Building of the Cosmos

 

BROTHERS, - When first the great Scriptures of the Hindu nation made an impression on European thought, that impression was one of a some­what strange and remarkable character. There was a conflict amongst European thinkers as to the origin and as to the value of this ancient literature. On the one side, it was acknowledged that a pro­found Philosophy might there be seen; on the other, the idea of finding such a Philosophy amongst a people regarded as less civilized than those who became their critics - that idea led to much of controversy as to the way in which these books had originated, and as to the influence which had been at work in their construction. And even today, when the depth of their Philo­sophy is admitted, and the grandeur and width of their range of thought is no longer challenged, you find men like Professor Max Müller, who have given their lives to the study of these books, you [11] find them speaking of the Vedas as the babblings of an infant people. You find them denying that there is any kind of secret or hidden doctrine ­hidden under the veil of symbolism, concealed under the mask of allegory. It seems to me as though in the West it is impossible for thinkers to understand that you may have an infant race, and yet that race have Divine Instructors; that you may have a growing civilization, but have that civilization under the guidance of those who are specially illumined by the Spirit that is Divine. And so they have failed to understand the value of the Scriptures, seeing only the masses of the ancient people, understanding nothing of the dignity of those who stood above them as Teachers and as Guides. Trying to find what is called a purely human origin for the Scriptures, they have lamentably failed in their analysis: for where the Divine is put aside, the growth of no nation can be understood, and where the hidden Deity in man is ignored, no real grasp can be gained of Philosophy, or of Religion, or of civilization.

Now my attempt - and it must be a very imper­fect attempt - in these lectures, is to vindicate the position that within the Hindu Scriptures you may find Philosophy, Science and Religion of the deep­est, of the widest and of the most inspiring kind; that the Science of the West [12] is slowly beginning to tread the paths which in these Scriptures are clearly traced; that the knowledge which the West is beginning to gather from observations of the external universe, is knowledge which may be more rapidly acquired by the study of the Scrip­tures, which were written by those who studied the universe from within rather than from without.  Thus we may read that in the Lotus-chamber of the heart with its ether-filled space we may see everything which in the external world may be found.

 

Both the heaven and earth exist within it. Both Agni and Vayu, both the Sun and the Moon … and what­ever else exists in this Universe.[1]

 

are there, so that in finding his Spirit, man also finds everything which exists in the Kosmos.  This is a statement not only beautiful in its poetry, but accurate in its science; and by really finding the eyes of the Spirit, those eyes that pierce through every veil of external nature, we can gain know­ledge at once more accurate and more profound than can be discovered when the study is pursued purely through the eyes of the flesh.

Now in pursuing this line of investigation, very great help has been given to us by that Russian lady and great Teacher known to us as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Her value to the world does not lie in the question as to whether she were or were not able to perform certain acts which others might be unable to rival. Her value to the world does not lie in whether she be a wonder-worker [13] or whether she be a conjurer. These points are not the points by which ultimately she will be judged by posterity. From my own standpoint these so-called marvels are matters of comparative indifference; the whole of these, while interesting from one standpoint, I look upon as of compara­tively small significance. Her real value was that she unveiled to us the secret of the Ancient Know­ledge, that she put into our hands the keys by  which we might ourselves unlock the gates of the inner sanctuary, that she came to us knowing the things of the Spirit and able to explain to us how we for ourselves might follow the clues which she gave; so that those who are instructed in this Esoteric Philosophy - spoken of in modern times as the Theosophical Teachings - those who are in­structed in it can turn to the Vedas, can turn to the Puranas, and there find knowledge which from the ordinary reader is hidden. Thus she acts as a great Teacher, filling the function which in ancient times was carried on between the Teacher and the disciple: taking the Scriptures and unfolding their inner meaning and so opening the way for spiritual progress, making it possible for us to attain to the Ancient Wisdom of the temples. I am going to try to justify that view by showing - having taken certain teachings from the ancient Hindu Scrip­tures - how these teachings become clearer and more easy to grasp, when they are read in the light which she has thrown upon them in the [14] volumes spoken of by the name of The Secret Doctrine. I am going to support that teaching also by reference to the most advanced Science of our own  day, showing you how The Secret Doctrine, which is really the most ancient Indian teaching, is sup­ported on the one side in the West by what is called Science, and on the other side in the Past by the Scriptures, which may be made more in­telligible, more coherent, and of which the ap­parent contradictions vanish, when they are viewed in the light of these Secret Teachings of which a fragment only is given to the world.

Now speaking of the building of the Kosmos, I cannot at the very outset deal with the question according to Science as it is understood in Europe, because Science does not, in Europe, deal with the beginning of things. It only deals with manifesta­tion after it has reached a certain point. It tells us nothing, as it were, of the first burgeoning out into existence of the Kosmos. It deals with no­thing until we have Matter in a form which the physical senses can appreciate, or at least which the imagination, following on the lines of the physical senses, is able to construct. Tyndall has spoken of the scientific use of the imagination, and in that way we can go on scientific lines be­yond that which actually may be sensated. It is no longer argued that that only is true which can be perceived by means of the senses; that was the position held some thirty years ago. It is one [15] which the progress of Science has made it impossible to hold today. But you do find that Science still maintains that nothing can come within its purview save such concepts as may be formed by the intellect on the facts which have been collected by the senses; so that when you are dealing with the existence of the manifested Kosmos, you must not in your thought go beyond those material conceptions for which you already have foundation in the material phenomena that you have observed. That is, you may go beyond the aggregation of Matter that you can see, and you may posit the existence of the atom which is invisible, and which can only be seen by an effort of the scientific imagination. But you must not go beyond that which this imagination can con­struct out of the material supplied by the senses. Crookes, it is true, deals with the building of the atom, but even then he only carries it as far as what is called protyle or original Matter; beyond that Science will not go. It refuses to go further into the origin of things. It refuses to ask: Is it possible that behind this protyle we may still trace growth and evolution? So that in the first tracing we have only The Secret Doctrine and the Scriptures. We cannot bring in the scientific criticism and assistance until a little later in the argument.

Now in order that this argument may be com­plete from our own standpoint, I want to make a brief comparison between the beginning of things [16] as we find it in the Shastras, and the beginning of  things as it is traced for us in the book called The Secret Doctrine; so that we may see, as I think we shall see, that the coherent statement that is made in the latter is exceedingly helpful, when we are puzzling ourselves somewhat over the many state­ments of the different aspects of the evolution that we find in the Shastras. For you must remember that blinds have been deliberately used in these Scriptures that have been placed in our hands.  We cannot, by reading them consecutively, always gain a coherent notion of the whole which in this fragment is represented, and we gain very much in time if we get a glimpse of the whole, so that when we meet the fragment, we can put it into its proper place in the edifice which we are trying to con­struct, instead of searching everywhere, and keep­ing our knowledge fragmentary, for need of that architectural plan which Madame Blavatsky really supplies.

Let us turn first to the Shastras and see how they trace for us the origin of things. Here there is a very noticeable difference between the Puranas and the Upanishads. You will find more detail­ - detail given in successive descriptions, as it wherein the Puranas; you will find in the Upanishads a philosophic rather than cosmological view, especi­ally a view which starts from the Spirit in man and shows the connection of that Spirit with the Source whence it came. This will make a difference in [17] the view of the universe presented in these two great divisions of the Shastras, and you will find one point especially of difference that I will put to you, which may sometimes have puzzled the reader as to the possibility of reconciliation between the two. First of all then, if I may use what seems a paradox, but is really a truth, before the “origin of  things” thought is thrown backwards; for the origin of things means manifestation, it means differentiation. The very word “things” implies manifested existence. Before the manifest, there must be the One; even in European Science this is recognized, and they rightly allege the One to be inscrutable and the phenomenal to be the object of observation. But you will very rarely find that the existence of that which is behind phenomena is denied - save perhaps in some comparatively small schools of thought, that see in the universe nothing but a mass of changing phenomena, with no under­lying unity in which these phenomena inhere. Generally, if Science becomes Philosophy, the One is posited as incognizable and unknowable to hu­man thought. But there is a yet deeper conception in the Hindu view of the universe: for that which by human thought is unreachable, is still, as one may say, on the outer limit of manifestation, and even behind that outer limit, behind and beyond Brahman - who is described as invisible, intangible, unseeable, and unseizable even by thought that which cannot be proved, and whose only proof is [18] in the belief in the soul - behind that, there still is posited that which has no name but only a descrip­tive epithet, that can only be spoken of as the “beyond Brahman” - Para Brahman - of the Philo­sopher, the “Unmodified Vishnu” of the Vishnu Purana. Now on THAT, the Unmodified Vishnu, there is nothing to be said and nothing to be thought. Neither thought nor speech has any­thing to do in that region, and we can only begin either to think or to speak when manifestation occurs, and when out of that darkness which may not be pierced, the first quiver comes forth which is Light, the possibility of manifested existence.

And then we come in the Scriptures to the first of all manifestations, to that which is spoken of sometimes - and notice the fact - as manifested and sometimes as unmanifested; unmanifested in itself, but manifested in the act of generation. For our thought soars, as it were, to Brahman, albeit Brah­man Itself is unseizable by human thought. And we find Brahman or Its equivalent spoken of, in both those great sources of study, Upanishads and Puranas, as triple in Itself, although not triple in direct manifestation. The One, but with an inner and latent three-foldedness, which will appear gradually in manifested sequence and make the universe of things a possibility. Brahman Itself is essentially threefold; whether you take it as you may find it in the Taittiriyopanishad, where Brah­man is spoken of as Truth, as Knowledge, as [19] In­finity, or in that phrase which is more familiar to us, as Existence, as Bliss, as Thought. Really in these words you have the same conception - Sat­-chit-ananda - so familiar always in speaking of the Supreme, and this is but another phrase for that which you find in the Upanishad quoted. For what are Satyam, Gnyanam, Anantam?[2] These are only different human words which fail in the attempt to represent realities, and whether you take the one or the other threefold phrase it matters not; what you do need to grasp is that these are latent in the first Emanation, and that the beginning of the Kosmos is the unfolding of this threefold latency into manifestation, is the becoming active of the latent potentialities.

Now you have in the Vishnu Purana that which represents this same thought of the triple latency; you have the first manifestation of Vishnu which is Kala, Time, which is neither Matter nor Spirit, but which exists when both of these have disappeared into it. You may remember in the second chapter of Vishnu Purana we are told that there is Pra­dhana, which is the essence of Matter, Purusha, which is the essence of Spirit; when these dis­appear, the form of Vishnu that is Time remains; thus there is this conception of Time without beginning and without ending, which, as it were, stands behind the next manifestations, joins them, and makes them possible. Then you come to the [20] second stage, which in this Purana is given under the name of Pradhana-Purusha, essential Matter, essential Spirit - out of the One, the Two, which means manifestation; and that is why Brahman is spoken of as both unmanifest and manifest. It is unmanifest in Itself; It is manifest when the Two appear from the One, and this duality makes the Kosmos possible. Then you may find many words in many books, all of which convey the same thought: the duality on which so much stress has been laid by Subba Rao - whose death every Philosopher must regret for the work that he might have done in this unification of the secret and the published thought. You have Mulaprakriti and Daiviprakriti - which are only other expressions for that which in Greek thought is called the Logos - in mani­festation. Again, you have the one characteristic given you of that Pradhana, that it is Vyaya, ex­tensible; you cannot begin to describe, because  attributes are not yet evolved, but you have the one characteristic of extensibility, which always means the possibility of form; so that in this Second, which is manifested from the One, there is the essence of form - that which is to take on mani­fold appearances - and you have also that which is to come out in form, the Purusha which moulds, working on the Pradhana, and thereby makes the manifoldness of the manifested universe possible. Then there is - still following the Vishnu Purana - the third stage, or Mahat, that which is to be the [21] controlling and directing force, that which is to be the Over-ruler, as we may say, which in every case will guide the evolution of the universe, and make it consistent, reasonable, right through; and here I cannot but remind you for a moment that, in the last expression, I have used a thought which we lately heard from Professor Huxley. He speaks of an Intelligence that “pervades the universe”[3], recognizing, as it were, such an Intelligence after professing Agnosticism for so many years. There is an Intelligence of which he is obliged to admit the pervading quality, which is essentially the same as that fundamental conception of Mahat, which is intelligence without limitation, save such limita­tion as the very fact of manifestation must imply.

Now these three stages in this clear, definite pre­sentment from the Vishnu Purana are somewhat difficult to trace in the Upahishads, but let me say before leaving their presentation in the Purana  that the Three are but the unfoldment of the One, of the Satchitananda which you have latent in the First. You have differentiated Them when you regard Them as three. The First is then Sat, pure Existence. What is the Second, which is dual, save Ananda, for the very fact of bliss implies duality? What is Mahat but Chit in manifesta­tion? So that it is really a process of unfolding, as I said; all that which is latent in the One be­coming manifest in the Three. In the Upanishads [22] this unfolding is somewhat veiled. There is a ten­dency in the Upanishads to pass directly from the Brahman in which all is latent, to the Spirit in man which is Brahman in the heart - the Logos of the individual Soul. None the less in the Upanishads here and there you will find traces given which show you that the same thought is present which is more definitely unfolded in Pauranic writ­ings. You will find if you will turn to the Mun­dakopanishad, it is said there that from Brahman is produced Life - which is Ananda - and Mind, which is Chit; then it goes on to the five elements, ether, air, light and the rest[4]. So that you do have the same succession, although but little stress is laid upon it, the object of the writer being different from the unfolding of the Kosmos. So again you may find in the Brihadaranyakopanishad the trinity of Life, Name and Form. Life, from which the Two proceed; and Life is concealed by Name and Form, that is, the First is concealed by Its dual manifestation. So also you will find the same idea in the Kathopanishad in the succession which is traced in the gradual search after Spirit; when you have gone through Manas to Buddhi, from Buddhi to Atma, beyond Atma there is the Unmanifested, and beyond the Unmanifested there is the Great Soul, therein spoken of as Purusha. Thus you get this most suggestive fact, that between the Spirit in man, and that beyond which there is naught, there [23] is given but one stage, “the Unmanifested”. What is the underlying thought of that single instead of triple presentation? It is to tell those whose eyes are opened that to the Spirit in man there is but One between it and That which is unknowable, for the Logos of the Soul is one, and one is the Ray of which the Spirit is the reflection in the heart; so that in the Upanishad, which is meant to lead you to the finding of the unity of the Spirit with its Lora, everything is ignored save that one Logos to which the Spirit belongs, and the very Kosmos in its multiplicity disappears when the Spirit itself is seeking the source whence it came.

Now turning from this sketch taken from the Scriptures themselves, let us take The Secret Doc­trine - I am using that name simply for the book called by it - we shall find that the whole of these most complicated teachings are presented in a form so simple, so clear, that we may take it as a clue to guide us in studying the far more difficult form in which it is presented to us in the Hindu writings. It being built entirely on the same foundation as that of the Shastras, you find first postu­lated Para Brahman, on Which nothing may be said; and then the presentment of the three Logoi, the word Logos being used, as being more familiar in Western thought, and as having as we shall see in a moment when I come to deal with Sound - special significance with regard to the building [24] of the Kosmos. The very word Logos implies the Builder, inasmuch as the uttered sound is the Great Builder of all manifested forms. And then we have traced for us the succession of these three Logoi, only the ancient Trimurti under another name, that we have been studying in the Scriptures themselves; we have the First Logos unmanifest, that is one title which is given to it. The First, the Unmanifest, appears but to disappear, because so far as Kosmos is concerned, the First Logos is unmanifested; it can only become manifest to the Spirit in man which is one with Itself. Then the One differentiated into Two, and, using the lan­guage of the West, this duality is described as “Spirit-Matter” - not Spirit and Matter, for you have but two aspects of the One, and if you divide them in thought you begin with a mistaken con­ception. The universe does not grow out of Spirit and Matter - two separate conceptions - it is an evolution from Spirit-Matter, or the One with a dual aspect. And so in this second you have, as I said, the Ananda aspect, and you find H. P. Blavat­sky laying great stress on this fundamental unity which yet becomes dual in manifestation, Spirit-­Matter, Purusha-Pradhana. These are but the two primeval aspects of the One and the Secondless. And then when she went on to throw to the care­ful student a hint as to the symbolism of the sub­ject, by which he may unveil this fundamental mystery of the Kosmos, you find her dealing with [25] the symbolism of the moon and suddenly throwing into the paragraph on the moon this phrase:

Lunar magnetism generates life, preserves and destroys it; and Soma embodies the triple power of the Trimurti, though it passes unrecognized by the profane.[5]

 

Then a little further on she speaks of

 

The One Divine Essence, unmanifested, perpetually beget­ting a Second Self, manifested, which Second Self, androgy, nous in its nature, gives birth in an immaculate way to every thing macro- and micro-cosmical in this Universe.

 

In this sentence in which the writer throws in the notion of the moon in an apparently somewhat curious way, you have the key to much of the allegory which will explain to you these obscure beginnings of the building of the Kosmos. From one side you have the sun and from the other side the moon. On the one side you have the light, and on the other side the water; fire and water everywhere, as that by which the building of the universe may take place, and fire and water are but the names for Spirit and Matter, and but express this duality of the Second Logos. In this second manifestation fire is the Daiviprakriti or the Light of the Logos; water is a manifestation of the Mulaprakriti or the root of all Matter. As they proceed, it is along this dual line; and the moon (as is known by every student) is constantly represented as androgynous, sometimes as male, some­times as female, today as God, King Soma, [26] to­morrow as Goddess, so that this is always pressed on your attention. When you think of the moon you have the double side, positive and negative, that which in our world we recognize as sex. Thus we have perpetually this antithetical duality, with­out which no building can be, for you must have the passive which nourishes the universe, you must have the active which fecundates; otherwise there is no possibility of reproduction, there is no exist­ence for the universe manifest at all. And then the Third is Mahat, the same name for the ideating power, thought, intellect, which is to be at the very root of existence. So that here again life and thought are to be primary; wherever you find an atom of manifested existence, you will find in it this duality, which it takes from its source; for out of the dual the dual must proceed, and you will neither have unliving Matter nor senseless Energy. Such existences are impossible in a universe that has been generated by Life and by Thought. And this Trinity is, in the deepest sense, of sevenfold constitution, for in the three lie enfolded the seven, as also in the Trimurti, when you begin to think, you will find the seven involved; for in the Tri­murti you are obliged to recognize in each the Shakti side, or duality in each, so that your three  must become six; wherever you realize the One you are obliged in manifestation to realize the Two; you cannot have Vishnu without Lakshmi, you cannot have Shiva without Durga, the two are [27] always recognizable, so that when you think of the Trimurti you are really thinking of six, and the Seventh is that which synthesizes all, and without which this differentiation could never appear; so that in the very foundation of the Kosmos the sep­tenary appears, and it is only the lack of insight in us which has blinded us to that so long. When  we reach this stage, the stage of Mahat, or intelli­gence, at once we come to the possibility of the  manifestation in which Western Science also may play its part; from the word Mahat, you have the threefold Ahamkara, which essentially has the qualities so familiar to every student of the Gita, so familiar to every student I may say of Philoso­phy as a whole - the true or pure, the active or brilliant, the dark or elemental - that Matter of  threefold quality which is necessary for further manifestation, and in which we shall find mani­foldness will appear. So we learn, if we take the Vishnu Purana, that from the Tamasic quality proceed the elements -not the elements of which Western Science speaks, but the five ancient ele­ments; we have no good English equivalent for Bhutadi. It is from Ahamkara that the material universe proceeds; first it generates Akasha, from Akasha air, from air fire, from fire water, and from water earth. Now why this succession? First Akasha: of that we are told the characteristic is Sound; the rudiment of Sound is evolved, and that is the only attribute of Akasha. Then air, [28] and what is air in this sense? Certainly not the air of the atmosphere, certainly not that which is the air of later manifestation, a mingling of gases where the atom has already appeared. The great “Air” of the Upanishads and of the Puranas is the breath of the Supreme, essentially Motion, for only when this conception of motion comes in, is any manifestation possible. So that first you have the Akasha, whose only attribute is Sound; then you have the Motion which is given to that Akasha by the great Breath; and in these you have sound, and then touch, which is the second sense, and from sound and touch - your very Akasha and Air  - you have Fire generated, for which this friction between Breath and Akasha is necessary, and that is the Electricity, without which no further growth can be, and not until you have this succession of Akasha, which can take form from Breath, which can give form to Electricity, which can build into aggregation, until this there does not become possible atomic constitution, from which you may have your water and earth, or the liquid and solid  manifestations of that which hitherto has been the so-called “immaterial”. And notice how that suc­cession is, as it were, guaranteed to us intellectually by the senses of man; see how the first is corre­lated with the sense of hearing, how the second with both sound and touch, the second sense; how with the fire there comes light which is correlated with vision, so that then you have sound and touch [29] and vision; how then there comes water which is correlated with taste, because without moisture taste cannot be, and the four are present; and, lastly, earth, whose essential characteristic is smell, the last of the senses to be evolved in the physical, and therefore the first of the senses to be found on the astral plane when the soul is passing backwards to seek itself. H. P. Blavatsky, of course following this, has already pointed out that the Akasha is that which is generated from the Third Logos, and that it’s only characteristic is Sound. But here at once comes in our Modern Science, and in this conception of the Akasha in which is working the great Breath, so that by the Akasha and Vayu Agni may appear, we find ourselves face to face with the very latest theories and discoveries of Science, and with that genesis of the elements­ which is only another term for the building of the Kosmos - which you may study in Western lan­guage in the writings of Mr. Crookes. Madame Blavatsky in the first volume of The Secret Doc­trine wrote to a considerable extent on these dis­coveries of Crookes so far as they had been published when that book was written; but she pointed out that there were some points which still were lacking. And it is noticeable that only just at the end of her life - it was in 1891, only a couple of months before her death - Mr. Crookes, speak­ing before an audience of the picked Scientists of England, stated that that which had been a [30] hypo­thesis, had become a certainty, and that he was now able to put forward as definitely ascertained theories, things which before he had only been able to suggest as hypotheses which might be useful as a guide to discovery. And what is this great dis­covery of his which it was said by one of those who listened to him would put his name on a level with the greatest thinkers and the greatest Scien­tists of our time? It was the discovery that the atom was not eternal, that the atom was produced and not primary, that it was destructible, and therefore had come into existence - for only that which is indestructible is eternal, as every Philo­sophy will admit. And he showed that the atom must be looked upon as dual, that it must be re­garded as a neutral body formed by the joining of the positive and negative elements in Nature, and that the atom was permanent just because of its duality, because as it were the two were knit to­gether, and that gave it its stability and its power to act as the brick, so to speak, in the building of the world; and then behind the atom he placed what he called “the protyle”, borrowing the name from an Occultist of mediaeval Europe, Roger Bacon, who had used the same word to denote the primeval substance. When he wanted to trace how these atoms were builded, then he found himself com­pelled to posit protyle as primeval substance. Note how the professor closely followed on the line of ancient thought, when he found himself obliged to [31] posit Motion - that is, the great Breath, which is the second element after Akasha, without which the Akasha would remain motionless and therefore without generating anything. Having protyle and motion, he then posits the third, that is the force allied to electricity, which he says traces for itself a spiral course through the space filled with matter. As this spiral course is traced, atom after atom is generated by the aggregation of the protyle; and so all these atoms are formed, falling into definite chemical classes according to the position that they hold in the spiral which is traced by the electrical force. And the spiral is a necessary form; why? First you have motion; imagine the motion is in one direction. As that motion in one direction proceeds through homogeneous matter, it compresses the matter together; and as the mat­ter solidifies, it loses heat. It is a familiar fact that such a fall of temperature must occur; it is one of the most familiar experiments in elementary chemistry, that where matter passes from one state to another, from gas to liquid, from liquid to solid, or from solid to liquid, liquid to gas, that according to the process of the change heat is either given out or else becomes latent. To take the common illustration, if ice becomes water, heat becomes latent to an extent of what is called 8o units, before there is any change in the outer appearance or temperature of the ice. So when the temperature changes with the solidifying of the elements, what [32] must be the result? The result must be that the line representing the motion must change its direc­tion; and with the fall of temperature there will be a change in motion; if you want to represent it, you must no longer have the straightforward line, but one which is the resultant of two com­bined forces moving in different directions, there­fore the necessary tracing of a spiral; so that the  ancient symbol of the Serpent, so familiar in our literature - the Serpent of which I shall have some­thing to say tomorrow - is the most significant symbol of the spiral coiling itself continually, and it thus gives us the very picture of the Kosmic Motion. It is that which our great Scientists were obliged to make when generalizing force in the Kosmos, and the genesis of the elements comes about by this spiral or serpentine motion. This motion H. P. Blavatsky calls the spiral motion of Fohat in Space, for Fohat underlies all forces, and by it the force of electricity is generated.

With this there comes Sound. You cannot have Motion in Matter without generating vibration; and all vibration is fundamentally Sound; all vibration is changeable into Sound, transmutable into Sound; and the old phrase that the Serpent glides hissing through Space carries with it a very real signifi­cation. Therefore is it that the first property gene­rated in Akasha is Sound - the Word, the Logos; and you may remember there again how Subba Rao has put this very plainly and very beautifully [33] when he is speaking of the uttered Sound, of the  uttered Word, where he speaks of Fohat as instru­ment of the Word, and where he points out to us that that which we utter is the Vaikari Vach - that is “the whole Kosmos in its objective form”[6]; for the whole Universe is but the uttering of the Word which is latent in the unmanifested Logos, and which is spoken in the second Logos; it is this spoken Word which is the objective Kosmos. So alike in Kosmos and in man is this power of Sound - Sound without which form cannot be, Sound which is the builder of form, which generates form,  every Sound having its own form, and every Sound being of this triple character, that it generates form, that it upholds form, that it destroys form. Thus, once again, the Trimurti appears, the Crea­tor, the Preserver, the Destroyer; they are all One in different aspects, for the Divine is One, what­ever the form of Its manifestation. And here in­deed may we bring together ancient and modern thought; Shabda Brahman is the force that builds the Kosmos, but it is also the force by which a Yogi brings about all the powers within himself; and so, as I say, taking our Western Science, we can now bring, in support of this form - building power of Sound, a number of what are called facts, which to some persons are more convincing than those deeper realities of which the fact is only the phenomenal expression. These facts which Modern [34] Science has gathered with respect to Sound, are valuable to us, not as teaching us - they ought not to have anything to teach us - but as enabling us to convince others who have not understood the value of the Scriptures, though the Scriptures give the essence of which Science only gives the outer manifestation. What then are some of those facts which substantiate the position of the ancient writers that Sound lies at the very origin of forms, and that the multiplicity of forms simply depends upon the variety of the sounds. First, we shall find one of the earliest experiments with regard to Sound - one of the clumsiest, although at the time it seemed beautiful enough. Take, for instance, an ordinary drum, so that in the parchment head of this drum you have a vibrating surface. If you take the bow with which you throw the strings of a violin into vibration, and draw this bow across the edge of the parchment, then a note is given out - a note which depends of course on the ten­sion in the parchment and various other matters which are not important to us. That is simple enough; but it was thought desirable to try to dis­cover what happened when the note was given out; and in order that that which is invisible might be made visible, sand was lightly scattered over the surface of the drum; then the bow was drawn across the edge of the circle of the drum, and this experiment was done over and over again at every point in this circle which was the circumference of [35] the drum. Let me say in passing that European Science is admirable in its patience, in the way in which it repeats over and over again until it gets the fact; in that it is worthy of our admiration, for in that fashion only can these phenomenal facts be discovered. In every portion of the circumfer­ence that was experimented upon, it was found that as the bow was drawn across, the sand was thrown up in the air, but it was also found that when it came back it did not fall evenly over the surface, but formed a geometrical figure. So that the sand spread over the parchment was by sound compelled to assume definite geometrical shapes, different as the notes were changed in character by bowing different points in the circumference. As different intervals in the circumference gave out different harmonics of the fundamental note, it was found different shapes were produced; that at first, touching it at a particular point, you will only get the drum divided into four, because that is the fun­damental note given out by the parchment vibrat­ing as a whole. When you make it vibrate in harmonics you have geometrical shapes of a far more elaborate character. And following out these investigations of harmonics - as they were called­ - we discover that in every note that is sounded, you have not got a single sound but a very com­plex sound that can be divided and subdivided. What seems to us simple is complex; when you strike a note you are sounding a large number of [36] notes at the same time, and the highly trained ear can discover such harmonics; it is the difference of harmonics that gives difference of quality to the sound. Now it is found that the difference of quality, or this splitting-up of one sound into many, was shown to the eyes by the shapes that were traced by this falling of the sand. They then began to get out this difference in a more delicate way, for the sand was a heavy substance, and this parchment was rather a clumsy vibrating material, so that they got more delicate substances, and lighter and lighter finely-divided stuff, such as delicate seeds or the spores of the Lycopodium. This is one of the best things to experiment with, because it is so very light that a very fine vibration throws it into forms. Then they tried tuning-forks - steel forks which, vibrating, give different notes. They obtained the vibrations by means of mirrors ar­ranged to throw a traced picture of the vibrations by the magic lantern through a magnifying lens on to a sheet; and in this way the invisible vibra­tions of the tuning-fork were traced and magnified  and were there seen to form beautiful geometrical designs. On the sheet on which the image from the magic lantern was thrown, it was found that every note gave rise to exquisite forms, which were changed as the note was changed, so that really whenever you are playing any piece of music you are forming the most exquisite shapes in the ether and the air around. That is the way in which [37] pulses of sound are in these ingenious fashions made visible to the eye by throwing them from the magic lantern on to the screen; so that the invisible was made visible, and the power of Sound was made manifest to the eye as well as to the ear.

Still further investigations were made, and Mrs. Watts-Hughes proved that when notes were sung into a horn-shaped instrument and a succession of notes thus sounded, more elaborate forms could be builded, forms such as ferns, trees, and flowers - ­all these were generated by the notes of the human voice. In order still further to analyze and see how this was done, a clever instrument was in­vented, in which two pendulums were set swinging, each of the pendulums having its own motion. These pendulums were made to interact with each other, and the motion of one pendulum modified the motion of the other; from these pendulums with their interacting motions, with a pencil at­tached by means of a lever which could be moved in the resultant direction obtained from the two pendulums, most elaborate forms were traced on a card put under the point of the pencil, so that successive motions might be observed; and most marvellously complicated forms were thus obtained, forms like shells of the most elaborate descrip­tion, geometrical shapes perfect in their angles and perfect in their curves. Now as the vibrations of a note are always in one direction, and as the pendulum motions were simply swinging [38] backwards and forwards, the interferences of the pen­dulums, which were made to modify each other, were really the reproduction of the true vibrations interfering with each other or modifying each other. Thus was obtained a graphic picture of the modifications which might be caused by vibrations which were interfering, although each separate one was in one direction; and you find that the result of the interference was this marvellous elaboration of form; and just similarly to that, you find that  the result of the interference of the light-waves is colour. Wherever you break up light-waves and thus make one interfere with another, you get colour coming forth and manifesting itself; so that what we call colour in mother-of-pearl is only the result of a very delicate roughness in the surface which makes interference of the light vibrations with each other; by these pendulums were shown the interference of the vibrations of Sound. So Science has shown us how forms are builded by Sound, and looking at the outside of Nature, we are struck by the strange fact that everywhere we find geometrical shapes. Take the crystal which is found in the mineral world. Every crystal is builded along certain axes of direction. Every crystal takes its shape from these axes of direction. The simplest crystals are built on the simplest lines, and the more elaborate the crystal the more numerous will be the axes which have their centre in the middle of the crystal. Each crystal is built [39] along these axes, and the difference of the crystals depends upon this fundamental arrangement of the axes; so that in the building of the crystals in the mineral world geometrical shapes appear once more. But you cannot separate the crystal from the crystalloid. The crystalloid is like the form of the crystal in the mineral world, but it is found in the vegetable world. No longer is the mineral in Nature divided from the vegetable world, but in the vegetables these bodies are formed of a different kind of material and they are not called crystals but crystalloids. Here again these axes appear and the same suggestion of geometrical form on which the vegetable world is to be built. When we study the vegetable world we go still further. Take for instance a twig of a tree; note and study the arrangement of the leaves on it. You will find that the leaves are arranged in a spiral. The spiral, coming forth once more as the generating force, directs the arrangement of the leaves; sometimes very simple, sometimes very complicated. Take a very simple case like that of the apple tree - which is very familiar to us in England - where the spiral is what we call 2/5; in this the spiral has a double turn, and there are five leaves, which are placed on the points, so to speak, of the spiral, until you have to begin again when five are complete. You will find, if you take a bit of string and twist it twice round the stem or twig of the tree, that on this spiral you have, touched five leaves which are [40] arranged at equal intervals on the string. If you take another kind of plant you will find a different arrangement, but still the spiral; another plant will have another and different arrangement, but still the spiral; so that when the plant is sending out its leaves, it is always working under this law of spiral arrangement, and there is this geometrical rule which governs the apparently irregular sending forth of leaves and flowers. There is no irre­gularity; the most apparently irregular arrangement is only a complicated series of interlacing spirals; for sometimes instead of one spiral you have two; in a few cases you have three spirals, and these three by going round the stem, interlacing, make extremely complicated arrangements which look like confusion; but “that which is Chaos to the senses is Kosmos to the reason”. You will always find this geometrical arrangement underneath the apparently chaotic heaps which you may observe by the eye or the senses. Is it not true as Plato said, that “God geometrizes”? Is not this the fundamental conception of the Scriptures, that Sound-vibration is the builder of form? Is that not justified by these discoveries of Modern Sci­ence?

Not only can Sound build; Sound can also de­stroy. Strange that the same force should produce opposite results. People have laughed at it, when it is said in Religion. They are obliged to admit it, when Science repeats what Religion so long has [41] said. That which in Religion is incredible contradiction, in Science has to be reconciled by the discovery of the unifying truth. Why cannot we apply the same theory in Religion when we find what seems to be contradiction? Why cannot we study and seek for that underlying truth, which will make the apparent contradictions but aspects, as the two sides of one shield? Thus the builder of form destroys it; and whereas gentle vibrations build, vehement vibrations tear apart that which the gentle ones have brought together. Inasmuch as no form is solid, but every form consists of molecules with spaces between them, the vibration of the Sound going between the molecules makes them vibrate more and more strongly, throws them further and further apart, until the time comes when the attracting force which keeps them to­gether being overcome, they shoot out and the form becomes disintegrated.

If you take a glass, and you discover its funda­mental note - as you may very easily do by half filling it up with water, and drawing a bow across it, and seeing how the water is divided - when you discover the fundamental note, produce that note on some instrument from which you are able to obtain great intensity and loudness of sound; then your glass first will give out the note and you can hear it coming from the glass; you will see the water in the glass thrown into vibration though no one has touched it. The sound grows louder, and the wave­ [42] lets of the water that show you how it is acting get bigger and bigger, become more and more tur­bulent, until dashing against each other they make wave tumults instead of harmony, and then the vibrations of the molecules of the glass which cause all these movements in the water become too great for the glass to stand them; it shivers in every direction. So again Tyndall has taken a glass rod, and rubbing it gently has produced a sound; but making that sound intense, the rod has shivered and disappeared: there were only circular fragments of the glass rod, showing the power of the note which the glass itself had generated. So that everywhere we have the proof that Sound can disintegrate form and can create form; as you see, Sound may act either as builder or preserver or destroyer; for preserver I say it is, since without Sound nothing exists. Everything is in constant motion; one sort of motion builds the form, another preserves the form, a third destroys the form; and the destruction of one form is only the building of another. That which is destroyer in one shape is creator in another. There is no annihilation; for every death in one sphere is a birth into another. So let us finish this rough sketch of this part of the building of the Kosmos and of the power of Sound, by showing how it justifies what has been called superstition and folly, and the mere bab­blings of an ignorant people with regard to the uses of Sound! As long as there has been a Hindu faith, [43] the power of Sound has been recognized in the sacred Word; in that Word lie all potencies; for the sacred Word expresses the One and only Being, every power of generation, of preservation and of destruction. Therefore has been forbidden the careless use of that Word; therefore forbidden its use amongst mixed audiences; therefore should it never be sounded where many people are gathered together, and where mingling and hostile magnetisms are making a confused atmosphere, so that any great sound thrown into it must cause tumult and not harmony; therefore was it never to be sounded save when the mind was pure; never to be sounded save when the mind was tranquil; never to be used save where the life was noble; because the sound that working in the harmonious builds, working in the inharmonious destroys; arid every­thing that is evil is tumultuous, while everything which is pure is harmonious. For the great Breath, which is purity, goes forth in rhythmical vibration, and all that is one with that rhythm is essentially pure and therefore harmonious. But when the great Breath, working on Matter, finds friction, then it is that impurity is set up, and if man in his own atmosphere - using that breath which comes out from him, which is the reflection of the Supreme Breath - is impure, that is, inharmonious, then to sound the name of the Supreme under these cir­cumstances is to invite his own destruction, his own disintegration, for he throws the very force of [44] the Divine into disharmony. What then can he do but destroy that which has nothing in common with the divine harmony? And this is true not only of the sacred Word, but of the mantra that is used to build. Why is it - have you ever thought of it - that when a new life is to be builded within the womb of the mother, mantras are repeated? Why? In order that their building forces may work on the growing life and that it may be thrown into harmonious vibrations, so that that which shall be born may be worthy to be the habitation of a noble Soul. Why is it that from the moment of conception, religion begins for the Hindu? It is because the Spirit must never be without Reli­gion, because, when the Spirit is coming towards its human birth, it is necessary that these forces of Religion should surround it, and help in the building of its earthly home. And so also with sacred Sound the new-born life is welcomed in its very incoming into this world of manifestation; that the sacred harmony may surround it, and give it the impulse in the birth hour, which shall send it on towards harmonious development. Step by step this harmony is to mould the growing life, and when the time comes that the Spirit can work more directly on the physical body, you mark it by the ceremony of initiation which gives to the child the mantra which is to be the key-note of the future life. Therefore the mantra should come from one who knows the key-note of that life, and [45] is able to give it the sounds which are wanted to keep it harmonious right through life. Here comes in this great preserving power of Sound; so that whenever that life is in danger this Sound may protect; whenever that life is threatened by visible or invisible menace, that murmur of the muttered mantra may come between it and the dan­ger, making around it waves of harmony, from which every evil thing shall be thrown back by the force of the vibrations. Let any foe come against it, that foe is flung backwards when it touches these vibrations. And so onwards again right through life to the death hour. Every morning through life that chanted mantram shall give the key-note to the day, and the whole day shall be made har­monious and be brought into rhythm with the sound with which the day has begun; and when the day closes and the sun is sinking once more, the chant should be resounded, so that the dishar­mony of the day may be rendered harmonious, and the Spirit may be made fit to go onwards in the night time towards its Lord. And when the death hour has come and the Spirit must pass onwards into other regions of the universe, the chanted mantram accompanies it. In the ceremonies of Shraddha there are used special sounds which shall break the bondage-house of the Soul, and which shall destroy the body generated on the other side of death which keeps the Soul in prison. So to the very threshold of Devaloka, Sound [46] accompanies it, until it passes into that Loka where the chants of the Devas shall ever surround it in its sojourning with an ocean of harmony, which is not mingled with the discord of the earth; shall there keep it in perfect rest and perfect bliss till the word comes to go backward to the earth, in order that it may serve as harmonizer of Nature once again. [47]

 

THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS.

 

II. - FIRE.

 

 

My BROTHERS, - We saw yesterday, in dealing  with the building of the Kosmos, that the great Breath was the moving agent, and that that Breath gave to the Akasha its property of Sound, its pri­mary characteristic. Now looking at things either from the standpoint of Eastern knowledge or from that of modern Western investigation, we find that  the differences between what are called the reports of the senses are differences in the translation by the consciousness of outside impulses, those im­pulses being fundamentally the same. The result of the great Breath, throwing the Akasha into action, may be translated in different ways, when it reaches our consciousness, according to the fashion in which we sensate it. So that it is true to say either from the Eastern or from the Western standpoint that sensations differ according to the organ that receives them, the differences being caused by the body through which the sensations [51] are received, the consciousness translating into different tones that which fundamentally is the same. So, in studying Western Science you will learn that all senses belonging to the body are developed from a primary sense, and that the primary sense is that which is called the sense of touch.

There has lately been much investigation into the nature and action of ether, which is the lowest form of what we know as Akasha. For Akasha is the primary substance of which ether is one of the lower manifestations in connection with our own solar system. That substance has Motion, as we saw yesterday; but the Air is the great Breath in the Akasha, and it is that which gives rise to this feeling of touch. We saw Sound was evolved, with which hearing is correlated, and then we have touch, correlated with Vayu, as the great Breath. All these vibrations in the ether, from the stand­point of Modern Science, are but modes, as they are called, of motion; and the reception of the mode of motion by the individual decides the name which shall be given to it. Thus Modern Science teaches that Sound is one mode of motion in which air takes part. Light is another mode of motion, purely ethereal, it is said. Lately electricity has been recognized as another mode of motion. Heat is another mode of motion, and so on. Thus there has gradually appeared in Western Science that sense of unity which has always characterized knowledge in the East; so that everything which [52] in the phenomenal has a different appearance assumes to the consciousness this fundamental unity. Therefore in dealing with Light we are only dealing with another aspect in consciousness of primary motion, and that which from one aspect to us is Sound, in another aspect to us is Light. Therefore it will be reasonable to expect, as we shall indeed find, that the same fundamental con­ceptions are expressed at one time as Sound and at another time as Light, and that everywhere in the Kosmos, sound and colour are interchangeable, as I shall show you that they have been proved to be phenomenally interchangeable by some of the latest experiments which have been carried on in the West. Taking then the vibration known as Light as that which is to occupy our thought this morning, that Light would be the synonym in all the ancient books for THAT which is beyond con­ception, THAT which we spoke of yesterday as only to be expressed - if I may use again an inaccurate phrase - by the descriptive phrase Para Brahman, or beyond Brahman. “Darkness” is the word which in the Scriptures is always used to convey to us this primary thought - Darkness infinite and  complete; which expresses nothing, for it is beyond the possibility of expression; which conveys no idea, because idea is limitation and implies separa­tion of that which is thought from that which is not thought, and in this there can be no separa­tion; there is no thought, because thought means [53] that difference has appeared; and therefore Dark­ness, in which there is neither the visible nor the invisible, is the best symbol - Darkness, absolute, eternal, incomprehensible; it is that which is be­hind every manifestation of Light, as of everything  else which we can put into human language. And from the Darkness first is Light - but Light form­less; visible indeed, as coming into manifestation, but without form, for form would imply still some­thing beyond it; space which has no form. So that Brahman is described as “luminous without form”, the pure idea of Light, an idea which needs, of course, that use of the imagination which we spoke of, because to us it is always the light - giving body of which we conceive; whereas here you must not conceive of a body, you must not con­ceive of a form, you must think of Light divorced from everything which would limit it, and there­fore '”luminous without form” - as you will find Brahman spoken of in the Mundakopanishad[7]. That, then, will be the first idea: Darkness, and from that, Light.

And, strangely enough, in this conception of things Modern Science has also a word to say; for taking the conception of Motion with which we have connected the great Breath, darkness is con­sistent with motion from the standpoint of human consciousness. Light is indeed a form of motion, but vibration, which is too rapid or too slow to give [54] light, gives us darkness - a most significant fact, if for a moment you let it rest in the mind that where you think of vibrations so rapid that they cannot be sensed by the eye, there darkness is the answer of consciousness to this exceedingly rapid vibra­tion. In truth, beyond human consciousness as now existing, there is possibility - and we cannot say that there may not be endless possibilities - of existence beyond that which our senses can sen­sate. Thus Science tells us that vibrations so in­tensely rapid that the eye cannot answer to them will be translated to the consciousness as darkness, and only with the slackening of the vibration will there be light. Now translate that scientific thought into metaphysical language, and you have the very coming into manifestation of the universe; for as that which is beyond thought slackens itself for manifestation, then it becomes manifested as Light. And so even in the visible universe you will find that we have that which is truly in its essence light, but which shows no light - because the waves are too rapid; and we have to slacken those rapid vibrations by throwing them through a particular preparation, if we desire that luminosity should appear. So that when the universe is to become manifested and substance is to evolve, as it were, there is slackening of the Motion in the Infinite Darkness, and with the slackening of its vibrations Light without form appears. It seems as though we have had from the West a suggestion of the [55] depth of this ancient Eastern thought, and as though Western thought in its experimental fashion were groping towards the very idea which we find at the beginning of things in the Eastern books.

From this radiance, which is without form, from this luminosity, which is Light in its essence mani­festing itself - it is sometimes called “cold Flame” so as to exclude even the notion of heat from this pure Light - we have that second manifestation, the Second Logos which we spoke of yesterday, and then the Light becomes Fire. No longer abso­lutely formless, no longer without heat; but with the further slackening of the Light, as manifestation proceeds, there will be generated heat, and you will then have Fire, of which the essence is heat, and the cold, formless Flame will become the Fire which is the active agent in the building of the Kosmos. But Fire cannot appear alone, its very nature implying as it does something more than the Light whence it springs, implying that by fric­tion heat must come into existence; also it involves the further conception of that duality which we spoke of yesterday when we were dealing with the dual manifestation under Sound; and so when we have Fire, we cannot think of it without its action, and always the first action of Fire is the develop­ment of moisture. So that in this Second Logos or manifestation in the dual form, Fire and Water are the two things that come to us in thought; Fire which is Spirit in its essence, Water which is [56] always the symbol for the essence of Matter; and just as we found Spirit-Matter the Second Logos, and found there the very origin of the possibility of Sound, so looking at it from the standpoint of Light, we have this conception of Fire and Water, of the Light of the Logos and that in which it works. Of this the Lotus has ever been the sym­bol, growing out of the navel of Vishnu, hidden beneath the waters from which life is to spring;  for that Vishnu, who is not floating on the waters but is concealed beneath them, is in this aspect the First Logos, and the Lotus that grows upward from his navel is the Second Logos, and is the symbol of Fire and Water; for in the Lotus leaves, rising to a point, you have the upward-springing flames, and they float on the water. And the Lotus has been ever held as the symbol of Creative Fire, in the womb of which is to be generated heat, the active creative force. Therefore within the Lotus blossom, or the Lotus bud as it is at first, there is the Third Logos, Brahma, or the active creative agency, which is synonymous with Mahat, or the  creative intelligence in the womb of the Fire; and as the Fire opens out then there comes the second form of Flame which is creative, not the cold Flame of the First Logos, but the burning Flame of the Third, which from the Sea of Fire is to build up the Kosmos, and make the universe possible.

And when we turn to the light that has been [57] thrown on this ancient and not difficult conception for those who have carefully studied - when we turn to the writings of Madame Blavatsky, we shall find that this is very clearly put; so that taking these as a clue, we are able to unravel the symbolism to which we have just now referred. For Fire she uses ether in its purest form, the substance of ether, before we can speak of it as Akasha. And there are two Fires, and a distinction is made between them in the Occult teaching; the first, purely formless and invisible, is concealed in the Central Spiri­tual Sun, and is spoken of as triple, metaphysically. There again we have the triple nature of the Logos in which these Fires body themselves forth, and then the Fire manifesting as Kosmos which is to be septenary, both throughout the universe and our solar system; exactly the same as we found yesterday, where we had the triple unfolding itself into seven. And here we have the formless Flame - the cold Flame or Light - the Fire, and then the Heat or the creative Flame, the same symbolism under another aspect, the same essential idea given in another form. Therefore always have we learnt that the Light of the Logos, Daiviprakriti, or the brilliant side of Substance, has been the generative and creative agent; and you must remember that dealing with the symbolic Lotus that I alluded to, you have heard of it as hermaphrodite, bringing back the same idea of duality into our thought, that yesterday we found as the characteristic of the [58] Second Logos or the second manifested energy which is to build the universe. From this you get that force which in its lower forms is electricity, magnetism, and heat; but another kind of motion still, but another action of the great Breath, and it is that which in Theosophical literature is so often spoken of as Fohat - rightly translated by Subba Rao as the Light of the Logos; for it is the ener­gizing agent, it is that which, springing forth, has to build the Kosmos, that Fiery Serpent which is the creative agency. You must remember how I yesterday spoke of this, and how I alluded to it in the latest discoveries of Mr. Crookes as symbolizing electricity, and the way in which the spiral form was produced owing to the fall in temperature; here we see it as the Fiery Serpent, and as the Fiery Dragon in the milky ocean breathing forth Fire, and so building all forms of manifestation. Wherever you see the Serpent of Fire, wherever you see it becoming a circle with the tail in its mouth, then it is that you have passed from the spiral which generates to the globe which is the result of the generation; and the Serpent turning on itself, taking the tail into the mouth, that sym­bol is the Kosmos evolved. It has formed into the globe which everywhere is the Kosmos in its mani­fested shape. So the Serpent becomes the Egg; then from that emerge the later forms in the Kosmos; and within that Egg sometimes instead of within the Lotus you will have Brahma, the [59] creative agency. He is in the Golden Egg, which is but another symbol for the Lotus: he lives in that Egg for a while; then, coming forth from it, he creates the worlds. Hence again the symbolism of the Serpent twining round the mountain, in that churning of the ocean of substance from which, as you read in the Puranas, life and immortality and other things were generated; so that, as I have sometimes said, if the learned amongst you would take the Puranas and, studying them, would com­pare with them some of the statements of our Modern Science, you would be able to predict the  line of scientific discovery, and in this fashion you would justify to the West, as nothing else could do, the deeper nature of the Oriental thought, showing the West the lines along which it should  study and the way in which further investigations most wisely might be made.

Let me turn from that to the next point of deep interest that comes to us with regard to the Fire - ­an aspect of the Fire towards man - and the con­nection of the generating Fire in the Kosmos with that which is the root of life in the heart of the individual. Turn to the Mundakopanishad - I think it is the beginning of the second division - you will find the statement that “as from a blazing fire in a thousand ways similar sparks proceed, so, O beloved, are produced living souls of various kinds from the Indestructible One”[8]. What is the real [60] meaning of that shloka? It is from Fire, which we have already seen as the central force in Kosmos, that are thrown out sparks in every direction, when the blazing Fire has reached the stage of Flame. The word “blazing” implies the stage of Flame, for it is only where the fire has begun to blaze that you have flame, and that is the note of the third of the Logoi. But the third of the Logoi is Mahat: that is, It is Intelligence in its very essence; and so we may learn that it is from Brahman as intelligence that these sparks are thrown out which are found within every atom of the Kosmos, so that there might be nothing in the Kosmos which is to be builded which would not have in it the essence of the Divine Life. The spark which is thrown out is the Atma of the atom - which you must remember is not confined to man - the Self not of men alone, but of all beings, the innermost essence of the atom as much as the innermost essence of the highest manifested God: for the universe once more is one, and the spark which is thrown outward from the blazing fire is at the root of everything that ap­pears in manifestation, so that the grain of sand­ - nay, the atoms which compose the grain of sand - has Atma as its essence, and the Akasha as the form; which, binding as it were the ray outgoing from Atma, makes manifestation by limitation and introduces the principle of division into the one. As these sparks fly outwards you have what is called in The Secret Doctrine a “fiery whirlwind” - a [61] most expressive phrase - and this whirlwind pass­ing outwards into space carries ever with it the essence of the one Fire, or the one Life. And as this whirlwind is breaking forth, there are differ­ences in the nature of the sparks which are evolved, not in their essential nature, but in that which they bring with them into manifestation.

And here is hidden one of the greatest of the mysteries, the deepest of the mysteries, of the Occult Teaching, to which I must lead you up step by step; otherwise it will be difficult for some of you at least to follow the thought, if you have not looked beneath the letter of the Sacred Books and tried by a comparison of different passages to find out the hidden meaning that unites them all into one. Follow me step by step as I lead you to the heart of the mystery, which I do not want to state at the outset, lest by suddenly stating it, be­fore leading you up to it, I should cause confusion of thought which might be afterwards difficult to unravel. Conceive the spark coming forth as the spark of the fiery whirlwind; conceive then that it is Atma, and that the ray from this Atma is cut off, as I said, by the Akasha, is separated, so that al­though fundamentally one - Atma is one, and in its oneness lies the hope of our liberation -still in  manifestation it becomes separated, as it were, not from its own standpoint, which is the point from which all the radiating rays are seen as one, but from the other side of manifestation, looked at not [62] immediately as the Light, but as the Akasha that veils Light, and by limiting each ray makes separa­tion, where, essentially, separation there is none. That is, looked at from within, the universe is but one; looked at from without, the universe is manifold: because it is not seen from the standpoint of Atma. It is as though you stood in the central Sun, and saw along each ray, so that every part of the illuminated landscape would come to the eye through all these different rays which, stand­ing in the centre, are seen as one light; but if you were out in the landscape, looking back along the ray, then there would be many rays around you, and you could not see the Sun through any ray save your own. Still you would see the same Sun, for all rays spread outward from the one, and in that fashion there is unity in the centre while there is impossibility of recognizing that unity so long as you are at the circumference of this mighty circle, and see as it were but along one of the rays that lead back to the centre of the whole. Now keeping that thought in mind for a moment, let us take the next step. Every atom has Atma, now called Jiva, and in this sense of the term it is separate, as seen from the standpoint of the manifested individual, and no longer from the  standpoint of the manifested All. This is illusion, this is Maya, which we cannot transcend, and which makes the universe in a very real sense illusory; for, seeing with a vision that deceives us, seeing [63] these separate rays in manifestation, we fail to see the unity from which they spring, and so we often find used an expression which you should no longer misunderstand, where it is said that each atom has its Atma, not as implying fundamental separa­tion, but only separation in manifestation. Having reached that standpoint, let us realize that there is now in this manifesting whirlwind of sparks a differ­ence in nature which seems at first incomprehen­sible. Some of them are, as it were, living Flames - ­conscious and intelligent; out into this manifesting universe which is building they come as Devas. They are Intelligences which have reached a high point of spiritual development, and are far less bounded than the men who are to come into exist­ence later. So that we find that at this early stage of manifestation there is, as it were, a whirlwind of these sparks that manifest high intelligence, so that they will be able to act as living agents of creative energy, and build the Kosmos under this coordinating and controlling force. Thus amongst the first manifestations are these manifestations of the Devas, those that are spoken of under so many names as Indra, Vayu, and so on; those that our Orientalists say in their ignorance are “personified powers of Nature”, personified in an infant civi­lization, personified by the child-thought of man, which, taking the external phenomena in Nature, such as air and sky and light, called them Vayu, Indra and Agni and worshipped them as Gods! [64] Looked at from the true standpoint, it is not that the infant mind of man personified phenomena in Nature. It is that from the Supreme come out these sparks of Fire which are living Intelligences, which come out from Him long before an infant humanity has been born into the world at all, to build for that future humanity the Kosmos that shall be. And though it is said in the West that the folly of the untrained thinker, of infant humanity, personifies natural forces, what is really true is this: that these Devas are behind every pheno­menal appearance, and are the Intelligences that guide everything that we recognize as natural laws. They are entities. They are real existences sepa­rated off from the one Atma in the sense I have ascribed to the word separation, in order that they may build a universe and make that universe intel­ligent from centre to circumference. Phenomena in Nature - what are they? They are the outer appearances of the Devas, and the Deva is at the heart of the phenomenon; as manifestation pro­ceeds more and more, all those in lower and lower grades are gradually evolved, until you get a hier­archy. The lowest appearance that you have on earth is only an illusory covering of the Atma, so that the Soul well trained and developed, in that it is one with the creative force, can manipulate what we call Matter as it chooses, because it can control these Intelligences of which Matter is only an outer garment, and can stand as the manifested [65] God when once it has overcome the illusions of Matter that surround it.

And tracing onwards this great hierarchy the question arises - and here comes our difficulty­ - Why this difference in the manifesting sparks?­ - Why, as they spring forth front the blazing fire, does one appear as Deva? Why another as a lower grade of Deva? Why another as the centre round which a man is builded? Why another as the centre of a grain of sand? Why others as the centres of the atoms of which the grain of sand is builded? How in that unity that you have spoken of is there this possibility of difference in mani­festation? That there is the fact of difference is the first thing to realize. Devas, men, animals, vegetables, minerals, elemental forces - these sur­round us and the difference is clear. The Sons of Light that we read of are the higher Devas - as I said, are the builders of the Kosmos; but we read in the sacred books of some who are called the Sons of Fire. Who are the Sons of Fire? They are the Instructors of infant humanity - those that I spoke of yesterday as teaching the infant race - ­as giving them their Vedas - as giving them all their Sacred Scriptures, as guiding them in their first efforts towards civilization, as being in a very real sense the Teachers of men. What then are they? They are Flames which have clearly brought out with them into this stage of manifestation that highly developed intelligence which enables them [66] to become instructors of others, who are the sparks thrown out that have become incarnated in average  men. It is between men in incarnation, it is be­tween Kumaras and men that some strange differ­ence is suggested. Is it possible that we can discover what it means? Cycles of manifestations, comings and goings of the great Breath, Light that rebecomes Darkness, Darkness that reemerges as Light, Souls that have become differentiated in Matter, and men that climb upwards to their source, and are liberated. They go “never to return”, it is said. If they never return, why these differences in Manvantaras such as our own? Herein comes a point of the Secret Teaching which has been much lost sight of, secret because in the letter only of the published works the truth is concealed, not expressed. For what says the Upanishad about Brahman?

 

He is concealed in the Upanishads, that are concealed in the Vedas.[9]

 

If you want to find Brahman, you must go beneath the words of the Upanishads that are written, and find the secret meaning that underlies them. There the necessity for the Guru comes in. Therefore it was said that if a man was to find Brahman, he must seek and get the great (Teachers) and attend,[10] for the mere word of the Upanishad itself would not reveal the God that was hidden; and it needed the Flame that had developed in [67] order that the spark might burn upwards and itself become a Flame. And so let us seek the secret meaning which underlies the words “never re­turns”.

The spark in man develops (I use the word “man”; meaning average humanity), that spark develops by Tapas - by burning. By what burn­ing? By the fire of knowledge. That is the real meaning of Tapas, and in this “austerity”, as it is translated constantly into English, there is the action of knowledge that burns and that purifies; and as it burns, it burns the outer sheaths of the man in which denser ignorance has its seat; and as one after another is burnt by the fire of knowledge, the Flame becomes more manifest and begins to recognize its own nature. And this spark that was smothered in Matter becomes the Flame that has liberated itself from Matter, and when liberation is complete the Flame becomes one with its source. If you take many flames and bring them together there is only one flame as they touch; for the sub­stance is one and the division between each is lost. But let me go further with this illustration, and  following out that thought, you may conceive the truth very dimly - you cannot conceive it clearly until you have been it, for you know nothing until you become it, you understand nothing until you are one with it. Human knowledge is separation, but Divine Wisdom is unity, and it is only as the outside form of the Flame disappears that it [68] becomes merged in the One. It has not been lost. It has gained infinitely by the many Flames that have rebecome one Flame - and that is liberation. The loss of the limitation which separates you, and the widening out into all knowledge - infinite knowledge which has no limitation, is the essence of knowledge itself. But is that “for ever” in the full sense of the term? It “never returns” from Nirvana? Those of you who have studied deeply, in the light which is thrown on this by those who know, you will have learnt that cycle after cycle is taken as limit, and that each period of non-mani­festation is correlated with the manifestation that precedes it and follows it. As you have day and night taken as symbols of manifestation and non­manifestation, so you have planetary manifestation and absorption, and planetary reemergence and absorption again, and again planetary reemergence, until the time comes for the solar system to pass into non-manifestation. But that is correlated with the length of the solar system, and it again reemerges, having been suspended in manifesta­tion, and brings over to the next manifestation everything which was gathered in the preceding. And just as you learn a lesson in the day and are unconscious of that lesson in the night, but, the  knowledge remaining, when you wake up in the morning you find with you the knowledge which had been acquired the day before; just as the planet passing through its period of Pralaya brings [69] back to its next manifestation all that in the pre­vious one it had gained; just as the solar system with its long life, passing into its long period of non-manifestation, reemerges once more on a higher plane and becomes the solar system of a higher type, so when you deal with a Kosmos as a whole, with the Manvantara in the fullest sense of the term and the Pralaya that succeeds it, so that all Flames have become one and no longer there is differentiation, there is still a thread of Fire con­necting each Flame, and when differentiation is to begin the action is on these threads of Fire that, slowly passing outwards, bring with them the Flame from out the One, and they come out with this thread of individuality which even Pralayas or Nirvanas of varying lengths cannot destroy. The One and the All have come back into manifestation, and the differences in those emerging sparks are differences which in the previous Manvantaras have been gradually developed and have been pre­served even in the apparent destruction. The “never” means the length of the cycle. The “never” does not mean going absolutely out, though I have no words by which I can do any­thing more than make you dimly understand the sense that I am trying to convey. If it were only possible to find a word which would imply a state which is no state at all, and which I can only sym­bolize by taking this image of the union of the many Flames into the One, and yet the possibility [70] of withdrawal and of each Flame bringing out in­dividually its Karma; merged in the central Fire, but what has been called the golden thread persist­ing, and so preserving to the Nirvani the possibility of future growth!

For the life of Brahman is not as the life of man. His Life, as it were, includes the infinite lives that It generates, and each of these is but as the wink of an eye to that Life which is eternal; and though as He out-breathes He breathes out the Flames, and though as He in-breathes He breathes the Flames in once more, still to Him it is but as the wink of an eyelid; and what to us is millions of years is to Him but the shortest space that we can imagine. What from that standpoint can be Nir­vana, or separation of consciousness? What from that standpoint can mean our words of Manvan­tara and Pralaya? It is the Infinite Fire sending out Its Flames into Space and gathering them back into Its Bosom again, and again sending them out in ceaseless undulations; hence the possibility in each successive cycle of diverging manifestations; for each brings back into the next Manvantara whatever it has gathered in the endless Manvan­taras behind. And so we begin to understand that as consciousness can pass into the Turiya state and then return into limitation, so this infinite con­sciousness of the Kosmos may pass inward and then embody Itself once more; and that as we do not lose experience but bring it back into [71] manifestation as we return, so what is true in miniature may be true in some transcendent sense of the In­destructible One, and His eternal life may in some sense grow richer by the innumerable experiences of innumerable Manvantaras. This ever growing evolution to us means growth: what it means to Him, none but Himself can know!

Now see how, in our own Scriptures, there are hints thrown out of that mystery; how you are told of one who is to be the Indra of the next Manvan­tara; how you are told of one overshadowed by Vishnu, who after the overshadowing passed away entered another stage of consciousness, and will re­appear in another Manvantara as the guiding force of that. So you begin to catch the meaning when you read in the Scripture how some great devotees  disappeared beneath the waters, and remained on the bed of the ocean in meditation for ten thousand years and then came back to populate the earth.[11] What are all these but efforts of Teachers to make you understand, if you will develop the intuition to listen, the inner meaning of these symbols, of these nights and days, these recurrent periods of activity and meditation; for Pralaya is the meditation of the whole, and then, out of the waters, it comes  back to populate the Kosmos. So are the worlds peopled by the command of Brahma to some of his sons to go forth and give its population to the [72] earth; for ever in Brahma, the Third Logos, there is the compelling Word which sends out evolved children of his. These Sons of Brahma, these Rishis by whom the work of creation is to be done, must come from somewhere, and you cannot have creation save where there has been slow build­ing upwards beforehand. Those whom today we speak of as the Instructors of the present, in the next Manvantara will have gone onward to systems far higher than the planetary systems which we know; while the victors of the present Humanity, those who are now evolving the spark into Flame, those who by Tapas, by the fire of knowledge, are burning up ignorance and are becoming living Flames, they in the next Manvantara will come forth as the Sons of Fire - no longer as mere sparks thrown outwards, but developed Flames, who are able to build up and to instruct future races.

And now coming back from this I would venture to suggest to each of you who comes here with the desire to learn - not merely to find amusement - I would venture to suggest to any such amongst you - for there will be at least two or three such who come - that you will do well to take that thought and meditate on it for days and weeks and months, until to you it becomes a reality, for there is no other way of getting at the heart of things. You can only get the outer word from me, though I have striven in what I have been saying, [73] to speak from mind to mind as well as from tongue to ear; you will only catch the full force of instruc­tion and thought if you will take it into your own heart and there meditate upon it, evolving what is still concealed within.

Let us pass from that to the simpler question, which I want to give row to the outer world and not to the inner - that which is argument rather than food for meditation, still which will be useful to you in the outer world into which we shall have to go, and to which we should try to carry some light from the inner thought. I said at the very outset that Science recognizing the identity of light and sound, you might find it useful in the outside vindication of the Scriptures to point to many ex­periments which have been made in the scientific world, by which sound has been produced from light and light bas been produced from sound. For instance, it has been discovered by some of our careful experimenters that if you will take a  mass of coloured substance, and throw upon it different rays of light, some one ray will call sound from this coloured mass; that you can literally in the physical universe generate sound from colour, which is light; putting the physical colour into a ball of glass and then throwing upon it physical light, you will find that a low sound will be heard, and so you will transmute a light-ray into a ray of sound. This is an instructive experiment in the lower world which is worth keeping in mind. If [74] you go to one who talks to you jeeringly of the Scriptures in his ignorance, you may show him that in Western Science they are coming back to this notion of identity. Again, when you see in one of your own books that when you want to communicate with the lower Devas you must speak in colour and not in verbal language, what does it mean? It means, if you have learnt the correlations of sound and colour, that what you say to the human brain by means of spoken words which throw the coarser air into motion, you speak to the more ethereal Deva in colour, which throws the astral matter of which his body is composed into vibration. So that what would be word on the physical plane is colour and light on the astral plane. If you want to communicate with a Deva who has no Sthula Sharira, no visible body which answers to the heavier vibrations of the air, you must understand how each sound has its colour, and when you want to communicate, you must generate colour instead of sound, for the language of the lower Gods is the language of colours, and colours to them convey what we call an articulate idea - idea on the mental plane. What speech is in the physical world, colour is in the astral world. When you read that Devas have to be spoken to in the language of colours, they will tell you “that is childish nonsense, foolish superstition; there are no Devas, no language of colours; you are all very foolish and you are talking as in the childhood of [75] the race; it is fetishism, and you use all these words to cover your ignorance of reality”. If they knew a little more - they are beginning to learn - they would find that this language of colours is a reality, and the first step has been taken in this experiment in Paris, when throwing light on coloured objects, they obtained sound.

In clairvoyance, or clear vision, when a note is sounded, a colour is seen; that is in the experience of everyone who has developed the astral sense of sight. Many people are developing it in the West today. There is a strange thing I have not heard of in India, that is found in Egypt. It is possible that it may not be familiar to you that some of the ancient books in Egypt were written in colours, not in the forms of letters as we have in the Sans­krit, which is the very language of the Gods. Many Egyptian books, which were meant for study by  Occult Disciples, were not written in characters as we should say, but were written in colours; the understanding of them among the ancient Egyp­tians came to them from their great Priest-Initiates, who really were great Adepts like the Adepts of India. It is a significant thing that whenever a Sacred Book was ordered to be transcribed, if the colours were in any way altered, the transcriber was punished with death. In later times they only knew that this use of colour was a custom which had come down to them from the great Priests. They kept up the custom when the meaning that [76] underlay the custom had passed away. The real meaning was, that whereas the outsider read the written forms, the Adept read the colours; that which conveyed one meaning by the letters, con­veyed to the Occult Disciple another meaning by  the colour which each letter had; so that they might publish a book which would to those who  were uninitiated convey knowledge which was sim­ply written or spoken, but the Adept taking it and reading it, had given to him that which was know­ledge confined to the Occultists, for he read colours and not shapes, and each successive letter in its own colour had to him an Occult meaning. Thus the secrets of antiquity were preserved for each Initiate, who was able, when he passed his Initia­tion, to take over this ancient knowledge and have it as his own; and that still exists, although of course still hidden. And the language of colours is one of the stages of the training; when the student, the disciple, reads in colours and gains his teaching by different colour sensations, he learns to utilize them for the control of those forces that are known as Devas in our literature. So again you will find it written of the seven-tongued Fire - the seven tongues of Flame - which man has to understand. Turn to the Prashnopanishad, in which you will find the description of the life dividing itself into the vital airs. There it is said of one of these that it has seven Flames.[12] If, then, you turn to the [77] Mundakopanishad, you will have “seven flickering tongues of the fire”, each of which has its own name, and if you read those names you will find several of their names are colours.[13] That gives you the key to the understanding if you will take the passage and meditate on it, instead of trying to reach it by intellectual argumentation; for the key to that passage is in the colour of the flames, and the fact that the life distributes them over the body is a symbol to convey to your thought this hidden meaning: that life, Prana, is the active force of that Atma which has seven powers and becomes a sevenfold force in man. Each tongue of Fire becomes one of the “principles” in man, and when these are reunited in the heart, then the one flame of Atma has been reached.

And so I might take you through much of sym­bolism, through the symbolism of the household and other fires that ought to be familiar to every thoughtful man amongst you. For why are the twice-born to study the Vedas? Certainly not only that they may be able to repeat shloka after shloka; the daily study of the Veda, which is the duty of every twice-born, surely ought to mean that in the study knowledge shall come; when he reads of the five fires that the household fires symbolize in his house, that he should know something of what they mean and be reminded of some of the hidden facts - for why is the one fire kept lighted always, and [78] from that one others are to be lighted? Why may it only be lighted by the bride and the bridegroom, and never be extinguished so long as they both remain in this earthly life? It is the ancient ideal of Hindu marriage. It is recognition of the fact in the spiritual world that when the two rebecome one, when the dual aspects of nature typified in man and woman are to be reunited, they are to form one Spirit, and it is only as they unite that they become Fire; so the outer fire lighted by the two is the symbol of the union of the Spirit that makes them one, not in order that they may find sensual gratification, but in order that they may become  that Prajapati, the creator of the future world. That is the Hindu ideal of marriage - the noblest ideal of marriage that the world has ever known. No matter how much it may have become de­graded, how much it may have fallen, that it is which underlies the idea of marriage in youth before the passions are awake, that the body may not have a share in this union of the Souls and Spirits. That was the great truth on which the custom was builded, and the custom has survived where the knowledge has disappeared. For all men’s Spirits coming into reincarnation come for spiritual growth, and not for mere sensual gratifi­cation; and the Spirits that were to be joined together were not to come together by the im­pulses of passion in youth, that speak through the senses and not through the Spirit, and draw bodies [79] together, no matter how little affinity there may be between the Souls that are within them. There­fore the horoscope was studied, which threw light on the nature of the life that lay before the incarnating Spirit. Therefore that was made the founda­tion of marriage union, and therefore there is a sym­bolic act in your marriage today, that when the bride and bridegroom are to see each other, there is a screen dropped between them so that only the eyes of one may meet the eyes of the other; for in the eye is the dwelling-place of the Spirit, and it is that which should speak from the one to the other, and no other magnetism should then pass between them. This is the ideal that underlay the ancient institution of marriage, and therefore they lighted  together the fire which was the symbol of spiritual union; and therefore it is again that that fire must  never be extinguished while the Spirits remained joined outwardly and within. And therefore if the wife died first, the husband gave to her the fire that she might carry it onwards into the world on the other side of death, that she might come back to him with the fire in her hands, that is, as Spirit, and he might recognize it on the other side of death and know it was his own, and that there also the two Souls were one. Now that is the symbol­ism that underlay the holiest of all ideals of mar­riage, the marriage at which the West of today is scoffing, and which some of the younger amongst you, blinded by your ignorance, would degrade to [80] the lower ideal of the West, instead of purifying it again into the ancient ideal, thus giving back to India what India once had - men and women whom you cannot parallel today, women like those who stand in our ancient literature, noblest and purest and most glorious types of womanhood - types that you cannot find in the records of any other people, even in those pictures of imagination that are drawn by the inspiration of the poet and by the dream of the enthusiast.

Thus you might get the meaning out of the fires so familiar to you all; thus you might learn of the fires that teach you the method of reincarnation; thus you might learn how every symbol means something to the Soul that can see. And so, Brothers, I leave with you for your own thought that which in this discourse has been so imperfectly expressed; and I leave it with the prayer for you and for myself that those Supreme Ones Who are the Fires of the Kosmos, from Whom we have sprung and to Whom we return, that we - that are but sparks that would become Flames - may by aspiration go upwards towards Them, and that as the Flame in our own heart kindles it may kindle again the fire in other Souls. Then in our land of India, the great Gods looking downward shall once more see the Fires ascending towards heaven, not the household fires which remain as symbol, but that Fire of the Spirit which, aspiring upwards towards Their Feet, shall draw us upwards towards [81] Them, and make India again what she should be - ­the very Light of the World, and the Child of the Gods. Aye! her ancient people shall be the Chil­dren of the Gods once more, and when love shall be burning in each heart as Fire, the whole will flame upward to Their throne. [82]

 

YOGA.

 

 

BROTHERS, - In all ages, under every civilization, found within the limits of each religion, there has been an upward yearning of the Spirit of man - an attempt to find union with the Divine. It matters not what the special form of religion to which the devotee may belong; it matters not under what particular name he may worship Deity; it matters not, so far as the inner struggle is concerned, in what way he may try to express or to carry out these longings. The significant fact is that the yearning is there, a constant witness to the world of the reality of the Spirit, a constant witness of the truth of the spiritual life; the only witness, if you speak with accuracy, of the existence of the Divine, either in the universe or in man. For just as water will find its way through every obstruction, in order to rise to the level of its source, so does the Spirit in man strive upwards ever towards the source whence it came. Had it not come from the Divine, it would not seek to rise to the Divine. Were it not that it is the offspring of Deity, it [85] would not strive to reunite itself with Deity; and the very fact that the yearning exists, the very fact that efforts, however ignorant, are made to realize it, is the constant and the perpetual witness of the Divine origin of man, is the perpetual proof of that which we were studying yesterday, that the Spark may re-become the Flame; being Flame in  its origin, it may expand again into Flame, no matter how cramped it has been within the limits of manifestation.

Now the word Yoga, as everyone knows, means “union”. It expresses in a single term everything which the Spirit can desire; for in this word “union” is implied everything; as everything comes from the Divine, so union with the Divine means possession of everything - all knowledge, all strength, all purity, all love; and the one word which implies that union marks the highest aspira­tion which is possible for man. I have said this as­piration is found in every religion. Take one of the most modern of religions, that which is prevalent in the West under the name of Christianity, and you will find there exactly the same attempt towards union that you find carried out so methodically in the most ancient of all religions, the Hindu. The great difference between the two is in the method. You have the aspiration in Christianity; you have not, as a rule, the training; although it is true that within the limits of a single body in the Roman Catholic Church there is some distinct knowledge [86] as to the methods whereby union may be sought. But taking Christianity as a whole, you have aspiration, rather than sustained and deliberate effort. Yet still in reading the lives of the saints, as they are called, you will find from time to time descriptions of a state being reached, which any­one amongst you who has studied the matter would recognize as identical with the state known to us as that of Samadhi, where consciousness passes upward or rather inward, out of the normal and into the Divine. And although that be obtained as it were by the sheer force of devotion, it is still a testimony that under each religion there is the possibility of union; as indeed we might expect to find, when we remember that all Souls are essen­tially one, no matter how much they may be divided by differences of birthplace or by differ­ences of religion. And this, it seems to me, is important; important because it testifies continu­ally to the unity that underlies different faiths, and because it tends to break down the wall of separation, which is such a barrier as far as spirituality is concerned, while it is, to some extent, inevitable as long as we remain in the purely intellectual sphere.

But what I should be prepared to maintain, as a matter of argument and of experience, is the enor­mous advantage of the Hindu religion in that Yoga is there understood in method as well as in object. It is not only that what the Christian calls the [87] “Beatific Vision” is desired, but it is that the method whereby that Vision may be reached is taught, so that the man of the world may, to a great extent, learn the steps which, taken in this life, may in a future incarnation make possible for him an advance in Yoga; while those that are pre­pared for further advance may, by gaining special instruction; learn step by step that which will take  them onwards to the Divine.

Now it is clear that in a lecture like this, which to all intents and purposes is a public lecture - it is clear that the inner side of Yoga must be left practically untouched. Yoga, in the strictest sense of the term, is never taught, save from mind to mind, from Guru to shishya; it is not a matter for the platform, it is not a matter for discussion. Dis­cussion has no place in true Yoga. Discussion belongs to