The Masters and the Path of Occultism

by Gottfried de Purucker

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painted by Odilon Redon.

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Contents

To The Reader

Introductory

Who Are The Masters?

How The Masters Obtain Their Wisdom

Teachings Of The Masters

The Secret Doctrine Of The Ages

What Is Occultism?

The Mystery-Schools And Initiation

The Sacred Seasons

To The Reader

This little volume is the second in the Series which opened with The Story of Jesus. As was the case with the latter Booklet, so is the case with the present one: selections and excerpts from articles and lectures of the undersigned have been made and brought together with connecting thoughts into the present little volume. Those who did the work of collation and preparation, whose names are mentioned in the Prefatory Note to The Story of Jesus, are the ones who have continued their kindly work in this Booklet, and who will continue to do so in the Booklets to follow the present one in this Series. -- G. de P.

General Offices,

The Theosophical Society,

Point Loma, California.

April, 1939

Introductory

There is a hunger in the human heart for beauty; there is a longing in the human soul for harmony and for peace; there is an unceasing aspiration in the human mind for an understanding of the problems of the Universe; and all these qualities of heart and soul and mind are fundamentally one, arising out of that amazing spiritual fire which dwells in the inmost of the inmost of every human being, and which is a reflexion in his human character of the Divine Flame which is fundamentally the Spiritual Man; and this flame is the core of his being.

Men yearn for truth; they yearn for light; they yearn for peace and happiness; and alas, in how slight a degree is this divine hunger satisfied! It is unsatisfied because men will not self-consciously realize who they are, what they are, in the core of themselves; their human consciousness refuses to recognise the living existence in them of this Divine Flame of the spirit. Never the less, there is through the ages a pressure towards this realization, and when recognition comes, then indeed breaks the splendour of the spirit on the mind and illuminates it divinely. The man’s soul is then moved: and the very depths of his being are stirred, for he recognises not only his kinship with -- in the abstract sense -- but his fundamental oneness with, the Universe of which he is a child, an inseparable part.

There is light to be had, because there is system and order in the Universe, the results of flaming intelligences and cosmic compassion, and anyone whose heart impels him to carry on the search indefatigably and with a mental refusal to take discouragement at any time, but to carry on, will receive that light.

When this recognition of his inner spiritual grandeur comes to him, then he recognises also that there is spiritual grandeur outside of him, existing in other human beings. Then he recognises the kinship of other human spirits with his own. Thus the man who is spiritually awakened, recognises that other men also can be grand, and great, and that their hearts are filled, as is his, with an innate and instinctive spiritual nobility. In other words he recognises that the divine is working in other human beings also, and that possibly in some of these other fellows of his, there throbs a heart which is more or less fully cognisant of its spiritual powers. The man then realizes that he may find others higher than himself: one or more who have become more or less at one with the inner flame of divinity, with the inner god, with the divine spirit stirring within.

Such intimations or intuitions of the living divinity within us all persuade us beyond cavil or argument that our noblest aspirations are true, are based on fact; for in very truth there are such greatly awakened hearts in the world. There are indeed such wondrous men in the world, men who have evolved to the point where the divine flame within, the inner god of them, is expressing itself more or less fully and according to the evolutionary stage of advancement of the individual.

Such Great Men it has been customary from immemorial time to speak of as ‘Saviors’ of their fellows. They are indeed the spiritual Saviors of men, the great and outstanding human spiritual geniuses of the human race; they have shaken men’s hearts by the magic of their teaching and by the example of their lives, and by their power to explain life’s mysteries to inquiring minds hungering for truth and light.

Look at history. See the Great Men that the human race has produced: Gautama the Buddha, the very embodiment of wisdom and love; Jesus the Avatara, another embodiment of love and wisdom; and others of these Great Ones, whose names perhaps are less well known; and we realize as we survey these human embodiment’s of spiritual light that our intuitions and intimations are true. Then, as all men know, beneath these genii of the spirit and of the intellect there are, and there have been, and there will be in the future, other men whom we call geniuses, men of wondrous ability, men of high and vaulting talent, whose souls commune with the very stars, and pluck from heaven heaven’s own flame of truth, and tell it in phrase and in teaching to their fellows. We know that these men exist: we know that the records of these genii of the race are written in living flame across the pages of history. Where then shall we pause and say that human genius cannot go higher than this level, or than that level, or than the mediocre plane which average mankind already has attained in its evolution?

It is our Theosophical teaching that greater men even than those geniuses to whom I have last above alluded exist in the world at the present time and existed in past times; and they have lived and taught and guided their fellowmen; and these Great Ones compose a spiritual Brotherhood of the Great Sages and Seers of the human race. These are what are called the Theosophical Mahatmans. They are the Elder Brothers of mankind. They are men, not spirits. They are men who have evolved through self-devised efforts in individual evolution, always advancing forwards and upwards until they attained the lofty supremacy that now they hold. They were not so created by any extra-cosmic Deity, but they are men who have become what they are by means of inward spiritual striving, by spiritual and intellectual yearning, by aspiration to be greater and -- better, nobler and higher. They are not what they are by any favoritism either of a god or of Fate, but have merely run ahead of the great multitude of men. There they stand; they are Helpers, they are Seers, they are Sages. They have naught that they have by way of gift. All that they have -- which means all that they are -- all that they have evolved to, all that they have become, they have gained by self-devised efforts in individual evolutionary growth.

Who Are The Masters?

We now see just what these Mahatmans are: evolved men, men who have in evolution run ahead of the multitude of the races of mankind who have preceded us. They are men who have brought forth the powers and capacities of the inner god of which each human being is but a feeble expression at present. They are the great philosophers, the great leaders of men, the great thinkers, those who have swayed the hearts of multitudes and have captured their minds with the majesty and splendor of true thought.

Think of man’s intellect gaging the ways of the stars probing into the very womb of Space, counting the atoms in a particle of physical substance, drawing up philosophies and sciences and religions which have shaken the very souls of other men! This is indeed godlike; this is indeed more than mere genius; this verily is the working of the Divine Flame within.

Look again at the love which fills man’s spiritual being, if he only will give it room therein: love which embraces within its compass the entirety of all things, the spaces of Boundless Space! What a divine faculty love is; what a divine energy it is! Think again of compassion and pity and our instinctive sense of friendliness and brotherhood. Think of men’s yearning for peace, for harmony!

All these are godlike qualities. They are divine qualities. It is an alliance with one or more of these inner faculties which makes man great, which makes him a genius, which makes him able to shake the hearts and move the minds of his fellow-men. For when he is allied with this Divine Flame it sweeps through him and sways him, and then you can see it expressing itself in all the being of the man who shows it. He then forgets himself utterly as a personality. He then lives in the Boundless. He loses all thought of his personal being, and lives in Eternity. For during such times of illumination his consciousness has taken unto itself cosmic reaches, and he feels with the vibrations of the atoms in farthest Sirius, and vibrates sympathetically by reaction to the movements of the Polar Star. This is no mere poetical phraseology; it is actual truth.

The Mahatmans are highly evolved men, controlling powers over Nature’s forces which they have gained through self-directed evolution during many, many, many lives in the near and distant past. Now they are become Masters of life; in former ages they were men like you and me. In future ages they will become gods, just indeed as we shall all of us so become, when the destiny of the human race shall on this planet have reached its furthermost end for the present cosmic period of evolution; because within each one of us there is the individual’s own indwelling inner god, the source of all that is great in us; and evolution is simply bringing out or unfolding what the man already and now has ‘within’ him -- or ‘above’ him.

There is naught that is weird about these Great Men. They are the sanest men on earth, the gentlest, the kindliest, the most pitiful, the most compassionate, the most brotherly, and the most peaceful and the wisest, the strongest and the purest, the noblest and the greatest. They do not stand, all of them, on the same step of the ladder of evolutionary progress. Some of them are very great, very high, others less so, others less so still. Then next in turn there are their chelas or pupils, men who are striving to become like unto their Masters, and who are a step or two or three ahead of the average man; and then we the average men find our place in the scale. Thus, our Masters of Wisdom and Compassion, the Elder Brothers of the Race, have simply preceded us or run ahead of us in evolutionary development. All of us shall be Masters of Wisdom and Compassion some day. Those who are such at present are simply those who are ahead of the multitude of humanity.

They are active in the world all the time. Their agents are active always and everywhere. Their influence is always for good, always for brotherhood, always for kindliness among men, always for peace, always for progress and the gaining of a greater light, always for the things which give to men’s hearts high hope and courage, and to their minds inspiration and love and rest. But this is not the rest which is mere negative repose or sleep; it is, on the contrary, the rest which comes from the harmonious working of all one’s functions and faculties -- spiritual, intellectual, ethical, vital, and physical.

Sometimes they awaken men when men have fallen to sleeping, to spiritual and intellectual inertia, and resting in the smug satisfaction of physical comforts. They then begin to call forth the soul of men, that fiery flame which stirs and moves within us and leads us to deeds of greatness and to imagination of sublime things. Yea, then they stir up conditions so that men shall awaken and begin again to recognise the call from within, the call of the inner god.

They are our ‘Elder Brothers’ because they watch over us as an elder brother watches over his younger brother. They are our ‘Teachers’ because they teach us through the ages; they instruct us and guide us. They are our ‘Masters,’ because we are their pupils. It matters not that the pupil does not always recognise his teacher. In things of the spirit, and in things of the mind, these Great Ones always follow the best path, the efficient path. They work through other men as their agents whom they have chosen from out the multitude and who themselves are, relatively speaking, Great Men, but in less degree, and who become the pupils of these Greater Ones.

The ancient teachings of Wisdom which have come down to modern men from immemorial time have been voiced and taught and formulated and cast like thought-seeds into the minds of men by the great Seers and Sages of all the past ages. These Sages and Seers are what the Chinese philosopher, Confucius, called ‘Superior Men,’ superhuman men; and what the Greek philosopher Plato called ‘Godlike Men’; and what we in our own pragmatical European age would call ‘highly evolved men,’ or ‘supermen,’ perhaps.

History records the names of many of them: the Buddha, Sankaracharya, Krishna, Jesus called the Christ, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Apollonius of Tyana, Lao-Tse, Confucius, Zoroaster; and in other lands similar individuals of whom only a name remains at present, such as Quetzalcoatl of Mexico, and Manco Capac of Peru.

They form an association or band or society.

They have lived throughout the ages, each generation of them transmitting to succeeding generation the accumulated wisdom and knowledge that had been gained from immemorial time. They have wonderful powers over Nature, because they have learned to know Nature. They work entirely with Nature, with the Law. That is the reason that they are great. They are in harmony with things as they are, with the roots of things. They are the Servants of the Law, and in that lies their power. They never work contrary to Nature’s mandates. They warn men as far as men will let them. They are warning continually. Every now and again they send forth from among their own number someone to teach men, to carry a new message of wisdom and knowledge of Nature’s secrets into the world. They have done this through the ages, warning, teaching, encouraging, consoling, constantly saying: Come up higher; come to us.

Jesus, the Buddha, Sankaracharya: all these great men have been Messengers from the Lodge, the great White Lodge. Their teachings can be found in the great religious philosophies of the world, and today may be found in Theosophy.

These great Masters of Wisdom are back of the Theosophical Society today. They sent forth H. P. Blavatsky from among themselves, as their Messenger and Teacher to the world in this our age.

THE HERMETIC CHAIN

The light of the holy Sages is transmitted from messenger to messenger down the ages; and certain human beings can be trained to transmit that light in purity and in fulness. This chain of succession in Teachers is what is often spoken of in Greek historical tradition as the Hermetic Chain or the Golden Chain, and was considered among Greek philosophical mystics as reaching from Father Zeus through a series of spiritual and then noble human beings down to ordinary men. This was a teaching of the Mysteries, where it was fully explained: a true teaching because it represents distinctly and clearly a true operation of Nature. More or less faint and often distorted copies of this Hermetic Chain of Succession of Teachers was taken over by various later formal and exoteric sects, who kept the fundamental idea of a succession of teachers of power, however much the fact became degenerated into a mere theory -- such as in the Christian Church wherein it was called the Apostolic Succession.

In all the great Mystery-Schools of antiquity there was this succession of teacher following teacher; or, as the world would put it, of Leader following Leader, each one passing on the light to his successor as he himself had received it from his predecessor; and as long as this transmission of light was a reality it was a spiritual thing. Therefore all such movements lived, flourished, and did great good in the world.

What does a Teacher do? He shows the path. He evokes from within the latent and dormant faculties. He educates -- instructs also perhaps, but educates -- brings out what is within the pupil, leads forth his native powers. Instruction is merely filling the mind full of facts -- good enough in its way and in its place, but it is not the true work of a Teacher. A true spiritual Teacher will take your hand and bring you, if you trust him, to the portals of the temple of Divine Wisdom; and there, not he but you will give the knock. For this knock is not a knock of the hand. It is a manifestation issuing from soul, from mind, and heart, that you have arrived at the point where you want more light, and your Teacher recognises that knock.

The evolution of the race is like a rising along an arc for a time, until it reaches a culmination of power and faculty; and then slowly there is a sinking as the faculties wane, until the historic trough of the curve is reached. Then a new Great One appears and directs men on another upward round subsequent to the one down which they had come. Each such upward round is a little higher in its culmination than the one last passed.

This Theosophical teaching of guides, of leaders, coming to men in regular serial succession, is one of our most beautiful and most consoling Theosophical doctrines. The burden of the message of every such great Sage and Seer always contains the appeal to the individual man to awaken from his spiritual and intellectual slumber and to become more at one with the god within him.

How The Masters Obtain Their Wisdom

Records exist -- to be investigated by anyone who has an open mind and who can see, and has brains enough to judge according to the preponderance of evidence -- showing that the great Seers of the ages have penetrated behind and beyond the veil of appearances; have gone behind that veil to the roots of things; have sent their souls deep into the womb of being and have brought back knowledge therefrom. Wonderful indeed are the systems of thought that these great Seers and Sages of the ages have formulated in human language, touching every phase of the human being; systems which are so symmetrical, so profound in philosophical and scientific reach, that every fact that exists in human psychology finds its proper niche, its proper pigeonhole so to say, its exact lodgement, where it belongs.

Picture a universe which is consistent throughout itself, an organic whole, which is enlivened with a burning intelligence, and a vital flow which never ceases because the Universe is without frontiers, boundless, without a beginning, and without an end. Furthermore, the physical universe that we sense around us, is but the outer veil or garment or sheath, the reflexion, of the invisible worlds behind the scenes; and what men call physical laws -- the laws of physical Nature -- are but the reflexion, the copy to use a familiar expression, in our physical world, of the will-power and of the vital essences of the spiritual beings who guide and control the Universe, and who infill, fill full, these invisible realms behind the physical universe that we see.

Consequently, the Universe being thus an organic whole, and strictly coordinated, can be interpreted. It is not a senseless and crazy dance of fortuitously driven atoms. The Universe being thus subject to law and order, can be expressed in human formulation, so far as its structure and operations go, as a system of thought which human beings can understand.

Great Intellects, titanic spiritual Seers, have sent their consciousness behind the veils of the outward seeming deep into the womb of invisible Nature, and have brought back what they have seen, and have formulated their knowledge into a grand system of thought. This system of thought we today call Theosophy. It is the Mother of all the great religions and great philosophies of the past time, and will be so of those of the future; for this reason: that every one of these other great systems of thought has been founded upon the teaching of some great spiritual Seer and Sage.

Such enlightened beings have reached this state of spiritual elevation by becoming more fully what they are within themselves, by evolving forth what is within; for evolution is the bringing out, the unfolding, the unwrapping, what the evolving entity has in the core of its being. There can be no other evolution. A thing cannot become that which it is not in its inmost; no entity can bring forth something which is not locked up within, lying latent it may be, for the time being.

What then is Theosophy? It is the formulated system of natural Religion-Philosophy-Science, embracing the verities of infinite Nature, and teaching therefore of the structure, operations, and laws of Nature as they have been and are visioned, seen, experienced, witnessed by all the great Sages and Seers of the past and present. All of them have examined the indelible records of the Astral Light which contain the portrayal of all evolution from the very dawn of time; and through an ascending series of initiations have sent the percipient part of themselves, the seeing part, the visioning part, the thinking part, the intuitive part, the self-conscious part, behind the veil of the outward seeming of Nature which surrounds us. They have gone behind the veil into new and marvelous realms of being and there themselves at first hand have quaffed of the Waters of Truth. Drinking of those sublime Pierian Springs, they bring back to their fellowmen and formulate in human tongue what they themselves have seen and have found; and these various formulations were, in past ages, the original sources of the ancient philosophies and religions. All these great Sages and Seers have seen the same verities, have found the same truths, in the invisible spheres of being; and, having formulated this same body of truths which they had discovered, it is clear that behind all the literatures, within all literatures, under the words, in the words, behind the words, you will find one fundamental system of natural scientific religio-philosophy.

Teachings Of The Masters

What is the Pathway? The Pathway is you yourself. Therefore the call from the Teacher comes to you: Awake, my Brother, awake to the god within yourself, not outside, not in me, but in you -the Master supreme! Where is the fountain-head of your understanding? Where arises the flame of your intelligence? What is the wellspring of love within you? Where is the sun of compassion and pity and self-forgetfulness and peace? All within you. That therefore is the Path.

And powers? Shall we talk of powers? Look at the powers that these Great Men had. See the works that they wrought, the deeds that they did, the teachings that they taught. And every one of them said unto his followers: “Come up. Come up higher. Come up. All that I do, shall ye do likewise.” Self-conquest, self-discipline, self-study -- the study of the Higher Self – self-understanding, self-evolution, self-growth: there is the teaching. Forget the self in order that ye may find the Self. A paradox, but how wondrous true! Forget the lower, circumscribed man of limited self so that the consciousness of that self may expand into the fields of the Universe, its native home. Expand your human consciousness so that it may become the consciousness of the god within you.

INNER WORLDS

Furthermore, these Wise Men taught of the reality of inner and invisible worlds. They taught from what they themselves had experienced in the initiation-chambers: taught not only because someone else had instructed them, but because they had been on the mystical Adventure to these interior realms. And because they had been there, and had seen, and felt, and contacted these realms, they knew and therefore could teach Truth. How can a man really know anything at all which he himself has not been through?

They taught that it is the inner worlds to which all the better part of man goes when he lays aside the physical body -- the interior realms and planes and spheres of the cosmic life. They taught that the journey after death is made upwards through nine other planes or spheres, until the acme or top of the hierarchical ladder is reached; and then comes the return journey downwards through the same planes, until the earth-sphere is again entered upon; and thus a man is reborn, each time a little higher than before, let us hope -- because there are certain cases of retrogression -- with each new birth learning a little more and becoming somewhat more than he was before. For the root of each one of us is a divine being; and humanhood today is but a visible and imperfect manifestation in this world of gross substance, of the powers and faculties that are locked up within. The real roots of things are in the invisible worlds; the real causes of all things lie there. Therefrom spring forth the entities that compose the variety of our physical world; and today ultra-modern scientific thinkers, and the greatest of them, are talking more or less vaguely but intuitively about our ‘dimensions of space’; instead of which phrase, we, having the same idea although much more developed, speak about the superior worlds or realms or planes of space.

OUR EVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY

Existing in the very beginning of this present stage of cosmic evolution in the bosom of the super spiritual Source and Root of all that is, leaving IT as unconscious god-sparks, we have passed through many existences and lives on various spiritual spheres, as also in various material spheres, among these latter our own planet Terra; in them all learning, growing, expanding, evolving, manifesting forth outwards what we are intrinsically and naturally within our inmost center. This is the procedure of evolution: becoming or manifesting what we are latently within; for in the name of truth, what else can a man or woman, or any other being for the matter of that, become, except that which lies in the evolving entity itself? After the passage of many aeons of evolution in this manner, we shall re-enter, mystically speaking, or rebecome, or self-consciously recognise our kinship with, the All, and thus find ourselves again in the bosom of the Universal Life, but no longer as un-self-conscious god-sparks, but as fully self-conscious gods.

This thought of the spiritual unity of all beings is at the foundation, is in fact the basis, of every great religion and philosophy of the past. Every great Sage has taught that the human being has, indeed is, in the core of the core of himself, a spark of the Central Fire, of that bright Intelligence which infills the Universe; and that the pathway to unutterable wisdom and peace and bliss and love is the following of that still, small pathway within leading ever farther inwards, upwards, until self is lost in the All-Self, and the pilgrim becomes at one with the Divine Fire which vitalizes and infills and guides the Universe.

We see, therefore, the natural basis that ethics has in such thoughts as these: the basis that morals naturally have in right and noble living, in high thinking. These are the teachings of the Sages of old, and are the very basis of every world-religion that exists; the very basis of every great philosophy: the very basis of the facts of science. The facts of Nature which are rooted in the fundamentals of the Great Mother, likewise repose on the same spiritual substratum of being.

In the beginning of our evolutionary journey in our present Universe, we entered this present Universe as Elementals therein, and we have grown through all the stages upwards until at present we are human beings. And we are still growing, still evolving, still pressing forwards; for never must we forget that evolution is bringing out what is within, unfolding the latent powers locked up within the deathless center which every human is at the core of the core of himself. Infinitude lies there; deathlessness lies there; and therefore the pathway of growth is endless and beginningless.

The way by which to grow is to shed the personal in order to become impersonal; to shed the limited in order to expand. How can the chick leave the egg without breaking its shell? How can the inner man expand without breaking the shell of the lower selfhood? How can the god within manifest itself until the imperfect, the small, the constricted, the personal in other words, has been surpassed, overpassed, left behind, abandoned, cast aside? It is in impersonality that lies immortality. In personality lies death. Therefore expand, grow, evolve, become what you are within!

NO UNCHANGING PRINCIPLE IN MAN

There is a deduction, a very important one, to be drawn from this, nor should we be affrighted at it: All evolution is change; all change in evolution is growth, expansion. You cannot become something better than what you are now without leaving this present behind. Consequently, as this law applies as much to the spiritual and psychical realms as it does to the physical and astral, we draw the following deduction: There is no immortally unchangeable soul in man. Do you understand? Thank the gods that it is so! Because if there were a genuinely immortally unchangeable soul in me that soul could never grow, because it could not change; I should be for ever in crystallized imperfection; because, if I changed in one atom, and by one iota, immortality would instantly vanish, because I should have become something else by the degree of that change for betterment; but evolution, which is change, is uninterrupted and continuous and has proceeded throughout eternity. Do you now understand the idea? That is the heart of the explanation of the teaching of the Lord Gautama the Buddha, who was the very incarnation of love and wisdom on earth because manifesting the powers of a divinity, his own inner God, his own inner Dhyani, as we Theosophists say, the celestial entity of which he was the human expression or vehicle. And Jesus the Syrian Sage and Avatara said exactly the same in substance when he taught: “I and my Father are one.”

THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSE IS HARMONY

If your instincts and your thoughts and your desires be earthwards, earthward will you go, for earthwards is your attraction. If your instincts and your will and your understanding and your aspiration are upwards towards the stars and the immortal suns, thither will you travel in the evolutionary course. These are facts.

The same rule applies even in the common affairs of life. The things upon which a man sets his heart he struggles for, and gets them; and precisely the same rule holds man in Nature’s unerring balance of justice. In the pan of the balance into which you have thrown the strongest elements and affections of your character, will you be found yourself when you are weighed in life’s balance. That is the meaning of the ancient Egyptian symbolic picture of the man’s heart being weighed in the balance.

Therefore the Great Men, the Seers and Sages, philosophers, true religionists, natural scientists, have taught that the very nature of the heart of the Universe is beauty, harmony, therefore order, law, love and peace, and that the expression of these cosmic attributes throughout Nature is the cause of the orderliness that the observant eye sees everywhere. They taught also that the disorderliness that one sees likewise in Nature, the things that go wrong, the warped things, the things dying before their time, and human beings in especial, are merely the proof of the vast hierarchies of evolving and therefore imperfect Intelligences in Nature, which Intelligences, collaborators as they are in the great universal work, produce imperfect results because they themselves are as yet imperfect.

Therefore did they say that the immortal gods, in all their evolutionary grades: highest, intermediate, and low: are nevertheless not perfect, although incomparably more perfect than men. On such reasoning as this was the true polytheism of the ancients based.

Every entity and every thing in the Universe is a learning thing: every entity therefore is on its upward evolutionary way. The Universe is divisible into numberless hosts of beings in all phases of evolutionary progress: endless hierarchies of beings and things and entities, graded in steps and stages; and this principle prevails in similar fashion on our earth.

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

Every phenomenon of growth is accompanied with a sound. There is indeed such a thing as the Music of the Spheres, a very real thing. Every motion of material substance is accompanied with a sound. That sound may be too great for our imperfect ears to sense, or to take note of; or it may come within the limited gamut of sound that evolution has brought our auditory sense to understand or to take in. In the latter case we are aware of the physical sound: in the former case we are not, but the sound is there just the same.

The musical harmonies throughout Nature are going on all the time. Everything that moves, sings as it moves; and all things are moving. Nothing is absolutely inert, consequently everything sings, and the stars in their majestic cyclical motions, and the planets in their orbits, sing the Song of the Spheres; but our senses are not attuned to take it in. Therefore we don’t hear it. Shakespeare describes this beautifully in a passage in his Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene I:

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims; Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Shakespeare in this passage was merely repeating the teachings of the ancient Greek Pythagoreans, which teachings had come down to his time through the writings of a few early Christian theologians and mainly in the teachings of the pseudo-Dionysius, called the Areopagite. The Pythagorean doctrine is our Theosophical teaching also, and the matter is now becoming somewhat understood even by the ultra-modern scientific researchers, to the effect that every material thing in movement produces, among other phenomena, sound.

There is not only a ‘Music of the Spheres,’ but there is music everywhere, and man’s poor interpretative faculty attempts to seize some of the celestial harmonies, and the result is that we have what we call human music beautiful in its way indeed, but oh, how imperfect, as compared with Nature’s natural harmonies.

The next time when you pass a fellow human being on the street, no longer look upon him as an imperfect fellow: no longer let your eyes rest upon him as a being of mere flesh and blood and bones; but remember that you have just passed an imbodied god in his higher being, full of mysteries, so that his very body is singing a hymn, had you the ears to hear it. And had you this actual inner spiritual ear, you could hear the music of the spheres; for, in solemn truth, every sphere that runs its course in the abysmal depths of space, sings a song as it passes along. Having this power you can hear the grass grow. Every little atom is attuned to a musical note. It is in constant movement, in constant vibration at speeds which are incomprehensible to the ordinary brain-mind of man; and each such speed has its own numerical quantity, in other words its own numerical note or sound, and therefore sings that note; so that had you this spiritual clairaudience, the life surrounding you would be one grand sweet song and you yourself would sing a song, your very body would be as it were a symphonic orchestra, singing some magnificent, incomprehensible, musical symphonic composition. The growth of a flower for instance would be like a changing melody running along from day to day.

The Secret Doctrine Of The Ages

Men are the handiwork of cosmic gods and spiritual beings; and each such god or spiritual entity expresses itself through the human tabernacle which it has built up. Each one therefore is a conglomerate constitution builded by the faculties and powers flowing forth from the heart of the heart of his very being, which is his inner god, his cosmic spirit. H. P. Blavatsky expresses this same thought briefly but admirably in The Secret Doctrine (1, 224):

Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various [cosmic] spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of these hosts; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them.

It is thus that men are builded up into humanity, into possessing the human constitution including of course human physical bodies; each such constitution more or less, and usually less, expressing at least a little of these sublime, these divine, powers and faculties. But, occasionally and singly a human being becomes the vehicle, the self-conscious temple, of the divine entity within; and then such a man walks the earth an incarnate god. Such was the Christ, such was the Buddha. Such were many if not most of the great Sages and Seers of the past.

There is truth in the Universe. That truth can be had, and the way to have it is by willpower and perseverance in following the Path, and by self-forgetfulness, so that you will not have your feet clogged by the mire of selfish desire, holding you fast on the pathway. There is but one fundamental Truth in the Universe, simply because there is but one Boundless All. All the great Sages and Seers therefore of necessity taught that one Truth; felt it, experienced it; and hence the teaching of all of them was one in every essential characteristic. No matter in what age these great Sages taught, no matter what the language they used, no matter what the figures of speech that they employed, in each and in every case the essentials of their teachings were the same because the Truth was one. This Truth regarding the nature, structure, operations, and laws of the Boundless All, visible and invisible, not only was but today is the Secret Doctrine of the Ages, the Archaic Wisdom-Religion of Mankind, of which faint echoes even today are heard in every human mind which is not wholly asleep, and in every human heart which is not dead.

Even today the great Sages and Seers have their schools of initiation into which men in the outside world can enter, provided that these Great Ones see in the hearts and minds of the men in the outside world the qualifications for initiation. This procedure is not a selfish one. It is not a policy directed by an ignoble wish to keep truth for oneself, but is directed by Nature’s own law. You cannot teach a child lessons in Sanskrit, nor how to deliver a lecture on astronomy or chemistry, as instances. You must wait until the child grows, grows up, until its faculties evolve, which is the same thing as inner growth.

What a wondrous picture of hope and consolation we have here! Any man who will show the necessary qualifications is acceptable to these teachers -- not only acceptable, but he is helped, is taught; and every great Sage and Seer throughout the ages has had the same wonderful Message to give to mankind: “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest, and peace, and light;” as said Jesus the Avatara.

Any son of man has a right to these sublime teachings as his heritage as a human being. But his heart must hunger for them; his mind must be ready to receive them. Otherwise how can he take them? His moral instincts must be sufficiently developed so that the development of the wonderful but latent power within him can be brought about with an assurance that these powers will not be debased to ignoble uses.

The Theosophical Society was originally founded to bring these same ancient, very archaic, wonder-teachings back to the cognisance and living of mankind; and even today those who have proved themselves by kindliness of action, by a heart-hunger for truth, by the courage to follow that truth to the world’s end, ready to receive initiation, can get it.

When I speak of the Archaic Doctrine, the Wisdom-Religion of Mankind, the Secret Doctrine of the Ages, I am speaking of that ‘Lost Word,’ which yet is not a Word, but a system of teaching, a Wisdom, the existence of which still remains as an echo in the hearts of all good and true and intuitive men. This ‘Lost Word’ you can have. It is, as a body of doctrines, the formulation in human language of the essential truths of the Universe. It comprises the facts regarding the nature of the Universe, visible and invisible, spiritual, intellectual, psychical, ethereal, astral, and physical. It comprises also the teachings regarding the structure and operations and laws of the Universe. It also includes teaching a man to find himself, i.e., to discover and uncover from its enshrouding veils, the god within him.

In every human being there is his inner god, having found which he will enjoy communion with the divinities, and will understand the Universe in which he lives and moves and has his being and of which he is an inseparable part. Receiving this Wisdom means the broadening of his consciousness, the deepening of his being, the evocation of his latent intellectual powers, and self-acquaintance with his ‘soul,’ so to speak -- call it by what name you like. It also means to become self-consciously at one with the All.

MEN NEED TEACHERS

There is a teaching current in the world today to the effect that a man does not need teachers, that a man should be sufficient unto himself, that he has it within him to find his own path; and this is said to be a manly course of life. Verily so it is: “Truth abides within in fulness.” But why haven’t you found the path? Why aren’t you what you claim you can be? For the simple reason that you don’t know how to be it and because you have not been taught. You need a teacher.

Men need teachers. Truth is within, in very fact; as Browning has set forth in his Paracelsus:

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe.

There is an inmost center in us all,

Where truth abides in fulness; and around,

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception -- which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh

Binds it, and makes all error; and, to KNOW, Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without.

But a man must be taught how to unfold this truth within himself. The growth of little children will exemplify the idea. A child has everything within it that the grown man has, but as yet undeveloped, and he needs his teachers; he needs the mother’s loving care, first to guide the footsteps, then to teach the letters of the alphabet, to watch over its growing intelligence, to guide its mind into the proper paths; and I pity the mothers who fail in this, one of the noblest duties that a human being can undertake.

The spiritual Teacher of grown men is just what Socrates claimed that he was himself, a ‘midwife’ bringing out the man himself, bringing his disciples to birth, to spiritual birth. This is a sublime thought.

And there are Teachers to be had. The great Association of the Masters have their envoys and representatives in the world all the time. As a great people will send its ambassador or envoy to some foreign land, so do these Great Ones send their envoys, high disciples of theirs, into the world, in order to proclaim at different periods in the world’s history the same old Secret Wisdom of the ages. H. P. Blavatsky was one such. There were many others before her. There were others after her. The future will show many more. Happy are they whose hearts recognise these envoys; happy they who recognise the footfalls of the Messengers of Peace and Wisdom crossing the mountain-tops of the Mystic East!

It is trifling with truth, it is juvenile, childish, to say that the Great Ones send their representatives no more until a certain time-period has been reached. How do you know? Here is a good proof by which you may judge one who comes as an envoy: What is his teaching? What is his life? What does he give to the world? Does he inspire his fellows with great and noble thoughts and does he show them the still small path of the ages? If he does, you need have no fear about superficial theories whether he is or is not a Teacher from the Great Ones. Such a man is a man to be trusted.

Reject anything that your conscience tells you is false; abhor it. Cast it aside even if a very god from heaven taught it to you; reject it, if your conscience tells you that it is wrong. You may make mistakes time after time; but at any rate you are exercising your divine prerogatives of free will and of vision; and you are also therefore exercising your intellect. And these will grow by the exercise and thus become stronger; and the time will surely come when your judgment and your discrimination will surely have grown through this exercise to be far greater than now they are, and then you will recognise truth whenever you see it or hear it. If, on the other hand, what a man teaches, you find to be true, that is if it appeals to you as a fact, then hold to it and help him to sow that truth abroad. Such action is a human duty. Every decent man feels it.

Genuine Theosophical Teachers are not mere preachers of ideas or mental notions that may have currency as a fad in any age, but they base their teachings and doctrines solely on the facts of being. Life is a school and men are the pupils in that school, and in that school there are teachers. In these few words you have the key to the whole situation and to the policy of the Great Lodge.

We are all little children, when you think of it, by comparison with the surrounding great mystery of the Universe; and even the greatest god cannot fully plumb the mystery; for were he able to plumb it to the deepest deep, to the uttermost end, then he would find a frontier at that uttermost end and no farther advancement would be possible. But there is no such uttermost end, no such frontier. There is always a grander and a greater world to explore, always something nobler beyond, something higher and more beautiful still, deeper, and more lofty.

Can you realize what it means to have your consciousness virtually of cosmic reach, attaining the outermost limits of our Solar System, both visible and invisible? Try for an instant to realize what it is to send your consciousness behind the veils of the physical universe, deep, deep, deeper still, into the very heart of being; and there to learn, by becoming it, what is there, by experiencing all that is there in your own perceiving consciousness; and then, holiest thing of all, perhaps, feeling so strong your oneness with the Boundless Universe that instinctively and with all the impulses of your life you consecrate yourself to its service -- a godlike activity.

This consecration brings about a becoming ever greater in spiritual power, in growth of inner faculty, in inner vision, in inner hearing, in deeper feeling. Following upon this consecration the inner spiritual senses will open and develop grandly.

Therefore seek out your Teacher. Aspire; be. But also look within. Both are required: Teachers and the noble self-confidence arising from one’s increasing sense of union with the inner spiritual light. When you have the latter, then you see the Vision Sublime, and you are approaching a stage in your growth in which you will be near to confabulating with the gods who fill the Universe full and of whom we humans are the children.

What Is Occultism?

Occultism is the most serious and important branch of human knowledge. It is the science of the things that are causal, and therefore of the things which are in most instances invisible -- Nature’s fundamental structure, operations, and ‘laws’; and anyone who studies these realities and who has reached some understanding of them from individual experience and insight and who delivers what he knows to his fellow-men, is a true and genuine Occultist. No true Occultist exists except he who has been initiated. Mystics exist, many of them, without having passed through the initiatory rites; and there have been many grand mystics. Mysticisms of many kinds exist, according to the temperament of the writer or the thinker or the feeler. But there is but one Occultism -- the science of things unseen -- and seen!

All through the ages there have been searchers and seekers after this secret Wisdom. The instinct of the human heart has told all thinking and intuitive men in all ages that there is an explanation of the riddles of life, and that this explanation may be found. Always the problem has been the How, the Where. Blind sons of men, the great Sages and Seers have always told you the How and the Where! Every one of them has given to you the hint, has shown to you the beginning of the path. Their message has always been, although variously voiced and differently phrased: “Look within, O son of man, for there begins the mystic pathway of Wisdom for each one of you, a pathway which leads to the heart of the Universe; for each one of you in his inmost, in the core of the core of his being, is a divinity, a deathless god. And the very heart of the heart of the heart of the core of the core of every living entity is a spark of the eternal Central Fire; so that if you become at one with this spark, you are at one with the Central Fire, its fountain-head; and then all Wisdom is yours, and all Knowledge is yours, and all Love is yours, and all Power is yours.”

This is so simple that a child may understand the rule; and every Theosophical movement in every age has been founded with the main intent of bringing to men the realization of the truths of life -- of the nature, structure, and operations of the Universe of which all men are inseparable, individual parts. Every Theosophical movement throughout the ages has been founded in order to bring back to man the realization of that which is essentially man’s, to awaken in his heart his spiritual instincts, to light the divine fire anew in his soul, so that, inflamed with its glory, he may press onwards, find this pathway, and in following it to its end -- which is indeed no end, for it is endless -- may reach the realization by individual experience of his complete oneness with the Universe of which he is a child. That Universe is you. Every part of it is yours. It is your eternal Home and your everlasting Dwelling-place. There you are native; and not only are you, each one of you, the heart of the Universe, but that Universe itself verily is you yourself in your inmost.

There, then, is the Pathway. Beginning to tread it, you begin the study of genuine Occultism; and it is dependent upon your own selves, your own souls, individually speaking, how far you advance along this Pathway, which ‘begins’ in you and which reaches for ever and for ever and for ever in constantly enlarging reaches throughout the beginningless and endless spaces of Space. “Man, know thyself!”

Your Self, your spiritual Self, is the Universe itself. The Heart of Being is your heart of being. You are in the Universe, you live in the Universe, always will you be in it, you cannot ever leave it, you have never been out of it, because you are its child, and here now you are. Is not this thought a very simple and easily understood conception? In its correct understanding we may begin to catch a glimpse of the glory that lies back of it, the inspiration to a nobler and a grander life that it contains.

Any man who pursues this study, following this inner pathway, is a genuine Occultist; and precisely in accordance with the advance that he has made along this inner, wondrous Path of mystery and peace and wisdom and beauty, is his inner spiritual standing -- whether he be a mere beginner on the Path or a Master of life.

PSEUDO- OR IMAGINARY OCCULTISTS

On the other hand, no matter how much one may be inclined to the study of things which are hid, if he does not follow this spiritual pathway he is not a genuine Occultist. He studies a pseudo occultism, indeed, in the sense of studying mysterious and weird things; but his occultism is imaginary. He is studying more particularly the curiously complex and perplexing psychological operations of his own mind. I do not deny and in fact I affirm that even this pseudo-occultism is a particular, albeit unimportant, branch of the genuine Occultism, because the student in Occultism must first of all study himself; but unless he has the larger teachings and is under the instruction of a genuine progressed Occultist, he is following a dangerous because misleading pathway. He is attempting to run before he can crawl.

Such men as these are pseudo-occultists, ‘imaginary occultists.’ Some of them are sincere even if ignorant; but some of them also are frauds, conscious or unconscious -- frauds, because claiming pretensions to a wisdom which they possess not. Are there not conscious and even unconscious frauds in other walks of life also? But because there are frauds, shall we turn from the realities? Because there are bad men in the world, men whose hearts are ignoble, whose instincts are base, and whose claims are mere pretensions, shall we avoid the companionship of those whose hearts are noble, whose instincts are lofty, and whose word is truth itself? Of course not! Even these unfortunate ministers of deception are unconscious and perhaps unwilling witnesses of the existence of the pure gold of the genuine occultism to which, despite themselves, they are drawn and which they attempt to copy.

Every true coin, it is said, is or can be counterfeited: if a thing had no genuine, no real value, there would be no possibility of its being counterfeited, because no one would have a use for it. Therefore, wherever a counterfeit is seen, it is paradoxically enough a testimony to actual values existing somewhere which are the realities. Hence, wherever you see a spurious coin you may be assured that a hunting for the pure gold will not be unrewarded.

Some of our greatest scientific researchers today have the right to the name of Occultist. They are penetrating behind the outermost veil of the outward seeming, moving forwards towards another invisible veil which is behind the veil of the outward seeming. They have as yet advanced but a short way, it is true; and they really don’t know whither they are going. Nevertheless they are students of the things which are invisible in Nature’s structure and in her operations and energies and laws; and thus truly may be classed as genuine -- but unconscious -Occultists. We Theosophists don’t call them by that name because we prefer to restrict this term to men who have been trained by genuine occult Teachers, who have been taught how to unlock the inner percipient self; so that it may, if one like, leave the body and enter into the very womb of natural being. This indeed can be done; it is in fact done every day; and those men who can do this are the genuine Occultists, those who have the best and largest right to this noble title.

All the great Seers and Sages have thus been trained and are thus genuine Occultists. But they never talk in public about it. They don’t advertise themselves even, though there are rare exceptions to this rule of secrecy. There are occasions when the association of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion send out one or more of their pupils with instructions to proclaim spiritual truth once more to the hearts and minds of men, and to do so with the voice of authority, as Jesus did, as the Buddha did, as Pythagoras did, as Empedocles did, as Lao Tso did, as Krishna did, as Apollonius of Tyana did, and as did many others; and their teaching has always been fundamentally one teaching, however it may have varied in form because given in different ages to different races of men. It matters not at all in what language they spoke, nor in what age and under what conditions and in what circumstances they delivered what they had to say: the essentials were always the same -- the same identic formulation of natural facts, and the same identic system of natural verities.

Every new bringer of truth has been persecuted, and especially persecuted (strange and melancholy paradox!) by those who were nearest to him, nearest in belief to his teachings. This also is a paradox full of pathos, that men from a sense of caution and prudence -- noble virtues in themselves -- and from a love of holy truth itself, hesitate, draw back, are suspicious, when they hear a thing which seems to them new, albeit beautiful and full of spiritual inspiration. Then comes Time, the great solver of all problems, the healer of all wounds, and pours his soothing balm over men’s hearts and minds, clears away the mists, and finally brings understanding; and after the death of the envoy, mayhap, they say: “Verily, verily, a Son of the Sun has come to us and we recognised him not.” But even though such be the fate of most of the envoys of the Great Ones, in the end it matters not at all. The envoys come, knowing what they will meet with; but they come to give, and to give up their life if need be, to give of themselves, all that they have and all that they are, in the giving; for they come not for self but for others.

Verily there are, then, genuine Occultists, and those whom we may perhaps call imaginary occultists. Let us be charitable in our judgment regarding these latter. Some of them are not at all bad men. Some of the teachings that they give are good. But whence take they them? Where do they find them? They have found them in the Theosophical philosophy! That is the fountain-head whence they draw all the good that they gave: they find it all in the genuine teachings of Theosophy as brought to the Western world by the Envoy of the great Teachers, H. P. Blavatsky. She was a genuine Occultist indeed, the Envoy of the Great Ones, as others have been before her. She brought the teachings of the age-old Wisdom-Religion anew to mankind; and it is from this fountain of Wisdom that men of later date have drawn for their own purposes.

If now they had given out these teachings and had said: “These truths have I drawn from H. P. Blavatsky; to her is due the credit, and also to them -- the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion -who sent her forth,” then we would not utter a word of blame. Indeed, we should even applaud. But when people take credit unto themselves, not giving credit where credit is rightly due, then such action is a spiritual theft, and such people are rightly qualified as ‘imaginary’ occultists. The woods are full of them today. Our cities today contain a small army of them, and our newspapers contain innumerable advertisements of their trade. I have not the slightest desire to throw mud at anyone nor to utter a word of unmerited reproof. But my instinct of justice and my sense of right revolt sometimes when I ponder over these matters, and I feel that it is my duty to tell the truth.

“Come unto me,” said the Syrian Initiate-Teacher, “Come unto me, and I will show you the pathway to wisdom, to peace, to love, and to power.” Such was also the declaration of the Oracle of the Delphic Apollo, who, in other words, said: “Man, know thyself: this is the pathway to wisdom, to peace, to love, to power.”

And H. P. Blavatsky said, in language which no thoughtful mind could misinterpret: “Come unto me, my Brothers. I have been taught. Only as I have been taught am I authorized to give; but what I have been taught I can give, and it is my duty to give it.”

She gave, and gave lavishly. What she gave was not her own; it is not my own; it is not your own. It is the common spiritual and intellectual heritage of mankind; it belongs to us all as human beings, to every son of man; and anyone who studies this common heritage of mankind and who follows the pathway that it opens, is a genuine Occultist; and if he follow this pathway leading him to a greater chamber of wisdom and then later still to chambers more lovely by far, he is a greater Occultist. The pathway, remember, is endless, for it leads over and through the spacious fields of the spaces of invisible space.

OCCULT POWERS

Occultism, let us understand clearly, is the science and the study of the things which are invisible, secret, sacred -- the study of the inner structure, operations, powers, and so-called laws, of the Universe; and Theosophy as presented today is its theoretic presentation. This is a definition which is exact and which is therefore true; and, of course, since man is an inseparable part of the Universe, therefore the secret powers, energies, and operations of the inner and invisible human being form a part of the study of the genuine Occultist also.

For instance, there is a strange and mysterious energy in man, which few men consciously know anything about, and in connexion with this there is a secret and wonderful key which enables him to unloose, to unlock so to say, the chains which bind him into the gross psycho-astral-physical encasement. There is this key by which to unlock the lock which shuts this inner man in; and when the inner man is thus loosed or unlocked, he can go forth into the inner realms of being, into the secret and invisible places of space. In Tibet this power is called the Hpho-wa. It is called by other names in other places.

All races of people have known of this wondrous fact. They have thought much about it, wondered greatly about it, and instinct has told them it is a fact. When this inner man is thus unloosed, he can send himself or project himself or, if you like the phrasing better, he himself can go, whither he will; not only anywhere on the surface of the earth or to the center of the earth or to the higher regions of our atmosphere, but also to the moon, to the planets, to the sun. It depends upon what part of the inner constitution of himself he unlocks. The spiritual part is at home in the solar spaces. Thither at will it goes like a flash of thought. The more material part of the constitution of man is earthly and clings to the earth, but nevertheless is more ethereal than is the physical body; and he can send this more ethereal but yet material part of his being to any portion of our own rocky sphere that he may please to despatch it to; and there he can function in all his powers and faculties self-consciously and with full volition and do what he pleases. His ability in each case depends solely upon his grade of advancing in the Sacred Science, which also means his power to ‘live the life.’

RULES FOR ADVANCEMENT

Would you like to test this yourself? Would you like to know by personal experience of these things? You can, if you will obey the law and follow the rules. Ah, yes, the same old stumbling blocks -- laws and rules! But such is Nature’s way. There’s the rub: obeying rules and following studies. And yet is it not every where the same in life? You can’t even run an automobile without learning how to do it. How can you work a problem without learning the rules for its solution? How can you practise chemistry without having studied the science?

Here then is the secret: You must give yourself, if you desire to find yourself. “Give up thy life if thou wouldst live.” Give up the small life, the petty life, the mean life, the restricted life, the little personal life which shuts you in -- give it up and follow the light of the Star within you. Expand from personality into impersonality and take your place as a master of life! Cultivate the powers which give you freedom, which release you from the shackles and chains of the lower selfhood. Be free spiritually, and intellectually free; then you can be trusted with all the ‘occult powers’ within you and within the Universe surrounding you, of which you are a child, because then you will be a Master of Life, and all the powers that then you will have you will wield only for great and noble and unselfish and impersonal purposes.

Let us not, however, confuse this wide range of experience possible to human beings, with merely one or two or three more or less disputed psychic faculties such as thought-transference, or ordinary clairaudience or clairvoyance -- and here I do not refer to genuine spiritual clairvoyance, using the word in the largest sense as meaning clear-seeing, insight behind the veils, inner visioning.

Furthermore, were I to say that everybody should cultivate ‘occult powers’ merely because they are ‘occult,’ I should be failing grossly in my duty. Therefore I say, No. You should cultivate your spiritual powers, yes; your intellectual powers, yes; your intellectual faculties, yes, for these are the genuinely occult powers, of which the others are the lower and weak reflexions; but when it comes to cultivating these lower, the astral and psychic powers, then I say, No. The average man is totally unfit to have complete command of other powers than those which he already has. Indeed, the average man cannot even control himself, the ordinary psycho-astral-physical powers that he commonly uses today; and then, forsooth, people talk about ‘cultivating occult powers’! It simply shows that they don’t know what they refer to.

It is one of our Theosophical duties to show men the way to wisdom, to peace, to happiness, to strength, and to spiritual power -- the real powers, the powers which are safe and clean and sweet, which make a man lovable, which make him compassionate, which guarantee that power put into his hands will be wielded never for self but always in order to benefit others. Before the lower ‘occult powers’ of any kind are cultivated, man must learn the first lesson of the Higher Occultism, the mystic knowledge, which is to control himself; and all powers that later he gains must be laid on the altar of impersonal service -- on the altar of service to mankind.

There are great men, noble-minded men, men who can be trusted; and they are entitled to have powers, and they have them. They are chelas, as we Theosophists say. It may be unknown to themselves sometimes in the beginning, but nevertheless they are pupils, disciples, of the great Teachers -- of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion.

O my Brothers, unlock the divine in your own being! It is very easy to begin this effort. Aspire, forgive, love impersonally, control yourself, exercise your spiritual faculties, cultivate your intellectual powers, do good to others. But always learn to love, to love more, to love still more greatly, to love more grandly still; and let your compassion reach even to the stars in thought and in feeling. Then you are indeed on the pathway to the gods. You are becoming a genuine Occultist, and some day great powers will be yours and you will see the Vision Sublime -- that vision which will enable you even while yet in the physical body to look within and beyond, and to see Truth face to face.

The Mystery-Schools And Initiation

The Mysteries were originally the secret schools founded by the great Seers and Sages of the human race. The national Sages and Seers, one or more in each country, founded each his own school in which he taught not merely esoteric law, and discipline, and many of the arts and sciences, but also taught men how to live, and how to receive the Vision Sublime. That was the origin of the Mysteries; and the teachings of Theosophy today are the doctrines expressed in modern formulation of the tenets then taught and lived. The fundamental teachings of all these

Mystery-Schools all over the world were the same: that great doctrine which we call the Wisdom-Religion of Antiquity today called Theosophy.

These Mysteries, even in their original form, which form was indeed kept to the very end of their existence, were taught in two ways: by dramatic expression or symbolism in the form of ritual and ceremony of certain natural secrets; and by mouth-to-ear communication of holy truths. Both the Small and the Great Mysteries of Antiquity, as they were about the time of the Fall of the Roman Empire, had preserved even to that day more or less all of the inferior part of the teachings given in dramatic form; and somewhat of the same idea of ritualism and ceremonial observances still prevails in Occidental countries in certain secret and fraternal organizations. But at the time of the Fall of the Roman Empire, that is to say at the time when Christianity began to extend widely, the deeper teachings, the mouth-to-ear communication of high truths, were withdrawn.

As to the form that the ten days’ celebration of the Greater Mysteries took each year, I might make a brief picture of them in words without going too far; because I tell you frankly that these same Mysteries are celebrated today in their fullness in proper quarters, and with all the ancient possibilities of achievement in initiation; and among us Theosophists today there are those who know of this for a fact.

I will give you a picture: a picture in the form of dramatic symbology. The seed must die before the offspring, which is of itself, comes into being; and the raising of the new out of the old is symbolic of the birth of the inner god in the neophyte. You may read in some of the rather mystical treatises of the Christian literary cycle, of the Christ-sun, of the sun-Christ. This is an allusion not to the man Jesus but to the Christ-light in the core of the core of every human being. When the Christ in the heart of a man is enabled to express himself fully through the outer man, then the spiritual Sun-God is born. Then indeed, in the mystical wording of the early Christians, can the witnesses of this sublime rite chant: “All hail to the risen Christ” out of the gloom of matter and the bondage of the lower selfhood. These beautiful symbolical things are facts in initiation. They contain wondrous truths of life; they contain wondrous truths of Science -- in the modern understanding of that word as classified knowledge -- as well as truths of Religion and of Philosophy.

One of the greatest of the esoteric schools among the Greeks and later among the Romans was that of the Mithraists. They had a wonderful teaching which was also a Mystery-Teaching. Mithraism drove Christianity so hard at one time, and the scales were so evenly balanced, that a feather’s weight in the Mithraic scale would have changed the course of history. Christianity prevailed only because it was easier of acceptance on belief by the unthinking multitude.

The nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea at that time were, spiritually speaking, running on a down-grade: an era of spiritual and intellectual obscuration had come upon men; and the grand old teachings of the Mystery-Schools had been largely forgotten, and the races that then lived around the Mediterranean could hardly understand those teachings. The time finally came when they preferred to believe on faith rather than to think. That is why Christianity prevailed. Mithraism at one time was predominant in court, in the army, in the navy, among the people, indeed everywhere; but it required study, thinking, something more than easy belief; and, speaking in a strange paradox, it was its greatness which was its weakness: it was too great for a degenerate people to understand it.

Consider the Eleusinia, as another type of esoteric society, commonly called the Mysteries of Eleusis. Consider also the Mysteries of Samothrace. Concerning these the greatest men of Greece and Rome have told us that in them a man was taught how grandly to live and, when his time comes, how grandly to die, filled with the fervent hope that he was on his way to join the gods, not in body, but in essence, preceding a return here on earth among men.

But why, one may ask, are these ancient mystery-centers now but a memory? Why did they fall? Why did they die? How was it that they passed? For the same reasons that all human institutions finally fall and die. Those in charge proved faithless to the trust. Nothing on this earth could have overthrown these Schools had they remained true at heart, for the might of the great Masters would then have been behind them, and this might means the Spiritual Solar Fire. At Eleusis, for instance, things had come to such a pass that the initiations and the teachings became a mere rite or a mere ceremonial, a mere form, like the Christian ceremonies today of baptism and the Communion, and what not. The School at Athens, which was the same as the Eleusinian, was closed by an Imperial Rescript of the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, and seven philosophers, sincere, earnest, and good men, and the only faithful ones of the time, fled their native land, Greece, fled to King Khosru of Persia, for protection against the laws and armies and tyranny and persecutions of imperial Rome. The Persian king received them hospitably; and as Rome at that time was at war with Persia, when Persia won in this war, one of the conditions of the peace was -- and it was laid down with the sword -- that these seven philosophers should be permitted to return to their native land, and to live in peace, and to teach in peace, and to die in peace; and so it was!

Ephesus was another center where the sacred teachings at one time were taught in fame. Babylon also, and Memphis in Egypt; and there were scores of other such places on the globe, all teaching the same fundamental system of truths. They taught Occultism, the secret teaching of the things that are hid, not apparent, secret; such as the structure of the Universe around us, the kind and nature and quality and circumstances of the spiritual beings who fill the Universe full, and man’s origin and destiny -- spiritual, psychical, physical.

THE PATHWAY OF INITIATION

Now there are two ways for a man to achieve his destiny, two ways for a human soul to reach its own inner powers, the full expansion of its own god-like genius. The first is that followed by the majority, drifting along like flotsam on the ceaselessly moving ebb and flow of the Ocean of Time; and this is the path of natural evolution, of natural growth. But oh! how slow, how slow, how slow it is! Ages will pass before the expansion of inner faculties and powers reaches even a modicum of a larger greatness.

The other pathway is Initiation. This means a quicker growth, a more rapid evolution, a more speedy emergence from the chrysalis of humanhood into possessing the wings of the spirit -- into becoming the bird of eternity, to change the metaphor somewhat. There is a path, as H. P. Blavatsky, the main founder of the Theosophical Society so nobly wrote, rugged and uphill though it be for the average man, yet it leads to the very Heart of the Universe. The one traveling this path passes through the portals of growth quickly, relatively speaking; so that instead of spending ages in slowly evolving, he can grip himself, guide his own evolution, and thus much more quickly grow.

This is self-directed evolution. This is initiation. It exists today. But there are preparations necessary especially for initiation. None can follow a pathway -- is it not obvious? -- which he has not the strength to walk upon. Therefore he must gather strength unto himself. He must prepare himself. To use the language of the Christian New Testament, he must “gird up his loins and take his staff in his hand, have no thought for the morrow, and carry nothing with him.” Light-footed must he speed along, without encumbering and hampering weights.

How do you make these preparations? Become self-forgetful; for then you throw off your burdens: you hate not, and you love all things, both small and great. Forget yourself, and you are then no longer enchained with the bonds of desire and acquisition tying you to things of evanescent and impermanent value. Your soul, your spirit, your mind, your heart, become infilled with impersonally great and noble thoughts, desires, and aspirations, which even one thought of merely personal profit and personal acquisition and gain will kill at least for the time being.

Initiation is a means of stimulating evolution; and there are many kinds of initiation. Some are very difficult indeed, such as only the greatest and strongest men can take, for the road is thorny and beset with pitfalls, simply because we human beings are weak; we are growing; we are not yet fully developed. But there are other initiations which are much easier, and which, while they do not, indeed, produce the great fruits in the increase of consciousness, in the gaining of comprehension, that the great initiations do, nevertheless are very helpful.

Man, know thyself, for thy Self is a divine being, rooted in the Universe of which the human being is an extension, so to speak. Therefore, by looking within, by following the roots of your own inner spiritual being ever more inwards and upwards, you come to understand naturally the mysteries of Mother Nature. It is a great and wonderful Adventure. Every man is capable of developing this inner consciousness in his heart, and therefore you can do it.

You can gain wonderfully just by cultivating a few simple rules of mental and practical conduct. Be kindly; refuse to hate. Learn to love; learn to forgive. Let your heart expand. Be yourself, and expand your sympathies; touch with the tendrils of your consciousness the hearts of other human beings. Oh! what a delight to feel, as it were, the inner spiritually electrical quiver that your own soul experiences when you have touched the heart of a fellow human being! Practising these rules of morals and of noble ethics, you begin a short cut to a comprehension of yourself, and ultimately you touch the mysteries of the Universe.

A great mystery is a human being. There is infinity in his heart of hearts. Man is a child of eternity, and eternity is in the very structure of the consciousness of his being. Man is an incarnate god, albeit a fallen god, misusing his powers; nevertheless by that fact can he rise again, and will rise again; and every normal human being must know, if he studies himself, that in his consciousness there is a beaming light, a star of glory, and that he can follow this light to ever greater expansions of splendor, for the entire Universe is his playground, is the stage of his Adventure, which is cosmic life; and as a Pilgrim passing from the eternity of the past into the eternity of the future, he plays many parts on the stage of life.

Out of eternity have we come, journeying through realm after realm of Nature’s mystic and invisible constitution: through worlds both invisible and visible: gathering experience in each, perfecting our faculties in each. And when grown great in any such world, or on any such plane, or in any such sphere, having learned all the lessons that these worlds and planes and spheres can give us, we then pass to still nobler things.

THE TWO PATHS

When a human being has learned all that Earth can teach him, he is then godlike and returns to earth no more -- except those whose hearts are so filled with the holy flame of compassion that they remain in the schoolroom of Earth that they have long since advanced beyond and where they themselves can learn nothing more, in order to help their younger, less evolved brothers.

These exceptions we Theosophists call the Buddhas of Compassion, the Christs; and such a spirit is the Christ-spirit. Either path is noble -- to pass onward into Nirvana, or to return to Earth to help mankind. Both lead to heights of spiritual sublimity. But one, the road of compassion, is divine. Some day all must make that choice. But the results of making that choice, of choosing the road of self-forgetfulness and pity and impersonal love for all others, while temporarily holding you in the realms of illusion, of matter, will ultimately lead you by a road straighter than any other, to the core of the core of the Universal Heart; for you shall have obeyed the impersonal commands of cosmic love, and that means allying yourselves consciously with divinity.

THE OBJECT OF INITIATION

There is such a thing as so training the faculties and energies of the human understanding, of the human mind, of the human heart, that these become enormously receptive of natural truth. This procedure in ancient days was called initiation into the Mysteries. Specially trained men, great initiates of the ages, trained by others who had been previously trained and prepared, sent their spirit into and behind the veil of exterior matter deep into the abysses of the Cosmic Heart, and consciously brought back what they had there seen.

Initiation is naught but a becoming at one with your own inner god, your own spiritual being, and this means expanding your consciousness, your inner powers, so that they take cosmic extent. Being at one with the spiritual essence of things, you live and breathe its atmosphere and become a very god in flesh. Just as Jesus the Syrian Sage said: “I and my Father are one,” referring here to his own inner god. When you become at one with your own inner god; in other words become at one with the divine essence working through you and giving you intelligence and love and power and vision; you have allied yourself with the divinity within, and thus become a god among men, literally.

The Great Ones of the past have done just this; and lesser men do it in degree; and these lesser sons of men are they whom we call geniuses.

In past ages, when the currents of material life ran less strong than today, when men’s minds were turned more to the things which endure, it was thought to be man’s loftiest objective to become more than man, more than an ordinary human. In order to do this, a man whose heart was enhungered for truth and whose soul was quickened with an intuition of great spiritual values, entered upon the Path of the ancient Mystery-Teaching. He gave up his life in order to find Life; he broke the bonds of personal existence -- limited, restricted, constricted -- so that his soul might expand into its native cosmic essence. That is what the Mysteries of the ancient days in their higher degrees did for the men who were capable and strong enough to undertake the tests and pass them successfully.

Now, this study and investigation of the secret laws of our great parent, Mother Nature, of which we are all children, is called Occultism. It also involves the highest form of spiritual self dedication. An end of this study and investigation cannot be reached, because Mother Nature herself in her wondrous and illimitable fields of existence is endless. So this means that behind every veil which now confronts and blinds you, you can pass into a greater light, only to find another veil beyond, behind which, by greater growth still, you may go; and so on for ever. What a sublime hope! Endless growth, endless expansion, undying vision! It is a blessed thought that we gain it all by our own efforts alone!

Brotherhood is based on Nature’s fundamental law, that no entity lives unto itself absolutely. It cannot. In trying to violate this fundamental law it perishes in time. But when we live unto others than our own self, we expand constantly. Our consciousness reaches for ever and for ever more outwards to greater spaces and finds its play in ever wider and grander fields. Living unto others is the way to grow great. This is not vapid sentimentality; it enunciates the first law of occult being.

All the Mystery-Schools of the past, all the methods of initiation, were founded with one object in view: to bring forth from within, the spiritual powers of those who were prepared, the faculties divine of the god within. And these initiations are not alone of the past. Let me tell you in all solemnity of holy truth, that they continue today for those who are found worthy and ready and prepared.

All initiations, so far as pictorial rite or figurative symbolism went, portrayed the mystic structure and operations and secrets of the hid Universe as expressed in the acts and words of the Master Initiator and of the neophyte. The great Pyramid of Cheops was a majestic fane, a majestic temple wherein those who had been duly prepared to receive a vast and sublime light, received it under wise guidance; and yet it was a tomb, but not of a dead body. It was a tomb of human personality where the lower, passionate, weak, vacillating, unsteady-minded, man became for the time being at least an imbodied god.

By the ancient magic of the Mystery-Schools of the archaic ages, at the times of the higher initiations the god came forth from within the spiritual nature and shone directly through the physical vehicle so that the body of the neophyte, as it lay in trance, was resplendent with light.

And on the third day, when the neophyte was ‘raised,’ remaining conscious of his sublimer experiences in the inner worlds for a short or a longer period, depending upon his own spiritual power, he taught even his teachers what he had learned behind the veil. And while he was in this state his very face shone with glory, the glory of Father Sun.

The entire story of Jesus as given in the Christian New Testament is an esoteric or mystical tale setting forth in mystical form what took place in the initiation-chambers -- initiation signifying the dying of the lower man so that the higher nature of the neophyte could thereafter be released; and further that the postulant, when he had finished his three days’ initiation-trial, might go forth ‘anointed’ or as one who had received the unction or anointing in the Mysteries.

I would that I might describe this fully. Let me, however, say this: the neophyte lay entranced for three (or more) days and nights, and during that period of time his inner being was released from the chains of the body and went on its peregrinations through the entire solar system, from planet to planet and from planet to sun, finally passing the very portals of Father-Sun. Remember that according to the Ancient Wisdom the heart of the heart of the sun is a cosmic divinity, the source of the glorious splendor and vitality which it is constantly pouring forth.

On the eve of the third day the spirit-soul began to wing its way back to its personal encasement, and on the morning of the fourth day, more or less as regards the time, the neophyte arose from the cruciform couch or bed on which he had lain attached, roped to it but for safety’s sake only, and arose a Master of Light, a Master of Life, a Christ, a Buddha, one who had received the holy and mystical unction, the anointing on the forehead. Thereafter he was a qualified and authorized spiritual Teacher of men. He taught by the authority that belonged to him by natural right and by initiation, and he could say, as every such Sage and Seer has always said: I am the Way, I am the Life, I am the Light.

Everyone who has gone through these same wonderful experiences has said the same, and has truly spoken. Each one of us, if we attain in the same way, will find that it will be not merely our right but our duty to teach, and that we shall teach with authority because we shall know -- all the inner and higher part of our being will be awakened: intuition, wisdom, and knowledge instant, quick, certain, sure, and full, will infill our mind with the Mysteries of the Universe. We shall see grandly; and hence this is called the Vision Sublime.

The Sacred Seasons

The Mysteries of Antiquity were celebrated at various times of the year: in the spring, in the summer-time, in the autumn, and at the winter solstice.

These most sacred of the ancient Mysteries began with the winter solstice. Therein were initiated certain men who had been chosen on account of having perfected a certain preliminary period of training: chosen, not arbitrarily but because these Elect were ready for the tests, to go through initiatory trials for the purpose of bringing out into manifestation in the man the divine faculties and powers of the inner god.

The Initiatory Cycle contained the circling year as a symbol of the entire spiritual, intellectual, and psychical life-cycle of a human being; and at the four cross-periods, composing ‘the cross of the Universe,’ as the divine philosopher Plato, called it, there took place the four great initiation ceremonies of human existence.

The first of these Initiations was called the ‘Birth.’ It took place and takes place at the time of the winter solstice, December 21-22 or thereabouts, which Christians now call the Christmas-Festival of December 25; and when this new ‘Birth’ occurred, then men said: “Lo! the Christ in man is born.” Or: “The Inner Buddha is born from within the shell of the neophyte.” As the man lived on, if he had the strength of will and the courage to proceed and to follow the Path to the second initiatory stage -- no matter how many years this may have taken or now may take -- then came the ‘Easter’ of his life, the second great Initiation, when the Christ within him was -- not born, because that had already taken place -- but when the Christ ‘arose’ and took his own stand as a fully developed Master, Teacher, Guide, and Leader, of men.

Then came the third stage, that which was commemorated mythologically by so many of the ancient peoples in the festival of the Mid-summer, of the summer solstice. On June 21-22 began the ‘trials’ of this third stage, and they lasted for fourteen days, beginning at a time when the moon was new and culminating and ending for that period when the moon was full. So was it also at the winter solstice or ‘Christmas’-Initiation beginning on December 21-22, when the moon was new and ending fourteen days afterwards, when the moon was full. So was it also during the Spring-time, the spring equinox, the second stage; and so was it again during the Autumn-period, September 21-22: each of these Initiation-ceremonies began when, according to the ancient, wonderful, mystical, true astrology, the sun and moon and planets were rightly situated.

Every one of these Initiation-periods began either at the time of the winter solstice, or of the spring equinox, or of the summer solstice, or of the autumnal equinox; respectively therefore on December 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until the full moon; or on March 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until full moon; and then on June 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until full moon; and then finally on September 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until the moon was full.

This whole matter has been so completely lost sight of by Occidental peoples that it is most difficult adequately to describe the true circumstances; and the difficulty is rendered still greater by the fact that due to misunderstanding and ignorance and ecclesiastical bigotry and jealousy, what remained or was taken over by the early Christians has been greatly distorted and changed; so that while actually the Christians celebrated two of these great Initiation-festivals, the ones they call Christmas and Easter, they know nothing of the other two; and even the two that they still commemorate they commemorate on approximately the accurate dates, but actually inaccurately because not following the exact astronomical time-periods.

The circle of the year represented symbolically the entire Initiatory cycle that a man could follow from the beginning of his training until its end. There was the ‘Birth’; then the ‘Resurrection,’ or rather the evocation of the inner Christ or Master, which was the mystic ‘Youth’ just as the former had been the mystic ‘Birth’; then the third was the mystic ‘Majority’ or Adulthood, at which the glorious Initiate or Master of Life began an active, indeed a strenuous, career among men as Teacher and Guide and Savior; and then finally the last period, that of the Passage into the Great Peace, where, if such was the choice made and followed, the Master left the world of men for ages and entered into other spheres. Many renounced this fourth and supreme Initiation in order to remain Buddha-like, in their love and pity for erring mankind, with men in order to help them and to protect them and to guide them.

THE ESOTERIC EASTER

In The Story of Jesus I have briefly explained the trials of the neophyte at the winter solstice, when his spirit-soul through initiation is ‘born.’ Let us turn now to the spring equinox, for, from the above, it must be evident that the Easter-Festival has behind it as its background and origin an esoteric fact. It represents an actual event which occurs annually in the spiritual life of man, because the events of man’s spiritual life faithfully reflect the events that take place in the spiritual life of the world.

Every great mystical event of the ancient religions and philosophies of the world was commemorated in a feast, in the ancient sense of this word -- in a festival such as Easter in Occidental lands now is, and such as was the European original and forerunner of the present-day Easter festival: the Ostara or Eastre, as it was called by different families of the early Germanic inhabitants of the northern European countries. In those lands it took the form of a celebration of the vital forces working in the Spring-time, when new life is surging through the earth and affecting all earth’s children, when the trees begin to burgeon and the flowers begin to blow, and when a new hope is singing in men’s hearts, representing in men, because derived from the spiritual realms, exactly what appears in the beauteous flowers that in those northern lands Nature then begins to bring forth.

How is the date of Easter reckoned today, according to the Christian fashion of doing so? It is figured in this way: Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon on the date of, or first after, the spring equinox. Bitter disputes arose in the early days of Christianity about the proper date on which to celebrate the Christian Easter-Festival, commemorating the supposed Resurrection, the rising, of their Savior; and the greatest and most bitterly debated of these disputes was called the Quartodeciman -- the word ‘Quartodeciman’ being taken from the Latin word for fourteenth -- ‘fourteenthers.’ It was so called because a large body of the early Christians contended that Easter should fall on the fourteenth day -- which was full moon day -of the Jewish month of Aviv or Nisan -- the same day on which the ancient Jews commemorated their ‘Passover.’

The Jewish calendar was wholly a lunar one -- their months went by moons. As a matter of fact, even in English the word month, derived from the Anglo-Saxon Monath, means the period of one lunation or one moon, in Anglo-Saxon Mona. But the Christians, the majority of them, did not like the idea of celebrating the ‘Resurrection’ of their Savior, Jesus Christ, although he was a Jew, on the same date on which the Jews commemorated their Passover. They were very largely of opinion that their Easter-Festival commemorating the alleged ‘Rising’ of Jesus must be celebrated on a Sunday, the day of the Sun. Thus it came about that after a great deal of verbal fighting and verbal squabbling -- very bitter and unkind some of it -- the arguments of the Quartodeciman’s were rejected and they were declared to hold ‘heretical opinions.’ This event took place at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 of the Christian Era.

This decree of the Nicaean Council showed that the Christians of that time had already lost the root-meaning of the Easter-Festival; and I may add here that the Jews had the right idea in celebrating their Passover on the fourteenth of the month Nisan, in other words when the moon was full, no matter how much the Jews themselves at that late date may have misunderstood the real meaning and significance of this Spring-Festival.

The esoteric fact connected with this Spring-Festival is one which is fully explained in our own Theosophical esoteric teachings. The moon, among all the ancient peoples and even today among non-Christian peoples practically all over the earth, has been called the ‘Lord and Giver of life’ as well as of ‘death’; and there are certain phases of the moon, in other words certain positions that the moon occupies, taken in connexion with the astronomical positions of the sun and the earth, when influences and forces both from the moon to earth and from earth to the moon run strong. Indeed an examination of the ancient literatures of the world will reveal all this, although in some cases the truth is rather carefully hid; but a study of Theosophy will give the key to the enigma.

The old initiations have not died off from the face of the earth. They take place even today, and in the archaic way, under the supervision and guidance of men, great Sages and Seers, who know perfectly well what they are doing, and who know what the inner and to us -- to the average man -- mysterious secrets of the Universe are. They know how Nature’s forces and currents run, and in what direction they run and along what pathways they return. They know, in other words, the circulations of the Universe, circulations not only physical but psychical and spiritual; for verily there are such circulations in the Universe.

Everything in the Universe is connected and bound together with every other thing that exists. Nature is one universal organism or organic entity. There is a harmony which prevails everywhere; and consequently there is a cosmic life which is the Ocean of Being in which all differentiations take place: which is the great Fountain of Being in which all things exist. Consequently Nature is one, and, as the old Hermetists said, what you see operative in any part of Nature, merely mirrors what takes place everywhere, because Nature’s laws form one unity, and consequently work together everywhere throughout the Mighty Mass. Out of the small, discover the great; in the great, seek the mystery of the small; as above, so is it below; as below, as the great Egyptian Hermes said, so is it above. Nature is organically one: one life, one essence, one consciousness, and one vast and incomprehensibly differentiated aggregate of bodies; and therefore all things in the Mighty Whole are ruled and controlled alike and show it forth in the manifestations of their individual existences.

Thus, therefore, following this analogical principle: just as a man’s body has its circulations, has its feeble consciousness reflected from the inner spiritual man, so has the mighty organic sphere of our own Home-Universe. Man is a child of that Universe and a reflexion of it, manifesting in the small what exists in his Great Parent.

The northern European peoples had a habit of celebrating the Easter-Festival of Spring by sending eggs, colored or otherwise, as gifts to each other. It was a pagan custom among them long before the Christians adopted it. Why, we may well ask? Out of the apparently inanimate and senseless egg comes a living being. Omne vivum ex ovo, ”Every living thing springs from an egg,” be it small or be it great. The egg, therefore, was a symbol of the resurrection of life, this mystic, symbolic idea centering around the germ of life enclosed within a relatively senseless encasement or body, which is the egg; but that germ within the egg is a living and working entity; growing: wonderfully, mysteriously, marvelously: in time assuming the form and the content of the individual to be born from the egg; and one day the egg bursts and the entity comes forth -- the fledgling, the chick, the human being; for the human life-germ is a cell -which is an egg -- also.

Sending an egg was therefore a symbolic message, and was meant to say: “Brother, with this gift of the symbolic egg, symbol of the new life to be, I hope that you too will soon break the infolding ‘egg’ of the lower self, the personal man; and that, having broken the shell of your personal being, you may step forth as the Master within.” It therefore meant: Seek initiation; break the shell of the lower personal man and step out as the living germ to be developed into an entity fit to live in the larger world of the spiritual. The egg, therefore, mystically and symbolically, represented the ‘birth’ of the living Christ -- his resurrection from out the tomb of the material encasement.

The personal man must be ‘crucified,’ i.e., ‘slain’ -- metaphorically speaking -- in order that the Christ within may resurrect or arise. Why not ally yourself with your own inner divinity, the real spiritual and intellectual essence of yourself? There is the source of all Wisdom and of all Knowledge. In becoming at one with this inner source you attain the Great Peace. You reach the Great Quiet, and mighty strength. You touch the vast reservoir where are stored up all the greatest forces of the Universe; for the very heart of each one is in actual fact the heart of the Universe -- a ‘heart’ which is not localized but is everywhere, called the ‘heart of the Universe’ because it is the central focus of consciousness of every entity that exists.

The Pathway of Beauty, the Pathway of Peace and Strength, the Pathway of the Great Quiet, is within. This is the Pathway that the great Sages and Seers of all the ages have taught. Follow that Pathway. It will lead you to the heart of the Sun, the Master and Guide of our Solar System. And later, if you follow it, it will conduct you to a destiny still more sublime. Yet that sublime destiny is only the beginning, only the beginning of something grander; for evolution, growth, expansion of consciousness, go on for ever: and when the Theosophist becomes the Occultist, when theory is exchanged for practice, then the Path of Occultism is discovered to be this Path which goeth onwards for ever.

THE END

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Table of Contents

To The Reader

Introductory

Who Are The Masters?

How The Masters Obtain Their Wisdom

Teachings Of The Masters

The Secret Doctrine Of The Ages

What Is Occultism?

The Mystery-Schools And Initiation

The Sacred Seasons