Chapter XI: Part II: Lectures to Theosophical Students (4)

So far as I can gather from what he says, he does not regard the Christ as historical, though he does not very clearly draw the line as to how he would separate, historically, the Jesus of the Gospels from that Ideal which he names “The Christ.” He says that he and many other people find themselves beset by certain difficulties: “Are the claims to be presently set forth made on behalf of a spiritual ‘Ideal’ to which we may provisionally apply the word ‘Christ,’ or are they predicated of Jesus?” Then he goes on to say that insistence on limitations of knowledge, restrictions of outlook, evasions of issues, and disillusionments of experience, true enough of a historic Jesus, may not be wholly relevant to a spiritual “Christ Ideal,” expanding and enriching through the ages into “the Christ that is to be.” Then he says it would be still less applicable to one who is regarded as the “fulness of Godhead,” “Very God of very God.” That, practically, is his thesis, and he tries to show in this article that very many difficulties might be avoided if Christians were willing to recognise a Christ Ideal side by side with the historical Jesus. In that way they might evade some of the difficulties which are pressed against the conception of Jesus as the Christ by large numbers of people who find their faith challenged and themselves in difficulties by these objections which are put to them both inside and outside the Church. He quotes Dr. Fairbairn, writing on _Christ in Modern Theology_. “If He knows as God while He speaks as man, then His speech is not true to His knowledge, and within Him a bewildering struggle must ever proceed to speak as He seems and not as He is. If He had such knowledge, how could He remain silent as He faced human ignorance, and saw reason wearied with the burden of all its unintelligible mysteries? If men could believe that once there lived on this earth One who had all the knowledge of God, yet declined to turn any part of it into science for man, would they not feel their faith in His goodness taxed beyond endurance?” That view (which appears to be adopted by Mr. Roberts) does not seem to me necessarily at all a sound one, and it is by no means certain that a man speaking in a particular age to people among whom great limitations of knowledge existed, and with a particular object before Him—not to enlarge the bounds of science, but to deepen spirituality and lay a strong foundation of morals—that such a Teacher, however highly illuminated, however much speaking as the very Spirit of God, would say all that He knew with regard to external facts and external phenomena, with the certainty of making very difficult the reception of His message on points enormously important—on points, in fact, of vital and essential need for the higher spiritual progress of man. Hence it does not appear to me that Dr. Fairbairn’s issue is at all well taken. Every great teacher—not for the moment considering the special divinity of Christ or Jesus—who is speaking to people less instructed than himself is under a similar difficulty. If on matters of ordinary scientific knowledge he is illuminated where they are not, the very fact that he presses that upon them would bewilder and confuse. You cannot enable the human intellect to evolve at what might be called a supernatural rate. It is capable of growth, and often of rapid growth, but if you try to force it beyond the rapid natural growth, you will only perplex, bewilder, and confuse; and if your aim is not, broadly, to increase scientific knowledge, which man will inevitably find out for himself after a time, but to help him to the things which need spiritual illumination in order that he may receive them, then such a difficulty as is put here as to the inner bewilderment which would be felt by the speaker to speak as he seems, and not as he is, would not be bewilderment at all, but a quite deliberate limitation of what he said, with a view to the effectiveness of his work, and that which he desired to give to the people of his time. That is true necessarily of every great prophet, of every highly inspired man; and the greatness of the inspiration would chiefly be shown, not in the amount of physical knowledge which he might give, but rather in his avoidance of certain difficulties which, when the race grew more learned, might come in their way and complete their ideas. That is to say, he would evade the scientific difficulty as far as he possibly could, and would do it deliberately, knowing that that was not his particular work, and that he could not do his own work if he turned aside in this direction. So that, as far as I am personally concerned, looking on this from the standpoint of the Theosophist and Occultist, these difficulties to me do not exist. I realise that they must always be found where one who is superhuman—I object to the word supernatural—comes in any age of the world’s history in order to teach a new conception of religion, and in order to adapt what he is giving to the civilisation which he intends to influence.

It appears to me that it is a perfectly rational and necessary thing that the growth of knowledge from the ordinary standpoint should be left to work its way out along the lines of intellectual development; anything less than that will check intellectual growth inevitably, for intellectual growth can only come about by the freest of thought, the freest of discussion, the most absolute liberty to challenge everything and to controvert anything which appears to be illogical. The condition of intellectual growth is that of complete freedom, and any sort of limitation which is put upon it by the knowledge of a great teacher will only check that intellectual evolution which is essential for the future growth of man. Many similar difficulties, of course, are made with regard to all inspired Scriptures, and for that reason it seems to me that it is well that we distinguish definitely between the spiritual work of the spiritual teacher and the scientific investigation of the scientific student; that it should be realised that these two departments of human activity work under different laws to a very great extent, and that that which is spiritually known cannot always be justified to the intellect until that intellect becomes spiritually enlightened—that is, that you have to deal in man with a being who is fundamentally a spiritual being, in whom the divine Spirit becomes incarnate, embodied, but in whom that divine Spirit is going to unfold along three great lines of unfoldment which we find in all human consciousness, which we recognise as in the divine nature itself. It has to unfold to an ordered Activity which should be truly in harmony with the laws of nature, which are the expression of the divine nature in this manifested form. It has to unfold along the Intellectual line, and that unfoldment must be left utterly unfettered. It has also to evolve along that line which in its lowest stages is emotion, in its higher stages is religion; and that spiritual unfolding, the highest characteristic of Spirit showing itself out as Will, has to be developed from above more than from below, to come downward by illumination more than to climb upward by reasoning. Unless we can understand this complicated nature of man in whom divinity is gradually unfolding and mastering matter at every stage of its unfolding, mastering, purifying it, ultimately spiritualising it; in all its earlier stages limited by the matter that it has yet failed to master, gradually making it plastic and ductile, and then in its higher stages having utterly subdued it to its own purposes—unless we can understand that that is a rough outline of human evolution, we shall constantly find ourselves in difficulties between the intellectual growth and the spiritual unfolding. Hence whenever a man comes to earth in whom divinity is far more manifestly unfolded than in his fellow-men, he can only shed down upon them illumination from the spiritual region, stimulate their aims, but not control their intellect. If that be realised, then the whole of these difficulties, which are being made at the present time about the obvious limitations outwardly of the knowledge of the supreme Christian Teacher, will entirely fall out of court, and you will see that He was speaking to the people of His day in the way that He could best affect them in order to help forward their evolution from the standpoint where they were, and was not the least intent on showing out His enormous knowledge, which would only have crushed rather than assisted.

Suppose for the moment you can take that way of looking at human evolution—and it seems to me the most rational way of looking at it—then we come to deal with this special manifestation of the Teacher who was the Founder of Christianity, a Hebrew speaking to Hebrews, and having to reconcile the speaking to the people of His day with the speaking to people of generations after generations, through centuries and perhaps millennia to come, then we should be perfectly able to realise that we are here face to face with one of those supreme divine manifestations, and that in studying it we must be ready to separate between the Teacher of religion and the man speaking to the men of His day, and accepting their limitations in order that He might reach them effectively. I want to carry you very much further than that in what I say; all that might very well be accepted by any rational and intelligent Christian, especially if he finds himself able to realise that what is said of the divinity of Jesus is true at a very much lower level of all His brethren, that all men are fundamentally and essentially divine; that that which was said by the great teacher S. Paul: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” and that which was answered by Jesus Himself, when he was challenged for calling Himself the Son of God: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods, and ye are all the children of the Highest?” is literally true. If you realise all that is implied in that statement, that He is the first among many brethren, you will see that every Son of Man is potentially, and will hereafter be actually, a Son of God, meaning by that that Deity will unfold within him, and that a manifestly divine humanity is the natural goal of evolution.

One realises, in looking at an article like this, that by the mystic Christ—that is what the writer means—he means that in the Epistles a somewhat different view is taken from that of the Gospels, the one dealing specially with an historical person, the other with an indwelling Spirit. He realises that when the Apostle Paul declares to his converts that he is travailing in birth for them until Christ be formed in them, when he says in another passage that they are to develop to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, he is holding up before them a picture of the birth in the soul of this divine Spirit that he spoke of as Christ, and the gradual unfolding of that into the perfection of divine manhood. That is perhaps the most inspiring ideal that can well be put before Christian people, that not only outside them but within them, not only as an outer helper but as an indwelling Spirit, this idea of the Christ is to be realised, and that that unfolding of the Christ in man is a real fact in religious consciousness, making that highest stage of human evolution when the man becomes perfect, and there only remains before him the superhuman evolution after the human is finished.

But I want to put to you rather a different idea of this relation between Jesus and Christ. I recognise to the full the value of that mystic ideal, I have not one word to say against it; in fact it is one that, when I am speaking to Christians, I constantly proclaim—the absolute necessity of that indwelling presence. But there is another view of this great Being which may be less familiar to you, which is the view taken by those who are sometimes called Occultists, in a very special sense of the term. Let me put it to you quite baldly for the moment, and then work it out a little more. The view that we take of that great Teacher who came to the world some two thousand years ago is, that the child who was born and who grew up into manhood until the time of the Baptism was a man of marvellous purity, of extraordinary spiritual intuition, but a man that we should call a disciple; that it was his to train and guard that pure body in preparation for the incoming of the indwelling Christ, and that in the Gospel story it is the event of the Baptism which marks the coming of the Christ. Let me just recall the words to you for a moment: “When Jesus went down into the water, the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God came down upon Him like a dove, and abode upon Him. And a voice was heard from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved Son; hear ye Him.’” Now it is clear that that event, marked out so distinctly in the Gospel story, must connote something of enormous importance. There was no need, as it were, for Him who was to be the Teacher to be baptised, and to receive the downcoming Spirit of the Most High, unless in that there was hid some profound spiritual truth, unless something was there afterward that was not there before; and it is _then_, from the occult point of view, that the _Jesus_ became the _Christ_. But let me put it to you even a little more closely. Here, of course, is where the point of difference will probably arise in the minds of many in regard to what I am saying, for all might be willing to recognise that that might imply a great downflow of spiritual energy, of divine life. From our standpoint Jesus the Hebrew, the individual, the spiritual man, stepped out of the body that he had been dwelling in through all those years and preparing for the coming of his Lord, giving it over as a holy temple for the incoming of the supreme Teacher, so that the body became the habitation of the supreme Teacher for the three years of the ministry. Now that view, as many of you who have studied Christian history will know, was very widely held in the early Church; although it was condemned later as the Gnostic heresy, none the less it was quite orthodox until its formal condemnation within the Catholic Church, until the time that it was expelled. You find it in many of the early writings of the learned Christian teachers, you find it warred against by some others of the Christian teachers and doctors and bishops of the time, but none the less it was a view which had very wide prevalence in the early Church; it was accepted by large numbers of profoundly learned men; and although ultimately condemned as a heresy in the forms in which it was put, it might none the less not be improbable, even from the standpoint of the orthodox, that some truth was hidden in it in the broad sense, even if the form in which it was put forward in the Church of those days was justly condemned. My own view is that they were right, not in all the details of the way in which they put it, but in the fundamental fact. Let us suppose for a moment that they were so; then the question would necessarily arise—who is the Christ? And it is there that, as I said, there was one view that might be unfamiliar to you in the West, yet which, it seems to me, should be to the Christian a view full of beauty and full of hope for the future. There is only one Supreme Teacher of mankind. There is a great office above all those whom we Theosophists speak of as Masters—a Master of Masters, so to speak—the one Supreme Teacher. In Christendom you speak of him by the Greek name, a name which, as you know, was taken from the Grecian mysteries, of which a particular grade of initiation bore the name of the Christos, and the Adept who reached that grade was spoken of as the Christos. That was the name which was adopted in the early Church, according to the account in the Acts, to designate this great Teacher who had come to the world, and we should say, rightly adopted. It is an instance of spiritual insight recognising a great truth.

But now, supposing I ask you to go to the people of other religions for a moment, the ancient religions that we find in the eastern world. Suppose I ask a member of the most ancient of those, the Hindū faith: “Do you recognise in your religion one supreme World-Teacher above all religions, and not belonging to one exclusively—a universal Teacher?”—he would say, “of Gods and men”; over here you would say, “of Angels and men,” because the word there, Deva, is equivalent to your word Angel. He would at once say: “Why, yes; of course we recognise one Supreme Teacher at the head of all spiritual life and impulse, and we call him (pardon me if I use for the moment their name) the Jagat-Guru—the World-Teacher.” Supposing I went to another great religion there—the Buddhist—and I asked a member the same question: “Do you recognise in your religion a Supreme Teacher?” his answer would at once be, “Why, of course we do. There is only one who holds the place of Teacher over all Gods and all men; one Teacher only who is the Teacher of the world. We call Him the Bodhisattva—the Wisdom-Truth.” No nobler name could be given to Him; He is the Wisdom and the Truth; not the Buddha, as you may have expected me to say; He was not the Teacher. When He reached Buddhahood He passed away from earth. It is while He is going onwards to Buddhahood that He is known by this name of Wisdom-Truth, or Boddhisattva. During the whole of that period of teaching He has this name; and then when the supreme illumination comes to Him his office is finished, and He passes away from earth. Of course, as we know, the last Buddha remained in his body for some time, still teaching, but none the less the office of the Teacher is not to the Buddhist the Buddha, but he who is to be the Buddha—what you would call the Christ glorified and ascended, not the Christ on earth teaching and suffering. It is interesting to notice how in the various religions these same points arise and these same differences are seen under different names, so that we see that in these two greatest of eastern religions a Supreme Teacher is recognised. Now, from the occult standpoint, it is that Teacher who came as the Christ; and, supposing that all Christian people recognised that fact, they would reach the hearts of the eastern world far better than they do now, if, instead of telling them they must worship the Christ, they would say to them, “You are already worshipping Him under a different name,” which is supremely true; for it is the same Being who holds that office through all these thousands of years, the same supreme Perfection. He only comes into manifestation in order to help His younger brethren; He leaves that body when its utility for the moment is over; when, being so great in comparison with the people to whom He came, they could no longer tolerate His presence.

Now that is the view of the nature of the Christ which you would find among, say, Occultists or well-instructed Theosophists. They recognise in the Christ of Christendom the Supreme Teacher of the world, but they do not admit that He will come only once to the world; they reverence and honour Him now as still the Supreme World-Teacher, but they do not identify Him with the great disciple who took the Jewish name as Jesus, and who is now amongst us as the Master who is the Guide and Helper of the Christian Church. There is the point where the difference would come in. The orthodox Christian would claim Him as supreme over all religions, but he would hardly recognise difference between the disciple who has become the Master with the special Christian Church in His charge, and the Supreme Teacher who, while He certainly ever sends His benediction upon Christianity, sends it also upon the other great religions of the world. This is where I feel the difference might come in between myself and many of you. To us the great Master Jesus, who is, as you would also acknowledge—those of you, at least, who are members of the Church of England—thus still dwelling in a human body, still embodied literally, has that power which the Master on the higher planes of being has, of being spiritually in touch with all who call upon Him, with all who look to Him for guidance, but none the less still possesses a physical body. This is a point of enormous importance (although not as important as spiritual omnipresence), for it means to us, and it means to many Christians who think with us, and are Theosophists with us, a possibility of a close and personal relation, as of a disciple to a Master, which goes somewhat beyond the spiritual communion which every true Christian has with his great Teacher. How should I put that to convey exactly what I mean in clear and definite language? I must put it, I think, by giving a general principle with regard to these great Beings whom we speak of as Masters, divine men, men made perfect, which works through the whole of that great Brotherhood. They have many ways of working in the world; through their own subtle, spiritual bodies they work, sending out floods of blessing over the whole world; but, in addition to that spiritual impulse and spiritual blessing which flow into every heart that opens itself to receive them, with an ever present and potent power, there is an even closer and more specialised communion between the Spirit as embodied and those who are still wearing human bodies themselves, a possibility which the saints have realised of that personal and individual and specialised communion with their Master where they saw Him, heard Him; where to them He became, not only a spiritual presence, but an individualised Teacher, and even Friend; where they knew themselves as disciples, and knew Him as Master, which is the great mark, after all, of those who are specifically called the saints. For that close and intimate and specialised relationship the body is necessary; and hence, although sceptics have very often challenged that Article of the Church of England where it says that “He did truly take again His body, with flesh and bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,” it does convey a fundamental and essential truth: the great Teacher is not only a spiritual Presence, He is a human though divine Being, who can be specifically and personally known. And if this latest impulse of Divine Wisdom which we call Theosophy is to be of use to Christendom, it will be along these lines of gradually winning Christians back to a conception that has been very largely lost—that their touch with their Divine Master must be much closer and more realised in the brain and human heart as contact of disciple and Teacher, than when they are thinking of Him as Deity, when they are regarding Him as the second Person in the Trinity. How far that will commend itself to many of you it is, of course, impossible for me to say; but let the outline, at least, be clear, so that it may be definitely understood. It is the conception of a Christ for whom a body was prepared, and prepared by His own well-loved disciple, who guarded, tended, trained it through the years of childhood, of youth, and of early manhood; a body surrendered to the incoming mighty Personage, who is the Supreme Teacher of the world, incoming at the point marked by the Baptism, worn until the time of the death, so that through the whole of that teaching, the ministerial life, it was not Jesus but the Christ who was the Teacher who founded Christianity. That body is laid aside, but He is still Lord of all religions, and He gives to His well-beloved disciple who became the Master Jesus this religion specifically as his charge, his work in the world. Other religions would have other Masters, but only one Supreme; others would look to other divine men made perfect, but would recognise beyond them this Master of Masters; and hence all religions draw together in the Supreme Teacher, and find there unity in that greatest and mightiest of all. So that every religion looks up to the one Teacher through Masters who specifically belong to the various faiths of the world. That is the view which is very generally held in the Theosophical Society, although none is bound to accept it, inasmuch as we impose no dogmas upon anyone; it is the view which is taken by those who have been most thoroughly instructed in this matter; and it seems to me that it is one of extreme interest to thoughtful people, even if they do not find themselves able to accept it.

That is, then, the view of the nature of Christ that I would submit to you; and if you look at it you will see that the whole of the criticisms to which I have referred fall to pieces, and no longer need disturb the hearts or consciences of any; for it would be recognised that you have here a manifestation of the same great Being, but not a unique manifestation, who adapts Himself to the needs of His time, gives out so much of His wisdom and truth as He thinks can be accepted by the people of His day and generation, but who, in giving it, gives with it an inspiring Spirit, which enables future generations to find more and more in that teaching, and as they themselves develop spiritually, to find ever greater depths in the teaching which had been given by the Christ. You will see how naturally that view passes on into the future, and why it is that many of us, believing that a new civilisation is dawning upon earth, also believe that the same Supreme Teacher will again be manifested, again to tread the earth as He trod it in Judæa, again to enlighten the world with spiritual wisdom, again to strike the keynote of a new civilisation, gathering all the religions of the world under that supreme teaching of His own, so that we look forward to a coming Christ as well as backward to a Christ in His last manifestation on the earth.

Lecture VII

The Theosophical Student in face of Revelation, Inspiration, and Observation

_A Lecture delivered to the British Convention of the Theosophical Society, July 4th, 1909_

Friends: Those who seriously take up the study of Theosophy should not be satisfied with the mere reading of the voluminous theosophical literature poured out into the world through the centuries of the past, and continuing to flow into it in our own days. They should, in addition, if they have any innate faculty for such investigation, prepare to develop the faculties by which they may verify for themselves that which they are told by others. But in all cases much theoretical study is desirable before passing on into the practical, and in most cases it may not be possible to develop the subtler senses within the limits of the present incarnation, although a good foundation may be laid for such development in the next. Hence theoretical study must form a large part of the training of every theosophical student, and his attitude towards such study is a matter of serious importance. He needs to discriminate between the books he reads, and to suit his attitude to the type of the book; he must seek to understand what is meant by Revelation, what by Inspiration, and to distinguish revealed from inspired literature, and both from the records of observations.

Some Scriptures which are regarded as authoritative lie at the back of all the great religions. Thus Hindūism has the Veda. The word means knowledge, and this knowledge is of that which is eternally true. It is the knowledge of the Logos, the knowledge of the Lord of a universe; the knowledge of what _is_, not of what _seems_; the knowledge of realities, not of phenomena. This abides ever in the Logos; it is part of Himself. In its manifested form, as revealed for the helping of man, it becomes the _Vedās_, and in this form goes through many stages, until finally little of the original remains. All Hindū schools of philosophy acknowledge the supreme authority of the Vedas; but after this formal acknowledgment is made, the intellect is allowed to range freely at its will—to inquire, to judge, to speculate. Rigid as Hindūism is in its social polity, it has ever left the human intellect free; in philosophy, in metaphysic, it has ever realised that truth should be sought, and no penalty inflicted on error; error being sufficiently penalised by the fact that it _is_ error, and breeds misfortunes under natural laws. Even to-day that ancient liberty is maintained, and a man may think and write as he will provided that he follows in practise the social customs of his caste. The Hindū divides all knowledge into two types—the supreme and the lower. In the lower he places all his sacred books—following in this the dictum of an Upanishad[5]—together with all other literature, all science, all instruction; in the category of the supreme he places only “the knowledge of Him by whom all else is known.” There you have Hindūism in a nutshell. When once supreme knowledge has been attained and illumination has been experienced, all Scriptures become useless. This is asserted plainly and boldly in a well-known passage in the _Bhagavad Gītā_: “All the Vedas are as useful to an enlightened Brāhmana as is a tank in a place covered over with water.”[6] What need of a tank when water is everywhere? What need of Scriptures when the man is enlightened? Revelation is useless to the man to whom the Self is revealed.

In the early days of Buddhism the Vedas held high place, for the Lord Buddha, as Dr. Rhys Davids says, “was born and brought up, and lived and died a Hindū.”[7] But the charter of intellectual freedom for Buddhists is contained in the wise advice of their Teacher: “Do not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor in traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor in rumours, as such; nor in writings by sages, merely because sages wrote them … nor on the mere authority of your own teachers or masters. But we are to believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness. For this I have taught you: not to believe merely because you have heard; but when you believed of your own consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly.”[8] Even revelation, for the Buddhist, must be brought to the touchstone of reason and consciousness; there must be a response to it from within, the interior witness of the Self, ere it can be accepted as authoritative.

In the Christian and Muhammadan faiths—both largely influenced by Judaism—the authoritative nature of revelation is carried further than in any earlier faith. In modern days the yoke of a revealed Scripture has been much lightened for Christianity by the growth of the critical spirit and by the researches of scholars. The modern Christian student is little more hampered by his revelation than is the Hindū by his. A conventional reverence is yielded, a lifting of the hat, and then the student goes freely on his way.

What is Revelation? It is a communication from a Being superior to humanity of facts known to Himself, but unknown to those to whom He makes the revelation—facts which they cannot reach by the exercise of the powers that they have so far evolved. These facts can be verified at any time by one who has climbed to the level of the Revealer, who may be an Avatāra, a Rishi, a Founder of a religion. They “speak with authority,” the authority of knowledge, the one authority to which all sane men bow. We do not find that these great Beings wrote down Their teachings Themselves; They taught, but They did not record. Some follower, some disciple, it may be after the lapse of many years, even of centuries, wrote down what he or his forefathers had heard; hence the revelation—and to this rule there is probably no exception—is inevitably to some extent coloured, narrowed, distorted by the transcriber. That which was heard originally by those round the divine Teacher exists indeed in the ākāshic records, and may ever be recovered thence by those who have developed the inner senses by which those records may be read. In many cases true records will have been made at the time by highly qualified persons; but such precious books are kept securely in the custody of their chosen guardians, in secret temples, in rock libraries, available for the study of high Occultists, but of none other.

The Muhammadans would claim that in the case of their sacred book there is more certainty that the very words of their Prophet were preserved. And doubtless to this is due the overwhelming authority of _Al Qurān_ in the minds of the faithful of Islām.

What should be the attitude of the Theosophical Student towards revelation? He should treat the Scriptures of the world with reverence, remembering their origin, but none of them with submission, remembering that they are transmitted to him by varied channels. He should call to his aid the best scholarship, should gain all the light he can from archæological and historical researches, and use his best critical judgment in separating the essential truth revealed from all the accretions that may have grown up around it. If he has developed his higher psychic qualities, he should try to trace and disentangle the ancient from the modern, search the ākāshic records for comparison, confirmation, or contradiction of the revelation as it has come into his hands. How immense might be the services of such Theosophical Students as they become more numerous and better equipped for this gigantic task. And without this external equipment much may be done by inner unfoldment; he may unfold within himself his own spiritual powers; he may seek in profound meditation the truth which shines in the revelation beneath many a veil of ignorance and misconstruction; he may so purify his life that his bodies will become translucent of the light of the spirit within him, will illumine the written words. “The things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.” But that Spirit dwells in every child of man; and as His light shines out, the divine things are revealed to the pure in heart. Until the inner Spirit thus responds to the revealed teachings and statements, the Theosophical Student must hold his judgment in suspense before the claims of any revelation. It is not true _for him_ until he can re-echo it in the voice of his own Spirit, his deepest Self. Useful and beautiful it may be; worthy of profoundest study and reverent research are the world’s Bibles. But until they are affirmed by the Spirit within submission cannot be yielded, lest that should be given to the errors of men which is due only to the divine Spirit.

What is Inspiration? The raising of the normal human faculties by some extraneous influence through grade after grade of intellectual, moral, and spiritual power, up to the point where the extraneous influence may even expel the man from his body and use it for the expression of another individual; where the new possessor is a Being at a height utterly transcending man, inspiration may pass into revelation. Some may think the word should be restricted to the raising of the powers of the subject from above their normal capacity to the highest point of their possible exercise, short of the expulsion of their owner and his replacement by another individual greater than himself.

The lower grades of inspiration are within the experience of very many. Have you never felt, when listening to a speaker whose knowledge and power transcended your own, that your mental faculties were lifted to a higher level than that to which you could rise unaided? On such occasions you grasp questions that hitherto have eluded you; you see plainly, where before there had been obscurity; the field of thought becomes illumined, and objects are seen in hitherto undreamed-of relations—you feel that you know. On the following day you desire to share with a friend the treasures you acquired, and you begin to recount the luminous exposition, to describe the great horizons which opened before you. You fail: where is the light, where the far-off scenes over which your eyes had swept? Your mind has sunk again to its normal level; the inspiration has passed away. As with the intellectual, so with the moral faculties. You had seen an unknown beauty, had felt an overwhelming admiration for the lofty and the pure: what has become of the warmth, the ardour? Are the cold ashes of the intellectual approval all that remains of the throbbing heart, the passionate delight in the moral ideal? Why does it now look so cold, so grey, so unattractive? You were raised to a higher level than you can reach unassisted; but none the less has the moral ideal and its power been shown to thee “in the Mount,” and the fact that you have once experienced its all-compelling power will render you more susceptible to it in the future, and the day will come when that which you felt when inspired by another shall become the normal exercise of your own moral faculties.

Coming to higher grades of inspiration, we may know, some of us, what it is to stand in the presence of the Masters, and to feel the marvellous uplift of Their presence. There is no need for words, no need for teaching; Their presence is enough. From that presence we go out again into the ordinary world, to feel the difference of its atmosphere from that of the Holy One. But, _we have known_, and the memory remains an abiding power.

Those who have written or spoken under inspiration have been thus uplifted, their own intellectual and moral faculties have thus been stimulated, and raised far above their normal level. It is still they who write or speak, and their own characters and temperaments colour what they say, leave their own impress on what they write. But they write and speak far more nobly, far more powerfully than they could do unassisted.

And so we may rise from grade to grade of inspiration until we reach the stage at which the mind and emotions of the man no longer sway his body, but the body is wholly taken possession of and used by One greater than himself. Then it is no longer the man himself who speaks, but “the Spirit of” his “Father who speaketh in” him; his own limitations are struck away, his own idiosyncrasies vanish, and the inspired utterances flow forth unsullied. Then inspiration may range into revelation.

The process of all this is a very simple one. We know that by the correlation between changes in consciousness and vibrations of matter, each change in consciousness is accompanied by a vibration of the matter appropriated by the consciousness and forming its body; each vibration of the matter of a body is accompanied by a change in the embodied consciousness. Either one of the pair may be the initiator; the other ever responds. When two or more people are together, one more evolved than the other or others, the more evolved person, thinking, desiring, acting, sets up in his own bodies, mental, astral, and physical, a series of vibrations which corresponds to the changes in his consciousness; these vibrations cause similar vibrations in the mental, astral, and physical matter intervening between himself and the less advanced person or persons present. These vibrations in the intervening matter cause similar vibrations in the neighbouring body or bodies. These vibrations are immediately answered by corresponding changes in the embodied consciousness or consciousnesses, and the person or persons concerned, thus placed _en rapport_ with one more advanced, think, desire, act on a higher level than would be possible for them on their own initiative. They are able to understand more keenly, to feel more warmly, to act more nobly than they could do unassisted. When the stimulus is removed they gradually sink back to their normal level, but memory is left, and they remember that they “have known.” Moreover, it is more easy for them to respond a second time, and so on and on, until they establish themselves on the higher level permanently. Hence the value of companionship with those more advanced than ourselves, of living “in their atmosphere.” Words are not necessary; little speech may pass; but insensibly the subtle body is tuned to a higher key, and only, perhaps, when the companionship is interrupted do the younger become conscious of the change which has thus been brought about by contact with the elder.

Similar results may be brought about by reading the writings of those who are more evolved than we are. A similar series of changes is set up, though less powerfully than by the living presence. Moreover, intent and reverent study may attract the attention of the writer whether he be in or out of the body, and may draw him to the student, and thus cause the latter to be enveloped in his atmosphere quite as potently as though he were physically present. Hence the value of reading noble literature: we are keyed up to its level for the time, and such reading, steadily persevered in, will lift us to a higher level and establish us thereon. Hence the value of a brief reading before meditation, lifting us into an air more favourable to the work of meditation than we can start from unassisted. Hence the value also of “holy places” for such meditation, places where the atmosphere is literally vibrating at a higher rate than our own; and hence the advice so often given by the instructed, to keep, if possible, a room or closet set apart for meditation, such a place soon gaining an atmosphere purer and subtler than that of the surrounding world. It is of little use for the theosophical student to be acquainted with these laws if he does not utilise them to his own helping, and to the helping of those around him.

What should be the attitude of the theosophical student towards the inspired man or the inspired book? He should be receptive, stilling all his normal vibrations so far as is possible, and opening his whole nature to the impact and influx of the waves of vibration that pour forth upon him. But his attitude should be more than receptive: he should gently endeavour to attune himself and to co-operate with the inflowing waves. He should try to strengthen the sympathetic vibrations, so that the accompanying changes in consciousness may be as complete as possible. For this he must pour out to the inspiring Object his love, his trust, his complete confidence and self-surrender, for thus only can he attune his bodies into sympathy with those of the Inspirer. He must, for the time, empty himself of his own ideas, his own feelings, his own activities, surrendering himself to reproduce, not to initiate. As the unruffled lake can mirror the moon and the stars, but as that same lake rippled by a passing breeze can yield only broken reflexions, so may the lower being, steadying his mind, calming his desires, and imposing stillness on his activities, reproduce within himself the image of the higher, so may the disciples mirror the Master’s mind. And so, also, if his own thoughts spring up, his own desires arise, will he have but broken reflexions, dancing lights, that tell him nought.

If you are going to read one of the inspired books of the world—_The Imitation of Christ_; _The Golden Verses_ of Pythagoras; _The Light on the Paths_; _The Voice of the Silence_—it is well to preface the reading with a prayer, if that be your habitual way of raising your consciousness to its highest mood, or with the repetition of a mantra, or the soft chanting of some familiar and beloved rhythm, in order to bring yourself into a sympathetic condition. Then read a phrase, re-read, brood over it, savour it mentally, suck out its essence, its life.

Thus shall your subtle body become, to some extent at least, attuned to that of the inspired writer, and repeating his vibrations, shall set up in your consciousness the corresponding changes. Priceless is the value of inspired books: they are steps of a ladder set up between earth and heaven, a veritable Jacob’s ladder, on which descend and ascend the angels of God.

There remains a third class of books worthy of the attention of the theosophical student, but towards which his attitude should be entirely different from those which he adopts towards the revealed and the inspired. These are books containing the observations of students more advanced than himself, observations carried on upon planes above the physical, observations made by students who are evolving in knowledge of, and in power on, those planes, and have not yet reached the stature of the Perfect Man. There are books such as _The Secret Doctrine and Esoteric Buddhism_, written by disciples, which are not records of the direct observations of students, but are rather transcriptions of the teachings of Masters, into which errors may creep by misunderstandings of those teachings. H. P. Blavatsky herself told us that there were inevitably errors in _The Secret Doctrine_; and as we have in that wonderful book her own descriptions of the pictures shown to her by her Master, there is an opening for possible errors of observation: these are probably not serious, as she was carefully overlooked and aided during the writing. These two books stand apart from the bulk of our literature, the Masters having been largely concerned in their production. The books I have in mind are those written by disciples, using their own normal faculties, faculties still in course of evolution; books relating chiefly to the astral, mental, and buddhic planes, to the constitution of man, to the past of individuals, nations, races, and worlds. We are gradually accumulating a large amount of literature of this kind, a literature of observations by students using superphysical faculties. With regard to this, certain things need to be borne in mind.

First: the students in question are in course of evolution, and the faculties of which they make use to-day, which have become their normal faculties, are more developed and reach higher planes than those which they used ten or fifteen years ago. Hence they see now very much more than they saw then, both in quantity and quality, and this enlarged sight must inevitably give reports differing in fulness from that of the earlier and narrower vision.

Secondly: this greater fulness will change relative proportions and perspective. A thing which seemed imposing and independent when seen alone, may become subordinate and comparatively insignificant when seen as a part of a larger whole. It may change form and colour, seen with surroundings which become visible only when it is looked at with a higher vision. That which was a globe, sailing through space, to the physical eye, becomes the free end of a continuous body, materially attached to the sun, when seen with superphysical sight. Was it false to describe it a globe? Yes, and no.

It was and is a globe on the physical plane, answering to all that is meant by a globe down here. In subtler regions it is not a globe, but a body, the tip of which is a globe only to gross vision, vision to which its continuation is invisible.

Thirdly: the keener vision detects intermediate stages before unseen, and shows a series of changes between two which, to the less acute sight, were in immediate sequence. Thus, in the earlier observations, it was said that the ultimate physical atom broke up into astral matter. When a similar phenomenon is studied twelve years later, it is seen that the physical atom breaks up into an immense number of inconceivably minute particles, and that these immediately group themselves into forty-nine astral atoms, which may or may not, again, combine into astral molecules. Again, a whirling wall was mentioned: keener vision sees no wall, but an illusory enclosure, caused by rapid motion, like the fiery circle traced by a whirling fire-tipped stick. So, in the continuous light of gas or electricity, a whirling disk of black and white rays shows grey; put out the lights, and let the darkness be rent by a lightning-flash, the disk hangs motionless, every black and white ray distinct. Which is the true observation? The eye in each case bears true witness to what it _sees_. The different conditions impose upon it different visions.

Other differences also arise, but these may serve as samples. Are, then, books relating to observations useless? They only become useless, even mischievous, when the theosophical student treats them as revelations or inspirations instead of as observations. Observation is the basis of scientific knowledge; the correction of earlier observations by later ones is the condition of scientific progress. The student of optics, when confronted with the black-and-white rayed disk, the grey disk, the whirling disk hanging motionless, does not conclude that the conflicting observations make observations useless. He searches for and finds the conditions of light, of the constitution of the eye, which explain the equally true though contradictory reports. He submits the observations to renewed experiment and to the scrutiny of reason, until from the contradictions emerges the many-sided truth.

What should be the attitude of the theosophical student to books of observations? To all such books you must take up the attitude of the scientific student, not of the believer. You must bring to bear upon them a bright intelligence, a keen mind, an eager intellect, a thoughtful and critical reason. You must not accept as final, observations made by other students, even though those students are using faculties which you yourselves have not as yet developed. You should accept them only for what they are—observations liable to modification, to correction, to reviewal. You should hold them with a light grasp, as hypotheses temporarily accepted until confirmed or negated by further observations, including your own. If they illuminate obscurities, if they conduce to sound morality, take them and use them; but never let them become fetters to your mind, gaolers of your thought. Study these books, but do not swallow them; understand them, but hold your judgment in suspense: these books are useful servants but dangerous masters; they are to be studied, not worshipped. Make your own opinions, do not borrow those of others; do not be in such a hurry to know that you accept other people’s knowledge, for ready-made opinions, like ready-made clothes, are neither well-fitting nor becoming.

There is a dangerous tendency in the Theosophical Society to make books of observations authoritative instead of using them as materials for study. We must not add to the number of blind believers who already exist, but to the number of sane and sober students, who patiently form their own opinions and educate their own faculties. Use your own judgment on every observation submitted to you; examine it as thoroughly as possible; criticise it as fully as you can. It is a poor service you do us when you turn students into popes, and, parrot-like, repeat as authoritative, statements that you do not know to be true. Moreover, blind belief is the road to equally blind scepticism: you place a student on a pedestal and loudly proclaim him to be a prophet, despite his protests; and then, when you find he has made some mistake, as he warned you was likely, you turn round, pull him down, and trample on him. You belabour him when you should belabour your own blindness, your own stupidity, your own anxiety to believe.