The Theosophical Society,
Theosophy
and Religion
The Common Foundation of all Religions
By
Henry Steel Olcott
A lecture
delivered at the Pachaiyappa's Hall,
BEFORE proceeding with my discourse I must first express the
profound thanks of Madame Blavatsky - my learned colleague - and myself for the
warm and distinguished welcome we have received, from your Committee on our
landing, and this immense assemblage which embraces so large a number of the
educated men of this Presidency. We have thus had one more proof of the fact
that the progress of our work in
Religion is - according
to Mr Herbert Spencer -
"a
great (I should say the greatest) reality and a great truth - nothing less than
an essential and indestructible element of human nature". He holds that
the religious institutions of the world represent a genuine and universal
feeling in the race just as really as any other institution. The accessory
superstitions which have overgrown and perverted the religious sentiment must
not be confounded with the religious sentiment itself. That this is done is a
mischievous mistake, alike of religionists and anti-religionists. Science in
clearing away these excrescences brings us always nearer the underlying truth,
and is therefore the handmaid and friend of true religion. The substratum of
truth is the one broad plateau of rock upon which the world's theological
superstructures are reared. It is - as the title of our lecture puts it -
"the common foundation of all religions".
And now what is it? What is this rock? It is a conglomerate,
having more than one element in its composition. In the first place, of
necessity, is the idea of a part of man's nature which is non-physical; next,
the idea of a post-mortem continuation of this non-physical part; third, the
existence of an Infinite Principle underlying all phenomena; fourth, a certain
relationship between this Infinite Principle and the non-physical part of man.
The evolution of the grander from the lower intellectual
conception in this graded sequence is now conceded, alike by the scientist and
the theologian. This evolution is accompanied by an
elimination, for in religion, as in all other departments of thought,
the light cannot be seen until the clouds are cleared away. Primitive truth is
the light, theologies the clouds; and they are clouds still, though they
glitter with all the hues of the spectrum. Fetish worship, animal worship, hero
worship, ancestor worship, nature worship, book worship; polytheism,
monotheism, theism, deism, atheism, materialism (which includes positivism),
agnosticism; the blind adoration of the idol, the blind adoration of the
crucible - these are the Alpha and the Omega of human religious thought, the
measure of relative spiritual blindness.
All these concepts pass through a single prism - the human mind.
And that is why they are so imperfect, so incongruous, so
human. A man can never see the whole light by looking from inside his body
outwardly, any more than one can see the clear daylight through a dust-soiled
window-glass, or the stars through a smeared reflecting lens. Why? Because the
physical senses are adapted only to the things of a physical world, and
religion is a transcendentalism. Religious truth is
not a thing for physical observation, but one for psychical intuition. One who
has not developed this psychical power can never know religion as a fact; he
can only accept it as a creed, or paint it to himself as an emotional sentimentality.
Bigotry is the brand to put upon one; gush that for the other. Back of both,
and equally threatening them, is Scepticism.
Like man his religion has its ages; first, proclamation, propagandism, martyrdom; second conquest, faith; third, neglect,
self-criticism; fourth, decadence, tenacious formalism; fifth, hypocrisy;
sixth, compromise; seventh, decay and extinction. And, like the human race, no
religion passes as a whole through these stages seriatim. At this very day, we
see the Australian sunk in the depths of animalism, the American Red Indian
just emerging from the Stone Age, the European in the full flush of high
material civilization. And so a glance at religious history shows us the
cropping up of highly heretical schools and sects in each great religion, of
which each represents some special departure from primitive orthodoxy, some
separate advance along the road towards the final goal that we have sketched
out. And I also note, as the physician observes the symptoms of his patient, that history constantly shows in the bitter mutual hatreds
of these cliques and sects for each other, the clearest proofs that our
postulate is correct when we say - as just now - that Religion can never be
really known by the physical brain of the physical man. All these hatreds, bitternesses and cruel reprisals of sect for sect, and
world's faith for world's faith, show that men mistake the non-essentials for
essentials, illusions for realities.
We can test this statement most easily. Look away from this war
of theologians to the class of men who have developed their psychical powers
and what do you see? In place of strife, peace, agreement
mutual tolerance, a brotherly concord as to the fundamentals of religion.
Whatever their exoteric creed they are greater than and far above it, and their
innate holiness and gentleness of nature give life and strength to the Church
they represent; they are the flowers of the human tree, the brothers of all
mankind; for they know what is the light that shines behind the clouds; under
the foundations of all the Churches they see the same rock. I ask those of you
who wish to be convinced of this fact to read the Dabistan,
by Mohsan Fami, who records
in it his observations of the sādhus of twelve
different religions two centuries ago. "Granting all the premises" -
the modern sceptic will say - "can you prove to
me that science has not swept away all your religious hypotheses along with the
myths, legends, superstitions and other lumber? Well, I answer,
"Yes". It is exactly on that datum line that the Theosophical Society
is building itself up. Some people think us opponents of Science, but on the
contrary we are its warmest advocates - until it begins to dogmatize from
incomplete, known data upon new facts. When it reaches that point we challenge
it and fight it with all our strength, such as it may be, just as we fight the
dogmatism of theology. For to our mind, it does not matter whether you blindly
worship a fetish, a man, a book, or a crucible - it is blind idolatry all the
same; and Science can be, and has been, as cruel and remorseless in her way as
the Church ever was in hers.
The first step is to have an agreement as to what the word
"Science" means. I take it to be the collection and arrangement of
observed facts about Nature. If that is correct, then I protest against half
measures: I want those observations to be complete, to cover all of Nature, not
the half of it. What sort of ontology would it be which, while pretending to
investigate the laws of our being, took note only of our anatomy, physiology
and whatever relates to the physical frame of man, leaving out all that
concerns his mental function? Absurd! you would say;
but I ask you whether it is any more absurd to study man in his body without
the mind, than to study him in body and mind while ignoring the trans-corporeal
manifestations of his middle nature. You want me to define what I mean by this
"middle nature" and by its trans-corporeal manifestations: I will do so, I start, then, with the proposition that there is more
of a man than can be burnt with fire, eaten by tigers, drowned by water,
chopped to pieces with knives, or rotted in the ground. The materialist will
deny this, but it does not matter; the proposition can be proved as easily as
that he is a man.
They have in
The opposed party affirm that the brain is the organ of the mind,
the machine of its manifestation, and that the thinking something in man thinks
still and still exists even though the brain be shattered, even though the man
die. The one reflects the tone of materialistic science, the other the tone of
the
(1) The
Material body - Stūlasarīra
(2) The Lingasarīra
(3) The
Life Principle - Jīva
(4) The Kāmarūpa, resulting as Māyāvirūpa
(5) The
Physical Intelligence (or Animal Soul) - Manas
(6) The
Spiritual Intelligence - Buddhi
(7) The Ātmā
And so minute is their analysis, that each of these groups is
subdivided into seven sub-groups. Generally speaking, the first, fourth and
seventh principles mark the boundaries of the tripartite or trinitarian
man. And the fourth, which comes just midway between the gross body (Stūlasarīra) and the Ātmā, or divine and eternal principle, is this middle
nature of which we have been in search. Now the next question to be asked of us
is whether this fourth principle, or Māyāvirūpa or
human "Double," is intelligent or non-intelligent, matter or spirit;
and the next, whether its existence can be scientifically accounted for and
proved. We will take them in order.
In itself the Double is but a vapour, a
mist, or a solid form according to its relative state of condensation. Given
outside the body one set of atmospheric, electric, magnetic, telluric and other
conditions, this form may be invisible yet capable of making sounds or giving
other tests of its presence; given another set of conditions, it may be
visible, but as a misty vapour; given a third set, it
may be condensed into perfect visibility and even tangibility. Volumes upon
volumes might be filled with bare paragraph abstracts of recorded instances of
these apparitional visits. Sometimes the form manifests intelligence, it
speaks; sometimes it can only show itself - I am now speaking of the
apparitions of dead persons. I have personally seen more than five hundred such
apparitions at a place in
We have two means of proving this
(1) in the concurrent testimony of
eye-witnesses as recorded in the literature of different races; and
(2) in the evidence of living witnesses.
In the Hindū religious and
philosophical works there are many such testimonies. Not to mention others, we
may cite the case of Sankarāchārya, who entranced his
body, left it in the custody of his disciples, entered the body of a Rājah just deceased, and lived in it for a number of weeks;
and that of Agastya, who appeared in the heat of the
battle between Rāma and Rāvana,
while his body was entranced in the Nilghiris. This
story is given in the Rāmāyana. In Patańjali's Yoga Sūtras this
phenomenon is affirmed to be within the power of every Siddha
who perfects himself in Yoga. As to living witnesses, I am one myself; for I
have seen the Doubles of several men acting intelligently at great distances
from their bodies, and in this pamphlet that I now show you, [Hints on Esoteric
Theosophy (Calcutta, 1882)] will be found the certificates of no less than nine
reputable persons - five Hindūs and four Europeans -
that they have seen such appearances on various occasions within the past two
years. And then we have the scores of similar attestations from credible
persons living in different parts of the world which are to be read in many
European books treating upon these subjects. I do not pretend to say that a
skeptical public can be expected to take this mass of evidence, conclusive as
it may be, without reserve; the alleged phenomenon so surpasses ordinary human
experience that, to believe its reality, each one must see for himself. I
however do affirm that we have here a case of probable verity made out; for,
under the strictest canons of scientific orthodoxy, we cannot suspect a
conspiracy to lie among so many individual witnesses, who never saw or heard of
each other, who, in fact, did not even live in the same generation, but yet
whose testimonies corroborate each other.
But if we have a case of probable truth, the man of science will
ask us what we next demand of him. Do we allege a natural and scientific, or a
supernatural, hence unscientific, explanation for the projection of the Double
of the living, and the apparition of that of the deceased man? I answer, most
assuredly, the former. I am devoted enough to Science to deny, with all the
emphasis I can give to words, the fact that a miraculous phenomenon ever took
place, in this age or any age. Whatever has ever occurred must have done so
within the operation of natural law. To suppose anything else would be
equivalent to saying that there is no permanency in the laws of the universe,
but that they can be set aside and played with at the caprice of an
irresponsible and meddlesome Power. We should be in a universe going by jerks,
started and stopped like a clock that a child is playing with. This
supernaturalism is the curse of all creeds, it hangs like an incubus around the
neck of the religions and hatches the satire of the sceptic;
it is the dry-rot that eats out the heart of any faith that builds upon it.
This it is which, carried in the body of a church, foredooms
it to ultimate destruction as surely as the hidden cancer carried in the human
system will one day kill it. And of all epochs this nineteenth century is the
worst in which to come before the public as the champions of supernatural
religions. They are going down in every land, melting before the laboratory
fires like waxen images. No, when I stand forth as the defender of Hindūism, Buddhism or Zoroastrianism, I wish it understood
that I do not claim any respect or tolerance for them outside the limits of
natural law, I believe - nay I know - that their foundation is a scientific
one, and on those conditions they must stand or fall so far as I am concerned.
I do not say they are in equally close reconciliation with science, but I do
say that whatever foundation they have, whether broad or narrow, long or short,
is and must be a scientific one. And so, too, when I ask you to cease from
making yourselves ridiculous by denying the existence of this middle nature in
man, it is because I am persuaded, as the result of much reading and a good
deal of personal experience, that the Double, or Māyāvirūpa,
is a scientific fact.
Well then, to return - is it matter or something else? I say
matter plus something else. And here stop a moment to think what matter is.
Loose thinkers - among whom we must class raw lads
fresh from college, though they be ever so much titled - are too apt to
associate the idea of matter with the properties of density, visibility, and
tangibility. But this is very inexcusable. The air we breathe is invisible, yet
matter - its equivalents of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbonic acid are
each atomic, ponderable, demonstrable by analysis.
Electricity cannot, except under prepaid conditions, be seen, yet it is matter.
The Universal Ether of science no one ever saw, yet it is matter in a state of
extreme tenuity. Take the familiar example of forms
of water, and see how they rapidly run up the scale of tenuity
until they elude the clutch of science: stone-hard ice, melted ice, condensed
steam, super-heated and invisible steam, electricity, and - it is gone out of
the world of effects into the world of causes!
Well then, with this warning before you, my cerebrally
superheated young friend of the
I will say, then, that as the thing has been explained to me,
each of these several sets of atoms which compose the seven parts of man occupy
the interstitial space between the next coarser set of atoms. They are
focalized as to their several energies in what the Hindūs
call the Shadadharams, or centres
of vital force, crowned by Sahasrāram, in which Ātmā is located. This supreme point is in the crown of the
head; the others are located at the base of the spine, the abdomen, the
umbilicus, the heart, the root of the throat, and the centre of the frontal
sinus. The atoms of the Buddhi would, then, pervade the interstices of the
Manas; those of the Manas , those of the Kāmarūpa; those of the latter those of the Jīva; those of the Stūlasarīra.
And as each coarser contains the particles of all the finer principles,
therefore the Stūlasarīra is the gross casket
within which the several parts of the composite man are contained. Pervading
and energizing all is the Ātmā, or that
incomprehensible final energy which cannot be comprehended by the physical
senses, and which is described to himself by the
Brahman in the Māndūkya-Upanishat by saying:
"Thou art not this, nor that, nor the third, nor anything which the mind
can grasp with the help of the physical perceptions." Your popular Telugu
poet beautifully and allegorically depicts this idea in his poem Sītārāma Ańjaniyam (cosmic
matter) where Sītā - who is herself the personification
of Prakrti - is asked by the daughters and wives of
the Rshis to point out her husband, but, through
modesty, refrains. The ladies then pointing successively to a number of
different men ask each time: "Is this thy husband?" She answers in
the negative, but when they point to Rāma she is
silent, for she cannot even speak of her heart's lord before strangers. So the
poet would have us understand, while we may freely say what Ātmā
is not, when we are required to say what it is we must be silent, for words are
powerless to express the sublime idea.
We have now prepared the ground to answer both of the questions
put to us by our imaginary critic. The Kāmarūpa, when
intelligently projected beyond the physical body by the developed energy of an
Initiate of Occult Science, contains in it all his Manas and Buddhi (including
the Chittham and Ahankāram,
- sense of individuality) - his Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence. The
Initiate quits his earthly casket - in which are left the Jīva
and Lingasarīra - and for the moment lives, thinks
and acts in this Double of himself. Its atomic condition being less dense than
that of the corporeal body, it has enhanced powers of locomotion and
perception. Barriers that would stop the body - for example, the walls of a
room - cannot stop it, for its particles may pass through the interstices of
the gross matter composing the wall. It is in the subjective world and may
traverse its space like thought, which is itself a form of energy. Or, if he
likes, the Initiate may simply project a non-intelligent image of himself and make it appear at the spot at which he may have
focalized his thought. It depends upon him whether the image shall be but an
illusionary form, or his own self; it may be mere matter, or matter plus himself. As to our accounting for the middle nature of man
scientifically, I have already shown that we may do this by the collection of
testimonies, and by personal observation. We may add that further proof is
obtainable by the best and surest of all methods - that of going oneself
through the necessary course of self-training and projecting one's own Double.
For this is no exclusive science reserved for a favoured
few; it is a true science based upon natural law, and within the reach of
everyone who has the requisite qualifications. The humblest labourer
may lift the veil of mystery as well as the proudest sovereign or the
haughtiest priest.
But it is constantly asked: why are not these secrets thrown open
to the world as freely as the details of chemistry or any other branch of
knowledge? It is a natural question - for a superficial reasoner
to put; but it is not a sound one. The difference between psychic and physical
sciences is that the former can only be learned by the self-evolution of
psychical powers. No college professor can evolve them for you, nor any friend,
fellow-student or relative; you must evolve them for yourself. Can another man
learn music, or Samskrit, or the art of painting or
sculpture for you? Can another eat, sleep, feel warm or cold, digest or breathe
for you? Then why should you expect him to learn psychology for you? Anyhow he
cannot do it, however much you may expect it, and that is the final answer to
all such questioners. Nor is it absolutely certain that, even though you should
try ever so much, you could evolve these powers in yourself. Has every man the
capacity for languages, or music, or poetry, or science, or philosophy? You
know that each of these require certain clear aptitudes, and if you have them
not you can never become a musician, poet, scientist or philosopher. The
branches of physical science are difficult to master, even when you have the
natural capacity; but psychical science is more difficult than either of them -
I might almost say than all combined. That is why the Mahātmā
has been described as "the rare efforescence of
a generation of enquirers" (Sinnett's The Occult
World p 101), and in all generations the true Sādhu
has been reverenced as almost a superhuman being. The term applies to him only
in the sense of his being above the weaknesses, the prejudice and the ignorance
of his fellow men.
With the most absurd blindness to the experience of the race, we
Founders of the Theosophical Society are constantly being asked to turn its
members into Adepts. We must show the short cut to the Himavat,
the private passages to the Asramums in the Nilghiris! They are not willing to work and suffer for the
getting of knowledge, as all who have got it heretofore,
they must be put into a first-class carriage and taken straight behind the Veil
of Isis! They fancy our Society an improved sort of Miracle Club, or
Such minds can get no profit by joining the Theosophical Society,
and I advise them to stay outside. We want no such selfish triflers. Ours is a
serious, hard-working, self-denying Society, and we want only men worthy to be
called men and worthy of our respect. We want men whose first question will not
be "what good can I get by joining?" "but"
what good can I do by joining?" Our work requires the services of men who
can be satisfied to labour for the next generation and the succeeding ones; men
who, seeing the lamentable religious state of the world - seeing noble faiths
debased, temples, churches, and holy shrines thronged by hypocrites and mockers
- burn with a desire to rekindle the fires of spirituality and morality upon
the polluted altars, and bring the knowledge of the Rshis
within the reach of a sin-burdened world. We want Hindūs
who can love
Now to take our scientific argument
one step further. Granted that the existence of the Double has been proven, and
also its projectibility, how is it projected? By an expenditure of energy, of course. That energy is the
vital force set in motion by the will. The power of concentrating the will for
this purpose is one that may be natural or acquired. There are some persons who
have it naturally so strong in them that they often send their Doubles to
distant places and make them visible, though they may never have given a day's
study to the science of psychology; I have known both men and women of this
sort. But it is an uncommon power, and can never be exercised at all times
except by the true proficient in psychological science. The operations of the
brain in mechanically evolving the current of will-force have been more or less
carefully expounded by Bain and Maudsley, while
Professors Tait and Balfour Stewart have, in their
Unseen Universe, traced for us the dynamic effect of thought evolution into the
Ether, or, as Hindūs have called it these thousands
of years, the Ākāsa. They go so far as to say that it
is not an unthinkable proposition that the evolution of thought in a single
human brain may dynamically affect a distant planet. In other words, when a
thought is evolved a vibration of etheric particles is set up, and this motion
must continue on indefinitely. Now the Yogi evolves such a current and turns it
upon himself as a concentrated force; continuing the process until the power is
sufficient to force his Double out of its corporeal encasement, and to project
it to whatsoever locality he desires. We have thus shown the fact of the Māyāvirūpa, its capability to exist outside the body, and
the energy which causes its projection. I cannot go into details to elaborate
the argument, for I can only detain you an hour in this tropical heat. But I
have at least, I trust, shown you that I rely only upon scientific principles,
and claim no indulgence from the advocates of supernaturalism.
And now is this Double - which is none other than what is
commonly called the "Soul," immortal? No, it is not. So much of it as
is matter in aggregation must ultimately obey the law of dispersion which in
time breaks up and forces out of the objective universe whatever is material.
It is equally the law of planetary as of lesser forms. As all that is material
in a star was primarily condensed from the loose atoms in space, so all that is
material in the human body, however coarse or however fine it may be, was primarily condensed from the chaotic atoms in the Ākāsa. And to that dispersed condition they must return
whenever the centripetal force that attracted them into the human nucleus
ceases to resist the centrifugal force or attractions of the atoms in space.
This brings us right upon the problem of a continuity of existence beyond the
physical death. Here is the dividing line between the world's religions. The
dualists affirm that this soul goes to heavenly or infernal places to be for
ever blest or punished according to the deeds done in the body. Though they do
not use the very word, yet it is the doctrine of merit they teach. For even
those extremely unscientific theologians who affirm that a punishing and
rewarding Deity has from all time preordained some to be saved and some to be
dammed, tell us that the merit of faith in a certain system of morals and
discipline and a share in the vicarious merit of another, are prerequisites to
future bliss. We may assume, therefore, that merit, or KARMA, is a corner-stone
of Religion. This is both a logical and scientific proposition, for the
thoughts, words and deeds of a man are so many causes which must work out
corresponding effects; the good ones can only produce good effects, the bad
ones only bad - unless they are antagonized and neutralized by stronger ones
that are good.
I need not go into the metaphysical analysis of what is bad and
what good. We may pass it over with the simple postulate that whatever has
either a debasing tendency upon the individual or promotes injustice, misery,
suffering, ignorance and animalism in society is essentially bad,
that what tends to the contrary is good. I should call that a bad religion
which taught that it is meritorious to do evil that good may come; for good can
never come out of evil, the evil tree produces not good fruit. A religion that
can only be propagated at the point of the sword; or upon the martyr's pile; or
under instruments of torture; or by devastating countries and enslaving their
populations; or by cunning stratagems seducing ignorant children or adults away
from their families and castes and ancestral creeds - is a vile and devilish
religion, the enemy of truth, the destroyer of social happiness. If a religion
is not based upon a lie, the fact can be proved and it can stand unshaken as
the rocky mountain against all the assaults of sceptics.
A true religion is not one that runs to holes and corners, like a naked leper
to hide his sores, when a bold critic casts his searching eye upon it and asks
for its credentials. If I stand here to defend what is good in Hinduism, it is
because of my full conviction that, that good exists, and that however
fantastic and even childish some may think its tangled overgrowth of customs,
legends and superstitions, there is the rock of truth, of scientific truth,
below them all. On that rock it is destined to stand through countless coming
generations as it has already stood through the countless generations which
have professed that hoary Faith since the Rshis shot
from their Himālayan heights the blazing light of
spiritual truth over a dark and ignorant world.
It is most reasonable that you should ask me what those of you
are to do who are not gifted with the power to get outside the illusion-breeding
screen of the body and acquire an intimate actual perception of
"Divine" truth through the developed psychical senses. As we have
ourselves shown that all men cannot be Adepts, what comfort do we hold out to
the rest? This involves a momentary glance at the theory of rebirths. If this
little span of human life we are now enjoying be the entire sum of human
existence; if you and I never lived before and will never live again, then
there would be no ray of hope to offer to any mind that was not capable of the
intellectual suicide of blind faith. The doctrine of a vicarious atonement for
sin is not merely unthinkable, it is positively repulsive to one who can take a
larger and more scientific view of man's origin and destiny than that of the dualists.
One whose religious perceptions rest upon the intuition that cause and effect
are equal; that there is a perfect and correspondential
reign of Law throughout the universe; that under any reasonable conception of
eternity there must always have been at work the same forces as are now active
- must scout the assertion that this brief instant of sentient life is our only
one.
Science has traced us back through an inconceivably long sequence
of existences - in the human, the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral
kingdoms - to the cradle of future sentient life, the Ether of space. Would a
man of science, then, make bold to affirm that you and I, who represent a
relatively high stage of evolution, came to be what we are without previous
development in other births, whether on this earth or other planets? And if he
would not, he must, in conformity with his own canons of the conservation and
correlation of energy, deduce from the whole analogy of nature that there is
another life for us beyond this life. The force which evolved us cannot be expended, it must run on in its vibratory line until its
limit is reached. And that limit the Hindū and the
Buddhist, the Jain and the Zoroastrian Adepts, all define as that abstract
world which lies beyond the phenomenal one of illusions and pain. Whatever they
may call it - whether Mukti, or Nirvāna, or Light -
it is all the same idea; it is the outcome of the eternal Principle of energy
after passing around a cycle of correlations with matter. That final limit the
Middle Nature as a whole never reaches, for it is material as to its form,
size, colour and atomic relations; if we call it the
"Soul," therefore, we may say that the "Soul" is not
immortal; for that which is material tends always to resume its primitive atomic
condition. And the Hindū philosopher, arguing from
these premises, teaches that what does escape out of the phenomenal world is Ātmā, the SPIRIT. And thus, while from the Hindū standpoint it is correct to say the "Soul"
is not immortal, it must also be added that the "Spirit" is; for,
unlike the Soul or Middle Nature, Ātmā contains no
mortal and perishable ingredients, but is of its essence unchangeable and
eternal.
The confusion of the words "Soul" and
"Spirit," so common now, is perplexing and mischievous to this last
degree.
It is no argument to bring against the Asiatic theory of Palingenesis, that we have no remembrance of former
existences. We have forgotten nineteen-twentieths of the incidents of our
present life. Memory plays as the most prankish tricks. Every one of us can
recollect some one trifling incident out of a whole day's, month's year's
incidents of our earliest years, and one that was in no way important, nor
apparently more calculated than the others to impress itself indelibly upon the
memory. How is this? And if this utter forgetfulness of the majority of our
life-incidents is no proof that we did not exist consciously at those times,
then our oblivion of the entire experiences in previous births is no argument
against the fact of such previous births. Nor, let me hasten to add, are the
alleged remembrances of previous births, affirmed by the modern school of Reincarnationists, valid proofs of such births; they may be
- I do not say they are mere tricks of the imagination, cerebral pictures
suggested by chance external influences. The only question with us is whether
in science and logic it is necessary for us to postulate for ourselves a series
of births, somewhere, at various times. And this I think must be answered in
the affirmative.
So then conceding the plurality of births, and coming back to our
argument, we see that even though anyone of us may not have the capacity for
acquiring adeptship in this birth, it is still a
possibility to acquire it in a succeeding one. If we make the beginning we
create a cause which will, in due time and in proportion to its original
energy, sooner or later give us adeptship, and with
it the knowledge of the hidden laws of being, and of the way to break the
shackles of matter and obtain Mukti - Emancipation.
And the first step in this beginning is to cleanse ourselves from vicious
desires and habits, to do away with unreasoning prejudices, dogmatism and
intolerance, to try to discover what is essentially fundamental and what is non-essential
in the religion one professes, and to live up to the highest ideal of goodness,
intelligence, and spiritual-mindedness that one can extract from that religion
and from the intuitions of one's own nature. I regard that man as a mad
iconoclast who would strike down any religion - especially one of the world's
ancient religions - without examining it and giving it credit for its intrinsic
truth. I call him a vain enthusiast who would patch up a new Faith out of the
ancient Faiths, merely to have his name in the mouths of men. I call him a
foolish zealot who would expect to make all men see truth as he sees it, since
no two men can even see alike a simple tree or shrub, let alone grasp
metaphysical propositions with the same clearness. As for those who go about
the world to propagate their peculiar religious belief, without the ability to
show its superiority to other beliefs which they would supplant, or to answer
without equivocation the fair questions of critics - they are either
well-meaning visionaries or presumptuous fools. But mad, or vain, or stupid, as
either of these may be, if they are sincere they are personally entitled to the
respect that sincerity always commands. Unless the whole world is ready to
accept one infallible chief and blindly adopt one creed, the wisest, the only
rule must ever be to tolerate in our fellow man that infirmity of judgment
which we are ourselves always liable to, and never wholly free from. And that
is the declared policy and platform of the Theosophical Society - as you may
see by reading this pamphlet containing its Rules and By-Laws. It is the broad
platform of mutual tolerance and universal brotherhood.
There must be elementary stages leading up towards adeptship, you will say; there are, and modern science has
laid out some of them. I told you that psychology is the most difficult of
sciences to get to the bottom of, but still Western research has cleared many
obstacles from the path. Mesmerism is by far the most necessary branch of study
to take up first. It gives you (1) proof of the separability
of mind from conscious physical existence; a mesmerized subject may show an
active intellectual consciousness and discrimination while his body is not only
asleep but buried in so profound a trance as to more resemble a livid corpse
than a living man; (2) it gives you proof of the actual transmissibility of
thought from one mind to another; the mesmeric operator can, without uttering a
word or giving a perceptible signal, transmit to his subject the thought in his
own mind; (3) it easily proves the reality of a power to hear sounds and see
things occurring at great distances, to communicate with the thought of distant
persons, to look through walls, down into the bowels of the earth, into the
depths of the ocean and through all other obstructions to corporeal vision; (4)
of a power to look into the human body, detect the seat and causes of disease,
and prescribe suitable remedies, as also a power to impart health and restore
physical and mental vigour by the laying on of the
mesmerist's hands, or by his imparting his robust vital force to a glass of
water for the patient to drink, or to a cloth for him to wear; (5) of a power
to see the past and even prognosticate the future. These and many more things
Mesmeric Science enables a person, not an Adept of the higher Asiatic
Psychology, to prove completely to himself and others. I say this on the
authority of a Committee of the Academy of France. And then, besides Mesmerism,
there are the highly important branches of Psychometry,
Odyle, Mediumism, and
others that to barely mention would be beyond the scope of my present lecture.
Each and all help the inquirer towards the acquisition of "Divine"
wisdom, towards an intelligent and scientific conception of the laws of that
"Eternal Something," as Herbert Spencer calls it, which you may call
God or by any other name you like. Whatever name you may choose for it, the
knowledge of it is the highest goal for human thought, and to be in a state of
harmony with it the noblest, first and most necessary aspiration of intelligent
man. The pursuit of this knowledge is, in one word, THEOSOPHY, and the proper
method of research constitute Theosophical Science.
And thus in a single sentence I have answered a thousand
questions as to what Theosophy is, and what the object of Theosophical
research. Most of you, like the great mass of Hindūs,
have until this moment been imagining to yourselves that we were come to preach
some new religion, to propagate some new conceit, to set up some "New
Dispensation". You see now how far you have been from the mark, and what
popular injustice has been done to us. Instead of preaching a new religion we
are preaching the superior claims of the oldest religions in the world to the
confidence of the present generation. It is not our poor ignorant selves that
we offer to you as guides and gurus, but the venerable Rshis
of the archaic ages. It is not an American or a Russian, but a hoary Hindū Philosophy that we claim your allegiance for. We come
not to pull down or destroy, but to rebuild the strong fabric of Asiatic
religion. We ask you to help us to set it up again, not on the shifting and
treacherous sands of blind faith, but upon the rocky base of truth, and to
cement its separate stones together with the strong cement of Modern Science. Hindūism proper has nothing whatever to fear from the
researches of Science. Whatever of falsehood may have come down to you from
previous generations, we may well dispense with, and when the time comes for us
to see through our present māyā (illusions) we will
cheerfully do so. "The world was not made in a day," and we are not
such ignorant enthusiasts as to dream that in a day, or a year, or a
generation, long-established errors can be detected and done away with. Let us
but always desire to know the truth, and hold ourselves ready to speak for it,
act for it, die for it, if necessary, when we may
discover it.
People ask us what in our religion, and how it is possible for us
to be on equal terms of friendliness with people of such antagonistic Faiths. I
answer that what may be our personal preferences among the world's religions
has nothing to do with the general question of Theosophy. We are advocating
Theosophy as the only method by which one may discover that Eternal Something,
not asking people of another creed than ours to take our creed and throw aside
their own. We two Founders profess a religion of tolerance, charity, kindness,
altruism, or love of one's fellows; a religion that does not try to discover all
that is bad in our neighbour's creed, but all that is
good, and to make him live up to the best code of morals and piety he can find
in it. We profess, in a word, the religion that is embodied in the Golden Rule
of Confucius, of Gautama, and of the Founders of
nearly all the great religions; and that is preserved for the admiration and
reverence of posterity in the Edicts of the good king Asoka on the monoliths
and rocks of
Come then, ye old men and young men of
The Theosophical Society,