Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The Brotherhood of Great Seers and Sages, otherwise frequently called by modern Theosophists, Mahatmans, Masters, Elder Brothers, those highly evolved spiritual initiates in the truths, facts, and mysteries of the Universe, which the last few chapters of the present work have treated of at some length, has existed from what to Western minds is immemorial time. This great Brotherhood or Association may be called a University -- a 'collegium' the ancient Romans would doubtless have called it, thereby meaning a Society, an Association, of Men united in a common purpose and governed by common ideals and esoteric knowledge.
The ascription of immemorial age to this Brotherhood is obviously a general statement, and in no sense a precise and definite answer to the very natural question: For how long a period of time actually has this Brotherhood been in existence? The answer may briefly be given as follows: This Brotherhood or University has existed as a more or less voluntary Association of Mahatmans or high Adepts under the direct inspiration and guidance and indeed teaching of their Hierarch, whom we may call by the ancient esoteric term the Mahaguru, for many millions of years -- certainly for not less a period of time than twelve million years; in other words, since the beginning or appearance on Earth of the great Body-Race or Root-Race which preceded our own present Fifth Root-Race of humans.
The individuals of this preceding or Fourth Root-Race, which as a Race comprised through the millions of years of its existence many and various sub-races, in their turn subdivided into family groups and minor racial or national units, are technically called in modern Theosophy the 'Atlanteans' -- not that they called themselves 'Atlanteans,' for the various sub-racial units or stocks which in their aggregate made the Fourth Root-Race called themselves by names which have aeons since been lost to history, except in so far as certain works of the most ancient literatures of the world which still survive refer to them under appellations or titles which in the view of all modern scholars are accepted only as mythologic celebrities -- eponyms descriptive of beings of ages long gone by. (444)
Moreover while their Initiates recognised all the various racial stocks to belong to this great racial stream, the different national units were as slightly conscious of their own racial identity through time as the racial stocks of our present Fifth Root-Race are, subdivided as our present Fifth Root-Race has been and still is into many and differing varieties and even species of the genus homo. For convenience it was found necessary in modern Theosophical studies to give unto them a name; and it was because their greatest focus of civilization, that is, the main continental home, geographically speaking, on which the larger number of their various sub-races lived and flourished and perished, existed where now the turbulent waves of the Atlantic ocean roll their dreary wastes, that they are therefrom called Atlanteans.
This Atlantean Race reached its culminating point of material splendor in civilization and material progress some four or five million years ago. Every Root-Race is marked by its own characteristic evolution in both intellectual and psychical lines; and the main characteristic of all the Atlantean peoples was materialism in its various forms and expressions. Things of matter were worshiped rather than things of the spirit. On every hand and throughout ages were to be noted the evidences and the effects of this dark and somber worship. Materialism and not spirituality -- a materialism combined with a deliberate practice of both matter-magic and psychical magic -- was the professed and confessed belief and ideal of all the various sub-races after the middle point which marked the Atlantean civilization had been reached.
At that remote time the entire globe had become so materialistic, not only in outlook but in practice, so sunken in the life of matter, that the whisperings of the spirit of man, whisperings from the god within him, no longer reached man's soul easily; and although there were throughout the long ages which comprised the risings and fallings of the different Atlantean civilizations, both groups and individuals who sincerely and earnestly cultivated the life of the spirit, yet the masses, the multitudes, which formed the individual units of the Atlantean stock were eager followers and often actual worshipers of the dark and evil forces which form the night-side of Nature.
Imagine a people really most remarkably intelligent, more intelligent than we of the Fifth or Aryan Race by far, but of an intelligence of an entirely material and often evil-seeking type. They placed matter and its forces and productions before spirit and its light, and worshiped the former; and having reached the culmination of what was really a splendor and a glory but of a wholly material type and greater than anything that our present Fifth Race has as yet attained, they were saved in their frenzied rush downwards to universal sorcery only by the unceasing labors of certain ones whom we may speak of as being verily incarnated divinities and demi-gods. It was these Great Ones and their followers, many in the aggregate, but singularly few when compared with the Atlantean masses, who for the salvation of the many, and for the initiation of the chosen worthy few, finally during a period of culmination in evil-doing and spiritual wickedness, established the first genuine spiritual Mystery-Schools of the globe. This happened shortly -- geologically speaking -- before the Atlantean race sank to its racial perdition brought about by its own evil-doing.
In addition to the purpose of these schools as just stated, they were established in order to carry on the Wisdom-Teaching of the Gods into the next great Root-Race-to-come, the Fifth, which is ours. These Mystery-Schools were guarded with extremest care against spiritual infection and as far as possible from unworthy membership, so much so that in later ages, and quite in accordance with the materialistic Atlantean spirit, even the unconscious betrayal of the teachings given in the Mystery-Schools was punished with death. Such a method of protecting the sacredness and secrecy of the Mystery-Schools was emphatically wrong, but it was typically Atlantean in type and symbolical of the Atlantean spirit: rigid, cruel in impulse, powerful in action: typical of the time when the gentle breathings of the spirit with their refining influence no longer descended upon the soul of man like a balm healing and soothing and bringing inner health. Force even at that late date was worshiped and all things that were essentially of matter were still more or less idolized.
Yet this statement must not be taken as all-inclusive or as being universally applicable to the Mystery-Schools. There were many Mystery-Schools after the time of their first establishment, a few of which retain somewhat of their spirituality to the present day, and some which degenerated at a very early period and whose names are now not even a memory in the mind of man, for they died the death that was their due; others of intermediate character prevailed for a while until they became seats no longer of the white magic of the spirit of man, but schools of black magic, and they lived as long as Nature's violated laws could tolerate them.
Yet, as just stated, certain ones of these Mystery-Schools prevailed far into the Fifth Root-Race, and one, the greatest of them from the beginning, lives even to this day -- the Brotherhood of the Masters or Mahatmans.(445)
Thus were the formal and regularly instituted Mystery-Schools established many hundreds of thousands of years before the great Atlantean Race sank into unregenerate weakness leading to its final disappearance; and these Mystery-Schools have thus existed for some four or five million years, as hinted at in the preceding footnote, by the mandates and careful spiritual supervision of the Great Ones who even yet are the spiritual guides and protectors of foolish men. These Mystery-Schools were extended as it were into the outer world as branches of the Great Brotherhood, when, in this or that or in some other sub-race, men's minds and hearts showed the proper openings for the implanting of the seeds of truth, and the proper receptivity among at least a sufficient few to entertain and cherish and foster the Light of the World. At other times, when what Plato called periods of spiritual barrenness came upon men during the course of the revolving ages, then were the Mystery-Schools withdrawn from public knowledge, becoming hid and at times utterly secret, known only to those whose spiritual and intellectual and psychical unfolding through evolution attracted their minds to these Schools and attracted the Teachers in these Schools to these then unusual individuals. Thus it was that only those who listened with earnest and yearning ear to the whisperings of the spirit within themselves, and who had an intuition that there was sublime truth to be found in the world: only they whose inner eye had opened and whose heart had become less stony than that of the multitudes: only they were accepted as disciples or chelas.
Yet in and throughout all the ages these Mystery-Schools, whether secret or partially secret, or more or less commonly known, were the sources or foci out of which went into the multitudes of men the impulses and guiding light which built up the civilizations of the different epochs. Out of these Schools went into the world everything that was of permanent value. Out from the arcana of these Mystery-Schools, in the different ages and in the different parts of the globe, went the teachings, went the men imbodying and illustrating those teachings, that made the great brilliance of the ancient civilizations; and so it was from the remotest epochs of the self-conscious human race, down even to fairly recent times in human history.
Out from these Schools went everything that made Rome great in matters of law and order; that made whatever was splendid and fine in the civilizations of Babylon, of Egypt, of Hindusthan, and likewise of that still mysterious series of racial civilizations which existed in the Occidental parts of the European lands -- the Ancient Peoples of Northern Europe, and ancient Gaul and Britain, and their Druidic wisdom.
It is of course to be remembered that these impartations of truth, originating in the Great Brotherhood and recurrent throughout the revolving ages, were at times of mundial or world-wide character and at other times of more local or racial or national character or even of smaller type. The impartations or impulses or divulgations or new 'revelations' -- call them by what name one will -- were thus at times of widely spread and at other times of merely local character, in each case depending upon the need which was seen to prevail. Even single cities at times became foci or centers of reception and of impartation to local needs. Ephesus was one of such local centers where the sacred teachings of the gods at one time were taught to those ready to receive; Memphis in Egypt was another instance; and, indeed, scores of other places there were on the globe, which were similarly blessed. Eleusis and Samothrace at one time were two local foci of light and esoteric learning. Today these are all a memory! Why did they fall, why did the light die out? How was it that they passed? Reflexion easily shows the cause, which may be stated to be the reason why all human institutions reach their individual culminations and then finally decay and die; and the causes occasionally were that those in charge of the light proved faithless to the trust. Nothing on this earth in human or materially evil power could have ever overthrown or brought about the decay of these Schools had they remained clean and true at heart, for the might of the great Brotherhood would then have been within and behind them -- and this 'might' means the Spiritual Solar Fire.
At Eleusis, for instance, things had come to such a pass that the initiations and the teachings given there had become mere rites or mere ceremonials, mere empty forms, very like the Christian ceremonies of today of baptism and of the Communion and what not. Yet the Mysteries of Eleusis lasted until a late era even in degenerate Greece. Indeed, it was not until the time of the Emperor Justinian that the Esoteric School at Athens which was essentially the same as was the Eleusinian, was closed by an Imperial Rescript in the sixth century, very probably because of a petition sent to Constantinople by the guardians of the School themselves; and then seven philosophers, sincere, earnest, and good men, and the only 'faithful' ones of the time, fled their native land, Greece -- fled to King Khosru of Persia, for protection against the laws and armies and against the tyranny and persecution of imperial Rome. The Persian King received them hospitably; and as Rome at that time was at war with Persia, when Persia won in this war, one of the conditions of the peace was, and it was laid down with the sword, that these seven philosophers should be permitted to return to their native land, and to live there in peace, and to teach there in peace, and to die there in peace; and so it was!
Among Roman Emperors, Hadrian, Trajan, and Augustus -- all three as well as others -- had been initiated at Eleusis, but in an era when the Eleusinian Mysteries themselves were nearly dead, spiritually speaking. These emperors had received initiation in the forms and rites which still remained in function, pretty much as a man may join a Church and be confirmed in the orthodox way, "receive the laying on of hands" -- a mere gesture -- and receive communion. He would then be said to be 'initiated,' in connexion with the teaching, such as it was, such as it is, given.
Yet Trajan, Augustus, and Hadrian did actually pass through the Eleusinian Rite, as indeed many Romans had done before them, but in a corrupted and degenerated period. Nevertheless they did receive something; for as long as the Mysteries lived, the men who conducted them, although degenerate descendants of once noble sires, still had some lingering sparks of the ancient verities, and were enabled to clothe their procedures and rites with at least a semblance of the Holy Fire of archaic times.
Julian the 'Apostate' -- so called because he would not apostatize from the religion of his forefathers -- did indeed have a Teacher guiding him; but his case was unusual and almost singular. The Mysteries in his time had become practically extinct, if not wholly so. The fatal mistake that this most earnest and noble-hearted but misfortunate Emperor made during his life was his uncalled for and unjustified invasion of Persia; and thereby hangs a curious tale. Julian the Emperor Initiate must have known in his heart that his undertaking of the Persian War was both unjustifiable and esoterically wrong; and yet Julian the Emperor and chief official of the Empire was karmically carried along into this disastrous catastrophe; for in a certain sense it does indeed seem that he could not wholly help himself in this respect. This would appear to be the plain truth. His case was one of those outstanding and singularly pathetic instances where an early karmic mistake of magnitude held that unfortunate but truth-seeking and benevolent man in the "fell clutch of circumstance." He could have done one of two things. He could have said No, to his councillors and have held to his decision; and that would have ended the matter for the time being, and he would not have committed a new esoteric mistake. Or he could have said Yes, as indeed he did, thus yielding to the impelling, but not compelling, chain of events, and thereby laid up for himself an accumulated karmic store which it will probably take ages for him to work off. He did what he must have known to be wrong in one sense, and a part of his unfortunate karman fell upon him immediately. He was slain by one of his own soldiers, a Christian regicide.
The incident, recorded by the Christian ecclesiastical historians of that and of a later time, is well known, to the effect that Julian, after the dart or spear had pierced his side, gathered some of his blood in his hand and cast it upwards saying: "Galilean, thou hast conquered!" If this incident was true as related, it was not at all a recognition that Jesus was what the later Christians said he was, the human incarnation of God, but that the dogmatic religious influence that was following so strongly and which was a distortion of the example and teaching of the noble Sage and Seer Jesus, had conquered for the time in that and succeeding centuries. It was on Julian's part the poignant despair of a great and noble heart, crying: "I have done my best and have lost. Thou, the dogmatic religion [then increasing in Greece] hast conquered." But the cry of his breaking heart was made to his own Father, who heard, and now, two thousand years later, more or less, after two thousand years of spiritual obscuration and intellectual darkness, the Ancient Wisdom is coming back into its own. Julian one day will be vindicated for what he really was, and will be regarded in esoteric history as one of the most unfortunate martyrs in the ranks of the workers for the Ancient Wisdom. He was at heart a great and high-minded man of wide and generous and impartial sympathies, whose whole life and soul were given up to improving his people both spiritually and intellectually according to his lights; and if at times he made mistakes -- and all human beings will occasionally err -- justice compels us to place beside his occasional errors the brilliant and touching record of his life so finely lived.
The cause of the disappearance of the Mysteries has always been degeneracy, faithlessness on the part of the students, and their lack of an imperative and heart-reaching call for Light. Where there is a call, a genuine spiritual and intellectual call: a call issuing from both heart and mind: there invariably comes the response by way of a new instalment or impartation of teaching from the Great Brotherhood; and when the yearning for spiritual and intellectual truth dies, when the yearning for greater light wanes, there comes no Teacher -- yet often there appears a Destroyer, who may, or may not, as the case may be, be more, or less, an agent, perhaps unconsciously to himself, of the spiritual Powers which hold the spiritual and intellectual safety of the globe in their strong hands.
When the human race, or any branch of it, or even an individual, makes the spiritual and intellectual appeal in terms so strong, with spiritual energy so vibrant, with the very fiber of the inner life so to say, it actually operates with the spiritual magnetism of a Teacher, and the call is heard in the Great Brotherhood invariably, and an Envoy or Messenger appears in the world as its representative. The Mysteries have always degenerated because men became involved more and more in selfishness and the self-seeking ways of the material world, and lost the inner touch, the inner consciousness of communion with the spiritual Powers mentioned above.
These Mystery-Schools of ancient days were really Universities for the education and instruction of human beings in the nature and laws of themselves and therefore of the Universe of which they are children. In their origin, these Mystery-Schools, all of them, were very holy and spiritually and intellectually on a high plane, and conditions for admission into them were severe and difficult -- necessarily so in view of well-known human weaknesses and imperfections and of the vast abysses of human folly. They were, in fact, copied after the glorious Association or University or Brotherhood of the Great Seers themselves. In this Association or Brotherhood, even today worthy and unusual human beings drawn from all quarters of the globe are under education, instruction, and training, not only along the lines of ordinary knowledge such as the universities of our so-called 'civilized lands' impart, in so far as this ordinary knowledge may be useful for the work in hand, but these Sages give and do far more: they draw out -- 'educate,' in the Latin meaning of this word -- the inner spiritual and intellectual and psychical characteristics of their pupils; in other words, they evolve or unfold the consciousness of each individual disciple, and thus they teach him how to place his own feet by his own will and effort upon that 'still small Pathway to the Gods,' by treading which all knowledge and wisdom of the universe can be found, in progressively greater perfection, as the disciple passes from life to life unfolding in each in ever enlarging measure his own inner capacities and attributes.
Furthermore, they instruct their chelas or disciples in the knowledge of the entire past history of our planet, and the real and natural workings of Nature on our physical plane which fall under such modern names as Astronomy, Chemistry, Meteorology, Geology, Zoology, and Botany, and many more: and, indeed, these modern 'courses of instruction' are considered the least in importance of what is therein taught, and are but side-lines of study giving place to a growing knowledge of Nature -- the structure, laws, and operations, of the Universe, and of its component hierarchical principles. The entire system in this wonderful University of the 'Sons of the Fire-mist,' as the Great Seers are sometimes called, is not at all a mere loading the brain-mind with more or less useless facts all-too-soon forgotten, as occurs in ordinary centers of instruction in our civilized lands, but in educating and training the consciousness and will of the disciples or pupils so that these learners may know actualities of Nature at first hand by sending the percipient consciousness into the heart or core of things, and thus as it were by temporarily becoming such things, instantly and exactly to KNOW what things really are: what their past, and what their future. They learn how to develop the wonderful vision of the penetrating spiritual eye, called in India's mystical writings, the Eye of Siva, whose flashing sight penetrates behind all the enshrouding veils of matter into the most recondite abysses of the universal life.
Indeed, the higher initiations consist almost entirely, as regards procedure, in such coalescence of the consciousness of the postulant or neophyte with the beings and entities and things which he must fully know in order to become on earth what the future destiny of the Monad is to be cosmically: a self-conscious identification with the object. In this way Wisdom as well as Knowledge is fully gained, and, above everything else, the pearl beyond all price is won -- realization by self-conscious identification of the disciple's own fundamental being with all that is, with the Heart of the Universe.
This procedure, as will be obvious to the thoughtful student who has at least some acquaintance with esoteric teaching, is patterned after that of the great Kosmic University, the Universe itself, in which incomputable hosts of entities in all grades of evolutionary development are at school so to say; and these entities learn the lessons of universal life in only one way -- by becoming; for there is no other way by which to learn the reality of things, except by becoming them, which means temporary self-identification therewith, and stage by stage on the rising scale of perfection. How can one really know a thing in itself, the reality of it -- in other words, attain truth -- except by becoming for a time, long or short as the case may be, that thing itself? The idea is a simple one: we become, at least temporarily, whatever our consciousness vibrates synchronously with; for this means at least a temporary coalescence of identities, and paradoxical as it may sound, such identification or coalescing of principles and substances is the only real way of attaining complete and unadulterate knowledge of truth. This statement is not at all extraordinary or unknown even to the average thinking man. The cases are extremely numerous in which one's consciousness temporarily coalesces with the consciousness of some other being or thing; and in the ordinary and usual manifestations of this fact we call it 'sympathy.'
Clearly, then, since it is by self-identification with spiritual beings and things as well as with spiritual ideals that we grow to greater things, and equivalently by self-identification with things beneath the human status that we degenerate to lower things, this teaching is based upon the most practicable as well as the most practical course of training which either human idealism or imagination could figurate. The reader or student would wander wide from the mark or diverge greatly from the truth if he should imagine that such training has a tendency to make one impractical or unfitted for the manly carving of one's own pathway in life. It would seem that none but the most superficial reader could infer the last idea. It would stand to reason that the titan intellects of the human race and the wisest men that the human race has ever produced would scarcely waste their time in impractical as well as impracticable if not frivolous temporizings with realities. The whole attempt of inner training is to attain self-identification in progressive and ever-enlarging stages with the great Spiritual Powers on which the Universe itself is constructed and with which it is molded -- strange as this manner of phrasing the wonderful truth may seem to the Western mind, untrained in matters of esoteric philosophy and its deep science.
Nor is it to be supposed for an instant that training in chelaship, in other words discipleship, begins suddenly and without the previous preparation of lifetimes of awakening in progressive stages; for this idea is likewise wrong. One cannot begin too early. It is somewhat like the training of a child in the course of bringing it up: the fond and erring parent, who will allow his child to run wild 'according to nature,' expecting at a later date, when the character is already more or less set in its future crystallized forms, to take it in hand and to train it in the manner the fond parent thinks it should go, is simply preparing a grievous and disappointing day for himself.
Training cannot begin too early,(446) and this is as applicable to the average man, commonly called the 'man in the street,' as it is in the training for chelaship and its lifetimes of preparation. One of the main objectives of such training is the arousing and stimulation of the moral sense to become so strong in the life of the disciple that the voice of conscience thus highly developed and trained becomes the instant and relatively unerring monitor indicating which path at any moment the disciple should follow, or which of any two or more solutions of a problem the chela should accept. Coincident with this is the training of the mind and of the intellect to become keen, polished, instant in action, and, under the guidance of the moral sense, virtually unerring in judgment.
It is the brain-mind alone, an excellent instrument in its way, but a very poor master, which is trained by pragmatical matters, and no objection lies against this, so far as this training goes; but it is most emphatically neither the training of the ethical sense nor of the true intellect, the noetic or higher manasic faculty in the constitution of the developing disciple. For instance, such studies as are popular in modern Theosophical circles, such as a thorough acquaintance with the facts and philosophy of the Rounds and Races, are extremely valuable precisely for the fact that they induce abstract thinking apart from pragmatical matters which are usually based upon selfish considerations. Indeed, from the very beginning of such training in discipleship, the disciple himself is urged in every day of his life to identify himself both in thought and in sympathetic feeling not merely with others of his own human kind but with the Universe at large; so that the susurrus of the wind in the leaves of the trees or the soughing of the gentle breeze, or the quiet and mystic suggestions that come to any observer on any star-lighted night: all these are instances of natural facts which the student can use as bases for the work of self-identification with all that is. The fact itself is very well known, and commonly known -- at least to observant folk; every man who succeeds even in the ordinary affairs of life, such as in his profession or business or trade, is a man who identifies himself with it and thus becomes proud of his productions; whereas the unfortunate individual who looks upon himself as a bond-slave to what to him are the fell mandates of either conscience or duty, is the man who is riding direct for a fall, and assuredly destined to become one of life's failures. We do well what best we love, because in this manner we identify ourselves with what we do.
Thus this whole matter of training in chelaship involves a profound lesson in the intricacies of human psychology, and can after the above manner easily be shown to be not only very practical but indeed the only practicable method of insuring success.
It was pointed out that a Teacher or Messenger or Envoy -- call the bearer of the Message what one will -- is sent from the Great Brotherhood into the world of men for the purpose of striking anew a keynote of spiritual truth when an urgent and sincere call comes from the heart of mankind or from a sufficient number of human units to warrant such an appearance in the world, and this statement is perfectly true; but it must likewise be stated that, just as Krishna points out in the beautiful episode in the Mahabharata called the Bhagavad-Gita,(447) an Avatara -- i. e., a portion of himself -- comes in times of great spiritual barrenness, when the waves of materialism are rising high and spirituality and true intellectuality are at the decline as compared with more favored epochs. This statement likewise is true. But at such times of spiritual degeneracy or barrenness, when wickedness and moral decay are in the ascendancy among men, then, even when an Avatara does not appear, an especial effort is made by the Great Brotherhood to inaugurate at least the beginning of a period of spiritual fertility, to adopt Plato's idea.(448)
The fact is that in either of these cases there is the call: in the former case, the hungry and earnest hearts yearning for truth and light and spiritual help and intellectual teaching; and in the latter case the pathetic call of the helpless and those in danger of being engulfed in the mire of the epochs of crassly materialistic times. As already stated, the Great Brotherhood has as its first purpose or objective the watching over and protection, as well as the guiding, of mankind; for their position in and on this earth is that of the representatives of the Hierarchy of Light, otherwise called the Hierarchy of Compassion, to which all the Buddhas of Compassion and Avataras belong.
Thus it is that the members of the Great Brotherhood are eternally alert and watchful, and, as a matter of fact, are continuously acting as a Guardian Wall, to adopt the phrase of H. P. Blavatsky, around mankind, shielding and protecting it against dangers both of a cosmic and terrestrial character, of which the multitudes know less than nothing. Mankind little knows indeed what it owes to the strong hands, metaphorically speaking, of the great Sages and Seers. Furthermore, these Great Seers are the guardians, the custodians, of the inexpressibly beautiful and noble formulation of teachings, which in modern times is called Theosophy; and when times are ripe for it, in other words when fully propitious, or when the race needs a new spiritual and intellectual as well as psychical inspiration, as said before, they send forth from their own number a Messenger, to strike anew the everlasting and identic keynotes of Universal Truth in the minds and hearts of men -- truth regarding both visible and invisible Nature, and that part of Nature which we call man's inner and invisible constitution.(449)
From age to age come forth these Messengers at least when the currents of the spiritual life are running low, as said above, and when a wave of materialism is threatening to ingulf men's spiritual intuitions and to stifle the cry for help and light uttered by wounded human hearts. They come when the world needs a regenerative current from the inner spiritual Sun, over-ruling and guiding the destinies of our planet Terra; and they found, it may be a new religion, it may be a new philosophy, it may be either one or the other but bearing a strongly scientific stamp; and in any one of the three cases, the religion or the philosophy or the science endures for an age or for more than one age, until decay and degeneration again set in, which occurs when the vital force which first emanated from the great founder's heart and mind has run its course. Then comes the period for another reawakening of the hearts and minds of men, and a new Message comes forth in the same ancient manner from the Great Sages.
The old literatures still contain records even if only a few have survived the gnawing tooth of time, exemplifying genuine seership, or, as it is commonly called in Occidental lands, prophecy. These surviving records of ancient seership commonly describe the coming of a major cycle of degeneration, but there always is likewise therein the promise of a following spiritual awakening or incoming of a period of regenerative activity. It has been thought that a selection of three such prophecies might be interesting for the present pages, and consequently they are reproduced hereunder. The first is from Peter, the Christian Apostle; the second is from the Vishnu-Purana, one of the most popular works of its type still extant in India; and the third is from a book which belongs to what is commonly called the Hermetic literature of Egypt.
First, then, comes the so-called prophecy of Peter:
In the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own desires, and saying: Where is the proof of its presence? For, from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world. For this they wilfully forget that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and through water . . . by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished; but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored with fire, being reserved against the day of judgment, and destruction of ungodly men.
. . . But the day of the spirit will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be uncovered . . . the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. But . . . we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth holiness. (450)
Peter has confused in his Epistle -- whether through ignorance or from intention is a matter of slight importance -- several doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom as to what is to come when the present evolutionary era shall have run its course, and again when the Solar Pralaya or dissolution of the solar system shall have arrived. Peter confuses, for instance, the submergence of the Atlantean or Fourth Great Continent by water, with matters pertaining both to the primordial appearance and ultimate disappearance of the solar system, in connexion with which events, 'water' is frequently used as symbolic of the fields of space -- in other words, the Greek Chaos.
The reference as given in this extract from Peter's Epistle to terrestrial and cosmical events, often alluded to in Greek philosophy, shows clearly enough the Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic origin of the ideas which this Christian Apostle incorporated in his own rather vague and diffuse prophecy.
The second illustration of archaic prophecy is, as hereinbefore stated, found in the Vishnu-Purana.(451) The extract hereunder given has reference to the course of the Kali-yuga or Black Age, which began only five thousand and some odd years ago, and which the archaic works state will run for 432,000 years. It is of some interest to note that this extract from the Vishnu-Purana in its descriptions of a steadily degenerating age, states facts which to a certain extent are as applicable to our own time as they will be equally applicable many scores of thousands of years hence, mutatis mutandis.
There will then [in Kali-yuga] be contemporary monarchs ruling the earth; kings of churlish soul, of violent temper, and always turned to falsehood and evil actions. They will inflict death on women, children, and cows;(452) they will rapaciously take away the property of their subjects; they will possess but limited power; nor will they, as a rule, reign for a long time but will rapidly rise and fall; their lives will be short, and their ambitions insatiable; nor will they have much piety. The people of the various countries intermingling with them will be similarly corrupted; and worthless men holding the patronage of the princes whilst the nobler are neglected, the people will perish. Wisdom and piety will day by day grow less, and finally the entire period will be depraved. In those days, property alone will give rank; wealth will be the only cause of devotion; mere romance of a passional nature will be the sole bond between the sexes; falsehood will be the only means of success in litigation; women will become objects of sensuous attraction only. The earth will be venerated for its minerals solely; the mere Brahmanical thread will be the only sign of a Brahmana; outward show will be the only distinctions of the various orders of men; dishonesty will be the sole means of livelihood; weakness will be the cause of dependence; menace and egoism will be the substitutes for true learning; open-handedness will be considered as devotion; mere outward washings will be substitutes for real inner purification; mere consent will take the place of marriage; fine garments will be dignity; and water merely at a distance will be considered as a holy spring. From all the orders of life, the strongest will seize the reins of government in a country so debased. The people, groaning under the heavy load of taxation imposed upon them by the avaricious rulers, will flee to the valleys of the mountains, and will rejoice if they find wild honey, herbs, roots, fruits, leaves, and flowers, for food; their sole clothing will be the bark of trees, and they will be exposed to cold, rain, wind, and the sun. Men's lives will be shortened to three-and-twenty years. Thus, in the Kali-yuga, will decay proceed apace, until the human stock approaches extinction.
This prophecy, of which it may be said that only too many signs of its truth may already be perceived amongst us, does not continue to its end in an entirely pessimistic vein. The prophetic forecast continues hereunder:
When the practices taught by the Vedas [the holy books] and the Books of Laws shall have almost ceased, and the end of the Kali-yuga shall be nigh, a portion of the divinity which lives in its own spiritual nature in the state of Brahman, and which is the beginning and the end [of all things] and which comprehends everything, shall appear on this Earth, and will take birth in the family of an eminent Brahmana of Sambhala-village, called Vishnu-Yasas, as the Kalkin-avatara who will be endowed with the eight superhuman faculties. By his irresistible power he will overthrow all the Mlechchhas and thieves, and all whose minds are devoted to iniquity. Then he will re-establish right-doing on Earth; and the minds of them who live at the end of the Kali-yuga shall be as pellucid as crystal. The men thus changed by the influences of that exceptional period shall be the seeds of human beings to come, and shall grow into a race which will follow the duties and laws of the Krita-yuga [Age of Purity].(453)
In some respects the prophecy from the old Egyptian Hermetic book is the most interesting of the three here chosen, for the reason that what it prophetically alluded to has already come and gone and has become history. It is alleged to be a prophecy of an Egyptian Sage who foresaw what Egypt would be, once that she had fallen. It is selected from the Egyptian Hermetic work called Treatise on Initiations, otherwise called Asklepios. (454)
Art thou not cognisant, O Asklepios, that Egypt is the image of the Heavens, or rather that it is the projection here below of the order of things above? Yea, to tell the truth, this land is a temple of the Kosmic scheme. However, there is something that thou shouldst know, since sages ought to foresee things: -- a time will come when it shall appear that the Egyptians have worshiped the divinity so piously in vain, and that all their holy invocations have borne no fruit and are unheard. Divinity will then leave the earth and return to the Heavens, abandoning Egypt, its ancient home, leaving this land bereft of religion and widowed of the presence of the gods. Foreigners will cover the soil, and not only will holy matters be neglected, but, still more terrible, religion, piety, and the worship of the gods will be forbidden and punished by law. Then this land, made holy by so many temples and shrines, will be covered with tombs and filled with the dead. O Egypt! Egypt! There will remain of thy religion only obscure legends which posterity will refuse to credit; words engraven upon stone will alone remain to testify to thy devotion! The Scythian, the Indian, or some other near-by barbarian will rule Egypt. Divinity will return to the Heavens; and men thus forsaken will perish; Egypt will be likewise forsaken and desert; abandoned of men and gods!
To thee I cry, O most holy of Rivers; to thee I foretell the coming doom! . . . The number of the dead shall exceed that of the living; and if a few inhabitants remain on the land, Egyptians by tongue, they will be aliens in manners.(455)
How remarkably this prophecy has been fulfilled! Yet the original does not contain solely the above more or less purely pessimistic allocution. Hermes, the alleged speaker, as he continues in his prophecy, states that he foresees brighter days in times still more distant when Divinity will return anew to Egypt. Thus he strikes the same keynote of future optimism and hope for restoration to better and even greater things than in the past, even as the Vishnu-Purana of Hindusthan phrases it in its own forecast. In those distant times of the glorious future, once again will be brought to men the message and inspiration of universal and everlasting compassion and of hope, of ever-flowing inspiration, in which times the sacred archaic teachings regarding the inner light, which flows from the Star of Glory which each man is in the inmost arcanum of his being, will again become the most precious heritage of the human race.
These great Sages or Masters have never been discouraged in their world-work for humanity by the fact that the sublime body of philosophical and religious and scientific truths which at periodically cyclical intervals they promulgate anew would have to undergo in the natural course of events periods of degeneration recurring at cyclical epochs likewise. It is their Great Labor, directed by spiritual beings even greater than they, to do this sublime work for mankind, and they do it regularly throughout the whirling cycles of time, and without intermission and surcease. Millions upon millions of suffering human souls, who would otherwise have lacked spiritual and intellectual guidance along life's pathways, and untold millions of men and women who have sought and longed for truth, have received throughout all past ages help and guidance and consolation untold from the work of these World-Teachers and, on the occasions when they or their Messengers appear publicly among men, by the example of their utterly noble and self-sacrificing lives.
Yet it is perhaps one of the saddest reflexions that the philosophical historian draws from his studies of men's minds and temperaments, as expressed in the past, that all great men, whatever may be their stage of evolutionary development, are invariably misunderstood at first, often violently persecuted, usually derided and scorned, and occasionally even made victims of the public's hatred of innovations. Further that same public, after having done away with some great man, as a certain few instances of history show, after the passage of a few years begins to elevate him to the rank of the deities, to worship him perhaps, or to bow down to him as a god; in doing so usually losing sight of the noble Message that he brought to the world. Such is the fervor of personal adoration, and most assuredly this is not what the Great Teachers desire.
Consider for a moment two bright stars of life and thought which appeared at an interval of half a millennium or so: the great Sakyamuni, Gautama-Buddha; and the great Syrian Sage called Jesus by his later followers. In the latter case his devotees have actually turned their noble Master not only into a god, but into the actual figure of the second person of their Trinity; and even in the former case, that of Gautama the Buddha, although due to the majestic intellect and wisdom of the Buddha in stating his doctrine and wonderful ethics, no such extraordinary apotheosis has taken place, yet even he is regarded in some, but not in all, parts of the world which recognise him as their Master, with a fervor of devotion which, while perhaps ennobling in the self-forgetfulness that it evokes, must yet be by no means fully in line with the goal which the great Indian had in mind when, on leaving the Bodhi-tree, he began to preach his sublime doctrine of self-control, duty, and universal love.
Merely personal devotion and personal fervor directed to a human personality, however noble and great, are not what are wanted. As a dog will follow his master to the ends of the earth with a self-abnegation that lacks something of the divine only because so limited to one object, and not universal, so men have a quite similar way of devoting themselves to and loving only that one of the world's Great Teachers in whose family, so to say, they happen to belong.
It is in these well-known facts that we see the reason for the disinclination of a people, among whom a Messenger may appear, to receive the Message thus brought to them. Human nature is a curious mass of contradictions. It calls eagerly for more light, but it must have the light shaped after its own pattern, and the pattern is its own prejudices and predilections. It calls for help, but it insults and rejects the helper when he comes, unless the aid be extended after the manner that is considered customary in substance or in form.
But the Great Sages remain at their task with the courage of Heroes, and their indomitable will overcomes all mean and ignorant things.
The progress of civilization is but a series of conquests over obstacles needlessly thrown in the way of human advancement. It is but a succession of truths rejected in the first instance almost invariably, and later recovered and taken to heart as being the lessons of the gods.
The different Messages brought to mankind by all the great World-Teachers, whether we belong to their time or not, and whether we belong to their race or not, have a profound meaning for us also (because these Messages are of universal import) which is ours by our human birthright, and we greatly lose by not knowing it and accepting it as our own common human heritage.
What horrible and needless wars might have been prevented had this noble teaching of universality of thought and endeavor and aspiration and sympathy always been followed! What pitiful suffering and mental and physical agony might have been avoided had men known better, and knowing better, had acted more wisely!
Then again, how can one whose ideas of religion and of human brotherhood are limited by merely artificial geographical frontiers: how can such a one know the mighty surge of sympathy, the warm flow of pity and compassion, the keen intellectual delights and strengthening of mental and moral fiber, that accrue to him whose mind reaches out eagerly towards other human minds and souls now living in other parts of the world or who have lived and have left us the fine flowers of their lives?
As said before, it is this feeling of self-sufficiency which is at the root of the ridicule which every great man who has appeared in the world with a new Message to mankind has had to face. It is at the root of the hatred on the part of the upholders and supporters of established institutions; of the obloquy and scorn that every Great One has had to face. But in every case, in spite of almost insuperable difficulties, the tremendous power of his character has broken through the stone walls of human prejudice and ignorance, and when finally he has disappeared from among men, there ensues the second phase, like the first arising out of human ignorance and stupidity: he is usually worshiped as a god or demi-god.
Although the greater ones among them already have the light of approaching divinity shining on their foreheads, it is to be remembered that they belong nevertheless to that particular group of evolving beings who in their aggregate form the human race, and in consequence their own destiny is inseparably bound up with humanity's future. For this reason, in addition to others, are they humanity's natural Guides, Teachers, and Protectors.
The wise old Mohhammedan Khalif, Al Mamun,(456) a younger son of Harun-er-Rashid of Baghdad, whom we all as children have read of in The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, once wrote regarding these great Teachers of Wisdom, of whose existence he certainly had some inkling:
These men are the Elect of God, God's best and most useful workers, whose lives are given over to the evolution of their rational faculties; for the teachers of Wisdom are the real luminaries and law-makers of the world, which without their aid would relapse into ignorance and barbarism.
In the words of the Christian New Testament, the Great Sages and Seers are both collectively and individually like the sower in the Christian parable who scatters seeds of Universal Wisdom on the wings of thought, as it were. The old parable -- it is a beautiful image of an actual fact -- points out that some of the seeds that the sower scatters broadcast fall by the wayside; some are eaten by birds; some fall into dry and sun-burnt places; but others -- multitudes of them -- fall into good human soil, take root therein, and grow.(457)
These Mahatmans or Masters or Great Sages work unceasingly and without interruption among men all the time; though it is only at rare intervals when the times are ripe for it that they individually and personally mingle publicly with the multitudes. They are for ever watching the inner movements and outer productions of human minds and hearts. They go among men unperceived, in order to aid and to watch their less progressed fellow humans; and they study world-conditions, and do their best to ameliorate life's asperities and to protect mankind against on-coming psychical and other perils. They are always seeking, they are continuously searching, for evidences of the Buddhic Splendor, for evidences of the spiritual glory, in individual men, so that they may foster this and lend their aid in bringing it out in larger measure of unfolding power. Their standing on the evolutionary ladder of life is so far advanced beyond the average, that their inner faculties and powers are awakened, so that they can see at a glance, by a light or an aura around this human being or that, where such human fellow stands, and thus do they know instantly that here or that there is a human being who is ready for their personal help and spiritual and intellectual encouragement. It is, of course, obvious that they cannot help when and where men will not receive the proffered aid, when men consciously or unconsciously reject it and refuse it. Nevertheless continuously, undiscouraged, undismayed, living from age to age, they work on; and they and their Successors in the Great Brotherhood form the links of the Golden Chain of Hermes as the Greeks used to say, as the centuries flow by into the ocean of the past: working, helping, inspiring and inspiriting, giving to men thoughts of spiritual grandeur, of ethical sublimity; nor do they restrict their spiritual and intellectual ministrations alone to the average multitudes, for they likewise are frequently, it may be invisibly, present in the private study or laboratory of the earnest scientific researcher, invisibly and unknown, planting a fertile idea in this mind, suggesting a noble thought to that mind, but only when the spiritual and psychological ground of the human individual thus selected is found ready and apt to receive these ideas.
It is a fact of immense moral weight and of inestimable value to thinking men, that there is in the world a government of ideas, issuing forth from this wholly impersonal and spiritual source -- a government of ideas founded on spiritual and intellectual and moral grounds which are of the stuff of the heart of the universe. It is a fact of immense magnitude that mankind is not an abandoned and helpless orphan at the mercy of the chance winds of a relentless fate or of a haphazard destiny, but is in very truth and fact the continuously guided but hitherto always wilful and forgetful ward of high spiritual powers, who work, albeit usually in silence and in secrecy, in and through mankind itself, and doing so as best these spiritual powers may.
There are greatly developed guiding minds in and behind the world of men; but even these guiding Minds, the Great Seers and Sages of the ages, never work against Nature herself, nor, indeed, against the purposively wilful aggregated will of humanity; for it is obvious that if they exerted their spiritual and intellectual and psychical powers, that they know how to wield so we, merely in order to force men and women to follow paths which mankind have not themselves chosen by deliberate choice, these Sages would not then be 'working with Nature' and with the slowly rolling current of evolutionary development, but would be enacting the part of drivers of dumbly driven human cattle, with consequent spiritual-intellectual good and benefit neither to the drivers nor to the driven.
Nature permits no permanent slavery in life, nor has she much use in her evolutionary courses for mere parasites. Nature's effort is to build Men, and Nature's truest human Servants, the Great Ones, work entirely in collaboration with the Great Mother towards the same end. Thus it is that they guide, they even watch over and continuously protect; but never at any time is their effort bent to enslave the wills of evolving men. They look upon no moral failing as so great in defect of right as that of bowing the conscience in mental servitude to the dictates of another, no matter how high, no matter how great, how pure, how wise; for it is a part of their endeavor to make men free -- free-willing agents and collaborators with themselves in what they do. Hence it is that they desire to see all men spiritually free, intellectually free, the while inwardly cognisant of the sublime ethical beauty of the subordination of the merely personal, with its whimsies and feeble vacillations, to the spiritually grand, whether in themselves or in human representatives of outstanding spiritual development.
They send forth ideas into the world: ideas that are intrinsically more mighty, more powerful, than anything that ordinary human civilization knows: ideas which in very fact build and rebuild civilizations, and which, if misused by smaller minds even can destroy them. It is against such misuse that they and their disciples are continually on the alert.
It should never be supposed, however, that the Teachers of Wisdom and Compassion and of Peace send forth their Messengers or Envoys to meddle or to take a direct part in the political turmoils of any age, or to be involved in directing fevered human passions of disagreement into channels even possibly leading to human bloodshed or to the rending of the ties of human affection and love, thus leading to the misery of broken hearts. They guide humanity spiritually and intellectually; they instil lessons of mercy and of pity, and all of them as well as their Messengers or Envoys, should indeed they ever act as agents of karmic destiny, which happens occasionally, do so with the sole objective of softening and ameliorating the harsh asperities and ignoble conditions in human life. It is their sublime duty always to work to restore and to preserve peace and harmony and brotherly love among men. Should such Exalted Individuals ever concern themselves with the political turmoils of any age, one may say without fear of contradiction that they do so only as Peace-makers. This does not mean that they stand apart, cold-bloodedly, so to speak, and indifferently watch things running to ruin. The inference to be drawn is the following: never do they instigate human quarrels, nor at any time do they stimulate human passions, nor, on the other hand, do they direct the affairs of the world as dii ex cathedra -- as exterior gods, pulling the wires of action of human beings, who thus would be but their dancing marionettes.
It is the Esoteric Tradition that a Teacher is sent from the Great Brotherhood whenever there is a sufficient number of ready and waiting human hearts, and at such times Societies or Associations are established which will become the vehicles for the transmission to mankind of the great body of philosophical and religious and scientific teaching based on the secret structure and laws of the Universe. But the first teaching given to the aspirant to wisdom always is: Find that Wonder within yourself which is now, which is always, ready and waiting. Try! This is the Way. Be earnest, be truthful, be an upholder of the canons and codes of honor. When your word is pledged, live up to it. Be clean, be helpful, be pitiful, be compassionate, be brotherly. These ethical principles open the heart and the mind of the inner man: break the doors, rather, of the prison in which the inner man lies in the chains of maya, enchained by his outward parts. It is the practice of these spiritual virtues and qualities which gives to man strength, which exercises his highest faculties, and which thus brings them into active functioning in his daily life.
The aspirant or candidate for the Archaic Wisdom is always told: There is a way by which to gain truth. There is a way by which man may gain wisdom. Yet any knock except the right knock is unheard. In a paradoxical sense one must practise before one may receive the full light of knowledge. The knock itself is, first, living the life. One must come with peace in his heart, and with a yearning for light so strong that no impediments or obstacles will daunt the courageous soul. One must come to the outer portal ready to brave the scorn of the world -- the blind, foolish, ignorant world, which laughs and scorns because it knows not better, much as children laugh when they hear a truth which they do not understand.
It is a fact of great consolation that the genuine archaic Mystery-Schools still exist. The great Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace not only form the same Brotherhood which has been on earth as an organic association since the middle of the Third Root-Race, but many of them, doubtless nearly all of them, are the reincarnated egos of the Great Ones of the Brotherhood who lived in former ages, although it is likewise true that from time to time, when found fit and ready, disciples, chelas, ascend to the level of their Teachers or Preceptors, and take their ranks in the Great Brotherhood.
Thus the light of the holy Sages is transmitted from age to age throughout time, forming the Guruparampara or Succession of Spiritual Teachers, whisperings of the existence of which have reached the multitudes from time to time. The Masters succeed each other from Predecessor to Successor in regular serial line, the Predecessor, providing it is his time to do so, going on into greater Light, and in his turn being succeeded by the chosen pupil best prepared to take his place. This succession of the Great Teachers in esoteric line, dating from Atlantean times to the present day, indeed from the ages of Lemuria, has at various times and in various countries been called by different names: the passing on of the Word, or the transmission of Light, the 'Golden Chain,' or the 'Hermetic Chain,' etc. This Hermetic Chain was considered by certain Greek philosophical mystics and poets as reaching from Father Zeus downwards through a series or line of spiritual beings and then through certain elect and lofty human beings to ordinary men.
The ancient Greeks and Romans used a beautiful simile taken from one of their sports in order to exemplify in rather mystic fashion this esoteric fact. In the torch-race, the torch-bearer ran from post to post. On reaching the end of his stage he handed the lighted torch which he carried to the one there waiting, who immediately took up the race and in his turn handed it to the one waiting for him. This exercise of the arena or stadium was taken by many Greek and Latin writers as symbolizing the carrying on of Light from age to age, and as pointing to the spiritual Torch-bearers who pass the Torch of Truth from hand to hand throughout unending time.
The ancient Mystery-Schools of every country of the globe and of whatever epoch in time, have had each one a Succession of Teachers trained and authorized by their training to teach in their turn; and as long as this transmission of the light of Truth was a reality in any one country, it was in every sense a truly spiritual institution. Therefore as long as every such succession lived and flourished it did immense good in the world. Thus it was that there was a succession of Teachers in the Mystery-Schools even of Greece and Rome, for instance, although it is unfortunately true that the degeneracy spoken of in previous pages became early manifest in Samothrace, Eleusis, and elsewhere and in the Mediterranean lands.
Upon the same esoteric facts and the same law of serial handing on of the Light reposes the famous succession of the 'Living Buddhas' of Tibet. This succession is a real one, but of a somewhat special type, and it is by no means what Occidental scholars mistake it to be or have frequently misunderstood it to be.
The Occult Succession or transmission of authority and light from Teacher to Teacher is an example or illustration, in the grandly real, of the same natural laws of nature that prevail in the ordinary affairs of men. In the Esoteric Schools, however, the Guruparampara or Succession of Teachers, is a real and truly spiritual fact, based upon actual initiation and training of the Teachers, and not upon formal or conventional customs or habits, as is the case in the outer world of ordinary affairs.
More or less faint and even distorted copies of this Hermetic Chain or Succession of Teachers are to be noticed as having existed, or now existing, in various formal and exoteric sects such as the general Christian Church, wherein it is called the 'Apostolic Succession.' Of course when this Apostolic Succession, as it actually was and is in the Christian Church, became a mere form, a mere matter of open or secret election to the office, or mere appointment, then the original light, or what there was of the original Divine Light, was already gone; and consequently the Apostolic Succession in the Christian Church is to the Theosophist but a whited tomb holding some of the ideals of men long dead.
It is to be sincerely hoped that this statement will not be taken by the good people of the Christian Church as an unkind criticism, for no one regrets more greatly than does the true Theosophist that the spiritual light of the Christos no longer throws its immensely powerful and guiding rays into the human corpus vile, as it certainly once did as long as the great Founder lived and taught.
It might here be added that there are, indeed, not only the special Envoys or Messengers of the Masters who come at certain periodical or cyclical intervals in world-history, but there are also what one may call Minor Messengers. Those Minor Messengers are individuals more or less unconscious of the work that they are empowered or sent to do; and there are other delegates of even less rank who are but vaguely conscious of their inspiration, and many perhaps are entirely unconscious of the fact that they are instruments for the carrying into the world of certain ideas or ideals which the Great Teachers desire the spreading of and which they are, unconsciously to themselves, inspired to work for.
The fact of the appearance of such spiritual and intellectual leaders among men is, of course, well known to every tyro-student of world-history. It is not always the fact that they are bearers of a specific Message to particular portions or sections of humanity, although this is perhaps true if we consider merely national or geographical frontiers. Giordano Bruno, for instance, may be called one of these vaguely conscious human instruments; and yet it would hardly be correct to say that his message to, or his work among, men was devoted to a particular section of humanity. The work that Bruno did profoundly affected the philosophic thought of Europe even during his own time, and perhaps more so after his martyrdom. Giordano Bruno was, in fact, only vaguely conscious of the truth that he was the bearer to mankind of a philosophic message of real value at the time when it was promulgated -- a message which has real value even today, especially to a certain class of minds.
It should not be thought that the Messengers or Envoys, however great they may be as individuals, are particularly favored children of Nature, for such a supposition would be entirely contrary to fact. They are as much human as are the humblest or least known of the human multitudes. What differentiates them so markedly from their fellows is the fact that they have through lifetimes passed on earth, by individually devised efforts for spiritual and intellectual improvement, brought themselves into relatively fuller union or unity with the spiritual powers within themselves than have the majority of mankind. Every man and woman has the possibilities of being, and indeed in relative degree should be, a Minor Messenger or Envoy of what we may by generalization call the Life Spiritual. Every human being can be and should be in degree a messenger of truth to his fellow-men, and, in fact, is so exactly in proportion as the individual human allies himself with the spiritual part of his own constitution and thus becomes a transmitter to other men of the particular message of which he himself is the vehicle or agent of transmission. His life on earth is not fully complete unless this individual message of his own is passed on to others. It is really pitiful that so few men are cognisant or rather self-conscious of this fact and of the really inexhaustible fountain of spirituality and wisdom lying still and quiet in every human heart. The preceding is, of course, no appeal for a growth of a spirit of egoism among men -- which supposition would be not only ridiculous but fantastically false -- but is just the contrary, for any such increase of the egoistic spirit in a man would be absolutely fatal to the transmission of his spiritual-intellectual individual message to others. Just as a genius or true teacher is always impersonal, so should less evolved individuals likewise try to be; and the greater the egoism is in a man the more imperfectly is the spiritual-intellectual message, of which he should be the vehicle, given to others. There is here seen a striking contrast between the working of spiritual individuality in man as contrasted with brain-mind egoistic individualism. The former is in every sense elevating. The latter is always either foolish or degrading, and usually both. It is a man's duty to strive to be a spiritual and intellectual Leader of his fellow-men, and hence a leader only in things which are grand, which elevate, which refine, which truly instruct, which encourage, and which give light and help to others.
It is perhaps particularly to students of Theosophy that the foregoing observations may be addressed, for one of the purposes of the Theosophical Movement is to arouse spiritual individuality in its members, and to stimulate in them all not only the urge but an actual desire to take a leading part -- to become a leader -- in promulgating the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom in the world, and to do so by becoming as individuals exemplars of impersonal and self-devoted leadership among their fellow-men in the cause of the gods.
Thus it is seen that the cases of the Masters' Messengers and of their Minor Messengers or Envoys are merely outstanding and notable examples of what should be the general rule. The Messengers or Envoys are chosen not merely because they are fit and able to carry the Message which the Masters desire the spreading of to and in the world, but also because such Messengers have themselves reached a more or less advanced degree or stage on the evolutionary pathway. It should be obvious that the Messenger cannot properly deliver the Message which he is not only empowered but instructed to deliver to mankind, unless he himself is a capable and understanding agent -- and capacity and understanding are the fruits of evolutionary unfolding of inner faculty in growth.
A Messenger of the Masters is not to be understood only by the Message of which he is the mouthpiece, but also by the Messenger's own character as an individual. Indeed, both these must be taken into consideration, because it is one of the easiest things in the world for the devil to copy the works of god -- to employ the well-worn Christian saying. While it is quite possible that a barrel redolent of the evil odor of pickled fish and brine may contain fragrant essential oil of roses, it is obvious that such cases of contrarieties would be most extremely rare. A man is not great merely because he thinks lofty thoughts, because his ideas equal in sublimity the loftiest that the human race knows, nor because he is a preacher of beautiful phrases. A man is great only in proportion as these, through his own deliberate will, manifest themselves in his daily life. Such a man becomes a light, lighting not merely his own pathway on the endless pilgrimage of eternity, but shining afar as a star giving light unto his fellows, providing an ever-flowing inspiration into their hearts. A true teacher is one by example as well as by precept.
Greatness lies not alone in thinking; greatness lies rather in doing: although of course it is evident that in order nobly to do, nobly we must think. Many are the men and women throughout the ages who have aspired to be personal or chosen disciples of the Great Ones; but of them it may be said as was said on another occasion: 'Many are they who are called, but few are they who are chosen.'(457a) Discipleship consists first and foremost in doing. It is the empty vessel that makes the most noise; but it is the full vessel from which are drawn the streams that nourish and strengthen.
The greatest claim, therefore, that the Seers and Sages have upon our gratitude is not that they have been Teachers of men merely, but that they have been Teachers and Inspirers because they are Doers: because they put into example the sublime spiritual ethics which compose the core of their Message to mankind.
What the Teachers of mankind look for, when searching among men for the stuff of which disciples are made, is the rare combination of the qualities or attributes of devotion, intellectual power, dawning spiritual insight; and when these three qualities or attributes are strong enough in an individual they catch the eye, so to speak, of the Teacher: they then actually attract by a species of spiritual magnetism, so to say, the personal attention and teaching of one or more of the Great Seers and Sages; and these are the fortunate and happy cases where the disciple by right of growing spirituality and unfolding intellectual power, enters into personal relations with those wonderful Men.
Every new spiritual birth takes place through the pangs of coming into a new type of life; and these new births of the chela, of the disciple, take place at constantly recurring and indeed at cyclical intervals. The disciple is a forerunner of the race; he is a pioneer and hews his way through the jungle of human life, making a Way not for himself alone -- although indeed his own face is set towards those mountains of the Mystic East -- but for the poor and for the less strong who follow after him. Verily, of such stuff are disciples made; and as the chela hews his way along his own self-chosen path, the time comes when he finally achieves the grade or status of spiritual mastery, and then he becomes a Master of Life and of Wisdom. The glory of the Hierarchy of Compassion begins to pour through his being and even shows itself in his body, so that his very presence among his fellows is like a benediction, and brings quiet and peace, and evokes wisdom and love.
For every normal human individual there will come the time when he will feel the urge to follow the lonely but beautiful path of chelaship, of discipleship; yet every true disciple or chela realizes that this path of relative and temporary seclusion is followed only up to the point where the disciple becomes a Master of Life. Thereafter, more than ever before, does he become a ceaselessly active servant of the law of Cosmic Compassion, and a servant of mankind in the sense of devoting his whole life and all that is in him to awakening the spiritual and intellectual consciousness of his fellow-men. Long even before this stage has been reached, he knows well that in genuine spiritual service lies the only lasting happiness that man knows on this earth. He realizes that everything that is thought or is done for self ultimately turns to ashes and dead sea fruit in the mouth, and is not merely tasteless but thoroughly poisonous.
The real Teacher communes somewhat as follows with his disciple: You yourself, child, within yourself hold the keys to wisdom, great beyond human description; and all that I can do is to show you how you yourself may cultivate and develop these your own inner faculties and powers, which have been before your time developed within themselves by the titan intellects, the spiritual Seers and Sages, of the human race -- the god-men of the past. Chela -- child -- look therefore within yourself! There lie the secrets of all the by-gone mistakes, and of your present sorrows. In yourself likewise lie treasures ineffable which you will realize when some day you shall have found them and have brought them into activity in your life. Within you lies the only wisdom you shall ever, you can ever, obtain. Within yourself is the Path, and that Path, O Child, is Yourself -- your Spiritual Self, your Divine Self, that starry celestial power which is your root of being. It -- it, is also the heart of the Universe, for you and the All are essentially and fundamentally one and not twain. Can you, O Child, separate yourself from the Universe which encompasses you around? Can you ever leave it? Are you not an offspring of it, body of its body, blood of its blood, life of its life, thought of its thought, being of its being? Verily, you are IT. So when you have found yourself, your greater Self, your Spiritual Self: the inner god, the divinity within: then have you found not only the Path which leads to the heart of the Universe, but you have found yourself and it to be One.
Such has been the teaching of all the great Mystery-Schools of all the ages of the immemorial past. Never in a single instance has one of these Mystery-Schools which has remained true to its spiritual and intellectual function and objective, taught anything other than what has been outlined in the preceding paragraphs. It is not too much to say that these Mystery-Schools still exist and carry on the same work of spiritual and intellectual regeneration and instruction that their predecessors or forerunners of bygone ages did, each in its respective epoch. These Mystery-Schools still exist, indeed, and while their number is today not as large as it was in more favored eras, when the dark cloaks of matter were less dense and the glory of Father Sun was more clearly felt in human hearts, nevertheless they still exist in different countries of the globe as branches of the chief focus of Spiritual Light of our earth. Without attempting in any wise to draw aside the veil preserving the secrecy of these great institutions, it is at least inspiring as well as comforting to know that nearly every racial unit on the globe today contains or possesses one or more of these Schools. They all owe allegiance and are subordinate to the Mother-School which conducts its very great and wonderful operations, carefully guarded against all unworthy intrusion or invasion, in one of the most inaccessible parts of High Tibet.
Each such Mystery-School, therefore, has its own especial work to do in, and its own particular duties to perform to, the race or nation of which it actually is the spiritual and intellectual heart, although in every single case utterly unknown of the busy multitudes among whom it is established. Places of seclusion and if possible of relative inaccessibility are always chosen for the spots where these Schools exist; for they are above everything else not Schools in the sense of being mere buildings containing lecture-halls with professors and listeners, but centers of spiritual light, and they may, it is quite possible, have no buildings at all of any size in which meetings are held. Such meetings may be held under the face of Father Sun, or possibly under the violet dome of night. One may meet a member, whether disciple or teacher, of one of these Schools, in the hurly-burly of the streets of one of our great cities, and pass him by, neither knowing nor recognising how near one has approached to brushing the skirts of a passing quasi-god-man, mayhap.
The disciples of these Schools are all of them, and without any exception whatsoever, in training, and this training, as so often stated in these pages, is a bringing out of the higher attributes and qualities, faculties and powers, of man's nature. In fact, it may be stated with perfect truth, that all this esoteric training is, briefly stated, a forcing -- if the word may be used -- or hastening or 'telescoping' of the evolutionary process of unfolding growth. Not that there is anything unnatural about it, for the exact contrary is true; the growth is always natural, i. e., steady, consecutive, going along from step to step, and from degree to degree, but on a rising scale, so that no step or degree at any time can be omitted. The point is that instead of the disciple's being satisfied with the slow aeonic growth that takes place as the ages revolve, he enters into intensive stimulative training, thus greatly shortening his evolutionary course.
All the elements of our nature are naturally working towards this end, to wit: that we shall see Truth and follow it, indeed become it -- in other words become faithful servitors of the laws which hold the Universe in unity and harmony, inspired by the vast spiritual consciousness of the Divine Cosmic Hierarchy. We none of us can avoid following this path ultimately, whether at present or in the distant future, do what we will and mis-hew our pathway as we may, we must follow it ultimately, for there is no other way, no other path in evolution.
With each step forwards we become ever more and more aware that we are not alone on this Pathway to the Gods: others have been over the path before us: a long procession of great-minded seers, the greatest spirits and minds of the past ages, have trodden this age-old Path before us; yet they are still our companions, more intimate in a sense with us than is our own arm or foot or our breathing, because joined to us by interior spiritual bonds. They are watching over us even now. In following this sublime pathway, we feel a strange and wondrous companionship infinitely intimate and very high, a sense of brotherhood so sweet and strong and invigorating that there is naught in ordinary human life that can compare with it: an infinite peace, an immeasurable and ineffable calm, an impersonal love. It is caused by the inner recognition of our intimate companionship of the Soul -- the Spirit-soul -- with these Great Men in whom the inner god so enlightens their minds and all their nature that the Universe is their sphere of consciousness, and their Home.
FOOTNOTES:
444. As the geologic epochs follow one another in time, continents rise above the waters in different parts of the globe, are peopled for long periods of time by racial stocks immigrating from elsewhere, and again sink beneath the oceans. Each such great continental system bears its own particular series of differing racial and sub-racial stocks. When all the racial stocks of any one such great continental system are considered together as an aggregate or racial unit, such a unit is named in modern Theosophy a Root-Race or Body-Race.
These continental systems succeed one another in regular serial order and are separated each one from its predecessor and successor by millions of years of time. One such aggregated unit of racial stocks was the Atlantean or Fourth Root-Race. As stated in the text above, Theosophists give the name 'Atlantis' to the immense continental system which with its outlying sub-continents and islands more or less once covered the face of the globe, but with its focus or main center where now the Atlantic Ocean is. The name 'Atlantis,' from which comes the adjective 'Atlantean,' is taken from the Timaeus, etc., of Plato, who with other Greek writers referred vaguely to an island of about the size of modern Ireland which had once existed in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules, i. e., the modern Straits of Gibraltar. While Plato and other Greek writers who followed him called this island 'Atlantis,' still other Greek writers named it 'Poseidonis.'
This island was, in fact, merely the last surviving insular remnant of note-worthy magnitude which still existed at the remote time of which Plato wrote, say some eleven or twelve thousand years before the Christian Era. This Atlantis of Plato was the home-land from which colonists once set out to populate what were then the stretches of the Nile Delta, a process of colonization which continued for thousands of years, although it may be said in passing that the early Egyptian stock sprang from these early Atlantean colonists or 'Atlanteans' intermarrying with immigrants into Egypt from the Far East or what the ancient Greeks called Aethiopia, which was the Southern India of that now distant period. These Indian immigrants into Egypt in their turn were descendants of Aryanized Atlanteans from an Atlantean sub-race which had colonized lands now largely sunken beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean and of the Pacific.
These Aryanized Atlanteans are referred to in ancient Hindu literature, as in the Mahabharata, under the term Rakshasas, etc. Modern Ceylon, a still surviving remnant of the ancient Lanka, was the northern headland of one of these Pacific-Atlantean land-masses. There still survive as lonely insular remnants of the once great Atlantean land-massif, the Azores, the Canaries, and the islands of Madeira -- all of which were once cloud-capped mountain-peaks of the archaic Atlantean continent. Other Atlantean remnants survive elsewhere. (return to text)
445. The date of the first establishment of the Mystery-Schools of the archaic ages is given in the text as having occurred during those periods of Atlantean civilization when the terrific rush towards absolute matter and its dark and somber forces needed checking for the benefit of the many who had sufficient good in them to profit by the effort thus made. Yet this refers to the actual establishment of the ancient mysteries as Schools or Esoteric Colleges, each one presided over by a hierarchy of initiates, in regular serial line of succession, this being the first instance of such serial successorship in the history of the globe during this Fourth Round. This is referred to in the single Sanskrit word Guru-parampara, or line of successive Teachers: not an 'apostolic succession' as the Christian Church has it as a feeble and distorted echo of the original reality, but as the actual succession of initiate-adepts succeeding each other through the ages.
Thus were the Mystery-Schools first established, and the above brief sketch gives the reason for the founding of these centers of esoteric training and instruction. Yet the foregoing must not be misunderstood to mean that it was only during the before-mentioned period of Atlantean degeneracy that the Spiritual Teachers and Leaders of mankind first began their sublime work of assembling and instructing the multitudes of men, for this last work had actually been going on for millions of years, but dealing rather with individuals, numerous enough in the aggregate, than with actual established Schools of secret and formal instruction. Indeed, the Hierarchy of Compassion or of Light, as it is technically known in the Esoteric Philosophy, had been at work in this sublime labor ever since and indeed from before the time of the slow incarnation of the Manasaputras, and therefore the inauguration of such work may be placed with fair accuracy at about the middle point of the preceding great Root-Race or Third. Then was formed or established or set in operation the gathering together of the very highest representatives, spiritually and intellectually speaking, that the human race as yet had given manifestation to; and just herein lies a mystery so subtil and difficult of elucidation that one can do little more than point to it with a suggestive hint or two. Nothing like it is known to the pragmatic West, and the idea is absolutely new to the Occident, so that there is in our ordinary stock of figures of speech or of metaphors little or nothing to which one could point by way of suggestive sample of the verity, or as a suggestive analogy.
However, perhaps the following confessedly imperfect and somewhat vague allusion may be at least helpful: the Silent Watcher of the Globe, through the spiritual-magnetic attraction of like to like, was enabled to attract to the Path of Light, even from the earliest times of the Third Root-Race, certain unusual human individuals, early forerunners of the general Manasaputric 'descent,' and thus to form with these individuals a Focus of Spiritual and Intellectual Light on Earth, this fact signifying not so much an association or society or brotherhood as a unity of human spiritual and intellectual Flames, so to speak, which then represented on Earth the heart of the Hierarchy of Compassion. This Focus or Heart, as the ages passed, slowly attracted to itself other individuals whose increments of energy increased the Holy Flame, and thus kept the Sacred Light alive and present on Earth through the ages which succeeded, which ages brought about the materialization of the human race which culminated in the human weaknesses and malpractices of the later Fourth Root-Race, and thus it was that this Focus of Living Flames became in the middle and later Fourth Root-Race the first and holiest of the true Mystery-Schools which, as the succeeding ages rolled on into the past, became racialized or nationalized into smaller or inferior foci enlightening, each after its own manner and possibilities, the various greater and less sub-races of the Fourth Root-Race.
Now it was just this original focus of Living Flames, which never degenerated nor lost its high status of the mystic center on Earth through which poured the supernal glory of the Hierarchy of Compassion, today represented by the Great Brotherhood of the Mahatmans, which is referred to in the present portion of this study. Thus it is that the Great Brotherhood traces an unbroken and uninterrupted ancestry back to the original focus of Light of the Third Root-Race. (return to text)
446.
"Friends, the struggle for the eternal is not in the daring deed nor yet hundreds of them. It is the calm, unbroken forgetfulness of the lower self for all time. Begin it now on your present plane. You have within you that same guide that the Masters possess. By obeying it they have become what they are." -- W. Q. Judge (return to text)
447. Ch. iv, sl. 7-8. (return to text)
448. Concerning the nature of the cyclical times when the Great Teachers either appear personally or individually in the world of men or send a greater or less Messenger or Envoy for the same purpose, it may be stated that just exactly as the cycles of time are great, small, and of intermediate duration in time-periods, just so are the appearances of the Great Teachers or their Messengers to the multitudes. The greatest Teachers come at the longest cyclical periods -- i. e., at the opening or close of such longest cycles; the Messengers or Envoys are sent forth to do their work in the world at the opening or closing of the short cycles of recurring time-periods; and the Teachers or Messengers of intermediate power come at the beginnings or endings of cycles or time-periods of intermediate length.
Thus, for instance, every Root-Race, of which there are seven during a Globe-Manvantara, has its own Racial Buddha, and, as elsewhere stated, these Root-Races are of time-periods counting millions of years in duration. As an example of the shorter or intermediate cycles or time-periods, there is the regular recurring series of what are called the Messianic Cycles, each such Messianic Cycle being 2160 years in length. This last statement, in other words, again means that for each Precessional Cycle, or Great Year, of 25,920 years' duration, there are twelve such Messianic Cycles; and the observant reader will of course note that such a Messianic Cycle of 2160 years in duration is just half of the very sacred and secret numerical sequence 4320, these figures 432 followed by one or more zeros being known to every student of ancient literature as the sacred and secret numerical sequence known in Babylonia and in ancient and modern India.
This cycle of 2160 years is called the Messianic Cycle -- a modern phrase due to the work of the Theosophical Society -- because it is the recurrent time-period at the opening or close of which a new and somewhat especial spiritual and intellectual effort is made and work undertaken by the Great Brotherhood publicly in the world; and it may as well be frankly stated that H. P. Blavatsky was a Messenger opening such a Messianic Cycle, and that a previous Messianic Cycle ended -- or a new one began -- some 2160 years ago, more or less, with the life and work of the Avatara whom the West knows under the name of Jesus the Christ. (return to text)
449. These Messengers or Envoys or Delegates -- one may call them by any appropriate title -- are not always by any means members of the Great Brotherhood itself; for frequently chelas are empowered, authorized, and directed to undertake this work; and these chelas again are of different degrees of standing or of ability, to use an easily understood word. It is only at extremely rare intervals that a full member of the Great Brotherhood appears personally among men, and this only when the need or the call is extraordinarily great. Far more often is it that some trained and properly instructed chela or disciple is sent forth; and it is just as well to state this with all possible emphasis, because a correct understanding of these few simple facts would have avoided no small amount of extremely unfair and often utterly unjust criticism that has been made by superficial observers or thinkers of more than one such chela-messenger who in the past has appeared, has done his work as best he could, and has then retired or been withdrawn when the work was done that he was sent to do. (return to text)
450. 2 Peter, iii, 3-13. (return to text)
451. Bk. IV, ch. xxiv. (return to text)
452. It may be pointed out that of necessity these archaic prophecies are always clothed in the language and bear the stamp of the ideas, religious and philosophical and scientific, of the people or peoples to whom they were originally delivered. Obviously this was for the purpose of their easy understanding. It would be childish for a Seer to speak to a people in a language and using ideas or metaphors of which the people addressed had no spiritual or intellectual conception whatsoever. The Teacher accommodates his thoughts to those he addresses. (return to text)
453. Vishnu-Purana, Bk. IV, ch. xxiv. (return to text)
454. The author of the present work is well aware that most if not all of the so-called 'Hermetic' writings commonly ascribed to Egyptian sources, are by modern scholars considered to be the productions of writers who lived in the Graeco-Egyptian era. This is quite possible; but it in no wise changes the facts of the observations above, for Egypt although then living in degenerate times was still Egypt, and worship of its gods continued. Furthermore, it is more than probable that even if it be true that these Hermetico-Egyptian books were written by Alexandrian or other Greek or quasi-Greek scribes, the ideas contained in them are traceable to remote Egyptian antiquity. (return to text)
455. Part IX. (return to text)
456. Khalif Al Mamun lived in the ninth century of the Christian Era and held the Mohhammedan Khalifate from 813 to 833. (return to text)
457. Matt., xiii, 3-8. (return to text)
457a. Matt., xxii, 14. (return to text)