POINT OUT THE WAY
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Arranged by Chapters.
The Three FUNDAMENTALS AT AN INFORMAL
“OCEAN” CLASS
QUESTIONS ANSWERED AT AN INFORMAL
“OCEAN” CLASS The following series of articles are reprinted from THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT magazine, published by Theosophy Company (India), Ltd., Theosophy Hall, 40 New Marine Lines, Bombay 400 020 (India). The series ran from January, l951 through July, 1954. The answers are based on the Teachings as brought by H. P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge. The writings of these two Teachers and those consistent with them, form the basis of study for those associated with The United Lodge of Theosophists.
THE UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS: DECLARATION The policy of this Lodge is independent devotion to the cause of Theosophy, without professing attachment to any Theosophical organization, It is loyal to the great Founders of the Theosophical Movement, but does not concern itself with dissensions or differences of individual opinion. The work it has on hand and the end it keeps in view are too absorbing and too lofty to leave it the time or inclination to take part in side issues. That work and that end is the dissemination of the Fundamental Principles of the Philosophy of Theosophy, and the exemplification in practice of those principles, through a truer realization of the SELF; a profounder conviction of Universal Brotherhood. It holds that the unassailable basis for union among Theosophists, wherever and however situated, is “similarity of aim, purpose and teaching,” and therefore has neither Constitution, By-Laws nor Officers, the sole bond between its Associates being that basis. And it aims to disseminate this idea among Theosophists in the furtherance of Unity. It regards as Theosophists all who are engaged in the true service of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, condition or organization, and It welcomes to its association all those who are in accord with its declared purposes and who desire to fit themselves, by study and other wise, to be the better ‘able to help and teach others. “The true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and all.” 1 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— The following is the form signed by Associates of the United Lodge of Theosophists: -----====ooo000ooo====-----
Being in sympathy with the purposes of this Lodge, as set forth in its “Declaration, I hereby record my desire to be enrolled as an Associate, it being understood that such association calls for no obligation on my part, other than that which I, myself, determine. 2 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— CONTENTS
The First Fundamental
————————————————————5 Chapter I ——————————————————————————23 Chapter II —————————————————————————28 Chapter III I. The Sevening of Cosmos —————————33 II The Sevening of Man ————————————————37 III. The Monads ————————————————————41 IV Rounds of Evolution —————————————————45 V. The “S. D” Basis ———————————————————50 Chapter IV ——————————————————————————54 Chapter V I. The Lives, Healing and Astral Matter ——57 II. The Astral Body, Astral Substance, and Human Birth ——61 III The Astral Body, Cells and Skandhas —————————68 IV. The Astral Body, Imagination and Prodigies ——————73 V. Astral Matter, Atoms and Incarnation —————————76 Chapter VI Hypnotism, Suggestion and the Astral Light —————79 Chapter VII I. Manas, Self—Consciousness and the Brain 84 II. The Inner Ego, Incarnation and the “Mindless Man” ———88 III. Intuition, Intellect and “Lighting Up” the Child —————93 IV. Genius, Initiation and the Motion of Manas ——————100 Chapter VIII I. Reincarnation and “New Thinkers” ———106 II. Food, Incarnation, and the Thinker in Evolution —————111 III. “Once a Man, Always a Man,” and “Lost Souls”——————116 Chapter IX I. Vegetarianism, Religious Taboos, Memory —121 II. Buddhi, “Progress” in Devachan, Conscious Death ————127 Chapter X Environment, Intelligence and Blind Tom ——————131 Chapter XI I. Karma, Nirvana and the “Karmaless” ——137 II. Equilibrium and Liberation ——————————————142 Chapter XII I. Death and the Death Vision ——————148 II. The Motion of “Shells” and “Waking” Kama Loka —————154
3 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Chapter XIII I. “Waking” from Devachan and the 15OO-Year Cycle —————158 II. Assimilation in Devachan and Continuing Consciousness ——163
Chapter XIV I. The Four Ages, The Four Castes and “The Lives” ——————168 II. Earthquakes, The Yugas and Evolution ——————————173 III. Kali Yuga, Cycles and the Calendar ————————————177 IV. Early Rounds, Spiritual Cycles and Nirvana ————————181
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI I. Imagination, Cohesion and Faith —————————————190 II. Modes of Seeing, Vibrations, Contact with Masters —————195
Chapter XVII
Conclusion ———————————————————————————204
4 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— The Three Fundamentals at an Informal “Ocean” Class; Before the reader proceeds to the consideration of the Stanzas from the Book of Dzyan which form the basis of the present work, it is absolutely necessary that he should be made acquainted with the few fundamental conceptions which underlie and pervade the entire system of thought to which his attention is invited. These basic ideas are few in number, and on their clear apprehension depends the understanding of all that follows; therefore no apology is required for asking the reader to make himself familiar with them first, before entering on the perusal of the work itself .— H.P.B., The Secret Doctrine Vol. I, p. 13. It was the conviction of Robert Crosbie that a proper comprehension of the three fundamental propositions was necessary for the aspirant to Theosophical service. It has also become the conviction of almost all who have been assuming responsibility for the propaganda through the U.L.T. At its study classes these fundamentals are regularly considered, repeated and explained. At one such study-class, with The Ocean of Theosophy as its text book, these fundamentals were Question and Answer form. It should be said that the answers here presented were originally given extemporaneously, and this quality will serve to remind the reader that the statements made are suggestive rather than authoritative. The obvious intent of the speaker was to turn inquirers to the recorded teaching it whence they might derive “an inspiration of their own to answer their deeper questions, and to guide them across the ocean of Theosophy.
The First Fundamental
Q.—Is it possible for a great intellect to understand The Secret Doctrine without an understanding of the Three Fundamental Propositions?
A.—The Three Fundamental Propositions
are a part of The Secret Doctrine so, if we understood The Secret Doctrine
we would understand the Three Fundamental Propositions. But, in any event,
let us examine the term “intellect.” We habitually use it to mean that our
intellect exists apart from other intellects, and apart from the other
elements in our nature. Certainly, any ordinary man of average
intelligence, of good intellectual comprehension, could follow clearly
everything that H.P.B. has written. But it would do good only so far. He
would derive merely an intellectual benefit from it, because intellect was
the only one of the elements in him that he had exercised. He might see
that all The Secret Doctrine statements are correct. There are very able
men in the Theosophical. field, and always have been—able men in our sense
of the word—who know The Secret Doctrine intellectually. What is the
matter with them? They have forgotten a more important element than the
intellect—the Will. What is the good of all the knowledge in the world,
without the Will to apply what we see, what we know? Theosophy is devoted
primarily not only to the education of our minds but to the arousal of our
WILL. The Will cannot be aroused from outside: The
intellect can. 5 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
A.—This question ought to bring us back
to what we understand. What picture is raised in our minds by the word
"knowledge"? We can’ t know anything as object or as subject, save and
except to the extent that it manifests itself. What do I know of any of
you? Nothing whatever, except what I perceive. Your body, your expression,
your words, your acts, all that I ever can see is what I can know; all
that I can see and know is your manifestation not you. So the word
“knowledge” always means duality: the knower—yourself, myself, any other
self—and what is known. What is known is always what is manifest.
Q.—How far does the “substance” of Spinoza’s conception agree with the First Fundamental? A.—Turn
to Volume I of The Secret Doctrine to the section on “Gods, Monads and
Atoms,” beginning about page 610. H.P.B. gives the fundamental idea of
Spinoza and goes quite at length into the fundamental ideas of Leibnitz,
showing that between the two is the esoteric doctrine. Leibnitz conceived
of the universe as an infinitude of living centres of action, each one of
them a kind of spiritual being; but he had to account for their origin.
This he did by postulating some kind of a supernal extra-cosmic deity of
which all living things are the children. We can see the anthropomorphism
that governed his perception of the infinitude of purely monadic beings.
Spinoza conceived of an infinite and
changeless divine substance that never had a beginning, can never die; but
he could not account for the fact that there are beings in the world.
There was a gap between the simplicity of substance and the multiplicity
of beings. 6 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—It is said that everything which we see is seen inwardly. But how is it possible that objects visible to the naked eye can be seen within? A.—Well, isn’t there more than one kind of seeing? One may be on the outside of a thing and see it as within oneself. This is the process that we partly know and use and call “feeling,” “memory,” “thought,” and refer to as “faith” and “hope” and “aspiration,” and by many other terms. In other words, there is a mental or metaphysical universe: it is life regarded as internal to ourselves. Then there is identically the same life regarded as external to the form we occupy, and that life regarded as external is what we call space and matter and the stars and planets.
Very, very difficult
it is for us to grasp the reality. Once H.P.B. used an expression
something after this fashion. It must be about page 75, in the first
volume of The Secret Doctrine and it is repeated in other places. It is to
the effect that the same initial difficulty confronts us all—the apparent
multitude of objects and their diversity. But that exists in our
consciousness and nowhere else. Change our state of consciousness, and the
conceptions that we now take to be realities cease to be. We are there,
Life is there, and behold, we begin to perceive another state of
impressions. What was there in the beginning? Why, in the beginning there
was Life, and Life was full of impressions, and Life was busy with those
impressions. What is there after death? The same Life, and we, busy with
our impressions. But these impressions change with the nature of the
being, and that is again our Third Fundamental. All this universe was once subjective; that is, internal to our consciousness. It now is internal to the consciousness of the Mahatmas—it is not an external universe to Them. In Their consciousness this universe is subjective; it is Their mind; it is Their intelligence; it is Their knowledge; it is Their wisdom. When the Three Fundamentals are seen, the universe entire is internal to ourselves; the universe entire is external to ourselves; the universe is part internal and part external; the universe ceases to be altogether internal and external, as we think it. What else could it be to be a Mahatma? It is hard to realize that duality and multiplicity exist in the perceiving consciousness and nowhere else, but The Secret Doctrine and its three basic propositions exist to help us toward this realization. Q.—Should we not make a distinction between limited space and the Space of the First Fundamental? A.—Yes; Space is given to us as the perfect symbol of the One
7 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Self, the One Reality. Why? Because it is that in which all things live and move and have their being; it is that which is the background of consciousness, the field of perception and the arena of action for any and every being of every description. So when we get the spiritual conception of Space, we can appreciate what H.P.B. said in another place. She said, “I have tried my best to convey to Theosophists, to arouse in them, the perception that there is but one Reality; that It is omnipresent; that It neither was nor will be; It eternally is.” She said she had tried in vain to arouse them to see that. “Now,” she said, “once that is seen, that we came from That, that we exist in That, and that sooner or later we must return to That—all the rest becomes easy.” Q.—The First Proposition of Theosophy states that All is Life, whether in form or out of form. Why, then, should we worry as to man’ s using an animal form? Since the consciousness that is using the animal form will some day extend to the human form, in previous periods of evolution this humanity of today must have used animal forms. A.—Let us get H.P.B.’s definition of “animal.” She is speaking in terms of consciousness when she says “animal”; she is speaking in terms of consciousness when she says “Buddhi”; she is speaking in terms of consciousness when she says “Manas,” or “Atma”, but in our reading of these terms, we translate them into terms of form and action as experienced by us here and now through our physical senses. What is an animal, according to Theosophy? It is the germ of awakening consciousness, the germ, exactly as the embryo is the germ of a human being. And what is human consciousness? It is the next stage beyond the germ stage; that is, human consciousness stands in the same relation to the consciousness of Manas—Egoic self-consciousness—as the foetus stands in relation to the body after it is born. First, the embryo; then the foetus; then the body that is born. First, the germ of consciousness; then the unification, through experience, of those germs until a stage is reached where a contact point is set up with a higher form, and that is the so-called “mindless” man; then we. have the human stage, and there the same struggle begins over again in order for the individual to reach Egoic self-consciousness or regain it—just as the mass in the kingdoms below struggled to reach human self-consciousness. Human self-consciousness never was germinal self-consciousness; the baby body never was the foetus; the foetus never was an embryo. What do the three words represent? Three stages in the evolution of a human form. Apply that, then, to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. To make the category complete, three elemental stages; then the mineral stage, the vegetable stage and the animal stage of consciousness. That is all part of developing the germs of experience which constitute an individual entity; then occurs the lighting up of Manas, or the reflection of Self, in that combination of germs, and we call that “human” consciousness. Now, looking at it from the stand-point of stages in the journey of consciousness, we can see that while it is one and the same Monad or Spark, or Soul, these words—elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal, and human—are by us interpreted in terms of form while their meaning is stages in the awakening of consciousness The man was never an animal any more than Devachan was ever Kama-Loka. The various kingdoms represent stages or states through which one and the same Perceiver passes. 8
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—If the First Fundamental transcends human conception and expression, how can that be regarded as a practical basis for thought and action? A.—The statement of the First Fundamental Proposition is that there is a centre in each one of us on which everything else turns; that centre is no “place”—it is a centre of consciousness. Now, we know that nothing exists for us unless we are conscious of it, or unless we are aware of it. So, can’t we see at once that consciousness is the reality to us, and that existence has no place whatever except for that reality? Let us extend the idea; bring it home to ourselves. We are limited, but the only limitation is our own conception and perception. Extend that idea—it is true of all others; it is true of all life. No existence is apart from That. There is the principle and basis for all experience of every kind . Imagine a railroad station, a few minutes before train time. Looking at the whirling mass of humanity, all the people moving, full of excitement, did you ever think that there must be something permanent somewhere? We can watch our own reactions; every time someone passes in front of us, we think about it ; we have some feeling about it ; and people are passing all the time. Our own reactions are like that—changing—first one thing, and then another, first one colour, and then another. All of a sudden it may come home to us: we don’t change at all. We have these thoughts, and they change; we have feelings, and they change; but we are the beings who have them. We have not changed with any of the feelings and thoughts, and we can relate, say, one change to another. We could not if we were any of the passing impressions. Thus, there must be something permanent in us. All down the ages, people have been trying to find God, and they have erected all sorts of mental images, usually reflections of them selves and carrying human virtues to the nth degree, and also displaying a great many human defects. They have placed this God in some impossible heaven somewhere—no two heavens alike, no two Gods alike, either. The real Spiritual Teacher on whose teachings the religions afterwards were founded never taught any outside God like that ; They all taught the God within, this changeless something which everyone is. Theosophists call it a Principle; they don’t call it a God because people make a being of a god. Theosophists say that there is one changeless essence—a Principle, not a person, which is the sustainer of all, the source of all. Interesting? Yes, isn’t it? It is ennobling, too, because it makes of every man a god, and why not? All that any man can know of God is what he knows in himself, through himself and by himself.
Q.—What is the distinction between reincarnation and metempsychosis? Ans.—The distinction lies in the definitions and misconceptions given to those terms by man. H.P.B. says that “metempsychosis” means, in the first instance, the changes which go on metaphysically in any and every being; that is, the very word “metempsychosis”—the transformation of soul—leaves matter out of consideration altogether. Every time, for example, we change a bad feeling to good feeling, there is a metempsychosis. Every time we change from courage to fear, there is a metempsychosis: it is temporary, but it is a transformation, no matter how 9 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— short a time it lasts. It goes on in our own souls. So metempsychosis refers to man as a spiritual and psychological being, without regard to the world he may occupy, or the form that he might inhabit, or the state of consciousness in which he may at any given moment be. Metempsychosis deals with the changes through which the soul goes. Now what is reincarnation? The word literally means “going into flesh again.” This psychological and spiritual being may enter a body of matter such as is known to us, that we call flesh; that would be it incarnation . If it came a second time into a body of flesh, that would be its reincarnation. H.P.B. originally used, in Isis Unveiled the word “metempsychosis”; she refused to employ the word “reincarnation,” because that word had already been preempted by the followers of Allan Kardec, who was an exceedingly well-known French Spiritualist, author of great numbers of text-books used in the French public schools. Kardec got interested in Spiritualism through two of his little nieces ; he performed many experiments with them, and with others, and evolved a kind of philosophy. In this philosophy of his, he took that which we call the personality—that is, the human consciousness—to be the real being, and he thought that that human consciousness returned to earth again—that a man could be reincarnated in his own son or his own grandson. This return of the personality to a body on earth again he called “reincarnation.” The confusion of Kardec’s teaching with H.P.B.’s gave rise to one of the great misconceptions that finally split the Theosophical Society. Some of H.P.B.’s students—among them Col. Olcott himself—thought that because she discarded Kardec’s doctrine, she knew nothing about reincarnation, or else that she changed her mind after she went to India. Yet in Isis the distinction is made perfectly clear. “Reincarnation” means the return of Atma-Buddhi-Manas to an animal body on this earth. “Metempsychosis” means the changes that go on in Buddhi-Manas as the result of the experiences gained through repeated reincarnations. Q.—Isn’t it also metempsychosis that takes place in the units of life going from one kingdom to another?
Ans.—When units of life go from one kingdom to another—that is, dying in one kingdom, losing their bodies and getting new bodies in another kingdom—that is re-embodiment. If it should be rebirth in bodies of flesh, it would be reincarnation; but if we refer to the changes that go on in the soul, then another term is used. If the soul, the reincarnating ego, has not reached the human stage, the process of re-embodiment is called transmigration. “Transmigration,” properly speaking, as the word is ordinarily used, does not apply to the reincarnating ego. When H.P.B. came to write the S.D., Kardec’s word “reincarnation,” because it was a materialistic term, become popular and the Theosophists and Spiritualists were all using it. So H.P.B., in The Secret Doctrine had to employ the word in common usage. She adopted term “reincarnation,” but gave it an altogether different sense from the Kardec meaning or the Hindu meaning. We would do well to remember that Karma as H.P.B. taught it, is not known in the world at all ; that reincarnation as H.P.B. taught it is not known in any religion. 10 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————
through a physical body would not be
subject to reincarnation. . . . ” The question goes on to say, “He might, however, choose to reincarnate.” He does not choose to reincarnate, but he chooses the time, place and circumstances of his reincarnation. Then the question is asked, “Does pre-existence, then, necessarily involve reincarnation?” It doesn’t necessarily involve reincarnation here, but so long as any being has any thing to do with manifested life, if he doesn’t reincarnate here, he must incarnate in some other place. Q.—Is there no way of getting free from Reincarnation? Ans.—Well, consider what the opposite of freedom is. The opposite of freedom means that we are the victims of forces over which we have no control. Freedom means we are in the same world, with the same forces, but we have control over them. Q.—One of the Aphorisms on Karma states that effects may be counter acted or mitigated by the thoughts and acts of oneself or of another. The question is, how can an individual be affected except by his own thoughts and actions? Ans.—We have to remember that nature’s method of accounting is double-entry. We do not have a thought except in connection with someone else; we do not perform an act except in connection with someone else. Our thoughts and our acts produce an immediate change in us, but that is in the beginning of things. Since they are visited upon another, they produce a modification in him, willingly or unwillingly; and then, in the course of time, that which we sowed with other beings we reap from other beings. If a man visited evil on us, and we knew it was evil but did not resent it; if we did not have any condemnation or blame for him, knowing how it came that we suffered at the hands of this person—then that Karma is done so far as we are concerned. Since one half of the problem has already been solved, it is immediately an amelioration of circumstances for the other half, although not always to his consciousness. Other wise, why should Buddha have said, for example, “Let the sins of the whole world fall on me”? We come down to this statement, that there is no such thing as the Karma of any one, exclusive of the Karma of all. I might hurt my foot, which is one member of my body, and then I could counteract or mitigate the injury to my foot by using my hand. There is nothing hard to understand about that when we realize that self-consciousness is Buddhi-Manas—and there is only one Buddhi-Manas in manifestation. That Buddhi-Manas is the whole of humanity, not this individual or that individual. From the standpoint of enduring consciousness, there is only one man-consciousness here on earth; that is the consciousness of all humanity. So each physical personal being stands in relation to the collective consciousness of mankind—Buddhi-Manas—as, say, one of the members of the body stands to the whole body. 11 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Each one of us is a portion of the body corporate of humanity, and any part of the body corporate—physically or metaphysically—can be used to injure other portions, or it can be used to ameliorate, mitigate or counteract any injury inflicted on, or about to be inflicted on, the rest. We know that is so. Here is an unconscious man who would die if someone didn’t staunch the flow of blood. Isn’t the effect of the collision by which this man was knocked unconscious and so wounded that his life-blood was ebbing away—isn’t this Karma mitigated by the action of the one who stays the flow of blood? Here one of us has his rent coming due tomorrow, and is about to be thrown out on the street. A neighbour lends us the money, or the landlord gets a change of heart: isn’t this Karma ameliorated? Take our meeting here. Some of us get a strength from the collective mind, from the collective motive, which of ourselves we could not muster. That is a mitigation, a mitigation through others of the individual Karma. Otherwise, what is the sense of any association? All associations are either for good or for evil, and that means they can make good bad; or bad worse—or they can make good better; and evil less bad. Ans.—Don’t we know that he has a choice? If you want to read a psychological study of the subject from the stand-point of Theosophy, it would be worth while to read a very short story by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Pit and the Pendulum.” There was a man in a situation so awful that it’s almost unbelievable and unimaginable. He reconciled himself to it. The story doesn’t show him the victim—that is, the loser—in the struggle. Everything that happens to us is Karma, and that’s our usual view of Karma; we don’t think of Karma except in terms of effects experienced. Yet there is the other side to it—the causes of those effects. Now, when anything happens to us, it is the ego who feels, whether in the body or out of the body. Out of the body, the ego knows the causes of those effects, and so he struggles, even unwittingly, when he is back in the body and no longer can perceive the causes. He struggles, although he does not understand why he struggles, against these bad effects. An old school of Philosophy all down the ages has taught that. man is the creature of the environment; that is, in fact, the philosophy of materialism. Now, notice the philosophy of religion. A man is just as much a creature in religion as he is in materialism. In one case, he is the creature of matter, of his environment, of his birth. In the other, he is the creature of “God.” The materialist—the genuine one—knows that it is no use to struggle. He believes in Kismet, fate, destiny, no free-will. Yet he goes right on struggling, and does not perceive the contradiction in himself . So, the religious man believes that everything that happens to him happens to him by the will of his God, but he is as busy as a bee all the time : he does not perceive the logical absurdity of his own position. Higher Manas is perception on the plane of causes; lower Manas is experience on the plane of effects. In other words, the teaching of The Secret Doctrine is very simple. H.P.B. puts it in these identical words: Whenever the immortal ego incarnates, it becomes a compound unity of 12 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— spirit and matter, which together act on seven distinct planes of Life and Consciousness. If we regard matters from that point of view, the problem begins to clear up. We enter into union with our brother lives of lower grades of intelligence than ourselves. Now, while in union with them, we see through their eyes, on their plane. How else could we see? In other words, we become for the time being the other fellow—the animal self, the astral self, the Kamic self, the physical self. Not until the combination is loosed, whether by sleep, or by death, or by the regaining while in the body of Manasic knowledge, are we able to live free from the contingencies of the environment. We could put it, according to the Seventh Chapter of the Ocean in some such fashion as this: call what H.P.B. otherwise calls the immortal ego, or the reincarnating ego, by the name of Manas without qualification. The moment that Manas enters into union with the forms of life on a lower plane than its own, Manas is modified by the union. Lower Manas is the modification of higher Manas; higher Manas is that part of Manas which is not modified by contact with matter. What part is that? What else than the part of Manas which is in contact with Buddhi? If we regard lower Manas and higher Manas not as two separate things or as two separate beings, but think of lower Manas as a modification induced in Manas by its union with matter—that’s what the word “incarnation” means—then we can understand the distinction. Mr. Judge goes on to show that the modification of this Lower Manas—the original modification—is subject to four further modifications: That modification in lower Manas induced by the body alone; that modification induced by the astral body; and the modification induced by the principle of Kâma, or the intelligence which belongs in the astral and physical natures. Those are three of the modifications, and Mr. Judge says they are all due to memory. When we study our body, our body is seen to be a product of memory; our astral body is a product of memory; passions and desires are the product of memory—these are nothing but the reanimation of the three forms of memory in matter. What reanimates them? Our incarnation. And what is the fourth modification of Manas? Lower Manas is still integral with Manas, and so there is some Manasic action, even in that part of Manas which is present in the body and intoxicated, as we might say, by incarnation. But we want to know why. That’s Manas. Whenever we are trying to find out the cause of a condition that afflicts us or others—not trying to dodge it, but trying to find out what caused it; whenever we are trying to cure the bad effects we are experiencing by admitting our share in bringing them about, and are determined to set up better causes; there is the action of Manas in the body—pure Manas.
Ans.—It isn’t strange at all; it’s the most natural thing in the world. All the events of Nature move in just those cyclic orders. It is the Law of the whole universe. It pertains just as much to the atom as to ourselves and to the sun, This very universe we live in—in a state of intense activity now—will have a rest, retire into silence and secrecy, and then after that emerge again into another new mode of activity. It is the same way with ourselves. We are living here on this earth now, intensely active, and we are going to die; we will have our rest, and we will come back again to earth. We will reincarnate, as Theosophists say, 13 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— because we have left unfinished business here. There are beings acting here that we were acting with before; we do not act at all alone; we all act together, and every time we act mentally, or morally, or physically, we involve the whole universe in our actions, some, of course, more remotely and some more immediately. Just as a seed in the vegetable kingdom grows to a certain kind of fruitage and no other, so it is with us. “Causes sown each hour bear each its harvest of effects, for rigid Justice rules the World.” There isn’t any accident; there isn’t any miracle, and there isn’t any God that brings these things to pass in our lives. We have set up the causes for them; we have brought about these events. So we can actually be the makers of our own destiny for good and bad, and we are making that destiny every minute. So long as we work for the good of all beings in the universe, we are acting for our divine destiny; but if we act for self, then for an infernal destiny. If we really come to know this Law, we shall be more intelligent beings, and we shall bring to bear upon this earth that Law of Harmony and translate it into what we all would love to see—Universal Brotherhood. That’s not only a name to Theosophists—that is what they are making all the time.
Q.—What is the meaning of Over-Soul, and what is the relation of Over-Soul to the Universal Sixth Principle? also, what is it that does the passing—what or who passes through the various forms? Ans.—The Over-Soul is universal intelligence or knowledge, the knowledge of all considered as one. What is the Universal Sixth Principle? The Over-Soul, Buddhi. Now, we have an idea of “my” knowledge, and “your” knowledge, as if it were our own. It is, in a way, but knowledge is one. An idea of unity must prevail in a consideration of all these subjects and ideas. There is one knowledge; it is the knowledge of all considered as one; our knowledge is our own knowledge. Over-Soul is another word for that one body of perfected knowledge. The soul of each one is his hold on that. Now, what is it that goes through all this process of evolution? It is the Monad. Mr. Judge in the Ocean calls it the germ of self-consciousness. He does not say that is the Monad, but that is what the Monad is. The Monad is Life in manifestation, manifested Life. The term “Monad” has been used as if it were a differentiated something, but H. P. Blavatsky says it is used for convenience only, that it would be better to say, the Monad, or Life manifesting in the mineral kingdom, in the vegetable kingdom, in the animal kingdom, and so on. In the lower kingdoms, the “monad” is like a wave in the ocean of life. When the man stage is reached, there is a self-conscious Monad; the germ of self-consciousness has ripened. But it is not fully aware, yet it is aware of itself, and awake; that is so with each one of us. The Monad in the human kingdom is that ripened germ or sprouting germ of self-consciousness, that which wells up in each one and says, “I am my self.” This does not mean that any of the lower kingdoms become man—they are like grades in school through which life passes, to finally differentiate and act as a self-conscious Ego in the man form. 14 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Q.—Does the “spark,” as used in the Third Fundamental, change? If it does not change, what is the use of the Pilgrimage? Ans.—We fail to see that it is the finite which constitutes our experience; it is the Infinite which has the experience. Each one of us is both the finite and the Infinite. As the perceiver, we are the Infinite; we are forever unchanging. Each one of us can perfectly well answer that our experience constantly augments; there is no end to the growth of Soul, if we use the word “Soul” in the meaning of experience. What is the highest form of experience? Self-realization. The time must come, then, when a man realizes that in him and in everything else are both the finite and the Infinite, and that all finite or manifested existence has but one object—an ever—increasing realization of the nature of the Infinite, which is All. Ans.—That is not the statement of the Third Fundamental. The Third Fundamental says that no purely spiritual Buddhi—that is, no primary form of life—can have a completely self-conscious or a perfected existence until It has passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara. There could be no babies unless there were adults; there could be no eggs unless there were the chickens that laid them. The eggs do not lay the chickens; the chicken lays the egg. The analogy, then, is that action or evolution or manifestation begins in Spirit, not in matter. What is meant by “Spirit”? A collective or universal term for consciousness and that which issues from the pure essence of the universal Over-Soul has no consciousness of its own. The Secret Doctrine makes a graphic statement of the very beginning of Evolution. It calls the beginning “the descent of souls”—conscious and unconscious atoms. The greatest beings, says the Secret Doctrine cannot avoid reincarnation. But that’s quite different from descent through the elemental forms of the phenomenal world. Ans.—It is quite a wonderful thing to think of a man form, to recognize in one form all that there is in Nature. The human form represents a sample lot of the whole of Nature. Only through and in such a form could self-consciousness well up; it is a fitting instrument for a self-conscious life. In such a form, through such a combination of instruments, man can stand aside and look at himself; that is what self-consciousness means. The beings below man represent varying degrees of consciousness and intelligence, but they are like beings in a “state.” Their range is that state of intelligence, that state of consciousness—there is no individuality there. There is an incipient individuality as far below as the vegetable kingdom, so it is said; but not until the man stage is reached through natural impulse—the great give-and-take of Nature, with the higher forms of intelligence clothing themselves in the low ones and thus impressing them—only when the man stage is reached, is a universal instrument available, one that could be made universal because the whole of Nature is represented therein. Then there is a fitting instrument for the use of the self-conscious man. Think how it is with ourselves in a dream. In a dream we are the 15 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— state, ordinarily speaking; we are involved in the state; usually, we can step aside and look at ourselves. We can think of that, then, as representing a state of consciousness. But in normal wakefulness, we can examine our works, we can examine our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes—step away from ourselves and look it all over. That is self-consciousness. Now, evolution means the expansion of that. Finally, not only is the universe our instrument, but we know it is. The consciousness of any being in it is, if we like, our consciousness, without our losing ourselves or our sense of Self. Ans.—Well, we really ought to answer that in this way. If the First Fundamental is true, this is a Universe of Life, no matter what kingdom it is. Now, lives exist in a state of unity; lives exist in an unorganized state; lives exist in an organized state; there are the three classes of lives or souls or monads. So, then, if we use the words of the Third Fundamental, and call it a Buddhi—a purely spiritual soul— then there is a purely spiritual soul in every atom of dust, just as much as there is in the greatest Mahatma, because it is a life beginningless and endless. Notice that no principles of manifestation are active in the purely spiritual Buddhi. After endless transmigration through induced activities, one principle of action wakes up; it was there latent all the time—it could not have been aroused if it had not been there. But, from the manifested stand-point, it had no existence. After a while, two principles of action are aroused; after another while, three elements of action, and then we have the mindless man. It is Life which travels through the kingdoms in a given state, with no activity whatever, any more than there is mobility in this paper. This paper is not active—but we can move it around. The air is not active in any conscious sense, but we are using it constantly, and in time that which we call air will have one element or principle of action of its own. Now, when three principles of action have been developed, we have the highest form of matter; then it is possible for another kind of induction to be set up. What is it? A life or soul in which all seven principles of action are active, can coalesce with it or incarnate in it, and then we have a human being. So it is Life, Life unorganized which moves from below up, and when finally three principles are active, it means an organized life, but with no consciousness of Self. The fully organized form of matter, makes it possible for a spiritual soul—that is, a self-conscious being, call it a reincarnating Ego—to enter incarnation. Then you have once more a seven-principled being here on earth. But remember that so far as the lower principles are concerned, it is induced action; so far as the higher principles are concerned—the Ego—it is a will action. In time this Life which constitutes what we call our body, the cells of our body, the molecules of our body, the atoms of our body—whatever we choose to call them—will have all the principles of action waked up, and when this obtains, you have the human being. After that, the progress is of necessity self-induced and self-devised. 16 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— into matter, is the same amount of self-induced and self-devised effort required as on the upward sweep? Ans.—Isn't it far easier to fall than it is to climb? Evolution, in the sense of the initiation of a period of universal manifestation, must necessarily proceed from the collective action of all the spiritual beings; but evolution, as applied to the individual being, at once calls for self-induced and self-devised exertion. It takes no effort for any being to move with the mass, no matter in what direction the mass may be moving—up, down, or otherwise. The effort comes in when the individual desires to pursue a course which is at variance with that pursued by the mass, and that is in the fourth stage of evolution.
Ans.—In the march of an army, there is universal motion. Does that imply any lack of individuality in the constituent soldiers who in their collectivity of orderly motion compose the army? H.P.B. tells us over and over again that, in attempting to consider these things, we have to depart from the methods of study and education which we are all familiar with in everyday life, and which we learn in our schools. She says that, since Theosophy in its origin deals with states of consciousness higher than the human, and with forms of matter more refined than any that we now know anything about, it follows that the only way for us to gain the clear perceptions and conceptions which are necessary is through analogy and correspondence. If man is, as she declares over and over again, the microcosm of the great macrocosm, then when any statement is made, our business is to search within ourselves to see some activity, some motion, some experience, some relativity in our consciousness which will fit the description given in regard to other states and forms of life and being. She declares that that is the only Ariadne thread which will lead us out of the labyrinth of misconception in which man is involved. It is astonishing to try this principle on ourselves, and, after reading a particular statement of the philosophy, say, “NOW, if that statement is true, there is that in me which I know, which I can identify, which corresponds to it. Let me find it. There is that in the working of everyday human consciousness which is analogous to, and corresponds with, anything and everything taught in the Secret Doctrine
Ans.—If there were not a limitation to free-will or any other kind of will, how could there be will at all? If there were not a limit to manifestation, there would be nothing but that which is Absolute. We have but to think to see that this is so. Our conception of free-will is actually a conception of will, but under a misleading guise. Our conception of will is causation without resistance. That is, we think we can set up any causes we please, and can pick the results that please us—kicking overboard the results that do not gratify our taste. But we all know that we get both kinds of results. Everyone has will, for will, primarily, is the power of selection, nothing else. Of two things, we choose that which to us appears better or dearer. So does an atom; so does everything and anything. Will, 17 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— then, in the sense of the exercise of the power to perceive, is absolutely universal—everywhere and in everything. Will in the spiritual sense could only mean the will as applied to one’s self. If we perceive a course of action which is better than our present one, let us pursue it. But generally we perceive that which is better for the other fellow to do, and try to make him do it. That is our conception Will; it is the scientific conception and the religious conception—it is called the will of "God". If we take all these English words which carry an occult value because they have a fundamental meaning, and then rigidly make our own definition of those terms in the light of Theosophical teachings, we shall be doing for ourselves precisely what H.P.B. does in all her writings. It is perfectly amazing in going through the Secret Doctrine to see with what scrupulous, constant and universal assiduity H.P.B. herself defines every term she uses. Now, if we read her definitions of will, and her statement in regard to the First Principle—that is, her statement in regard to the four presently manifested aspects of the First Principle—we can see how carefully she has expressed what she means in so far as the limitations of language permit. If we would compare her definitions of terms with those in the dictionary or with popular usage and understanding, we should often see that the two definitions are antithetical. Almost invariably, her use of the most common words is exactly the opposite of ours. Take, for example, the word “matter.” We habitually think and speak of matter as three-dimensional; it is not, and never was. It is two-dimensional; it is a reflecting surface. We are the third “dimension” of matter, and we never see it. Matter has no consciousness of its existence; it is we who have the consciousness of its existence, and we name that consciousness, to ourselves, “matter.” Go out and speak to a lump of rock and say, “Stone, move.” The stone does not answer. But if an Adept who actually understood the real nature of the stone said, “Move,” it would move, and He would not have to set up a highly involved industrial system to do it, either ! Ans.—H.P.B. defines what an. “independent conscious existence” is a few lines further on: It is self-consciousness or individuality; once acquired, it can be maintained by the individual himself, regardless of whether bodies come or go; regardless of whether universes come or go; it is a combination of intellect and will. We are self-conscious, but only in a limited way. We lose our self-consciousness every night when we go to sleep and we pick it up again in the morning. So it is as if we died at night and were re-manufactured every morning, just as at the time of our birth. Why? Because our self-consciousness is objective; it cannot be complete, so long as anything can even temporarily interrupt its continuity. If our consciousness were like the Mahatma’ s, it could not be interfered with by sleep; if it were like the Mahatma’s, it could not be interfered with by death. The continuity of consciousness means Life plus Will, plus knowledge or understanding, and that means the control of memory, so that memory becomes a faculty like our physical sense of sight—we can exercise it or refuse to exercise it, at will. No matter what we wished to look at, we could look at it, and if we wished to stop looking at it, we could stop looking at it. Memory is only a form of percep- 18 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— tion that is, the power of seeing. There has not yet been acquired in matter the full self-consciousness that sooner or later we all must acquire in matter. We have it on the plane of Spirit; we lose it every time we leave the plane of Spirit; we need not, but we do.
The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge, has long been a basic text-book in the study programme of the United Lodges of Theosophists. Published in 1893, two years after the passing of H. P. Blavatsky and five years after the issuance of The Secret Doctrine the Ocean first appeared in the modest form of a paper series. Mr. Judge is said to have written the whole of the Ocean in a week’s time, and, even making allowances for his prodigious capacity for work, this is a remarkable achievement. Yet, in another sense, The Ocean of Theosophy was started in 1887, when Mr. Judge printed An Epitome of Theosophy a brief pamphlet which nevertheless does full justice to the central Theosophical doctrine. The Epitome shows what was indeed the fact, that Mr. Judge was familiar with The Secret Doctrine’s synthesis of the Theosophic philosophy before H.P.B.’s work was printed, even as he had had “prior acquaintance” with Isis Unveiled in both cases Mr. Judge was one of those helping H.P.B. to prepare and organize the wealth of material provided her by her Adept teachers. In 1890 came the second forerunner of the Ocean—Echoes from the Orient—contributed anonymously by Mr. Judge to a Washington newspaper, in 21 installments. When, later in the year, the articles were collected in a pamphlet, Mr. Judge’s preface disclaimed any idea, on his part, of having “exhaustively treated’ the subject of Theosophy. As with the Ocean the evident aim of the Echoes is to invite not merely inquiry, but strong search for the truth toward which Theosophy points the way. The week in 1893 devoted by Mr. Judge to putting The Ocean of Theosophy on paper was thus itself an epitome, since the book manifestly echoes knowledge which was his in former births—as well as steady self- education in the then newly—recorded Theosophical teachings. To study the Ocean by continuous reference to the writings of H. P. Blavatsky is, then, a most natural procedure, for it follows the example set by Mr. Judge himself.
The present series, collected from stenographic notes of Ocean class
questions and answers, is a case in point, for attention is clearly and
constantly directed to the source material in H.P.B.’s Secret Doctrine As
Robert Crosbie has observed, the student will find that every statement in
the Ocean can be expanded by consulting H.P.B. ‘s book—and the Ocean class
which succeeds in stimulating this process of “testing and verifying” has
done the best it can, and all that it can, toward making Mr. Judge’s
text-book a living Theosophical manual. 19 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— up in an informal Ocean class, have appeared in our last three issues. As an introduction to this series of answers to questions in the same class, we give part of a talk on the book itself. Next, following the general programme of the study classes, we will present the questions and answers devoted to the Ocean proper. It should be said that the answers to be presented in this series were originally given extemporaneously, and this quality will serve to remind the reader that the statements made are suggestive rather than authoritative. The obvious intent of the speaker was to turn inquirers to the recorded teaching itself, whence they might derive “an inspiration of their own” to answer their own deeper questions, and to guide them across the ocean of Theosophy. —————————— Perhaps there are those here who have found life a puzzle, a mystery rather than a problem. They have tried out their own experience, and found not enough in it to solve the mystery; they have been to academic philosophy, to organized religion, or to orthodox science, whatever it may be, and found no answer. Coming to this Ocean class, they may for the first time in their lives be in a student frame of mind, open-minded enough to look in a new direction. Now we introduce them to Mr. Judge. First, will they not see here an honest man, writing not for his sake, but for theirs and ours, and writing of what he understands, in order that we all may gain some little understanding? What moved Mr. Judge to write The Ocean of Theosophy Take the first sentence of the preface: “An attempt is made in the pages of this book to write of Theosophy in such a manner as to be understood by the ordinary reader.” Second, let us apply a simple test to Mr. Judge, as we can to Mme. Blavatsky—a test by which we shall soon learn the difference between what these two wrote and what lesser students have written in regard to Theosophy. To Illustrate: when the colonists settled in New England, they gave the Indians some gunpowder and showed them what to do with it. The Indians reasoned according to their experience, and what did they do with the gunpowder? They went out and planted it so as to raise a crop. Again: a man takes a slab of oak lumber and plants it. He doesn’t raise any oak trees; but he does if he takes an acorn and plants it. So, in everything H.P.B. writes, in everything Mr. Judge writes, is a seed value, and that is a value we nearly always miss. No preacher can write about religion if he does not himself know. The hundreds of students who have written books about Theosophy, in just as fine language, just as interesting, just as detailed, just as explicit—often more so, in fact—were handing us shavings Not a thing they have written will grow when planted in the mind. If we were to take The Ocean of Theosophy as material stuff for our intellectual clothing, that would be all we should get out of it. If we were to read it out of mere curiosity, we should have only an interest in something that is novel. The curious man, as distinguished from the interested man, will never look at the same thing more than twice; he will never read the same book more than once. or twice; after that his interest wanes, because his “interest” was curiosity. Those who read the Ocean merely for comparative purposes—that is, to see how It differs from what some other writer says—will derive from it only the comparison; they won’t get seed values 20 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— How can we determine that the Ocean has seed values? Take any given sentence in the Ocean that conveys an idea complete and intact in itself. One who thinks about that idea, will find it germinates; it grows at once; and it will wake up things in his own nature that he did not know were there. The writing of a true teacher, at any time, in any place and in any nation, can be told by its “seed value.” William Q. Judge wrote the Ocean in peculiar circumstances. A. P. Sinnett had written, in 1881, The Occult World exciting the curiosity of tens upon tens of thousands people. But the philosophy in The Occult World the noble ethics in the book, were seen by scarcely any one who read it. Instead, the impression was, “What a wonderful man Sinnett was What wonderful phenomena H.P.B. performed” Then Mr. Sinnett wrote Esoteric Buddhism which was an attempt to present in terms understandable by the ordinary reader the teachings of Theosophy. Yet, few men can read Esoteric Buddhism and derive moral elevation out of it. It treats of Theosophy from a one-life stand-point, from the stand-point of our thinking brain; in other words, from the materialistic stand point. At the time the Ocean was written, Esoteric Buddhism more widely circulated than any other single Theosophical book, had almost entirely displaced Isis Unveiled The Secret Doctrine and all the other literature of Theosophy. Sinnett’s book is very simple; nobody can misunderstand it. A christian can read it clear through and never get a jolt; a Spiritualist can read it clear through and think Sinnett was talking about Spiritualism. Everybody read Esoteric Buddhism because it was so simple to understand, and it was so, so nice that not a thing in it would offend anybody-’s feelings. People read it and were none the wiser; people read it and were none the better. They grafted whatever they could catch on to their christianity, their Spiritualism, their materialism, and called themselves Theosophists To compare the method of treatment of The Ocean of Theosophy with that of Esoteric Buddhism is amazing. A man can read a thousand Esoteric Buddhism’s and never dream that Theosophy relates to himself. No man with ordinary intelligence can sit down and read the Ocean without having the realization strike him at one point or another that Theosophy pertains and belongs not to somebody else, to some other world, some other chain of globes, some other incarnation, but to himself, here and now. That is the seed of Mr. Judge’s book. Another reason Mr. Judge had for writing the Ocean is shown in the closing paragraph of the preface: “No originality is claimed for this book. The writer invented none of it, discovered none of it, but has simply written that which he has been taught and which has been proved to him. It therefore is only a handing on of what has been known before.” This is almost a paraphrase of H.P.B.’s statement in the Introduction to The Secret Doctrine where she repeats what Confucius said: “I only hand on; I cannot create new things.” Why did Mr. Judge speak as “the writer,” instead of using the word “I”? He saw that the personal pronoun, I, was totally misread in the world. The Hindus have made out of Brahmâ, out of Krishna, out of Vishnu, out of Siva, gods outside of man, because of the use of the pronoun I. Christians have made out of Jesus an outside God, and turned his teachings around to mean that mortal man is only to be saved by an immortal god independent of mankind—all because they misunderstood the use of the first personal pronoun 21 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— This brings us to one of the great teachings of the Ocean : the true nature of the ego. “I” is the sound uttered at every breath. The Sanskrit word is Aham and it means the Om. Literally, I, the English form of Aham means “I am that I am,” the phrase attribute to Jehovah in the Bible. When such an one as Jesus says “I,” he is using the pronoun for the Ego in a totally different sense than we do. When we say we are speaking from the stand-point of the personal ego, but a man like Jesus manifestly speaks from another stand-point—that of the true, the reincarnating ego. The comparative value of the teachings of Jesus, and those of Lao Tse, or of Buddha, or Krishna, is indicated by Krishna’s use of the word I. Krishna’s is not a use made by a reincarnating ego, but a conception of “I” that almost transcends our imagination, for Krishna uses “I” in the sense of universal self-consciousness. Universal self-consciousness, egoic self-consciousness, and personal self-consciousness are all one self-consciousness—three modes of the same vision. The first chapter of the Ocean—the first paragraph, after Theosophy is defined—says, “All is soul and spirit ever evolving under the rule of law which is inherent in the whole.” Mr. Judge has already spoken of law on the first page. Now he says that all, all, from atom to Brahmâ, from Satan to Jehovah, all, all, is soul and spirit. Turning to Patanjali— whose Yoga Aphorisms no one has better rendered into English than Mr. Judge—we find what the soul is: “The soul is the perceiver; is assuredly vision itself pure and simple; unmodified; and it looks directly upon ideas.” If that statement is true, what are we? We are soul and spirit. What, then, was Judge’s purpose? To so rouse us, to so touch us—not as bodies, not as persons, not as educated men and women, not as illiterate people, not as saints, or sinners—but to so touch our souls that we would for a moment make the primary assumption, “I am a soul and as so I will look forth upon these ideas.” Mr. Judge desired that we might look upon what he had written through his eyes, that we might see what he saw when he wrote. He wished to endow us, if you please, with his vision for a time. If the highest see through the eyes of the lowest, as in fact they do, and as we do almost habitually, then by turning the vision inward, the lowest may see through the eyes of the highest. How is it that here and there in some rare rejuvenating instant we meet some person, we hear some tone, we see some sight, we read some book, we have some form of contact with the soul and spirit around us, so that we see as we never saw before? Just for an instant we are looking forth on this same universe through the eyes of the highest. What is the highest in us? Soul and spirit in the egoic sense. We look through the eyes of the body, habitually, and so we see all things as matter reflects them. Once in a while, we look with the eyes of desire, and we see all things as desires reflect them. Very rarely, we look out in an abstract measuring equipoise of reason, and then we see all this universe with what kind of eyes? With the eyes of Manas per se. When we look with the eyes of the body, we are bound to be affected by what we see; we are bound to go by what we see; and in no long time the man thinks, “I am this body; I began with this body; when this body terminates, I cease.” And if a man looks with the eyes of desire, he never looks back, he never looks at the present; he is forever just ahead. His word is Tomorrow, Mañana. Desire always relates to the future, when we shall possess something we do not now possess, acquire something we do not now have, and so on. And the reasoning, what is that? That is 22 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— weighing the future against the past, or weighing the past against the future; both dead, because the unborn are, as far as this world is concerned, just as dead as those who have passed away. Now, Judge says, Atma-Buddhi-Manas—soul and spirit plus universal consciousness—they and no other are we. Can we see that through the eyes of matter? Can we see through the eyes of any Christian sect that there is no difference whatever between us and Christ, save the difference in attitude? Never does a Christian church stress the identity existing between man and the Supreme Spirit. Never in all the four quarters of the globe, in any popular religion whatever, is the inquirer helped to grasp the fact that great beings, supernal beings, have come amongst us over and over again. They come, not to overwhelm us with their knowledge and power, not to show us an impassable gulf separating themselves from us, as between Dives and Lazarus; but to tell us that the difference is all in the use made of the vision by the soul itself. The Soul is the perceiver. How is he using his power of vision? That is one of the great lessons of The Ocean of Theosophy It can be read with the eye of mind, with the eye the senses, with the eye of aspiration—that is, with the desire to become great, to gain powers, to shine before men—or it can be read with the eye of soul and spirit, and the reader becomes intimately acquainted with the rest of himself, and with the whole of nature, embodied and disembodied. In order to make this ideal possible for us to grasp, Mr. Judge opens The Ocean of Theosophy by teaching of Masters. What is a Master? He is a being, a perceiver, in whom is embodied the whole universe, past, present and to come—a conscious embodiment of the whole of nature. Think what it means that there are such Beings, that they were once as we are, that They are our Elder Brothers, that what They are, we are on the road to becoming. This conception of Masters follows upon the concept of law, and upon the concept that all is soul and spirit—that the only difference between us and the greatest Master is that we have not yet completed the assimilation, understanding and control which shall make us a perfected embodiment of the whole of nature, of its kingdoms, of its operations. The great thing about the Ocean is that by studying it Theosophically, we can gain enough understanding of Theosophy to come in contact with the mind of William Q. Judge. Having come in contact with the mind of William Q. Judge, we can come in contact with William Q. Judge; and having come in contact with William Q. Judge, we can come in contact with all the beings of the class to which he belongs. If all is soul, if all is spirit, then to whatever extent we are interested in the same things that the Adepts are, we are an embodiment of all the Adepts and devoted to Their Cause—humanity.
Q.—What is meant in Theosophy by “Soul”? Is man, as a Soul, the same as the Ego; that is, are Soul and the reincarnating Ego the same? Ans.—Suppose we take the statement made on the second page of the Ocean that, even down to the minutest atom, no matter how we regard it or what we may name it, what visible or what changing appearance may present—actually, “All is Soul and Spirit.” If the question is, “What is Soul?” Soul is everything;—there is nothing that is not Soul and 23 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Spirit in its basic nature. Then the question naturally arises, What is the distinction between the Soul and Spirit? It would be worth while to look in The Theosophical Glossary for a brief memorandum by H.P.B. under the word Spirit She says that the word “Spirit” ought in fact never to be used except in direct relation to the Universal Consciousness, but that a great confusion is due to warring conceptions, so that the words “Soul” and “Spirit’ are used indiscriminately. Now, if we take “Spirit” to refer first, last, and all the time to Consciousness from the Universal point of view, just as we use the word “Matter” for the universal basis of all form then, with Spirit as the universal basis of all consciousness, Soul would be the individual form of Spirit—just as we say “matter” and “body,” not meaning two different things, but one, matter being the universal stuff from which all bodies are formed. Then we would have in “matter” and “body” a perfectly good analogy to what is metaphysically meant by the words “Spirit” and “Soul.” If, then, we take man as a Soul-Life or Consciousness, which, as Mr. Judge says, is “ever evolving under the rule of law which is inherent in the whole”—man represents a Soul which has reached a given stage in the evolution of individual consciousness. The animal below us is no less Soul than we are; the Life in the vegetable and the mineral kingdom is no less Soul than we are; but their stage of evolution, their stage in the gradual progress towards individualized permanent consciousness, is behind ours. Using “Soul” in that sense, man as a Soul and as the reincarnating Ego mean one and the same thing.
Ans.—The life of a civilization is much longer than the life of a single generation of men—call the life of a civilization about 2,000 years. The Great Teachers come at the birth of a new civilization, and the birth, the genesis of the new, is always while the old is still on the stage. The men and women who will be running this country 10, 15, 20 years from now are on earth right now, and many of the boys and girls who will be running this earth 30 or 50 years hence are here now. So there are cycles when Great Teachers come and there are cycles when lesser Teachers come. So far as Theosophy is concerned, the statement is made that Teachers have never been absent from the race. With regard to the present effort, it began in the l4th century with Tsong-kha-pa, in Tibet, and with Western Teachers bringing the same truths in Europe.
Ans.—Is there one of us but knows, if he asks himself, that we gain knowledge both by experience and from observation? It is only when we look wholly outside that we ask such a question as that. In fact, in reading the Ocean or any of the other Theosophical books, we might try to bear in mind that there is that in us, a department of our nature, where the knowledge actually exists of anything and everything that the Teachers write about; then, we would begin to look within ourselves to corroborate, from the harvest of our own past experience, our observation of what the Teachers say. There is, however a vast difference between a man asleep or a man 24 —————————————————————————————————————————————————— dreaming, and a man awake. The thing to observe is that it’s the same man, regardless of what state he is in. Let us apply that to knowledge: if this teaching is true, we have been active and a part of this solar system ever since it had a beginning—not to go farther back. There isn’t a single state, a single condition, a single form of life and being in this solar system that every one of us has not been through tens of thousands of times in all the kingdoms below as well as in the present human kingdom; in all of the seven states of consciousness, not merely the one we are aware of now. Where is this experience? It is asleep in us, and, in the religious man and the scientific man, it’s dreaming. Our business, then, is to awaken to the same kind of consciousness that we have here and now in other states of matter and on other planes of life and being. Only a part of our nature is awake. At other times, in the past, other parts of our nature have been awake. We identify ourselves with the part of our nature that is awake; we do not recognize our whole nature, and so make no effort to rouse that part of us which is present but not active.
Ans.—Learning from observation distinguishes man—even the savage, the lowest of men—from the brute kingdom. Animals cannot learn from observation; they can learn only by experience. Why can’t they learn by observation? Well, the meanest of men always “sees double.” If the impulse rises in him, say, to run from something that he sees, he can say, “Well, shall I run or shall I stand fast and fight?” And no matter how much his legs want to run, he can choose to stand and fight, and do it. But when the same situation presents itself to the animal, it has only one perception, fight It never reasons. Why doesn’t it reason? It sees no contrast. It can see only one thing at a time. Now if we observe ourselves, we will find that 99% of what we know comes from observation. What does the other 1% come from? Experience. We conduct ourselves by bringing what we see (observation) and what we experience into coadunition and consubstantiality: that is knowledge. Ans.—Well, if we use the word “observation” in a subordinate, and the word “experience” in a general, sense, then all observation is a part of our experience; but if we take the two words as they stand, “observation” and “experience,” then experience is direct perception and observation is indirect perception. Old Patanjali says that the means of knowledge are three not two—as we think of them when we say “observation and experience.” The first means of knowledge, says Patanjali, is direct perception—that is what we call experience. One who has tasted tabasco sauce knows th |