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IN HISTORY AND IN RELIGION
BY
PRESIDENT
OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
THE
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
161
NEW BOND STREET, W.
1913
FOREWORD
THIS volume, containing
lectures delivered in
On these, June 1st and 8th,
I delivered
I have to thank the Christian Commonwealth,
as so often before, for its wonderfully accurate reports of the
The last lecture stands by itself, and was an
address to the Congress at the morning session of June 15th.
May the little book, which
took its origin in times so stormy, carry to some the Peace which ever broods
over its author's heart.
ANNIE BESANT.
ADYAR,
September
9th, I9I3.
|
|
|
|
FOREWORD |
|
| 1 |
MANIFESTATIONS
OF SUPERHUMAN BEINGS IN OUR WORLD. |
| 2 |
SAVIOURS
OF THE WORLD, OR WORLD-TEACHERS. |
| 3 |
“THE
CHRIST IN MAN”. |
| 4 |
THE
RESTORATION OF THE MYSTERIES. |
| 5 |
THE
CONDITIONS OF INTELLECTUAL AND OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH. |
| 6 |
THE
POLICY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. |
I
MANIFESTATIONS OF SUPER-
HUMAN BEINGS IN OUR WORLD
FRIENDS:
1.
I ought almost, I
think, to begin with an apology for offering to you a very large subject in a
most imperfect form. I had planned to place before you the whole question of
Super-human Beings manifested in our world in a course of six lectures, so to
some extent perhaps touching on the main points of the subject, and making
intelligible possibly to you some of the obscurities of the past. I have been
compelled, not by my own will, to change the course of six lectures in London
into two, and I can only try to place before you tonight something of
the general forms of manifestations and of the great realities that lie behind
those forms, and then, next Sunday evening, to point you to the future rather
than to the past. Basing upon what has happened in the past the possibilities
of the future, I shall try to indicate to you some of the greatest of those
possibilities, the restoration to our world and to religion of those great
Mysteries which have ever been the life of religion in the past, openly in its
life during thousands and tens of thousands of years, existing still today,
although withdrawn from the common knowledge of men, to come back to our world
as soon as men are ready for and desire their restoration. For ever the barrier
between the spiritual and the physical does not lie in the spiritual world; it
lies in the physical world, the habitation of mortal men; for the life of the
Spirit, which exists in forthgiving, is ever striving to pour itself into our
mortal world; but we erect barriers, we create obstacles, we hinder the free
flow of that beneficent, that glorious life. Only as we build up in ourselves
the spiritual vessels that are able to receive it, will the old stream of
spiritual life pour forth again abundantly upon our world, not only on
individuals who prepare themselves for its reception, but on the great masses
of those who follow the religions of the world, on the great masses of all who
seek to make their life serviceable to their generation, to the world in which
they are.
2.
But for this evening
our eyes turn backwards to the past, seeking whether in that past we can find
any guarantee of the hope which gleams in the future. Now, as we turn back the
pages of history we find civilisation after civilisation succeeding each other.
Students of ancient literature, students of those old books which have come
down from a past which seems to us perchance hidden in the night of time, have
found records of civilisations mighty and great, apparently permanent and
secure, but which have so utterly passed away from ordinary human thought that
in modern days men disbelieved in their existence, and thought the stories in the
ancient books were but legends, fables created by national pride in order
to glorify their own past, not records of historical facts, not pictures
of civilisations that really existed on our earth. These ancient books,
it is true, were corroborated now and again by what is
called occult research. Men and women who had developed in themselves certain
powers not yet general in our race have claimed that by the exercise of those
powers they could read records of the past existing as pictures in matter subtler
than the physical, as men with physical eyes can read the printed page. But in
a time like our own, when Occultism is only now beginning to make its way among
men, an age in which Mysticism until lately was regarded, in the high opinion
of the Times newspaper, as an “exploded superstition”, so that it
marvelled that a man so eminent as the Dean of St Paul’s should think it worth
while in the twentieth century to give lectures on such a superstition; in our
age, when Occultism and Mysticism are again beginning to claim the attention of
the thoughtful and the earnest, there is more probability as the years roll on
that the records of the past, as read by the Occultist, will again take their
place as subjects of study among men. Until quite lately - nay, I hardly know
whether I dare say until - those records have been scoffed at by the foolish,
have been ignored by the learned; but, as you know, during the last half, and
even more, of the nineteenth century, a new light came into the arena of human
thought, and antiquarian research, spreading widely and digging deeply, began
to unveil fragments whose existence could not be denied, fragments of ancient
civilisations. And step by step as archaeology advanced, step by step as excavation
succeeded excavation, it was found that physical research was confirming the
legends of the ancient literature, was verifying many a statement made by
occult research - stories of such a one as King Minos of Crete, stories of
such a one as Menes of Egypt, stories running back into ancient Babylon.
3.
Those were brought to
the light of day, not in ways that could be challenged, not in forms that could
be denied, but in matter solid enough to knock a man down with, so that a man
could be sure that it existed - in libraries made of ancient tiles which had
long outlived their makers, in fragments of ancient architecture from city
after city buried one below the other, and each succeeding city shut off from
its predecessors by ruins, by solid earth which intervened between each pair. In
these ways, ever being confirmed by new investigations, by these physical
methods which appeal to the physical mind of men, the existence of those old
civilisations was proved, and none now ventures to deny that well-nigh endless
past of civilised man.
4.
One thing came out
strongly, a surprise to the thinkers of the last century. Quite naturally, the
great doctrine of Evolution applied to human history resulted in a certain
theoretical building up of the past which appealed to the human mind and seemed
logical and even necessary. The elder amongst you must remember how we read of
the growth of civilisation, how we were told of families of savages who joined
together into tribes, of tribes who linked themselves together into communities
for mutual assistance and defence, of communities building themselves up into
nations, and so on step by step, millennium after millennium, until from
barbarism civilisation arose, just as in the corresponding domain of religion
the ideas of the savage, the animistic ideas of the barbarians, were held to be
the origin, the source, of all the religions of the world. But, however natural
that view was, it was found not to square with facts. None had discovered in
the excavations of the past those infant civilisations whose remnants might
naturally have been looked for, building up step by step in successive
excavations. Savages have been found, cave men have been discovered, villages
built on piles have been unveiled, but between those and the civilisations
there is no steady advance or link which science has discovered. Savages exist
today side by side with great civilisations; they existed also in the past; but
between them no bridges have been found. On the contrary, it has been seen
everywhere, as facts have been accumulated, that what Bunsen has said of
5.
The Ruler, the typical
Man, He is concerned with the building up of the outer civilisations, with the
shaping of social polity, with the laying down of laws by which the people must
develop, must evolve. He has to do not only with racial types, not only with
national polities, but also with the great seismic changes which go side by
side with evolution of new races. Take as types of what the Theosophist means
when he speaks of a Root Race, the two great types so familiar to you that we
call the fourth and fifth; typical examples of the fourth in the Chinese and
Japanese, typical examples of the fifth in the Indian and the European. If you
put those two side by side you see at once what I mean by the fundamental
difference of Races; difference in outer features, difference in nervous
system, showing distinctions so deeply wrought into the physical frame that
confusion between them is utterly impossible, and a child would distinguish
between those I have mentioned, which we call the fourth and fifth of human
Root Races. Smaller differences, but yet clearly marked, until by intermarriages
the characteristics have been more or less blended, you find in the
sub-divisions, to which we give the name of sub-races. Now the great Ruler is
connected with the racial type. His task to build out of a previous Race the
new Race which is to succeed it in leading the evolution of humanity; His task
to prepare for the new Race He has builded the continent on which that Race
shall develop, to which in time it shall be led in order that its evolution may
proceed. And without delaying - for we have not time to delay upon it - on the
interesting geological questions of the existence of a great physical continent
to which the name of Lemuria has been given, or the great Atlantic continent
known as Atlantis, only reminding you that these are subjects that are being
discussed by scientists and not only by Theosophists, we find that the world as
it is today is the world ruled by the later Race, by the various sub-races of
the fifth, and we see in these distinct types the work of a great Builder,
the Builder of the outer evolution as well as of nations, and of social
organisms; and to Him the name has ever been given from which ‘man’ is
derived, the word Manu - the man, the typical man, the thinker,
inasmuch as thought is that which differentiates the human being from his lower
brethren of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
6.
Side by side with that
we find the World Teacher, as we often call Him, the supreme Teacher concerned
largely with the subdivisions of the great Race, concerned with the presentation
I spoke of, of eternal truths in a new form fitted for the new sub-race which
is gradually emerging out of its predecessors.
7.
One thing comes out
strongly and clearly as we try to take a large and rational view of human
history: that there is a Plan that underlies it, a Plan according to which
humanity is builded, not suddenly, not by leaps and bounds, but in a
definite order. Just as the architect plans a building, and then it rises,
stage by stage according to the plan, so do we find in that great building of
humanity stage after stage arising, quality after quality super-added, a
definite building, not a sudden creation, and the plan of the building - Evolution. Here again I can only point you to a few proofs
of that; you can multiply them almost endlessly for yourselves. Take what has
gone on within what you acknowledge as history, the gradual peopling of
Europe; take the coming into Europe of that great race the descendants of which
are called the Latin peoples today - we call them the fourth sub-race, or the
Keltic, - entering into Greece, spreading over the whole of the south of
Europe, travelling northwards then for a while into Scandinavia and across from
Scandinavia by Scotland - by Britain, in fact - into Ireland, peopling every
land, just as a wave sweeps over a beach, peopling the great continent of
Europe with a race in which emotion predominated over intellect, and beauty was
the expression that was sought, and art the heritage of the sub-race. Think of
ancient Greece and ancient Rome, with their splendid architecture and their
magnificent sculpture; think of their successors in Italy, of the great schools
of Italian painters, remembering that Art includes forms of every kind, not
only in the outer shaping of wood or stone or brick, but in that subtler shaping
of form to thought which we call art in literary expression, in poetry, in
prose, in all the perfection of the literary excellence which is even today the
pride of the Latin races. Think of the Frenchmen, how the French thinker
expresses himself, and how the French nation judges the thinker. You will never
find a thought accepted by the mass of the French people, nor by its judges and
critics, unless the form is as perfect as the thought is good; failure in
thought is almost more pardonable than failure in form - for where thought
always seeks to express itself in beauty, literary perfection is a necessary
condition of the success of the thought expressed. Compare that with the
Teutonic, the sub-race that followed on the Keltic, where Science represents to
that race what Art was to its forerunner. Realise that in the Teuton it is the
mind that is seeking for full expression by knowledge rather than by form;
contrast the expression of the German and the English with the French
expression in science, and you will find that both in Germany and in England
the thought, however strong, is often clumsy in expression, obscure in
presentation; but the peoples of both countries look rather to the
strength and the virility of the thought than to the perfection of its artistic
expression in the form.
8.
And just as you see
there a fourth sub-race and a fifth sub-race, so a sixth sub-race is issuing,
as I pointed out to you at length some years ago. There the quality to be
developed, built on to the emotions, built on to the mind, is that higher
quality, intuition, that is beginning to assert itself even in the philosophy
of our time - that intuition which sees rather than reasons, which knows by
direct vision rather than by following a chain of logical argument, that which
is the power of the Spirit rather than the power of the mind or of the
emotions. That is the next quality to be builded, to be the characteristic
quality of the sixth sub-race of humanity.
9.
And looking thus at it
you find that religions follow a corresponding order; you find that each
sub-race has its own religious note, which is as different as its note in
emotional or mental expression. You see how in the first great sub-race that
made India its habitation, the idea of mutual Duty of every member of the
social organism was the keynote of the religion that was given by the
great teachers to their people. You see the survival of that in forms too
rigid, and, therefore, mischievous, in what is known as the caste system of
India; but while you may see that now it is doing much of harm to the progress
of the people, you are bound, if you are rational, also to see that that
keynote of the social order will have to return in a higher form, in a higher
civilisation, and that the sense of mutual duty and mutual obligation is the
one binding force by which the nation and the community can live. And then, if
you trace the second sub-race which lived on the borders of the Mediterranean,
you see that to which in these modern days we give the name of Magic, the use
of the human body to influence the subtler worlds by finding out the
correspondences between man, who is only the microcosm, with the mighty
macrocosm in which he lives, and of which he is the reflection in miniature.
And if you pass on from there to
10.
Now, the idea that
such Superhuman Beings had much to do with the affairs of men is no new idea,
no mere Theosophical fad. In Christian antiquity you find the thought put
forward that over every nation there presided a great
Angel. Read the way in which Origen speaks of the Angel Guardians of nations
and of the world. The idea in the East was a little more complicated. So far as
I know - but there I may be wrong - I do not think that in Christian
antiquity you can find the idea that Saints as well as Angels shared in the
guidance of our mortal world; but in the East, whilst they recognised
what here would be called “the ministry of Angels”, speaking of them as the
Shining Ones - so often mistranslated ‘God’ -whilst they recognised their work
in many grades as the older Christians recognised the ministry of the nine
great Orders in the angelic host, they joined side by side with them the men
who had attained perfection, those who had passed that great fifth Initiation
of which I was speaking to you with the others last year, men who have finished
the ordinary human life, who have passed beyond the cycle of births and deaths
known as reincarnation, who have reached that point of overcoming of which the
Apocalypse speaks when it declares of him that overcometh he “shall be a pillar
in the temple of my God and go forth no more”. Those who have overcome,
not for Their own gain but for the helping of humanity, Those who are liberated
Spirits, who have bound Themselves in the bonds of the flesh by love and not by
compulsion, Those who are divine men, who have perfected the human cycle of
evolution, it is They who share with the angelic host the guidance of evolution
in the world in which we are. For this world is not lonely as it rolls through
space, nor confined only to the men bound still to the wheel of births and
deaths. The spiritual world interpenetrates the physical, as every religion has
declared; Superhuman Beings move amongst us and take their part in the affairs
of men.
11.
If you care to read a
record in written books, take some of the old Hindu books, and read how these
perfected men visited the courts of kings in order to see that kingdoms were
well governed and royal duties were honourably performed. You may read how such
a mighty Sage and Saint, known as superhuman by the powers that He possessed,
would visit the court of the King, question the King as to the condition of the
people, ask him whether he is seeing that every grade of the people is supplied
with all that it needs: whether the craftsman has materials ready to his hand;
whether the agriculturist is well supplied with seed for the future harvest;
whether the widows of his soldiers who have died in battle and the
orphans left behind are carefully guarded by him; whether he is seeing to the
education of his people, and taking care that all the grades of the nation are
performing their appointed duties. You may read this in page after page, in
story after story. And, although no longer visible, They
walk among men still; the work They are striving to do is more difficult today,
for it is against the battling wills of men and the resistance of the
developing mind. In those days, readily was Their
guidance accepted, and, therefore, They walked openly among the people; but it
was necessary for human evolution that the mind should develop with all its
power of challenge, with all its demand for proof, with its resistance to
authority, with its refusal to obey where it did not understand. Do not be
mistaken and think that this is evil; there is nothing evil which helps forward
the evolution of man. The time came when the child-state had to end for a
while, and the developing youth of the mind must have its way. So the Guardians
drew back from sight but never from labour, and worked unseen and unhampered by
the growing conditions of humanity, but with the same heart of love, the same
brain of wisdom as in the elder days. It is They who
pull down Empires and build them up, who bring about equilibrium between
nations and do not allow a single set of national ideals so to triumph over the
world that all others shall give way before them. It is They who gradually
build up a great Empire and give to some sub-race the ruling of the world; it
is They who are giving to England today the possibility of the mighty part that
she may play in the advancing humanity of the time, of World-Empire mightier
than any Empire of the past, to be based not on the submission of conquered
peoples, but on the free-will allegiance of self-governing but united
communities. That is done today, not by direct order from the mouth of the
recognised
12.
Now suppose for a
moment that that Theosophical idea commended itself to you as throwing light
on history - which on many points of the rising and falling of Empires is
obscure and unintelligible; if you can take that thought that behind all the
powers that rule there is a mighty divine Will working through human
imperfection with the help of Superhuman Agents, then you can look on all the
troubles of the time as evidently working out to a foreseen end; you can see
in the unrest and the distress not the breaking up of a civilisation, but the
instability that belongs to growth and that is to be guided to progress; and
you will begin to realise that if some outer forms decay, it is because the
living Spirit within them is growing too large for the garments that clothed it
in the past, and that we may feel secure that, as a nation does its duty, new
forms will evolve fitted for its greater manifestation, and so the building up
of the human race will continue as it has continued through so many changes in
the past.
13.
Let us ask now what are the special methods of the manifestation of Superhuman
Men. That you may clearly follow this, I must trouble you for a moment
with one or two details as to the constitution of man. You must realise that
every one of you is a living and spiritual Intelligence, that you show out the
Spirit in three chief ways, the aspects of the Spirit - by Will or Power,
Wisdom, and the creative activity of Intellect. Those are yourself, your innermost
nature. But then you clothe yourself in matter, in order that these may develop
in this lower world. The aspect of the Intellect embodies itself as mind; the
aspect of Wisdom embodies itself as emotion; the aspect of Will embodies itself
as self-determination in our lower world, the precedent of action. All kinds of
matter are utilised by these spiritual forces in order that they may express
themselves in the various worlds in which we live; but those material garments
are not you; they are but the clothes you wear; and you may learn, if you will,
and care to take the trouble, to separate one garment from another and to
utilise them freely, as you utilise that fleshly garment which, for some of
you, is the only body that you know.
14.
For the moment, take
that as hypothesis, study it at your leisure; but without understanding that it
is a spiritual Intelligence working in various kinds of matter, as we know
matter here, which is meant, you will not be able to understand those methods
of manifestation which I have called Inspiration, Overshadowing, and
Incarnation. Think, then, of the matter that you use, as a garment that can be
put off and on; think of yourself as the living spiritual Intelligence with the
three aspects I have mentioned; and realise that, with every change of
consciousness, every mood of mind, there is a vibration in the matter in which
the consciousness is clothed, which answers to the change in consciousness,
changelessly as to method, each mood having its own expression in the vibrations
by which matter responds.
I.
- INSPIRATION
15.
Now, there is nothing
save in degree different in these forms of manifestation of Superhuman Beings
from the ways in which you influence each other. There is an enormous
difference in degree, there is no difference of kind; every one of us, all the
time, is influencing all with whom we come into contact, some more than others
according to the force of consciousness which is able to have stronger
vibrations of matter correlated with itself, but the way in which one
consciousness influences another in the physical is by means of these
vibrations of matter, which cause similar vibrations in other bodies with which
they come into contact. That is the special point that I want you
theoretically for the moment to accept. Have you sometimes found in studying
science that you understand a thing better when a brilliant teacher explains
it, than when you read it in a book? What is the difference? It is not in
the thought; the thought may be the same on the printed page and in the spoken
words; but it is that the matter correlated to the changing thought of the
teacher, vibrating under his greater knowledge and more highly developed powers
of mind, sets vibrating the mental matter in your own body, and so enables your
consciousness to answer as the vibrations again are responded to by the
changing mood of thought. He transmits his thought to you through the matter
that clothes you, and he raises you to a higher point of comprehension than you
could win by your own unaided power. That is a constant experience; you find it
with the orator as well as with the scientific teacher. A thing which is plain
to you while the orator is speaking, which you grasp, which you realise, which
you are sure you know, is half lost on the following day, and you find
you cannot repeat it perfectly left to your unaided powers.
16.
What, then, has the
speaker done? What effect has the teacher wrought on you? He has made you
answer to himself; lie has inspired you by means of the contact which you have
experienced from his word and from his thought. Now carry that on further, and
you will find what Inspiration means. Where a higher being is inspiring an
ordinary man or woman, the effect of that Inspiration is a stimulation of
the faculties that the man or woman already possesses, because the matter in
which he is clothed is compelled to vibrate in unison at a higher rate of
vibration than he is able to initiate for himself. That is what Inspiration
means. It functions or flowers, as it were, on our material garments - the
vibrations of one whose body works at a higher vibration than does ours, and
so the inner God is able to shine out more completely, the faculties that
exist in us are stimulated under the abnormal action, and what we call Inspiration
is nothing more than stimulation from a higher to a lower, imposing on the
lower for the time that higher vibration, and so enabling the faculties
the man already possesses to open out into flower where they only existed as
bud. You may have Inspiration in art, in poetry, in literature, but its nature
is ever the same, the stimulation of faculties you possess, the opening out of
the hidden God through the higher vibrations imposed upon you from without.
17.
So at once you realise
there are many degrees of Inspiration, according to the power of response of
the one on whom this force is exercised, his power to reproduce that which the
Superhuman Being is striving to use for his stimulation, for lifting him to a
higher plane of thought. And so you begin to realise that if you yourself would
be inspired by higher and Superhuman Beings you must purify your vehicles in
order that the finer matter in them may be able freely to respond. You must
purify your physical body and brain by abstaining from all unclean and gross
forms of food; you must purify your emotional nature by casting aside the
animal and rising into the human emotions; you must purify your mental nature
by thinking nobly, purely, grandly, by casting out of the mind, the moment it
enters, any thought that is low or base or foul. For Inspiration can only work
where the vehicles are made pure, and the limit of our
Inspiration is the limit of receptivity which we have made by the training of
the lower nature. But it is open to all of you to have that Inspiration more or
less perfectly according as you become pure and noble and selfless, to each
according to his measure. The thimble or the vast tank can be filled alike from
an ever-flowing stream; but the size of the receptacle determines the amount of
water which can flow into it, and it is ours to make the receptacle in order
that the Inspiration may lead us to greater usefulness to men.
18.
II. – OVERSHADOWING
19.
What, then, is
Overshadowing? As Inspiration is stimulation by higher vibrations, Overshadowing
is the dominating of consciousness for a time by the Superhuman Helper. The
consciousness of the man is dominated, not stimulated. The idea dominates his
thought, and becomes to him apparently his own. Many a one is overshadowed by a
Higher Being who is not conscious of the source of the thoughts that come into
his mind; thoughts of desire for service, thoughts of aspirations for the
helping of men, these are breathed out from a higher consciousness to a lower,
and they dominate the lower and become its ideal. Ideals, those fixed ideas
that guide and control conduct, constantly come from the overshadowing power
of a higher than ourselves, lifting up a picture so beautiful that we needs
must love it, and, in loving it, try to reproduce its beauty in ourselves. And
this, again, may be in different stages. The Overshadowing may be of the brain,
so that some great thought dominates the brain; it may be of the subtle mind,
so that from that flow downwards to the brain these thoughts that uplift and
help. Or it may be from the very Spirit itself in its subtlest garments of
finer matter, so that the material, dominated for the time by the more highly
opened Spirit, receives from it these great ideals which then come down to be
slowly translated into life. And here again, if you would ever have that grace
of Overshadowing from a higher, you must try to keep your consciousness under
the control of the higher, and not of the lower. The lower is good as a servant,
it is fatal as a master; the lower is useful as an instrument, it is harmful
when it strives to direct. The man who would receive the Overshadowing of the
higher must have the consciousness ready to respond to all that comes from
above, to nothing that comes from below. For the life of a man must flow either
upwards or downwards, either outwards or inwards; and those only can be overshadowed
who are trying to turn to the Gods within them, and not surrendering
themselves to the bodies without them, those who are trying to make love
and wisdom the characteristic and natural expression of their consciousness.
On them may come down that power of the higher which for the time shall
dominate them and make them more than men.
20.
III. – INCARNATION
21.
But when you come to
the last of the three words I took, Incarnation, you are coming to a different
method; no longer stimulation, as in Inspiration; no longer domination, as in
Overshadowing; but substitution; a Higher Being who, desiring to work through
some physical instrument for some great purpose, chooses a physical instrument
which he can use for the purpose on which his mind and heart are set. We find
such cases in the history of the past, most especially in the case of the
Founders of great religions. One thing characterises most of these; it is that
distinction familiar in the ancient Christian Church, held by those who were
called the Gnostics or Knowers. You may remember how in the early Church there
was much controversy as to the nature of Jesus Christ; how some regarded Him as
God Himself, others considered that the human body was the body of a chosen
disciple trained and prepared through many years of pure and noble living and
devoted aspiration, in order that when you come to the time marked in the
Gospel as the baptism, the Spirit of God, the Christ Himself, might descend and
abide upon him. And so those early Christian Knowers declared that the disciple
Jesus and the Christ were two distinct individuals, never to be confused, and
that all the disciple gave to the Christ was the outer physical body that He
wore; that the inner subtler bodies were those of the Christ Himself, far
higher - nay, no comparison is possible between those spiritual bodies of the
Christ and anything that can be worn by mortal man on earth, - and that when
He, the great Teacher, deigned to come, He took but the outer shell of His
devoted disciple, and that shell, surrendered to the greater One, left the
disciple himself clothed in his subtle bodies of lower evolution, while through
the body of flesh the divine man was manifest; and so men saw in the face of
the Christ the very vision of Divinity Himself.
22.
That was the older,
wiser teaching of the Christian Church, cast out later as knowledge grew less
and confusion took the place of vision. And so in every great divine
Incarnation of earlier days, the same method appears to have been followed, of
a body specially prepared and trained for many years and then surrendered in
loving sacrifice, in order that it might be the vehicle of a mightier Being to
work out for man what none but He might do. That is called Incarnation, where
the body of flesh is taken but where the Being is the supreme Teacher of the
world.
23.
And even that, if you
think, is nothing so abnormal, nothing so strange; for what is each one of you
but a divine Incarnation? Although the divinity in you is not unfolded as
it was in Him to whom the West has given the name of the Christ, all of
you are truly divine Incarnations; but the Divinity in you is but as a germ and
seed, not yet unfolded into leaf and flower. But one reason why the
passionate love of man has gone out to these supreme Teachers more than
to any other Child of Man is not only that the beauty of Divinity is
revealed in man, so that man becomes what he essentially is - divine, but
because every such Teacher is the promise of the future; because you and
I in aeons, in ages to come, shall also unfold the Divinity which in Him
was made manifest, because, as your own Testament tells you, Christ is
but the first-born among many brethren, and in every one of His brethren
the beauty of the Godhead is ultimately to be unveiled, to be
manifested. And so the heart of humanity goes out to Them
as to the promise of the future, as well as the splendour of the past, not only
the manifestation of God triumphant in one human form, but the promise of God
manifest in every human form. That every Child of Man shall be a manifested
Child of God - that is the glory of Their attraction.
24.
And never forget, you
who belong to the Christian faith, that the great teacher S. Paul was not
satisfied with the mere acceptance of Christian doctrines, that he was not
satisfied with Baptism and Communion, the two universally recognised
Sacraments of the Christian Church; he declared that they were but little
children who knew but those outer elements, and that he travailed for his
converts, until, as he said, “Christ be born in you”; for of what avail
is Christ to you as an outer ideal unless He is born within you to reproduce
the life which is His? Every great religion has its ideal, its divine
mission under different names; but names are nothing where the life is one. The
Buddhist thinks of the Lord Buddha, and, looking inward, he declares: “Thou art
Buddha”. The Hindu thinks of the divine manifestations spoken of in his own
faith, and declares himself to be one with the
manifestations in whom he believes. And if you give the name of Christ to that
supreme Teacher who, some two thousand years ago, came to give to the West its
own religion, remember that His value to you is not only that of a mighty
example - though great indeed is the value of that example of perfection shown
to men, - but far more that you should reproduce Him in yourself, far more that
the infant Christ should be born in the cave of your heart; that in you He
should develop to boyhood, to youth, to manhood, until you have grown “to the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. It is not a Christ outside
you who saves; it is not a Christ outside you who redeems; it is the Christ
within, who transforms the man into His own image, and makes him realise that
as the Father in Heaven is perfect, so is perfection the inevitable goal of
man.
25.
II
26.
SAVIOURS OF THE WORLD,
27.
OR WORLD-TEACHERS
28.
29.
FRIENDS:
30.
We are to deal here
with the special manifestations of two Superhuman Men in History and Religion,
with the life, the power, of two Supreme Teachers of the world. Tonight the
general theory is to be the subject of discourse; we are to trace through age
after age the reappearance of this World-Teacher for the helping of man, for
the founding of great religions. Then, in another discourse, we are to study
the subject from its more mystical side, to consider the relation of the human Spirit
to the divine, and to try to see the conditions of the unfolding of the Christ
in man. Those of you who are familiar with Christian teaching will remember how
the great Initiate, S. Paul, pointed out that it was the intention of the
Christian religion to bring about the birth of the Christ within the individual
believer, and that the Christ-Child, thus born in the human Spirit, was to grow
and to develop until the full stature of the Christ was reached in man. Until
that becomes objectively true, as it is ever true implicitly, in the human
being, Christ cannot become the first-born among many brethren, surrounded by,
those who have reproduced in themselves His own likeness, so that the great
family of the Sons of God shall be realised as the rationale of the evolution
of the Sons of Man.
31.
It will be reasonable
at the outset of our thinking to trace, however briefly, however imperfectly,
that great human evolution which changes the imperfect into the perfect, the
weak into the strong, the Son of Man into the Son of God. For it has been
recognised in the great faiths of the world that there is a path which human
feet may tread; and long before the Christian faith came to the helping of the
world, that path was described as a narrow path, a razor path, a path difficult
to tread, and the name by which it was and is known in ancient occult teaching
is the same name by which Christian Mystics have called it in modern days - it
has ever been named the “Way of the Cross”. For the idea of the Cross as known
in the ancient world was that the life of God came down in order that the world
might be lifted up through that life; and in the ancient symbolism it was said
that the Spirit was crucified in matter, that Spirit descended into matter in
order that matter might be uplifted into Spirit; and you may remember how Plato
wrote, speaking of the second manifestation of divine life, that which in our
own phraseology we call the Second LOGOS; how it was said that the LOGOS, the
Wisdom, was shown in the form of a cross in the universe, decussated as a
cross. That ancient idea is profoundly true, and manifests one of the great
occult truths of evolution, and that is the idea that underlies the Cross in
all the ancient pre-Christian faiths.
32.
You find it ever as
the sign of Spirit descending into matter, and then as the sign of Spirit
triumphant over matter; so that everywhere it stands as the sign of life emerging from the grave, the grave being the matter and
the Spirit the Life triumphant. It is found on ancient pottery, it is found
painted in ancient frescoes, it is found carved in ancient stone and decorating
the sides of the walls of temples which were ruined before the modern faith of
Christianity was born. And this is natural, inasmuch as all faiths contain the
same essential truths, use the same significant symbols, and those symbols ever
indicate the same spiritual verities. As this truth dawns upon us not only from
the statements of ancient faiths, not only from the researches of occult
investigators, but from the testimony of antiquarians and archaeologists
who have searched into the ruins and the fragments left behind by ancient
civilisation, as we see this truth emerging from the fundamental identity of
the great faiths of the world, we feel a strong power, a certainty of
conviction of the essential truths of religion, which could never be ours
so long as our faith depended on a single book, so long as we saw only a
single revelation, instead of the constant manifestations of God in man.
33.
And so we find in our
study of religious truths that there has ever been the idea that
gradually man might quicken his evolution and tread onward, step by step,
along the narrow path which should lead him to the life that knows no ending,
when for him the cycle of births and of deaths would be over, and the one who
had overcome, who had conquered all the difficulties of life, should become a
pillar in the temple of his God, to go forth no more, but to support the temple
for the reception of men.
34.
In modern days, by
those same antiquarian researches that I have spoken of, the history of our
globe has been rolled far back into the centuries. Tens and hundreds of
thousands of years have gradually been seen to be all too short for the story
of the evolution of man. When some of us were children in the Western world, we
were taught that the history of our globe was comprised within a brief six
thousand years, and when, shortly before the French Revolution, that most
remarkable Mayor of Paris, M. Bailly, published in Europe the chronology
brought from India - the chronology brought from the Brahmanas of India, and
it was seen that they reckoned the age of the world not by tens of thousands
but by hundreds of thousands of years, that each age in the world which made
only part of its story was to be measured by many hundreds of thousands of
years - when that first came across from the East to the West, it was laughed
at as Oriental exaggeration. But modern Western research has proved its accuracy,
and those long ages of Brahmanic chronology are accepted by modern science, and
seen to be necessary for the tremendous evolution that lies behind. So
gradually, bit by bit, more and more light has been thrown upon the path, and
it has come to be realised by very many - I do not for a moment pretend
that in Europe it is as yet by the majority, but by many of the deeper
thinkers, by those who try to solve some of the problems of the human
race - it is seen by them that the only explanation of this long evolution of
consciousness, which goes side by side with the long evolution of forms,
must lie in a continuing consciousness which unfolds itself in body after body,
in age after age, until it develops from the ignorance of the savage up to the
heights of genius, up to heights of wisdom and of holiness.
35.
And so it will come
with no surprise to the student, when the idea is presented to him, that Those
who are seen in the world’s history towering high above Their fellow-men, Those
who bear the sacred names in the great religions of the world, that Those also
were once men as we are men, and have climbed upwards to Their divine
perfection through the difficulties and struggles that now encompass us, Their
younger brethren. When we recall the words spoken by the Christ when He was
last on earth, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven
is perfect”, we realise that to reach such divine perfection demands not one
brief span of human life, but many and many a life during which that perfection
is attained, and we begin to understand that when we see the Saint on earth, he
is but marking one stage of the progress along the road which each one of us
shall tread; and that beyond that Saint, exquisite as his life may be, there
stretch great reaches of superhuman perfection; and at the very summit of
those, on the high mountain-peaks, covered as it were with the dazzling
whiteness of divine perfection, there stands the flower of our race, the man
who has become divine, and who is therefore able to help His younger brethren
still struggling up the mountain side; that even the world’s Saviours were once
men like ourselves who have evolved the God within Them, the God hidden in us,
made manifest in Them.
36.
And these great
Founders of religion show marks of strange similarity. It is not only that in
the story of Their lives a similar history is seen to be outlived age after
age; but it is also seen that Their teachings are fundamentally identical;
that over and over and over again the same moral teaching comes forth from
those divine lips, the same great precepts which are to lead us to perfection
are spoken in the ears of different nations, are given out in different
tongues, the meaning ever the same. We notice the earliest World-Teacher who
came to the instructing of the childhood of our Aryan race - in that great
cradle of the Race which will once again be acknowledged in time to come as it
was in the past, found in Central Asia - known under the name of Vyasa, the
Teacher who gave in that far-off time the Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Religion,
the Wisdom Religion, which since has spread its branches under different names
over all the children of the Aryan race; we find Him teaching: “To do good to
another is right; to do evil to another is wrong”. We find Him declaring that
that which you would not have another do to you, you
should not do to another, but that which you would wish done to yourself, that
you should do to your fellow-men. That teaching, familiar to you as the
teaching of “the Golden Rule”, is a rule that has ever been given by great
World-Teachers in the past; and as we see the similarity of teaching underlying
differences of presentment, as in a moment I will show you, we see that these
resemblances are so striking that they must needs come from a single spirit; we
are not surprised to hear that the World-Teacher remains one and the same
through many and many an age of human history, through many and many a stage of
human civilisation; that it is the same mighty Teacher who comes back again and
again into the world He loves, who is known under different names, it is true,
but the names veil the same mighty Individual, the same World-Teacher, the
same Prophet of the different faiths, bringing the same message, teaching the
same truths, breathing the same compassionate love; He is the same age after
age, appearing in His world for its helping, and thus lifting humanity age
after age another step up to the golden ladder which ends at the feet of God.
37.
And seeing this
gradually come out from the story of the past, we begin to see in human
evolution two lines of mighty helping, used for the evolution and the gradual
uplifting of men; two lines of saving and of guiding, the one the line of
the Ruler, the other of the Teacher ; the one the line of the Protector
who guides the fate of nations; who builds the earth age after age into
different distributions of continents and of oceans; who has in hand the
evolving of the different Races of mankind - each Race bringing out its
characteristic qualities, and so gradually contributing its share to the final
perfection of humanity. And side by side with the line of the Ruler, the
Protector, the King, we see the line of the Teacher, of the Founder of the
faiths of the word, of the Guide of spiritual evolution, who gives to one faith
after another its own characteristic note, its own dominant teaching; so that,
as all the great truths are to be found in each faith, there is also one in
each faith which dominates the rest, giving to it its own peculiar colour,
evolving in it its own peculiar characteristics; just as the Races are builded
into the final perfection of humanity, so the religions also are builded to
bring out one by one the great qualities which are needed in spiritual
evolution, until both outer and inner perfection shall crown the working out of
the mighty Plan, made by the Divine Architect before our humanity was born, to
reach its consummation when our world had touched its ending, and its fruitage
is the perfection of humanity.
38.
Looking at it, then,
in that wide way, we see the Ruler and the Teacher coming down the stream
of history side by side, each with his own work, and as the life in the East,
so far as our Aryan race is concerned, is older than the life in the
West, we find an eastern name given to the World-Teacher in those eastern
lands - a name which means the Essence of Wisdom; sometimes in
Theosophical books you come across the name Bodhisattva, and that translated is
simply Wisdom-Essence, the Essence of Wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge
penetrated by love. And so the World-Teacher in those older days is known by
this eastern name, just as in later days in the West the World-Teacher took the
Greek name for the nations of Christendom, that name of the Anointed, the
Christos, by which He is known among us.
39.
But the difference of
names must not blind us to the identity of function, and of teacher-ship. We
must realise that names vary with languages, but Truth is eternal, and remains
the same; and the World-Teacher brings it out from time to time in order that
man may learn gradually what he could not learn at once, and realise that great
Knowledge of God which is in very truth Eternal Life.
40.
We see, then, down the
ages certain great figures stand out, the Founders of religions, and I am
limiting myself to the Aryan race, omitting Those that have gone before, not
because that history is not also profoundly interesting, but because in a
single lecture one must limit the area of discourse if the object is to be
worked out of conveying such hints of knowledge as shall lead some of you to
study for yourselves. For remember, that the only object of a lecture is to
stimulate the hearers into study; not to give them a mere superficial idea,
which is all that any lecture can do, but to be a sign-post pointing to the road
along which every student must walk for himself; for only by individual study
can knowledge worthy of the name be gained, and the duty of the lecturer is
only to point out the way, every man having to study for himself and to gain by
his own efforts a grasp of Truth.
41.
These great Teachers,
then, that we see shining out from time to time in the history of mankind, in
the history of our own Race, when They appeared in our
world, founded certain religions. Of those great religions the oldest in the
Aryan race is that which you know in its modern form as Hinduism. That is
followed by the religion that grew up in later
42.
And then the third
great faith, that which came from
43.
The first of these is
that in which Hinduism originated - a religion which had as its special mark
the sense of Duty between the members of the community, which struck the
keynote of the Duty of man to man, and founded that Duty in the recognition of
the One Divine Life in which every human being inheres, from which he draws his
own individual life. I mentioned the name given to the World-Teacher when He
came forth to found that ancient faith, the name of Vyasa, and He took as the
symbol of His teaching that body, that divine body, that we call the Sun of our
system. If you look at the symbol under which God is expressed in that
ancient faith, you will find that it ever goes back to the Sun, from which the
life of the system pours forth; for as all life in our solar system comes forth
from the Sun, and every planet takes from the Sun its light and life, so
in Hinduism was the Sun regarded as the outer manifestation of God
Himself, the one Life of the world and of all that lived therein; and we
find its central prayer - the prayer that is ever repeated by every Hindu as he
turns eastwards as the Sun rises, and bows before the Sun as its light dawns in
the eastern sky - you find that ancient prayer still ringing from modern
lips: “That Sun we worship; may the divine radiance make wise, may it brighten
our thought”. To that divine Life and Light, recognised as divine in the outer
world and as the source of all physical as well as all emotional and mental and
spiritual life, the cry goes up from that ancient faith day by day, that that
light which we worship may shine in us and irradiate us. As the heat and the
warmth and the light of the Sun were the symbols by which the World-Teacher
gave knowledge and wisdom to the first religion of our Aryan race, so we find
that after a while He retired and left in the field His pupils to carry on the
knowledge and to spread the truths He taught.
44.
It was not until
another great emigration went forth, that which went forth to Arabia, to Egypt,
along the basin of the Mediterranean, the second of which I spoke, that He
again came forth from His home in Central Asia, and, taking the body of a
disciple in Egypt, began to teach the same ancient truth of the One Life in
every man, in the outer world as well as in his inner heart. But in Egypt He
spoke a language a little different, and instead of taking the Sun itself as
the symbol of divinity, He took the Light which came forth from it and which
dwelt also in the hearts of men; it is from ancient Egypt that those words were
drawn, so familiar to every one of you in the Fourth Gospel of the Christian
Church, of the “Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”.
Those were the words He spoke in the name that is known in the West as Hermes,
or as Thoth in the ancient Egyptian faith; He, the Messenger of the Supreme,
declared that the Light which exists in the world around us lives also in our
own hearts, and He taught that man should look within for the divine Light and
find it burning within his own heart. He taught that when once you see the
Light burning within yourself, then, and then only, shall you be able to
recognise the Light as it burns in the heaven above us, as it shines in the
world around us; for only as we know God in ourselves, do we learn to see God
in all who are around us. Nay, to us He is not only in the man, but in the
animal, the vegetable, the mineral kingdoms, for there is nothing which exists,
moving or unmoving, that could for one moment be bereft of Him, in a world
where all is God; there is not the lowest grain of dust that is not penetrated
with the one divine Light even as it shines out in the highest Archangel; for
the Light is one, and that Light is the Light of the world.
45.
And so He taught through
Light the ancient hidden side of the old Egyptian lore. Many a sentence is to
be found of the Light. The King of Egypt, the Ruler, is told that his one great
duty is to “Look for the Light”, for only as the King sees the divine Light in
the people that he rules can he be truly King by the grace of God, recognising
divinity in his subjects as he feels it within himself. And the priests
were taught to “Follow the Light”, and the people were told to “Seek for
the Light”; and so everywhere in ancient Egypt the Light was the symbol
of the Godhead, and only as it irradiated the heart of man could man hope to
realise the splendour of the divine Life.
46.
And then another
emigration was to come forth, that which was to people ancient
47.
Again the time came
when another emigration was to go forth, the fourth of these emigrating hosts,
called by us the Keltic, although that name in
48.
And when that work was
done, then the great World-Teacher who had been the same Individual appearing
in the different forms, came for the last time back to India, and there He took
on His last body, that you have heard of as Gautama, the Lord Buddha; for His
work in this world was over, and wider fields called for His service, utter
perfection having been reached by Him and His labour on earth fulfilled. You
remember how here He reached what is called the perfect Illumination, the
perfect Enlightenment, and then, after teaching for some five-and-forty years
of life, how He passed away from earth. But still they tell us in those eastern
lands that from time to time His shadow shines forth upon the world in
blessing; for He was the first of our humanity who touched that height of
stainless perfection, He who, having been World-Teacher through these long ages
of the past, handed on to His mighty Successor the function of teaching the
Race through the further stages of its evolution - to Him who in the East is
still called the Bodhisattva, who in the West appeared as the Christ.
49. For now another Individual, though of the same mighty Brotherhood of World-Teachers, comes forth on to the stage of the world in order to lift up our race to yet higher reaches of spirituality, to yet greater glory of perfection. And we find Him first appearing in the eastern lands under a name that you will know very well - the name of Shri Krshna - that marvellous Child of eastern stories, who is an embodied Love, and who to two hundred and fifty millions of our Race today is the supreme Object of worship and of devotion. Very brief the life that there He led. As a youth He passed away, but so marvellous was His out-welling love, so marvellous His compassionate tenderness, that even those few years of mortal life have changed, as it were, the aspect of Hinduism, and have made it a religion of Devotion where before it was rather a religion of Knowledge. Just so also among the Buddhists - the people who use the name of the Lord Buddha as that of their supreme Teacher - you find that they speak of Gautama, the Lord Buddha as the Buddha of Knowledge, but they speak of the One who is now the Supreme Teacher as the Buddha of Compassion. It was that brief life of love, which has made so wondrous a devotion in all our eastern brethren, that ‘Krshna-cult’, as it is called, which suddenly springs up a few centuries before the Christian era, which is not traced to an definite beginning by the ordinary Orientalist in the West. They know not the true eastern story; therefore they cannot understand the religion of love, which suddenly sprang up in that eastern land. They cannot understand why, in many points, it is so like Christianity, why it has so much said in it of divine grace, of the helping of man by God, of the lifting up of the helpless and the sinner. They cannot understand how these strange lik