Other
Salient Articles

By

H.P.B and W.Q.J


Preface

Important articles by HPB and WQJ that are not present in the three and two volume Theosophical Articles series published by Theosophy Company, Los Angeles, are here reproduced from original sources. We have also included those articles that appear in Raja Yoga, The Heart Doctrine and Vernal Blooms that are missing in the aforementioned Theosophical Articles series. It is hoped that this online edition will afford easy access to these salient teachings of Theosophy pure and simple from the original founders of the modern Theosophical Movement.


Contents

  1. Articles by H.P.B.
  2. To TheosophistsLucifer, October, 1888
  3. Going To And FroLucifer, December, 1890
  4. Indian Days: A Dialogue of Life and DeathTheosophical Forum, May, June, 1899
  5. Articles by W.Q.J.
  6. Through the Gates of GoldThe Path, March, 1887
  7. The Convention Speechesof London, 1892
  8. Of Funds And PropertyThe Path, February, 1894
  9. Letter to the American Section, March, 1894The Theosophical Forum, July, 1935
  10. Letter to A. W. Barnard, November, 1886The Theosophical Forum, August, 1936

To Theosophists

It having been affirmed by some French members of the Theosophical Society (in the Bulletin d'Isis), as well as some in England, that the undersigned had exceeded her constitutional powers as Corresponding Secretary and Co-Founder of the Theosophical Society, in issuing an emergent order dissolving the Staff of the “Isis” Branch of the T. S. in Paris, and its bye-laws, and authorizing Mr. F. K. Gaboriau to reconstitute it ad interim, until the pleasure of the President in Council could be ascertained, the following extracts from the official “Decision” of Colonel H. S. Olcott sitting in arbitration at Paris, on the 17th of September last, will be read with interest and profit.

“. . . Mme. Blavatsky having learnt that Mr. Froment would not accept the Presidency (to which he was entitled as Vice-President), upon the death of the President, Mr. Louis Dramard to succeed, (under the bye-laws of ‘Isis’ — Ed.), and seeing the Branch upon the point of falling into anarchy, issued ad interim (and despite the protestations of Mr. Gaboriau, who preferred to remain secretary) an order by which the Bureau (Staff) was dissolved, its bye-laws cancelled. She named at the same time as President of the Branch, Mr. Gaboriau, one of its founders, who had given many proofs of his devotion to the theosophical cause. Moreover, Mr. Gaboriau was commissioned to compile new bye-laws. The Branch continued to exist, and the rights of its members were maintained pending the adoption of the new bye-laws. It has been objected that Mme. Blavatsky had not the right to act in this manner; that her interference was illegal according to the Rules of the Theosophical Society, because ‘she is not a member of the Isis Branch’, but member of the ‘Blavatsky Lodge’ of London, and that no Branch has a right of jurisdiction outside the limits prescribed in its charter. But, in point of fact, Mme. Blavatsky is a member of no Branch, she is, with me, Co-Founder of the Society, Corresponding Secretary and, ex officio, member of the General Council, of the Executive Council and of the Annual Convention, a sort of Parliament held at Adyar by delegates from all countries.”1

She was then perfectly authorized (competente) to issue the order in question as a temporary measure, an order which must be finally submitted for approbation to the President in Council. The Executive Council, in its Session of 14th July, formally ratified the measure taken by Mme. Blavatsky, a measure which was urgent and which I declare to have been legal. . . .

This settles the question of the actual right of the Corresponding Secretary one of the Founders to interfere in such exceptional cases, and when the welfare and reputation of the Theosophical Society are at stake. In no other, except such a case, would the undersigned have consented, or taken upon herself the right of interfering.

Moreover, the extent and limits of such interference are very succinctly and clearly defined in a letter from one of the Masters, to our President, Colonel Olcott, received by him on his way from India to Europe, only a few weeks ago. Besides general instructions respecting the policy he should pursue in the present crisis, there were the following special paragraphs relating directly to the undersigned. Colonel Olcott's sense of justice is so strong that, although some of the passages in the letter have a tone of reproach for his having permitted himself to think harshly of his old and tried friend and co-worker, he has unreservedly given permission to copy the passages relating to her, in extenso; and with full comprehension of the risk he runs of being calumniated. He has done this in the hope that the warning and declaration conveyed in the letter may prove profitable to others who find themselves in a hostile mood towards the undersigned.

As the Master's letter can interest none except certain members of our Society, it will be sufficient to quote in this magazine only a few select sentences from the said letter:


“. . . . Misunderstandings have grown up between Fellows both in London and Paris which imperil the interests of the movement. You will be told that the chief originator of most, if not of all those disturbances is H. P. B. This is not so, though her presence in England has, of course, a share in them. But the largest share rests with others, whose serene unconsciousness of their own defects is very marked and much to be blamed. . . . Observe your own case, for example. . . . But your revolt, good friend, against her ‘infallibility’ — as you once thought it — has gone too far, and you have been unjust to her,* for which I am sorry . . . .”

“Try to remove such misconceptions as you will find, by kind persuasion and an appeal to the feelings of loyalty to the cause of truth, if not to us. Make all these men feel that we have no favourites, nor affections for persons, but only for their good acts and Humanity as a whole. But we employ agents the best available. Of these, for the last thirty years, the chief has been the personality known as ‘H. P. B.’ . . . Imperfect and very troublesome, no doubt, she proves to some; nevertheless, there is no likelihood of our finding a better one for years to come, and your theosophists should be made to understand it. . . .”

“Since 1885 I have not written, nor caused to be written, save through her agency, direct or remote a letter or a line to anybody in Europe or America, nor have I communicated orally with, or through any third party. Theosophists should learn it. You will understand later the significance of this declaration, so keep it in mind. . . . Her fidelity to our work being constant, and her sufferings having come upon her through it, neither I nor either of my brother associates will desert or supplant her. As I once before remarked, ingratitude is not among our vices. . . . To help you in your present perplexity: H. P. B. has next to no concern with administrative details, and should be kept clear of them. . . . But this you must tell to all: in occult matters she has everything to do . . . . We have not ‘abandoned her’; she is not ‘given over to chelas.’ She is our direct agent. . . . In the adjustment of this European business you will have two things to consider the external and administrative, and the internal psychical. Keep the former under your control, and that of your most prudent associates, jointly; leave the latter to her. You are left to devise the practical details. . . . Only be careful, I say, to discriminate when some emergent interference of hers in practical affairs is referred to your appeal between that which is merely exoteric in origin and effects and that which, beginning on the practical, tends to beget consequences on the spiritual plane. As to the former, you are the best judge; as to the latter, she. . . .”

“. . . (This letter) . . . is merely given you as a warning and a guide. . . .You may use it discreetly, if needs be. . . . Prepare, however, to have the authenticity of the present denied in certain quarters. . . .”

(Signed) K.H.

[Extracts correctly copied. — H. S. Olcott.]


No use repeating over and over again that neither this “Master” nor any other Colonel Olcott and I have to do with, are “Spirits”. They are living and mortal men, whose great Wisdom and Occult Knowledge have won the profound reverence of all those who know them. Those who do not are welcome to spin out any theory they like about the “Adepts” — even to denying point-blank their existence. Meanwhile, the incessant charges and denunciations, the idle gossip and uncharitable constructions to which the President-Founder and the undersigned have been subjected for the last three years force us now to make the declaration which follows.

H. P. Blavatsky.


A JOINT NOTE.

To dispel a misconception that has been engendered by mischief makers, we, the undersigned, Founders of the Theosophical Society, declare that there is no enmity, rivalry, strife, or even coldness, between us, nor ever was, nor any weakening of our joint devotion to the Masters, or to our work, with the execution of which they have honoured us. Widely dissimilar in temperament and mental characteristics, and differing sometimes in views as to methods of propagandism, we are yet of absolutely one mind as to that work. As we have been from the first, so are we now united in purpose and zeal, and ready to sacrifice all, even life, for the promotion of theosophical knowledge, to the saving of mankind from the miseries which spring from ignorance.

H. P. BlavatskyH. S. Olcott

Lucifer, October, 1888


1 Vide art. 17c of the Rules of T.S.

* And if our kind Colonel Olcott was “unjust,” what, then, shall be said of others? — [Ed.]

† The italics are outs. — [Ed.]


Going To and Fro

In a leader of the Pall Mall Gazette of November 25th, headed:

ARE WE CRUEL AS A NATION?

Some Thoughts by the Way on the Rear-guard Atrocities.

the writer, treating of the late African exploration scandals, says:

“Though the African stories are the heaviest blow dealt against the reputation of the Anglo-Saxon race for humanity since the publishing of ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin,’ there is, or appears to be, this difference between the floggings and kidnapping on the Congo and the cow-hiding and kidnapping in Tennessee — that whereas the inbred cruelty of the Southern planters was the result of a savage system, the atrocities of the rear-column were isolated, single, sporadic outrages, confined to a single camp.”

He then proceeds to ask the ominous question: But is this really the case? And relates a ghastly anecdote of which a young Englishman is the “hero,” taken from the second volume of the journal of the brothers Jules and Edmond de Goncourt, and concludes as follows:

“By itself the anecdote might be dismissed as a study in morbid mental anatomy. But ranged with the Jameson story it goes to strengthen the inference that there exists in the English character a strain of latent cruelty which is not sufficiently allowed for when we give our countrymen a free hand in new territories. Our innate love of bullying, repressed but always present in English schoolboys as a class, in favourable surroundings develops into ferocious cruelty for cruelty's sake. The deeds of the old buccaneers are probably the most wantonly ferocious of any recorded in recent history. These men, though largely recruited from other maritime nations, and from the blacks of Africa and the West Indies, were in the main Englishmen. Their captains, distinguished above the rest for cruelty, were nearly all of British stock. Horrible as was the Spaniards' treatment of the Caribs, these Indians could be armed and trusted to fight to the last gasp for their Spanish masters rather than run the risk of capture by the buccaneers. The cruelties inflicted by the latter after taking a settlement are almost incredible. Death by burning and torture was the usual fate of the prisoners; and it is related of one of the captains that he cut out and ate the heart of a Spaniard who refused to betray the place of the buried valuables of the community. But if these are ancient tales — not so very ancient, as history shows — what shall we say of the brutal bullying which still flourishes in public schools? Is this the training to make gentle masters of subject races? Quite recently in one of the best public schools in England a boy was roasted before a fire till the skin peeled off his back; and it is certain that were the present double supervision of masters and monitors relaxed our big boys would make the weaker ones' lives too miserable to be endured. Schoolboy bullying is a purely British institution. It is without a parallel on the Continent; and yet we refuse to believe that the instincts of the boy recur in the man. If we do not, and dispense with that supervision of the rule of our countrymen abroad which we do not remit in the case of our boys at home, we may look to a repetition of the Congo scandals with tolerable certainty.”

Of the past indeed it may be said: “Look not behind or thou art lost”: but of the present, and thereby of the future, what? It is hardly a question of pitting one Western nation against another in this for they are all tarred with the same brush more or less. But what is important is that just as he who cannot recognise his own faults, is the least wise; so, that nation which is the most self-satisfied about its morals and qualities, has least claim for wisdom among its sister nations; especially if it exaggerates and waxes piously indignant over the faults of the rest of the family, and shuts tightly its eyes to its own. Now there is no doubt whatever but that the most piously self-contented race in the world is the Anglo-Saxon stock: the slimy virus of Puritanism has still to work its way out of the system of our national body. We are among nations the “unco' guid,” and the more intellectual we become, the less aware we are of our self-admiration, as the subtle disease strikes in from plane to plane. Are we cruel as a nation? Yes: physically, psychically and mentally we are cruel. We are selfish and unjust right through and therefore must in the nature of things be cruel. Now how can this be changed? Educate ! Educate!! The children are our salvation. Just as the student of occult nature can imbue the new atoms of his body which momentarily replace the old ones, with less vicious tendencies and thus regenerate himself by moral Alchemy and attain the “Elixir of Life,” so can a nation work its own regeneration by educating the new atoms of its national body, its children. Thus the writer of the article has put his finger right on the diseased spot. True it is that bullying is not so flagrant as it was, but it is still popular; and a “fellow” still thinks it a legitimate amusement; in fact a reward of virtue, for was he not “ragged” when he was a “junior” and so has won the prerogative in his turn with suffering. Thus the weary round goes on, and hate breeds hate; unfeelingness and animalism breed their like unceasingly, and the finer sentiments and intuitions are crushed out of all our children and replaced with a Spartan cruelty in which they ignorantly glory, rejoicing to place themselves on a par with the retrograde animalism of the Red Indian. “The child is father to the man,” and the early habits of thought and feeling continue throughout life. Oh the pity of it! When will the mind of the nation, its parents, guardians and preceptors, be strong enough to influence its matter, when? Do you want proof of this reasoned ferocity? Then read the following cutting from The Standard of November 19th:

“EXTRAORDINARY SURGICAL OPERATION NEW YORK, NOV. 18.

“In the Charity Hospital in New York a portion of a living dog's foreleg has been grafted in a boy's leg to take the place of a bone which is wanting. The two are bound together, and the youth and dog lie side by side in one of the hospital cots. In ten or twelve days, if the dog's limb unites with the boy's, the operation will be complete, and the last links of flesh by which the dog is connected with the boy will be cut. The dog is a black spaniel, and was placed under anassthetics.”

We sometimes hear it said of communities that they have “No backs to be thrashed and no souls to be damned”: but they have, and when the rock descends it breaks them to powder. The proofs are only too abundant. The rock is already swaying: let us not shout too loud or we may bring it on our heads!


The theorems of philosophy are to be enjoyed as much as possible as if they were ambrosia and nectar. For the pleasure arising from them is genuine, incorruptible and divine. They are also capable of producing magnanimity; and though they cannot make us eternal beings yet they enable us to obtain a scientific knowledge of eternal natures. If vigour of sensation is considered by us to be an eligible thing, we should much more strenuously endeavour to obtain prudence; for it is as it were the sensitive vigour of the practical intellect which we contain. And as through the former we are not deceived in sensible perceptions so through the latter we avoid false reasoning in practical affairs.

Lucifer, December, 1890


Indian Days: A Dialogue of Life and Death*

THE heat was unbearable the day we spent in D . It was so hot that one was inclined to suspect that Surya meant to bake the Jats, who are his faithful worshippers, alive, as well as ourselves, who so constantly cursed his too scorching caresses. The glaring rays of sun poured liquid gold on the marble walls and cupolas of the Kiosks, lay in blinding spots on the slumbering waters of the tanks, and darted dazzling arrows into everything, living or dead. Even the flocks of parrots and peacocks, which are as plentiful in the gardens of India as sparrows in our Russian cabbage beds, were forced to hide in the thickest part of the shrubbery.

Great was the silence around us. Everything slept, tingling with heat and languor. We took refuge in a marble summer house, lofty and well hidden under the thick trees, so that we enjoyed under this peaceful shelter a sort of comparative coolness. It stood in the middle of a small pond, protected and darkened by various creepers. While there, it was impossible to feel either weary or overheated. Here was a haven of shadow and coolness, but outside the limit of the miniature lake, a regular Hades of heat lay ablaze. The very ground seemed to crackle and open in numberless chinks, under the flaming kisses of the formidable spring sun. His rays, like fiery tongues, licked the foliage of the garden, still luxurious but already fading.

Roses pressed their petals together or shed them on the ground. Even the lotus and the water lily curled the edges of their thick, hardy leaves, as if gingerly avoiding the burning touch.

Orchids alone, “those blossoms of passion,” lifted high their many-coloured, insect-like chalices, drinking in this torrent of fire as other flowers drink in refreshing dew.

What an original and lovely garden! It was set on a dead rock measuring hardly an acre, but containing over two hundred large and small fountains. The keeper, a clean-shaven old man, all sugar in words and manner, assured us that only a part of the fountains were playing, many being out of order and stopped; but that on the day of a great reception in D , that of the Prince of Wales, if I am not mistaken, there were six hundred of them. However, we were perfectly satisfied with the two hundred. For a few rupees the gardeners enabled us to feel deliciously cool during the hottest hours of the day, and when the night came, to walk along a path which was bordered with high sprays of fresh water instead of trees. I have never seen anything comparable to these two walls of water dust sparkling in the moonlight and passing through all the shades of the rainbow.

Almost abandoned by human beings, the lovely garden is running wild, given over as it is to the sole use of an army of magnificent peacocks, which are also getting as wild as the garden. The favourite birds of Juno, whom India calls Sarasvati, fill the garden, hundreds of them composedly pacing up and down the path, sweeping with their long tails the accumulation of dry leaves and rubbish which evidently had not been removed from the path for years. The birds are strung along the branches of the trees like so many beads, giving to the old garden the appearance of an enchanted wood in some fairy-land. In the glare of an Indian day, the shaggy old trees move as if expanding and contracting in gentle breathing, and thousands of inquisitive eyes peep at you from behind the thick foliage, sparkling like huge blue sapphires, with reflections of gold. These are the eyes on the tails of the restless peacocks, ever moving on the branches.

The first time I entered the garden, I stood aghast a long while utterly unable to account for this strange phantasmagoria. But as soon as my curiosity took the shape of action and I moved forward to examine the wonder more closely, I had to suffer the consequences of my rashness. One of the peacocks, frightened by my approach, darted past me, and in his heavy flight, not only knocked the sun hat off my head, but myself as well off my feet. So my reflections on the theme of the wonders of India were interrupted. The exploration of the garden, however, soothed my feelings and the Babu avenged my fall by tearing a whole handful of bright feathers from the tail of another peacock. “A souvenir from D ,” he said. He did not seem to be in the least moved by the consideration that his victim was perfectly innocent, having taken no part in the offence.

The garden is cut in all directions by a regular network of narrow paths. These were going to be cleaned, the gardener explained to us, but not before he heard about some new “distinguished visitor” having started for D ; which led us to conclude, with our usual insight, that we were not included in the category of those lucky people. In all directions we saw waters peacefully slumbering in their nests of marble, snugly covered with thick blankets of green scum. The receptacles of the fountains, the ponds and miniature lakes had long turned into a sort of green gruel. Only the water-works right in front of the palace are regularly attended to, and add immensely to the beauty of the lovely wood. In spite of its neglected appearance, the octagonal pond in the centre, where we were taking refuge, is especially beautiful. Surrounded by smaller fountains with their high sprays flying into the air from the bowers of luxuriant tropical growth, we spent a blissful day, as if in some aquatic kingdom. Four avenues of waterworks lead crosswise to the pond and you reach the Kiosk which sheltered us, by going over four little bridges with lace-like parapets of white marble.

We were tired of talking, and sat in silence; each of us was left to his own reflections and occupations. I was trying to read, but my thoughts turned more to the Thakur than to the contents of the book. With his head half hidden by the thick foliage of some creeper, and only, his long white Beard protruding, our respected chief, Colonel O., was snoring gently. Narayan and Mulji crouched on the floor and the Babu, taking the place of some absent idol, sat with his legs crossed on the high pedestal and to all appearances was also snoozing.

We sat on, half dozing, motionless and silent for a long while. At last towards half past five, the slumbering gardens began to wake up. The heat grew less; the peacocks crawled out of their hiding places and flocks of golden-green parrots called out to each other on the tops of the trees. A few moments more and the sun will disappear under the distant line of the salt lakes. Then exhausted nature will be granted a respite until next morning and will grow cool for the new ordeal by fire.

I put my book by, and looked around with increased interest, everything beginning to breathe freely and to move. The garden, the very image of Daniel’s fiery furnace a moment ago, was now turning into a grove in some classical idyl. But in vain would one look for troops of merry nymphs playfully throwing water at each other; in vain would one listen for the gay notes of Pan’s piping. The limpid waters of the tank reflected only the deep blue sky, and the peacocks roosting on the lace-like bridges. Preparing for sleep, they played with their tails like so many Spanish ladies with their fans; they spread them and then shut them again, admiringly looking at their own images reflected in the water below. At last, having sent us a few more golden rays, the sun departed and a faint cooling- breeze began to reach us. It was so pleasant in our summer house, so cool and quiet, that we decidedly refused to go into the stuffy halls of the palace for dinner, and asked for our food to be served to us where we were, deputing the Babu to settle the matter.

The frisky Bengali would not go over the bridge. He said he recognized the peacock he had plundered, sitting right on the balustrade, and feared the bird’s revenge. So it would fare better with him if he took a safer and a shorter way to the shore, which he did by plunging head foremost into the water directly from the pedestal on which he was enthroned throughout the afternoon. The noise of the splashing water startled the Colonel, who said he wanted to know whether the Babu meant to get drowned, plunging into unknown waters in this foolhardy way.

“Better to get drowned, than to risk the revenge of an infuriated glamour!” shouted the latter, noisily blowing the water from his mouth and nostrils.

“What glamour?” asked our president, pacified by the fact that the water hardly reached the Babu’s chest.

“Why, the accursed peacock, of course. I have recognized him for a certainty for the same bird who visited us yesterday in Burtpore,” went on the Bengali at the top of his voice, stepping with great difficulty on the muddy bed of the tank. “Do you think that I did not notice the pretended bird and Mulji exchanging meaning glances behind my back!”

“A very round-about way of making fun of me,” said the “General” frowning. “This Nastika never believed in anything, laughing at everything on earth.”

“Well, now is your opportunity to laugh at him. Just look at him,” I said, bursting into laughter.

Indeed the Babu was a sight. With an effort he extricated himself from the mud, and climbing the high white marble banks, left behind him long streaks of greenish mud. Covered with mud and weeds all over, he had lost his likeness to humanity.

“You are like a drowned man, my poor Babu,” I said laughingly. “It is the second bath you have taken today. The water has a wonderful attraction for you. Surely after death you will be turned into a water spirit; but I hope you will escape death by drowning.”

“What I was, that I am and that I shall be,” he answered, quoting one of the aphorisms of his all-denying sect. “Dust I was, dust I shall be, and besides they say that drowning is a very pleasant death, Mem-Sahib.”

“Who you are, everybody sees; what you shall be, I do not know, but undoubtedly in your last incarnation you were a Newfoundland puppy!” retorted Mulji.

But the remark was lost on the Babu. He evidently was a little ashamed of his looks, and ran towards the house at full speed.

Were Narayan right and were I actually endowed with the gift of prophesy, as he pretended, I would rather have swallowed my own tongue than have given utterance to my last remark. Poor boy, little did he think that an untimely and painful death was in store for him in the yellow waters of the Ganges. It is five years since I saw him last, and two since his terrible accident, but I can never think about him and the pleasant days we spent together without feeling sad, sad at heart. I often dream — only too often — of his fragile, childlike little body emerging from the water all covered with the green-black mud of that tank at D . It seems to me I can see his eyes fixed on mine inquiringly, those eyes of his so full of light and mischief then, glazed and dim a long time now. It seems to me I can hear my own remark, “I hope you will escape death by drowning,” and his light-hearted answer, “what I was, that I shall be; dust I was, dust I shall be,” and I wake up shuddering with horror and pity.

The poor fellow was drowned in the most horrible, and at the same time ridiculous manner. Between Dehra Dun and Haridwar the Ganges is not the great river it becomes further on, but a mad torrent which is swift as it is shallow. In one place especially, the river is to be crossed only with the aid of a small footbridge, while the horses must be led, their legs only partly covered by the water. But in spite of all warning, the Babu would cross over on horseback. The horse was soon knocked off its legs, and the boy could not free himself for some reason or other, most probably his foot having got entangled in the stirrup. The mad torrent dragged both horse and rider over a mile, until they finally disappeared, having reached a place where the river forms an abrupt waterfall.

“But is it really possible? Has he actually become dust?” I often ask myself when my thoughts turn to the past, and invariably my mind turns to another conversation, a conversation which took place only a few days after our pleasant stay in D , and which may throw some light on the insoluble enigma of death. As usual, Narayan and the Babu came to disagree on some important point and asked Thakur to help them out of their difficulties.

I have written down this remarkable conversation in full as I remember it, in the hopes that serious readers may profit by it. Not that it definitely settled questions which to me personally are a constant torment; but it gives a complete idea of the point of view from which the best philosophy of the East considers life beyond the grave, its mysteries, and, in general, the soul of man.

“Master,” Narayan had said to Thakur, in the midst of a very hot dispute with the poor Babu, “what is it he is saying, and can one listen to him without being disgusted? He says that nothing remains of the man after he is dead, but that the body of the man simply resolves itself into its component elements, and that what we call the soul, and he calls the temporary consciousness, separates itself, disappearing like the steam of hot water as it cools.”

“Do you find this so very astonishing?” said the Master. “The Babu is a Charvaka1 and he tells you only that which every other Charvaka would have told you.”

“But the Charvakas are mistaken. There are many people who believe that the real man is not his physical covering, but dwells in the mind, in the seat of consciousness. Do you mean to say that in any case the consciousness may leave the soul after death?”

“In his case it may,” answered Thakur quietly; “because he sincerely and firmly believes in what he says.”

Narayan cast an astonished and even frightened look at Thakur, and the Babu — who always felt some restraint in the presence of the latter — looked at us with a victorious smile.

“But how is this?” went on Narayan. “The Vedanta teaches us that the spirit is immortal and that the human soul does not die in Parabrahman. Are there any exceptions?”

“In the fundamental laws of the spiritual world there can be no exceptions; but there are laws for the blind and laws for those who see.”

“I understand that, but in this case, as I have told him already, his full and final disappearance of consciousness is nothing but the aberration of a blind man, who, not seeing the sun, denies its existence, but all the same he will see the sun with his spiritual sight after he is dead.”

“He will not see anything,” said the Master. “Denying the existence of the sun now, he could not see it on the other side of the grave.”

Seeing that Narayan looked rather upset and that even we, the Colonel and myself, stared at him in the expectation of a more definite answer, Thakur went on reluctantly:

“You speak about the spirit of the Spirit, that is to say about the Atma, confusing this spirit with the soul of the mortal, with Manas. No doubt the spirit is immortal, because being without beginning it is without end; but it is not the spirit that is concerned in the present conversation. It is the human, self-conscious soul. You confuse it with the former, and the Babu denies the one and the other, soul and spirit, and so you do not understand each other.”

“I understand him,” said Narayan.

“But you do not understand me,” interrupted the Master. “I will try to speak more clearly. What you want to know is this. Whether the full loss of consciousness and feeling of oneself is possible after death, even in the case of a confirmed Materialist. Is that it?”

Narayan answered: “Yes; because he completely denies everything that is an undoubted truth for us, and in which we firmly believe.”

“All right,” said the Master, “To this I will answer positively as follows, though this does not prevent me from believing as firmly as you do in our teaching, which designates the period between two lives as only temporary; whether it is one year or a million that this entr’acte between the two acts of the illusion of life lasts, the posthumous state may be perfectly similar to the state of a man in a very deep fainting-fit, without any breaking of the fundamental rules. Therefore, the Babu in his personal case is perfectly right.”

“But how is this,” said the Colonel, “since the rule of immortality does not admit of any exceptions, as you said?”

“Of course it does not admit of any exceptions, but only in the case of things that really exist. One who has studied the Mandukya Upanishad and Vedanta-sara ought not to ask such questions,” said the Master with a reproachful smile.

“But it is precisely the Mandukya Upanishad” timidly observed Narayan, “which teaches us that between the Buddhi and the Manas, as between the Ishvara and Prajna, there is no more difference in reality than between a forest and its trees, between a lake and its waters.”

“Perfectly right,” said the Master, “because one or even a hundred trees which have lost their vital sap, or are even uprooted, cannot prevent the forest from remaining a forest.”

“Yes,” said Narayan, “but in this comparison, Buddhi is the forest, and Manas Taijasi the trees, and if the former be immortal, then how is it possible for the Manas Taijasi, which is the same as Buddhi, to lose its consciousness before a new incarnation? That is where my difficulty lies.”

“You will have no difficulties,” said the Master, “if you take the trouble not to confuse the abstract idea of the whole with its casual change of form. Remember that if in talking about Buddhi we may say that it is unconditionally immortal, we cannot say the same either about Manas, or about Taijasi. Neither the former nor the latter have any existence separated from the Divine Soul, because the one is an attribute of the terrestrial personality, and the second is identically the same as the first, only with the additional reflection in it of Buddhi. In its turn, Buddhi would be an impersonal spirit without this element, which it borrows from the human soul, and which conditions it and makes of it something which has the appearance of being separate from the Universal Soul, during all the cycle of the man’s incarnations. If you say, therefore, that Buddhi-Manas cannot die and cannot lose consciousness, either in eternity or during the temporary periods of suspension, you would be perfectly right; but to apply this axiom to the qualities of Buddhi-Manas is the same as if you were arguing that as the soul of the Colonel is immortal, the red on his cheeks is also immortal. And so it is evident you have mixed up the reality, Sat, with its manifestation. You have forgotten that united to the Manas only, the luminousness of Taijasi becomes a question of time, as the immortality and the posthumous consciousness of the terrestrial personality of the man become conditional qualities, depending on the conditions and beliefs created by itself during its lifetime. Karma, the law of perfect balance in the Universe and man, acts unceasingly, and we reap in the next world the fruit of that which we ourselves have sown in this life.”

“But, if my Ego may find itself after the destruction of my body in a state of complete unconsciousness, then where is the punishment for the sins committed by me in my lifetime?” asked the Colonel, pensively stroking his beard.

“Our philosophy teaches us,” answered Thakur, “that the punishment reaches the Ego only in its next incarnation, and that immediately after our death, we meet only the rewards for the sufferings of the terrestrial life, sufferings that were not deserved by us. So, as you may see, the whole of the punishment consists in the absence of reward, in the complete loss of the consciousness of happiness and rest. Karma is the child of the terrestrial Ego, the fruits of the acts of his visible personality, even of the thoughts and intentions of the spiritual ‘I.’ But at the same time it is a tender mother, who heals the wounds given in the preceding life before striking this Ego and giving him new ones. In the life of a mortal there is no mishap or sorrow which is not a fruit and direct consequence of a sin committed in a preceding incarnation; but not having preserved the slightest recollection of it in his present life, and not feeling himself guilty, and, therefore, suffering unjustly, the man deserves consolation and full rest on the other side of the grave. For our spiritual Ego, death is always a redeemer and a friend. It is either the peaceful sleep of a baby or a sleep full of blissful dreams and reveries.”

“As far as I remember, the periodical incarnations of the Sutratma2 are compared in the Upanishads to the terrestrial life which is spent, term by term, in sleeping and waking. Is that so?” I asked, wishing to renew the first question of Narayan.

“Yes, it is so; that is a very good comparison.”

“I do not doubt it is good,” I said, “but I hardly understand it. After the awakening, the man merely begins a new day, but his soul, as well as his body, are the same as they were yesterday; whereas, in every new incarnation not only his exterior, sex, and even personality, but, as it seems to me, all his moral qualities, are changed completely. And then, again, how can this comparison be called true, when people, after their awakening, remember very well not only what they were doing yesterday, but many days, months, and even years ago, whereas, in their present incarnations, they do not preserve the slightest recollection about any past life, whatever it was. Of course a man, after he is awake, may forget what he has seen in his dreams, but still he knows that he was sleeping and that during his sleep he lived. But about our previous life we cannot say even that we lived. What do you say to this?”

“There are some people who do remember some things,” enigmatically answered Thakur, without giving a direct answer to my question.

“I have some suspicions on this point, but it cannot be said about ordinary mortals. Then how are we, we who have not reached as yet the Samma Sambuddha,3 to understand this comparison?”

“You can understand it when you better understand the characteristics of the three kinds of what we call sleep.”

“This is not an easy task you propose to us,” said the Colonel, laughingly. “The greatest of our physiologists have got so entangled in this question that it has become more confused than ever.”

“It is because they have undertaken what they had no business to undertake, — the answering of this question being the duty of the psychologist, of whom there are hardly any among your European scientists. A Western psychologist is only another name for a physiologist, with the difference that they work on principles still more material. I have recently read a book by Maudsley which showed me clearly that they try to cure the soul’s diseases without believing in the existence of the soul.”

“All this is very interesting,” I said, “but it leads us away from the original object of our questions, which you seem reluctant to clear up for us, Thakur Sahib. It looks as if you were confirming and even encouraging the theories of the Babu. Remember that he says he disbelieves in the posthumous life, the life after death, and denies the possibility of any kind of consciousness exactly on the grounds of our not remembering anything of our past terrestrial life.”

“I repeat again that the Babu is a Charvaka, who only repeats what he has been taught. It is not the system of the Materialists that I confirm and encourage, but the truth of the Babu’s opinions in what concerns his personal state after death.”

“Then do you mean to say that such people as the Babu are to be excepted from the general rule?”

“Not at all. Sleep is a general and unchangeable law for man as well as for every other terrestrial creature, but there are various kinds of sleep and still more various dreams.”

“But it is not only the life after death and its dreams that he denies. He denies the immortal life altogether, as well as the immortality of his own spirit.”

“In the first instance he acts according to the canons of modern European Science, founded on the experience of our five senses. In this he is guilty only with respect to those people who do not hold his opinions. In the second instance again he is perfectly right. Without the previous interior consciousness and the belief in the immortality of the soul, the soul cannot become Buddhi Taijasi. It will remain Manas.4 But for Manas alone there is no immortality. In order to live a conscious life in the world on the other side of the grave, the man must have acquired belief in that world, in this terrestrial life. These are the two aphorisms of Occult Science, on which is constructed all our Philosophy in respect of posthumous consciousness and the immortality of the Soul. Sutratma gets only what it deserves. After the destruction of the body there begins for the Sutratma either a period of full awakening, or a chaotic sleep, or a sleep without reveries or dreams. Following your physiologists who found the causality of dreams in the unconscious preparation for them in the waking state, why should we not acknowledge the same with respect to posthumous dreams? I repeat what the Vedanta Sara teaches us: Death is sleep. After death there begins before our spiritual eyes a representation of a programme that was learned by heart by us in our lifetime, and sometimes even invented by us, the practical realization of our true beliefs, or of illusions created by ourselves. These are the posthumous fruit of the tree of life. Of course the belief or disbelief in the fact of conscious immortality cannot influence the unconditioned actuality of the fact itself, once it exists. But the belief or disbelief of separate personalities cannot but condition the influence of this fact in its effect on such personalities. Now I hope you understand?”

“I begin to understand. The Materialists, disbelieving everything that cannot be controlled by their five senses and their so-called scientific reason and denying every spiritual phenomenon, point to the terrestrial as the only conscious existence. Accordingly they will get only what they have deserved. They will lose their personal I; they will sleep a sleep of unconsciousness until a new awakening. Have I understood rightly?”

“Nearly. You may add to that that the Vedantins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted reality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual spheres must be considered a reality because it is there that lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sutratma. Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived one, in which everything except its spiritual prototype is doomed to complete destruction.”

“But excuse me, Thakur. Is it possible that my personality, my terrestrial conscious I, could perish not only temporarily, as in the case of a Materialist, but still worse — leave no traces of itself whatever?”

“According to our teachings, not only is it to perish, but it must perish in all its completeness, except the one principle in it which, united to Buddhi, has become purely spiritual and now forms an inseparable whole. But in the case of a hardened Materialist it may happen that neither consciously nor unconsciously has anything of its personal I ever penetrated into Buddhi. The latter will not take away into eternity any atom of such a terrestrial personality. Your spiritual I is immortal, but from your present personality it will carry away only that which has deserved immortality, that is to say only the aroma of the flower mowed down by death.”

“But the flower itself, the terrestrial I?”

“The flower itself, as all the past and future flowers which have blossomed and will blossom after them on the same mother branch, will become dust. Your real I is not, as you ought to know yourself, your body that now sits before me, nor your Manas, but your Sutratma-Buddhi.”

“But this does not explain to me why you call our posthumous life immortal, endless, and real, and the terrestrial one a mere shadow. As far as I understand, according to your teaching, even our posthumous life has its limits, and though being longer than the terrestrial life, still has its end.”

“Most decidedly. The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life trans-sepulchral, are limited in their continuation, and even the very number of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the hours of his posthumous life, when unveiled he stands face to face with truth and the shortlived mirages of his terrestrial existences are far from him, compose or make up, in our ideas, the only reality. Such breaks, in spite of the fact that they are finite, do double service to the Sutratma, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks Sutratma-Buddhi could never reach it. Sutratma is the actor, and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's parts. I suppose you would not call these parts, much less the costumes, the personality of the actor. Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of births up to the very threshold of Paranirvana, many such parts, which are often disagreeable to it, but like a bee, collecting honey from every flower, and leaving the rest of the plant to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality, the Sutratma, collecting only the nectar of mortal qualities and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which it has to clothe itself, at last unites all these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a Dhyan Chohan. So much the worse for those terrestrial personalities from whom it could not gather anything. Of course, such personalities could not consciously outlive their terrestrial existence.”

“Then the immortality of the terrestrial personality still remains an open question, and even immortality itself is not unconditioned?”

“By no means!” said the Master. “What I mean is that immortality could not be claimed for what has never had any existence; for everything that exists in Sat, or has its origin in Sat, immortality as well as infinity is unconditioned. Mulaprakriti is the reverse of Parabrahman, but they are both one and the same. The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit, force and matter, have neither end nor beginning, but the shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, their exterior so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality itself, only imaginary.”

“Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the phantasm waking?”

“This comparison was made by me to facilitate your comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions it is perfectly accurate.”

“You say that posthumous life is founded on a basis of perfect justice, on the merited recompense for all the terrestrial sorrows. You say that Sutratma is sure to seize the smallest opportunity of using the spiritual qualities in each of its incarnations. Then how can you admit that the spiritual personality of our Babu, the personality of this boy, who is so ideally honest and noble-minded, so perfectly kind-hearted in spite of all his disbeliefs, will not reach immortality, and will perish like the dust of a dried flower?”

“Who, except himself,” answered the Master, “ever doomed him to such a fate? I have known the Babu from the time he was a small boy, and I am perfectly sure that the harvest of the Sutratma in his case will be very abundant. Though his Atheism and Materialism are far from being feigned, still he cannot die for ever in the whole fullness of his individuality.”

“But Thakur Sahib, did not you yourself confirm the rightness of his notions as to his personal state on the other side of the grave and do not these notions consist in his firm belief that after his death every trace of consciousness will disappear?”

“I confirmed them, and I confirm them again. When travelling in a railway train you may fall asleep and sleep all the time, while the train stops at many stations; but surely there will be a station where you will awake, and the aim of your journey will be reached in full consciousness. You say you are dissatisfied with my comparison of death and sleep, but remember, the most ordinary of mortals knows three different kinds of sleep — dreamless sleep, a sleep with vague chaotic dreams, and at last a sleep with dreams so very vivid and clear that for the time being they become a perfect reality for the sleeper. Why should not you admit an exact analogy in what happens to the soul freed from its body? After their parting there begins for the soul, according to its deserts, and chiefly to its faith, either a perfectly conscious life, a life of semi-consciousness, or a dreamless sleep which is equal to the state of non-being. This is the realization of the programme of which I spoke, a programme previously invented and prepared by the Materialist. But there are Materialists and Materialists. A bad man or simply a great egoist, who adds to his full disbelief a perfect indifference to his fellow beings, must unquestionably leave his personality for ever at the threshold of death. He has no means of linking himself to the Sutratma, and the connection between them is broken forever with his last sigh; but such Materialists as our Babu will sleep only one station. There will be a time when he will recognize himself in eternity, and will be sorry he lost a single day of the life eternal. I see your objections — I see you are going to say that hundreds and thousands of human lives, lived through by the Sutratma, correspond in our Vedantin notions to a perfect disappearance of every personality. This is my answer. Take a comparison of eternity with the single life of a man, which is composed of so many days, weeks, months, and years. If a man has preserved a good memory in his old age he may easily recall every important day or year of his past life, but even in case he has forgotten some of them, is not his personality one and the same through all his life? For the Ego every separate life is what every separate day is in the life of a man.”

“Then, would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a birth for a new life, or, still better, a going back to eternity?”

“This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of material life the words ‘live’ and ‘exist’ are not applicable to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of their meanings, the Vedantins would soon arrive at the ideas which are common in our times among the American Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not nominal Christians, so amongst the Vedantins — the life on the other side of the grave is the land where there are no tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, and where the just realize their full perfection.”

The Theosophical Forum, May, June, 1899


* Translated from the Russian by Vera Jelikhovska Johnston.

1 A sect of Bengali Materialists.

2 In the Vedanta, Buddhi, in its combinations with the moral qualities, consciousness, and the notions of the personalities in which it was incarnated, is called Sutratma, which literally means the “thread soul,” because a whole row of human lives is strung on this thread like the pearls of a necklace. Manas must become Taijasi in order to reach and to see itself in eternity, when united to Sutratma. But often, owing to sin and associations with the purely terrestrial region, this very luminousness disappears completely.

3 The knowledge of one’s past incarnations. Only Yogis and Adepts of the Occult Sciences possess this knowledge, by the aid of the most ascetic life.

4 Without the full assimilation with the Divine Soul, the terrestrial soul, or Manas, cannot live in eternity a conscious life. It will become Buddhi-Taijasi or Buddhi-Manas, only in case its general tendencies during its lifetime lead it towards the spiritual world. Then full of the essence and penetrated by the light of its Divine Soul, the Manas will disappear in Buddhi, will assimilate itself with Buddhi, still preserving a spiritual consciousness of its terrestrial personality; otherwise Manas, that is to say, the human mind, founded on the five physical senses, our terrestrial or our personal soul, will be plunged into a deep sleep without awakening, without dreams, without consciousness, till a new reincarnation.


Through the Gates of Gold

The most notable book for guidance in Mysticism which has appeared since Light on the Path was written has just been published under the significant title of Through the Gates of Gold.1 Though the author’s name is withheld, the occult student will quickly discern that it must proceed from a very high source. In certain respects the book may be regarded as a commentary on Light on the Path. The reader would do well to bear this in mind. Many things in that book will be made clear by the reading of this one, and one will be constantly reminded of that work, which has already become a classic in our literature. Through the Gates of Gold is a work to be kept constantly at hand for reference and study. It will surely take rank as one of the standard books of Theosophy.

The “Gates of Gold” represent the entrance to that realm of the soul unknowable through the physical perceptions, and the purpose of this work is to indicate some of the steps necessary to reach their threshold. Through its extraordinary beauty of style and the clearness of its statement it will appeal to a wider portion of the public than most works of a Theosophical character. It speaks to the Western World in its own language, and in this fact lies much of its value.

Those of us who have been longing for something “practical” will find it here, while it will probably come into the hands of thousands who know little or nothing of Theosophy, and thus meet wants deeply felt though unexpressed. There are also doubtless many, we fancy, who will be carried far along in its pages by its resistless logic until they encounter something which will give a rude shock to some of their old conceptions, which they have imagined as firmly based as upon a rock — a shock which may cause them to draw back in alarm, but from which they will not find it so easy to recover, and which will be likely to set them thinking seriously.

The titles of the five chapters of the book are, respectively, “The Search for Pleasure,” “The Mystery of the Threshold,” “The Initial Effort,” “The Meaning of Pain,” and “The Secret of Strength.” Instead of speculating upon mysteries that lie at the very end of man’s destiny, and which cannot be approached by any manner of conjecture, the work very sensibly takes up that which lies next at hand, that which constitutes the first step to be taken if we are ever to take a second one, and teaches us its significance. At the outset we must cope with sensation and learn its nature and meaning. An important teaching of Light on the Path has been misread by many. We are not enjoined to kill out sensation, but to “kill out desire for sensation,” which is something quite different. “Sensation, as we obtain it through the physical body, affords us all that induces us to live in that shape,” says this work. The problem is, to extract the meaning which it holds for us. That is what existence is for. “If men will but pause and consider what lessons they have learned from pleasure and pain, much might be guessed of that strange thing which causes these effects.

The question concerning results seemingly unknowable, that concerning the life beyond the Gates,” is presented as one that has been asked throughout the ages, coming at the hour “when the flower of civilization had blown to its full, and when its petals are but slackly held together,” the period when man reaches the greatest physical development of his cycle. It is then that in the distance a great glittering is seen, before which many drop their eyes bewildered and dazzled, though now and then one is found brave enough to gaze fixedly on this glittering, and to decipher something of the shape within it. “Poets and philosophers, thinking and teachers, all those who are the ‘elder brothers of the race’ — have beheld this sight from time to time, and some among them have recognized in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the Gates of Gold.

Those Gates admit us to the sanctuary of man’s own nature, to the place whence his life-power comes, and where he is priest of the shrine of life. It needs but a strong hand to push them open, we are told. “The courage to enter them is the courage to search the recesses of one’s nature without fear and without shame. In the first part, the essence, the flavour of the man, is found the key which unlocks those great Gates.

The necessity of killing out the sense of separateness is profoundly emphasized as one of the most important factors in this process. We must divest ourselves of the illusions of the material life.

“When we desire to speak with those who have tried the Golden Gates and pushed them open, then it is very necessary — in fact it is essential — to discriminate, and not bring into our life the confusions of our sleep. If we do, we are reckoned as madmen, and fall back into the darkness where there is no friend but chaos. This chaos has followed every effort of man that is written in history; after civilization has flowered, the flower falls and dies, and winter and darkness destroy it.”

In this last sentence is indicated the purpose of civilization. It is the blossoming of a race, with the purpose of producing a certain spiritual fruit; this fruit having ripened, then the degeneration of the great residuum begins, to be worked over and over again in the grand fermenting processes of reincarnation. Our great civilization is now flowering and in this fact we may read the reason for the extraordinary efforts to sow the seed of the Mystic Teachings wherever the mind of man may be ready to receive it. In the “Mystery of Threshold,” we are told that

“. . . only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the Golden Gates. He must be capable of testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction every joy existence has to give; and he must be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and that without suffering from the denial.”

The fact that the way is different for each individual is finely set forth in “The Initial Effort,” In the words that man “may burst the shell that holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides him from the eternal, at any moment where it is easiest for him to do so; and most often this point will be where he least expects to find it.” By this we may see the uselessness of laying down arbitrary laws in the matter.

The meaning of those important words, “All steps are necessary to make up the ladder,” finds a wealth of illustration here. These sentences are particularly pregnant:

“Spirit is not a gas created by matter, and we cannot create our future by forcibly using one material agent leaving out the rest. Spirit is the great life on which matter rests, as does the rocky world on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can break our limitations we find ourselves on that marvellous shore where Wordsworth once saw the gleam of the gold.”

Virtue, being of the material life, man has not the power to carry it with him, “yet the aroma of his good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the odour of crime and cruelty.”

“To the one who has lifted the golden latch the spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all softness arises, is opened and becomes part of his heritage. But before this can be reached a heavy weight has to be lifted from the heart, an iron bar which holds it down and prevents it arising in its strength.”

The author here wishes to show that there is sweetness and light in occultism, and not merely a wide dry level of dreadful Karma, such as some Theosophists are prone to dwell on. And this sweetness and light may be reached when we discover the iron bar and raising it shall permit the heart to be free. This iron bar is what the Hindus call “the knot of the heart!”2 In their scriptures they talk of unloosing the knot, and say that when that is accomplished freedom is near. But what is the iron bar and the knot? is the question we must answer. It is the astringent power of self — of egotism — of the idea of separateness. This idea has many strongholds. It holds its most secret court and deepest counsels near the far removed depths and centre of the heart. But it manifests itself first, in that place which is nearest to our ignorant perceptions, where we see it first after beginning the search. When we assault and conquer it there it disappears. It has only retreated to the next row of outworks where for a time it appears not to our sight, and we imagine it killed, while it is laughing at our imaginary conquests and security. Soon again we find it and conquer again, only to have it again retreat. So we must follow it up if we wish to grasp it at least to its final stand just near the “kernel of the heart.” There it has become “an iron bar that holds down the heart,” and there only can the fight be really won. That disciple is fortunate who is able to sink past all the pretended outer citadels and seize at once this personal devil who holds the bar of iron, and there wage the battle. If won there, it is easy to return to the outermost places and take them by capitulation. This is very difficult, for many reasons. It is not a mere juggle of words to speak of this trial. It is a living tangible thing that can be met by any real student. The great difficulty of rushing at once to the centre lies in the unimaginable terrors which assault the soul on its short journey there. This being so it is better to begin the battle on the outside in just the way pointed out in this book and Light on the Path, by testing experience and learning from it.

In the lines quoted the author attempts to direct the eyes of a very materialistic age to the fact which is an accepted one by all true students of occultism, that the true heart of a man — which is visibly represented by the muscular heart — is the focus point for spirit, for knowledge, for power; and that from that point the converged rays begin to spread out fan-like, until they embrace the Universe. So it is the Gate. And it is just at that neutral spot of concentration that the pillars and the doors are fixed. It is beyond it that the glorious golden light burns, and throws up a “burnished glow.” We find in this the same teachings as in the Upanishads. The latter speaks of “the ether which is within the heart,” and also says that we must pass across that ether.

“The Meaning of Pain” is considered in a way which throws a great light on the existence of that which for ages has puzzled many learned men.

“Pain arouses, softens, breaks and destroys. Regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint, it appears as a medicine, as a knife, as a weapon, as a poison, in turn. It is an implement, a thing which is used, evidently. What we desire to discover is, who is the user; what part of ourselves is it that demands the presence of this thing so hateful to the rest?”

The task is, to rise above both pain and pleasure and unite them to our service.

“Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained. Where there is neither male nor female, neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in man dominant, and then is life real.”

The following passage can hardly fail to startle many good people:

“Destiny, the inevitable, does indeed exist for the race and for the individual; but who can ordain this save the man himself? There is no clue in heaven or earth to the existence of any ordainer other than the man who suffers or enjoys that which is ordained.”

But can any earnest student of Theosophy deny, or object to this? Is it not a pure statement of the law of Karma? Does it not agree perfectly with the teaching of the Bhagavad-Gītā? There is surely no power which sits apart like a judge in court, and fines us or rewards us for this misstep or that merit; it is we who shape, or ordain, our own future.

God is not denied. The seeming paradox that a God exists within each man is made clear when we perceive that separate existence is an illusion; the physical, which makes us separate individuals, must eventually fall away, leaving each man one with all men, and with God, who is the Infinite.

And the passage which will surely be widely misunderstood is that in “The Secret of Strength.”

“Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil. Nature knows no such distinctions.”

Religion is always man-made. It cannot therefore be the whole truth. It is a good thing for the ordinary and outside man, but surely it will never bring him to the Gates of Gold. If religion be of God how is it that we find that same God in his own works and acts violating the precepts of religion? He kills each man once in life; every day the fierce elements and strange circumstances which he is said to be the author of, bring on famine, cold and innumerable untimely deaths; where then, in The True, can there be any room for such distinctions as right and wrong? The disciple must, as he walks on the path, abide by law and order, but if he pins his faith on any religion whatever he will stop at once, and it makes no matter whether he sets up Mahatmas, Gods, Krishna, Vedas or mysterious acts of grace, each of these will stop him and throw him into a rut from which even heavenly death will not release him. Religion can only teach morals and ethics. It cannot answer the question “what am I?” The Buddhist ascetic holds a fan before his eyes to keep away the sight of objects condemned by his religion. But he thereby gains no knowledge, for that part of him which is affected by the improper sights has to be known by the man himself, and it is by experience alone that the knowledge can be possessed and assimilated.

The book closes gloriously, with some hints that have been much needed. Too many, even of the sincerest students of occultism, have sought to ignore that one-half of their nature, which is here taught to be necessary. Instead of crushing out the animal nature, we have here the high and wise teaching that we must learn to fully understand the animal and subordinate it to the spiritual. “The god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous power of production. The animal in man, elevated, is a thing unimaginable in its great powers of service and of strength,” and we are told that our animal self is a great force, the secret of the old-world magicians, and of the coming race which Lord Lytton foreshadowed. “But this power can only be attained by giving the god the sovereignty. Make your animal ruler over yourself, and he will never rule others.

This teaching will be seen to be identical with that of the closing words of The Idyll of the White Lotus:

“He will learn how to expound spiritual truths, and to enter into the life of his highest self, and he can learn also to hold within him the glory of that higher self, and yet to retain life upon this planet so long as it shall last, if need be; to retain life in the vigour of manhood, till his entire work is completed, and he has taught the three truths to all who look for light.”3

There are three sentences in the book which ought to be imprinted in the reader’s mind, and we present them inversely:

“Secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and the heart of man is the light which can illumine all life, the future and the past.”

“On the mental steps of a million men Buddha passed through the Gates of Gold; and because a great crowd pressed about the threshold he was able to leave behind him words which prove that those gates will open.”

“This is one of the most important factors in the development of man, the recognition — profound and complete recognition — of the law of universal unity and coherence.”

The Path, March, 1887


1 Mabel Collins (nom de plume of Kenningale R. Cook, 1851–1927), Through the Gates of Gold: A Fragment of Thought, Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1887, 111pp; 2nd ed., Ward & Downey, London, 1887, 152pp.; John M. Watkins, 1901; combined with Light on the Path, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena 1997

2 hṛdaya-granthim, i.e., false identification with the physical body

3 Mabel Collins, The Idyll of the White Lotus, London, 1884, 141 pp.; 2nd ed., Theosophical Publication Society, London 1896, 135pp, and later editions.


The Convention Speeches of London, 1892

I will now very earnestly and respectfully ask you to give your attention to myself. As chairman of this meeting, as chairman of the Convention which has just closed, as the General Secretary of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, and as one of those who, with Colonel Olcott, and Madame Blavatsky, founded the Theosophical Society seventeen years ago, I have been asked to speak to you a little about the Theosophical Society. Last year Colonel Olcott himself, as the President-Founder of the Society, addressed a similar meeting, but of course I will not say what he said, nor shall I go over the same ground.

Now the Theosophical Society was, as I said founded seventeen years ago, in the city of New York, in America. When it was started, a stream of jokes in the newspapers, laughter, ridicule of every kind, greeted it and people thought, “This new thing, this new fad, in our faddy country, will soon expire.” But you see that although many of those who joined us from the spiritualist body have disappeared from our ranks, we have still a few delegates to present to you tonight as representing the Society. It is a Society which now extends all over the civilised world, and into many parts of what you are pleased to call the uncivilized world.

This Theosophical Society was started by Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, as I said; and she and he worked together in it with some of us unflinchingly, she as much as he. Her life on this earth has been ended. But Colonel Olcott is still living, and working for the Society in India. To him we must give the greatest credit, for he has worked against all sorts of opposition, both within and without the Society; and without him as a bold and fearless pioneer we should not have reached the influence which we have now attained. So we have all been giving him credit today, and we wish you to remember him. Whether you belong to our society or not, or whether you believe as we do or not, all present must approve a fearless man. [Cheers]

The Theosophical Society has three objects. Those objects are:

First, to found the nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, class, sex, colour, or previous condition. This is our first and our most important object; this is our only creed. It admits belief in any particular creed. It does not say you must give up this, that, or the other — except what is bad and immoral. It asks you only to accept the idea that universal brotherhood is a thing we should strive for.

And, in order to give support to that hitherto Utopian idea, it has two other objects:

One of which is to study, investigate, look into, the philosophies and religions of the past, for that includes the present, because our philosophy and our religion have grown out of the past, it is but a counterfeit presentment of which the ancients knew and taught, and you have nothing of your own that is particularly new. Today, as of old, in the time of Solomon, it is true that there is nothing new in this world under the sun. We thought that the second object was important, because, while we are looking into the religions and philosophies of the past and present we shall perhaps discover the one truth which must underlie all systems of religion and philosophy. We have come to believe that all systems of religion, Buddhism, Brahmanism, Confucianism, what you call Christianity, all rest on one basis, all flow from one old school. And if we can cut away the husks, the crusts, about this central truth, we shall at last have arrived at the truth about it. The only revelation which is possible is the revelation which comes to man by his own experience, by his own effort, by his own suffering. He learns in no other way, and all the revealed books of the past are revelations from the human heart and soul to itself.

Our third object, to support these other two, because we are living in the world surrounded by phenomena, is to investigate the psychical laws that govern man and nature.

With these three objects we have covered the whole field. By the first we embrace progress in social life. If it were attained and made real it would cure all the evils that legislation vainly attempts to cope with, and which legislation hitherto has failed in any way to cure. The last one, the investigation of psychical laws of man and nature, you may say has not been pursued by us. But we think it has been pursued by us in the proper way. We have in London and in America what people call the Psychical Research Society, which engages itself with what it grandly calls investigation into psychical phenomena, consisting, as far as my experience goes, in recording a number of dreams, visions, apparitions and thoughts, in the mass not so large as we have had before; but they give no explanation. We have discovered in the investigation of the ancient philosophies that they have thought out all the psychological laws of nature, and have given a system of philosophy which is scientific and explains them all. Some have been investigating this system of philosophy, so that when we come to look at the things about us we may be able to explain them without going to the trouble of making a lot of books recording these things without any explanation. We are, therefore, pursuing the last object in the proper way. Then we are prepared to show that we have discovered in this and other countries that certain faculties are coming out which are of a dangerous character. Psychical characteristics are showing themselves more than ever before. In my country I know (I have had it brought to my attention in print as well as by words) that men and women are striving to exercise the powers which are indicated by what you call telepathy and hypnotism, for selfish purposes and for nothing else. Theosophy teaches us that it is a dangerous thing to go into phenomena of this character unless you have first prepared the ground by showing men why they should be moral, why they should not practise these things for selfish purposes. For we consider that those who practise telepathy, hypnotism, and the like, for their own selfish ends, are just as immoral as the dynamiter or the burglar. We think you have no right to burglarize the mind of another; and we know many men and women in this city and in other cities who would break open the minds of their fellows to discover secrets for their own profit.

The Theosophical Society has been investigating these three objects in a philosophical and scientific manner, and all we ask of anyone who wishes to join us is that he should believe in and attempt to practise “Universal Brotherhood,” so that we may begin to form the nucleus around which the real brotherhood may at last accumulate itself.

I have said that the Theosophical Society extends all over the world. I have seen it in India, America, and this country. It is in Africa, it is in New Zealand, it is in the Isles of Europe about the various seas. It is all over India, and is connected there not only with bodies which are visible, but with bodies of men who keep themselves unknown. It is connected there with societies counting thousands upon thousands of men in their ranks, and they are all devoted to high purposes. They are not the heathen you think they are, but worshippers of a single God or spirit, and, as St. Paul has said to you, “an unknown God.” That is the Christian God, for the Christian Bible says you cannot discover or find out God. If you cannot discover or find Him out you cannot describe Him, or give Him attributes. And the poor heathen says, “We cannot discover Him, or find Him, but we attempt to follow a high ideal”; and they are not the miserable heathen you think them.

This Society then embraces Europe, Asia, Africa, and America — and this has been done in seventeen years. Do you consider that we have been snuffed out or that we have failed? I think not. We have succeeded against opposition such as no Society in this country has succeeded against. The press and the pulpit have attacked us without reason, have libelled us, and told lies about us. But we forgive them because we are weak human beings as they are, and we know the right will prevail; that is, justice will prevail; and we have enormous confidence that this Theosophical Movement will be the greater movement of this or any other century, small as it seems today and weak as we appear to you to be. [Cheers]

The Theosophical Society is without a creed, but any society devoting itself to a definite object must at last accumulate within its ranks a number of members who all think more or less alike; and that is just what has happened in the Theosophical Society. A great many of us, the majority I will frankly say, think about alike, but not because we have forced belief into each other. We have come together and said to each other, “Here are these ideas,” and it has resulted in the majority having come to one conclusion. But the Society is always free and open. It has no dogmas. The doctrines we have put principally forward among a great many others for investigation cover everything; we are so presumptuous as to say that Theosophy is large enough to cover all Science and all Religion, to make indeed Science religious, and Religion scientific [cheers] — but among all these doctrines we think there is a truth of the highest importance to humanity, because sorrow prevails everywhere, and we are attempting by our Society’s work to find a cure for sorrow. We think that evils will never be cured by legislation. You have been legislating all these long years and have not succeeded. We have still our strikes, our sorrows, our poverty. We began without anything against us in America, and today there is the same thing there as here. As one of our great investigators of criminal records says, crime in America is worse than in England in proportion. With all your legislation, here is the same evil, and so we bring principally forward three doctrines which we think of the highest importance.

The first is Justice; we call it Karma; you can call it Justice, but the old Sanskrit word is Karma. It is that you will reap the result of what you do. If you do good you will get good; if you do evil you will get evil. But it is said that man does not get his deserts in many cases. That is true under the old theory. But the next step is that we bring forward out of Christianity, Buddhism, Brahmanism, that doctrine under which it becomes true, and that is Reincarnation. This means we are all spiritually immortal beings, and in order to receive our deserts we must all come to the place where we have done the good or the evil, so that today you have come to this life from some other life. If you have been good you are happy, if you have been evil you are unhappy, just because you lived in a corresponding way in that life. And if you are not caught up within this life you will be caught up within the next one which is coming. For after you die you have a slight period of rest, and then return to this civilisation which you have made, and for which you are responsible, and for which you will suffer if its evils are not eliminated.

And the next doctrine is that all these spiritual beings in these bodies are united together in fact, not in theory; that you are all made of one substance; that our souls vibrate together, feel for each other, suffer for each other, and enjoy for each other; so that in far China people are suffering for the evils of people in London, and people in London are suffering for the evils of people in China, and in New York the same. We are all bound together with a bond we cannot break, and that is the essential unity of the human family; it is the basis of the universal brotherhood.

We bring these three doctrines prominently forward because ethics must have a basis not in fear, not in command, not in statute law, but in the man himself. And when he knows that he is united with everyone else, and is responsible for the progress of his brother, he will then come to act according to right ethics. And until he so believes he will not, and our sorrows will increase and revolutions will come on, blood will be shed, and you will only rise then out of the ruins of that civilization which you hoped to make the grandest that the world has ever seen.

We hope that the day will soon come when these doctrines will be believed and practised, which this movement, called the Theosophical Movement, has thus brought prominently forward. [Cheers]


The Theosophical Society.

The death of H.P. Blavatsky should have the effect on the Society of making the work go on with increased vigour free from all personalities. The movement was not started for the glory of any person, but for the elevation of Mankind. The organisation is not affected as such by her death for her official position were those of Corresponding Secretary and President of the European Section. The Constitution has long provided that after her death the office of Corresponding Secretary should not be filled. The vacancy in the European Section will be filled by election in that Section, as that is matter with which only the European Branches have to deal. She held no position in the exoteric American Section, and had no jurisdiction over it in any way. Hence there is no vacancy to fill and no disturbance to be felt in the purely corporate part of the American work. The work here is going on as it always has done, under the efforts of its members who now will draw their inspiration from the books and works of H.P.B. and from the purity of their own motive.

All that the Society needs now to make it the great power it was intended to be is first, solidarity, and second, Theosophical education. These are wholly in the hands of its members. The first gives that resistless strength which is found only in Union, the second gives that judgement and wisdom needed to properly direct energy and zeal.

Read these words from H.P. Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy:

If the present attempt in the form of our Society succeeds better than its predecessors have done, then it will be in existence as an organized, living, and healthy body when the time comes for the effort of the XXth century. The general condition of men’s minds and hearts will have been improved and purified by the spread of its teachings, and, as I have said, their prejudices and dogmatic illusions will have been, to some extent, at least, removed. Not only so, but besides a large and accessible literature ready to men’s hands, the next impulse will find a numerous and united body of people ready to welcome the new torchbearer of Truth. He will find the minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an organisation awaiting his arrival which will remove the merely mechanical material obstacles and difficulties from his path. Think how much one to whom such an opportunity is given could approach. Measure it by comparison with what the Theosophical Society actually has achieved in the last fourteen years without any of these advantages and surrounded by hosts of hindrances which would not hamper the new leader. Consider all this and then tell me whether I am too sanguine when I say that, if the Theosophical Society survives and lives true to its mission, to its original impulse, through the next hundred years — tell me, I say, if I go too far in asserting that this earth will be a heaven in the twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now!1

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.2


1 The Key to Theosophy, 1889, p. 307

2 Quoting the last tetrastich of A Psalm of Life, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.


Of Funds And Property

It was thought by some at one time in the history of the Theosophical Society that a society fund was an indispensable prerequisite to the growth of the movement. This was a natural idea to a Western man because most of the achievements of the West are the result of the use of money, but if one has a good knowledge of human nature and remembers what has happened in other organizations it must be evident that, while money is necessary in order to get bread to eat, it is not entirely necessary for the work of the Theosophical Society.

The Roman Catholic Church is probably the most powerful religious body, controlling vast sums of money and owning the best property everywhere, but its great achievements have been in the line of fostering dogmatism and chaining the minds of men; its latest one a few months ago consisting in compelling St. George Mivart, who is a Roman Catholic, to recant what he said in a prominent review tending to show that eternal damnation is impossible.

The Methodist and other Churches of the dissenting side of Christianity sustain large missionary enterprises for which they get millions of dollars from their adherents, and the result is that they pay the salaries of many missionaries, enabling their secretaries at home to accumulate money, produce but few converts abroad, and keep up the breach in brotherhood between the East and West by fostering the idea that the heathen are unregenerate and damned. If the Theosophical Society as an organization had always possessed a fund and property, there would always be those who, moved by selfish motives, would struggle to gain possession of the money and the use of the property for their own benefit. But without a fund belonging to the treasury, the Society has steadily grown in influence and numbers. This is because instead of money to fight for we have had an inspiring ideal, and instead of corporate funds to work with we have had devotion which causes the members to use in the work of the organization their own private means untrammelled by the treasury rules. Thus the Society is poor, and it is sincerely to be hoped that it will always remain without a fund as a temptation to the cupidity of man.

The Headquarters in America, situated in New York City, is a piece of property the title of which is vested in the local Branch, which is a corporation formed for the purpose of holding the property. It does not belong to the Theosophical Society, but it is devoted, under the same spirit of devotion as has moved all true Theosophical workers, to the uses and the benefit of the T.S. The Headquarters in London belongs also to a body of persons, not to the Theosophical Society. Exceptionally, the Headquarters in Adyar belongs as a center to the Theosophical organization as a whole. It has been said by some that all donations, all legacies, all bequests of property, all general acquisitions of all property for the T.S. work should be to and for the Theosophical Society as legal beneficiary, but with this view I for one cannot agree. The funds that are used in the work, outside of the necessary funds belonging to the various Sections and spent during the year, should remain the property of private persons who devote them to the uses of the Society freely and in whatever direction their conscience permits. If we accumulate a large corporate fund we will also accumulate around it those human beings who unconsciously as well as deliberately conceal their motives, who ask to be allowed to work so that they may be paid, and who as members of the whole body owning the fund have a right to demand its division. May Heaven defend us from such a state of things! If persons have money which they desire to devote in large sums to the Society’s work, they should either use it themselves in the line of that activity or deliver it over to such devoted workers as have shown that their guide in life is self-sacrifice for the whole.

Take a few concrete examples. In the American Section, for instance, salaries are not paid, unless you call board and lodging a salary to certain persons who are without means. There are workers in the official departments of that Section who spend their entire time from early morning till night, and all the money they can spare over their actual necessities, in toiling for the Theosophical Society without a salary and at the same time giving out of their means to the needs of the work. In England it is the same. There Mrs. Besant and others work unceasingly for the Society, she supporting herself and contributing all that remains of her earnings to the needs of the Society. H. P. Blavatsky did the same. Col. Olcott did also and is still doing it. Thus in every direction the real lasting and beneficial activities of the Society are carried on by those who, willing to work for it, do not ask a salary; and those of them who possess means do not wish to be trammeled by rules and regulations relating to a general fund which will always be source of annoyance and a temptation to the wicked. In our history of many years we have had this proved in the case of a treasurer in India who, having the small general funds under his control, stole all that he could lay his hands upon. He was but a mortal thrown into the midst of temptation. If the money were his own and he were working in the Society with it, he would not steal it for he could not.

We ought not to encourage large donations to the treasury, but should spread abroad the principle that private means should be liberally given to the tried ones for use in their discretion when the giver does not know how or has not the opportunity to use it himself. Let them do as has been done; just as one man gave H. P. Blavatsky $5000 for the Girls’ Club at Bow, London, for which it was judiciously used by Mrs. Besant as agent; or as another gave a large sum to help start a headquarters; or like another in giving the money to print quantities of tracts and pamphlets; or as another who paid over from time to time to an official enough to sustain a well-tried, devoted, but penniless worker in further hard travelling and speaking for the Cause. In this way devotion becomes more valuable than millions of money; those who are capable of speaking and writing but have no means will be enabled to go on by others who, favored by material fate, have a surplus. But make a large treasury fund, and then no barnacle or drone could be shaken off once it had fastened on the old ship, because he would have a voice in the management of means. Again, those captious, suspicious persons who always know the date of a penny or the number of a bill would harass those who had the spending.

Again, our poverty and lack of earthly applause and reward have saved us from cranks and sectarians who subliminally attracted by wealth, would prate of doctrine and duty while they stood guard over the cash-box. In the strength of our ideal and devotion is our power, and that work which is done without reward or the hope of it and without the blighting influence of a debit and credit account goes further and lasts longer than any which is given as return for a money consideration.

The Path, February, 1894


Letter to the American Section, March, 1894

LEAVES OF THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY

[The following is a copy of a typewritten letter on official T. S. paper, and signed by William Q. Judge in his own handwriting, which letter was afterwards returned to Headquarters, and is now held in the archives of the T. S. The letter is reproduced verbatim et literatim.]

Copy

Theosophical Society, American Section

General Secretary’s Office
Headquarters, 144 Madison Avenue.
New York, March 8, 1894.

No. 537.

Dear Friends:—

I have your letter of the 5 of March enclosing a draft or $5 for the Society, which is received with many thanks.

There are a great many ways to prove different things, and some things cannot be proved in the modern way of objective proof or the testimony of mere witnesses. Mathematics, for instance, in their final and important truths cannot be proved at all. They are accepted in so far as the axioms are concerned. The atom of science, for instance, is an accepted belief although it is utterly unprovable in the ordinary way; the proof coming from the necessity of such a thing as an atom. So it is with a great many other things. If one does not believe he has a soul, nobody can prove it for the soul never seen and never can be. The doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation are provable, it seems to me, by the facts and necessities of life and the human soul. If we are souls, then Reincarnation is absolutely necessary. Karma is absolutely necessary or else this world is a vast mass of chance which no one can admit. Hence these doctrines you have to admit as necessities. In the same way all the other doc- trines prove themselves through consciousness, through experience, through the necessities of life. As they are perhaps new doctrines to you, it is necessary for you to have patience and wait until your mind has had sufficient length of time to dwell on them and think them over so as to destroy your erroneous ideas, and then you will see more clearly.

I could not tell you of any particular course to develop the inner faculties, and permit me to say that if I knew of such a course I would be very reluctant to tell it because it is full of danger. It is necessary first to understand philosophy, to understand yourself so far as it can be understood on this plane; to discipline one’s self; to develop virtue, attention, fortitude; then one is prepared to go further. That spiritual inner faculties exist is easily demonstrated by reason of their existence in individuals in the race, and secondly from their necessity. The best advice I can give you is to continue studying, but at the same time to add to it actual practice in the way of doing as much work as you can for other people, without at all intimating that you do not do so now. By working for other people we put into practice the inner beliefs which rest upon unity, we develop certain faculties in our nature, we increase our spirituality; for the first and most important step in the cultivation of spiritual faculties is the practice of good thought, good act, and constant endeavor for other people. By following this you will find yourself growing from within more and more, which is what you want, for all light that comes from without is deceptive and when it is gone leaves just what you have yourself. Consequently you should endeavor to increase the light within. You will find many suggestions along the line of your inquiry in a little book called “Letters that have helped me” which I advise you to read. Referring to Patanjali's Aphorisms which you are reading you must perceive in that all practice is useless which is not co-extensive with altruistic life and that denominated by him as charity, benevolence, and other truths, as well as with discipline and dispassion. I am

Sincerely yours,
(Signed) William Q. Judge

The Theosophical Forum, July, 1935


Letter to A. W. Barnard, November, 1886

LEAVES OF THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY

[The following are from one of W. Q. Judge’s letterpress copy-books in the archives of the Theosophical Society, Point Loma. The first is in the handwriting of R. H. (Richard Harte), the second in the handwriting of some other secretary, whose initials do not appear. The letters are here produced verbatim et literatim. —Eds.]

1886
Nov 16 [188]6

A. W. Barnard

Dear Sir in reply to yours of the 14th I would advise you to write to J. W Bouton publisher 706 Broadway N. Y. for his catalogue. I fancy there is an English translation of the Zohar in it, but have no copy of the catalogue in hand. As to the Gates of Light I cannot tell.

I think you are about right in not expecting to “obtain much mystic power” from our Society. We do not profess to supply it. We are a body of earnest students, and try to the best of our power to live up to our professions, in which I fear many of us fail. Those professions are founded upon the morality which is common to every age and every religion (at least as far as lip service goes). But we make no external professions, and live as unobtrusively as we can, making our professions only in our own hearts, and wearing the “yellow robe” internally.

The fact is that many people in these times apply the commercial spirit to things spiritual. “I am ready to pay for powers, and for knowledge of the occult; you have the supply, then favor me with some of your wares.” Of course I do not mean that anyone offers money, but they offer promises of a life’s devotion &c.

Now, my dear sir, the old rule still remains in force in things occult: that knowledge is only given to those who deserve it, and have proved by their life that they do deserve it. Only those who do the will of the Masters are reckoned as deserving their notice; aspiration, desires, promises go for nothing. What is that will? Well, it is simply to free your mind from vain and earthly desires, and to work at the work before you always lending a helping hand to others. Get rid of anger, of vanity, pride, resentfulness, ambition and really lose them, and you have then made the first step towards the understanding of the occult; with these feelings latent in the heart it is not possible to make one single step in Magic.

You may acquire psychic power, and no doubt there are men in India and elsewhere who can help you in that direction, but it would be to your destruction eventually. They are the quacks of Occultism — beware of them. Their plane of work is the psychic, not the spiritual — the region of delusions, not that of truth.

As a Society The Theosophical Society is exoteric. Its work is above board and open — namely to encourage its members in studying the ancient Doctrine and in “leading the life.” The esoteric work does not appear, and cannot appear, because it is between the individual member and a source which reaches him only through his own inner consciousness.

Hence our Society is disappointing to those who expect to learn how to draw magic figures and pronounce magic words which will “raise the devil” or make water turn into wine. But for him who can see below the surface of things it is the first step in a brotherhood at whose head stand the adepts of the Himalayas.

Many men approach the subject of occultism in the way you seem to have done — with a wish to produce effects. They find that the only terms on which they will be taught (not by their fellow students) is to “lead the life,” and that to have made the leading of the life habitual is the only preparation for the acquirement of occult powers, and by the time those powers come they are looking to something higher and they seem to them trivial, childish, only useful for making the ignorant stare or envy them — for “showing off” as children say.

Yours very truly
W. Q. Judge
by R. H.

The Theosophical Forum, August, 1936