Chapter IX: Part II: Lectures to Theosophical Students (2)

Next we have to consider what we ought to do in the training of the next generation; for there is great need that the Theosophical ideal of education should spread through Western minds, and especially through Britain and its empire. Religious education at the present time is in peril; how great that peril is may be measured by the Moral Education Congress gathered together in London last year to try to find a moral basis that should furnish education apart from all the sanctions of religion—a hopeless task, but none the less a sign of the peril of the times. Now, we have had secular education in India. It has been the English education the Government has given there. It could not give any other because of the different religions of the country, and it was bound not to help any one of these to the detriment of the others. The moral result has been disastrous. It has fostered selfishness, indifference to the country, lack of public spirit. It has given us a race of men who have acquired from the West its superficial qualities, but not its inner strength, not its inner capacity. And the troubles you have in India now are largely the result of this anti-religious education, which has made hundreds of the best Indian type skeptics, a thing which has only been checked with the growth of the Theosophical Society throughout India. We have turned back that irreligious wave, with the result that the Indian Government to-day regards the Theosophical Society as the most likely agency for training the youth of India along lines of freedom and order at the same time. They realise that we have put our finger on the weak point in their own system, and that our plan of giving to the child the religion of his parents is really the way to solve that religious problem in India. Now, over here you have to face the problem how to preserve religion while letting dogmatism go; how to find a common ground, a few common principles, which all Christians inculcate, leaving to a later time in life the special sectarian divisions which the young man and woman can acquire later if they wish. Now, in that the Theosophical Society may well play a great part in the immediate future, strengthening all the influences which make for the keeping of religion as an integral part of education, helping to soften the bitter sectarianism, and persuade the different denominations to remember that they are Christians more than that they belong to this, that, or the other denomination. If we succeed in that, then the service to the education of the empire will be supreme.

Along other lines we want, if we can, to persuade the public mind to become a little more receptive of new ideas; to lose a little of its pride, and learn a little humility. Unless we are quite sure that we are at the very top of human evolution, and that nothing greater than ourselves can be evolved, then it would be the part of wisdom to recognise that the next type, which is the type of the future, must be different from the type of the present, and, in the beginning of its evolution, new and strange. You may remember how J. S. Mill, in speaking of liberty, laid immense stress on originality, and complained that modern methods were tending to make all come to a single level; to do away with the eccentric, even with the original. Now, for growth, variety is wanted. Where there is no spontaneous variation in types, you have stagnation. And yet every one of us is so fond of our own particular line of thought that we take it almost as an offence if someone starts a new thought which we cannot at once fit into our own mental grooves. Now, we must try to correct that, first in ourselves, and then in the public at large, especially in view of the coming of that mighty Teacher I have spoken of. When He comes, the type of the sixth Root Race, He must be very different from all of us, otherwise He would not be the type of the new departure. How can we avoid treating Him when He comes exactly as our predecessors of the fourth sub-race treated Him when He came last to start the fifth? It is so easy for all of us, looking back to the mighty Figure of the Christ, to realize something of its splendour, but we see Him through the glamour of the religion which has made His name supreme in many of your hearts. Try and put yourselves back in time, and see how strange that new type would have then seemed to you, how against all your prejudices. So different was He that He raised an antagonism so bitter that they could not bear Him amongst them for more than three years, and then murdered Him. It is hard for us to realise that. We are apt to think, “If I had been there, I would have stood beside Him; I would not have been amongst those who slew Him.” And yet there is no particular reason to think we should not have done the same. It is a great lesson for the immediate future. For when He comes again to bless this beginning of a sixth sub-race, the buddhic, He will show out the qualities of Buddhi prominently, and those are by no means very acceptable to the modern world. Look fairly at your own minds and see how you stand on your rights. It is the spirit of the time. If you have not what you think your rights, you make a clamour for them. For the mānasic civilisation that is the proper way, but those who want to go on in the new future that is dawning have to throw all that aside. You must relinquish your “rights.” If you are trampled on, you must recognise that it is only yourself of the past trampling on yourself of the present: no one can trample on you except a person who embodies your own past injustice, and is working out that which you yourself have created. That is a very unpopular view, as unpopular as the Sermon on the Mount. And so along many other lines of that which is admirable from the popular standpoint—power, dominance, the spirit which tramples down all opposition. How different from that of the Wisdom which rules, but rules from within, “mightily and sweetly ordering all things.” And if you will think over this in detail and work it out, you will find you will have to change your ideal of what is admirable, and build up on ideal on the basis of Spirit and unity, and not on rights and claims. And that is one reason why the Theosophical ideals very often find themselves rejected in the outer world. Those are the qualities needed for the world as it shall be; and if we are to be builders of that immediate future, we must develop them in ourselves. But you may say: “Is it not rather a big assertion to make that this Theosophical Society is really a nucleus of a great Root Race; that it is the beginning of a sub-race? What right have you to make such a claim?” The answer is, that looking back to the last choice, we should expect to find the beginning of the new Race and new sub-race among those who were not the leaders of the present, but had in them the germ of the future. That is why our people are gathered not from the leaders and the thinkers, but from the loving, the compassionate, the brotherly. It seems a feeble thing, this power of Brotherhood. It is the mightiest thing in all the world. And although it is true that we cannot expect to find amongst us men and women of magnificent intellect and overwhelming power of thought, we may expect to find amongst us the compassionate, the gentle, and the loving, and those give the plastic material which will yield itself to the fingers of the Manu to be moulded into a new type, a higher evolution. Hence, from time to time the great shakings that take place to shake out those who are too purely intellectual, and who do not think the word Brotherhood is a word that ought to be heard so much amongst us. The Masters have chosen Brotherhood as our mark, and we cannot march in Their army if we will not bear Their sign. And so, if mind makes us too self-assertive, too sure of our own superiority, then we must be shaken out of this movement. So do not in this immediate future be troubled if we still continue to go along our own quiet road of attracting the loving and the gentle rather than those who are mighty in their intellectual power. The thing of vital importance is the Spirit of Brotherhood, and that we must never let go. And remember, in the whole of the struggles of the future, as in those of the past, that they must always rage round persons, and those who think more of personalities than of principles are inevitably shaken out. If you make a person’s presence or absence a reason for being in or out of the Society, you are showing the spirit of separation, which cannot realise a principle, but thinks only of the passing and transient personality. What can it matter whether any one of you agrees or disagrees with Mr. Leadbeater, or with Mr. Mead, or with anyone else? These are all persons. The principle of the Society remain unshaken. Presidents are elected and Presidents die, but the Society goes on. What folly, then, to give up a place in a mighty movement because the person temporarily at the head of it is a person who does not exactly fit into the shape you have made as your own particular ideal. It does not matter. The Society is not bound by its President any more than by anyone else. It is bound only by its great central principle of Brotherhood. And so all of you who have stood through the past shaking have shown that you care more for principles than for persons, and it does not matter whether, so to speak, you have agreed or disagreed with the President so long as you have stood firm within the Society; for there lies the principle, whilst the other is only personality. Cling, then, to that principle to which you have clung through the past storm; recognise that whether a person be right or wrong, noble or ignoble, great or small, that is a matter of secondary importance. The work of the future lies in the movement, and not in the hands of any particular individual who may happen to be here. Whether you or I come back to this great movement in other lives depends on ourselves, and not on the opinion that anyone else may happen to have about us. None can throw us out of it if we are worthy to remain in it; none can keep us in it if we are unworthy to be part of it. And realising kārmic law, realising the greatness of the movement and its work in the future, let us join hands, whether we agree or disagree with each other on any other matter save that of Brotherhood, and go forward into the future that is unfolding before us, brighter than ever the past has shone; go forward to the making of the sub-race out of which the Root Race shall spring, under the banner of our Manu and our Bodhisattva, the mighty Ones of years and millennia to come.

Lecture III

The Catholic and Puritan Spirit in the Theosophical Society

The Value and Danger of Each

I want to try to trace out the somewhat difficult subject of the place of the Puritan and the Catholic Spirit in our Society. I want to show that both types are necessary in every great movement; that both have their value and place, yet also their dangers. And if we realise that both are necessary, it may help each type to be tolerant as regards the other, and to see that each has its dangers.

Now, all the world over these two types are found; they are, in fact, two marked temperaments, intellectual and emotional, into which, roughly, you might throw almost all thoughtful and educated people, and even the thoughtless and ignorant, for those also will show similar types, although naturally less attractively, because more extreme, than they may be among the class of people who at least are seeking to understand themselves, and to gain some measure of equilibrium. Looked at from the outside, the Catholic type is certainly the more attractive, and therefore I want to impress upon you the value of the Puritan type; because, being less attractive, its value is more likely to be overlooked. If the Puritan spirit were completely lost, mankind would lack that vigour and strength and tendency to free thought and free judgment which are so essential to human evolution. Unfortunately, it has often been united with a very cold and forbidding exterior; and if we take the two types as we find them in the reign of Charles I., certainly the Puritan is not very attractive from outside—hard, rather sour, forbidding, and austere. But it is not quite fair to judge the Puritan by that type in the reign of the Stuarts. It is not fair to pick out a type at the moment where these two difficulties face it—danger to itself, and the extreme evil of the type it is opposing. It is hardly fair to take that moment for a judgment of the value of the temperament in itself. But even if you take the Puritan of the time of Charles I. and Cromwell, you can hardly help noticing, if you go beyond externals, the extreme moral value of that type amid those difficult and dangerous surroundings. Austere as it was, it was the austerity that was trying to guard itself against continual danger of pollution, and naturally it ran into extremes, as all reactions run, with the inevitable result that another reaction followed on the first, and you had the loose and profligate type of the Court of Charles II. It is the types I want to disentangle from these special manifestations, and, looking at them apart, from all conditions that may emphasise one characteristic or another.

Now, in what does the Puritan type exactly consist? It seems to consist in an attitude of protest and criticism rather than of ready acceptance of the prevailing thought of the time. The Puritan mind is essentially critical, and critical in the modern sense of the term, which, instead of making the critic a judge, makes him an opponent and condemner. We must remember, however, that the true critical spirit is absolutely necessary for human progress, even though it often slips into condemnation and cynicism. The Puritan is always intellectual (I am speaking of the purer type), a man in whom mind is predominant. He is of the type that tends to separation rather than unity; he stands alone, sufficient for himself (I say that rather than “self-sufficient,” the second form connoting a rather unpleasant quality). We must realise the strength of this type. The strength may slip into austerity, but that very largely grows out of the religion to which the Puritan may happen to be attached. You do not find him in his more aggressive form unless he is protesting against something he regards as dangerous and mischievous. Naturally, under these considerations he is thrown into the attitude of combat, and hence all that is harshest and most hostile inevitably comes to the surface. But that is not a necessary part of the Puritan spirit. Looking at him as the intellectual man in whom emotion in this particular life is comparatively weak, or if not weak, repressed; seeing that in him the mental qualities are those which in this incarnation he specially endeavours to develop; understanding that the mind can only be developed where the qualities of analysing, comparing, and judging are active, you can readily see how, in the face of opposition, these qualities would turn into antagonism and protest. But I do not think antagonism and protest are a necessary part of the Puritan spirit. In peaceful times your Puritan would be distinguished rather as the analytical or intellectual man, most valuable to any community into which he may be thrown at the time. For you cannot develop the mind without developing these analysing qualities: synthesis comes later, the one belonging to the lower, the other to the higher Manas. Both need to be developed. While the lower Manas is developing, you must have these qualities of analysis, comparison, and judgment without which it is not possible to lay a strong foundation for any belief. You must recognise the utter necessity for the challenging, questioning, even doubting and sceptical spirit. Only by means of this can error be detected, and the traditions that come down from the past be gradually purified of the accretions that have come to them during the ignorant periods through which they may have passed. To be sceptical is no fault, but rather a virtue. If there is to be progress at all, there must be challenging of that which has come down from the past, so that, testing, analysing, criticising, you may be able to separate the truth from the error. How would religion become ever more and more spiritual if men are only to inherit, and never to examine and understand? And since no religion or other form of thought can ever come down through centuries without picking up a large amount of error, if we had not this critical and challenging spirit all religions would grow into superstitions, and that which is most valuable for the race would gradually be covered under a mass of ignorant error. Hence at certain times in the history of the race a great outburst of the Puritan spirit is necessary. That alone will bring about fundamental changes, religious, moral, and social; that alone has the courage to go forward whilst in a minority, and test with the test of reason every belief and every tradition. We must not, then, blind ourselves to the immense value of this spirit in the intellectual development of man. For always, inasmuch as religious and social order has come by some great Teacher enormously beyond his own generation in religious, moral, and social development, inevitably his teachings, handed down generation after generation, will in many respects tend to be covered with superstition.

Let us pause for a moment and see what the word “superstition” means. I do not think I can give a better definition than my old one: “superstition is the taking of the non-essential as the essential.” I think that you will find that that covers all the cases which you would call superstitions—a truth originally; but in every truth there are necessary and accessory parts. As the understanding of the truth is clouded, the accessories take on too large a value in the minds of people, until at last the accessory is everything and the essential nothing.

I told once an Indian story which marks out clearly what is superstition. There was once a very holy man in the habit of offering a sacrifice by pouring butter into the fire—one of the ordinary Hindū ceremonies. Morning after morning he duly performed this rite. He was much admired by his neighbours, and the regularity of the discharge of his religious duties led them to consider him a model worthy of imitation. This good man happened to have a cat. As he was kindly-hearted and affectionate, the cat loved him, and used to come up and interrupt his religious service; so he put a collar round the cat and tied it to the bedpost to prevent interruptions. Time went on, a few generations passed, and then all of the people who copied this admirable saint not only offered the sacrifice, but also considered it a part of the rite to have a cat tied to the bedpost. Still more time went on, until at last all that remained of the original ceremony was the cat tied to the bedpost and nothing else. Now there is superstition: the harmless accessory had become necessary, until it occupied the whole of the worshippers’ minds. This is often the case in religions which have lasted long, and have had many ignorant adherents. They cannot distinguish between the inner meaning and the outer form; and gradually the outer form becomes everything, and the inner meaning disappears. Then comes the time when, superstition having taken the place of truth, there rises up the critical intellect of man, attacks the whole, and challenges the authority. Only sometimes the critic is not evolved enough to recognise the truth at the same time that he wars against the error. More often he takes the whole as superstition and tries to destroy it completely. There you have the history of many reformations. Take the great Reformation of the sixteenth century. If you look back to that you will see that an enormous amount of valuable truth was thrown aside in trying to get rid of the surface error with which the truth had been covered. And so in tracing down the growth of the Puritan spirit from the time of Luther, through Calvinistic Switzerland, up to Scotland with John Knox, and then looking at it as it spread over England, and became so powerful under James I. and Charles I., you will recognise that in the whole of that there is a gradual throwing away of everything that the mind could not grasp and understand, and consequently a great loss of the spiritual side of things. The result of that historically has been that the truth that was thrown away in the getting rid of the error came back again a little later. And so with certain fundamental tendencies in man, against which the Puritan of that time set himself utterly—the use of images in public worship, the use of music, the use of garments different from the everyday garments, and so on—all these points that he threw aside as part of the Papal abomination came back again, slowly, steadily, gradually spreading through the whole of the Anglican Church. So that you have this remarkable object-lesson, which it would be well for all Puritan-spirited people to remember. You may visit a cathedral to-day. Outside the cathedral you will see the statues which were broken by Cromwell’s soldiery; and inside the cathedral, on or round the high altar and chancel, you will see the modern statues placed there in order to help the devotional spirit in the congregation.

I have purposely taken the Puritan spirit outside the Theosophical Society so that you may look at it apart from any special question of interest to our own Society. If you see the value of that in religion, you will welcome its presence in the Theosophical Society. You will realise that that spirit is wanted in order to balance and keep in check what might otherwise be the excess of the Catholic spirit. You will realise that our critical friends are doing us an immense service in their criticism, and that it only becomes mischievous when the critical spirit grows into antagonism and dislike, which need not at all accompany it, and should not accompany it in a well-balanced and thoughtful mind. We must have that spirit amongst us, otherwise the enthusiastic will run away too rapidly and fall into error. The chill that sometimes it causes is a very valuable element for mental growth. We do not want to have nothing but chill—that will prevent growth altogether; but if we were more tolerant with each other, then we might have the advantage of the chill, which would keep the intellectual atmosphere clear and sharp, without having the very life chilled out of us by criticism.

Let us now pause on what we mean by the Catholic spirit. By that I mean the spirit which is reverent of tradition, which is willing to submit to reasonable and recognised authority, which is willing to take a great plan and co-operate in it, and realise that the presence of the architect of the plan, if He be a person highly developed, say a Master, is enough to give it authority, and that there is no lack of freedom or dignity in accepting the plan of a greater, and working it out to the utmost of one’s ability. It is the spirit which, largely emotional, when it rises into love of the higher and becomes devotion, causes sympathetic vibrations on the buddhic plane, and so begins the awakening of the Spirit above the intellect. Again, with this Catholic spirit you always find the love of beauty. It is artistic. It seeks to clothe thought in forms of beauty. It loves ceremonial, takes a pleasure in harmonised expression of thought, and desires that everything round it should be emotionally satisfactory as well as intellectually sound. Moreover, its mind is eminently teachable, where the Puritan is not. Hence it is far easier to lead it along the path of what is called Occultism. The Catholic mind very readily recognises that those above itself in development may be able by guidance and teaching to help it to reach knowledge which, unaided, it would be unable to achieve. The Puritan would walk alone; the Catholic would utilise every assistance that can be given in evolution, including the assistance of human beings more highly developed, as well as of spiritual intelligences. And so you have round it an atmosphere which readily responds to impulses from the spiritual worlds, and always with this spirit you find the tendency toward Occultism of various kinds. I do not think you ever find that tendency in connexion with the Puritan spirit. You may find with the Puritan spirit sometimes a lofty form of mysticism, a recognition of a Spirit as the Life of the universe, and an attempt to realise that Spirit within oneself. That you may reach largely by way of the intellect, and emotion is not necessarily concerned in it. Intellectually you may realise unity, and then pass into the mystical ideal of the One in the Many, to be recognised in each. And you do find occasionally in the great Puritans of the past a very noble, though somewhat stern and cold, form of mystical belief; whereas the moment you come to Catholic mysticism, you find yourself in an atmosphere charged with emotion. The Catholic Mystic is swept up in a great surge of emotion to the Object of his love; the Puritan Mystic calmly, almost coldly, recognises the greatness of the Object of his worship, intellectually tries to realise, and by that to some extent unifies himself with It. You have an example of the Puritan Mystic in Cromwell. Read his letters, read the letters of the man, wrung out of his heart by the strain of doubt and despair, and clinging, in spite of all temptation, to his belief in the reality of a Divine Power whose instrument he was. You will rise from that reading with a new idea of the strength of the man, and realise that with all that strength there was the recognition of the strength of God and of his own strength as being only an instrument in the divine hands. But you never find the Puritan Mystic the expression of love, of passionate affection, that are so common among the Catholic Mystics; and more than anything else is the difference marked when you come to deal with Occultism.

And there, in our own Society, is a point we ought to pause upon. The Catholic type amongst us will be one that will readily respond to the idea of the Masters, the Puritan less quickly. The Catholic mind in the Theosophist will not only recognise the ideal of the Masters, but will be fired with a desire to tread the path that They have trodden. There will be a looking up of reverence, an outstretching of the hand for guidance; a realisation that by that dependence more rapid progress may be made than along any other line. That which is invisible will exercise a potent attraction; he will always be trying to know something of the invisible worlds and their inhabitants, he will always be reaching out toward these worlds and trying to expand his consciousness into communication with them. He will be willing to train himself with that in view, and you will have in him the possibility of the Occultist which you will not find in the Puritan type. For you cannot begin this part of occult knowledge along the purely intellectual lines. The intellectual exertion will check at once the evolution of the other vehicles. The moment you begin to think: “What am I doing? Is it imagination? Is it hallucination?” you check the growth of the subtler faculties of the man. You are obliged for a time to go on without questions, feeling, sensing, groping, and refusing to allow the mind to come in with its analysing spirit, that chills everything down so much that these budding faculties, as it were, shrink back from the touch of the frost, refusing to unfold. “Well,” you say, “there is a danger. The person may become overcredulous, may be utterly led astray.” True. It is the necessary danger of all such research. Only step by step do you learn by experience to distinguish between the true and false, between the thought-forms created by yourself and the inhabitants of other worlds into which you are penetrating with half-opened eyes. But remember that distinguishing does not do away with the reality of the thought-form. Your own thought-forms which surround you when you first pass on to the astral plane are real forms in astral matter. They deceive you, yes, because they are your own creations, and only give you back the things you are thinking about. They repeat to you your own thoughts, and there lies the element of danger. But you can only outgrow that by experience, exactly in the same way that the baby learns that it cannot catch hold of the glittering thing at the end of the room, but, to reach it, must cover a great deal of space. You do not think it heartbreaking because the baby makes mistakes. You are content that he shall learn. Why not be as philosophical about yourselves? You know that they will grow out of their ignorance by experience. So will you. Those who always want to be right are people who will never make Occultists. The Occultist must be ready to plunge forward, and possibly tumble into a bog, but be ready to go on again afterwards, learning by experience to understand. Those who will not face this have not enough of the Catholic spirit to make Occultists, and had better leave it for another incarnation.

There is another danger, one especially seen here—the dependence upon another. I have often been asked: “How can you develop independence and judgment if you are always trying to do the will of another, whom you call your Master?” The answer is simple. You look to your Master for direction, and He may point you to some work to be done. You take the work because He told you to do it. So far you are the obedient servant; but your judgment, your reason, all your thought-power, all your initiative, are taxed to the utmost in the achievement of the task. A sensible Occultist never goes running to his Master and asking, “How shall I do this?” He knows that is not the Master’s work. The Master has done His part in saying “Do that.” How you do it tests you, and brings out your strength and weakness. And the Master is far too wise to prevent your bringing out your strength and discovering your weakness by doing for you what He has told you to do. Hence the Occultist develops all his faculties in the attempt to do his Master’s will. The two things work well together, and he does not become weak but strong in realising that the Master is greater than he, and knows far better the plan of the work, while he himself, in carrying out his own portion of it, finds full employment for every faculty of brain and heart.

It is scarcely possible for the typical Puritan to become an Occultist in the life in which this side is being so strongly developed. You cannot understand everything when you go into unknown worlds; and unless you are willing to be ignorant, there is no possibility of discovering new knowledge. Every pioneer of science—to quote, I think, Faraday—“runs about like a dog with his nose to the ground, trying to find out a trail.” That is exactly the way of the experimenter. You must search for yourself for the trace which will guide you to the desired knowledge; and if you will not do that, you must take the results of others, and be content with these results for this life.

But, now, how will these two types of spirit work when they come to, say, such a question as that of Mr. Leadbeater? You will have at once the working of the critical intelligence which sees faults more readily than virtues, and bad motives more readily than good. That is its weakness. But it also has its value in pointing out certain dangers into which the Society might otherwise slip. The Catholic spirit will be far more ready to take it for granted that one from whom they have learned much, whom they know to have far vaster knowledge than their own, may have some other reason which they do not see, which would justify to the doer what he has done, and they do not feel that curious sense that they must save their neighbours’ souls, whether their neighbours desire it or not. They are content to say, “This is my road, that is his”—a wider and more generous spirit. Nevertheless, I think we should do well also to recognise that the presence in the Society of the critical and even judging spirit has at some times its value. But it is not a foundation on which anything can be built, and that is sometimes forgotten. You cannot build an enduring edifice on the grounds of protest against someone else. It cannot endure. It is curious to notice that the same people who condemn personality when the tendency of the personality is love and devotion, are the people who show personality most strongly when they antagonise and dislike. I admit to the full that principle should guide, not personality; but I cannot admit that a love for a personality is wrong, whilst a hatred of a personality is right and admirable. Both may put persons above principles if the two come into clash. And it is putting a personality above a principle when you desert the Theosophical Society, forgetting the great principles which make it immortal, and leave it, protesting against it, because one or two people hold views with which you do not agree. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of personality. Mr. Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant are both comparatively old, and cannot at the most live very long. What utter folly, then, to desert the great principles incarnated in the Society because of the antagonism of two transitory personalities! If Theosophy be anything at all, then it is everything in life, and is not to be given up for anyone, whether saint or criminal. Suppose a hundred murderers were members of the Society, is that any reason why you or I should go out of it? It seems to me that the fact that we disapprove of that so much is a reason for staying in the Society, in order to strengthen it in the hour of its peril and to carry it through.

We need in the whole of this to study our own nature first, and find out our weak points, and then to guard against that weakness in the time of storm and stress. And we need, more than that, to realise that very often when people oppose us, they oppose us because of their virtues, and not because of their vices. That is, that the people who are utterly against me now are against me because of their virtues. They are wrong in the view they take—they misconstrue; that does not matter. But the fundamental reason why they oppose is because they believe that I am condoning what is wrong. That is a good feeling and right. But it is not right when it goes into hatred and calumny, when people go about telling abominable stories of all kinds which are utterly false, using them as weapons to injure. But, none the less, the beginning lay in a virtue—the desire to guard the Society from harm; and that ought to be recognised even when it has run into excess. If we can do that, then, in the midst of struggle, we shall be learning the true Theosophical spirit, which sees the good first, and only recognises the excess afterwards. And my suggestion is: “Train yourself, in your ordinary thinking, to see first the good of a person or thing, and only afterwards allow yourself to see the weakness or evil.” Then you will get all the good of your critical spirit, and be guarded against much harm. But if you see the bad side first, you are likely not to see the good side at all. These things test our members, and show whether we are fit to go along this great path or not—show whether we are ready to be part of that great Sixth Race which is coming, or whether we are so wedded to our own opinions that outside those we can see nothing good.

The trouble is practically over, but we should remember its lessons—a wider tolerance, a sterner self-criticism, and a more charitable attitude towards our fellows. You cannot be too hard in criticising yourself, nor too tolerant and charitable towards your neighbour. Remember that in every one of us the Self is endeavouring to express something of himself. In our own case we have the right to criticise every obstacle put in the way of His manifestation, to be hard in our judgment of ourselves, pitiless in our condemnation of our every fault and weakness. But we cannot govern the manifestation of the Self in another; hence our criticism is useless and impertinent—does not help, but hinders; for if the other person is wrong, as you think he is, then your harsh judgment makes an added barrier in his way when the Self in him is trying to guide him back to the right, whereas your charity, your tolerant respect, will help him to realise the noblest in him. Hence the lesson of this great shaking should be criticism of ourselves and charity to all around us. Recognition of our own type, clear self-judgment, so that we may walk aright and help others as much as may be; and, above all, so to purify our own characters that we may be channels for the life that flows in the Society, and may not soil it as it passes through ourselves. The Society can never die by attacks from without, nor by desertions from within; it can only die when its members are careless of their own thought, their own character, their own ideas; that, and that alone, can make the Society unworthy of the guidance of its Teachers. It was once said: “So long as three men remain in the Society worthy of our Lord’s blessing it cannot perish.” That was a word spoken by a Master in the days when the Society was weak and struggling, and when the few people that belonged to it feared it would never survive the storm that shook it in the time of the Coulomb attack. Think of that if any other storm should approach us—although we are not likely now to have another for the next twelve years; but when a storm comes, remember that inspiring idea, that as long as three remain in the Society it cannot perish; and add to that the vow registered by the Higher Self: “If others depart, I will be one of the three.”

Lecture IV

The Sacramental Life

I am to speak to you to-night on a subject of deep interest to those who regard the religions of the world from the standpoint of Occultism. In all the great religions we find what are called “sacraments,” to take the Western name; and in all religions the object is the same—the endeavour to spiritualise the ordinary life of man; to make it possible for men and women living in the world, blinded by their bodies, unable to rise above the material limitations—to enable those men and women to come into direct touch with higher worlds and higher beings, and so, from the definite sacramental act, to pass on until the whole life may become a sacrament by the radiation of spiritual life through the material coating.

Now different religions have different numbers of sacraments, although the essence remains the same. In Hindūism the sacraments are very numerous. Ten are recognised as of universal application, but the number will run up to thirty or forty if you take all the ceremonies that are distinctly recognised as having this character among the more orthodox Hindūs. The number, after all, is immaterial; it is the fundamental idea which is important. As knowledge of the meaning of the sacraments spreads, especially in the Western world, it will be found that many things that have been put aside as superstitious will come back with a new light and power. Certain ideas which were cast aside at the period of the Reformation were thrown aside rather by reaction than for any defensible reason. The way in which many of the thoughts and dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church were pressed among the people, the widespread ignorance of meanings while forms were carefully observed, not unnaturally brought about a powerful reaction when reason began to challenge the ceremonies. As occult knowledge had practically fallen into the background among the great mass of the Roman Catholic priesthood, there came rejection of that which could not be rationally explained. As we are able to see the justification for very much that then was rejected, however, we realise that many of these things will come back. And if we think, it is not unnatural that these should return. Going back to the early days of religion (I am thinking now of Christianity, but it is the same in all the great religions), we find the Founder and his immediate disciples who shape and mould the religion. As these men were men to whom the spiritual world was familiar, and as their duty was to make bridges between the ordinary mass of men and the great spiritual teachings of religion, it was inevitable that in the forms of worship laid down by them there should be in the background occult truths. Hence we find in the early Church the great institution of the Mysteries; and I shall want, later on, to show the relation between the Mystery, the Sacrament, and the great legend of the Holy Grail.

Let us now consider what a sacrament really is. I do not think we can get a better definition than in the Catechism of the Anglican Church: “An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”—something that is outer, tangible, that the senses can appreciate, a material object; then, with that, indissolubly connected, certain facts of the invisible world, so that the outer sign is able to act as a channel for the inner reality. But also, under the heading of “outward and visible sign,” you want something beyond the material object; you want a material gesture and material words. These three things are always present in a sacrament; some material object which is the immediate channel, certain sounds or words which make a change in the subtle material mingled with the denser material of that object, and a gesture called often the “sign of power,” as the words are called “words of power.” Now the gesture must be one through which magnetism can be thrown on to the object which is affected by the words.

Let us see how those facts are bound together in the sacrament itself, and what is their connexion with the constitution of man and of the worlds in which he lives. The worlds with which the man is connected, for our present purpose, we can take as the physical, astral, mental—the three worlds in which turns the wheel of births and death. He is in those three—either in all of them together, as when in the physical world; in two of them, as when in the astral world; in one only when in the heavenly world. For remember that only in the physical world are the three bodies available that connect him with all of the three at the same time. In these three worlds, then, man is continually living. He is related to them by his physical body, astral body, and mental body, so that you have a living intelligence, a spiritual being, who, by means of the matter that he has appropriated in these three worlds, is able to come into contact with each of them. But now arises the question: Given a spiritual intelligence clothed in this triple veil of matter; given the fact that that spiritual intelligence, by the veil of matter, is in contact with three worlds—how shall he be able to come gradually into conscious connexion with each, so that the stream of spiritual life, coming down from the spiritual world, may at once purify the matter of his bodies, illuminate his consciousness in these three stages, and so begin the great work of spiritualising the whole man? That is the problem that religion has had to solve. So far as ordinary Protestantism is concerned, the body has been cast aside as a very temporary possession, only occupied by the spiritual intelligence during one brief life, and hardly worth troubling about. Hence the body has become very much neglected from the ordinary standpoint of Protestantism, and the reaction against that has taken the form of materialism, so that you find people rejecting the view of the worthlessness of the body, and falling into a materialism in which the body is made the most important thing. Instead of that, in the earlier days of the great faiths, the body was regarded as a valuable possession, a thing to be made holy, to be sanctified, in order that it might be a fitting instrument of the spiritual intelligence therein embodied.

And so, in all these earlier days of religions, continual relationships were being made, first between the spiritual world and the lower worlds, and then between the embodied intelligence and the bodies that that intelligence is wearing. Hence the sacraments which should touch both body and consciousness, which should sanctify the material vehicles while illuminating the spiritual intelligence, which should make the whole man really spiritual in order that the object of incarnation might be accomplished—that matter in all the worlds should be rendered the obedient servant of Spirit. That was the object of the sacrament. Hence the necessity for the material object in order that it may come into touch with the dense body. Hence the need of the signs in order that, by the vibrations set up, sent on to subtler planes, the subtler bodies might be set vibrating, and be able to receive the downfall of spiritual life. Hence also the need for the gesture, so that the magnetic force sent out in the consecration might link together the denser and the subtler matter by this bond of magnetism, and in that way might make the whole of the material object a vehicle for the higher life while preparing the bodies for the reception of that downflow.

Now let us, in order to work out these principles, take the sacrament of Baptism. In this you know that you have the whole of these three conditions of a sacrament present—water, the material object; the words of power; the consecration of the water. You have the words of consecration, praying God to sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin; and then you have the sign of power—the cross made over the water—in order that the magnetism from the fingers of the priest may magnetise it, and be the link between the physical water and the astral matter which interpenetrates it.

I pause for a moment on the phrase “words of power.” The whole understanding and use of such words depends on the fact that every sound causes certain definite vibrations. Wherever there is a sound there is a correlated vibration. Now a mantra, or word of power, is a certain definite succession of sounds made by an Occultist in order to bring about certain definite results. That is as much a scientific fact as a fact that none of you would challenge—that you can by producing a musical note set up vibrations in a glass or rod or string which is sympathetic. You remember the experiments of Tyndall. He would show how by a certain sound you could shiver a piece of glass. What really happens? The glass begins to vibrate. As the vibrations are made by the note, it repeats them; if it is more than the glass can respond to, the particles are torn asunder and the glass is broken. Exactly a similar line of thought conducts you to the use and meaning of the mantra. The Occultist tries certain sounds. He finds out what are the sounds that bring about the vibrations that he desires. Having discovered that experimentally, he puts those sounds into a definite order and then gives a sentence which will reproduce that sequence of sounds whenever the sentence is uttered. This sequence of sounds causes vibrations, which in their turn set up vibrations in the subtle bodies. The more the mantra is repeated, the more powerful the result. Hence the use of repetition that you find so much in Church formulæ. Hence the use of the rosary, so that you may not have the jar of counting in producing the vibrations that you require. Now it is obvious that a mantra cannot be translated without losing part of its power. It may still have a power from the thought which is in it, but the sequence of sounds is affected. Hence the special value of the mantra apart from the thought which the words embody. Hence the wisdom of the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches in using their words of power as given by the Occultists who devised them. Unfortunately, in the Reformation, occult knowledge being at a discount, it was thought you could translate the words of power without losing the effect. You keep the effect caused by the thought; you lose a very large part of the mechanical effect caused by the sounds. What is lost of ordinary mechanical effect has to be brought about by devotion or will-power; whereas if you produce the vibrations mechanically, you then have all your devotion and will-power left undiminished to bring about the higher results. There is the value of the scientific ways of dealing with the bodies. It is not a question of consciousness now, but of the bodies, and only secondarily of the effect on the consciousness of the vibrations of the bodies; yet that also cannot be left out. Just as a change in consciousness brings about a certain vibration, so does a vibration bring about a corresponding change in consciousness. Hence to set up right vibrations helps the consciousness to remain in a certain condition, and we naturally find that in the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches the effects produced by the words of the sacrament are greater than these produced in Churches where the words of power are translated. One advantage that comes out of that is that, in the first case, where the priest is using the words that themselves make the vibrations, the man’s character, devotion, and knowledge are not as important as they are in the case where the mechanical effect is lost, and the priest must supply by his own devotion and will-power that which could be more readily produced by the mantra. It is out of that that has come the statement that the unworthiness of the priest does not destroy the worth of the sacrament. Certainly it is not as potent where the priest is unworthy, but where the mechanism is perfect, the worker not being perfect is less important.