences between the beings occupying the various grades or steps on the evolutionary Ladder of Life are in all cases both highly instructive to the thoughtful mind and extremely interesting, as showing among other things the steady yet slow emergence into functional activity in individuals of ever nobler qualities and attributes, which become dormant in increasing degrees as we descend the Ladder of Life: or, inversely, which become more and more dominant and steadily increasing in power as we ascend the Ladder of Life. What man can fail to see the differences which exist between a man and a tiger for instance, or between a man and a fish? Or between these and the un-self-conscious existence of the stone? Yet probably today no man would be rash enough, probably none so blind, as to say that these beings and entities are as individuals separate in origin, separate in natural being, separate in destiny. We have the contrary of this supposition proved to us on every hand and by every glance of our eyes -- by every object that our eyes rest upon; for all-environing Nature in the multi-myriad productions she brings forth proclaims the vast and coherent aggregate of beings and things of Nature as indissolubly interrelated and interlocked both in activity and in destiny, as well as in origin.
Yet comparing stage with stage, rung with rung, of the Ladder of Life, how enormous are the differences that separate the highest from the lowest, the Man from the Stone, or the Man from the Fish, or from the Tiger. We see everywhere stirring around us: in the lives, in the emotions, in the instincts and impulses, of the humbler beings and things that surround us, the same forces that stir in our own breasts and motivate us to action: love, affection, fear, passion, sympathy, remembrance, hatreds, and many more such. Still, so far as our Mother-Earth is concerned, Man, because of his evolutionary status, stands supreme over all that are beneath. He has attained a post whence he surveys the beings below him with fascinated interest; and he turns his eyes in the other direction, and he is subtilly conscious that farther along the way and ahead of him, rung after rung of the ascending scale, there must be beings far greater than he, beings in comparison with whom he is as are the animals now to him: beings who in ages, aeons, long since past, in their turn were where he now stands.
Man's logical sense obliges him to accept this graduated scale of beings in the endless chain of unfolding development; for he is utterly incapable of pointing to a beginning or of finding an end. The breaks that from time to time he thinks he discerns are obviously mere fantasies of the imagination -- breaks which are from time to time filled by the progress of research and activity.
The reader's attention is pointedly called to the fact that unless we assert, which no man has the right to assert, that man, or the human species, is the highest evolutional product that Nature through all past eternity could produce, we are obliged to admit that such beings superior to men exist, for inflexible logic compels us to admit their existence whether we know of them or not; and that if such beings ahead of and superior to man do not exist, then the graduated scale of beings beneath man, showing a constant rise as evidencing Nature's efforts upwards, would become an anomaly demanding an explanation -- and that, no one yet has succeeded in giving.
Following then the teachings of the great Sages and Seers of all past ages, and collating and summing their statements on the subject, we are enabled for purposes of convenient illustration, tentatively to divide this graduated scale into seven (or even into ten) stages or degrees of evolutionary unfolding, and an attempt is hereunder made to do so after the following fashion:
a. First Elemental Kingdom:
Ethereal and highly fluidic in type or character, with relatively unmanifest and unindividualized monadic corpuscles, or rather units, possessing a common vital organic existence.
b. Second Elemental Kingdom:
Separation into droplets, so to say, of quasi-particularized entities which are nevertheless still held together in union by an identic vital stream or flow.
c. Third Elemental Kingdom:
Beings yet more highly particularized, although still bound together by, and functioning in, a common vital organic existence.
1. The Mineral Kingdom:
Quasi-individualized corpuscles, or particulars, functioning in organic unity. Simple unism as a body.
2. The Vegetable Kingdom:
Simple communism. The pressure towards individualization increases.
3. The Beast Kingdom:
Dawning of distinct individualized units.
4. The Human Kingdom:
Efflorescence of individuality. Dawning of a common or general consciousness.
5. The Great Ones:
Full-grown individuality. Self-conscious realization of a unifying general underlying consciousness.
6. Quasi-Divine Beings or Lower Gods:
Perfected individuality merging, without diminution, into the general underlying consciousness. Dawning of cosmical consciousness.
7. Gods:
Emergence into conscious realization of cosmical consciousness, without loss of a perfected impersonal individuality.
The table thus given is of course purely tentative; and any attempt accurately to define or describe the various and varied states of consciousness, contained in the second column, is attended with extraordinary difficulties -- not the least of which is the finding of properly descriptive words. But the table is nevertheless extremely suggestive and is accurate as far as it goes, although of course lacking completeness in the sense of being intentionally condensed and succinct. Yet, as said, it is highly suggestive, and will repay careful study.
The mind pauses in wonder and awe in contemplation of the truly sublime reaches of conscious, quasi-conscious, and self-conscious beings and entities thus spread out before the inner eye when contemplating the hierarchy as tabulated above. It would indeed be an inexplicable anomaly in Nature if Man, obviously as yet so imperfectly evolved, were the highest possible stage of consciousness that the Universal Life of the Kosmos has as yet through all reaches of past eternity been able to produce. As we ponder over the spectacle that our mind thus spreads before us, we are driven to realize that the main and perhaps essential difference between Man and the beings beneath him in evolutionary development, lies in Man's self-conscious Mind. Here also, in this self-conscious mind, we have the particular link binding us to the higher realms and worlds of Cosmic Being, and the bridge over which consciousness passes to and fro between Matter and Spirit, the former the nether pole of the latter; and as we study the lower beings, we are driven also to realize the fact that they too have minds of their own kind, belonging to their own respective classes: centers of consciousness in other words, yet not of reflective or indirect consciousness -- consciousness bending back or folding back upon itself, such as man has.
Here then in Man it is that we perceive the union of another and higher plane of being with this plane of being. The intellectual and material have, so to say, effected a union: or perhaps it would be better to say that in man's case the sensitive and psychological on the one hand, and the intellectual-spiritual on the other hand, have united; and the product of this union is -- seven-principled Man. Heaven and earth have kissed, as the quaint saying of the ancients had it, and their offspring is the human race.
No one can be blind enough not to see the enormous, indeed apparently almost impassable, gulf which separates the self-conscious mind of man from the directly sensitive mind of the lower creatures. Man may truly be called a god inshrined within a tabernacle -- the latter, the psycho-material framework of his lower and lowest nature. It is the destiny of the god within him in the course of future ages to raise up to its own level of power, beauty, wisdom, and strength, the growing and falling, yet ever aspiring, center which Man usually calls 'myself.'
A study of the graduated scale given on the preceding page, teaches us the great and wonderful truth that as man grows through evolutional unfolding towards a fuller union with his own inner god, with the individual god within himself, i. e., his spiritual essence: as his faculties develop and his consciousness expands under the life-giving and warming rays of this inner spiritual sun, which is the above-mentioned god within us: pari passu he grows into greatness of understanding, and attains keen realization of an accompanying greatness of sympathy and fellow-feeling with all that is. He realizes with ever-enlarging comprehension his essential oneness with the Universal Nature from which he sprang in the beginning of this period of Cosmic Evolution, and towards reunion with which he is now journeying back in both space and time.
The noblest lesson that we can draw from all this is the lesson of fundamental unity, of inseparable interests, and of unbreakable natural bonds uniting us with all that is and with everything that is. None of us can advance or pursue our pilgrimage alone -- nay, not one of us. We take along with us, bound into all the parts of our constitution, innumerable hosts of lower and inferior beings, beings and entities evolutionally inferior to us; for we humans are all, collectively and individually, aggregates of inferiors, just precisely as the human race is united by inseparable and unbreakable bonds with our Spiritual Cosmic Superiors. We must all go forwards together, and we have been doing so through all past time; and into all future time we shall be progressing unitedly as a vast cosmic River of Lives.
Thus it is that the Great Sages, the Mahatmans or Masters, form one stage or degree on the evolutionary scale or Ladder of Life, and just above or superior to us men of average evolutionary development. There are other still greater and more evolved beings on the Ladder of Life, who are very properly to be called the Teachers of these Great Sages or Seers themselves, and who are also Superior, or still more highly evolved, Men than the Great Sages themselves are. Higher even than these Superiors just spoken of there are yet others still more fully evolved, who may with propriety be called Human Gods; they are Nature's Controllers, Governors, of our own planet, Earth. Above and over these Human Gods just mentioned, there lives or rather is what is technically called in the Esoteric Philosophy the 'Silent Watcher' of our Globe, who thus is the spiritual Hierarch thereof.
This Wondrous Being, this Silent Watcher, belongs to the class of Spiritual Superiors who are called Dhyani-Buddhas. Interlinked in the vital being and consciousness of this Dhyani-Buddha, streaming forth from him in manifold radiation, are innumerable Rays. These children-rays streaming from the vital being and consciousness or essential heart of this Wondrous Being are human Egos, and this Wondrous Being himself is called in the Esoteric Philosophy the Ever-Living-Human-Banyan, because from himself he sends forth branches or tendrils of the spirit which reach down into the substantial fabric of the universe in which he lives, there to take root; and because proceeding from the life-consciousness of the Wondrous Being they themselves become children banyan-trees, growing up in their turn, and in due course of time through the cycling ages they achieve lofty spirituality, and then they also send forth new tendrils as Rays, which take root in the substantial fabric of the Universe, thus building up new trunks -- and thus the wonderful mystic Tree of Life grows through time and space.
In other words, the Ever-Living-Human-Banyan, or the Wondrous Being, is the hyparxis of the Hierarchy of Adepts of our Planetary Chain, which Hierarchy was first formed during this Fourth Round on our Globe Earth, shortly before the middle period of the Third Root-Race. This was the karmically proper and appropriate time for the appearance of this Hierarchy, because then infant humanity was beginning to become self-conscious, and through unfolding growth becoming ready for the receiving and the understanding of spiritual and intellectual Light.
And now a Mystery, and let him understand it who may -- and can: Every initiate reaching initiation and passing successfully through it is derivative from the heart-essence of the Wondrous Being, the Dhyani-Buddha of this Fourth Round. Initiations during the Fifth Round on any Globe of our Planetary Chain will have their causal being in the activities of the Fifth-Round Dhyani-Buddha; and those undergoing the trials and tests of the then initiatory cycle will be under the supervision and connected with the Dhyani-Buddha of the Fifth Round, exactly as the Dhyani-Buddha of the present Fourth Round holds the same relative place and performs the same relative functions for initiants in this Fourth Round. Similarly the Sixth and Seventh Rounds, in so far as initiations are concerned, will be connected in identic manner with the respective Dhyani-Buddhas of each.
It has been previously stated in the present work that there are in fact many such Wondrous Beings, many Silent Watchers, like a mystical Ladder of Light in rising scale of spiritual and intellectual grandeur. These Wondrous Beings themselves are children-banyans from a still Greater Banyan composed of Spiritual Beings, and this Greater Banyan is the invisible heart of the Solar System, the Divine Hyparxis of Father Sun. The Ever-Living Human Spiritual Banyan which descended in the Third Age from a "high region," as H. P. Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine,(413) is a grand Spiritual Being, who is the leader on Earth of the Hierarchy or Brotherhood of Adepts or Sages or Masters.(414)
It is obvious that the matter here hinted at is one that it is virtually impossible satisfactorily to elucidate in a published work, but it may be said that this Wondrous Being came to our plane of earth as a 'visitor,' living here in what to him was once the Underworld of his own High Plane; dwelling for a time on earth amongst Early Humanity, first as the greatest, the primordial, spiritual Teacher and Guide of the then human race; and from him and from his work and his enlightening presence, was originally formed the Brotherhood of the Mahatmans, over which Brotherhood he still presides, a Being, himself One, and yet in function and essence many. Verily a stumbling-block to the profane, and a luminous Mystery to the wise!
Chapter 32
FOOTNOTES:
401. In modern Theosophy these Great Men are called by a variety of names, such as Elder Brothers, Masters, Sages, and perhaps most frequently by the Sanskrit word, Mahatmans, signifying Great Selves, which, philosophically at least, adequately describes them. The term mahatman is a Sanskrit compound formed of maha, 'great,' and atman, 'self.' Of course the term mahatman is nothing new either in ancient Sanskrit literature nor even in present-day India; for modern Hindus not infrequently employ the term mahatman, or in its nominative form mahatma as a title of high respect; nor is the term limited by modern Hindus only to teachers of philosophical or religious doctrine, as is evidenced by the fact that it has been almost by popular acclaim conferred upon Mahatma Gandhi, to choose just one prominent instance as an illustration.
In ancient Sanskrit literature the term was quite frequently used in very much the same manner as a title of reverence or of profoundly respectful regard. (return to text)
402. "And ends with the Solar Gods," because in the text above, in order to avoid confusion, the "Spiritual Hierarchy" is rather arbitrarily limited to the solar system alone. Yet such limitation, as just stated, is deliberate and arbitrary, and is solely for the purpose of painting a word-picture. In truth, this Hierarchy is co-extensive with the Galactic Universe, and indeed, in a still loftier sense extends for ever beyond it; but in the Galaxy itself ramifications of this sublime divine-spiritual hierarchical structure reach out not only to every solar system of the billions which compose the Galaxy, but ramify into still smaller branchings in innumerable directions everywhere.
Nor should the extent of this truly kosmic Hierarchy be considered as limited in its almost innumerable ramifications to the material and physical universe, although it does extend to every inhabited stellar or planetary body in the physical universe; but incomparably the greater part of this inconceivably immense Hierarchy is in the inner worlds rising tier above tier in the hierarchical structure, so to speak, until finally the hierarchy merges itself into the invisible Intelligence of the Galactic Kosmic Hierarch; and of such Galactic Hierarchs there are virtually an infinity strewn over and in all the fields, visible and invisible, of the utter Boundless. What a sublime and indeed awe-inspiring fact! (return to text)
403. See the life of Apollonius of Tyana as written from authentic records and tradition by Flavius Philostratos in the beginning of the third century of the Christian Era. Apollonius himself was born, according to the best authorities, in the year 4 before the beginning of the Christian Era, and therefore was a contemporary of Jesus the Avatara, if we accept Christian chronology. There are many things in Philostratos' Life of Apollonius which correspond singularly and very curiously indeed to similar incidents related of Jesus called the Christ. (return to text)
404. The reference in the text to the assumption of physical body after physical body at the will of the Adept refers of course only to those cases in which for reasons of their own the Mahatmans choose this method of continued and uninterrupted individual existence on the earth-plane. There is another and a far greater method of continuing their individual existence as Workers in the lofty labors of compassion to which they devote their lives, and this is by remaining in the astral realms of the Earth as Nirmanakayas. A Nirmanakaya is one who is a full or complete man possessing all the portions of his constitution in unity and active form except the physical body and its vital force with the Linga-sarira. As a Nirmanakaya, the adept can live for age after age in the full plenitude of all his powers, and in intimate connexion and intercourse, if he so desires, with all the affairs of earth-life. Invisible and unknown, he and those with him in the same condition or state of being, live as unseen yet perpetually active spiritual and intellectual 'powers' in the affairs of the world, continually stimulating individuals who are ready or prepared to receive such spiritual and intellectual stimulation; they are, therefore, in the Nirmanakaya-condition members in that Guardian Wall which surrounds mankind from age to age, protecting it against cosmic dangers of which the average man knows nothing, nor of the existence of which has he any consciousness, yet which are very real indeed. They work likewise as the protectors and inspiritors of every noble cause or movement whose work in their judgment will inure to the common benefit of all. Every such movement has their support and aid if it prove worthy. (return to text)
405. Scientists and philosophical thinkers today, except of course the rapidly diminishing number of theologians, reject the possibility of 'miracles' as strongly as does the Theosophist and there is no small number among such men who hold to the conviction that Nature contains a vast field of as yet unexplained because unknown powers and attributes and qualities. Yet of course the individual opinions in these various modern groups differ among themselves.
Occasionally, the scientists and philosophical thinkers of a century or so ago held views which in certain respects approximated somewhat more closely to the Theosophical position. Such, as examples in point, were the Swiss biologist Bonnet, the Swiss physiologist and botanist Haller, the mathematician Euler, also of Swiss nationality, and the German professor and theologian Schmid. Such as these supposed "miracles to be already existent, or implanted, in Nature itself. These germs of miracles always exist alongside of other germs of actions of Nature in a sort of sheath, like secret springs in a mechanism, and spring into view when conditions are proper." This quaint manner of speaking, which shows clearly enough how greatly scientific and philosophical thinkers one or two hundred years ago were still under the influence of Christian theological thought, is not a manner of speaking which appeals to the Theosophist; but leaving the manner aside, one is conscious of the fact that there is a certain modicum of truth in the idea expressed. This idea seems to be that 'miracles' are merely the expressions of unknown forces or potencies or powers in Nature itself, and approximate closely to the views of mystics like Jerome Cardan and Paracelsus, who taught an invisible world, or series of invisible worlds, existing within the outer sphere: "Beside or rather behind the visible world is an invisible world, which breaks through into ours in particular spots" (Dorner's System of Christian Doctrine) when conditions are fit for such events to happen. (return to text)
406. 'Treatise Baba-Meziahh.' (return to text)
407. 'Treatise Baba-Meziahh.' (return to text)
408. Fragment I, p. 14 orig. ed. (return to text)
409. In Greece, likewise, there come to mind the names of five individuals called legendary. What does 'legendary' mean? Merely that these Great Men lived so far back in the past that we know but little about them, and that their personalities have been surrounded so thickly with a halo of romance and of reverential thought that the lineaments of their personalities have become more or less distorted through the mists of time. We know only that so great was their influence that even in the time of Plato, when their names even then were legendary, they had changed the entire religious and philosophical thought of the Greek world, and their teachings formed the basis of the most brilliant European civilization that has ever existed in historic times. Their names were Olen, Orpheus, Musaeus, Pamphos, and Philammon -- a glorious constellation, indeed! (return to text)
410. 'Fragments on Nature and Life.' (return to text)
411. Ibid. (return to text)
412. In employing the word 'struggle' in the text, the author is using the ordinary phraseology of modern quasi-philosophical biology in order to carry over to the reader more easily the undercurrent of thought unfolding in the present chapter. In point of fact, this biological 'struggle' is more or less purely imaginary so far as Nature's intrinsic laws and processes are concerned; for the entire field of this 'struggle' in the case of human beings is rather the unceasing human effort to grow in unfoldment, which effort, partly because of the complexity of the human constitution, makes the human being seem to be and indeed often actually to be, at war with himself. Thus the effort is in the growing or unfolding individual himself, and only relatively and in small degree, if indeed at all, does any such 'struggle' along these lines of breaking down barriers impeding growth arise from man's relations with the surrounding sphere of circumstances, or Nature -- or indeed with his fellows; and the last statement concerning man's struggle with his fellows is repeated despite the apparent contradictions of this statement that seem to be all too observable throughout the course of known human history. The meaning of the author here is that the diversity of interests which arise in human intercourse is largely imaginary and artificial, and in no real or substantial sense is born of an inherent spiritual or biological conflict between man and man.
Were men only to realize that their interests are fundamentally common, and that every man is best served when he himself serves the interests of his fellows, then the so-called strife of man with man and in every direction would automatically cease, or ninety-nine parts out of a hundred of such situations would disappear, and we should have what would be almost a heaven on earth when compared with the horrible social and other conflicts that in our present era of materialistic selfishness so harass and perplex and plague us all. It is precisely on the lines of thought which fortunately seem to be gaining greater currency in the world today to the effect that even in commercial affairs the man who deliberately sets out to achieve his own ends at the cost of his fellows is playing a losing game; for the best interest of his fellows is his own best interest; so that this older and really wicked idea is steadily now being more largely replaced by the idea of mutual service.
We have just here a proof of the statement made above that antagonisms or 'struggles' or 'conflicts' between man and man are not based in Nature nor even in environing circumstances, but in man's foolishness and selfishness. The author addresses himself here pointedly to the old damnable biological theory of our recent forefathers to the effect that man is 'born' at enmity with his fellow-man, and that evolution is attained by conflict, struggle against others, and that the 'survival of the fittest' is brought about by the predominance of might over right. Today every thinking man is beginning to realize that all this is downright false, is no 'law' of Nature at all, but is a superficiality of deduction arising in a stupid misinterpretation not only of Nature herself, but of man's own constitution and characteristic attributes.
Men best serve themselves when they serve each other, for this not only brings about immense inner spiritual and intellectual and moral strength, but likewise brings all co-operating factors into compact unity of common effort, common understanding, and common interest.
It should be clear, therefore, that the so-called 'struggle' or 'conflict' is simply the working of many factors in the individual's own constitution, often, alas, working against themselves in struggle or conflict, because many men are too lazy or too stupid to think for themselves. Hence the struggle or conflict is in man's own mind; and as all men have this conflict, because all men are more or less evolutionally undeveloped, they imagine that the struggle or conflict exists in Nature, outside of themselves -- as if, by the way, men themselves were not inseparable parts of Nature!
Once the realization comes home to a man that all Nature is a unity, and that he himself forms but one small cog or wheel in the cosmic macrocosm, which is directed and inspired by a vast unifying Spiritual Force, and by Cosmic Intelligence, man finds his freedom from illusion, sees the so-called 'struggle' for what it really is, his own fatal illusion, and thus attains peace, and liberation from the bonds of ever-hungering desire born of the thraldom of his personal self to the impulses which that personal self perpetually gives birth to. Slavery lies in the fields of 'self,' freedom and strength in common effort. (return to text)
413. Vol. I, p. 207. (return to text)
414. The reader who is interested in the matter of, and in the teaching concerning, the Dhyani-Buddhas is referred to the author's previous work, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy, passim, wherein the matter is outlined. (return to text)