A Master Of Wisdom On The Panoramic Vision At Death

1. The supreme energy resides in the Buddhi: latent when wedded to Atman alone; active and irresistible when galvanized by the essence of Manas. 2. Healing requires perfect benevolence, untainted even by latent selfishness. 3. The unreformed Western mind cannot grasp the essence of Buddhistic exegesis. The twin faces of Avalokiteshvara. The blind and guilty Rhys Davids leads the blind and innocent Lillie into the ditch. 4. God Geometrises. 5. Only the unshackled Spirit shall see the things of the Spirit without a veil.

The cis-Himalayan Mahatmas are Great Souls and Masters of Wisdom; their higher individuality is en rapport with the Universal Soul. Through occult training in successive births, the hold of lower Manas weakens until the whole Manas identifies with the Universal Soul, which runs through humanity at large, and lo and behold! a new Saviour of Mankind is born. Only a pure and unexpecting soul, whose brotherly love has uplifted his Manas above the fog of separateness, can ever hope to approach the majesty of a Mahatma. Manasic perception is enlightened belief without intellectual understanding. That is the real meaning of faith, not the blind belief implied by the religious meaning of faith. The adept is the rare efflorescence of a generation of enquirers. Their three higher aspects are merged into One. A Planetary Spirit can roam the interstellar spaces in full consciousness, while continue living on earth in his original body. That is highest form of adeptship man can hope for on our planet. Only an Occultist, by analysing and experiencing sentient life in all its phases, whether on earth or beyond, whether mineral, vegetable, animal, or spiritual life, can figure out the Great Problem of Consciousness. Spirit and Matter are co-existent, inseparable, interdependent, and convertible to each other. This androgynous Force is Mind and Soul. Since motion is all-pervading and absolute rest inconceivable, under whatever form or mask may appear, whether as light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity or elec-tricity — all these must be phases of One and the same universal omnipotent Force. Consciousness is not only transformable into other aspects or phases of the all-pervading Force, but that it can be infused into, and animate, an artificial man. The three extant centres of Occult Brotherhood, though widely separated geographically, and as widely exoterically, promulgate the same esoteric doctrine. Self is a passing guest, whose concerns are all like a mirage of the great desert. It is upon the serene and placid surface of the unruffled mind that the visions gathered from the invisible find a representation in the visible world. Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magnetic sympathy. By subduing the lower Manas and thus identifying with his higher counterpart, man can become master and ruler over blind molecular motion.

With Addendum by Thomas Taylor, the English Platonist.

In Esotericism there are two Avalokiteshvaras, First and Second Logos, or Father and Son. Avalokiteshvara is both the unmanifested Father and the manifested Son, the latter proceeding from, and identical with, the other; namely, the Parabrahm and Jivatman, the Universal and the individualized seventh Principle in man, the Passive and the Active. Rhys Davids is like the Cape Settlers who lived over diamond mines without suspecting it. He was an atheist and a materialist.

No man dies insane or unconscious, as some physiologists assert. Even a madman, or one in a fit of delirium tremens, will enjoy perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though unable to say so to those present. A man may often appear dead, yet from the last throbbing of his heart, and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body, the brain thinks and the Ego lives over his whole life over again. Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a death-bed and find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death. Keep quiet just after Death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest you disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of Past casting its reflection upon the Veil of Future. At the end of the seventh Round, at the threshold of the long Nirvana that awaits us after we leave Globe Z, we will remember our collective lives on earth. Irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from its fifth Principle, and has to be annihilated in the Eighth Sphere. And even the shells of those good men, whose pages will not be found missing in the great book of lives, will regain their remembrance and self-consciousness after the sixth and seventh principles, enriched with the essence of the fifth, have gone to their gestation period. The flame has left that candle forever; but are the particles that moved, their motion producing the objective flame, annihilated or dispersed for all that? Never. Relight the candle, and the same particles drawn by mutual affinity will return to the wick. Memory is one thing, and perceptive faculties quite another. A madman may remember very clearly some portions of his past life; yet he is unable to perceive anything in its true light because the higher portion of his Manas and Buddhi are paralysed in him. That which will “perceive” in the shell is something that perceives with a borrowed or reflected light. Personal consciousness does always vanish at death; and when the centre of memory is re-established in the shell, it will remember and speak out its recollections but through the brain of some living human being. At the seventh Round men will become gods; and animals, intelligent beings.

Neither the physical nor the metaphysical Science are of interest to the true philanthropist, except in the degree of their potentiality of moral results, and in proportion of their usefulness to mankind. Nature works slowly but incessantly towards the evolution of conscious life out of inert material. Every thought passes into the inner world and, by coalescing with an elemental, it becomes an active intelligence. Thus a good thought is perpetuated as an active beneficent power; an evil one, as a maleficent demon. The Buddhist calls this impulse-seed his Skandha; the Hindu, his Karma; the Adept evolves these shapes consciously; other men throw them off unconsciously. Every form of life is sustained by countless other lives. If you offer nothing in return, you are like a thief. The building ant, the busy bee, the nest-building bird accumulate, each in their own humble way, as much cosmic energy in its potential form as a Haydn, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow. They thus rob nature instead of enriching her, and will all in the degree of their intelligence find themselves accountable. Exact experimental Science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, or philanthropy. Her cold classification of facts outside man can only benefit the career of her professors. The Initiated Adept is the efflorescence of his age. Few ever appear in a single century. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other, as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished according to the established order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were but toys to play with, then indeed might we have created conditions that would have turned this earth into an Arcadia for lofty souls. But having to deal with an immutable Law, being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do what we could and rest thankful. Modern education enthrones scepticism and imprisons spiritualism. The boisterousness of animal passions stifles spirituality. What else could one expect of men so nearly related to the lower kingdom, from which they evolved? The era of blind faith is gone; that of enquiry is here. Enquiry that only unmasks error, without discovering anything upon which the soul can build, will but make iconoclasts. The noble aim of the progressive mind is to furnish the building blocks for a universal religious philosophy. A philosophy impregnable to scientific assault, because itself the finality of absolute science; and, a religion worthy of the name. The main aim of the Theosophical Society is to root out superstition and scepticism, and to help man shape his future. The cis-Himalayan Mahatmas will not be thwarted in their philanthropic attempts to save humanity from itself until that day when the new continent of thought is firmly established.