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T»j PRINCETON, N. J. *Jfc 
 
 Presented by Dr. FTL.PaHo-n 
 
 Division 
 Section ■■ 
 
 JBBS<b5 
 
 3 (el 
 
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ESOTERIC BUDDHISM 
 
LONDON : 
 
 printed by gilbert and rivington, limited, 
 st. john's square. 
 
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM 
 
 BY 
 
 A. P. SINNETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE OCCULT WORLD*' 
 PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON LODGE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 
 
 FIFTH EDITION, ANNOTATED AND ENLARGED BY 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, Limited. 
 
 1885 
 
 [A II rights rese> ve<T\ 
 
PREFACE 
 TO THE ANNOTATED EDITION. 
 
 Since this book was first published in the beginning 
 of 1883, I na ve come into possession of much addi- 
 tional information bearing on many of the problems 
 dealt with. But I am glad to say that such later 
 teaching only reveals incompleteness in my original 
 conception of the esoteric doctrine, — no material 
 error so far. Indeed I have received from the great 
 Adept himself, from whom I obtained my instruction 
 in the first instance, the assurance that the book as it 
 now stands is a sound and trustworthy statement of 
 the scheme of Nature as understood by the initiates 
 of occult science, which may have to be a good deal 
 developed in the future, if the interest it excites is 
 keen enough to constitute an efficient demand for 
 further teaching of this kind on the part of the world 
 at large, but will never have to be remodelled or 
 apologized for. In view of this assurance it seems 
 best that I should now put forward my later con- 
 clusions and additional information in the form of 
 annotations on each branch of the subject, rather than 
 infuse them into the original text, which, under the 
 
vi Preface to the Annotated Edition. 
 
 circumstances, I am reluctant in any way to alter. 
 I have therefore adopted that plan in the present 
 edition. 
 
 As conveying an indirect acknowledgment of the 
 general harmony to be traced between these teachings 
 and the recognized philosophical tenets of certain 
 other great schools of Indian thought, I may here 
 refer to criticisms on this book, which were published 
 in the Indian magazine the Theosophist in June, 1883, 
 by " a Brahman Hindoo." The writer complains 
 that in interpreting the esoteric doctrine, I have 
 departed unnecessarily from accepted Sanscrit nomen- 
 clature ; but his objection merely is that I have given 
 unfamiliar names in some cases to ideas already 
 embodied in Hindoo sacred writings, and that I have 
 done too much honour to the religious system 
 commonly known as Buddhism, by representing that 
 as more closely allied with the esoteric doctrine than 
 any other. il The popular wisdom of the majority of 
 Hindoos to this day," says my Brahman critic, " is 
 more or less tinged with the esoteric doctrine taught 
 in Mr. Sinnett's book, misnamed ' Esoteric Bud- 
 dhism," while there is not a single village or hamlet 
 in the whole of India in which people are not more 
 or less acquainted with the sublime tenets of the 
 Vedanta philosophy. . . . The effects of Kauma in 
 the next birth, the enjoyment of its fruits, good or evil, 
 in a subjective or spiritual state of existence prior to the 
 
Preface to the Annotated Edition, vii 
 
 re-incarnation of the spiritual monad in this or any 
 other world, the loitering of the unsatisfied souls 
 or human shells in the earth (Kama loca), the pra- 
 ayic and manvantaric periods .... are not only 
 intelligible, but are even familiar to a great many 
 Hindoos, under names different from those made use 
 of by the author of ' Esoteric Buddhism/ " So much 
 the better, — I take leave to rejoin, — from the point of 
 view of Western readers, to whom it must be a 
 matter of indifference whether the esoteric Hindoo 
 or Bhuddhist religion is nearest to absolutely true 
 spiritual science, which should certainly bear no name 
 that appears to wed it to any one faith in the external 
 world more than to another. All that we in Europe 
 can be anxious for, is to arrive at a clear under- 
 standing as to the essential principles of that science, 
 and if we find the principles defined in this book 
 claimed by the cultured representatives of more than 
 one great Oriental creed as equally the underlying 
 truths of their different systems,, we shall be all the 
 better inclined to believe the present exposition of 
 doctrine worth our attention. 
 
 In regard to the complaint itself, that the teachings 
 here reduced to an intelligible shape are incorrectly 
 described by the name this book bears, I cannot do 
 better than quote the note by which the editor of the 
 Theosophist replies to his Brahman contributor. This 
 note says : — " We print the above letter as it expresses 
 
viii Preface to the Annotated Edition. 
 
 in courteous language, and in an able manner, the 
 views of a large number of our Hindoo brothers: At 
 the same time it must be stated that the name of 
 'Esoteric Buddhism' was given to Mr. Sinnett's 
 latest publication, not because the doctrine pro- 
 pounded therein is meant to be specially identified 
 with any particular form of faith, but because Bud- 
 dhism means the doctrine of the Buddhas, the Wise 
 i.e. the Wisdom Religion." For my own part I need 
 only add that I fully accept and adopt that explana- 
 tion of the matter. It would indeed be a misconcep- 
 tion of the design which this book is intended to 
 subserve, to suppose it concerned with the recom- 
 mendation, to a dilettante modern taste, of Old World 
 fashions in religious thought. The external forms 
 and fancies of religion in one age may be a little 
 purer, in another a little more corrupt, but they 
 inevitably adapt themselves to their period, and it 
 would be extravagant to imagine them interchange- 
 able. The present statement is not put forward in 
 the hope of making Buddhists from among the 
 adherents of any other system, but with the view of 
 conveying to thoughtful readers, as well in the East 
 as in the West, a series of leading ideas relating to 
 the actual verities of Nature, and the real facts of 
 man's progress through evolution, which have been 
 communicated to the present writer by Eastern 
 philosophers, and thus fall most readily into an 
 
Preface to the Annotated Edition, ix 
 
 Oriental mould. For the value of these teachings will 
 perhaps be most fully realized when we clearly per- 
 ceive that they are scientific in their character rather 
 than controversial. Spiritual truths, if they are truths, 
 may evidently be dealt with in a no less scientific 
 spirit than chemical reactions. And no religious 
 feeling, of whatever colour it may be, need be dis- 
 turbed by the importation into the general stock of 
 knowledge of new discoveries about the constitution 
 and nature of man on the plane of his higher acti- 
 vities. True religion will eventually find a way to as- 
 similate much fresh knowledge, in the same way that 
 it always finally acquiesces in a general enlargement of 
 Knowledge on the physical plane. This, in the first in- 
 stance, may sometimes disconcert notions associated 
 w T ith religious belief, — as geological science at first em- 
 barrassed biblical chronology. But in time men came 
 to see that the essence of the biblical statement does 
 not reside in the literal sense of the cosmological 
 passages in the Old Testament, and religious con- 
 ceptions grew all the purer for the relief thus afforded. 
 In just the same way when positive scientific know- 
 ledge begins to embrace a comprehension of the laws 
 relating to the spiritual development of man, — some 
 misconceptions of Nature, long blended with religion, 
 may have to give way, but still it will be found that 
 the central ideas of true religion have been cleared 
 up and strengthened all the better for the process. 
 
x Preface to the Annotated Edition. 
 
 Especially as such processes continue, will the internal 
 dissensions of the religious world be inevitably sub- 
 dued. The warfare of sects can only be due to a 
 failure on the part of rival sectarians to grasp funda- 
 mental facts. Could a time come when the basic 
 ideas on which religion rests, should be comprehended 
 with the same certainty with which we comprehend 
 some primary physical laws, and disagreement about 
 them be recognized by all educated people as 
 ridiculous, then there would not be room for very 
 acrimonious divergences of religious sentiment. Ex- 
 ternals of religious thought would still differ in 
 different climates and among different races, — as 
 dress and dietaries differ, — but such differences would 
 not give rise to intellectual antagonism. 
 
 Basic facts of the nature indicated are developed, 
 it appears to me, in the exposition of spiritual science 
 we have now obtained from our Eastern friends. It 
 is quite unnecessary for religious thinkers to turn 
 aside from them under the impression that they are 
 arguments in favour of some Eastern, in preference to 
 the more general Western creed. If medical science 
 were to discover a new fact about man's body, were 
 to unveil some hitherto concealed principle on which 
 the growth of skin and flesh and bone is carried on, 
 that discovery would not be regarded as trenching at 
 all on the domain of religion. Would the domain of 
 religion be invaded, for example, by a discovery that 
 
Preface to the Annotated Edition, x 
 
 should go one step behind the action of the nerves, 
 and disclose a finer set of activities manipulating 
 these as they manipulate the muscles ? At all events, 
 even if such a discovery might begin to reconcile 
 science and religion, no man who allows any of his 
 higher faculties to enter into his religious thinking 
 would put aside a positive fact of Nature, plainly 
 shown to be such, as hostile to religion. Being a 
 fact it would inevitably fit in with all other facts, and 
 with religious truth among the number. So with 
 the great mass of information in reference to the 
 spiritual evolution of man embodied in the present 
 statement. Our best plan evidently is to ask, before 
 we look into the report I bring forward, not 
 whether it will square in all respects with precon- 
 ceived views, but whether it really does introduce us 
 to a series of natural facts connected with the growth 
 and development of man's higher faculties. If it does 
 this we may wisely examine the facts first in the 
 scientific spirit, and leave them to exercise whatever 
 effect on collateral belief may be reasonable and 
 legitimate later on. 
 
 Ramifying, as the explanation proceeds, into a 
 great many side paths, it will be seen that the central 
 statement now put forward constitutes a theory of 
 anthropology which completes and spiritualizes the 
 ordinary notions of physical evolution. The theory 
 which traces man's development by successive and 
 
xii Preface to the Annotated Edition. 
 
 very gradual improvements of animal forms from 
 generation to generation, is a very barren and miser- 
 able theory regarded as an all-embracing account of 
 creation ; but properly understood it paves the way 
 for a comprehension of the higher concurrent process 
 which is all the while evolving the soul of man in the 
 spiritual realm of existence. The present view of 
 the matter reconciles the evolutionary method with 
 the deeply seated craving of every self-conscious 
 entity for perpetuity of individual life. The dis- 
 jointed series of improving forms on this earth have 
 no individuality, and the life of each in turn is a 
 separate transaction which finds in the next similar 
 transaction, no compensation for suffering involved, 
 no justice, no fruit of its efforts. It is just possible 
 to argue on the assumption of a new independent 
 creation of a human soul every time a new human 
 form is produced by physiological growth, that in the 
 after spiritual states of such soul, justice may be 
 awarded ; but then this conception is itself at 
 variance with the fundamental idea of evolution, 
 which traces, or believes that it traces the origin of 
 each soul to the workings of highly developed matter 
 in each case. Nor is it less at variance with the 
 analogies of Nature ; but without going into that, it 
 is enough for the moment to perceive that the theory 
 of spiritual evolution, as set forth in the teaching of 
 esoteric science, is at any rate in harmony with these 
 
Preface to the Annotated Edition, xiii 
 
 analogies, while at the same time it satisfactorily meets 
 the requirements of justice, and of the instinctive 
 demand for continuity of individual life. 
 
 This theory recognizes the evolution of the soul 
 as a process that is quite continuous in itself, though 
 carried out partly through the instrumentality of a 
 great series of dissociated forms. Putting aside for 
 the moment the profound metaphysics of the theory 
 which trace the principle of life from the original 
 first cause of the cosmos, we find the soul as an 
 entity emerging from the animal kingdom, and passing 
 into the earliest human forms, without being at that 
 time ripe for the higher intellectual life with which 
 the present state of humanity renders us familiar. 
 But through successive incarnations in forms whose 
 physical improvement, under the Darwinian law, is 
 constantly fitting them to be its habitation at each 
 return to objective life, it gradually gathers that 
 enormous range of experience which is summed up 
 in its higher development. In the intervals between 
 its physical incarnation, it prolongs and works out, 
 and finally exhausts or transmutes into so much 
 abstract development, the personal experiences of 
 each life. This is the clue to the true explanation of 
 that apparent difficulty which besets the cruder form 
 of the theory of re-incarnation which independent 
 speculation has sometimes thrown out. Each man 
 is unconscious of having led previous lives, therefore 
 
xiv Preface to the Annotated Edition. 
 
 he contends that subsequent lives can afford him no 
 compensation for this one. He overlooks the enor- 
 mous importance of the intervening spiritual con- 
 dition, in which he by no means forgets the personal 
 adventures and emotions he has just passed through, 
 and in the course of which he distills these into so 
 much cosmic progress. In the following pages the 
 elucidation of this profoundly interesting mystery is 
 attempted, and it will be seen that the view of 
 events now afforded us in not only a solution of the 
 problems of life and death, but of many very per- 
 plexing experiences on the border-land between 
 those conditions — or rather between physical and 
 spiritual life — which have engaged attention and 
 speculation so widely of recent years in most civilized 
 countries. 
 
Preface to the Original Edition xv 
 
 PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. 
 
 The teachings embodied in the present volume let 
 in a flood of light on questions connected with 
 Buddhist doctrine which have deeply perplexed pre- 
 vious writers on that religion, and offer the world 
 for the first time a practical clue to the meaning 
 of almost all ancient religious symbolism. More 
 than this, the esoteric doctrine, when properly 
 understood, will be found to advance an over- 
 powering claim on the attention of earnest thinkers. 
 Its tenets are not presented to us as the invention of 
 any founder or prophet. Its testimony is based on 
 no written scriptures. Its views of Nature have been 
 evolved by the researches of an immense succession 
 of investigators, qualified for their task by the posses- 
 sion of spiritual faculties and perceptions of a higher 
 order than those belonging to ordinary humanity. 
 In the course of ages the block of knowledge thus 
 accumulated, concerning the origin of the world and 
 of man and the ultimate destinies of our race — 
 concerning also the nature of other worlds and 
 
xvi Preface to the Original Edition. 
 
 states of existence differing from those of our present 
 life— checked and examined at every point, verified 
 in all directions, and constantly under examination 
 throughout, has come to be looked on by its custodians 
 as constituting the absolute truth concerning spiritual 
 things, the actual state of the facts regarding vast 
 regions of vital activity lying beyond this earthly 
 existence. 
 
 European philosophy, whether concerned with 
 religion or pure metaphysics, has so long been used 
 to a sense of insecurity in speculations outrunning 
 the limits of physical experiment, that absolute truth 
 about spiritual things is hardly recognized any longer 
 by prudent thinkers as a reasonable object of pursuit ; 
 but different habits of thought have been acquired in 
 Asia. The secret doctrine which, to a considerable 
 extent, I am now enabled to expound, is regarded 
 not only by all its adherents, but by vast numbers 
 who have never expected to know more of it than 
 that such a doctrine exists, as a mine of entirely 
 trustworthy knowledge from which all religions and 
 philosophies have derived whatever they possess of 
 truth, and with which every religion must coincide if 
 it claims to be a mode of expression for truth. 
 
 This is a bold claim indeed, but I venture to an- 
 nounce the following exposition as one of immense 
 importance to the world, because I believe that claim 
 can be substantiated. 
 
Preface to the Original Edition, xvii 
 
 I do not say that within the compass of this volume 
 the authenticity of the esoteric doctrine can be proved. 
 Such proof cannot be given by any process of 
 argument ; only through the development in each 
 inquirer for himself of the faculties required for the 
 direct observation of Nature along the lines indicated. 
 But his prima facie conclusion maybe determined by 
 the extent to which the views of Nature about to be 
 unfolded, may recommend themselves to his mind, 
 and by the reasons which exist for trusting the 
 powers of observation of those by whom they are 
 communicated. 
 
 Will it be supposed that the very magnitude of 
 the claim now made on behalf of the esoteric doctrine, 
 lifts the present statement out of the region of inquiry 
 to which its title refers — inquiry as to the real inner 
 meaning of the definite and specific religion called 
 Buddhism ? The fact is, however, that esoteric Bud- 
 dhism, though by no means divorced from the asso- 
 ciations of exoteric Buddhism, must not be conceived 
 to constitute a mere imperinm in imperio — a central 
 school of culture in the vortex of the Buddhist world. 
 In proportion as Buddhism retreats into the inner 
 penetralia of its faith, these are found to merge into 
 the inner penetralia of other faiths. The cosmic 
 conceptions, and the knowledge of Nature on which 
 Buddhism not merely rests, but which constitute 
 esoteric Buddhism, equally constitute esoteric Brah- 
 
 a 
 
xviii Preface to the Original Edition. 
 
 minism. And the esoteric doctrine is thus regarded 
 by those of all creeds who are " enlightened " (in the 
 Buddhist sense) as the absolute truth concerning 
 Nature, Man, the origin of the Universe, and the 
 destinies toward which its inhabitants are tending. 
 At the same time, exoteric Buddhism has remained 
 in closer union with the esoteric doctrine than any 
 other popular religion. An exposition of the inner 
 knowledge, addressed to English readers in the present 
 day, will thus associate itself irresistibly with familiar 
 outlines of Buddhist teaching. It will certainly im- 
 part to these a living meaning they generally seem 
 to be without, but all the more on this account may 
 the esoteric doctrine be most conveniently studied in 
 its Buddhist aspect : one, moreover, which has been 
 so strongly impressed upon it since the time of Gau- 
 tama Buddha that though the essence of the doctrine 
 dates back to a far more remote antiquity, the 
 Buddhist colouring has now permeated its whole 
 substance. That which I am about to put before 
 the reader is esoteric Buddhism, and for European 
 students approaching it for the first time, any other 
 designation would be a misnomer. 
 
 The statement I have to make must be considered 
 in its entirety before the reader will be able to 
 comprehend why initiates in the esoteric doctrine 
 regard the concession involved in the present dis- 
 closures of the general outlines of this doctrine as 
 
Preface to the Original Edition, xix 
 
 one of startling magnitude. One explanation of this 
 feeling, however, may be readily seen to spring from 
 the extreme sacredness that has always been attached 
 by their ancient guardians to the inner vital truths 
 of Nature. Hitherto this sacredness has always 
 prescribed their absolute concealment from the pro- 
 fane herd. And so far as that policy of concealment, 
 — the tradition of countless ages, — is now being given 
 up, the new departure which the appearance of this 
 volume signalizes will be contemplated with surprise 
 and regret by a great many initiated disciples. The 
 surrender to criticism which may sometimes perhaps 
 be clumsy and irreverent, of doctrines which have 
 hitherto been regarded by such persons as too 
 majestic in their import to be talked of at all except 
 under circumstances of befitting solemnity, will seem 
 to them a terrible profanation of the great mysteries. 
 From the European point of view it would be 
 unreasonable to expect that such a book as this can 
 be exempt from the usual rough-and-tumble treat- 
 ment of new ideas. And special convictions or 
 common-place bigotry may sometimes render such 
 treatment in the present case peculiarly inimical. 
 But all that, though a matter of course to European 
 exponents of the doctrine like myself, will seem very 
 grievous and disgusting to its earlier and more 
 regular representatives. They will appeal sadly to 
 the wisdom of the time-honoured rule which, in the 
 
 a 2 
 
xx Preface to the Original Edition. 
 
 old symbolical way, forbade the initiates from casting 
 pearls before swine. 
 
 Happily, as I think, the rule has not been allowed 
 to operate any longer to the prejudice of those who, 
 while still far from being initiated, in the occult sense 
 of the term, will probably have become, by sheer 
 force of modern culture, qualified to appreciate the 
 concession. 
 
 Part of the information contained in the following 
 pages was first thrown out in a fragmentary form in 
 the Theosophist, a monthly magazine, published at 
 Madras, by the leaders of the Theosophical Society. 
 As almost all the articles referred to have been my 
 own writing, I have not hesitated to weld parts of 
 them, when this course has been convenient, into the 
 present volume. A certain advantage is gained by 
 thus showing how the separate pieces of the mosaic 
 as first presented to public notice, drop naturally 
 into their places in the (comparatively) finished 
 pavement. 
 
 The doctrine or system now disclosed in its broad 
 outlines has been so jealously guarded hitherto, that 
 no mere literary researches, though they might have 
 curry-combed all India, could have brought to light 
 any morsel of the information thus revealed. It is 
 given out to the world at last by the free grace of 
 those in whose keeping it has hitherto lain. Nothing 
 could ever have extorted from them its very first 
 
Preface to the Original Edition, xxi 
 
 letter. It is only after a perusal of the present ex- 
 planations that their position generally, as regards 
 their present disclosures or their previous reticence can 
 be criticized or even comprehended. The views of 
 Nature now put forward are altogether unfamiliar to 
 European thinkers ; the policy of the graduates in 
 esoteric knowledge, which has grown out of their long 
 intimacy with these views must be considered in 
 connection with the peculiar bearings of the doctrine 
 itself. 
 
 As for the circumstances under which these revela- 
 tions were first foreshadowed in the Theosophist, and 
 are now rounded off and expanded as my readers will 
 perceive, it is enough for the moment to say, that the 
 Theosophical Society, through my connection with 
 which the materials dealt with in this volume have 
 come into my hands, owes its establishment to cer- 
 tain persons who are among the custodians of esoteric 
 science. The information poured out at last for the 
 benefit of all who are ripe to receive it, has been des- 
 tined for communication to the world through the 
 Theosophical Society since the foundation of that 
 body, and later circumstances only have indicated my- 
 self as the agent through whom the communication 
 could be conveniently made. 
 
 Let me add, that I do not regard myself as the sole 
 exponent for the outer world, at this crisis, of esoteric 
 truth. These teachings are the outcome, as regards 
 
xxii Preface to the Original Edition. 
 
 philosophical knowledge, of the relations with the outer 
 world which have been established by the custodians 
 of esoteric truth through me. And it is only regarding 
 the acts and intentions of those esoteric teachers who 
 have chosen to work through me, that I can have any 
 certain knowledge. But, in different ways, some other 
 writers seem to be engaged in expounding for the 
 benefit of the world — and, as I believe, in accordance 
 with a great plan, of which this volume is a part — the 
 same truths, in different aspects, that I am commis- 
 sioned to unfold. Probably the great activity at pre- 
 sent of literary speculation dealing with problems that 
 overstep the range of physical knowledge, may also 
 be in some way provoked by that policy, on the part 
 of the great custodians of esoteric truth, of which my 
 own book is certainly one manifestation. Again, the 
 ardour now shown in "Psychical Research," by the very 
 distinguished, highly gifted, and cultivated men, who 
 lead the society in London devoted to that object, is, 
 to my inner convictions — knowing as I do something 
 of the way the spiritual aspirations of the world are 
 silently influenced by those whose work lies in that 
 department of Nature — the obvious fruit of efforts, 
 parallel to those with which I am more immediately 
 concerned. 
 
 It only remains for me to disclaim, on behalf of the 
 treatise which ensues, any pretension to high finish as 
 regards the language in which it is cast. Longer 
 
Preface to the Original Edition, xxiii 
 
 familiarity with the vast and complicated scheme of 
 cosmogony disclosed, will no doubt suggest improve- 
 ments in the phraseology employed to expound it. 
 Two years ago, neither I, nor any other European 
 living, knew the alphabet of the science here for the 
 first time put into a scientific shape — or subject at all 
 events to an attempt in that direction — the science of 
 Spiritual Causes and their Effects, of Super-physical 
 Consciousness, of Cosmical Evolution. Though ideas 
 had begun to offer themselves to the world in more or 
 less embarrassing disguise of mystic symbology, no 
 attempt had ever been made by any esoteric teacher, 
 two years back, to put the doctrine forward in its 
 plain abstract purity. As my own instruction pro- 
 gressed on those lines, I have had to coin phrases and 
 suggest English words as equivalents for the ideas 
 which were presented to my mind. I am by no 
 means convinced that in all cases I have coined the 
 best possible phrases and hit on the most neatly ex- 
 pressive words. For example, at the threshold of the 
 subject we come upon the necessity of giving some 
 name to the various elements or attributes of which 
 the complete human creature is made up. " Element " 
 would be an impossible word to use, on account of the 
 confusion that would arise from its use in other signifi- 
 cations ; and the least objectionable on the whole 
 seemed to me " principle," though to an ear trained 
 in the niceties of metaphysical expression this word 
 
xxiv Preface to the Original Edition. 
 
 will have a very unsatisfactory sound in some of its 
 present applications. Quite possibly, therefore, in 
 process of time the Western nomenclature of the eso- 
 teric doctrine may be greatly developed in advance of 
 that I have provisionally constructed. The Oriental 
 nomenclature is far more elaborate, but metaphysical 
 Sanscrit seems to be painfully embarrassing to a 
 translator — the fault, my Indian friends assure me, not 
 of Sanscrit, but of the language in which they are now 
 required to express the Sanscrit idea. Eventually 
 we may find that, with the help of a little borrowing 
 from familiar Greek quarries, English may prove 
 more receptive of the new doctrine — or rather, of the 
 primeval doctrine as newly disclosed — than has been 
 supposed possible in the East. 
 
Contents. xxv 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ESOTERIC TEACHERS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Nature of the Present Exposition— Seclusion of Eastern 
 Knowledge— The Arhats and their Attributes — The 
 Mahatmas — Occultists generally — Isolated Mystics- 
 Inferior Yogis — Occult Training — The Great Purpose — 
 Its Incidental Consequences — Present Concessions . . i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 
 
 Esoteric Cosmogony — Where to Begin — Working back 
 from Man to Universe — Analysis of Man — The Seven 
 Principles 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PLANETARY CHAIN. 
 
 Esoteric Views of Evolution — The Chain of Globes — 
 Progress of Man round them — The Spiral Advance — 
 Original Evolution of the Globes — The Lower King- 
 doms 2>7 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WORLD PERIODS. 
 
 Uniformity of Nature — Rounds and Races— The Septe- 
 nary Law — Objective and Subjective Lives — Total Incar- 
 nations — Former Races on Earth — Periodic Cataclysms 
 — Atlantis— Lemuria— The Cyclic Law 55 
 
xxvi Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DEVACHAN. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Spiritual Destinies of the Ego — Karma— Division of the 
 Principles at Death — Progress of the Higher Duad — 
 Existence in Devachan — Subjective Progress— Avitchi 
 — Earthly Connection with Devachan — Devachanic 
 Periods 76 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 KAMA LOCA. 
 
 The Astral Shell— Its Habitat— Its Nature— Surviving 
 Impulses — Elementals — Mediums and Shells — Accidents 
 and Suicides — Lost Personalities 99 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HUMAN TIDE-WAVE. 
 
 Progress of the Main Wave — Obscurations — Twilight and 
 Dawn of Evolution— Our Neighbouring Planets — Gra- 
 dations of Spirituality — Prematurely Developed Egos 
 — Intervals of Re-Incarnation 131 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY. 
 
 The Choice of Good or Evil — The Second Half of Evo- 
 lution — The Decisive Turning-point— Spirituality and 
 Intellect — The Survival of the Fittest — The Sixth Sense 
 — Development of the Principles in their Order — The 
 Subsidence of the Unfit— Provision for All — The Excep- 
 tional Cases — Their Scientific Explanation — Justice 
 Satisfied — The Destiny of Failures — Human Evolution 
 Reviewed 148 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BUDDHA. 
 
 The Esoteric Buddha— Re-Incarnations of Adepts— Bud- 
 dha's Incarnation — The Seven Buddhas of the Great 
 
Contents. xxvii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Races — Avalokiteshwara — Addi Buddha — Adeptship in 
 Buddha's Time — Sankaracharya — Vedantin Doctrines — 
 Tsong-ka-pa — Occult Reforms in Tibet 167 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 NIRVANA. 
 
 Its Remoteness — Preceding Gradations — Partial Nirvana 
 — The Threshold of Nirvana — Nirvana — Para Nirvana — 
 Buddha and Nirvana — Nirvana attained by Adepts — 
 General Progress towards Nirvana — Conditions of its 
 Attainment — Spirituality and Religion — The Pursuit of 
 Truth 186 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 The Days and Night of Brahma — The Various Manvan- 
 taras and Pralayas — The Solar System — The Universal 
 Pralaya — Recommencement of Evolution — " Creation " 
 — The Great First Cause — The Eternal Cyclic Process . 196 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE REVIEWED. 
 
 Correspondences of the Esoteric Doctrine with Visible 
 Nature — Free Will and ^Predestination — The Origin of 
 Evil — Geology, Biology, and the Esoteric Teaching — Bud- 
 dhism and Scholarship — The Origin of all Things — The 
 Doctrine as Distorted — The Ultimate Dissolution of 
 Consciousness — Transmigration — The Soul and the 
 Spirit — Personality and Individuality — Karma ... 210 
 
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ESOTERIC TEACHERS. 
 
 The information contained in the following pages is 
 no collection of inferences deduced from study. I am 
 bringing to my readers knowledge which I have 
 obtained by favour rather than by effort. It will not 
 be found the less valuable on that account ; I venture, 
 on the contrary, to declare that it will be found of 
 incalculably greater value, easily as I have obtained 
 it, than any results in a similar direction which I 
 could possibly have procured by ordinary methods of 
 research, even had I possessed, in the highest degree, 
 that which I make no claim to possess at all — Oriental 
 scholarship. 
 
 Every one who has been concerned with Indian 
 literature, and still more, any one who in India has 
 taken interest in talking with cultivated Natives on 
 philosophical subjects, will be aware of a general 
 conviction existing in the East that there are men 
 living who know a great deal more about philosophy 
 in the highest acceptation of the word — the science, 
 the true knowledge of spiritual things, — than can be 
 
 B 
 
2 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 found recorded in any books. In Europe the notion 
 of secrecy as applied to science is so repulsive to the 
 prevailing instinct, that the first inclination of Euro- 
 pean thinkers is to deny the existence of that which 
 they so much dislike. But circumstances have fully 
 assured me during my residence in India that the 
 conviction just referred to is perfectly well founded, 
 and I have been privileged at last to receive a very 
 considerable mass of instruction in the hitherto secret 
 knowledge over which Oriental philosophers have 
 brooded silently till now ; instruction which has 
 hitherto been only imparted to sympathetic students, 
 prepared themselves to migrate into the camp of 
 secrecy. Their teachers have been more than content 
 that all other inquirers should be left in doubt as to 
 whether there was anything of importance to learn 
 at their hands. 
 
 With quite as much antipathy at starting as any 
 one could have entertained to the old Oriental policy 
 in regard to knowledge, I came, nevertheless, to per- 
 ceive that the old Oriental knowledge itself was a 
 very real and important possession. It may be 
 excusable to regard the high grapes as sour so long as 
 they are quite out of reach, but it would be foolish to 
 persist in that opinion if a tall friend hands down a 
 bunch and one finds them sweet. 
 
 For reasons that will appear as the present explana- 
 tions proceed, the very considerable block of hitherto 
 secret teaching this volume contains, has been con- 
 veyed to me, not only without conditions of the usual 
 kind, but to the express end that I might convey it in 
 my turn to the world at large. 
 
 Without the light of hitherto secret Oriental know- 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 3 
 
 ledge, it is impossible by any study of its published 
 literature — English or Sanscrit — for students of even 
 the most scholarly qualifications, to reach a compre- 
 hension of the inner doctrines and real meaning of 
 any Oriental religion. This assertion conveys no 
 reproach to the sympathetic, learned, and industrious 
 writers of great ability who have studied Oriental 
 religions generally, and Buddhism especially, in their 
 external aspects. Buddhism, above all, is a religion 
 which has enjoyed a dual existence from the very 
 beginning of its introduction to the world. The real 
 inner meaning of its doctrines has been kept back 
 from uninitiated students, while the outer teachings 
 have merely presented the multitude with a code of 
 moral lessons and a veiled, symbolical literature, 
 hinting at the existence of knowledge in the back- 
 ground. 
 
 This secret knowledge, in reality, long antedated 
 the passage through earth-life of Gautama Buddha. 
 Brahminical philosophy, in ages before Buddha, 
 embodied the identical doctrine which may now be 
 described as Esoteric Buddhism. Its outlines had 
 indeed been blurred ; its scientific form partially 
 confused ; but the general body of knowledge was 
 already in possession of a select few before Buddha 
 came to deal with it. Buddha, however, undertook 
 the task of revising and refreshing the esoteric science 
 of the inner circle of initiates, as well as the morality 
 of the outer world. The circumstances under which 
 this work was done, have been wholly misunderstood, 
 nor would a straightforward explanation thereof be 
 intelligible without explanations, which must first be 
 furnished by a survey of the esoteric science itself. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 From Buddha's time till now the esoteric science 
 referred to has been jealously guarded as a precious 
 heritage belonging exclusively to regularly initiated 
 members of mysteriously organized associations. 
 These, so far as Buddhism is concerned, are the 
 Arahats, or more properly Arhats, referred to in 
 Buddhist literature. They are the initiates who tread 
 the " fourth path of holiness," spoken of in esoteric 
 Buddhist writings. Mr. Rhys Davids, referring to a 
 multiplicity of original texts and Sanscrit authorities, 
 says :— " One might fill pages with the awe-struck 
 and ecstatic praise which is lavished in Buddhist 
 writings on this condition of mind, the fruit of the 
 fourth path, the state of an Arahat, of a man made 
 perfect according to the Buddhist faith." And then 
 making a series of running quotations from Sanscrit 
 authorities, he says : — " To him who has finished the 
 path and passed beyond sorrow, who has freed 
 himself on all sides, thrown away every fetter, there 
 is no more fever or grief. .... For such there are 
 no more births. . . . they are in the enjoyment of 
 Nirvana. Their old karma is exhausted, no new 
 karma is being produced ; their hearts are free from 
 the longing after future life, and no new yearnings 
 springing up within them, they, the wise are extin- 
 tinguished like a lamp." These passages, and all 
 like them, convey to European readers, at all events, 
 an entirely false idea as to what sort of person an 
 Arhat really is, as to the life he leads while on earth, 
 and what he anticipates later on. But the elucida- 
 tion of such points my be postponed for the moment. 
 Some further passages from exoteric treatises may 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 5 
 
 first be selected to show what an Arhat is generally 
 supposed to be. 
 
 Mr. Rhys Davids, speaking of Jhana and Samadhi 
 — the belief that it was possible by intense self- 
 absorption to attain supernatural faculties and powers 
 — goes on to say : — " So far as I am aware, no 
 instance is recorded of any one, not either a member 
 of the order, or a Brahmin ascetic, acquiring these 
 powers. A Buddha always possessed them ; whether 
 Arahats as such, could work the particular miracles in 
 question, and whether of mendicants, only Arahats 
 or only Asekhas could do so, is at present not clear." 
 Very little in the sources of information on the 
 subject that have hitherto been explored will be 
 found clear. But I am now merely endeavouring to 
 show that Buddhist literature teems with allusions to 
 the greatness and powers of the Arhats. For more 
 intimate knowledge concerning them, special cir- 
 cumstances must furnish us with the required ex- 
 planations. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Lillie, in "Buddha and Early Bud- 
 dhism," tells us: — "Six supernatural faculties were 
 expected of the ascetic before he could claim the 
 grade of Arhat. They are constantly alluded to in 
 the Sutras as the six supernatural faculties, usually 
 
 without further specification Man has a body 
 
 composed of the four elements in this tran- 
 sitory body his intelligence is enchained, the ascetic 
 finding himself thus confused, directs his mind to the 
 creation of the Manas. He represents to himself, in 
 thought, another body created from this material 
 body — a body with a form, members, and organs. 
 
6 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 This body, in relation to the material body, is like 
 the sword and the scabbard ; or a serpent issuing 
 from a basket in which it is confined. The ascetic 
 then, purified and perfected, begins to practise super- 
 natural faculties. He finds himself able to pass 
 through material obstacles, walls, ramparts, &c. ; he 
 is able to throw his phantasmal appearance into 
 many places at once, .... he can leave this world 
 and even reach the heaven of Brahma himself. .... 
 He acquires the power of hearing the sounds of the 
 unseen world as distinctly as those of the phenomenal 
 world — more distinctly in point of fact. Also by the 
 power of Manas he is able to read the most secret 
 thoughts of others, and to tell their characters." And 
 so on with illustrations. Mr. Lillie has not quite 
 accurately divined the nature of the truth lying 
 behind this popular version of the facts ; but it is 
 hardly necessary to quote more to show that the 
 powers of the Arhats and their insight into spiritual 
 things are respected by the world of Buddhism most 
 profoundly, even though the Arhats themselves have 
 been singularly indisposed to favour the world with 
 autobiographies or scientific accounts of "the six 
 supernatural powers." 
 
 A few sentences from Mr. Hoey's recent transla- 
 tion of Dr. Oldenberg's " Buddha : his Life, his 
 Doctrine, his Order," may fall conveniently into this 
 place, and then we may pass on. We read: — 
 " Buddhist proverbial philosophy attributes in innu- 
 merable passages the possession of Nirvana to the 
 saint who still treads the earth : ' The disciple who 
 has put off lust and desire, rich in wisdom, has here 
 on earth attained deliverance from death, the rest, 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 7 
 
 the Nirvana, the eternal state. He who has escaped 
 from the trackless hard mazes of the Sansara, who 
 has crossed over and reached the shore, self-absorbed, 
 without stumbling and without doubt, who has 
 delivered himself from the earthly and attained 
 Nirvana, him I call a true Brahmin/ If the saint 
 will even now put an end to his state of being he can 
 do so, but the majority stand fast until Nature has 
 reached her goal ; of such may those words be said 
 which are put in the mouth of the most prominent 
 of Buddha's disciples, ' I long' not for death ; I long 
 not for life ; I wait till mine hour come, like a servant 
 who awaiteth his reward.' " 
 
 A multiplication of such quotations would merely 
 involve the repetition in various forms of exoteric 
 conceptions concerning the Arhats. Like every fact 
 or thought in Buddhism, the Arhat has two aspects, 
 that in which he is presented to the world at large, 
 and that in which he lives, moves, and has his being. 
 In the popular estimation he is a saint waiting for 
 a spiritual reward of the kind the populace can under- 
 stand — a wonder-worker meanwhile by favour of 
 supernatural agencies. In reality he is the long-tried 
 and proved-worthy custodian of the deepest and 
 innermost philosophy of the one fundamental religion 
 which Buddha refreshed and restored, and a student 
 of natural science standing in the very foremost front 
 of human knowledge, in regard not merely to the 
 mysteries of spirit, but to the material constitution of 
 the world as well. 
 
 Arhat is a Buddhist designation. That which is 
 more familiar in India, where the attributes of Arhat- 
 ship are not necessarily associated with professions 
 
8 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of Buddhism, is Mahatma. With stones about the 
 Mahatmas, India is saturated. The older Mahatmas 
 are generally spoken of as Rishis ; but the terms are 
 interchangeable, and I have heard the title Rishi 
 applied to men now living. All the attributes of the 
 Arhats mentioned in Buddhist writings are described, 
 with no less reverence in Indian literature, as those 
 of the Mahatmas, and this volume might be readily- 
 filled with translations of vernacular books, giving 
 accounts of miraculous achievements by such of them 
 as are known to history and tradition by name. 
 
 In reality, the Arhats and the Mahatmas are the 
 same men. At that level of spiritual exaltation, 
 supreme knowledge of the esoteric doctrine blends all 
 original sectarian distinctions. By whatever name 
 such illuminati may be called, they are the adepts of 
 occult knowledge, sometimes spoken of in India now 
 as the Brothers, and the custodians of the spiritual 
 science which has been handed down to them by 
 their predecessors. 
 
 We may search both ancient and modern literature 
 in vain, however, for any systematic explanation of 
 their doctrine or science. A good deal of this is 
 dimly set forth in occult writing ; but very little of 
 this is of the least use to readers who take up the 
 subject without previous knowledge acquired inde- 
 pendently of books. It is under favour of direct 
 instruction from one of their number that I am now 
 enabled to attempt an outline of the Mahatmas' 
 teaching, and it is in the same way that I have picked 
 up what I know concerning the organization to 
 which most of them, and the greatest, in the present 
 day belong. 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 9 
 
 All over the world there are occultists of various 
 degrees of eminence, and occult fraternities even, 
 which have a great deal in common with the leading 
 fraternity now established in Tibet. But all my in- 
 quiries into the subject have convinced me that the 
 Tibetan Brotherhood is incomparably the highest of 
 such associations, and regarded as such by all other 
 associations — worthy of being looked upon themselves 
 as really "enlightened" in the occult sense of the 
 term. There are, it is true, many isolated mystics in 
 India who are altogether self-taught and unconnected 
 with occult bodies. Many of these will explain that 
 they themselves attain to higher pinnacles of spiritual 
 enlightenment than the Brothers of Tibet, or any 
 other people on earth. But the examination of such 
 claims in all cases I have encountered, would, I think, 
 lead any impartial outsider, however little qualified 
 himself by personal development to be a judge of 
 occult enlightenment, to the conclusion that they are 
 altogether unfounded. I know one native of India, 
 for example, a man of European education, holding a 
 high appointment under Government, of good station 
 in society, most elevated character, and enjoying un- 
 usual respect with such Europeans as are concerned 
 with him in official life, who will only accord to the 
 Brothers of Tibet a second place in the world of 
 spiritual enlightenment. The first place he regards 
 as occupied by one person, now in this world no 
 longer — his own occult master in life — whom he reso- 
 lutely asserts to have been an incarnation of the 
 Supreme Being. His own (my friend's) inner senses 
 were so far awakened by this Master, that the visions 
 of his entranced state, into which he can still throw 
 
io Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 himself at will, are to him the only spiritual region in 
 which he can feel interested. Convinced that the 
 Supreme Being was his personal instructor from the 
 beginning, and continues so still in the subjective 
 state, he is naturally inaccessible to suggestions that 
 his impressions may be distorted by reason of his own 
 misdirected psychological development. Again, the 
 highly cultivated devotees, to be met with occasionally 
 in India, who build up a conception of Nature, the 
 universe, and God, entirely on a metaphysical basis, 
 and who have evolved their systems by sheer force of 
 transcendental thinking, will take some established 
 system of philosophy as its groundwork, and amplify 
 on this to an extent which only an Oriental meta- 
 physician could dream of. They win disciples who 
 put implicit faith in them, and found their little school 
 which flourishes for a time within its own limits ; but 
 speculative philosophy of such a kind is rather occupa- 
 tion for the mind than knowledge. Such " Masters," 
 by comparison with the organized adepts of the 
 highest brotherhood, are like rowing-boats compared 
 with ocean steamships — helpful conveyances on their 
 own native lake or river, but not craft to whose pro- 
 tection you can trust yourself on a world-wide voyage 
 of exploration over the sea. 
 
 Descending lower again in the scale, we find India 
 dotted all over with Yogis and Fakirs, in all stages of 
 self-development, from that of dirty savages, but little 
 elevated above the gipsy fortune-tellers of an English 
 racecourse, to men whose seclusion a stranger will 
 find it very difficult to penetrate, and whose abnormal 
 faculties and powers need only be seen or experienced 
 to shatter the incredulity of the most contented repre- 
 
Esoteric Teachers. ii 
 
 sentative of modern Western scepticism. Careless 
 inquirers are very apt to confound such persons with 
 the great adepts of whom they may vaguely hear. 
 
 Concerning the real adepts, meanwhile, I cannot 
 at present venture on any account of what the 
 Tibetan organization is like, as regards its highest 
 ruling authorities. Those Mahatmas themselves, of 
 whom some more or less adequate conception may, 
 perhaps, be formed by readers who will follow me 
 patiently to the end, are subordinate by several de- 
 grees to the chief of all. Let us deal rather with the 
 earlier conditions of occult training, which can more 
 easily be grasped. 
 
 The level of elevation which constitutes a man — 
 what the outer world calls a Mahatma or " Brother " 
 — is only attained after prolonged and weary proba- 
 tion, and anxious ordeals of really terrible severity. 
 One may find people who have spent twenty or thirty 
 years or more, in blameless and arduous devotion to 
 the life-task on which they have entered, and are 
 still in the earlier degrees of chelaship, still looking 
 up to the heights of adeptship as far above their 
 heads. And at whatever age a boy or man dedicates 
 himself to the occult career, he dedicates himself to 
 it, be it remembered, without any reservations and 
 for life. The task he undertakes is the development 
 in himself of a great many faculties and attributes 
 which are so utterly dormant in ordinary mankind, 
 that their very existence is unsuspected — the possi- 
 bility of their development denied. And these facul- 
 ties and attributes must be developed by the chela 
 himself, with very little, if any, help, beyond guidance 
 and direction from his master. " The adept." says an 
 
12 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 occult aphorism, " becomes : he is not made." One 
 may illustrate this point by reference to a very 
 common-place physical exercise. Every man living, 
 having the ordinary use of his limbs, is qualified to 
 swim. But put those who, as the common phrase 
 goes, cannot swim, into deep water, and they will 
 struggle and be drowned. The mere way to move 
 the limbs is no mystery ; but unless the swimmer in 
 moving them, has a full belief that such movement 
 will produce the required result, the required result is 
 not produced. In this case, we are dealing with me- 
 chanical forces merely, but the same principle runs up 
 into dealings with subtler forces. Very much further 
 than people generally imagine will mere " confidence " 
 carry the occult neophyte. How many European 
 readers, who would be quite incredulous if told of 
 some results which occult chelas in the most incipient 
 stages of their training have to accomplish by sheer 
 force of confidence, hear constantly in church never- 
 theless, the familiar Biblical assurances of the power 
 which resides in faith, and let the words pass by like 
 the wind, leaving no impression. 
 
 The great end and purpose of adeptship is the 
 achievement of spiritual development, the nature of 
 which is only veiled and disguised by the common 
 phrases of exoteric language. That the adept seeks 
 to unite his soul with God, that he may thereby pass 
 into Nirvana, is a statement that conveys no definite 
 meaning to the ordinary reader, and the more he exa- 
 mines it with the help of ordinary books and methods, 
 the less likely will he be to realize the nature of the 
 process contemplated, or of the condition desired. It 
 will be necessary to deal first with the esoteric con- 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 13 
 
 ception of Nature, and the origin and destinies of 
 Man, which differ widely from theological conceptions, 
 before an explanation of the aim which the adept 
 pursues can become intelligible. Meanwhile, however* 
 it is desirable, at the very outset, to disabuse the 
 reader of one misconception in regard to the objects 
 of adeptship that he may very likely have framed. 
 
 The development of those spiritual faculties, whose 
 culture has to do with the highest objects of the occult 
 life, gives rise, as it progresses, to a great deal of inci- 
 dental knowledge, having to do with physical laws of 
 Nature not yet generally understood. This know- 
 ledge, and the practical art of manipulating certain 
 obscure forces of Nature, which it brings in its train, 
 invest an adept, and even an adept's pupils, at a com- 
 paratively early stage of their education, with very 
 extraordinary powers, the application of which to 
 matters of daily life will sometimes produce results 
 that seem altogether miraculous ; and, from the ordi- 
 nary point of view, the acquisition of apparently 
 miraculous power is such a stupendous achievement, 
 that people are sometimes apt to fancy that the adept's 
 object in seeking the knowledge he attains has been 
 to invest himself with these coveted powers. It would 
 be as reasonable to say of any great patriot of military 
 history that his object in becoming a soldier had been 
 to wear a gay uniform and impress the imagination 
 of the nursemaids. 
 
 The Oriental method of cultivating knowledge has 
 always differed diametrically from that pursued in the 
 West during the growth of modern science. Whilst 
 Europe has investigated Nature as publicly as possible, 
 every step being discussed with the utmost freedom, 
 
14 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 and every fresh fact acquired, circulated at once for 
 the benefit of all, Asiatic science has been studied 
 secretly and its conquests jealously guarded. I need 
 not as yet attempt either criticism or defence of its 
 methods. But at all events these methods have been 
 relaxed to some extent in my own case, and, as already 
 stated, it is with the full consent of my teachers that 
 I now follow the bent of my own inclinations as a 
 European, and communicate what I have learned to 
 all who may be willing to receive it. Later on it 
 will be seen how the departure from the ordinary 
 rules of occult study embodied in the concessions now 
 made, falls naturally into its place in the whole scheme 
 of occult philosophy. The approaches to that philo- 
 sophy have always been open, in one sense, to all. 
 Vaguely throughout the world in various ways has 
 been diffused the idea that some process of study 
 which men here and there did actually follow, might 
 lead to the acquisition of a higher kind of knowledge 
 than that taught to mankind at large in books or by 
 public religious preachers. The East, as pointed out, 
 has always been more than vaguely impressed with 
 this belief, but even in the West the whole block of 
 symbolical literature relating to astrology, alchemy, 
 and mysticism generally has fermented in European 
 society, carrying to some few peculiarly receptive and 
 qualified minds the conviction that behind all this 
 superficially meaningless nonsense great truths lay 
 concealed. For such persons eccentric study has 
 sometimes revealed hidden passages leading to the 
 grandest imaginable realms of enlightenment. But 
 till now, in all such cases, in accordance with the law 
 of those schools, the neophyte no sooner forced his 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 15 
 
 way into the region of mystery than he was bound 
 over to the most inviolable secrecy as to everything 
 connected with his entrance and further progress there. 
 In Asia in the same way, the "chela," or pupil of 
 occultism, no sooner became a chela than he ceased 
 to be a witness on behalf of the reality of occult 
 knowledge. I have been astonished to find, since my 
 own connection with the subject, how numerous such 
 chelas are. But it is impossible to imagine any human 
 act more improbable than the unauthorized revelation 
 by any such chela, to persons in the outer world, that 
 he is one, and so the great esoteric school of philo- 
 sophy successfully guards its seclusion. 
 
 In a former book, "The Occult World," I have 
 given a full and straightforward narrative of the 
 circumstances under which I came in contact with 
 the gifted and deeply instructed men from whom I 
 have since obtained the teaching this volume con- 
 tains. I need not repeat the story. I now come 
 forward prepared to deal with the subject in a new 
 way. The existence of occult adepts, and the im- 
 portance of their acquirements, may be established 
 along two different lines of argument : firstly, by 
 means of external evidence, — the testimony of quali- 
 fied witnesses, the manifestation by or through 
 persons connected with adepts, of abnormal faculties 
 affording more than a presumption of abnormally en- 
 larged knowledge ; secondly, by the presentation of 
 such a considerable portion of this knowledge as 
 may convey intrinsic assurances of its own value. 
 My first book proceeded by the former method ; I 
 now approach the more formidable task of working 
 on the latter. 
 
\6 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 The further we advance in occult study, the more 
 exalted in many ways become our conceptions of the 
 Mahatmas. The complete comprehension of the 
 manner in which these persons become differentiated 
 from human kind at large, is not to be achieved by 
 the help of mere intellectual effort. There are aspects 
 of the adept nature which have to do with the ex- 
 traordinary development of the higher principles in 
 man, which cannot be realized by the application of 
 the lower. But while crude conceptions in the be- 
 ginning thus fall very short of reaching the real level 
 of the facts, a curious complication of the problem 
 arises in this way. Our first idea of an adept who 
 has achieved the power of penetrating the tremendous 
 secrets of spiritual nature, is modelled on our con- 
 ception of a very highly gifted man of science on our 
 own plane. We are apt to think of him as once an 
 adept always an adept, — as a very exalted human 
 being, who must necessarily bring into play in all 
 the relations of his life the attributes that attach to 
 him as a Mahatma. In this way, while — as above 
 pointed out — we shall certainly fail, do all we can, 
 to do justice in our thoughts to his attributes as a 
 Mahatma, we may very easily run to the opposite 
 extreme in our thinking about him in his ordinary 
 human aspect, and thus land ourselves in many 
 perplexities, as we acquire a partial familiarity with 
 the characteristics of the occult world. It is just 
 because the highest attributes of adeptship have to 
 do with principles in human nature which quite 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 17 
 
 transcend the limits of physical existence, that the 
 adept or Mahatma can only be such in the highest 
 acceptation of the word, when he is, as the phrase 
 goes, " out of the body," or at all events thrown by 
 special efforts of his will into an abnormal condition. 
 When he is not called upon to make such efforts or to 
 pass entirely beyond the limitations of this fleshly 
 prison, he is much more like an ordinary man than 
 experience of him in some of his aspects would lead 
 his disciples to believe. 
 
 A correct appreciation of this state of things ex- 
 plains the apparent contradiction involved in the 
 position of the occult pupil towards his masters, as 
 compared with some of the declarations that the 
 master himself will frequently put forward. For 
 example, the Mahatmas are persistent in asserting 
 that they are not infallible, that they are men, like the 
 rest of us, perhaps with a somewhat more enlarged 
 comprehension of nature than the generality of man- 
 kind, but still liable to err both in the direction of 
 practical business with which they may be concerned, 
 and in their estimate of the characters of other men, or 
 the capacity of candidates for occult development. 
 But how are we to reconcile statements of this nature 
 with the fundamental principle at the bottom of all 
 occult research which enjoins the neophyte to put his 
 trust in the teaching and guidance of his master 
 absolutely and without reserve ? The solution of the 
 difficulty is found in the state of things above referred 
 to. While the adept may be a man quite surprisingly 
 liable to err sometimes in the manipulation of worldly 
 business, just as with ourselves some of the greatest 
 men of genius are liable to make mistakes in their 
 
 C 
 
1 8 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 daily life that matter-of-fact people would never 
 commit, on the other hand, directly a Mahatma comes 
 to deal with the higher mysteries of spiritual science, 
 he does so by virtue of the exercise of his Mahatma- 
 attributes, and in dealing with these can hardly be 
 recognized as liable to err. 
 
 This consideration enables us to feel that the trust- 
 worthiness of the teachings derived from such a 
 source as those which have inspired the present 
 volume, is altogether above the reach of small in- 
 cidents which in the progress of our experience may 
 seem to claim a revision of that enthusiastic con- 
 fidence in the supreme wisdom of the adepts which 
 the first approaches to occult study will generally 
 evoke. 
 
 Not that such enthusiasm or reverence will really 
 be diminished on the part of any occult chela as his 
 comprehension of the world he is entering expands. 
 The man who in one of his aspects is a Mahatma, 
 may rather be brought within the limits of affec- 
 tionate human regard, than deprived of his claims to 
 reverence, by the consideration that in his ordinary 
 life he is not so utterly lifted above the common-place 
 run of human feeling as some of his Nirvanic ex- 
 periences might lead us to believe that he would be. 
 
 If we keep constantly in mind that an adept is 
 only truly an adept when exercising adept functions, 
 but that when exercising these he may soar into 
 spiritual rapport with that which is, in regard at all 
 events to the limitations of our solar system, all 
 that we practically mean by omniscience, we shall 
 then be guarded from many of the mistakes that the 
 embarrassments of the subject might create. 
 
Esoteric Teachers. 19 
 
 Intricacies concerning the nature of the adept may- 
 be noticed here, which will hardly be quite intelligible 
 without reference to some later chapters of [this 
 book, but which have so important a bearing on all 
 attempts to understand what adeptship is really 
 like that it may be convenient to deal with them at 
 once. The dual nature of the Mahatma is so complete 
 that some of his influence or wisdom on the higher 
 planes of nature may actually be drawn upon by 
 those in peculiar psychic relations with him, without 
 the Mahatma-man being at the moment even con- 
 scious that such an appeal has been made to him. 
 In this way it becomes open to us to speculate on 
 the possibility that the relation between the spiritual 
 Mahatma and the Mahatma-man may sometimes be 
 rather in the nature of what is sometimes spoken of 
 in esoteric writing as an overshadowing than as an 
 incarnation in the complete sense of the word. 
 
 Furthermore as another independent complication 
 of the matter we reach this fact, that each Mahatma is 
 not merely a human ego in a very exalted state, but 
 belongs, so to speak, to some specific department in 
 the great economy of nature. Every adept must 
 belong to one or other of seven great types of adept- 
 ship, but although we may almost certainly infer that 
 correspondences might be traced between these 
 various types and the seven principles of man, I 
 should shrink myself from attempting a complete 
 elucidation of this hypothesis. It will be enough to 
 apply the idea to what we know vaguely of the occult 
 organization in its higher regions. For some time 
 past it has been affirmed in esoteric writing that 
 there are five great Chohans or superior Mahatmas 
 
 C 2 
 
20 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 presiding over the whole body of the adept fraternity. 
 When the foregoing chapter of this book was written, 
 I was under the impression that one supreme chief 
 on a different level again exercised authority over 
 these five Chohans, but it now appears to me that 
 this personage may rather be regarded as a sixth 
 Chohan, himself the head of the sixth type of Mahat- 
 mas, and this conjecture leads at once to the further 
 inference that there must be a seventh Chohan to com- 
 plete the correspondences which we thus discern. 
 But just as the seventh principle in nature or in man 
 is a conception of the most intangible order eluding 
 the grasp of any intellectual thinking, and only describ- 
 able in shadowy phrases of metaphysical non-signifi- 
 cance, so we may be quite sure that the seventh Chohan 
 is very unapproachable by untrained imaginations. 
 But even he no doubt plays a part in what may be 
 called the higher economy of spiritual nature, and 
 that there is such a personage visible occasionally to 
 some of the other Mahatmas I take to be the case. 
 But speculation concerning him is valuable chiefly 
 as helping to give consistency to the idea above 
 thrown out, according to which the Mahatmas may be 
 comprehended in their true aspect as necessary 
 phenomena of nature without whom the evolution of 
 humanity could hardly be imagined as advancing, 
 not as merely exceptional men who have attained 
 great spiritual exaltation. 
 
The Constitution of Man. 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 
 
 A SURVEY of Cosmogony, as comprehended by occult 
 science, must precede any attempt to explain the 
 means by which a knowledge of that cosmogony 
 itself has been acquired. The methods of esoteric 
 research have grown out of natural facts, with 
 which exoteric science is wholly unacquainted. These 
 natural facts are concerned with the premature 
 development in occult adepts of faculties, which 
 mankind at large has not yet evolved ; and these 
 faculties, in turn, enable their possessors to explore 
 the mysteries of Nature, and verify the esoteric 
 doctrines, setting forth its grand design. The 
 practical student of occultism may develop the 
 faculties first and apply them to the observation 
 of Nature afterwards, but the exhibition of the 
 theory of Nature for Western readers merely seeking 
 its intellectual comprehension, must precede con- 
 sideration of the inner senses, which occult research 
 employs. On the other hand, a survey of cosmogony^ 
 as comprehended by occult science, could only be 
 scientifically arranged at the expense of intelligibility 
 for European readers. To begin at the beginning, 
 we should endeavour to realize the state of the 
 universe before evolution sets in. This subject is by 
 no means shirked by esoteric students, and later on, 
 
22 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 in the course of this sketch, some hints will be given 
 concerning the views occultism entertains of the 
 earlier processes through which cosmic matter passes 
 on its way to evolution. But an orderly statement 
 of the earliest processes of Nature would embody 
 references to man's spiritual constitution, which 
 would not be understood without some preliminary 
 explanation. 
 
 Seven distinct principles are recognized by esoteric 
 science, as entering into the constitution of man. 
 The classification differs so widely from any with 
 which European readers will be familiar that I shall 
 naturally be asked for the grounds on which occultism 
 reaches so far-fetched a conclusion. But I must, on 
 account of inherent peculiarities in the subject, which 
 will be comprehended later on, beg for this Oriental 
 knowledge I am bringing home, a hearing (in the 
 first instance at all events) of the Oriental kind. 
 The Oriental and the European systems of conveying 
 knowledge are as unlike as any two methods can be. 
 The West pricks and piques the learner's controversial 
 instinct at every step. He is encouraged to dispute 
 and resist conviction. He is forbidden to take any 
 scientific statement on authority. Pari passu, as he 
 acquires knowledge, he must learn how that know- 
 ledge has been acquired, and he is made to feel that 
 no fact is worth knowing, unless he knows, with it, 
 the way to prove it a fact. The East manages its 
 pupils on a wholly different plan. It no more dis- 
 regards the necessity of proving its teaching than the 
 West, but it provides proof of a wholly different sort. 
 It enables the student to search Nature for himself, 
 and verify its teachings, in those regions which 
 
The Constitution of Man. 23 
 
 Western philosophy can only invade by speculation 
 and argument. It never takes the trouble to argue 
 about anything. It says : — " So and so is fact ; here 
 is the key of knowlege ; now go and see for yourself." 
 In this way it comes to pass that teaching per se is 
 never anything else but teaching on authority. 
 Teaching and proof do not go hand in hand ; they 
 follow one another in due order. A further con- 
 sequence of this method is that Eastern philosophy 
 employs the method which we in the West have 
 discarded for good reasons as incompatible with our 
 own line of intellectual development — the system of 
 reasoning from generals to particulars. The purposes 
 which European science usually has in view would 
 certainly not be answered by that plan, but I think 
 that any one who goes far in the present inquiry will 
 feel that the system of reasoning up from the details 
 of knowledge to general inferences is inapplicable to 
 the work in hand. One cannot understand details in 
 this department of knowledge till we get a general 
 understanding of the whole scheme of things. Even 
 to convey this general comprehension by mere 
 language, is a large and by no means an easy task. 
 To pause at every moment of the exposition in order 
 to collect what separate evidence may be available 
 for the proof of each separate statement, would be 
 practically impossible. Such a method would break 
 down the patience of the reader, and prevent him 
 from deriving, as he may from a more condensed 
 treatise, that definite conception as to what the 
 esoteric doctrine means to teach, which it is my 
 business to evoke. 
 
 This reflection may suggest, in passing, a new view, 
 
24 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 having an intimate connection with our present 
 subject, of the Platonic and Aristotelian systems of 
 reasoning. Plato's system, roughly described as 
 reasoning from universals to particulars, is condemned 
 by modern habits in favour of the later and exactly 
 inverse system. But Plato was in fetters in attempt- 
 ing to defend his system. There is every reason to 
 believe that his familiarity with esoteric science 
 prompted his method, and that the usual restrictions 
 under which he laboured as an initiated occultist, 
 forbade him from saying as much as would really 
 justify it. No one can study even as much occult 
 science as this volume contains, and then turn to 
 Plato or even to any intelligent epitome of Plato's 
 system of thought, without finding correspondences 
 cropping out at every turn. 
 
 The higher principles of the series which go to con- 
 stitute Man are not fully developed in the mankind 
 with which we are as yet familiar, but a complete or 
 perfect man would be resolvable into the following 
 elements. To facilitate the application of these ex- 
 planations to ordinary exoteric Buddhist writings the 
 Sanscrit names of these principles are given as well 
 as suitable terms in English. 1 
 
 1. The Body Rupa. 
 
 2. Vitality Pnma, or/z'va. 
 
 3. Astral Body Linga Sharira. 
 
 4. Animal Soul Kama Rupa. 
 
 5. Human Soul Manas. 
 
 6. Spiritual Soul Buddhi. 
 
 7. Spirit At?na. 
 
 1 The nomenclature here adopted differs slightly from that hit 
 upon when some of the present teachings were first given out 
 
The Constitution of Man. 25 
 
 Directly conceptions, so transcendental as some of 
 those included in this analysis, are set forth in a 
 tabular statement, they seem to incur certain degrada- 
 tion, against which, in endeavouring to realize clearly 
 what is meant, we must be ever on our guard. Cer- 
 tainly it would be impossible for even the most 
 skilful professor of occult science to exhibit each of 
 these principles separate and distinct from the others, 
 as the physical elements of a compound body can be 
 separated by analysis and preserved independently of 
 each other. The elements of a physicarbody are all 
 on the same plane of materiality, but the elements of 
 man are on very different planes. The finest gases 
 of which the body may to some extent be chemically 
 composed, are still, on one scale at all events,, on 
 nearly the lowest level of materiality. The second 
 principle which, by its union with gross matter, 
 changes it from what we generally call inorganic, or 
 what might more properly be called inert, into living 
 matter, is at once a something different from the 
 finest example of matter in its lower state. Is the 
 second principle, then, anything that we can truly 
 call matter at all ? The question lands us, thus, at 
 
 in a fragmentary form in the Theosophist. Later on it will be 
 seen that the names now preferred embody a fuller conception 
 of the whole system, and avoid some difficulties to which the 
 earlier names give rise. If the earlier presentations of esoteric 
 science were thus imperfect, one can hardly be surprised at so 
 natural a consequence of the difficulties under which its English 
 exponents laboured. But no substantial errors have to be con- 
 fessed or deplored. The connotations of the present names are 
 more accurate than those of the phrases first selected, but the 
 explanations originally given, as far as they went, were quite in 
 harmony with those now developed. 
 
26 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the very outset of this inquiry, in the middle of the 
 subtle metaphysical discussion as to whether force 
 and matter are different or identical. Enough for the 
 moment to state that occult science regards them as 
 identical, and that it contemplates no principle in 
 Nature as wholly immaterial. In this way, though 
 no conceptions of the universe, of man's destiny, or of 
 Nature generally, are more spiritual than those of 
 occult science, that science is wholly free from the 
 logical error of attributing material results to 
 immaterial causes. The esoteric doctrine is thus 
 really the missing link between materialism and 
 spirituality. 
 
 The clue to the mystery involved, lies of course in 
 the fact, directly cognizable by occult experts, that 
 matter exists in other states besides those which are 
 cognizable by the five senses. 
 
 The second principle of Man, Vitality, thus con- 
 sists of matter in its aspect as force, and its affinity 
 for the grosser state of matter is so great that it 
 cannot be separated from any given particle or mass 
 of this, except by instantaneous translation to some 
 other particle or mass. When a man's body dies, by 
 desertion of the higher principles which have rendered 
 it a living reality, the second, or life principle, no 
 longer a unity itself, is nevertheless inherent still in the 
 particles of the body as this decomposes, attaching 
 itself to other organisms to which that very process 
 of decomposition gives rise. Bury the body in the 
 earth and its jiva will attach itself to the vegetation 
 which springs above, or the lower animal forms which 
 evolve from its substance. Burn the body, and 
 indestructible jiva flies back none the less instanta- 
 
The Constitution of Man. 27 
 
 neously to the body of the planet itself from which it 
 was originally borrowed, entering into some new 
 combination as its affinities may determine. 
 
 The third principle, the Astral Body, or Linga 
 Sharira, is an ethereal duplicate of the physical body, 
 its original design. It guides jiva in its work on 
 the physical particles, and causes it to build up the 
 shape which these assume. Vitalized itself by the 
 higher principles, its unity is only preserved by the 
 union of the whole group. At death it is disembodied 
 for a brief period, and, under some abnormal condi- 
 tions, may even be temporarily visible to the external 
 sight of still living persons. Under such conditions 
 it is taken of course for the ghost of the departed per- 
 son. Spectral apparitions may sometimes be occa- 
 sioned in other ways, but the third principle, when 
 that results in a visible phenomenon, is a mere aggre- 
 gation of molecules in a peculiar state, having no life 
 or consciousness of any kind whatever. It is no more 
 a Being, than any cloud wreath in the sky which 
 happens to settle into the semblance of some animal 
 form. Broadly speaking, the linga sharira never 
 leaves the body except at death, nor migrates far 
 from the body even in that case. When seen at all, 
 and this can but rarely occur, it can only be seen 
 near where the physical body still lies. In some 
 very peculiar cases of spiritualistic mediumship, it 
 may for a short time exude from the physical body 
 and be visible near it, but the medium in such cases 
 stands the while in considerable danger of his life. 
 Disturb unwillingly the conditions under which the 
 linga sharira was set free, and its return might be 
 impeded. The second principle would then soon 
 
28 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 cease to animate the physical body as a unity, and 
 death would ensue. 
 
 During the last year or two, while hints and scraps 
 of occult science have been finding their way out 
 into the world, the expression, " Astral Body," has 
 been applied to a certain semblance of the human 
 form, fully inhabited by its higher principles, which 
 can migrate to any distance from the physical body 
 — projected consciously and with exact intention by 
 a living adept, or unintentionally, by the accidental 
 application of certain mental forces to his loosened 
 principles, by any person at the moment of death. 
 For ordinary purposes there is no practical inconve- 
 nience in using the expression " Astral Body " for the 
 appearance so projected — indeed, any more strictly 
 accurate expression, as will be seen directly, would 
 be cumbersome, and we must go on using the phrase 
 in both meanings. No confusion need arise ; but, 
 strictly speaking, the linga sharira, or third principle, 
 is the astral body, and that cannot be sent about as 
 the vehicle of the higher principles. 
 
 The three lower principles, it will be seen, are 
 altogether of the earth, perishable in their nature as 
 a single entity, though indestructible as regards their 
 molecules, and absolutely done with by man at his 
 death. 
 
 The fourth principle is the first of those which 
 belong to man's higher nature. The Sanscrit desig- 
 nation, kama rupa, is often translated " Body of 
 Desire," which seems rather a clumsy and inaccurate 
 form of words. A closer translation, having regard 
 to meanings rather than words, would, perhaps, be 
 " Vehicle of Will," but the name already adopted 
 
The Constitution of Man. 29 
 
 above, Animal Soul, may be more accurately sugges- 
 tive still. 
 
 In the Theosophist for October, 1881, when the 
 first hints about the septenary constitution of man 
 were given out, the fifth principle was called the 
 animal soul, as contra-distinguished from the sixth 
 or "spiritual soul;" but though this nomenclature 
 sufficed to mark the required distinction, it degraded 
 the fifth principle, which is essentially the human 
 principle. Though humanity is animal in its nature 
 as compared with spirit, it is elevated above the 
 correctly defined animal creation in every other 
 aspect. By introducing a new name for the fifth 
 principle, we are enabled to throw back the desig- 
 nation " animal soul " to its proper place. This 
 arrangement need not interfere, meanwhile, with an 
 appreciation of the way in which the fourth principle 
 is the seat of that will or desire to which the Sanscrit 
 name refers. And, withal, the kama rupa is the 
 animal soul, the highest developed principle of the 
 brute creation, susceptible of evolution into something 
 far higher by its union with the growing fifth principle 
 in man, but still the animal soul which man is by no 
 means yet without, the seat of all animal desires, 
 and a potent force in the human body as well, press- 
 ing upwards, so to speak, as well as downwards, and 
 capable of influencing the fifth, for practical purposes, 
 as well as of being influenced by the fifth for its own 
 control and improvement. 
 
 The fifth principle, human soul, or Manas (as de- 
 scribed in Sanscrit in one of its aspects), is the seat of 
 reason and memory. It is a portion of this principle, 
 animated by the fourth, which is really projected 
 
30 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 to distant places by an adept, when he makes an 
 appearance in what is commonly called his astral 
 body. 
 
 Now the fifth principle, or human soul, in the 
 majority of mankind is not even yet fully developed. 
 This fact about the imperfect development as yet of 
 the higher principles is very important. We cannot 
 get a correct conception of the present place of man 
 in Nature if we make the mistake of regarding him 
 as a fully perfected being already. And that mis- 
 take would be fatal to any reasonable anticipations 
 concerning the future that awaits him — fatal also to 
 any appreciation of the appropriateness of the future 
 which the esoteric doctrine explains to us as actually 
 awaiting him. 
 
 Since the fifth principle is not yet fully developed, 
 it goes without saying that the sixth principle is still 
 in embryo. This idea has been variously indicated 
 in recent forecasts of the great doctrine. Sometimes 
 it has been said, we do not truly possess any sixth 
 principle, we merely have germs of a sixth principle. 
 It has also been said, the sixth principle is not in us ; 
 it hovers over us ; it is a something that the highest 
 aspirations of our nature must work up towards. 
 But it is also said : — All things, not man alone, but 
 every animal, plant, and mineral have their seven 
 principles, and the highest principle of all — the seventh 
 itself — vitalizes that continuous thread of life which 
 runs all through evolution, uniting into a definite 
 succession, the almost innumerable incarnations of 
 that one life which constitute a complete series. We 
 must imbibe all these various conceptions and weld 
 them together, or extract their essence, to learn the 
 
The Constitution of Man. 31 
 
 doctrine of the sixth principle. Following the order 
 of ideas which just now suggested the application 
 of the term animal soul to the fourth principle, and 
 human soul to the fifth, the sixth may be called the 
 spiritual soul of man, and the seventh, therefore, spirit 
 itself. 
 
 In another aspect of the idea the sixth principle 
 may be called the vehicle of the seventh, and the 
 fourth the vehicle of the fifth ; but yet another mode 
 of dealing with the problem teaches us to regard 
 each of the higher principles from the fourth upwards, 
 as a vehicle of what, in Buddhist philosophy, is called 
 the One Life or Spirit. According to this view of 
 the matter the one life is that which perfects, by 
 inhabiting the various vehicles. In the animal the 
 one life is concentrated in the kama rupa. In man it 
 begins to penetrate the fifth principle as well. In 
 perfected man it penetrates the sixth, and when it 
 penetrates the seventh, man ceases to be man, and 
 attains a wholly superior condition of existence. 
 
 This latter view of the position is especially 
 valuable as guarding against the notion that the four 
 higher principles are like a bundle of sticks tied 
 together, but each having individualities of their own 
 if untied. Neither the animal soul alone, nor the 
 spiritual soul alone, has any individuality at all ; but, 
 on the other hand, the fifth principle would be 
 incapable of separation from the others in such a 
 way, that its individuality would be preserved while 
 both the deserted principles would be left uncon- 
 scious. It has been said that the finer principles 
 themselves even, are material and molecular in their 
 constitution, though composed of a higher order of 
 
32 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 matter than the physical senses can take note of. So 
 they are separable, and the sixth principle itself can be 
 imagined as divorcing itself from its lower neighbour. 
 But in that state of separation, and at this stage of 
 mankind's development, it could simply reincarnate 
 itself in such an emergency, and grow a new fifth 
 principle by contact with a human organism ; in such 
 a case, the fifth principle would lean upon and 
 become one with the fourth, and be proportionately 
 degraded. And yet this fifth principle, which cannot 
 stand alone, is the personality of the man ; and its 
 cream, in union with the sixth, his continuous indivi- 
 duality through successive lives. 
 
 The circumstances and attractions under the 
 influence of which the principles do divide up, and 
 the manner in which the consciousness of man is 
 dealt with then, will be discussed later on. Mean- 
 while, a better understanding of the whole position 
 than could ensue from a continued prosecution of the 
 inquiry on these lines now, will be obtained by 
 turning first to the processes of evolution by means 
 of which the principles of man have been developed. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 Some objection has been raised to the method in 
 which the Esoteric Doctrine is presented to the 
 reader in this book, on the ground that it is material- 
 istic. I doubt if in any other way the ideas to be 
 dealt with could so well be brought within the grasp 
 of the mind, but it is easy, when they once are 
 grasped, to translate* them into terms of idealism. 
 The higher principles will be the better susceptible 
 
The Constitution of Man. 33 
 
 of treatment as so many different states of the Ego, 
 when the attributes of these states have been sepa- 
 rately considered as principles undergoing evolution. 
 But it may be useful to dwell for awhile on the view 
 of the human constitution according to which the 
 consciousness of the entity migrates successively 
 through the stages of development, which the dif- 
 ferent principles represent. 
 
 In the highest evolution we need concern ourselves 
 with at present— that of the perfected Mahatma— it 
 is sometimes asserted in occult teaching that the 
 consciousness of the Ego has acquired the power of 
 residing altogether in the sixth principle. But it 
 would be a gross view of the subject, and erroneous, 
 to suppose that the Mahatma has on that account 
 shaken off altogether, like a discarded sheath or 
 sheaths, the fourth and fifth principles, in which his 
 consciousness may have been seated during an earlier 
 stage of his evolution. The entity, which was the 
 fourth or fifth principle before, has come now to be 
 different in its attributes, and to be entirely divorced 
 from certain tendencies or dispositions, and is there-, 
 fore a sixth principle. The change can be spoken of 
 in more general terms as an emancipation of the 
 adept's nature from the enthralments of his lower 
 self, from desires of the ordinary earth-life — even 
 from the limitations of the affections ; for the Ego, 
 which is entirely conscious in his sixth principle, has 
 realized the unity of the true Egos of all mankind on 
 the higher plane, and can no longer be drawn by 
 bonds of sympathy to any one more than to any other. 
 He has attained that love of humanity as a whole 
 which transcends the love of the Maya or illusion 
 
 D 
 
34 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 which constitutes the separate human creature for the 
 limited being on the lower levels of evolution. He 
 has not lost his fourth and fifth principles, — these 
 have themselves attained Mahatmaship ; just as the 
 animal soul of the lower kingdom, in reaching 
 humanity, has blossomed into the fifth state. That 
 consideration helps us to realize more accurately the 
 passage of ordinary human beings through the long 
 series of incarnations of the human plane. Once 
 fairly on that plane of existence the consciousness of 
 the primitive man gradually envelopes the attributes 
 of the fifth principle. But the Ego at first remains 
 a centre of thought activity working chiefly with 
 impulses and desires of the fourth stage of evolution. 
 Flashes of the higher human reason illumine it fit- 
 fully at first, but by degrees the more intellectual 
 man grows into the fuller possession of this. The 
 impulses of human reason assert themselves more and 
 more strongly. The invigorated mind becomes the 
 predominant force in the life. Consciousness is 
 transferred to the fifth principle, oscillating, however, 
 between the tendencies of the lower and higher 
 nature for a long while — that is to say, over vast 
 periods of evolution and many hundred lives, — and 
 thus gradually purifying and exalting the Ego. 
 All this while the Ego is thus a unity in one aspect 
 of the matter, and its sixth principle but a poten- 
 tiality of ultimate development. As regards the 
 seventh principle, that is the true Unknowable, the 
 supreme controlling cause of all things, which is the 
 same for one man as for every man, the same for 
 humanity as for the animal kingdom, the same 
 for the physical as for the astral or devachanic 
 
The Constitution of Man. 35 
 
 or nirvanic planes of existence. No one man has 
 got a seventh principle, in the higher conception 
 of the subject : we are all in the same unfathom- 
 able way overshadowed by the seventh principle of 
 the cosmos. 
 
 How does this view of the subject harmonize with 
 the statement in the foregoing chapter, that in a 
 certain sense the principles are separable, and that 
 the sixth even can be imagined as divorcing itself 
 from its next lower neighbour, and, by reincarnation, 
 as growing a new fifth principle by contact with a 
 human organism ? There is no incompatibility in 
 the spirit of the two views. The seventh principle is 
 one and indivisible in all Nature, but there is a mys- 
 terious persistence through it of certain life impulses, 
 which thus constitute threads on which successive 
 existences may be strung. Such a life impulse does 
 not expire even in the extraordinary case supposed, 
 in which an Ego, projected upon it and developed 
 along it up to a certain point, falls away from it alto- 
 gether and as a complete whole. I am not in a position 
 to dogmatize with precision as to what happens in 
 such a case, but the subsequent incarnations of the 
 spirit along that line of impulse are clearly of the 
 original sequence ; and thus, in the materialistic treat- 
 ment of the idea, it may be said, with as much approach 
 to accuracy as language will allow in either mode, 
 that the sixth principle of the fallen entity in such 
 a case separates itself from the original fifth, and 
 reincarnates on its own account. 
 
 But with these abnormal processes it is unneces- 
 sary to occupy ourselves to any great extent. The 
 normal evolution is the problem we have first to solve ; 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 and while the consideration of the seven principles as 
 such is, to my own mind, the most instructive method 
 by which the problem can be dealt with, it is well to 
 remember always that the Ego is a unity progressing 
 through various spheres or states of being, undergoing 
 change and growth and purification all through the 
 course of its evolution, — that it is a consciousness 
 seated in this, or that, or the other, of the potential 
 attributes of a human entity. 
 
The Planetary Chain. 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PLANETARY CHAIN. 
 
 ESOTERIC science, though the most spiritual system 
 imaginable, exhibits, as running throughout Nature, 
 the most exhaustive system of evolution that the 
 human mind can conceive. The Darwinian theory 
 of evolution is simply an independent discovery of a 
 portion — unhappily but a small portion — of the vast 
 natural truth. But occultists know how to explain 
 evolution without degrading the highest principles of 
 man. The esoteric doctrine finds itself under no 
 obligation to keep its science and religion in separate 
 water-tight compartments. Its theory of physics and 
 its theory of spirituality are not only reconcilable 
 with each other, they are intimately blended together 
 and interdependent. And the first great fact which 
 occult science presents to our notice in reference to 
 the origin of man on this globe, will be seen to help 
 the imagination over some serious embarrassments of 
 the familiar scientific idea of evolution. The evolu- 
 tion of man is not a process carried out on this planet 
 alone. It is a result to which many worlds in dif- 
 ferent conditions of material and spiritual develop- 
 ment have contributed. If this statement were 
 merely put forward as a conjecture, it would surely 
 recommend itself forcibly to rational minds. For 
 there is a manifest irrationality in the commonplace 
 
38 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 notion that man's existence is divided into a material 
 beginning, lasting sixty or seventy years, and a spiri- 
 tual remainder lasting for ever. The irrationality 
 amounts to absurdity when it is alleged that the acts 
 of the sixty or seventy years — the blundering, helpless 
 acts of ignorant human life — are permitted by the 
 perfect justice of an all-wise Providence to define the 
 conditions of that later life of infinite duration. Nor 
 is it less extravagant to imagine that, apart from the 
 question of justice, the life beyond the grave should 
 be exempt from the law of change, progress, and im- 
 provement, which every analogy of Nature points to 
 as probably running through all the varied existences 
 of the universe. But once abandon the idea of a 
 uniform, unvarying, unprogressive life beyond the 
 grave — once admit the conception of change and pro- 
 gress in that life — and we admit the idea of a variety 
 hardly compatible with any other hypothesis than that 
 of progress through successive worlds. As we have 
 said before, this is not a hypothesis at all for occult 
 science, but a fact, ascertained and verified beyond 
 the reach (for occultists) of doubt or contradiction. 
 
 The life and evolutionary processes of this planet 
 — in fact, all which constitutes it something more 
 than a dead lump of chaotic matter— are linked with 
 the life and evolutionary processes of several other 
 planets. But let it not be supposed that there is no 
 finality as regards the scheme of this planetary union 
 to which we belong. The human imagination once 
 set free is apt sometimes to bound too far. Once let 
 this notion, that the earth is merely one link in a 
 mighty chain of worlds, be fully accepted as probable, 
 or true, and it may suggest the whole starry heavens 
 
The Planetary Chain. 39 
 
 as the heritage of the human family. That idea 
 would involve a serious misconception. One globe 
 does not afford Nature scope for the processes by 
 which mankind has been evoked from chaos, but these 
 processes do not require more than a limited and 
 definite number of globes. Separated as these are, in 
 regard to the gross mechanical matter of which they 
 consist, they are closely and intimately bound together 
 by subtle currents and forces, whose existence reason 
 need not be much troubled to concede, since the 
 existence of some connection — of force or ethereal media 
 — uniting all visible celestial bodies, is proved by the 
 mere fact that they are visible. It is along these 
 subtle currents that the life elements pass from world 
 to world. 
 
 The fact, however, will at once be liable to distor- 
 tion, to suit preconceived habits of mind. Some 
 readers may imagine our meaning to be that after 
 death the surviving soul will be drawn into the cur- 
 rents of that world with which its affinities connect it. 
 The real process is more methodical. The system of 
 worlds is a circuit round which all individual spiritual 
 entities have alike to pass ; and that passage con- 
 stitutes the Evolution of Man. For it must be 
 realized that the evolution of man is a process still 
 going on, and by no means yet complete. Darwinian 
 writings have taught the modern world to regard the 
 ape as an ancestor, but the simple conceit of Western 
 speculation has rarely permitted European evolu- 
 tionists to look in the other direction, and recognize 
 the probability, that to our remote descendants we 
 may be, as that unwelcome progenitor to us. Yet 
 the two facts just declared hinge together. The 
 
40 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 higher evolution will be accomplished by our progress 
 through the successive worlds of the system ; and in 
 higher forms we shall return to this earth again and 
 again. But the avenues of thought through which 
 we look forward to this prospect, are of almost incon- 
 ceivable length. 
 
 It will readily be supposed that the chain of worlds 
 to which this earth belongs are not all prepared for a 
 material existence exactly, or even approximately 
 resembling our own. There would be no meaning in 
 an organized chain of worlds which were all alike, and 
 might as well all have been amalgamated into one. 
 In reality the worlds with which we are connected 
 are very unlike each other, not merely in outward 
 conditions, but in that supreme characteristic, the 
 proportion in which spirit and matter are mingled in 
 their constitution. Our own world presents us with 
 conditions in which spirit and matter are on the whole 
 evenly balanced in equilibrium. Let it not be sup- 
 posed on that account that it is very highly elevated 
 in the scale of perfection. On the contrary, it 
 occupies a very low place in that scale. The worlds 
 that are higher in the scale are those in which spirit 
 largely predominates. There is another world at- 
 tached to the chain, rather than forming a part of it, 
 in which matter asserts itself even more decisively 
 than on earth, but this may be spoken of later. 
 
 That the superior worlds which man may come to 
 inhabit in his onward progress should gradually become 
 more and more spiritual in their constitution — life 
 there being more and more successfully divorced from 
 gross material needs — will seem reasonable enough 
 at the first glance. But the first glance in imagina- 
 
The Planetary Chain. 41 
 
 tion at those which might conversely be called the 
 inferior, but may with less inaccuracy be spoken of 
 as the preceding worlds, would perhaps suggest that 
 they ought to be conversely less spiritual, more 
 material, than this earth. The fact is quite the other 
 way, and must be so, it will be seen on reflection, in 
 a chain of worlds which is an endless chain — i.e. 
 round and round which the evolutionary process 
 travels. If that process had merely one journey to 
 travel along a path which never returned into itself, 
 one could think of it, at any rate, as working from 
 almost absolute matter up to almost absolute spirit ; 
 but Nature works always in complete curves, and 
 travels always in paths which return into themselves. 
 The earliest, as also the latest, developed worlds — for 
 the chain itself has grown by degrees — the furthest 
 back, as also the furthest forward, are the most 
 immaterial, the most ethereal of the whole series ; 
 and that this is in all ways in accordance with the 
 fitness of things will appear from the reflection that 
 the furthest forward of the worlds is not a region of 
 finality, but the stepping-stone to the furthest back, 
 as the month of December leads us back again to 
 January. But it is not a climax of development 
 from which the individual monad falls, as by a 
 catastrophe, into the state from which he slowly 
 began to ascend millions of years previously. From 
 that which, for reasons which will soon appear, must 
 be considered the highest world on the ascending arc 
 of the circle, to that which must be regarded as the 
 first on the descending arc, in one sense the lowest — 
 i.e. in the order of development — there is no descent 
 at all, but still ascent and progress. For the spiritual 
 
42 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 monad or entity, which has worked its way all round 
 the cycle of evolution, at any one of the many stages 
 of development into which the various existences 
 around us may be grouped, begins its next cycle at 
 the next higher stage, and is thus still accomplishing 
 progress as it passes from world Z back again to 
 world A. Many times does it circle, in this way, 
 right round the system, but its passage round must 
 not be thought of merely as a circular revolution in 
 an orbit. In the scale of spiritual perfection it is 
 constantly ascending. Thus, if we compare the 
 system of worlds to a system of towers standing on a 
 plain — towers each of many stories and symbolizing 
 the scale of perfection — the spiritual monad performs 
 a spiral progress round and round the series, passing 
 through each tower, every time it comes round to it, 
 at a higher level than before. 
 
 It is for want of realizing this idea that speculation, 
 concerned with physical evolution, is so constantly 
 finding itself stopped by dead walls. It is searching 
 for its missing links in a world where it can never find 
 them now, for they were but required for a temporary 
 purpose, and have passed away. Man, says the 
 Darwinian, was once an ape. Quite true ; but the 
 ape known to the Darwinian will never become a 
 man — i.e. the form will not change from generation 
 to generation till the tail disappears and the hands 
 turn into feet, and so on. Ordinary science avows 
 that, though changes of form can be detected in 
 progress within the limits of species, the changes 
 from species to species can only be inferred ; and to 
 account for these, it is content to assume great 
 intervals of time and the extinction of the inter- 
 
The Planetary Chain. 43 
 
 mediate forms. There has been no doubt an 
 extinction of the intermediate or earlier forms of all 
 species (in the larger acceptation of the word) — i.e. 
 of all kingdoms, mineral, vegetable, animal, man, &c. 
 — but ordinary science can merely guess that to have 
 been the fact without realizing the conditions which 
 rendered it inevitable, and which forbid the renewed 
 generation of the intermediate forms. 
 
 It is the spiral character of the progress accom- 
 plished by the life impulses that develope the various 
 kingdoms of Nature, which accounts for the gaps 
 now observed in the animated forms which people 
 the earth. The thread of a screw, which is a uniform 
 inclined plane in reality, looks like a succession of 
 steps when examined only along one line parallel to 
 its axis. The spiritual monads which are coming 
 round the system on the animal level, pass on to 
 other worlds when they have performed their turn of 
 animal incarnation here. By the time they come 
 again, they are ready for human incarnation, and 
 there is no necessity now for the upward develop- 
 ment of animal forms into human forms — these are 
 already waiting for their spiritual tenants. But, if 
 we go back far enough, we come to a period at which 
 there were no human forms ready developed on the 
 earth. When spiritual monads, travelling on the 
 earliest or lowest human level, were thus beginning 
 to come round, their onward pressure in a world at 
 that time containing none but animal forms, provoked 
 the improvement of the highest of these into the 
 required form — the much-talked-of missing link. 
 
 In one way of looking at the matter, it may be 
 contended that this explanation is identical with the 
 
44 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 inference of the Darwinian evolutionist in regard to 
 the development and extinction of missing links. 
 After all, it may be argued by a materialist, " we are 
 not concerned to express an opinion as to the origin 
 of the tendency in species to develope higher forms. 
 We say that they do develope these higher forms by 
 intermediate links, and that the intermediate links 
 die out ; and you say just the same thing." But 
 there is a distinction between the two ideas for any 
 one who can follow subtle distinctions. The natural 
 process of evolution from the influence of local 
 circumstances and sexual selection, must not be 
 credited with producing intermediate forms, and this 
 is why it is inevitable that the intermediate forms 
 should be of a temporary nature and should die out. 
 Otherwise, we should find the world stocked with 
 missing links of all kinds, animal life creeping by 
 plainly apparent degrees up to manhood, human 
 forms mingling in indistinguishable confusion with 
 those of animals. The impulse to the new evolution 
 of higher forms is really given, as we have shown, by 
 rushes of spiritual monads coming round the cycle in 
 a state fit for the inhabitation of new forms. These 
 superior life impulses burst the chrysalis of the older 
 form on the planet they invade, and throw off an 
 efflorescence of something higher. The forms which 
 have gone on merely repeating themselves for 
 millenniums, start afresh into growth ; with relative 
 rapidity they rise through the intermediate into the 
 higher forms, and then, as these in turn are multiplied 
 with the vigour and rapidity of all new growths, they 
 supply tenements of flesh for the spiritual entities 
 coming round on that stage or plane of existence, 
 
The Planetary Chain. 45 
 
 and for the intermediate forms there are no longer 
 any tenants offering. Inevitably they become ex- 
 tinct. 
 
 Thus is evolution accomplished, as regards its 
 essential impulse, by a spiral progress through the 
 worlds. In the course of explaining this idea we 
 have partly anticipated the declaration of another 
 fact of first-rate importance as an aid to correct views 
 of the world-system to which we belong. That is, 
 that the tide of life, — the wave of existence, the 
 spiritual impulse, call it by what name we please — 
 passes on from planet to planet by rushes, or gushes, 
 not by an even continuous flow. For the momentary 
 purpose of illustrating the idea in hand, the process 
 may be compared to the filling of a series of holes or 
 tubs sunk in the ground, such as may sometimes be 
 seen at the mouths of feeble springs, and connected 
 with each other by little surface channels. The 
 stream from the spring, as it flows, is gathered up 
 entirely in the beginning by the first hole, or tub A, 
 and it is only when this is quite full that the con- 
 tinued in-pouring of water from the spring causes 
 that which it already contains to overflow into tub B. 
 This in turn fills and overflows along the channel 
 which leads to tub C, and so on. Now, though, of 
 course, a clumsy analogy of this kind will not carry 
 us very far, it precisely illustrates the evolution of life 
 on a chain of worlds like that we are attached to, 
 and, indeed, the evolution of the worlds themselves. 
 For the process which goes on does not involve the 
 pre-existence of a chain of globes which Nature 
 proceeds to stock with life ; but it is one in which the 
 evolution of each globe is the result of previous 
 
46 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 evolutions, and the consequence of certain impulses 
 thrown off from its predecessor in the superabundance 
 of their development. Now, it is necessary to deal 
 with this characteristic of the process to be described, 
 but directly we begin to deal with it we have to go 
 back in imagination to a period in the development 
 of our system very far antecedent to that which is 
 specially our subject at present — the evolution of 
 man. And manifestly, as soon as we begin talking 
 of the beginnings of worlds, we are dealing with 
 phenomena which can have had very little to do with 
 life, as we understand the matter, and, therefore, it 
 may be supposed, nothing to do with life impulses. 
 But let us go back by degrees. Behind the human 
 harvest of the life impulse, there lay the harvest of 
 mere animal forms, as every one realizes ; behind 
 that, the harvest or growths of mere vegetable forms 
 — for some of these undoubtedly preceded the 
 appearance of the earliest animal life on the planet. 
 Then, before the vegetable organizations, there were 
 mineral organizations, — for even a mineral is a 
 product of Nature, an evolution from something 
 behind it, as every imaginable manifestation of Nature 
 must be, until in the vast series of manifestations, the 
 mind travels back to the unmanifested beginning of 
 all things. On pure metaphysics of that sort we are 
 not now engaged. It is enough to show that we 
 may as reasonably — and that we must if we would 
 talk about these matters at all — conceive a life 
 impulse giving birth to mineral forms, as of the same 
 sort of impulse concerned to raise a race of apes into 
 a race of rudimentary men. Indeed, occult science 
 travels back even further in its exhaustive analysis of 
 
The Planetary Chain. 47 
 
 evolution than the period at which minerals began to 
 assume existence. In the process of developing 
 worlds from fiery nebulae, Nature begins with some- 
 thing earlier than minerals — with the elemental forces 
 that underlie the phenomena of Nature as visible 
 now and perceptible to the senses of man. But that 
 branch of the subject may be left alone for the 
 present. Let us take up the process at the period 
 when the first world of the series, — globe A let us call 
 it, — is merely a congeries of mineral forms. Now it 
 must be remembered that globe A has already been 
 described as very much more ethereal, more pre- 
 dominated by spirit, as distinguished from matter, 
 than the globe of which we at present are having 
 personal experience, so that a large allowance must be 
 made for that state of things when we ask the reader 
 to think of it, at starting, as a mere congeries of 
 mineral forms. Mineral forms may be mineral in the 
 sense of not belonging to the higher forms of vege- 
 table organism, and may yet be very immaterial as 
 we think of matter, very ethereal, consisting of a very 
 fine or subtle quality of matter, in which the other 
 pole or characteristic of Nature, spirit, largely pre- 
 dominates. The minerals we are trying to portray 
 are, as it were, the ghosts of minerals ; by no means 
 the highly-finished and beautiful, hard crystals which 
 the mineralogical cabinets of this world supply. In 
 these lower spirals of evolution with which we are 
 now dealing, as with the higher ones, there is progress 
 from world to world, and that is the great point at 
 which we have been aiming. There is progress down- 
 wards, so to speak, in finish and materiality and con- 
 sistency ; and then, again, progress upward in spiri- 
 
48 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 tuality as coupled with the finish which matter or 
 materiality rendered possible in the first instance. It 
 will be found that the process of evolution in its 
 higher stages as regards man is carried on in exactly 
 the same way. All through these studies, indeed, it 
 will be found that one process of Nature typifies 
 another, that the big is the repetition of the little on 
 a larger scale. 
 
 It is manifest from what we have already said, and 
 in order that the progress of organisms on globe A 
 shall be accounted for, that the mineral kingdom will 
 no more develope the vegetable kingdom on globe A 
 until it receives an impulse from without, than the 
 Earth was able to develope Man from the ape till it 
 received an impulse from without. But it will be 
 inconvenient at present to go back to a consideration 
 of the impulses which operate on globe A in the 
 beginning of the system's construction. 
 
 We have already, in order to be able to advance 
 more comfortably from a far later period than that to 
 which we have now receded, gone back so far that 
 further recession would change the whole character 
 of this explanation. We must stop somewhere, and 
 for the present it will be best to take the life impulses 
 behind globe A for granted. And having stopped 
 there we may now treat the enormous period inter- 
 vening between the mineral epoch on globe A and 
 the man epoch, in a very cursory way, and so get 
 back to the main problem before us. What has been 
 already said facilitates a cursory treatment of the 
 intervening evolution. The full development of the 
 mineral epoch on globe A prepares the way for the 
 vegetable development, and as soon as this begins, 
 
The Planetary Chain. 49 
 
 the mineral life impulse overflows into globe B. Then 
 when the vegetable development on globe A is 
 complete and the animal development begins, the 
 vegetable life impulse overflows to globe B, and the 
 mineral impulse passes on to globe C. Then, finally, 
 comes the human life impulse on globe A. 
 
 Now, it is necessary at this point to guard against 
 one misconception that might arise. As just roughly 
 described, the process might convey the idea that 
 by the time the human impulse began on globe A, 
 the mineral impulse was then beginning on globe D, 
 and that beyond lay chaos. This is very far from 
 being the case, for two reasons. Firstly, as already 
 stated, there are processes of evolution which precede 
 the mineral evolution, and thus a wave of evolution, 
 indeed several waves of evolution, precede the mineral 
 wave in its progress round the spheres. But over 
 and above this, there is a fact to be stated which 
 has such an influence on the course of events, that, 
 when it is realized, it will be seen that the life impulse 
 has passed several times completely round the whole 
 chain of worlds before the commencement of the 
 human impulse on globe A. This fact is as follows : 
 Each kingdom of evolution, vegetable, animal, and 
 so on, is divided into several spiral layers. The 
 spiritual monads — the individual atoms of that 
 immense life impulse of which so much has been said 
 — do not fully complete their mineral existence on 
 globe A, then complete it on globe B, and so on. 
 They pass several times round the whole circle as 
 minerals, and then again several times round as 
 vegetables, and several times as animals. We pur- 
 posely refrain for the pPresent from going into figures, 
 
 E 
 
50 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 because it is more convenient to state the outline 
 of the scheme in general terms first, but figures in 
 reference to these processes of Nature have now been 
 given to the world by the occult adepts (for the first 
 time, we believe), and they shall be brought out 
 in the course of this explanation very shortly, but, 
 as we say, the outline is enough for any one to think 
 of at first. 
 
 And now we have rudimentary man beginning his 
 existence on globe A, in that world where all things 
 are as the ghosts of the corresponding things in this 
 world. He is beginning his long descent into matter. 
 And the life impulse of each " round " overflows, and 
 the races of man are established in different degrees 
 of perfection on all the planets, on each in turn. But 
 the rounds are more complicated in their design 
 than this explanation would show, if it stopped short 
 here. The process for each spiritual monad is not 
 merely a passage from planet to planet. Within the 
 limits of each planet, each time it arrives there, it 
 has a complicated process of evolution to perform. 
 It is many times incarnated in successive races of 
 men before it passes onward, and it even has many 
 incarnations in each great race. It will be found, 
 when we get on further, that this fact throws a flood 
 of light upon the actual condition of mankind, as we 
 know it, accounting for those immense differences 
 of intellect and morality, and even of welfare in its 
 highest sense, which generally appear so painfully 
 mysterious. 
 
 That which has a definite beginning generally has 
 an end also. As we have shown that the evolutionary 
 process under description began when certain im- 
 
The Planetary Chain. 51 
 
 pulses first commenced their operation, so it may be 
 inferred that they are tending towards a final con- 
 summation, towards a goal and a conclusion. That 
 is so, though the goal is still far off. Man, as we 
 know him on this earth, is but half-way through the 
 evolutionary process to which he owes his present 
 development. He will be as much greater, before 
 the destiny of our system is accomplished, than he is 
 now, as he is now greater than the missing link. And 
 that improvement will even be accomplished on this 
 earth, while, in the other worlds of the ascending 
 series, there are still loftier peaks of perfection to be 
 scaled. It is utterly beyond the range of faculties 
 untutored in the discernment of occult mysteries, to 
 imagine the kind of life which man will thus ulti- 
 mately lead before the zenith of the great cycle is 
 attained. But there is enough to be done in filling 
 up the details of the outline now presented to the 
 reader, without attempting to forecast those which 
 have to do with existences towards which evolution is 
 reaching across the enormous abysses of the future. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 An expression occurs in the foregoing chapter 
 which does not recommend itself to the somewhat 
 fuller conceptions I have been able to form of the 
 subject since this book was written. It is stated that 
 "the spiritual monads — the individual atoms of that 
 immense life impulse of which so much has been said — 
 do not fully complete their mineral existence on globe 
 A, then complete it on globe B, and so on. They 
 pass several times round the whole circle as minerals, 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 and then again several times round as vegetables, &c." 
 Now it is intelligible to me that I was permitted to 
 use this form of expression in the first instance 
 because the main purpose in view was to elucidate the 
 way in which the human entity was gradually evolved 
 from processes of Nature going on in the first instance 
 in lower kingdoms. But in truth at a later stage 
 of the inquiry it becomes manifest that the vast 
 process of which the evolution of humanity and all 
 which that leads up to is the crowning act, the 
 descent of spirit into matter, does not bring about a 
 differentiation of individualities until a much later 
 stage than is contemplated in the passage just quoted. 
 In the mineral worlds on which the higher forms of 
 plant and animal life have not yet been established, 
 there is no such thing, as yet, as an individual spiritual 
 monad, unless indeed by virtue of some inconceivable 
 unity — inconceivable, but subject to treatment as a 
 theory none the less — in the life impulses which are 
 destined to give rise to the later chains of highly 
 organized existence. Just as in a preceding note 
 we assumed the unity of such a life impulse in 
 the case of a perverted human Ego falling away 
 as a whole from the current of evolution on 
 which it was launched, so we may assume the 
 same unity backwards to the earliest beginnings of 
 the planetary chain. But this can be no more than 
 a protective hypothesis, reserving us the right to 
 investigate some mysteries later on that we need not 
 go into at present. For a general appreciation of 
 the subject it is better to regard the first infusion, as 
 it were, of spirit into matter as provoking a homo- 
 geneous manifestation. The specific forms of the 
 
The Planetary Chain. 53 
 
 mineral kingdom, the crystals and differentiated rocks 
 are but bubbles in the seething mass assuming 
 partially individualized forms for a time, and rushing 
 again into the general substance of the growing 
 cosmos, not yet true individualities. Nor even in the 
 vegetable kingdom does individuality set in. The 
 vegetable establishes organic matter in physical ma- 
 nifestation, and prepares the way for the higher 
 evolution of the animal kingdom. In this, for the 
 first time, but only in the higher regions of this, is 
 true individuality evoked. Therefore it is not till we 
 begin in imagination to contemplate the passage of 
 the great life impulse round the planetary chain on 
 the level of animal incarnation, that it would be 
 strictly justifiable to speak of the spiritual monads as 
 travelling round the circle as a plurality, to which 
 the word " they " would properly apply. 
 
 It is evidently not with the intention of encouraging 
 any close study of evolution on the very grand scale 
 with which we are dealing here, that the adept 
 authors of the doctrine set forth in this volume, have 
 opened the subject of the planetary chain. As far 
 as humanity is concerned, the period during which 
 this earth will be occupied by our race is more than 
 long enough to absorb all our speculative energy. 
 The magnitude of the evolutionary process to be 
 accomplished during that period is more than enough 
 to tax to the utmost the capacities of an ordinary 
 imagination. But it is extremely advantageous for 
 students of the occult doctrine to realize the plurality 
 of worlds in our system once for all — their intimate 
 relations with, their interdependence on each other 
 — before concentrating attention on the evolution 
 
54 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of this single planet. For in many respects the 
 evolution of a single planet follows a routine, as it 
 will be found directly, that bears an analogical resem- 
 blance to the routine affecting the entire series of 
 planets to which it belongs. The older writings on 
 occult science, of the obscurely worded order, some- 
 times refer to successive states of one world, as if 
 successive worlds were meant, and vice versa. Con- 
 fusion thus arises in the reader's mind, and according 
 to the bent of his own inclination he clings to various 
 interpretations of the misty language. The obscurity 
 disappears when we realize that in the actual facts of 
 Nature we have to recognize both courses of change. 
 Each planet while inhabited by humanity, goes 
 through metamorphoses of a highly important and 
 impressive character, the effect of which may in each 
 case be almost regarded as equivalent to the recon- 
 stitution of the world. But none the less, if the whole 
 group of such changes is treated as a unity, does it 
 form one of a higher series of changes. The several 
 worlds of the chain are objective realities, and not 
 symbols of change in one single, variable world. 
 Further remarks on this head will fall into their place 
 more naturally at the close of a later chapter. 
 
The World Periods. 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WORLD PERIODS. 
 
 A STRIKING illustration of the uniformities of 
 Nature is brought out by the first glance at the 
 occult doctrine in reference to the development 
 of man on the earth. The outline of the design 
 is the same as the outline of the more compre- 
 hensive design covering the whole chain of worlds. 
 The inner details of this world, as regards its units 
 of construction, are the same as the inner details of 
 the larger organism of which this world itself is a 
 unit. That is to say, the development of humanity 
 on this earth is accomplished by means of successive 
 waves of development which correspond to the succes- 
 sive worlds in the great planetary chain. The great 
 tide of human life, be it remembered — for that has 
 been already set forth — sweeps round the whole circle 
 of worlds in successive waves. These primary 
 growths of humanity may be conveniently spoken of 
 as rounds. We must not forget that the individual 
 units, constituting each round in turn, are identically 
 the same as regards their higher principles, that is, 
 that the individualities on the earth during round one 
 come back again after completing their travels round 
 the whole series of worlds and constitute round two, 
 and so on. But the point to which special attention 
 should be drawn here is that the individual unit, 
 
56 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 having arrived at any given planet of the series in 
 the course of any given round, does not merely touch 
 that planet and pass on to the next Before passing 
 on, he has to live through a series of races on that 
 planet. And this fact suggests the outline of the 
 fabric which will presently develope itself in the 
 reader's mind, and exhibit that similarity of design on 
 the part of the one world as compared with the whole 
 series, to which attention has already been drawn. 
 As the complete scheme of Nature that we belong to 
 is worked out by means of a series of rounds sweep- 
 ing through all the worlds, so the development of 
 humanity on each world is worked out by a series 
 of races developed within the limits of each world in 
 turn. 
 
 It is time now to make the working of this law 
 clearer by coming to the actual figures which have to 
 do with the evolution of our doctrine. It would have 
 been premature to begin with them, but as soon as 
 the idea of a system of worlds in a chain, and of life 
 evolution on each through a series of rebirths, is 
 satisfactorily grasped, the further examination of the 
 laws at work will be greatly facilitated by precise 
 reference to the actual number of worlds and the 
 actual number of rounds and races required to 
 accomplish the whole purpose of the system. For 
 the whole duration of the system is as certainly 
 limited in time, be it remembered, as the life of a 
 single man. Probably not limited to any definite 
 number of years set irrevocably from the commence- 
 ment, but that which has a beginning progresses 
 onward towards an end. The life of a man, leaving 
 accidents quite out of the account, is a terminable 
 
The World Periods. 57 
 
 period, and the life of a world system leads up to 
 a final consummation. The vast periods of time, 
 concerned in the life of a world system, dazzle the 
 imagination as a rule, but still they are measurable ; 
 they are divisible into sub-periods of various kinds, 
 and these have a definite number. 
 
 By what prophetic instinct Shakespeare pitched 
 upon seven as the number which suited his fantastic 
 classification of the ages of man, is a question with 
 which we need not be much concerned ; but certain it 
 is that he could not have made a more felicitous 
 choice. In periods of sevens the evolution of the 
 races of man may be traced, and the actual number 
 of the objective worlds which constitute our system, 
 and of which the earth is one, is seven also. Re- 
 member, the occult scientists know this as a fact, 
 just as the physical scientists know for a fact that 
 the spectrum consists of seven colours, and the 
 musical scale of seven tones. There are seven 
 kingdoms of Nature, not three, as modern science 
 has imperfectly classified them. Man belongs to 
 a kingdom distinctly separate from that of the 
 animals, including beings in a higher state of or- 
 ganization than that which manhood has familiarized 
 us with as yet ; and below the mineral kingdom 
 there are three others, which science in the West 
 knows nothing about ; but this branch of the subject 
 may be set aside for the present. It is mentioned 
 merely to show the regular operation of the septenary 
 law in Nature. 
 
 Man — returning to the kingdom we are most 
 interested in — is evolved in a series of rounds (pro- 
 gressions round the series of worlds), and seven of 
 
58 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 these rounds have to be accomplished before the 
 destinies of our system are worked out. The 
 round which is at present going on is the fourth. 
 There are considerations of the utmost possible 
 interest connected with precise knowledge on these 
 points, because each round is, as it were, specially 
 allotted to the predominance of one of the seven 
 principles in man, and in the regular order of their 
 upward gradation. 
 
 An individual unit, arriving on a planet for the 
 first time in the course of a round, has to work 
 through seven races on that planet before he passes 
 on to the next, and each of those races occupies the 
 earth for a long time. Our old-fashioned specula- 
 tions about time and eternity, suggested by the misty 
 religious systems of the West, have brought on a 
 curious habit of mind in connection with problems 
 bearing on the actual duration of such periods. We 
 can talk glibly of eternity, and, going to the other end 
 of the scale, we are not shocked by a few thousand 
 years, but directly years are numbered with precision 
 in groups which lie in intervening regions of thought, 
 illogical Western theologians are apt to regard such 
 numbering as nonsense. Now, we at present living 
 on this earth — the great bulk of humanity, that is to 
 say, for there are exceptional cases to be considered 
 later — are now going through the fifth race of our 
 present fourth round. And yet the evolution of 
 that fifth race began about a million of years ago. 
 Will the reader, in consideration of the fact that 
 the present cosmogony does not profess to work 
 with eternity, nerve himself to deal with estimates 
 that do concern themselves with millions of years, 
 
The World Periods. 59 
 
 and even count such millions by considerable num- 
 bers ? 
 
 Each race of the seven which go to make up a 
 round — i.e. which are evolved on the earth in suc- 
 cession during its occupation by the great wave of 
 humanity passing round the planetary chain — is 
 itself subject to subdivision. Were this not the case, 
 the active existences of each human unit would be 
 indeed few and far between. Within the limits of 
 each race there are seven subdivisional races, and 
 again within the limits of each subdivision there are 
 seven branch races. Through all these races, roughly 
 speaking, each individual human unit must pass 
 during his stay on earth, each time he arrives there, 
 on a round of progress through the planetary system. 
 On reflection, this necessity should not appal the 
 mind so much as a hypothesis which would provide 
 for fewer incarnations. For, however many lives each 
 individual unit may pass through while on earth 
 during a round, be their numbers few or many, he 
 cannot pass on until the time comes for the round- 
 wave to sweep forward. Even by the calculation 
 already foreshadowed, it will be seen that the time 
 spent by each individual unit in physical life can 
 only be a small fraction of the whole time he has to 
 get through between his arrival on earth and his 
 departure for the next planet. The larger part of 
 the time — as we reckon duration of time — is obviously, 
 therefore, spent in those subjective conditions of 
 existence which belong to the " World of Effects," 
 or spiritual earth attached to the physical earth, on 
 which our objective existence is passed. 
 
 The nature of existence on the spiritual earth 
 
Co Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 must be considered pari passu with the nature of that 
 passed on the physical earth, and dealt with in the 
 above enumeration of race incarnations. We must 
 never forget that between each physical existence 
 the individual unit passes through a period of existence 
 in the corresponding spiritual world. And it is 
 because the conditions of that existence are defined 
 by the use that has been made of the opportunities 
 in the next, preceding physical existence, that the 
 spiritual earth is often spoken of in occult writing as 
 the world of effects. The earth itself is its corre- 
 sponding world of causes. 
 
 That which passes naturally into the world of 
 effects after an incarnation in the world of causes is 
 the individual unit or spiritual monad ; but the per- 
 sonality just dissolved passes there with it, to an 
 extent dependent on the qualifications of such per- 
 sonality — on the use, that is to say, which the person 
 in question has made of his opportunities in life. 
 The period to be spent in the world of effects — 
 enormously longer in each case than the life which 
 has paved the way for existence there — corresponds 
 to the " hereafter " or heaven of ordinary theology- 
 The narrow purview of ordinary religious conceptions 
 deals merely with one spiritual life and its con- 
 sequences in the life to come. Theology conceives 
 that the entity concerned had its beginning in this 
 physical life, and that the ensuing spiritual life will 
 never stop. And this pair of existences, which is 
 shown by the elements of occult science, that we are 
 now unfolding, to constitute a part only of the entity's 
 experience during its connection with a branch race 
 which is one of seven belonging to a subdivisional 
 race, itself one of seven belonging to a main race, 
 
The World Periods. 6i 
 
 itself one of seven belonging to the occupation of 
 earth by one of the seven round-waves of humanity 
 which have each to occupy it in turn before its func- 
 tions in Nature are concluded — this microscopic 
 molecule of the whole structure is what common 
 theology treats as more than the whole, for it is 
 supposed to cover eternity. 
 
 The reader must here be warned against one con- 
 clusion to which the above explanations — perfectly 
 accurate as far as they go, but not yet covering the 
 whole ground — might lead him. He will not get at 
 the exact number of lives an individual entity has 
 to lead on the earth in the course of its occupation 
 by one round, if he merely raises seven to its third 
 power. If one existence only were passed in each 
 branch race the total number would obviously be 
 343, but each life descends at least twice into 
 objectivity in the same branch — each monad, in other 
 words, incarnates twice in each branch race. Again, 
 there is a curious cyclic law which operates to aug- 
 ment the total number of incarnations beyond 686. 
 Each subdivisional race has a certain extra vitality 
 at its climax, which leads it to throw off an additional 
 offshoot race at that point in its progress, and again 
 another offshoot race is developed at the end of the 
 subdivisional race by its dying momentum, so to 
 speak. Through these races the whole tide of human 
 life passes, and the result is that the actual normal 
 number of incarnations for each monad is not far 
 short of 800. Within relatively narrow limits it is 
 a variable number, but the bearings of that fact may 
 be considered later on. 
 
 The methodical law which carries each and every 
 individual human entity through the vast evolu- 
 
62 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 tionary process thus sketched out, is in no way 
 incompatible with that liability to fall away into 
 abnormal destinies or ultimate annihilation which 
 menaces the personal entities of people who culti- 
 vate very ignoble affinities. The distribution of the 
 seven principles at death shows that clearly enough, 
 but viewed in the light of these further explana- 
 tions about evolution, the situation may be better 
 realized. The permanent entity is that which lives 
 through the whole series of lives, not only through 
 the races belonging to the present round-wave on 
 earth, but also through those of other round-waves 
 and other worlds. Broadly speaking, it may, in due 
 time,, though at some inconceivably distant future, 
 as measured in years, recover a recollection of all 
 those lives, which will seem as days in the past to us. 
 But the astral dross, cast off at each passage into 
 the world of effects, has a more or less independent 
 existence of its own, quite separate from that of the 
 spiritual entity from which it has just been disunited. 
 
 The natural history of this astral remnant is a 
 problem of much interest and importance ; but a 
 methodical continuation of the whole subject will 
 require us in the first instance to endeavour to realize 
 the destiny of the higher and more durable spiritual 
 Ego, and before going into that inquiry there is a 
 good deal more to be said about the development of 
 the objective races. 
 
 Esoteric science, though interesting itself mainly 
 with matters generally regarded as appertaining to 
 religion, would not be the complete comprehensive 
 and trustworthy system that it is, if it failed to bring 
 all the facts of earth life into harmony with its 
 
The World Periods. 63 
 
 doctrines. It would have been little able to search 
 out and ascertain the manner in which the human 
 race has evolved through aeons of time and series of 
 planets, if it had not been in a position to ascertain 
 also, as the smaller inquiry is included in the greater 
 the manner in which the wave of humanity with 
 which we are now concerned has been developed on 
 this earth. The faculties, in short, which enable 
 adepts to read the mysteries of other worlds, and of 
 other states of existence, are in no way unequal to 
 the task of travelling back along the life-current of 
 this globe. It follows that while the brief record of 
 a few thousand years is all that our so-called universal 
 history can deal with, the earth history, which forms 
 a department of esoteric knowledge, goes back to 
 the incidents of the fourth race, which preceded ours, 
 and to those of the third race, which preceded that. 
 It goes back still further indeed, but the second and 
 first races did not develope anything that could be 
 called civilization, and of them therefore there is less 
 to be said than of their successors. The third and 
 fourth did — strange as it may seem to some modern 
 readers to contemplate the notion of civilization on 
 the earth several millions of years ago. 
 
 Where are its traces ? they will ask. How could 
 the civilization with which Europe has now endowed 
 mankind, pass away so completely that any future 
 inhabitants of the earth could ever be ignorant that 
 it once existed ? How then can we conceive the idea 
 that any similar civilization can have vanished, leaving- 
 no records for us ? 
 
 The answer lies in the regular routine of planetary 
 life, which goes on pari passu with the life of its 
 
64 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 inhabitants. The periods of the great root races are 
 divided from each other by great convulsions of 
 Nature, and by great geological changes. Europe 
 was not in existence as a continent at the time 
 the fourth race flourished. The continent on which 
 the fourth race lived was not in existence at the time 
 the third race flourished, and neither of the con- 
 tinents which were the great vortices of the civilizations 
 of those two races are in existence now. Seven great 
 continental cataclysms occur during the occupation of 
 the earth by the human life-wave for one round-period. 
 Each race is cut off in this way at its appointed time, 
 some survivors remaining in parts of the world, not 
 the proper home of their race ; but these, invariably 
 in such cases, exhibiting a tendency to decay, and 
 relapsing into barbarism with more or less rapidity. 
 
 The proper home of the fourth race, which directly 
 preceded our own, was that continent of which some 
 memory has been preserved even in exoteric literature 
 —the lost Atlantis. But the great island, the de- 
 struction of which is spoken of by Plato, was really 
 but the last remnant of the continent. "In the 
 Eocene age," I am told, " even in its very first part, 
 the great cycle of the fourth race men, the Atlanteans, 
 had already reached its highest point, and the great 
 continent, the father of nearly all the present conti- 
 nents, showed the first symptoms of sinking— a process 
 that occupied it down to 11,446 years ago, when its 
 last island, that, translating its vernacular name, we 
 may call with propriety Poseidonis, went down with 
 a crash. 
 
 " Lemuria " (a former continent stretching south- 
 wards from India across what is now the Indian 
 
The World Periods. 65 
 
 Ocean, but connected with Atlantis, for Africa was 
 not then in existence) " should no more be confounded 
 with the Atlantis continent than Europe with America. 
 Both sank and were drowned, with their high civili- 
 zations and ' gods ;' yet between the two catastrophes 
 a period of about 700,000 years elapsed, Lemuria 
 flourishing and ending her career just about that 
 lapse of time before the early part of the Eocene age, 
 since its race was the third. Behold the relics of that 
 once great nation in some of the flat-headed aborigines 
 of your Australia." 
 
 It is a mistake on the part of a recent writer on 
 Atlantis to people India and Egypt with the colonies 
 of that continent, but of that more anon. 
 
 " Why should not your geologists," asks my revered 
 Mahatma teacher, "bear in mind that under the 
 continents explored and fathomed by them, in the 
 bowels of which they have found the Eocene age, 
 and forced it to deliver them its secrets, there may be 
 hidden deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed 
 ocean beds, other and far older continents whose 
 strata have never been geologically explored ; and 
 that they may some day upset entirely their present 
 theories ? Why not admit that our present continents 
 have, like Lemuria and Atlantis, been several times 
 already submerged, and had the time to reappear 
 again, and bear their new groups of mankind and 
 civilization ; and that at the first great geological 
 upheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series of 
 periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning 
 to the end of every round, our already autopsized 
 continents will go down, and the Lemurias and 
 Atlantises come up again ? 
 
 F 
 
66 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 " Of course the fourth race had its periods of the 
 highest civilization." (The letter from which I am 
 now quoting was written in answer to a series of 
 questions I put.) "Greek, and Roman, and even 
 Egyptian civilizations are nothing compared to the 
 civilizations that began with the third race. Those 
 of the second race were not savages, but they could 
 not be called civilized. 
 
 " Greeks and Romans were small sub-races, and 
 Egyptians part and parcel of our own Caucasian 
 stock. Look at the latter, and at India. Having 
 reached the highest civilization, and, what is more, 
 learning, both went down ; Egypt, as a distinct sub- 
 race, disappearing entirely (her Copts are but a hybrid 
 remnant) ; India, as one of the first and most 
 powerful offshoots of the mother race, and composed 
 of a number of sub-races, lasting to these times, and 
 struggling to take once more her place in history 
 some day. That history catches but a few stray, hazy 
 glimpses of Egypt some 12,000 years back, when, 
 having already reached the apex of its cycle thousands 
 of years before, the latter had begun to go down. 
 
 " The Chaldees were at the apex of their occult 
 fame before what you term the Bronze Age. We 
 hold — but then what warrant can you give the world 
 that we are right ? — that far greater civilizations than 
 our own have risen and decayed. It is not enough to 
 say, as some of your modern writers do, that an 
 extinct civilization existed before Rome and Athens 
 were founded. We affirm that a series of civilizations 
 existed before as well as after the glacial period, that 
 they existed upon various points of the globe, reached 
 the apex of glory, and died. Every trace and 
 
The World Periods. 67 
 
 memory had been lost of the Assyrian and Phoenician 
 civilizations, until discoveries began to be made a few 
 years ago. And now they open a new, though not 
 by far one of the earliest pages in the history of man- 
 kind. And yet how far back do those civilizations 
 go in comparison with the oldest, and even them 
 history is slow to accept. Archaeology has suffi- 
 ciently demonstrated that the memory of man runs 
 back vastly further than history has been willing to 
 accept, and the sacred records of once mighty nations, 
 preserved by their heirs, are still more worthy of 
 trust. We speak of civilizations of the ante-glacial 
 period, and not only in the minds of the vulgar and the 
 profane, but even in the opinion of the highly-learned 
 geologist, the claim sounds preposterous. What 
 would you say then to our affirmation that the 
 Chinese — I now speak of the inland, the true 
 Chinamen, not of the hybrid mixture between the 
 fourth and fifth races now occupying the throne — 
 the aborigines who belong in their unallied nationality 
 wholly to the highest and last branch of the fourth 
 race, reached their highest civilization when the fifth 
 had hardly appeared in Asia. When was it ? 
 Calculate. The group of islands discovered by 
 Nordenskiold of the Vega was found strewn ,vith 
 fossils of horses, sheep, oxen, &c, among gigantic 
 bones of elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses, and 
 other monsters belonging to periods when man, says 
 your science, had not yet made his appearance on 
 earth. How came horses and sheep to be found in 
 company with the huge antediluvians ? 
 
 " The region now locked in the fetters of eternal 
 winter, uninhabited by man — that most fragile of 
 
 F 2 
 
63 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 animals — will very soon be proved to have had not 
 only a tropical climate, something your science knows 
 and does not dispute, but having been likewise the seat 
 of one of the most ancient civilizations of the fourth 
 race, whose highest relics we now find in the dege- 
 nerate Chinaman, and whose lowest are hopelessly (for 
 the profane scientist) intermixed with the remnants 
 of the third. I told you before that the highest 
 people now on earth (spiritually) belong to the first 
 sub-race of the fifth root race, and those are the Aryan 
 Asiatics, the highest race (physical intellectuality) is 
 the last sub-race of the fifth — yourselves, the white 
 conquerors. The majority of mankind belongs to 
 the seventh sub-race of the fourth root race — the 
 above-mentioned Chinamen and their offshoots and 
 branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Java- 
 nese, &c, &c.) — with remnants of other sub-races of 
 the fourth and the seventh sub-race of the third race. 
 All these fallen, degraded semblances of humanity 
 are the direct lineal descendants of highly civilized 
 nations, neither the names nor memory of which have 
 survived, except in such books as ' Populvuh,' the 
 sacred book of the Guatemalans, and a few others 
 unknown to science." 
 
 I had inquired was there any way of accounting 
 for what seems the curious rush of human progress 
 within the last two thousand years as compared with 
 the relatively stagnant condition of the fourth-round 
 people up to the beginning of modern progress. 
 This question it was that elicited the explanations 
 quoted above, and also the following remarks in regard 
 to the recent " rush of human progress." 
 
 " The latter end of a very important cycle. Each 
 
The World Periods. 69 
 
 round, each race, as every sub-race, has its great and 
 its smaller cycles on every planet that mankind passes 
 through. Our fourth-round humanity has its one 
 great cycle, and so have its races and sub-races. 
 * The curious rush ' is due to the double effect of the 
 former — the beginning of its downward course — and 
 of the latter (the small cycle of your sub-race) running 
 on to its apex. Remember, you belong to the fifth 
 race, yet you are but a western sub-race. Notwith- 
 standing your efforts, what you call civilization is 
 confined only to the latter and its offshoots in America. 
 Radiating around, its deceptive light may seem to 
 throw its rays on a greater distance than it does in 
 reality. There is no rush in China, and of Japan you 
 make but a caricature. 
 
 " A student of occultism ought not to speak of the 
 stagnant condition of the fourth-round people, since 
 history knows next to nothing of that condition, ' up 
 to the beginning of modern progress,' of other nations 
 but the Western. What do you know of America, 
 for instance, before the invasion of that country by 
 the Spaniards ? Less than two centuries prior to the 
 arrival of Cortez there was as great a rush towards 
 progress among the sub-races of Peru and Mexico 
 as there is now in Europe and the United States. 
 Their sub-race ended in nearly total annihilation 
 through causes generated by itself. We may speak 
 only of the ' stagnant ' condition into which, following 
 the law of development, growth, maturity and decline 
 every race and sub-race falls during the transition 
 periods. It is that latter condition your universal 
 history is acquainted with, while it remains superbly 
 ignorant of the condition even India was in some ten 
 
70 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 centuries back. Your sub-races are now running 
 toward the apex of their respective cycles, and that 
 history goes no further back than the periods of decline 
 of a few other sub-races belonging most of them to 
 the preceding fourth race." 
 
 I had asked to what epoch Atlantis belonged, and 
 whether the cataclysm by which it was destroyed came 
 in an appointed place in the progress of evolution, 
 corresponding for the development of races to the 
 obscuration of planets. The answer was : — 
 
 " To the Miocene times. Everything comes in its 
 appointed time and place in the evolution of rounds, 
 otherwise it would be impossible for the best seer to 
 calculate the exact hour and year when such cata- 
 clysms great and small have to occur. All an adept 
 could do would be to predict an approximate time, 
 whereas now events that result in great geological 
 changes may be predicted with as mathematical a 
 certainty as eclipses and other revolutions in space. 
 The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents and 
 isles) began during the Miocene period — as certain of 
 your continents are now observed to be gradually 
 sinking — and it culminated first in the final disap- 
 pearance of the largest continent, an event coincident 
 with the elevation of the Alps, and second, with that 
 of the last of the fair islands mentioned by Plato. 
 The Egyptian priests of Sai*s told his ancestor, Solon 
 that Atlantis (i.e. the only remaining large island) 
 had perished 9000 years before their time. This 
 was not a fancy date, since they had for millenniums 
 preserved most carefully their records. But then, as 
 I say, they spoke but of the Poseidonis, and would 
 
The World Periods. 71 
 
 not reveal even to the great Greek legislator their secret 
 chronology. As there are no geological reasons for 
 doubting, but, on the contrary, a mass of evidence for 
 accepting the tradition, science has finally accepted 
 the existence of the great continent and archipelago, 
 and thus vindicated the truth of one more ' fable.' 
 
 " The approach of every new obscuration is always 
 signalled by cataclysms of either fire or water. But, 
 apart from this, every root race has to be cut in two, 
 so to say, by either one or the other. Thus, having 
 reached the apex of its development and glory, the 
 fourth race — the Atlanteans — were destroyed by 
 water ; you find now but their degenerate fallen 
 remnants, whose sub-races, nevertheless, each of them, 
 had its palmy days of glory and relative greatness. 
 What they are now, you will be some day, the law of 
 cycles being one and immutable. When your race, 
 the fifth, will have reached its zenith of physical in- 
 tellectuality, and developed its highest civilization 
 (remember the difference we make between material 
 and spiritual civilizations), unable to go any higher in 
 its own cycle, its progress towards absolute evil will 
 be arrested (as its predecessors, the Lemurians and 
 the Atlanteans, the men of the third and fourth races, 
 were arrested in their progress towards the same) by 
 one of such cataclysmic changes, its great civilization 
 destroyed, and all the sub-races of that race will be 
 found going down their respective cycles, after a short 
 period of glory and learning. See the remnants of the 
 Atlanteans, the old Greeks and Romans (the modern 
 belong to the fifth race). See how great and how short, 
 how evanescent were their days of fame and glory. For 
 
72 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 they were but sub-races of the seven offshoots of the 
 root race. 1 No mother race, any more than her sub- 
 races and offshoots, is allowed by the one reigning 
 law to trespass upon the prerogatives of the race or 
 sub-race that will follow it ; least of all to encroach 
 upon the knowledge and powers in store for its 
 successor." 
 
 The " progress towards absolute evil," arrested by 
 the cataclysms of each race in turn, sets in with the 
 acquisition, by means of ordinary intellectual research 
 and scientific advancement, of those powers over 
 Nature which accrue even now in adeptship from 
 the premature development of higher faculties than 
 those we ordinarily employ. I have spoken slightly 
 of these powers in a preceding chapter, when endea- 
 vouring to describe our esoteric teachers ; to de- 
 scribe them minutely would lead me into a long 
 digression on occult phenomena. It is enough to say 
 that they are such as cannot but be dangerous to 
 society generally, and provocative of all manner of 
 crimes which would utterly defy detection, if possessed 
 by persons capable of regarding them as anything 
 else but a profoundly sacred trust. Now some of 
 these powers are simply the practical application of 
 obscure forces of Nature, susceptible of discovery in 
 the course of ordinary scientific progress. Such pro- 
 gress had been accomplished by the Atlanteans. The 
 worldly men of science in that race had learned the 
 secrets of the disintegration and reintegration of mat- 
 ter, which few but practical spiritualists as yet know 
 to be possible, and of control over the elementals, 
 
 1 Branches of the subdivisions, according to the nomenclature 
 I have adopted previously. 
 
The World Periods. 73 
 
 by means of which that and other even more por- 
 tentous phenomena can be produced. Such powers 
 in the hands of persons willing to use them for merely 
 selfish and unscrupulous ends must not only be pro- 
 ductive of social disaster, but also for the persons who 
 hold them, of progress in the direction of that evilly 
 spiritual exaltation which is a far more terrible result 
 than suffering and inconvenience in this world. Thus 
 it is, when physical intellect, unguarded by elevated 
 morality, runs over into the proper region of spiritual 
 advancement, that the natural law provides for its 
 violent repression. The contingency will be better 
 understood when we come to deal with the general 
 destinies towards which humanity is tending. 
 
 The principle under which the various races of man 
 as they develope are controlled collectively by the 
 cyclic law, however they may individually exercise 
 the free will they unquestionably possess, is thus very 
 plainly asserted. For people who have never regarded 
 human affairs as covering more than the very short 
 period with which history deals, the course of events 
 will perhaps, as a rule, exhibit no cyclic character, 
 but rather a chequered progress, hastened sometimes 
 by great men and fortunate circumstances, sometimes 
 retarded by war, bigotry, or intervals of intellectual 
 sterility, but moving continually onwards in the long 
 account, at one rate of speed or another. As the 
 esoteric view of the matter, fortified by the wide range 
 of observation which occult science is enabled to take, 
 has an altogether opposite tendency, it seems worth 
 while to conclude these explanations with an extract 
 from a distinguished author, quite unconnected with 
 the occult world, who nevertheless, from a close ob- 
 
74 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 servation of the mere historical record, pronounces 
 himself decisively in favour of the theory of cycles. 
 In his " History of the Intellectual Development of 
 Europe" Dr. J. W. Draper writes as follows : — 
 
 " We are, as we often say, the creatures of circum- 
 stances. In that expression there is a higher philo- 
 sophy than might at first sight appear From 
 
 this more accurate point of view we should therefore 
 consider the course of these events, recognizing the 
 principle that the affairs of men pass forward in a 
 determinate way, expanding and unfolding them- 
 selves. And hence we see that the things of which 
 we have spoken as though they were matters of 
 choice, were in reality forced upon their apparent 
 authors by the necessity of the times. But in truth 
 they should be considered as the presentation of a 
 certain phase of life which nations in their onward 
 course sooner or later assume. To the individual, 
 how well we know that a sober moderation of action, 
 an appropriate gravity of demeanour, belong to the 
 mature period of life, change from the wanton wilful- 
 ness of youth, which may be ushered in, or its begin- 
 ning marked by, many accidental incidents ; in one 
 perhaps by domestic bereavements, in another by the 
 loss of fortune, in a third by ill-health. We are cor- 
 rect enough in imputing to such trials the change of 
 character ; but we never deceive ourselves by sup- 
 posing that it would have failed to k take place had 
 those incidents not occurred. There runs an irresisti- 
 ble destiny in the midst of all these vicissitudes. . . . 
 There are analogies between the life of a nation and 
 that of an individual, who, though he may be in one 
 respect the maker of his own fortunes, for happiness 
 
The World Periods. 75 
 
 or for misery, for good or for evil, though he remains 
 here or goes there, as his inclinations prompt, though 
 he does this or abstains from that, as he chooses, is 
 nevertheless held fast by an inexorable fate — a fate 
 which brought him into the world involuntarily, as far 
 as he was concerned, which presses him forward through 
 a definite career, the stages of which are absolutely 
 invariable — infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old 
 age, with all their characteristic actions and passions 
 — and which removes him from the scene at the 
 appointed time, in most cases against his will. So 
 also it is with nations ; the voluntary is only the out- 
 ward semblance, covering, but hardly hiding, the pre- 
 determined. Over the events of life we may have con- 
 trol, but none whatever over the law of its progress. 
 There is a geometry that applies to nations an equa- 
 tion of their curve of advance. That no mortal man 
 can touch." 
 
7$ Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DEVACHAN. 
 
 It was not possible to approach a consideration of the 
 states into which the higher human principles pass at 
 death, without first indicating the general framework 
 of the whole design worked out in the course of the 
 evolution of man. That much of my task, however, 
 having now been accomplished, we may pass on to 
 consider the natural destinies of each human Ego in 
 the interval which elapses between the close of one ob- 
 jective life and the commencement of another. At the 
 commencement of another, the Karma of the previous 
 objective life determines the state of life into which 
 the individual shall be born. This doctrine of Karma 
 is one of the most interesting features of Buddhist 
 philosophy. There has been no secret about it at any 
 time, though for want of a proper comprehension of 
 elements in the philosophy, which have been strictly 
 esoteric, it may sometimes have been misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 Karma is a collective expression applied to that 
 complicated group of affinities for good and evil 
 generated by a human being during life, and the 
 character of which inheres in his fifth principle 
 all through the interval which elapses between his 
 death out of one objective life and his birth into the 
 next. As stated sometimes, the doctrine seems to be 
 one which exacts the notion of a superior spiritual 
 
Devachan. 77 
 
 authority summing up the acts of a man's life at its 
 close, taking into consideration his good deeds and 
 his bad, and giving judgment about him on the whole 
 aspect of the case. But a comprehension of the way 
 in which the human principles divide up at death, will 
 afford a clue to the comprehension of the way in which 
 Karma operates, and also of the great subject we may 
 better take up first — the immediate spiritual condition 
 of man after death. 
 
 At death the three lower principles — the body, its 
 mere physical vitality, and its astral counterpart — are 
 finally abandoned by that which really is the Man 
 himself, and the four higher principles escape into that 
 world immediately above our own ; above our own, 
 that is, in the order of spirituality — not above it at 
 all, but in it and of it, as regards real locality — the 
 astral plane, or karma loca, according to a very 
 familiar Sanskrit expression. Here a division takes 
 place between the two duads, which the four higher 
 principles include. The explanations already given 
 concerning the imperfect extent to which the upper 
 principles of man are as yet developed, will show that 
 this estimation of the process, as in the nature of a 
 mechanical separation of the principles, is a rough 
 way of dealing with the matter. It must be modified 
 in the reader's mind by the light of what has been 
 already said. It may be otherwise described as a 
 trial of the extent to which the fifth principle has been 
 developed. Regarded in the light of the former "idea, 
 however, we must conceive the sixth and seventh 
 principles, on the one hand, drawing the fifth, the 
 human soul, in one direction, while the fourth draws 
 it back earthwards in the other. Now, the fifth prin- 
 
yS Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 ciple is a very complex entity, separable itself into 
 superior and inferior elements. In the struggle which 
 takes place between its late companion principles, its 
 best, purest, most elevated and spiritual portions 
 cling to the sixth, its lower instincts, impulses and 
 recollections adhere to the fourth, and it is in a 
 measure torn asunder. The lower remnant, asso- 
 ciating itself with the fourth, floats off in the earth's 
 atmosphere, while the best elements, those, be it 
 understood, which really constitute the Ego of the 
 late earthly personality, the individuality, the con- 
 sciousness thereof, follows the sixth and seventh into 
 a spiritual condition, the nature of which we are about 
 to examine. 
 
 Rejecting the popular English name for this 
 spiritual condition, as encrusted with too many mis- 
 conceptions to be convenient, let us keep to the 
 Oriental designation of that region or state into which 
 the higher principles of human creatures pass at death. 
 This is additionally desirable because, although the 
 Devachan of Buddhist philosophy corresponds in 
 some respects to the modern European idea of heaven, 
 it differs from heaven in others which are even more 
 important. 
 
 Firstly, however, in Devachan, that which survives 
 is not merely the individual monad, which survives 
 through all the changes of the whole evolutionary 
 scheme, and flits from body to body, from planet to 
 planet, and so forth — that which survives in Devachan 
 is the man's own self-conscious personality, under 
 some restrictions indeed, which we will come to 
 directly, but still it is the same personality as regards 
 its higher feelings, aspirations, affections, and even 
 
Devachan. 79 
 
 tastes, as it was on earth. Perhaps it would be 
 better to say the essence of the late self-conscious 
 personality. 
 
 It may be worth the reader's while to learn what 
 Colonel H. S. Olcott has to say in his " Bud- 
 dhist Catechism" (14th thousand) of the intrinsic 
 difference between " individuality " and " person- 
 ality." Since he wrote not only under the approval 
 of the High Priest of the Sripada and Galle, 
 Sumangala, but also under the direct instruction 
 of his Adept Guru, his words will have weight for 
 the student of occultism. This is what he says in 
 his appendix : — 
 
 " Upon reflection I have substituted ' personality ' 
 for 'individuality/ as written in the first edition. 
 The successive appearances upon one or many 
 earths, or ' descents into generation ' of the tanhai- 
 <rtf//^-coherent parts (Skandhas) of a certain being, 
 are a succession of personalities. In each birth the 
 personality differs from that of the previous or next 
 succeeding birth. Karma, the dens ex tnachind, 
 masks (or shall we say, reflects ?) itself now in the 
 personality of a sage, again as an artisan, and 
 so on throughout the string of births. But though 
 personalities ever shift, the one line of life along 
 which they are strung like beads runs unbroken. 
 
 " It is ever that particular line, never any other. It 
 is therefore individual, an individual vital undulation 
 which began in Nirvana or the subjective side of 
 Nature, as the light or heat undulation through 
 aether began at its dynamic source ; is careering 
 through the objective side of Nature, under the 
 impulse of Karma and the creative direction of 
 
8o Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 Tanha ; and tends through many cyclic changes 
 back to Nirvana. Mr. Rhys Davids calls that which 
 passes from personality to personality along the 
 individual chain ' character ' or ' doing.' Since 
 ' character ' is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, 
 but the sum of one's mental qualities and moral 
 propensities, would it not help to dispel what Mr. 
 Rhys Davids calls 'the desperate expedient of a 
 mystery,' if we regarded the life undulation as 
 individuality, and each of its series of natal manifesta- 
 tions as a separate personality ? 
 
 " The denial of ' soul ' by Buddha (see ' Sanyutto 
 Nikaya,' the Sutta Pitaka) points to the prevalent 
 delusive belief in an independent transmissible 
 personality ; and entity that could move from birth 
 to birth unchanged, or go to a place or state where, 
 as such perfect entity, it could eternally enjoy or 
 suffer. And what he shows is that the ' I am I ' 
 consciousness is, as regards permanency, logically 
 impossible, since its elementary constituents con- 
 stantly change, and the ' I ' of one birth differs from 
 the ' I ' of every other birth. But everything that I 
 have found in Buddhism accords with the theory of 
 a gradual evolution of the perfect man — viz. a 
 Buddha through numberless natal experiences. 
 And in the consciousness of that person who at the 
 end of a given chain of beings attains Buddha-hood, 
 or who succeeds in attaining the fourth stage of 
 Dhyana, or mystic self-development, in any one of 
 his births anterior to the final one, the scenes of all 
 these serial births are perceptible. In the 'Jata- 
 kattahavannana,' so well translated by Mr. Rhys 
 Davids, an expression continually recurs which I 
 
Devachan. Si 
 
 think rather supports such an idea — viz. ' Then the 
 blessed one made manifest an occurrence hidden by 
 change of birth,' or ' that which had been hidden by, 
 &c.' Early Buddhism, then, clearly held to a 
 permanency of records in the Akasa, and the 
 potential capacity of man to read the same when 
 he has evoluted to the stage of true individual 
 enlightenment." 
 
 The purely sensual feelings and tastes of the late 
 personality will drop off from it in Devachan, but it 
 does not follow that nothing is preservable in that 
 state, except feelings and thoughts having a direct 
 reference to religion or spiritual philosophy. On the 
 contrary, all the superior phases, even of sensuous 
 emotion, find their appropriate sphere of development 
 in Devachan. To suggest a whole range of ideas 
 by means of one illustration, a soul in Devachan, if 
 the soul of a man who was passionately devoted to 
 music, would be continuously enraptured by the 
 sensations music produces. The person whose 
 happiness of the higher sort on earth had been 
 entirely centered in the exercise of the affections will 
 miss none in Devachan of those whom he or she 
 loved. But, at once it will be asked, if some of these 
 are not themselves fit for Devachan, how then ? The 
 answer is, that does not matter. For the person who 
 loved them they will be there. It is not necessary to 
 say much more to give a clue to the position. 
 Devachan is a subjective state. It will seem as real 
 as the chairs and tables round us ; and remember 
 that, above all things, to the profound philosophy of 
 occultism are the chairs and tables, and the whole 
 objective scenery of the world, unreal and merely 
 
 G 
 
82 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 transitory delusions of sense. As real as the realities 
 of this world to us, and even more so, will be the 
 realities of Devachan to those who go into that 
 
 state. 
 
 From this it ensues that the subjective isolation of 
 Devachan, as it will perhaps be conceived at first, is 
 not real isolation at all, as the word is understood on 
 the physical plane of existence; it is companionship 
 with all that the true soul craves for, whether persons, 
 things, or knowledge. And a patient consideration 
 of the place in Nature which Devachan occupies will 
 show that this subjective isolation of each human 
 unit is the only condition which renders possible any- 
 thing which can be described as a felicitous spiritual 
 existence after death for mankind at large, and 
 Devachan is as much a purely and absolutely 
 felicitous condition for all who attain it, as Avitchi is 
 the reverse of it. There is no inequality or injustice 
 in the system ; Devachan is by no means the same 
 thing for the good and the indifferent alike, but it is 
 not a life of responsibility, and therefore there is no 
 logical place in it for suffering, any more than in 
 Avitchi there is any room for enjoyment or repentance. 
 It is a life of effects, not of causes ; a life of being 
 paid your earnings, not of labouring for them. There- 
 fore it is impossible to be during that life cognizant 
 of what is going on on earth. Under the operation 
 of such cognition there would be no true happiness 
 possible in the state after death. A heaven which 
 constituted a watch-tower, from which the occupants 
 could still survey the miseries of the earth, would 
 really be a place of acute mental suffering for its 
 most sympathetic, unselfish, and meritorious in- 
 
Devachan. 83 
 
 habitants. If we invest them in imagination with 
 such a very limited range of sympathy that they 
 could be imagined as not caring about the spectacle 
 of suffering after the few persons to whom they were 
 immediately attached had died and joined them, still 
 they would have a very unhappy period of waiting to 
 go through before survivors reached the end of an 
 often long and toilsome existence below. And even 
 this hypothesis would be further vitiated by making 
 heaven most painful for occupants who were most 
 unselfish and sympathetic, whose reflected distress 
 would thus continue on behalf of the afflicted race of 
 mankind generally, even after their personal kindred 
 had been rescued by the lapse of time. The only 
 escape from this dilemma lies in the supposition that 
 heaven is not yet opened for business, so to speak, 
 and that all people who have ever lived from Adam 
 downwards are still lying in a death-like trance, 
 waiting for the resurrection at the end of the world. 
 This hypothesis also has its embarrassments, but we 
 are concerned at present with the scientific harmony 
 of esoteric Buddhism, not with the theories of other 
 creeds. 
 
 Readers, however, who may grant that a purview 
 of earthly life from heaven would render happiness 
 in heaven impossible, may still doubt whether true 
 happiness is possible in the state, as it may be 
 objected, of monotonous isolation now described. 
 The objection is merely raised from the point of 
 view of an imagination that cannot escape from its 
 present surroundings. To begin with, about mono- 
 tony. No one will complain of having experienced 
 monotony during the minute, or moment, or half- 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 hour, as it may have been, of the greatest happiness 
 he may have enjoyed in life. Most people have 
 had some happy moments, at all events, to look 
 back to for the purpose of this comparison ; and 
 let us take even one such minute or moment, too 
 short to be open to the least suspicion of monotony, 
 and imagine its sensations immensely prolonged 
 without any external events in progress to mark 
 the lapse of time. There is no room, in such a 
 condition of things, for the conception of weariness. 
 The unalloyed, unchangeable sensation of intense 
 happiness goes on and on, not for ever, because the 
 causes which have produced it are not infinite them- 
 selves, but for very long periods of time, until the 
 efficient impulse has exhausted itself. 
 
 Nor must it be supposed that there is, so to 
 speak, no change of occupation for souls in 
 Devachan — that any one moment of earthly sensa- 
 tion is selected for exclusive perpetuation. As a 
 teacher of the highest authority on this subject 
 writes : — 
 
 " There are two fields of causal manifestations — 
 the objective and subjective. The grosser energies 
 — those which operate in the denser condition of 
 matter — manifest objectively in the next physical 
 life, their outcome being the new personality of each 
 birth marshalling within the grand cycle of the 
 evolving individuality. It is but the moral and 
 spiritual activities that find their sphere of effects 
 in Devachan. And, thought and fancy being limit- 
 less, how can it be argued for one moment that 
 there is anything like monotony in the state of 
 Devachan ? Few are the men whose lives were so 
 
Devachan. 85 
 
 utterly destitute of feeling, love, or of a more or 
 less intense predilection for some one line of thought 
 as to be made unfit for a proportionate period of 
 Devachanic experience beyond their earthly life. 
 So, for instance, while the vices, physical and sen- 
 sual attractions, say, of a great philosopher, but a 
 bad friend and a selfish man, may result in the birth 
 of a new and still greater intellect, but at the same 
 time a most miserable man, reaping the Karmic 
 effects of all the causes produced by the ' old ' being, 
 and whose make-up was inevitable from the pre- 
 ponderating proclivities of that being in the preceding 
 birth, the intermedial period between the two physical 
 births cannot be, in Nature's exquisitely well-adjusted 
 laws, but a hiatus of unconsciousness. There can be 
 no such dreary blank as kindly promised, or rather 
 implied, by Christian Protestant theology, to the 
 ' departed souls,' which, between death and 'resurrec- 
 tion/ have to hang on in space, in mental catalepsy, 
 awaiting the ' Day of Judgment.' Causes produced 
 by mental and spiritual energy being far greater and 
 more important than those that are created by 
 physical impulses, their effects have to be, for weal 
 or woe, proportionately as great. Lives on this 
 earth, or other earths, affording no proper field for 
 such effects, and every labourer being entitled to his 
 own harvest, they have to expand in either Deva- 
 chan or Avitchi. 1 Bacon, for instance, whom a poet 
 called 
 
 ' The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind/ 
 
 1 The lowest states of Devachan interchain with those of 
 
 Avitchi. 
 
86 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 might reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy 
 money-getter, with extraordinary intellectual capa- 
 cities. But, however great the latter, they would 
 find no proper field in which that particular line of 
 thought, pursued during his previous lifetime by the 
 founder of modern philosophy, could reap all its 
 dues. It would be but the astute lawyer, the corrupt 
 Attorney- General, the ungrateful friend, and the 
 dishonest Lord Chancellor, who might find, led on 
 by his Karma, a congenial new soil in the body of 
 the money-lender, and reappear as a new Shylock. 
 But where would Bacon, the incomparable thinker, 
 with whom philosophical inquiry upon the most 
 profound problems of Nature was his ' first and last 
 and only love,' where would this ' intellectual giant 
 of his race/ once disrobed of his lower nature, go to ? 
 Have all the effects of that magnificent intellect to 
 vanish and disappear ? Certainly not. Thus his 
 moral and spiritual qualities would also have to find 
 a field in which their energies could expand them- 
 selves. Devachan is such a field. Hence all the 
 great plans of moral reform, of intellectual research 
 into abstract principles of Nature — all the divine, 
 spiritual aspirations that had so filled the brightest 
 part of his life would, in Devachan, come to fruition ; 
 and the abstract entity, known in the preceding birth 
 as Francis Bacon, and that may be known in its sub- 
 sequent re-incarnation as a despised usurer — that 
 Bacon's own creation, his Frankenstein, the son of 
 his Karma — shall in the meanwhile occupy itself in 
 this inner world, also of its own preparation, in 
 enjoying the effects of the grand beneficial spiritual 
 causes sown in life. It would live a purely and 
 
Devachan. 87 
 
 spiritually conscious existence— a dream of realistic 
 vividness — until Karma, being satisfied in that 
 direction, and the ripple of force reaching the edge 
 of its sub-cyclic basin, the being should move into 
 its next area of causes, either in this same world 
 or another, according to his stage of progression. 
 .... Therefore, there is ' a change of occupation,' 
 a continual change, in Devachan. For that dream- 
 life is but the fruition, the harvest-time, of those 
 psychic seed-germs dropped from the tree of physical 
 existence in our moments of dream and hope — 
 fancy-glimpses of bliss and happiness, stifled in an 
 ungrateful social soil, blooming in the rosy dawn of 
 Devachan, and ripening under its ever-fructifying 
 sky. If man had but one single moment of ideal 
 experience, not even then could it be, as erroneously 
 supposed, the indefinite prolongation of that ' single 
 moment.' That one note, struck from the lyre of 
 life, would form the key-note of the being's subjec- 
 tive state, and work out into numberless harmonic 
 tones and semitones of psychic phantasmagoria. 
 There, all unrealized hopes, aspirations, dreams, 
 become fully realized, and the dreams of the objec- 
 tive become the realities of the subjective existence. 
 And there, behind the curtain of Maya, its vapor- 
 ous and deceptive appearances are perceived by 
 the Initiate, who has learned the great secret 
 how to penetrate thus deep into the Arcana of 
 
 Being " 
 
 As physical existence has its cumulative intensity 
 from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy 
 thenceforward to dotage and death, so the dream- 
 life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. There 
 
SS Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 is the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of 
 prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into 
 conscious lethargy, semi-unconsciousness, oblivion 
 and — not death, but birth ! — birth into another per- 
 sonality and the resumption of action which daily 
 begets new congeries of causes that must be worked 
 out in another term of Devachan. 
 
 "It is not a reality then, it is a mere dream," 
 objectors will urge ; " the soul so bathed in a delusive 
 sensation of enjoyment, which has no reality all the 
 while, is being cheated by Nature, and must encounter 
 a terrible shock when it wakes to its mistake." But, 
 in the nature of things, it never does or can wake. 
 The waking from Devachan is its next birth into 
 objective life, and the draught of Lethe has then 
 been taken. Nor as regards the isolation of each 
 soul is there any consciousness of isolation whatever ; 
 nor is there ever possibly a parting from its chosen 
 associates. Those associates are not in the nature of 
 companions who may wish to go away, of friends 
 who may tire of the friend that loves them, even if 
 he or she does not tire of them. Love, the creating 
 force, has placed their living image before the 
 personal soul which craves for their presence, and 
 that image will never fly away. 
 
 On this aspect of the subject I may again avail 
 myself of the language of my teacher : — 
 
 " Objectors of that kind will be simply postulating 
 an incongruity, an intercourse of entities in Devachan, 
 which applies only to the mutual relationship of 
 physical existence ! Two sympathetic souls, both 
 disembodied, will each work out its own Devachanic 
 sensations, making the other a sharer in its subjective 
 
Devachan. 89 
 
 bliss. This will be as real to them, naturally, as 
 though both were yet on this earth. Nevertheless, 
 each is dissociated from the other as regards personal 
 or corporeal association. While the latter is the only 
 one of its kind that is recognized by our earth expe- 
 rience as an actual intercourse, for the Devachanee 
 it would be not only something unreal, but could 
 have no existence for it in any sense, not even as a 
 delusion : a physical body or even a Mayavi-rupa 
 remaining to its spiritual senses as invisible as it is 
 itself to the physical senses of those who loved it 
 best on earth. Thus even though one of the ' sharers ' 
 were alive and utterly unconscious of that intercourse 
 in his waking state, still every dealing with him 
 would be to the Devachanee an absolute reality. 
 And what actual companionship could there ever be 
 other than the purely idealistic one, as above de- 
 scribed, between two subjective entities which are not 
 even as material as that ethereal body-shadow — the 
 Mayavi-rupa ? To object to this on the ground that 
 one is thus ' cheated by Nature/ and to call it ' a 
 delusive sensation of enjoyment which has no reality,' 
 is to show oneself utterly unfit to comprehend the 
 conditions of life and being outside of our material 
 existence. For how can the same distinction be 
 made in Devachan — i.e. outside of the conditions of 
 earth-life — between what we call a reality and a 
 factitious or an artificial counterfeit of the same, in 
 this, our world ? The same principle cannot apply 
 to the two sets of conditions. Is it conceivable that 
 what we call a reality in our embodied physical state 
 will exist under the same conditions as an actuality 
 for a disembodied entity ? On earth, man is dual — in 
 
90 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the sense of being a thing of matter and a thing of 
 spirit ; hence the natural distinction made by his 
 mind — the analyst of his physical sensations and 
 spiritual perceptions — between an actuality and a 
 fiction ; though, even in this life, the two groups of 
 faculties are constantly equilibrating each other, each 
 group when dominant seeing as fiction or delusion 
 what the other believes to be most real. But in Deva- 
 chan our Ego has ceased to be dualistic, in the above 
 sense, and becomes a spiritual, mental entity. That 
 which was a fiction, a dream in life, and which had its 
 being but in the region of ' fancy,' becomes, under 
 .the new conditions of existence, the only possible 
 reality. Thus, for us to postulate the possibility of 
 any other reality for a Devachanee is to maintain an 
 absurdity, a monstrous fallacy, an idea unphilosophical 
 to the last degree. The actual is that which is acted 
 or performed de facto : ' the reality of a thing is 
 proved by its actuality.' And the suppositious and 
 artificial having no possible existence in that Deva- 
 chanic state, the logical sequence is that everything 
 in it is actual and real. For, again, whether over- 
 shadowing the five principles during the life of the 
 personality, or entirely separated from the grosser 
 principles by the dissolution of the body — the sixth 
 principle, or our ' Spiritual Soul,' has no substance — 
 it is ever Arupa ; nor is it confined to one place with 
 a limited horizon of perceptions around it. There- 
 fore, whether in or out of its mortal body, it is ever 
 distinct, and free from its limitations; and if we call 
 its Devachanic experiences ' a cheating of Nature,' 
 then we should never be allowed to call ' reality ' any 
 of those purely abstract feelings that belong entirely 
 
Devachan. 91 
 
 to, and are reflected and assimilated by, our higher 
 soul — such, for instance, as an ideal perception of the 
 beautiful, profound philanthropy, love, &c, as well as 
 every other purely spiritual sensation that during 
 life fills our inner being with either immense joy or 
 pain." 
 
 We must remember that by the very nature of the 
 system described there are infinite varieties of well- 
 being in Devachan, suited to the infinite varieties of 
 merit in mankind. If " the next world " really were 
 the objective heaven which ordinary theology preaches, 
 there would be endless injustice and inaccuracy in its 
 operation. People, to begin with, would be either 
 admitted or excluded, and the differences of favour 
 shown to different guests within the all-favoured 
 region would not sufficiently provide for differences 
 of merit in this life. But the real heaven of our 
 earth adjusts itself to the needs and merits of each 
 new arrival with unfailing certainty. Not merely as 
 regards the duration of the blissful state, which is 
 determined by the causes engendered during objective 
 life, but as regards the intensity and amplitude of the 
 emotions which constitute that blissful state, the 
 heaven of each person who attains the really existent 
 heaven is precisely fitted to his capacity for enjoying 
 it. It is the creation of his own aspirations and 
 faculties. More than this it may be impossible for 
 the uninitiated comprehension to realize. But this 
 indication of its character is enough to show how 
 perfectly it falls into its appointed place in the whole 
 scheme of evolution. 
 
 " Devachan," to resume my direct quotations, " is, 
 of course, a state, not a locality, as much as Avitchi, its 
 
92 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 antithesis (which please not to confound with hell). 
 Esoteric Buddhist philosophy has three principal 
 lokas so-called — namely, i y Kama loka ; 2, Rupa loka ; 
 and 3, Arupa loka ; or in their literal translation and 
 meaning — I, world of desires or passions, of unsatis- 
 fied earthly cravings — the abode of ' Shells ' and 
 Victims, of Elementaries and Suicides ; 2, the world 
 of forms — i.e. of shadows more spiritual, having form 
 and objectivity, but no substance ; and 3, th.Q formless 
 world, or rather the world of no form, the incorporeal, 
 since its denizens can have neither body, shape, nor 
 colour for us mortals, and in the sense that we give 
 to these terms. These are the three spheres of 
 ascending spirituality in which the several groups 
 of subjective and semi-subjective entities find their 
 attractions. All but the suicides and the victims of 
 premature violent deaths go, according to their 
 attractions and powers, either into the Devachanic or 
 the Avitchi state, which two states form the number- 
 less subdivisions of Rupa and Arupa lokas — that is 
 to say, that such states not only vary in degree, or in 
 their presentation to the subject entity as regards 
 form, colour, &c, but that there is an infinite scale of 
 such states, in their progressive spirituality and 
 intensity of feeling, from the lowest in the Rupa, up 
 to the highest and the most exalted in the Arupa- 
 loka. The student must bear in mind that personality 
 is the synonym for limitation ; and that the more 
 selfish, the more contracted the person's ideas, the 
 closer will he cling to the lower spheres of being, 
 the longer loiter on the plane of selfish social inter- 
 course." 
 
 Devachan being a condition of mere subjective 
 
Devachan. 93 
 
 enjoyment, the duration and intensity of which is 
 determined by the merit and spirituality of the earth- 
 life last past, there is no opportunity, while the soul 
 inhabits it, for the punctual requital of evil deeds. 
 But Nature does not content herself with either 
 forgiving sins in a free and easy way, or damning 
 sinners outright, like a lazy master too indolent, 
 rather than too good-natured, to govern his household 
 justly. The Karma of evil, be it great or small, is as 
 certainly operative at the appointed time as the 
 Karma of good. But the place of its operation is 
 not Devachan, but either a new rebirth, or Avitchi — 
 a state to be reached only in exceptional cases and 
 by exceptional natures. In other words, while the 
 common-place sinner will reap the fruits of his evil 
 deeds in a following re-incarnation, the exceptional 
 criminal, the aristocrat of sin, has Avitchi in pro- 
 spect — that is to say, the condition of subjective 
 spiritual misery which is the reverse side of Deva- 
 chan. 
 
 " Avitchi is a state of the most ideal spiritual 
 wickedness, something akin to the state of Lucifer, 
 so superbly described by Milton. Not many, though, 
 are there who can reach it, as the thoughtful reader 
 will perceive. And if it is urged that since there is 
 Devachan for nearly all, for the good, the bad, and 
 the indifferent, the ends of harmony and equilibrium 
 are frustrated, and the law of retribution and of 
 impartial, implacable justice, hardly met and satisfied 
 by such a comparative scarcity, if not absence, of its 
 antithesis, then the answer will show that it is not so. 
 1 Evil is the dark son of Earth (matter), and Good — 
 the fair daughter of Heaven ' (or Spirit), says the 
 
94 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 Chinese philosopher ; hence the place of punishment 
 for most of our sins is the earth — its birth-place and 
 play-ground. There is more apparent and relative 
 than actual evil even on earth, and it is not given to 
 the hoi polloi to reach the fatal grandeur and eminence 
 of a * Satan ' every day.''' 
 
 Generally the re-birth into objective existence is 
 the event for which the Karma of evil patiently waits ; 
 and then it irresistibly asserts itself, not that the 
 Karma of good exhausts itself in Devachan, leaving 
 the unhappy monad to develope a new consciousness 
 with no material beyond the evil deeds of its last 
 personality. The re-birth will be qualified by the 
 merit as well as the demerit of the previous life, but 
 the Devachan existence is a rosy sleep — a peaceful 
 night, with dreams more vivid than day, and im- 
 perishable for many centuries. 
 
 It will be seen that the Devachan state is only one 
 of the conditions of existence which go to make up 
 the whole spiritual or relatively spiritual complement 
 of our earth life. Observers of spiritualistic pheno- 
 mena would never have been perplexed, as they have 
 been, if there were no other but the Devachan state 
 to be dealt with. For once in Devachan there is very- 
 little opportunity for communication between a spirit, 
 then wholly absorbed in its own sensations and 
 practically oblivious of the earth left behind, and its 
 former friends still living. Whether gone before or 
 yet remaining on earth, those friends, if the bond of 
 affection has been sufficiently strong, will be with the 
 happy spirit still, to all intents and purposes for him, 
 and as happy, blissful, innocent, as the disembodied 
 dreamer himself. It is possible, however, for yet 
 
Devachan. 95 
 
 living persons to have visions of Devachan, though 
 such visions are rare, and only one-sided, the entities 
 in Devachan, sighted by the earthly clairvoyant, being 
 quite unconscious themselves of undergoing such 
 observation. The spirit of the clairvoyant ascends 
 into the condition of Devachan in such rare visions, 
 and thus becomes subject to the vivid delusions of 
 that existence. It is under the impression that the 
 spirits, with which it is in Devachanic bonds of 
 sympathy, have come down to visit earth and itself, 
 while the converse operation has really taken place. 
 The clairvoyant's spirit has been raised towards those 
 in Devachan. Thus many of the subjective spiritual 
 communications — most of them when the sensitives 
 are pure-minded— are real, though it is most difficult 
 for the uninitiated medium to fix in his mind the 
 true and correct pictures of what he sees and hears. 
 In the same way some of the phenomena called 
 psychography (though more rarely) are also real. 
 The spirit of the sensitive, getting odylized, so to 
 say, by the aura of the spirit in the Devachan, 
 becomes for a few minutes that departed personality, 
 and writes in the handwriting of the latter, in his lan- 
 guage and in his thoughts, as they were during his 
 lifetime. The two spirits become blended in one, and 
 the preponderance of one over the other during such 
 phenomena determines the preponderance of per- 
 sonality in the characteristics exhibited. Thus it 
 may incidentally be observed, what is called rapport, 
 is, in plain fact, an identity of molecular vibration 
 between the astral part of the incarnate medium and 
 the astral part of the disincarnate personality. 
 
 As already indicated, and as the common sense 
 
96 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of the matter would show, there are great varieties ot 
 states in Devachan, and each personality drops into 
 its befitting place there. Thence, consequently, he 
 emerges in his befitting place in the world of causes, 
 this earth or another, as the case may be, when his 
 time for re-birth comes. Coupled with survival of 
 the affinities, comprehensively described as Karma, 
 the affinities both for good and evil engendered by 
 the previous life, this process will be seen to accom- 
 plish nothing less than an explanation of the problem 
 which has always been regarded as so incomprehen- 
 sible — the inequalities of life. The conditions on 
 which we enter life are the consequences of the use 
 we have made of our last set of conditions. They do 
 not impede the development of fresh Karma, what- 
 ever they may be, for this will be generated by the 
 use we make of them in turn. Nor is it to be sup- 
 posed that every event of a current life which bestows 
 joy or sorrow is old Karma bearing fruit. Many 
 may be the immediate consequences of acts in the 
 life to which they belong — ready-money transactions 
 with Nature, so to speak, of which it may be hardly 
 necessary to make any entry in her books. But the 
 great inequalities of life, as regards the start in it 
 which different human beings make, is a manifest 
 consequence of old Karma, the infinite varieties 
 of which always keep up a constant supply of 
 recruits for all the manifold varieties of human con- 
 dition. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the real Ego slips 
 instantaneously at death from the earth life and its 
 entanglements, into the Devachanic condition. When 
 the division of, or purification of the fifth principle 
 
Devachan. 97 
 
 has been accomplished in Kama loca by the contend- 
 ing attractions of the fourth and sixth principles, the 
 real Ego passes into a period of unconscious ges- 
 tation. I have spoken already of the way in which 
 the Devachanic life is in itself a process of growth, 
 maturity, and decline ; but the analogies of earth are 
 even more closely preserved. There is a spiritual 
 ante-natal state at the entrance to spiritual life, as 
 there is a similar and equally unconscious physical 
 state at the entrance to objective life. And this 
 period, in different cases, may be of very different 
 duration — from a few moments to immense periods of 
 years. When a man dies, his soul or fifth principle 
 becomes unconscious and loses all remembrance of 
 things internal as well as external. Whether his stay 
 in Kama loca has to last but a few moments, hours 
 days, weeks, months or years, whether he dies a 
 natural or a violent death, whether this occurs in 
 youth or age, and whether the Ego has been good, 
 bad, or indifferent, his consciousness leaves him as 
 suddenly as the flame leaves a wick when it is blown 
 out. W T hen life has retired from the last particle of 
 the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become 
 extinct for ever, and his spiritual powers of cognition 
 and volition become for the time being as extinct as 
 the others. His Mayavi-rupa may be thrown into 
 objectivity, as in the case of apparitions after death, 
 but unless it is projected by a conscious or intense 
 desire to see or appear to some one shooting through 
 the dying brain, the apparition will be simply auto- 
 matic. The revival of consciousness in Kama loca is 
 obviously, from what has been already said, a phe- 
 nomenon that depends on the characteristic of the 
 
 H 
 
98 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 principles passing, unconsciously at the moment, out 
 of the dying body. It may become tolerably com- 
 plete under circumstances by no means to be desired, 
 or it may be obliterated by a rapid passage into the 
 gestation state leading to Devachan. This gestation 
 state may be of very long duration in proportion to 
 the Ego's spiritual stamina, and Devachan accounts 
 for the remainder of the period between death and 
 the next physical re-birth. The whole period is, of 
 course, of very varying length in the case of dif- 
 ferent persons, but re-birth in less than fifteen hun- 
 dred years is spoken of as almost impossible, while 
 the stay in Devachan, which rewards a very rich 
 Karma, is sometimes said to extend to enormous 
 periods. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 The comments I have to make on the doctrine em- 
 bodied in the foregoing chapter will be postponed 
 most conveniently to the end of the next, and offered 
 in connection with those applying to the conditions of 
 Kama loca. 
 
Kama Loca. 99 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 KAMA LOCA. 
 
 THE statements already made in reference to the 
 destiny of the higher human principles at death will 
 pave the way for a comprehension of the circum- 
 stances in which the inferior remnant of these prin- 
 ciples finds itself, after the real Ego has passed either 
 into the Devachanic state, or that unconscious inter- 
 vening period of preparation therefor, which corre- 
 sponds to physical gestation. The sphere in which 
 such remnants remain for a time is known to occult 
 science as Kama loca, the region of desire, not the 
 region in which desire is developed to any abnormal 
 degree of intensity, as compared with desire as it 
 attaches to earth life, but the sphere in which that 
 sensation of desire, which is a part of the earth life, 
 is capable of surviving. 
 
 It will be obvious, from what has been said about 
 Devachan, that a large part of the recollections which 
 accumulate round the human Ego during life are 
 incompatible in their nature with the pure subjective 
 existence to which the real, durable, spiritual Ego 
 passes ; but they are not necessarily on that account 
 extinguished or annihilated out of existence. They 
 inhere in certain molecules of those finer (but not 
 finest) principles, which escape from the body at 
 death ; and just as dissolution separates what is 
 
 H 2 
 
ioo Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 loosely called the soul from the body, so also it pro- 
 vokes a further separation between the constituent 
 elements of the soul. So much of the fifth principle, 
 or human soul, which is in its nature assimilable with, 
 or has gravitated upward towards, the sixth principle, 
 the spiritual soul, passes with the germ of that divine 
 soul into the superior region, or state of Devachan, in 
 which it separates itself almost completely from the 
 attractions of the earth ; quite completely, as far as 
 its own spiritual course is concerned, though it still 
 has certain affinities with the spiritual aspirations 
 emanating from the earth, and may sometimes draw 
 these towards itself. But the animal soul, or fourth 
 principle (the element of will and desire, as associated 
 with objective existence), has no upward attraction, 
 and no more passes away from the earth than the 
 particles of the body consigned to the grave. It is 
 not in the grave, however, that this fourth principle 
 can be put away. It is not spiritual in its nature or 
 affinities, but it is not physical in its nature. In its 
 affinities it is physical, and hence the result. It 
 remains within the actual physical local attraction of 
 the earth — in the earth's atmosphere — or, since it is 
 not the gases of the atmosphere that are specially 
 to be considered in connection with the problem in 
 hand, let us say, in Kama loca. 
 
 And with the fourth principle a large part (as 
 regards most of mankind unfortunately, though a part 
 very variable in its relative magnitude) inevitably 
 remains. There are plenty of attributes which the 
 ordinary composite human being exhibits, many 
 ardent feelings, desires, and acts, floods of recollections, 
 which, even if not concerned with a life as ardent per- 
 
Kama Loca. ioi 
 
 haps as those which have to do with the higher aspi- 
 rations, are nevertheless essentially belonging to the 
 physical life, which take time to die. They remain 
 behind in association with the fourth principle, which 
 is altogether of the earthly perishable nature, and 
 disperse or fade out, or are absorbed into the respec- 
 tive universal principles to which they belong, just 
 as the body is absorbed into the earth, in progress 
 of time, and rapidly t or slowly, in proportion to the 
 tenacity of their substance. And where meanwhile 
 is the consciousness of the individual who has died or 
 dissolved ? Assuredly in Devachan ; but a difficulty 
 presents itself to the mind untrained in occult science, 
 from the fact that a semblance of consciousness in- 
 heres in the astral portion — the fourth principle, with 
 a portion of the fifth — which remains behind in Kama 
 loca. The individual consciousness, it is argued, can- 
 not be in two places at once. But first of all, to a certain 
 extent, it can. As may be perceived presently, it is a 
 mistake to speak of consciousness, as we understand 
 the feeling in life, attaching to the astral shell or rem- 
 nant; but nevertheless a certain spurious manifestation 
 of consciousness may be reawakened in the shell, with- 
 out having any connection with the real consciousness 
 all the while growing in strength and vitality in the 
 spiritual sphere. There is no power on the part of the 
 shell of taking in and assimilating new ideas and ini- 
 tiatingcourses of action on the basis of those newideas. 
 But there is in the shell a survival of volitional im- 
 pulses imparted to it during life. The fourth principle 
 is the instrument of volition, though not volition itself, 
 and impulses imparted to it during life by the higher 
 principles may run their course and produce results 
 
io2 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 almost indistinguishable for careless observers from 
 those which would ensue were the four higher prin- 
 ciples really all united, as in life. 
 
 The fourth principle, is the vehicle during life of 
 that essentially mortal consciousness which cannot 
 suit itself to conditions of permanent existence ; but 
 the consciousness even of the lower principles during 
 life is a very different thing from the vaporous, fleeting 
 and uncertain consciousness which continues to inhere 
 in them when that which really is the life, the over- 
 shadowing of them, or their vitalization by the in- 
 fusion of the spirit, has ceased, as far as they are 
 concerned. Language cannot render all the facets of 
 a many-sided idea intelligible at once, any more than 
 a plain drawing can show all sides of a solid object. 
 And at the first glance different drawings of the 
 same object from different points of view may seem 
 so unlike as to be unrecognizable as the same, but 
 none the less, by the time they are put together in 
 the mind, will their diversities be seen to harmonize. 
 So with these subtle attributes of the invisible prin- 
 ciples of man — no treatise can do more than discuss 
 their different aspects separately. The various views 
 suggested must mingle in the reader's mind before 
 the complete conception corresponds to the realities 
 of Nature. 
 
 In life the fourth principle is the seat of will and 
 desire, but it is not will itself. It must be alive, in 
 union with the overshadowing spirit, or " one life," to 
 be thus the agent of that very elevated function of 
 life — will, in its sublime potency. As already men- 
 tioned, the Sanscrit names of the higher principles 
 connote the idea that they are vehicles of the one life. 
 
Kama Loca. 103 
 
 Not that the one life is a separable molecular prin- 
 ciple itself ; it is the union of all — the influence of the 
 spirit ; but in truth the idea is too subtle for language, 
 perhaps for intellect itself. Its manifestation in the 
 present case, however, is apparent enough. What- 
 ever the willing fourth principle may be when alive, 
 it is no longer capable of active will when dead. But 
 then, under certain abnormal conditions, it may par- 
 tially recover life for a time ; and this fact it is which 
 explains many, though by no means all, of the phe- 
 nomena of spiritualistic mediumship. The "elemen- 
 tary," be it remembered — as the astral shell has 
 generally been called in former occult writings — is 
 liable to be galvanized for a time in the mediumistic 
 current into a state of consciousness and life, which 
 may be suggested by the first condition of a person 
 who, carried into a strange room in a state of insensibi- 
 lity during illness, wakes up feeble, confused in mind, 
 gazing about with a blank feeling of bewilderment, 
 taking in impressions, hearing words addressed to 
 him, and answering vaguely. Such a state of con- 
 sciousness is unassociated with the notions of past or 
 future. It is an automatic consciousness, derived 
 from the medium. A medium, be it remembered, is 
 a person whose principles are loosely united and 
 susceptible of being borrowed by other beings, or by 
 floating principles, having an attraction for some of 
 them or some part of them. Now what happens in 
 the case of a shell drawn into the neighbourhood of a 
 person so' constituted ? Suppose the person from 
 whom the shell has been cast, died with some strong 
 unsatisfied desire, not necessarily of an unholy sort, 
 but connected entirely with the earth life, a desire, for 
 
104 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 example, to communicate some fact to a still living 
 person. Certainly the shell does not go about in 
 Kama loca with a persistent intelligent conscious 
 purpose of communicating that fact ; but, amongst 
 others, the volitional impulse to do this has been 
 infused into the fourth principle, and while the mole- 
 cules of that principle remain in association, (and that 
 may be for many years,) they only need a partial 
 galvanization into life again, to become operative in 
 the direction of the original impulse. Such a shell 
 comes into contact with a medium (not so dissimilar 
 in nature from the person who has died as to render 
 a rapport impossible), and something from the fifth 
 principle of the medium associates itself with the 
 wandering fourth principle, and sets the original im- 
 pulse to work. So much consciousness and so much 
 intelligence as may be required to guide the fourth 
 principle in the use of the immediate means of com- 
 munication at hand — a slate and pencil, or a table to 
 rap upon — is borrowed from the medium, and then 
 the message given may be the message which the 
 dead person originally ordered his fourth principle to 
 give, so to speak, but which the shell has never till 
 then had an opportunity of giving. It may be argued 
 that the production of writing on a closed slate, or of 
 raps on a table without the use of a knuckle or a 
 stick, is itself a feat of a marvellous nature, bespeak- 
 ing a knowledge on the part of the communicating 
 intelligence of powers of Nature we in physical life 
 know nothing about. But the shell is itself in the 
 astral world ; in the realm of such powers. A phe- 
 nomenal manifestation is its natural mode of dealing. 
 It is no more conscious of producing a wonderful re- 
 
Kama Loca. 105 
 
 suit by the use of new powers acquired in a higher 
 sphere of existence, than we are conscious of the forces 
 by which in life the volitional impulse is communicable 
 to nerves and muscles. 
 
 But, it may be objected, the "communicating 
 intelligence" at a spiritual seance will constantly 
 perform remarkable feats for no other than their own 
 sake, to exhibit the power over natural forces which 
 it possesses. The reader will please remember, how- 
 ever, that occult science is very far from saying that 
 all the phenomena of spiritualism are traceable to 
 one class of agents. Hitherto in this treatise little 
 has been said of the " elementals," those semi-intelli- 
 gent creatures of the astral light, who belong to a 
 wholly different kingdom of Nature from ourselves. 
 Nor is it possible at present to enlarge upon their 
 attributes, for the simple and obvious reason that 
 knowledge concerning the elementals, detailed know- 
 ledge on that subject, and in regard to the way they 
 work, is scrupulously withheld by the adepts of occul- 
 tism. To possess such knowledge is to wield power, 
 and the whole motive of the great secrecy in which 
 occult science is shrouded turns upon the danger of 
 conferring powers upon people who have not, first of 
 all, by undergoing the training of initiates, given moral 
 guarantees of their trustworthiness. It is by command 
 over the elementals that some of the greatest phy- 
 sical feats of adeptship are accomplished ; and it is by 
 the spontaneous playful acts of the elementals that 
 the greatest physical phenomena of the seance room 
 are brought about. So also with almost all Indian 
 Fakirs and Yogis of the lower class who have power 
 of producing phenomenal results. By some means, 
 
106 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 by a scrap of inherited occult teaching, most likely, 
 they have come into possession of a morsel of occult 
 science. They may not necessarily understand the 
 action of the forces they employ, any more than an 
 Indian servant in a telegraph office, taught how to 
 mix the ingredients of the liquid used in a galvanic 
 battery, understands the theory of electric science. 
 He can perform the one trick he has been taught ; 
 and so with the inferior Yogi. He has got in- 
 fluence over certain elementals, and can work certain 
 wonders. 
 
 Returning to a consideration of the ex-human shells 
 in Kama loca, it may be argued that their behaviour 
 in spiritual seances is not covered by the theory 
 that they have had some message to deliver from 
 their late master, and have availed themselves of the 
 mediumship present, to deliver it. Apart altogether 
 from phenomena that may be put aside as elemental 
 pranks, we sometimes encounter a continuity of in- 
 telligence on the part of the elementary or shell that 
 bespeaks much more than the survival of impulses 
 from the former life. Quite so ; but with portions of 
 the medium's fifth principle conveyed into it, the 
 fourth principle is once more an instrument in the 
 hands of a master. With a medium entranced so 
 that the energies of his fifth principle are conveyed 
 into the wandering shell to a very large extent, the 
 result is that there is a very tolerable revival of con- 
 sciousness in the shell for the time being, as regards 
 the given moment. But what is the nature of such 
 consciousness, after all ? Nothing more, really, than 
 a reflected light. Memory is one thing, and per- 
 ceptive faculties quite another. A madman may 
 
Kama Loca. 107 
 
 remember very clearly some portions of his past life ; 
 yet he is unable to perceive anything in its true light, 
 for the higher portion of his Manas, fifth, and Buddhi, 
 sixth, principles, are paralyzed in him and have left 
 him. Could an animal — a dog, for instance — explain 
 himself, he could prove that his memory, in direct 
 relation to his canine personality, is as fresh as his 
 master's ; nevertheless, his memory and instinct can- 
 not be called perceptive faculties. 
 
 Once that a shell is in the aura of a medium, he 
 will perceive, clearly enough, whatever he can perceive 
 through the borrowed principles of the medium, and 
 through organs in magnetic sympathy therewith ; 
 but this will not carry him beyond the range of the 
 perceptive faculties of the medium, or of some one 
 else present in the circle. Hence the often rational 
 and sometimes highly intelligent answers he may 
 give, and hence, also, his invariably complete oblivion 
 of all things unknown to that medium or circle, or 
 not found in the lower recollections of his late per- 
 sonality, galvanized afresh by the influences under 
 which he is placed. The shell of a highly intelligent, 
 learned, but utterly unspiritual man, who died a 
 natural death, will last longer than those of weaker 
 temperament, and (the shadow of his own memory 
 helping) he may deliver, through trance-speakers, 
 orations of no contemptible kind. But these will 
 never be found to relate to anything beyond the 
 subjects he thought much and earnestly of during life, 
 nor will any word ever fall from him indicating a real 
 advance of knowledge. 
 
 It will easily be seen that a shell, drawn into the 
 mediumistic current, and getting into rapport with 
 
io8 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the medium's'fifth principle, is not by any means sure 
 to be animated with a consciousness (even for what 
 such consciousnesses are worth) identical with the 
 personality of the dead person from whose higher 
 principles it was shed. It is just as likely to reflect 
 some quite different personality, caught from the 
 suggestions of the medium's mind. In this per- 
 sonality it will perhaps remain and answer for a time; 
 then some new current of thought, thrown into the 
 minds of the people present, will find its echo in the 
 fleeting impressions of the elementary, and his sense 
 of identity will begin to waver ; for a little while it 
 flickers over two or three conjectures, and ends by 
 going out altogether for a time. The shell is once 
 more sleeping in the astral light, and may be uncon- 
 sciously wafted in a few moments to the other ends 
 of the earth. 
 
 Besides the ordinary elementary or shell of the kind 
 just described, Kama loca is the abode of another 
 class of astral entities, which must be taken into 
 account if we desire to comprehend the various 
 conditions under which human creatures may pass 
 from this life to others. So far we have been exa- 
 mining the normal course of events, when people die 
 in a natural manner. But an abnormal death will 
 lead to abnormal consequences. Thus, in the case of 
 persons committing suicide, and in that of persons 
 killed by sudden accident, results ensue which differ 
 widely from those following natural deaths. A 
 thoughtful consideration of such cases must show, 
 indeed, that in a world governed by rule and law, by 
 affinities working out their regular effects in that 
 deliberate way which Nature favours, the case of a 
 
Kama Loca. 109 
 
 person dying a sudden death at a time when all his 
 principles are firmly united, and ready to hold 
 together for twenty, forty, or sixty years, whatever 
 the natural remainder of his life would be, must surely 
 be something different from that of a person who, by 
 natural processes of decay, finds himself, when the 
 vital machine stops, readily separable into his various 
 principles, each prepared to travel their separate 
 ways. Nature, always fertile in analogies, at once 
 illustrates the idea by showing us a ripe and an 
 unripe fruit. From out of the first the inner stone 
 will come away as cleanly and easily as a hand from 
 a glove, while from the unripe fruit the stone can 
 only be torn with difficulty, half the pulp clinging to 
 its surface. Now, in the case of the sudden acciden- 
 tal death or of the suicide, the stone has to be torn 
 from the unripe fruit. There is no question here 
 about the moral blame which may attach to the act 
 of suicide. Probably, in the majority of cases, such 
 moral blame does attach to it, but that is a question 
 of Karma which will follow the person concerned 
 into the next re-birth, like any other Karma, and 
 has nothing to do with the immediate difficulty such 
 person may find in getting himself thoroughly and 
 wholesomely dead. This difficulty is manifestly just 
 the same, whether a person kills himself, or is killed 
 in the heroic discharge of duty, or dies the victim 
 of an accident over which he has no control what- 
 ever. 
 
 As an ordinary rule, when a person dies, the long 
 account of Karma naturally closes itself— that is to 
 say, the complicated set of affinities which have been 
 set up during life in the first durable principle, the 
 
no Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 fifth, is no longer susceptible of extension. The 
 balance-sheet, so to speak, is made out afterwards, 
 when the time comes for the next objective birth ; 
 or, in other words, the affinities long dormant in 
 Devachan, by reason of the absence there of any 
 scope for their action, assert themselves as soon as 
 they come in contact once more with physical 
 existence. But the fifth principle, in which these 
 affinities are grown, cannot be separated, in the case 
 of the person dying prematurely, from the earthly 
 principle — the fourth. The elementary, therefore, 
 which finds itself in Kama loca, on its violent expul- 
 sion from the body, is not a mere shell — it is the 
 person himself, who was lately alive, minus nothing 
 but the body. In the true sense of the word, he is 
 not dead at all. 
 
 Certainly elementaries of this kind may commu- 
 nicate very effectually at spiritual sect7ices at their 
 own heavy cost ; for they are unfortunately able, by 
 reason of the completeness of their astral constitu- 
 tion, to go on generating Karma, to assuage their 
 thirst for life at the unwholesome spring of medium- 
 ship. If they were of a very material sensual type 
 in life, the enjoyments they will seek will be of a 
 kind the indulgence of which in their disembodied 
 state may readily be conceived even more prejudicial 
 to their Karma than similar indulgences would have 
 been in life. In such cases facilis est descensus. Cut 
 off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind 
 them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the 
 opportunity which mediums afford for the gratifica- 
 tion of these vicariously. They become the incubi 
 and succubi of mediaeval writing, demons of thirst 
 
Kama Loca. iii 
 
 and gluttony, provoking their victims to crime. A 
 brief essay on this subject, which I wrote last year, 
 and from which I have reproduced some of the 
 sentences just given, appeared in the Theosophist, 
 with a note, the authenticity of which I have reason 
 to trust, and the tenor of which was as follows : — 
 
 "The variety of states after death is greater if 
 possible than the variety of human lives upon this 
 earth. The victims of accident do not generally 
 become earth walkers, only those falling into the 
 current of attraction who die full of some engrossing 
 earthly passion, the selfish, who have never given a 
 thought to the welfare of others. Overtaken by 
 death in the consummation, whether real or imagi- 
 nary, of some master passion of their lives, the desire 
 remaining unsatisfied, even after a full realization, 
 and they still craving for more, such personalities 
 can never pass beyond the earth attraction to wait 
 for the hour of deliverance in happy ignorance and 
 full oblivion. Among the suicides, those to whom 
 the above statement about provoking their victims to 
 crime, &c, applies, are that class who commit the act, 
 in consequence of a crime, to escape the penalty of 
 human law or their own remorse. Natural law 
 cannot be broken with impunity ; the inexorable 
 causal relation between action and result has its full 
 sway only in the world of effects, the Kama loca, and 
 every case is met there by an adequate punishment, 
 and in a thousand ways, that would require volumes 
 even to describe them superficially." 
 
 Those who " wait for the hour of deliverance in 
 happy ignorance and full oblivion " are of course 
 such victims of accident as have already on earth 
 
ii2 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 engendered pure and elevated affinities, and after 
 death are as much beyond the reach of temptation 
 in the shape of mediumistic currents as they would 
 have been inaccessible in life to common incitements 
 to crime. 
 
 Entities of another kind occasionally to be found 
 in Kama loca have yet to be considered. We have 
 followed the higher principles of persons recently 
 dead, observing the separation of the astral dross 
 from the spiritually durable portion ; that spiritually 
 durable portion being either holy or Satanic in its 
 nature, and provided for in Devachan or Avitchi 
 accordingly. We have examined the nature of the 
 elementary shell cast off and preserving for a time 
 a deceptive resemblance to a true entity ; we have 
 paid attention also to the exceptional cases of real 
 four-principled beings in Kama loca who are the 
 victims of accident or suicide. But what happens to 
 a personality which has absolutely no atom of spiri- 
 tuality, no trace of spiritual affinity in its fifth prin- 
 ciple, either of the good or bad sort ? Clearly in 
 such a case there is nothing for the sixth principle 
 to attract to itself. Or, in other words, such a 
 personality has already lost its sixth principle by 
 the time death comes. But Kama loca is no more 
 a sphere of existence for such a personality than the 
 subjective world ; Kama loca may be permanently 
 inhabited by astral beings, by elementals, but can 
 only be an antechamber to some other state for 
 human beings. In the case imagined, the surviving 
 personality is promptly drawn into the current of its 
 future destinies, and these have nothing to do with 
 this earth's atmosphere or with Devachan, but with 
 
Kama Loca. 113 
 
 that " eighth sphere " of which occasional mention 
 will be found in older occult writings. It will have 
 been unintelligible to ordinary readers hitherto why 
 it was called the " eighth " sphere, but since the 
 explanation, now given out for the first time, of the 
 sevenfold constitution of our planetary system, the 
 meaning will be clear enough. The spheres of the 
 cyclic process of evolution are seven in number, but 
 there is an eighth in connection with our earth, our 
 earth being, it will be remembered, the turning-point 
 in the cyclic chain, and this eighth sphere is out of 
 circuit, a cul de sac, and the bourne from which it 
 may be truly said no traveller returns. 
 
 It will readily be guessed that the only sphere 
 connected with our planetary chain, which is lower 
 than our own in the scale, having spirit at the top 
 and matter at the bottom, must itself be no less 
 visible to the eye and to optical instruments than the 
 earth itself, and as the duties which this sphere has 
 to perform in our planetary system are immediately 
 associated with this earth, there is not much mystery 
 left now in the riddle of the eighth sphere, nor as 
 to the place in the sky where it may be sought. 
 The conditions of existence there, however, are topics 
 on which the adepts are very reserved in their com- 
 munications to uninitiated pupils, and concerning 
 these I have for the present no further information 
 to give. 
 
 One statement though is definitely made — viz., 
 that such a total degradation of a personality as may 
 suffice to draw it, after death, into the attraction of 
 the eighth sphere, is of very rare occurrence. From 
 the vast majority of lives there is something which 
 
 I 
 
ii4 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the higher principles may draw to themselves, some- 
 thing to redeem the page of existence just passed 
 from total destruction, and here it must be remem- 
 bered that the recollections of life in Devachan, very 
 vivid as they are, as far as they go, touch only those 
 episodes in life that are productive of the elevated 
 sort of happiness of which alone Devachan is qualified 
 to take cognizance, whereas the life from which, for 
 the time being, the cream is thus skimmed, may come 
 to be remembered eventually in all its details quite 
 fully. That complete remembrance is only achieved 
 by the individual at the threshold of a far more 
 exalted spiritual state than that which we are now 
 concerned with ; one which is attained far later on 
 in the progress of the vast cycles of evolution. Each 
 one of the long series of lives that will have been 
 passed through will then be, as it were, a page in a 
 book to which the possessor can turn back at pleasure, 
 even though many such pages will then seem to him 
 most likely, very dull reading, and will not be fre- 
 quently referred to. It is this revival eventually of 
 recollection concerning all the long-forgotten person- 
 alities that is really meant by the doctrine of the 
 Resurrection. But we have no time at present to 
 stop and unravel the enigmas of symbolism as 
 bearing upon the teachings at present under con- 
 veyance to the reader. It may be worth while to do 
 this as a separate undertaking at a later period ; but 
 meanwhile, to revert to the narrative of how the facts 
 stand, it may be explained that in the whole book of 
 pages, when at last the " resurrection " has been 
 accomplished, there will be no entirely infamous 
 pages ; for even if any given spiritual individuality 
 
Kama Loca. 115 
 
 has occasionally, during its passage through this world, 
 been linked with personalities so deplorably and 
 desperately degraded that they have passed com- 
 pletely into the attraction of the lower vortex, that 
 spiritual individuality in such cases will have retained, 
 in its own affinities, no trace or taint of them. Those 
 pages will, as it were, have been cleanly torn out 
 from the book. And, as at the end of the struggle, 
 after crossing Kama loca, the spiritual individu- 
 ality will have passed into the unconscious gestation 
 state from which, skipping the Devachan state, it 
 will be directly (though not immediately in time) re- 
 born into its next life of objective activity, all the 
 self-consciousness connected with that existence will 
 have passed into the lower world, there eventually 
 to " perish everlastingly ;" an expression of which, as 
 of so many more, modern theology has proved a 
 faithless custodian, making pure nonsense out of 
 psycho-scientific facts. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 There is no part of the present volume which I 
 now regard as in so much urgent need of amplification 
 as the two chapters which have just been passed. 
 The Kama loca stage of existence, and that higher 
 region or state of Devachan, to which it is but the 
 antechamber, were, designedly I take it, left by our 
 teachers in the first instance in partial obscurity, in 
 order that the whole scheme of evolution might be 
 the better understood. The spiritual state which 
 immediately follows our present physical life, is a 
 department of Nature, the study of which is almost 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 Esoteric Buddhism - . 
 
 unhealthily attractive for every one who once realizes 
 that some contact with it — some processes of experi- 
 ment with its conditions — are possible even during 
 this life. Already we can to a certain extent discern 
 the phenomena of that state of existence into which 
 a human creature passes at the death of the body. 
 The experience of spiritualism has supplied us with 
 facts concerning it in very great abundance. These 
 facts are but too highly suggestive of theories and 
 inferences which seem to reach the ultimate limits 
 of speculation, and nothing but the bracing mental 
 discipline of esoteric study in its broadest aspect 
 will protect any mind addressed to the consideration 
 of these facts from conclusions which that study 
 shows to be necessarily erroneous. For this reason, 
 theosophical inquirers have nothing to regret as far 
 as their own progress in spiritual science is at stake, 
 in the circumstances which have hitherto induced 
 them to be rather neglectful of the problems that 
 have to do with the state of existence next following 
 our own. It is impossible to exaggerate the in- 
 tellectual advantages to be derived from studying the 
 broad design of Nature throughout those vast realms 
 of the future which only the perfect clairvoyance of 
 the adepts can penetrate, before going into details 
 regarding that spiritual foreground, which is parti- 
 ally accessible to less powerful vision, but liable, on 
 a first acquaintance, to be mistaken for the whole 
 expanse of the future. 
 
 The earlier processes, however, through which the 
 soul passes at death, may be described at this date 
 somewhat more fully than they are defined in the 
 foregoing chapter. The nature of the struggle that 
 
Kama Loca. 117 
 
 takes place in Kama loca between the upper and 
 lower duads may now, I believe, be apprehended more 
 clearly than at first. That struggle appears to be 
 a very protracted and variegated process, and to 
 constitute, — not as some of us may have conjectured 
 at first, an automatic or unconscious assertion of 
 affinities or forces quite ready to determine the future 
 of the spiritual monad at the period of death, — but a 
 phase of existence which may be, and in the vast 
 majority of cases is more than likely to be, continued 
 over a considerable series of years. And during this 
 phase of existence it is quite possible for departed 
 human entities to manifest themselves to still living 
 persons through the agency of spiritual mediumship, 
 in a way which may go far towards accounting for, 
 if it does not altogether vindicate, the impressions 
 that spiritualists derive from such communications. 
 
 But we must not conclude too hastily that the 
 human soul going through the struggle or evolution 
 of Kama loca is in all respects what the first glance 
 at the position, as thus defined, may seem to suggest. 
 First of all, we must beware of too grossly materia- 
 lizing our conception of the struggle, by thinking of 
 it as a mechanical separation of principles. There 
 is a mechanical separation involved in the discard 
 of lower principles when the consciousness of the 
 Ego is firmly seated in the higher. Thus at death 
 the body is mechanically discarded by the soul, 
 which (in union, perhaps, with intermediate princi- 
 ples), may actually be seen by some clairvoyants of a 
 high order to quit the tenement it needs no longer. 
 And a very similar process may ultimately take 
 place in Kama loca itself, in regard to the matter of 
 
u8 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the astral principles. But postponing this con- 
 sideration for a few moments, it is important to avoid 
 supposing that the struggle of Kama loca does itself 
 constitute this ultimate division of principles, or 
 second death upon the astral plane. 
 
 The struggle of Kama loca is in fact the life of 
 the entity in that phase of existence. As quite cor- 
 rectly stated in the text of the foregoing chapter, 
 the evolution taking place during that phase of exis- 
 tence is not concerned with the responsible choice 
 between good and evil which goes on during physical 
 life. Kama loca is a portion of the great world of 
 effects, — not a sphere in which causes are generated 
 (except under peculiar circumstances). The Kama 
 loca entity, therefore, is not truly master of his own 
 acts ; he is rather the sport of his own already 
 established affinities. But these are all the while 
 asserting themselves, or exhausting themselves, by 
 degrees, and the Kama loca entity has an existence 
 of vivid consciousness of one sort or another the 
 whole time. Now a moment's reflection will show 
 that those affinities, which are gathering strength 
 and asserting themselves, have to do with the spiri- 
 tual aspirations of the life last experienced, while 
 those which are exhausting themselves have to do 
 with its material tastes, emotions, and proclivities. 
 The Kama loca entity, be it remembered, is on his 
 way to Devachan, or, in other words, is growing into 
 that state which is the Devachanic state, and the 
 process of growth is accomplished by action and 
 reaction, by ebb and flow, like almost every other in 
 Nature, — by a species of oscillation between the con- 
 flicting attractions of matter and spirit. Thus the 
 
Kama Loca. 119 
 
 Ego advances towards Heaven, so to speak, or 
 recedes towards earth, during his Kama loca exis- 
 tence, and it is just this tendency to oscillate between 
 the two poles of thought or condition, that brings him 
 back occasionally within the sphere of the life he has 
 just quitted. 
 
 It is not by any means at once that his ardent 
 sympathies with that life are dissipated. His sym- 
 pathies with the higher aspects of that life, be it re- 
 membered, are not even on their way to dissipation. 
 For instance, in what is here referred to as earthly 
 affinity, we need not include the exercise of affection, 
 which is a function of Devachanic existence in a pre- 
 eminent degree. But perhaps even in regard to his 
 affections there may be earthly and spiritual aspects 
 of these, and the contemplation of them, with the 
 circumstances and surroundings of the earth-life, 
 may often have to do with the recession towards 
 earth-life of the Kama loca entity referred to above. 
 
 Of course it will be apparent at once that the in- 
 tercourse which the practice of spiritualism sets up 
 between such Kama loca entities as are here in view, 
 and the friends they have left on earth, must go on 
 during those periods of the soul's existence in which 
 earth memories engage its attention ; and there are 
 two considerations of a very important nature which 
 arise out of this reflection. 
 
 1st. While its attention is thus directed, it is turned 
 away from the spiritual progress on which it is en- 
 gaged during its oscillations in the other direction. 
 It may fairly well remember, and in conversation 
 refer to, the spiritual aspirations of the life on earth, 
 but its new spiritual experiences appear to be of an 
 
120 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 order that cannot be translated back into terms of 
 the ordinary physical intellect, and, besides that, to 
 be not within the command of the faculties which 
 are in operation in the soul during its occupation 
 with old-earth memories. The position might be 
 roughly symbolized, but only to a very imperfect 
 extent, by the case of a poor emigrant, whom we 
 may imagine prospering in his new country, getting 
 educated there, concerning himself with its public 
 affairs and discoveries, philanthropy, and so on. 
 He may keep up an interchange of letters with his 
 relations at home, but he will find it difficult to 
 keep them au courant with all that has come to be 
 occupying his thoughts. The illustration will only 
 fully apply to our present purpose, however, if we 
 think of the emigrant as subject to a psychological 
 law which draws a veil over his understanding when 
 he sits down to write to his former friends, and 
 restores him during that time to his former mental 
 condition. He would then be less and less able to 
 write about the old topics as time went on, for they 
 would not only be below the level of those to the 
 consideration of which his real mental activities had 
 risen, but would to a great extent have faded from 
 his memory. His letters would be a source of sur- 
 prise to their recipients, who would say to them- 
 selves that it was certainly so-and-so who was 
 writing, but that he had grown very dull and stupid 
 compared to what he used to be before he went 
 abroad. 
 
 2ndly. It must be borne in mind that a very well- 
 known law of physiology, according to which faculties 
 are invigorated by use and atrophied by neglect, 
 
Kama Loca. 121 
 
 applies on the astral as well as on the physical plane. 
 The soul in Kama loca, which acquires the habit of 
 fixing its attention on the memories of the life it has 
 quitted, will strengthen and harden those tendencies 
 which are at war with its higher impulses. The 
 more frequently it is appealed to by the affection of 
 friends still in the body to avail itself of the oppor- 
 tunities furnished by mediumship for manifesting its 
 existence on the physical plane, the more vehement 
 will be the impulses which draw it back to physical 
 life, and the more serious the retardation of its 
 spiritual progress. This consideration appears to in- 
 volve the most influential motive which leads the re- 
 presentatives of Theosophical teaching to discounte- 
 nance and disapprove of all attempts to hold commu- 
 nication with departed souls by means of the spiritual 
 seance. The more such communications are genuine 
 the more detrimental they are to the inhabitants of 
 Kama loca concerned with them. In the present 
 state of our knowledge it is difficult to determine with 
 confidence the extent to which the Kama loca entities 
 are thus injured. And we may be tempted to believe 
 that in some cases the great satisfaction derived by 
 the living persons who communicate, may outweigh 
 the injury so inflicted on the departed soul. This 
 satisfaction, however, will only be keen in proportion 
 to the failure of the still living friend to realize the 
 circumstances under which the communication takes 
 place. At first, it is true, very shortly after death, the 
 still vivid and complete memories of earth-life may 
 enable the Kama loca entity to manifest himself as a 
 personage very fairly like his deceased self, but from 
 the moment of death the change in the direction of 
 
i22 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 his evolution sets in. He will, as manifesting on the 
 physical plane, betray no fresh fermentation of 
 thought in his mind. He will never, in that manifes- 
 tation, be any wiser, or higher in the scale of Nature, 
 than he was when he died ; on the contrary, he must 
 become less and less intelligent, and apparently less 
 instructed than formerly, as time goes on. He will 
 never do himself justice in communication with the 
 friends left behind, and his failure in this respect will 
 grow more and more painful by degrees. 
 
 Yet another consideration operates to throw a very 
 doubtful light on the wisdom or propriety of gratify- 
 ing a desire for intercourse with deceased friends. We 
 may say, never mind the gradually fading interest of the 
 friend who has gone before, in the earth left behind ; 
 while there is anything of his or her old self left to 
 manifest itself to us, it will be a delight to communi- 
 cate even with that. And we may argue that if the 
 beloved person is delayed a little on his way to 
 Heaven by talking with us, he or she would be will- 
 ing to make that sacrifice for our sake. The point 
 overlooked here is, that on the astral, just as on the 
 physical plane, it is a very easy thing to set up a bad 
 habit. The soul in Kama loca once slaking a thirst 
 for earthly intercourse at the wells of mediumship 
 will have a strong impulse to fall back again and 
 again on that indulgence. We may be doing a great 
 deal more than diverting the souPs attention from its 
 own proper business by holding spiritualistic relations 
 with it. We may be doing it serious and almost per- 
 manent injury. I am not affirming that this would 
 invariably or generally be the case, but a severe view 
 of the ethics of the subject must recognize the dan- 
 
Kama Loca. 123 
 
 gerous possibilities involved in the course of action 
 under review. On the other hand, however, it is plain 
 that cases may arise in which the desire for commu- 
 nication chiefly asserts itself from the other side : that 
 is to say, in which the departed soul is laden with 
 some unsatisfied desire — pointing possibly towards 
 the fulfilment of some neglected duty on earth — the 
 attention to which on the part of still-living friends 
 may have an effect quite the reverse of that attending 
 the mere encouragement of the Kama loca entity in 
 the resumption of its old earthly interests. In such 
 cases the living friends may, by falling in with its de- 
 sire to communicate, be the means, indirectly, of 
 smoothing the path of its spiritual progress. Here 
 again, however, we must be on our guard against the 
 delusive aspect of appearances. A wish manifested 
 by an inhabitant of Kama loca may not always be the 
 expression of an idea then operative in his mind. It 
 may be the echo of an old, perhaps of a very old, 
 desire, then for the first time finding a channel for its 
 outward expression. In this way, although it would 
 be reasonable to treat as important an intelligible 
 wish conveyed to us from Kama loca by a person 
 only lately deceased, it would be prudent to regard 
 with great suspicion such a wish emanating from the 
 shade of a person who had been dead a long time, and 
 whose general demeanour as a shade did not seem to 
 convey the notion that he retained any vivid con- 
 sciousness of his old personality. 
 
 The recognition of all these facts and possibilities 
 of Kama loca will, I think, afford theosophists a sa- 
 tisfactory explanation of a good many experiences 
 connected with spiritualism which the first exposition 
 
124 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of the esoteric doctrine, as bearing on this matter, 
 left in much obscurity. 
 
 It will be readily perceived that as the soul slowly 
 clears itself in Kama loca of the affinities which 
 retard its Devachanic development, the aspect it turns 
 towards the earth is more and more enfeebled, and it 
 is inevitable that there must always be in Kama 
 loca an enormous number of entities nearly ripe for 
 a complete mergence in Devachan, who on that very 
 account appear to an earthly observer in a state of 
 advanced decrepitude. These will have sunk, as 
 regards the activity of their lower astral principles, 
 into the condition of the altogether vague and unin- 
 telligible entities, which, following the example of 
 older occult writers, I have referred to as " shells " in 
 the text of this chapter. The designation, however, is 
 not altogether a happy one. It might have been better 
 to have followed another precedent, and to have 
 called them " shades," but either way their condition 
 would be the same. All the vivid consciousness 
 inhering, as they left the earth, in the principles 
 appropriately related to the activities of physical life, 
 has been transferred to the higher principles which do 
 not manifest at seances. Their memory of earth-life 
 has almost become extinct. Their lower principles 
 are in such cases only reawakened by the influences 
 of the mediumistic current into which they may be 
 drawn, and they become then little more than astral 
 looking-glasses, in which the thoughts of the medium 
 or sitters at the stance are reflected. If we can 
 imagine the colours on a painted canvas sinking by 
 degrees into the substance of the material, and at last 
 re-emerging in their pristine brilliancy on the other 
 
Kama Loca. 125 
 
 side, we shall be conceiving a process which might 
 not have destroyed the picture, but which would leave 
 a gallery in which it took place, a dreary scene of 
 brown and meaningless backs, and that is very much 
 what the Kama loca entities become before they ulti- 
 mately shed the very material on which their first 
 astral consciousness operated, and pass into the 
 wholly purified Devachanic condition. 
 
 But this is not the whole of the story which teaches 
 us to regard manifestations coming from Kama loca 
 with distrust. Our present comprehension of the 
 subject enables us to realize that when the time 
 arrives for that second death on the astral plane, 
 which releases the purified Ego from Kama loca 
 altogether and sends it onward to the Devachanic 
 state — something is left behind in Kama loca which 
 corresponds to the dead body bequeathed to the 
 earth when the soul takes its first flight from physical 
 existence. A dead astral body is in fact left behind 
 in Kama loca, and there is certainly no impropriety 
 in applying the epithet "shell" to that residuum. 
 The true shell in that state disintegrates in Kama 
 loca before very long, just as the true body left to the 
 legitimate processes of Nature on earth would soon 
 decay and blend its elements with the general reser- 
 voirs of matter of the order to which they belong. 
 But until that disintegration is accomplished, the shell 
 which the real Ego has altogether abandoned, may 
 even in that state be mistaken sometimes at spiritual 
 seances for a living entity. It remains for a time an 
 astral looking-glass, in which mediums may see their 
 own thoughts reflected, and take these back, fully 
 believing them to come from an external source. 
 
i26 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 These phenomena in the truest sense of the term are 
 galvanized astral corpses ; none the less so, because 
 until they are actually disintegrated a certain subtle 
 connection will subsist between them and the true 
 Devachanic spirit ; just as such a subtle communica- 
 tion subsists in the first instance between the Kama 
 loca entity, and the dead body left on earth. That last- 
 mentioned communication is kept up by the finely- 
 diffused material of the original third principle, or 
 linga sharira, and a study of this branch of the sub- 
 ject will, I believe, lead us up to a better comprehen- 
 sion than we possess at present of the circumstances 
 under which materializations are sometimes accom- 
 plished at spiritual seances. But without going into 
 that digression now, it is enough to recognize that 
 the analogy may help to show how, between the De- 
 vachanic entity and the discarded shell in Kama loca 
 a similar connection may continue for awhile, acting, 
 while it lasts, as a drag on the higher spirit, but per- 
 haps as an after-glow of sunset on the shell. It would 
 surely be distressing, however, in the highest degree, 
 to any living friend of the person concerned, to get, 
 through clairvoyance, or in any other way, sight or 
 cognition of such a shell, and to be led into mistaking 
 it for the true entity. 
 
 The comparatively clear view of Kama loca which 
 we are now enabled to take, may help us to employ 
 terms relating to its phenomena with more precision 
 than we have hitherto been able to attain. I think 
 if we adopt one new expression, "astral soul," as 
 applying to the entities in Kama loca who have 
 recently quitted earth-life, or who for other reasons 
 still retain, in the aspect they turn back towards 
 
Kama Loca. 127 
 
 earth, a large share of the intellectual attributes that 
 distinguished them on earth, we shall then find the 
 other terms in use already, adequate to meet our 
 remaining emergencies. Indeed, we may then get 
 rid entirely of the inconvenient term " elementary," 
 liable to be confused with elemental, and singularly 
 inappropriate to the beings it describes. I would 
 suggest that the astral soul as it sinks (regarded 
 from our point of view) into intellectual decrepitude, 
 should be spoken of in its faded condition as a shade, 
 and that the term shell should be reserved for the 
 true shells or astral dead bodies which the Devachanic 
 spirit has finally quitted. 
 
 We are naturally led in studying the law of spiritual 
 growth in Kama loca to inquire how long a time 
 may probably elapse before the transfer of conscious- 
 ness from the lower to the higher principles of the 
 astral soul may be regarded as complete; and as 
 usual, when we come to figures relating to the higher 
 processes of Nature, the answer is very elastic. But 
 I believe the esoteric teachers of the East declare 
 that as regards the average run of humanity — for 
 what may be called, in a spiritual sense, the great 
 middle classes of humanity— it is unusual that a 
 Kama loca entity will be in a position to manifest 
 as such for more than twenty-five to thirty years. 
 But on each side of this average the figures may run 
 up very considerably. That is to say, a very ignoble 
 and besotted human creature may hang about in 
 Kama loca for a much longer time for want of 
 any higher principles sufficiently developed to take 
 up his consciousness at all, and at the other end 
 of the scale the very intellectual and mentally-active 
 
i28 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 soul may remain for very long periods in Kama loca 
 (in the absence of spiritual affinities in corresponding 
 force), by reason of the great persistence of forces 
 and causes generated on the higher plane of effects, 
 though mental activity could hardly be divorced in 
 this way from spirituality except in cases where it 
 was exclusively associated with worldly ambition. 
 Again, while Kama loca periods may thus be pro- 
 longed beyond the average from various causes, they 
 may sink to almost infinitesimal brevity when the 
 spirituality of a person dying at a ripe old age, and 
 at the close of a life which has legitimately fulfilled 
 its purpose, is already far advanced. 
 
 There is one other important possibility connected 
 with manifestations reaching us by the usual channels 
 of communication with Kama loca, which it is de- 
 sirable to notice here, although from its nature the 
 realization of such a possibility cannot be frequent. 
 No recent students of theosophy can expect to know 
 as yet very much about the conditions of existence 
 which await adepts who relinquish the use of physical 
 bodies on earth. The higher possibilities open to 
 them appear to me quite beyond the reach of intel- 
 lectual appreciation. No man is clever enough, by 
 virtue of the mere cleverness seated in a living brain, 
 to understand Nirvana ; but it would appear that 
 adepts in some cases elect to pursue a course lying 
 midway between re-incarnation and the passage into 
 Nirvana, and in the higher regions of Devachan ; 
 that is to say, in the arupa state of Devachan may 
 await the slow advance of human evolution towards 
 the exalted condition they have thus attained. Now 
 an adept who had thus become a Devachanic spirit 
 
Kama Loca. 129 
 
 of the most elevated type would not be cut off by the 
 conditions of his Devachanic state — as would be 
 the case with a natural Devachanic spirit passing 
 through that state on his way to re-incarnation — 
 from manifesting his influence on earth. His would 
 certainly not be an influence which would make itself 
 felt by the instrumentality of any physical signs to 
 mixed audiences, but it is not impossible that a 
 medium of the highest type — who would more 
 properly be called a seer — might be thus influenced. 
 By such an Adept spirit, some great men in the 
 world's history may from time to time have been 
 overshadowed and inspired, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously as the case may have been. 
 
 The disintegration of shells in Kama-loca will 
 inevitably suggest to any one who endeavours to com- 
 prehend the process at all, that there must be in 
 Nature some general reservoirs of the matter appro- 
 priate to that sphere of existence, corresponding to 
 the physical earth and its surrounding elements into 
 which our own bodies are resigned at death. The 
 grand mysteries on which this consideration impinges 
 will claim a far more exhaustive investigation than 
 we have yet been enabled to undertake ; but one 
 broad idea connected with them may usefully be put 
 forward without further delay. The state of Kama- 
 loca is one which has its corresponding orders of 
 matter in manifestation round it. I will not here 
 attempt to go into the metaphysics of the problem, 
 which might even lead us to discard the notion that 
 astral matter need be any less real and tangible than 
 that which appeals to our physical senses. It is 
 enough for the present to explain that the propinquity 
 
 K 
 
130 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of Kama-loca to the earth which is so readily made 
 apparent by spiritualistic experience, is explained by 
 Oriental teaching to arise from this fact, — that Kama- 
 loca is just as much in and of the earth as, during 
 our lives, our astral soul is in and of the living man. 
 The stage of Kama-loca, in fact, the great realm of 
 matter in the appropriate state which constitutes 
 Kama-loca and is perceptible to the senses of astral 
 entities, as also to those of many clairvoyants, is the 
 fourth principle of the earth, just as the Kama-rupa 
 is the fourth principle of man. For the earth has its 
 seven principles like the human creatures who 
 inhabit it. Thus, the Devachanic state corresponds 
 to the fifth principle of the earth, and Nirvana to the 
 sixth principle. 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 131 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HUMAN TIDE-WAVE. 
 
 A GENERAL account has already been given of the 
 way in which the great evolutionary life-wave sweeps 
 round and round the seven worlds which compose 
 the planetary chain of which our earth is a part. 
 Further assistance may now be offered, with the view 
 of expanding this general idea into a fuller comprehen- 
 sion of the processes to which it relates. And no one 
 additional chapter of the great story will do more 
 towards rendering its character intelligible, than an 
 explanation of certain phenomena connected with 
 the progress of worlds, that may be conveniently 
 called obscurations. 
 
 Students of occult philosophy who^enter on that 
 pursuit with minds already abundantly furnished in 
 other ways, are very liable to misinterpret its earlier 
 statements. Everything cannot be said at once, and 
 the first broad explanations are apt to suggest con- 
 ceptions in regard to details which are most likely 
 to be erroneous with the most active-minded and 
 intelligent thinkers. Such readers are not content 
 with shadowy outlines even for a moment. Imagi- 
 nation fills in the picture, and if its work is undis- 
 turbed for any length of time, its author will be 
 surprised afterwards to find that later information is 
 incompatible with that which he had come to regard 
 
 K 2 
 
132 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 as having been distinctly taught in the beginning. 
 Now in this treatise the writer's effort is to convey 
 the information in such a way that hasty weed growths 
 of the mind may be prevented as far as possible, but 
 in this very effort it is necessary sometimes to run on 
 quickly in advance, leaving some details, even very 
 important details, to be picked up during a second 
 journey over the old ground. So now the reader 
 must be good enough to go back to the explanation 
 given in Chapter III. of the evolutionary progress 
 through the whole planetary chain. 
 
 Some few words were said then concerning the 
 manner in which the life impulse passed on from 
 planet to planet in " rushes or gushes ; not by an 
 even continuous flow." Now the course of evolution 
 in its earlier stages is so far continuous that the pre- 
 paration of several planets for the final tidal-wave of 
 humanity may be going on simultaneously. Indeed, 
 the preparation of all the seven planets may, at one 
 stage of the proceedings, be going on simultaneously 
 but the important point to remember is, that the 
 main wave of evolution — the foremost growing wave 
 — cannot be in more than one place at a time. The 
 process goes on in the way which may now be de- 
 scribed, and which the reader may be the better able 
 to follow, if he constructs either on paper or in his 
 own mind a diagram consisting of seven circles 
 (representing the worlds) arranged on a ring. Calling 
 them A, B, C, &c, it will be observed from what has 
 been already stated that circle (or globe) D stands 
 for our earth. Now the kingdoms of Nature as 
 known to occultists, be it remembered, are seven in 
 number, three having to do with astral and elemen- 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 133 
 
 tary forces, preceding the grosser material kingdoms 
 in the order of their development. Kingdom 1 
 evolves on globe A, and passes on to B, as kingdom 
 2 begins to involve on A. Carry out this system and 
 of course it will be seen that kingdom 1 is evolving 
 on globe G, while kingdom 7, the human kingdom, is 
 evolving on globe A. But now what happens as 
 kingdom 7 passes on to globe B. There is no eighth 
 kingdom to engage the activities of globe A. The 
 great processes of evolution have culminated in the 
 final tidal-wave of humanity, which, as it sweeps on, 
 leaves a temporary lethargy of Nature behind. When 
 the life- wave goes on to B, in fact, globe A passes for 
 the time into a state of obscuration. This state is 
 not one of decay, dissolution, or anything that can be 
 properly called death. Decay itself, though its aspect 
 is apt to mislead the mind, is a condition of activity 
 in a certain direction, this consideration affording a 
 clue to the meaning of a great deal which is other- 
 wise meaningless, in that part of Hindu mythology 
 which relates to the deities presiding over destruction. 
 The obscuration of a world is a total suspension of its 
 activity ; this does not mean that the moment the 
 last human monad passes on from any given world, 
 that world is paralyzed by any convulsion, or subsides 
 into the enchanted trance of a sleeping palace. The 
 animal and vegetable life goes on as before, for a 
 time, but its character begins to recede instead of 
 advancing. The great life-wave has left it, and the 
 animal and vegetable kingdoms gradually return to 
 the condition in which they were found when the 
 great life-wave first reached them. Enormous periods 
 of time are available for this slow process by which 
 
134 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the obscured world settles into sleep, for it will be 
 seen that obscuration in each case lasts six times 1 as 
 long as the period of each world's occupation by the 
 human life-wave. That is to say, the process which 
 is accomplished as above described in connection with 
 the passage of the life-wave from globe A to globe B, 
 is repeated all along the chain. When the wave 
 passes to C, B is left in obscuration as well as A. 
 Then D receives the life-wave, and A, B, C, are in 
 obscuration. When the wave reaches G, all the pre- 
 ceding six worlds are in obscuration. Meanwhile the 
 life-wave passes on in a certain regular progression, 
 the symmetrical character of which is very satisfactory 
 to scientific instincts. The reader will be prepared 
 to pick up the idea at once, in view of the explana- 
 tions already given of the way in which humanity 
 evolves through seven great races, during each round 
 period on a planet — that is to say, during the occu- 
 pation of such planet by the tidal wave of life. The 
 fourth race is obviously the middle race of the series. 
 As soon as this middle point is turned, and the evolu- 
 tion of the fifth race on any given planet begins, the 
 preparation for humanity begins on the next. The 
 evolution of the fifth race on E for example, is com- 
 mensurate with the evolution, or rather with the 
 revival, of the mineral kingdom on D, and so on. 
 That is to say, the evolution of the sixth race on D, 
 coincides with the revival of the vegetable kingdom 
 on E, the seventh race on D, with the revival of the 
 animal kingdom on E, and then when the last monads 
 
 1 Or we may say five times, allowing for the half period of 
 morning which precedes and the half period of evening which 
 follows the day of full activity. 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 135 
 
 of the seventh race on D have passed into the 
 subjective state or world of effects, the human 
 period on E begins, and the first race begins 
 its development there. Meanwhile the twilight 
 period on the world preceding D has been deepen- 
 ing into the night of obscuration in the same pro- 
 gressive way, and obscuration there definitely sets 
 in when the human period on D passes its half-way 
 point. But just as the heart of a man beats and 
 respiration continues, no matter how profound his 
 sleep, there are processes of vital action which go on 
 in the resting world even during the most profound 
 depths of its repose. And these preserve, in view of 
 the next return of the human wave, the results of the 
 evolution that preceded its first arrival. Recovery 
 for the reawaking planet is a larger process than its 
 subsidence into rest, for it has to attain a higher 
 degree of perfection against the return of the human 
 life-wave, than that at which it was left when the 
 wave last went onward from its shore. But with 
 every new beginning, Nature is infused with a vigour 
 of its own — the freshness of a morning — and the 
 later obscuration period, which is a time of prepara- 
 tion and hopefulness as it were, invests evolution itself 
 with a new momentum. By the time the great life- 
 wave returns, all is ready for its reception. 
 
 In the first essay on this subject it was roughly 
 indicated that the various worlds making up our 
 planetary chain were not all of the same materiality. 
 Putting the conception of spirit at the north pole of 
 the circle and that of matter at the south pole, the worlds 
 of the descending arc vary in materiality and spiritu- 
 ality, like those of the ascending arc. This variation 
 
136 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 must now be considered more attentively if the reader 
 wishes to realize the whole processes of evolution 
 more fully than heretofore. 
 
 Besides the earth, which is at the lowest material 
 point, there are only two other worlds of our chain 
 which are visible to physical eyes — the one behind 
 and the one in advance of it. These two worlds, as 
 a matter of fact, are Mars and Mercury — Mars 
 being behind and Mercury in advance of us — Mars 
 in a state of entire obscuration now as regards the 
 human life-wave, Mercury just beginning to prepare 
 for its next human period. 2 
 
 2 It may be worth while here to remark for the benefit of 
 people who may be disposed, from physical science reading, to 
 object that Mercury is too near the Sun, and consequently too 
 hot to be a suitable place of habitation for Man, — that in the 
 official report of the Astronomical Department of the United 
 States on the recent "Mount Whitney observations," statements 
 will be found that may check too confident criticisms of occult 
 science along that line. The results of the Mount Whitney 
 observations on selective absorption of solar rays showed, 
 according to the official reporter, that it would no longer be 
 impossible to suggest the conditions of an atmosphere which 
 would render Mercury habitable, at the one extreme of the scale, 
 and Saturn at the other. We have no concern with Saturn at 
 present, nor if it were necessary to explain on occult principles 
 the habitability of Mercury, should the task be attempted with 
 calculations about selective absorption. The fact is that ordi- 
 nary science makes at once too much and two little of the Sun, 
 as the storehouse of force for the solar system, — too, much in 
 so far as the heat of planets has a great deal to do with another 
 influence quite distinct from the Sun, an influence which will 
 not be thoroughly understood till more is known than at present 
 about the correlations of heat and magnetism, and of the mag- 
 netic, meteoric dust, with which inter-planetary space is per- 
 vaded. However it is enough — to rebut any objection that 
 might be raised against the explanations now in progress, from 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 137 
 
 The two planets of our chain that are behind 
 Mars, and the two that are in advance of Mercury, 
 are not composed of an order of matter which tele- 
 scopes can take cognizance of. Four out of the 
 seven are thus of an ethereal nature, which people 
 who can only conceive matter in its earthly form 
 will be inclined to call immaterial. But they are 
 not really immaterial at all. They are simply in a 
 finer state of materiality than the earth, but their 
 finer state does not in any way defeat the uniformity 
 of Nature's design in regard to the methods and 
 stages of their evolution. Within the scale of their 
 subtle " invisibility," the successive rounds and races 
 of mankind pass through their stages of greater and 
 less materiality just as on this earth ; but whoever 
 would comprehend them must comprehend this earth 
 first, and work out their delicate phenomena by 
 correspondential inferences. Let us return therefore 
 to the consideration of the great life-wave in its 
 aspects on this planet. 
 
 Just as the chain of worlds treated as a unity has 
 its north and south, its spiritual and material pole, 
 working from spirituality down through materiality 
 up to spirituality again, so the rounds of mankind 
 constitute a similar series which the chain of globes 
 itself might be taken to symbolize. In the evolution 
 of man in fact, on any one plane as on all, there is a 
 
 the point of view of loyal devotees of last year's science — to 
 point out that such objections would be already out of date. 
 Modern science is very progressive, — this is one of its greatest 
 merits, — but it is not a meritorious habit with modern scientists 
 to think, at each stage of its progress, that all conceptions 
 incompatible with that stage must necessarily be absurd. 
 
138 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 descending and an ascending arc ; spirit, so to speak, 
 involving itself into matter, and matter evolving 
 itself into spirit. The lowest or most material point, 
 in the cycle thus becomes the inverted apex of phy- 
 sical intelligence, which is the masked manifestation 
 of spiritual intelligence. Each round of mankind 
 evolved on the downward arc (as each race of 
 each round if we descend to the smaller mirror of 
 the cosmos) must thus be more physically intel- 
 ligent than its predecessor, and each in the up- 
 ward arc must be invested with a more refined form 
 of mentality commingled with greater spiritual 
 intuitiveness. In the first round therefore we find 
 man, a relatively ethereal being compared even on 
 earth with the state he has now attained here, not 
 intellectual, but super-spiritual. Like the animal and 
 vegetable shapes around him, he inhabits an immense 
 but loosely organized body. In the second round he 
 is still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer and 
 more condensed in body — a more physical man, but 
 still, less intelligent than spiritual. In the third 
 round he has developed a perfectly concrete and 
 compacted body, at first the form rather of a giant 
 ape than of a true man, but with intelligence coming 
 more and more into the ascendant. In the last half of 
 the third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body 
 improves in texture, and he begins to be a rational 
 man. In the fourth round intellect, now fully deve- 
 loped, achieves enormous progress. The earliest 
 races with which the round begins, acquire human 
 speech as we understand it. The world teems with 
 the results of intellectual activity and spiritual 
 decline. At the halfway point of the fourth round 
 
The Human Tide- wave. 139 
 
 here, the polar point of the whole seven-world period 
 is passed. From this point outwards the spiritual 
 Ego begins its real struggle with body and mind to 
 manifest its transcendental powers. In the fifth 
 round the struggle continues, but the transcendental 
 faculties are largely developed, though the struggle 
 between these on the one hand with physical intellect 
 and propensity is fiercer than ever, for the intellect of 
 the fifth round, as well as its spirituality, is an advance 
 on that of the fourth. In the sixth round humanity 
 attains a degree of perfection both of body and soul, 
 of intellect and spirituality, which ordinary mortals 
 of the present epoch will not readily realize in their 
 imaginations. The most supreme combinations of 
 wisdom, goodness, and transcendental enlightenment 
 which the world has ever seen or thought of, will 
 represent the ordinary type of manhood. Those 
 faculties which now, in the rare efflorescence of a 
 generation, enable some extraordinarily gifted persons 
 to explore the mysteries of Nature and gather the 
 knowledge of which some crumbs are now being 
 offered (through these writings and in other ways) to 
 the ordinary world, will then be the common ap- 
 panage of all. As to what the seventh round will 
 be like, the most communicative occult teachers are 
 solemnly silent. Mankind in the seventh round will 
 be something altogether too God-like for mankind in 
 the fourth round to forecast its attributes. 
 
 During the occupation of any planet by the human 
 life-wave, each individual monad is inevitably incar- 
 nated many times. This has been partly explained. 
 If one existence only be passed by the monad in 
 each of the branch races through which it must pass 
 
140 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 at least once, the total number accomplished during 
 a round period on one planet, would be 343 — the 
 third power of seven. But as a matter of fact each 
 monad is incarnated twice in each of the branch 
 races, and also comes in, necessarily, for some few 
 extra incarnations as well. For reasons which are 
 not easy for the outsider to divine, the possessors of 
 occult knowledge are especially reluctant to give out 
 numerical facts relating to cosmogony, though it is 
 hard for the uninitiated to understand why these 
 should be withheld. At present, for example, we 
 shall not be able to state what is the actual duration 
 in years of the round period. But a concession, which 
 only those who have long been students of occultism 
 by the old method will fully appreciate, has been 
 made about the numbers with which we are imme- 
 diately concerned ; and this concession is valuable at 
 all events, as it helps to elucidate an interesting fact 
 connected with evolution, on the threshold of which 
 we have now arrived. This fact is, that while the 
 earth, for example, is inhabited as at present, by 
 fourth round humanity, by the wave of human life, 
 that is to say, on its fourth journey round the circle 
 of the worlds, there may be present among us some 
 few persons, few in relation to the total number, who, 
 properly speaking, belong to the fifth round. Now, 
 in the sense of the term at present employed, it must 
 not be supposed that by any miraculous process, any 
 individual unit has actually travelled round the 
 whole chain of worlds once more often than his 
 compeers. Under the explanations just given as to 
 the way the tide-wave of humanity progresses, it 
 will be seen that this is impossible. Humanity has 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 141 
 
 not yet paid its fourth visit even, to the planet next 
 in advance of our own. But individual monads may 
 outstrip their companions as regards their individual 
 development, and so become exactly as mankind 
 generally will be when the fifth round has been fully 
 evolved. And this may be accomplished in two 
 ways. A man born as an ordinary fourth round 
 man, may, by processes of occult training, convert 
 himself into a man having all the attributes of a fifth 
 round man, and so become what we may call an arti- 
 ficial fifth rounder. But independently of all exertions 
 made by man in his present incarnation, a man may 
 also be born a fifth rounder, though in the midst of 
 fourth round humanity, by virtue of the total number 
 of his previous incarnations. 
 
 If x stands for the normal number of incarnations 
 which in the course of Nature a monad must go 
 through during a round period on one planet, and y 
 for the margin of extra incarnations into which by a 
 strong desire for physical life he may force himself 
 during such a period, then, as a matter of fact, 2/\\ 
 (x+y) may exceed 28x ; that is to say, in 3^ rounds 
 a monad may have accomplished as many incar- 
 nations as an ordinary monad would have accom- 
 plished in four complete rounds. In less than 3J 
 rounds the result could not have been attained, so 
 that it is only now that we have passed the halfway 
 point of evolution on this halfway planet, that the 
 fifth rounders are beginning to drop in. 
 
 It is not possible in the nature of things that a 
 monad can do more than outstrip his companions by 
 more than one round. This consideration notwith- 
 standing, Buddha was a sixth round man, but this 
 
142 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 fact has to do with a great mystery outside the limits 
 of the present calculation. Enough for the moment 
 to say that the evolution of a Buddha has to do with 
 something more than mere incarnations within the 
 limits of one planetary chain. 
 
 Since large numbers of lives have been recognized 
 in the above calculations as following one another in 
 the successive incarnations of an individual monad, it 
 is important here, with the view of averting miscon- 
 ceptions, to point out that the periods of time over 
 which these incarnations range are so great, that vast 
 intervals separate them, numerous as they are. As 
 stated above, we cannot just now give the actual 
 duration of the round periods. Nor, indeed could any 
 figures be quoted as indicating the duration of all 
 round periods equally, for these vary in length within 
 very wide limits. But here is a simple fact which has 
 been definitely stated on the highest occult authority 
 we are concerned with. The present race of humanity, 
 the present fifth race of the fourth round period, began 
 to evolve about one million of years ago. Now it is 
 not yet finished ; but supposing that a million years 
 had constituted the complete life of the race, 3 how 
 would it have been divided up for each individual 
 monad ? In a race there must be rather more than 
 ioo, and there can hardly be 120 incarnations for an 
 
 3 The complete life of a race is certainly much longer than 
 this ; but when we get to figures of this kind we are on very 
 delicate ground, for precise periods are very profound secrets, 
 for reasons uninitiated students (" lay chelas," as the adepts now 
 say, coining a new designation to meet a new condition of 
 things) can only imperfectly divine. Calculations like those 
 given above may be trusted literally as far as they go, but must 
 not rashly be made the basis of others. 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 143 
 
 individual monad. But say even there have been 
 already 120 incarnations for monads in the present 
 race already. And say that the average life of each 
 incarnation was a century, even then we should only 
 have 12,000 years out of the million spent in physical 
 existence against 988,000 years spent in the subjec- 
 tive sphere, or there would be an average of more 
 than 8000 years between each incarnation. Cer- 
 tainly these intervening periods are of very variable 
 length, but they can hardly ever contract to anything 
 less than 1500 years — leaving out of account of course 
 the case of adepts who have placed themselves quite 
 outside the operation of the ordinary law — and 1500 
 years if not an impossibly short, would be a very brief 
 interval between two rebirths. 
 
 These calculations must be qualified by one of two 
 considerations, however. The cases of children dying 
 in infancy are quite unlike those of persons who 
 attain full maturity, and for obvious reasons, that the 
 explanations now already given will suggest. A 
 child, dying before it has lived long enough to begin 
 to be responsible for its actions, has generated no 
 fresh Karma. The spiritual monad leaves that child's 
 body in just the same state in which it entered it after 
 its last death in Devachan. It has had no opportu- 
 nity of playing on its new instrument, which has been 
 broken before even it was tuned. A re-incarnation of 
 the monad, therefore, may take place immediately on 
 the line of its old attraction. But the monad so re- 
 incarnated is not to be spiritually identified in any 
 way with the dead child. So, in the same way, with 
 a monad getting into the body of a born idiot. The 
 instrument cannot be tuned, so it cannot play on that 
 
144 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 any more than on the child's body in the first few 
 years of childhood. But both these cases are mani- 
 fest exceptions that do not alter the broad rule above 
 laid down for all persons attaining maturity, and 
 living their earth lives for good or evil. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 Later information and study — the comparison, 
 that is to say, of the various branches of the doctrine, 
 and the collocation of other statements with those in 
 the foregoing chapter — show the difficulty of applying 
 figures to the Esoteric Doctrines in a very striking 
 light. Figures may be quite trustworthy as repre- 
 senting broad averages, and yet very misleading when 
 applied to special cases. Devachanic periods vary for 
 different people within such very wide limits that any 
 rule laid down in the matter must be subject to a be- 
 wildering cloud of exceptions. To begin with, the 
 average mentioned above has no doubt been computed 
 with reference to fully matured adults. Between the 
 quite young child who has no Devachanic period at 
 all and the adult who accomplishes an average period 
 we have to take note of persons dying in youth, who 
 have accumulated Karma, and who must therefore 
 pass through the usual stages of spiritual develop- 
 ment, but for whom the brief lives they have spent 
 have not produced causes which take very long to 
 work themselves out. Such persons would return to 
 incarnation after a sojourn in the world of effects of 
 corresponding brevity. Again there are such things 
 as artificial incarnations accomplished by the direct 
 intervention of the Mahatmas when a chela who may 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 145 
 
 not yet have acquired anything resembling the power 
 of controlling the matter himself, is brought back into 
 incarnation almost immediately after his previous 
 physical death, without having been suffered to float 
 into the current of natural causes at all. Of course 
 in such cases it may be said that the claims the per- 
 son concerned has established on the Mahatmas are 
 themselves natural causes of a kind, the intervention 
 of the Mahatmas, who are quite beyond the liability 
 of acting capriciously in such a matter, being so much 
 fruit of effort in the preceding life, so much Karma. 
 But still either way such cases would be equally with- 
 drawn from the operation of the general average 
 rule. 
 
 Clearly it is impossible when the complicated facts 
 of an entirely unfamiliar science are being presented 
 to untrained minds for the first time, to put them for 
 ^ard with all their appropriate qualifications, com- 
 pensations and abnormal developments visible from 
 the beginning. We must be content to take the 
 broad rules first and deal with the exceptions after- 
 wards, and especially is this the case with occult 
 study, in connection with which the traditional 
 methods of teaching, generally followed, aim at im- 
 pressing every fresh idea on the memory, by provok- 
 ing the perplexity it at last relieves. In relation to 
 another matter dealt with in the preceding pages, an 
 important exception in Nature has thus, it seems to 
 me now, been left out of account. The description I 
 have given of the progress of the human tide-wave 
 is quite coherent as it stands, but since the publication 
 of the original edition of this book some criticism was 
 directed, in India, to a comparison between my version 
 
 L 
 
146 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of the story and certain passages in other writings, 
 known to emanate from a Mahatma. A discrepancy 
 between the two statements was pointed out, the 
 other version assuming the possibility that a monad 
 actually might have travelled round the seven planets 
 once more often than the compeers among whom he 
 might ultimately find himself on this earth. My 
 account of the obscurations appears to render this 
 contingency impossible. The clue to the mystery 
 appears to lie outside the domain of those facts con- 
 cerning which the adepts are willing to speak freely ; 
 and the reader must clearly understand that the ex- 
 planation I am about to offer is the fruit of my own 
 speculation and comparison of different parts of the 
 doctrine — not authentic information received from 
 the author of my general teaching. 
 
 The fact appears to be that the obscurations are 
 so far complete as to present all the phenomena 
 above described in regard to each planet they affect 
 as a whole. But exceptional phenomena for which 
 we must be ever on the alert, come into play even 
 in this matter. The great bulk of humanity is 
 driven on from one planet to the next by the great 
 cyclic impulse when its time comes for such a tran- 
 sition, but the planet it quits is not utterly denuded 
 of humanity, nor is it, in every region of its surface 
 rendered, by the physical and climatic changes that 
 come on, unfit to be the habitation of human beings 
 Even during obscuration a small colony of humanity 
 clings to each planet, and the monads associated with 
 these small colonies following different laws of evolu- 
 tion, and beyond the reach of those attractions which 
 govern the main vortex of humanity in the planet 
 
The Human Tide-wave. 147 
 
 occupied by the great tide-wave, pass on from world 
 to world along what may be called the inner round of 
 evolution, far ahead of the race at large. What may 
 be the circumstances which occasionally project a soul 
 even from the midst of the great human vortex, right 
 out of the attraction of the planet occupied by the tide 
 wave, and into the attraction of the Inner Round — 
 is a question that can only be a subject for us at 
 present of very uncertain conjecture. 
 
 It may be worth while to draw attention, in con- 
 nection with the solution I have ventured to offer as 
 applicable to the problem of the Inner Rounds, to the 
 way in which the fact of Nature I assume to exist, 
 would harmonize with the widely diffused doctrines 
 of the Deluge. That portion of a planet which re- 
 mained habitable during an obscuration would be 
 equivalent to the Noah's Ark of the biblical narrative 
 taken in its largest symbolical meaning. Of course 
 the narrative of the Deluge has minor symbolical 
 meanings also, but it does not appear improbable that 
 the Kabalists should also have associated with it, the 
 larger significance now suggested. In due time when 
 the obscured planet grew ready once more to receive 
 a full population of humanity, the colonists of the ark 
 would be ready to commence the process of populating 
 it afresh. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY. 
 
 The course of Nature provides, as the reader will 
 now have seen, for the indefinite progress towards 
 higher phases of existence of all human entities. 
 But no less will it have been seen that by endowing 
 these entities, as they advance with ever-increasing 
 faculties and by constantly enlarging the scope of 
 their activity, Nature also furnishes each human 
 entity with more and more decisive opportunities of 
 choosing between good and evil. In the earlier 
 rounds of humanity this privilege of selection is not 
 fully developed, and responsibility of action is cor- 
 respondingly incomplete. The earlier rounds of 
 humanity, in fact, do not invest the Ego with 
 spiritual responsibility at all in the larger sense of 
 the term which we are now approaching. The Deva- 
 chanic periods which follow each objective existence 
 in turn, dispose fully of its merits and demerits, and 
 the most deplorable personality which the ego during 
 the first half of its evolution can possibly develope, is 
 merely dropped out of the account as regards the 
 larger undertaking, while the erring personality itself 
 pays its relatively brief penalty, and troubles Nature 
 no more. But the second half of the great evolu- 
 tionary period is carried on on different principles. 
 The phases of existence which are now coming into 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 149 
 
 view, cannot be entered upon by the ego without 
 positive merits of its own appropiate to the new 
 developments in prospect ; it is not enough that the 
 now fully responsible and highly gifted being which 
 man becomes at the great turning-point in his 
 career, should float idly on the stream of progress ; 
 he must begin to swim, if he wishes to push his way 
 forward. 
 
 Debarred by the complexity of the subject from 
 dealing with all its features simultaneously, our 
 survey of Nature has so far contemplated the seven 
 rounds of human development, which constitute the 
 whole planetary undertaking with which we are 
 concerned, as a continuous series, throughout which it 
 is the natural destiny of humanity in general to pass. 
 But it will be remembered that humanity in the sixth 
 round has been spoken of as so highly developed that 
 the sublime attributes and faculties of the highest 
 adeptship are the common appanage of all ; while in 
 the seventh round the race has almost emerged from 
 humanity into divinity. Now every human being in 
 this stage of development will still be identified by 
 an uninterrupted connection with all the personalities 
 which have been strung upon that thread of life 
 from the beginning of the great evolutionary process. 
 Is it conceivable that the character of such per- 
 sonalities is of no consequence in the long-run, and 
 that two God-like beings might stand side by side in 
 the seventh round, developed, the one from a long 
 series of blameless and serviceable existences, the 
 other from an equally long series of evil and 
 grovelling lives ? That surely could not come to 
 pass, and we have to ask now, how do we find the 
 
150 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 congruities of Nature preserved compatibly with the 
 appointed evolution of humanity to the higher forms 
 of existence which crown the edifice ? 
 
 Just as childhood is irresponsible for its acts, the 
 earlier races of humanity are irresponsible for theirs ; 
 but there comes the period of full growth, when the 
 complete development of the faculties which enable 
 the individual man to choose between good and evil, 
 in the single life with which he is for the moment 
 concerned, enable the continuous ego also to make 
 its final selection. That period — that enormous 
 period, for Nature is in no hurry to catch its 
 creatures in a trap in such a matter as this — is barely 
 yet beginning, and a complete round period around 
 the seven worlds will have to be gone through 
 before it is over. Until the middle of the fifth 
 period is passed on this earth, the great question — to 
 be or not to be for the future — is not irrevocably 
 settled. We are coming now into the possession of 
 the faculties which render man a fully responsible 
 being, but we have yet to employ those faculties 
 during the maturity of our ego-hood in the manner 
 which shall determine the vast consequences here- 
 after. 
 
 It is during the first half of the fifth round that the 
 struggle principally takes place. Till then, the 
 ordinary course of life may be a good or a bad pre- 
 paration for the struggle, but cannot fairly be described 
 as the struggle itself. And now we have to examine 
 the nature of the struggle, so far merely spoken of 
 as the selection between good and evil. That is in 
 no way an inaccurate, but it is an incomplete, defini- 
 tion. 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 151 
 
 The ever-recurring and ever-threatened conflict 
 between intellect and spirituality, is the phenomenon 
 to be now examined. The commonplace conceptions 
 which these two words denote, must of course be 
 expanded to some extent before the occult concep- 
 tion is realized ; for European habits of thinking are 
 rather apt to set up in the mind an ignoble image of 
 spirituality, as an attribute rather of the character 
 than of the mind itself, — a pale goody-goodiness, 
 born of an attachment to religious ceremonial and 
 of devout aspirations, no matter to what whimsical 
 notions of Heaven and Divinity in which the 
 "spiritually-minded" person may have been brought 
 up. Spirituality, in the occult sense, has little or 
 nothing to do with feeling devout; it has to do with 
 the capacity of the mind for assimilating knowledge 
 at the fountain-head of knowledge itself — of absolute 
 knowledge — instead of by the circuitous and laborious 
 process of ratiocination. 
 
 The development of pure intellect, the ratiocinative 
 faculty, has been the business of European nations 
 for so long, and in this department of human 
 progress they have achieved such magnificent 
 triumphs, that nothing in occult philosophy will be 
 less acceptable to Europeans themselves at first, and 
 while the ideas at stake are imperfectly grasped, 
 than the first aspect of the occult theory concerning 
 intellect and spirituality ; but this does not arise so 
 much from the undue tendency of occult science to 
 depreciate intellect, as from the undue tendency of 
 modern Western speculation to depreciate spirituality. 
 Broadly speaking, so far Western philosophy has had 
 no opportunity of appreciating spirituality ; it has 
 
152 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 not been made acquainted with the range of the 
 inner faculties of man ; it has merely groped blindly 
 in the direction of a belief that such inner faculties 
 existed ; and Kant himself, the greatest modern 
 exponent of that idea, does little more than contend 
 that there is such a faculty as intuition — if we only 
 knew how to work with it. 
 
 The process of working with it, is occult science 
 in its highest aspect, the cultivation of spirituality. 
 The cultivation of mere power over the forces of 
 Nature, the investigation of some of her subtler 
 secrets as regards the inner principles controlling 
 physical results, is occult science in its lowest aspect, 
 and into that lower region of its activity mere 
 physical science may, or even must, gradually run up. 
 But the acquisition by mere intellect — physical 
 science in excelsis — of privileges which are the proper 
 appanage of spirituality, — is one of the dangers of 
 that struggle which decides the ultimate destiny of 
 the human ego. For there is one thing which 
 intellectual processes do not help mankind to realize, 
 and that is the nature and supreme excellence of 
 spiritual existence. On the contrary, intellect arises 
 out of physical causes — the perfection of the physical 
 brain — and tends only to physical results, the 
 perfection of material welfare. Although, as a con- 
 cession to "weak brethren" and "religion/' on which 
 it looks with good-humoured contempt, modern 
 intellect does not condemn spirituality, it certainly 
 treats the physical human life as the only serious 
 business with which grave men, or even earnest 
 philanthropists, can concern themselves. But 
 obviously, if spiritual existence, vivid subjective con- 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 153 
 
 sciousness, really does go on for periods greater than 
 the periods of intellectual physical existence in the 
 ratio, as we have seen in discussing the Devachanic 
 condition, of 80 to 1 at least, then surely man's sub- 
 jective existence is more important than his physical 
 existence, and intellect is in error when all its efforts 
 are bent on the amelioration of the physical existence. 
 These considerations show how the choice between 
 good and evil — which has been made by the human 
 ego in the course of the great struggle between 
 intellect and spirituality — is not a mere choice 
 between ideas so plainly contrasted as wickedness 
 and virtue. It is not so rough a question as that — 
 whether man be wicked or virtuous — which must 
 really at the final critical turning-point decide 
 whether he shall continue to live and develope into 
 higher phases of existence, or cease to live altogether. 
 The truth of the matter is (if it is not imprudent at 
 this stage of our progress to brush the surface of a 
 new mystery) that the question, to be or not to be, is 
 not settled by reference to the question whether a 
 man be wicked or virtuous at all. It will plainly be 
 seen eventually that there must be evil spirituality as 
 well as good spirituality. So that the great question 
 of continued existence turns altogether and of 
 necessity on the question of spirituality, as compared 
 with physicality. The point is not so much " shall a 
 man live, is he good enough to be permitted to live 
 any longer ? " as " can the man live any longer in the 
 higher levels of existence into which humanity must 
 at last evolve ? " Has he qualified himself to live by 
 the cultivation of the durable portion of his nature ? 
 If not, he has got to the end of his tether. 
 
154 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 It need not be hurriedly supposed that occult 
 philosophy considers vice and virtue of no consequence 
 to human spiritual destinies, because it does not 
 discover in Nature that these characteristics deter- 
 mine ultimate progress in evolution. No system is 
 so pitilessly inflexible in its morality as the system 
 which occult philosophy explores and expounds. But 
 that which vice and virtue of themselves determine, 
 is happiness and misery, not the final problem of 
 continued existence, beyond that immeasurably 
 distant period, when in the progress of evolution 
 man has got to begin being something more than 
 man, and cannot go on along the path of progress 
 with the help only of the relatively lower human 
 attributes. It is true again that one can hardly 
 imagine virtue in any decided degree to fail in 
 engendering, in due time, the required higher 
 attributes, but we should not be scientifically accurate 
 in speaking of it as the cause of progress, in ultimate 
 stages of elevation, though it may provoke the 
 development of that which is the cause of progress. 
 
 This consideration — that ultimate progress is 
 determined by spirituality irrespective of its moral 
 colouring, is the great meaning of the occult doc- 
 trine that " to be immortal in good one must identify 
 oneself with God ; to be immortal in evil with Satan. 
 These are the two poles of the world of souls ; 
 between these two poles vegetate and die without 
 remembrance the useless portion of mankind." * 
 The enigma, like all occult formulas, has a lesser 
 application (fitting the microcosm as well as the 
 macrocosm, and in its lesser significance refers to 
 1 Eliphas Levi. 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 155 
 
 Devachan or Avitchi, and the blank destiny of 
 colourless personalities ; but in its more important 
 bearing it relates to the final sorting out of humanity 
 at the middle of the great fifth round, the annihila- 
 tion of the utterly unspiritual Egos and the passage 
 onward of the others to be immortal in good, or 
 immortal in evil. Precisely the same meaning 
 attaches to the passage in Revelation (iii. 15, 16) : 
 " I would thou wert cold or hot ; so then because 
 thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will 
 spue thee out of my mouth." 
 
 Spirituality, then, is not devout aspiration ; it is 
 the highest kind of intellection, that which takes 
 cognizance of the workings of Nature by direct 
 assimilation of the mind with her higher principles. 
 The objection which physical intelligence will bring 
 against this view is that the mind can cognize 
 nothing except by observation of phenomena and 
 reasoning thereon. That is the mistake — it can ; 
 and the existence of occult science is the highest 
 proof thereof. But there are hints pointing in the 
 direction of such proof all around us if we have but 
 the patience to examine their true bearings. It is 
 idle to say, in face, merely for one thing, of the pheno- 
 mena of clairvoyance— crude and imperfect as those 
 have been which have pushed themselves on the 
 attention of the world — that there are no other 
 avenues to consciousness but those of the five senses. 
 Certainly in the ordinary world the clairvoyant 
 faculty is an exceedingly rare one, but it indicates 
 the existence in man of a potential faculty, the 
 nature of which, as inferred from its slightest 
 manifestations, must obviously be capable in its 
 
156 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 highest development of leading to a direct assi- 
 milation of knowledge independently of observa- 
 tion. 
 
 One of the most embarrassing difficulties that 
 beset the present attempt to translate the esoteric 
 doctrine into plain language, is due really to the 
 fact, that spiritual perceptiveness, apart from all 
 ordinary processes by which knowledge is acquired, 
 is a great and grand possibility of human nature. It 
 is by that method in the regular course of occult 
 training that adepts impart instruction to their pupils. 
 They awaken the dormant sense in the pupil, and 
 through this they imbue his mind with a knowledge 
 that such and such a doctrine is the real truth. The 
 whole scheme of evolution, which the foregoing 
 chapters have portrayed, infiltrates into the regular 
 chela's mind by reason of the fact that he is made to 
 see the process taking place by clairvoyant vision. 
 There are no words used in his instruction at all. 
 And adepts themselves to whom the facts and 
 processes of Nature are familiar as our five fingers 
 to us, find it difficult to explain in a treatise which 
 they cannot illustrate for us, by producing mental 
 pictures in our dormant sixth sense, the complex 
 anatomy of the planetary system. 
 
 Certainly it is not to be expected that mankind 
 as yet should be generally conscious of possessing 
 the sixth sense, for the day of its activity has not 
 yet come. It has been already stated that each 
 round in turn is devoted to the perfection in man of 
 the corresponding principle in its numerical order, 
 and to its preparation for assimilation with the 
 next. The earlier rounds have been described as 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 157 
 
 concerned with man in a shadowy, loosely organized, 
 unintelligent form. The first principle of all, the 
 body, was developed, but it was merely growing used 
 to vitality, and was unlike anything we can now 
 picture to ourselves. The fourth round, in which 
 we are now engaged, is the round in which the 
 fourth principle, Will, Desire, is fully developed, 
 and in which it is engaged in assimilating itself 
 with the fifth principle, reason, intelligence. In 
 the fifth round, the completely developed reason, 
 intellect, or soul, in which the Ego then resides, 
 must assimilate itself to the sixth principle, spiri- 
 tuality, or give up the business of existence alto- 
 gether. 
 
 All readers of Buddhist literature are familiar with 
 the constant references made there to the Arhat's 
 union of his soul with God. This, in other words, is 
 the premature development of his sixth principle. 
 He forces himself right up through all the obstacles 
 which impede such an operation in the case of a 
 fourth round man, into that stage of evolution which 
 awaits the rest of humanity — or rather so much of 
 humanity as may reach it in the ordinary course of 
 Nature — in the latter part of the fifth round. And 
 in doing this it will be observed he tides himself right 
 over the great period of danger — the middle of the 
 fifth round. That is the stupendous achievement of 
 the adept as regards his own personal interests. He 
 has reached the further shore of the sea in which so 
 many of mankind will perish. He waits there in a 
 contentment which people cannot even realize with- 
 out some glimmerings of spirituality — of the sixth 
 sense — themselves for the arrival there of his future 
 
i53 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 companions. He does not wait in his physical body, 
 let me hasten to add to avoid misconstruction, but 
 when at last privileged to resign this, in a spiritual 
 condition, which it would be foolish to attempt to 
 describe, while even the Devachanic states of 
 ordinary humanity are themselves almost beyond 
 the reach of imaginations untrained in spiritual 
 science. 
 
 But, returning to the ordinary course of humanity 
 and the growth into sixth round people, of men and 
 women who do not become adepts at any premature 
 stage of their career, it will be observed that this is 
 the ordinary course of Nature in one sense of the 
 expression, but so also is it the ordinary course of 
 Nature for every grain of corn that is developed to 
 fall into appropriate soil, and grow up into an ear of 
 corn itself. All the same a great many grains do 
 nothing of the sort, and a great many human Egos 
 will never pass through the trials of the fifth round. 
 The final effort of Nature in evolving man is to evolve 
 from him a being unmeasurably higher, to be a 
 conscious agent, and what is ordinarily meant by a 
 creative principle in Nature herself ultimately. The 
 first achievement is to evolve free-will, and the next 
 to perpetuate that free-will by inducing it to unite 
 itself with the final purpose of Nature, which is good. 
 In the course of such an operation it is inevitable 
 that a great deal of the free-will evolved should turn 
 to evil, and after producing temporary suffering, be 
 dispersed and annihilated. More than this, the final 
 purpose can only be achieved by a profuse expen- 
 diture of material, and just as this goes on in the 
 lower stages of evolution, where a thousand seeds are 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 159 
 
 thrown off by a vegetable, for every one that 
 ultimately fructifies into a new plant, so are the 
 god-like germs of Will, sown one in each man's 
 breast, in abundance like the seeds blown about in 
 the wind. Is the justice of Nature to be impugned 
 by reason of the fact that many of these germs will 
 perish ? Such art idea could only rise in a mind that 
 will not realize the room there is in Nature for the 
 growth of every germ which chooses to grow, and to 
 the extent it chooses to grow, be that extent great or 
 small. If it seems to any one horrible that an 
 " immortal soul " should perish, under any circum- 
 stances, that impression can only be due to the 
 pernicious habit of regarding everything as eternity, 
 which is not this microscopic life. There is room in 
 the subjective spheres, and time in the catenary 
 manvantara, before we even approach the Dhyan 
 Chohan or God-like period, for more than the 
 ordinary brain has ever yet conceived of immortality. 
 Every good deed and elevated impulse that every 
 man or woman ever did or felt, must reverberate 
 through aeons of spiritual existence, whether the 
 human entity concerned proves able or not to expand 
 into the sublime and stupendous development of the 
 seventh round. And it is out of the causes generated 
 in one of our brief lives on earth, that exoteric 
 speculation conceives itself capable of constructing 
 eternal results ! Out of such a seven or eight 
 hundredth part of our objective life on earth during 
 the present stay here of the evolutionary life-wave, 
 we are to expect Nature to discern sufficient reason 
 for deciding upon our whole subsequent career. In 
 truth, Nature will make such a large return for a 
 
160 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 comparatively small expenditure of human will- 
 power in the right direction, that, extravagant as the 
 expectation just stated may appear, and extravagant 
 as it is applied to ordinary lives, one brief existence 
 may sometimes suffice to anticipate the growth of 
 milliards of years. The adept may in the one earth-life 2 
 achieve so much advancement that his subsequent 
 growth is certain, and merely a matter of time ; but 
 then the seed germ which produces an adept in our 
 life, must be very perfect to begin with, and the 
 early conditions of its growth favourable, and withal 
 the effort on the part of the man himself, life-long 
 and far more concentrated, more intense, more 
 arduous, than it is possible for the uninitiated out- 
 sider to realize. In ordinary cases, the life which is 
 divided between material enjoyment and spiritual 
 aspiration — however sincere and beautiful the latter 
 — can only be productive of a correspondingly 
 duplex result, of a spiritual reward in Devachan, of 
 a new birth on earth. The manner in which the 
 adept gets above the necessity of such a new birth, 
 is perfectly scientific and simple be it observed, 
 though it sounds like a theological mystery when 
 expounded in exoteric writings by reference to Karma 
 and Skandhas, Trishna, and Tanha, and so forth. 
 The next earth-life is as much a consequence of 
 affinities engendered by the fifth principle, the conti- 
 nuous human soul, as the Devachanic experiences 
 which come first are the growth of the thoughts and 
 aspirations of an elevated character, which the person 
 
 2 In practice, my impression is that this is rarely achieved in 
 one earth-life ; approached rather in two or three artificial 
 incarnations. 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 161 
 
 concerned has created during life. That is to say, 
 the affinities engendered in ordinary cases are partly 
 material, partly spiritual. Therefore they start the 
 soul on its entrance into the world of effects with a 
 double set of attractions inhering in it, one set 
 producing the subjective consequences of its Deva- 
 chanic life, the other set asserting themselves at the 
 close of that life, and carrying the soul back again 
 into re-incarnation. But if the person during his 
 objective life absolutely developes no affinities for 
 material existence, starts his soul at death with all its 
 attractions tending one way in the direction of 
 spirituality, and none at all drawing it back to 
 objective life, it does not come back ; it mounts 
 into a condition of spirituality corresponding to the 
 intensity of the attractions or affinities in that 
 direction, and the other thread of connection is cut 
 off. 
 
 Now this explanation does not entirely cover the 
 whole position, because the adept himself, no matter 
 how high, does return to incarnation eventually, after 
 the rest of mankind have passed across the great 
 dividing period in the middle of the fifth round. 
 Until the exaltation of Planetary Spirithood is 
 reached, the highest human soul must have a certain 
 affinity for earth still, though not the earth-life of 
 physical enjoyments and passions that we are going 
 through. But the important point to realize in regard 
 to the spiritual consequences of earthly life is, that in 
 so large a majority of cases, that the abnormal few 
 need not be talked about, the sense of justice in regard 
 to the destiny of good men is amply satisfied by the 
 course of Nature step by step as time advances. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 The spirit-life is ever at hand to receive, refresh, and 
 restore the soul after the struggles, achievements, or 
 sufferings of incarnation. And more than this, 
 reserving the question about eternity, Nature, in the 
 intercyclic periods at the apex of each round, pro- 
 vides for all mankind, except those unfortunate 
 failures who have persistently adhered to the path of 
 evil, great intervals of spiritual blessedness, far longer 
 and more exalted in their character than the Deva- 
 chanic periods of each separate life. Nature, in fact, 
 is inconceivably liberal and patient to each and all 
 her candidates for the final examination during their 
 long preparation for this. Nor is one failure to pass 
 even this final examination absolutely fatal. The 
 failures may try again, if they are not utterly disgrace- 
 ful failures, but they must wait for the next oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 A complete explanation of the circumstances under 
 which such waiting is accomplished, would not come 
 into the scheme of this treatise ; but it must not be 
 supposed that candidates for progress, self-convicted 
 of unfitness to proceed at the critical period of the fifth 
 round, fall necessarily into the sphere of annihilation. 
 For that attraction to assert itself, the Ego must have 
 developed a positive attraction for matter, a positive 
 repulsion for spirituality, which is overwhelming in its 
 force. In the absence of such affinities, and in the 
 absence also of such affinities as would suffice to tide 
 the Ego over the great gulf, the destiny which meets 
 the mere failures of Nature is, as regards the present 
 planetary manzvantara, to die, as Eliphas Levi puts it, 
 without remembrance. They have lived their life, 
 and' had their share of Heaven, but they are not 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 163 
 
 capable of ascending the tremendous altitudes of 
 spiritual progress then confronting them. But they 
 are qualified for further incarnation and life, on the 
 planes of existence to which they are accustomed. 
 They will wait, therefore, in the negative spiritual 
 state they have attained, till those planes of existence 
 are again in activity in the next planetary manzvantara. 
 The duration of such waiting is, of course, beyond the 
 reach of imagination altogether, and the precise nature 
 of the existence which is now contemplated is no less 
 unrealizable ; but the broad pathway through that 
 strange region of dreamy semi-animation must be 
 taken note of, in order that the symmetry and com- 
 pleteness of the whole evolutionary scheme may be 
 perceived. 
 
 And with this last contingency provided for, the 
 whole scheme does lie before the reader in its main 
 outlines with tolerable completeness. We have seen 
 the one life, the spirit, animating matter in its lowest 
 forms first, and evoking growth by slow degrees into 
 higher forms. Individualizing itself at last in' man, it 
 works up through inferior and irresponsible incarna- 
 tions until it has penetrated the higher principles, and 
 evolved a true human soul, which is thenceforth the 
 master of its own fate, though guarded in the begin- 
 ning by natural provisions which debar it from pre- 
 mature shipwreck, which stimulate and refresh it on 
 its course. But the ultimate destiny offered to that 
 soul is to develope not only into a being capable of 
 taking care of itself, but into a being capable of taking 
 care also of others, of presiding over and directing, 
 within what may be called constitutional limits, the 
 operations of Nature herself. Clearly before the soul 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 can have earned the right to that promotion, it must 
 have been tried by having conceded to it full control 
 over its own affairs. That full control necessarily 
 conveys the power to shipwreck itself. The safe- 
 guards put round the Ego in its youth — its inability 
 to eet into higher or lower states than those of inter- 
 mundane Devachan and Avitchi— fall from it in its 
 maturity. It is potent, then, over its own destinies, 
 not only in regard to the development of transitory 
 joy and suffering, but in regard to the stupendous 
 opportunities in both directions which existence 
 opens out before it. It may seize on the higher 
 opportunities in two ways ; it may throw up the 
 struggle in two ways ; it may attain sublime spiri- 
 tuality for good, or sublime spirituality for evil ; it may 
 ally itself to physicality for (not evil, but for) utter 
 annihilation ; or, on the other hand, for (not good, 
 but for) the negative result of beginning the educa- 
 tional processes of incarnation all over again. 
 
 Annotations. 
 
 The condition into which the monads failing to pass 
 the middle of the fifth round must fall as the tide of 
 evolution sweeps on, leaving them stranded, so to 
 speak, upon the shores of time, is not described very 
 fully in this chapter. By a few words only is it indi- 
 cated that the failures of each manwantara are not 
 absolutely annihilated when they reach " the end of 
 their tether," but are destined after some enormous 
 period of waiting to pass once more into the current 
 of evolution. Many inferences may be deduced from 
 this condition of things. The period of waiting which 
 
The Progress of Humanity. 165 
 
 the failures have thus to undergo, is to begin with, a 
 duration so stupendous as to baffle the imagination. 
 The latter half of the fifth round, the whole of the 
 sixth and seventh have to be performed by the 
 successful graduates in spirituality, and the later 
 rounds are of immensely longer duration than 
 those of the middle period. Then follows the vast 
 interval of Nirvanic rest, which closes the manwantara, 
 the immeasurable Night of Brahma, the Pralaya of 
 the whole planetary chain. Only when the next man- 
 wantara begins do the failures begin to wake from 
 their awful trance — awful to the imagination of beings 
 in the full activity of life, though such a trance, being 
 necessarily all but destitute of consciousness, is 
 possibly no more tedious than a dreamless night in 
 the memory of a profound sleeper. The fate of the 
 failures may be grievous first of all, rather on account 
 of what they miss, than on account of what they 
 incur. Secondly, however, it is grievous on account 
 of that to which it leads, for all the trouble of phy- 
 sical life and almost endless incarnations must be 
 gone through afresh, when the failures wake up ; 
 whereas the perfected beings, who outstripped 
 them in evolution during that fifth round in which 
 they became failures, will have grown into the god- 
 like perfection of Dhyan Chohan-hood during their 
 trance, and will be the presiding geniuses of the next 
 manwantara, not its helpless subjects. 
 
 Apart altogether, meanwhile, from what may be 
 regarded as the personal interest of the entities con- 
 cerned, the existence of the failures in Nature at the 
 beginning of each manwantara is a fact which con- 
 tributes in a very important degree to a comprehen- 
 
166 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 sion of the evolutionary system. When the planetary 
 chain is first of all evolved out of chaos — if we may 
 use such an expression as " first of all" in a qualified 
 sense, having regard to the reflection that " in the 
 beginning" is a mere /aeon de parler applied to any 
 period in eternity — there are no failures to deal with. 
 Then the descent of spirit into matter, through the 
 elemental, mineral, and other kingdoms, goes on in 
 the way already described in earlier chapters of this 
 book. But from the second manwantara of a pla- 
 netary chain, during the activity of the solar system, 
 which provides for many such manwantaras, the 
 course of events is somewhat different— easier, if I may 
 again be allowed to use an expression that is appli- 
 cable rather in a conversational than severely scien- 
 tific sense. At any rate it is quicker, for human 
 entities are already in existence, ready to enter into 
 incarnation as soon as the world, also already in 
 existence, can be got ready for them. The truth 
 thus appears to be, that after the first manwantara of 
 a series — enormously longer in duration than its suc- 
 cessors—no entities, then first evolved from quite the 
 lower kingdoms, do more than attain the threshold of 
 humanity. The late failures pass first into incarna- 
 tion, and then eventually the surviving animal 
 entities already differentiated. But, compared with 
 the passages in the esoteric doctrine which affect 
 the current evolution of our own race, these con- 
 siderations, relating to the very early periods of world- 
 evolution, have little more than an intellectual interest, 
 and cannot as yet by any contributions of mine be 
 very greatly amplified. 
 
Buddha. 167 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BUDDHA. 
 
 The historical Buddha, as known to the custodians of 
 the esoteric doctrine, is a personage whose birth is 
 not invested with the quaint marvels popular story- 
 has crowded round it. Nor was his progress to adept- 
 ship traced by the literal occurrence of the super- 
 natural struggles depicted in symbolic legend. On 
 the other hand, the incarnation, which may outwardly 
 be described as the birth of Buddha, is certainly not 
 regarded by occult science as an event like any other 
 birth, nor the spiritual development through which 
 Buddha passed during his earth-life a mere process 
 of intellectual evolution, like the mental history 
 of any other philosopher. The mistake which 
 ordinary European writers make in dealing with a 
 problem of this sort, lies in their inclination to treat 
 exoteric legend either as a record of a miracle about 
 which no more need be said, or as pure myth, putting 
 merely a fantastic decoration on a remarkable life. 
 This, it is assumed, however remarkable, must have 
 been lived according to the theories of Nature at 
 present accepted by the nineteenth century. The 
 account which has now been given in the foregoing 
 pages may prepare the way for a statement as to 
 what the esoteric doctrine teaches concerning the 
 real Buddha, who was born, as modern investigation 
 
i68 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 has quite correctly ascertained, 643 years before the 
 Christian era, at Kapila-Vastu, near Benares. 
 
 Exoteric conceptions, knowing nothing of the laws 
 which govern the operations of Nature in her higher 
 departments, can only explain an abnormal dignity 
 attaching to some particular birth, by supposing that 
 the physical body of the person concerned was gene- 
 rated in a miraculous manner. Hence the popular 
 notion about Buddha, that his incarnation in this 
 world was due to an immaculate conception. Occult 
 science knows nothing of any process for the produc- 
 tion of a physical human child other than that ap- 
 pointed by physical laws ; but it does know a good deal 
 concerning the limits within which the progressive 
 "one life," or "spiritual monad," or continuous thread 
 of a series of incarnations may select definite child- 
 bodies as their human tenements. By the operation 
 of Karma, in the case of ordinary mankind, this selec- 
 tion is made, unconsciously as far as the antecedent 
 spiritual Ego emerging from Devachan is concerned. 
 But in those abnormal cases where the one life has 
 already forced itself into the sixth principle — that is 
 to say, where a man has become an adept, and has 
 the power of guiding his own spiritual Ego, in full 
 consciousness as to what he is about, after he has 
 quitted the body in which he won adeptship, either 
 temporarily or permanently — it is quite within his 
 power to select his own next incarnation. During 
 life, even, he gets above the Devachanic attraction. 
 He becomes one of the conscious directing powers of 
 the planetary system to which he belongs, and great 
 as this mystery of selected re-incarnation may be, it is 
 not by any means restricted in its application to such 
 
Buddha. 169 
 
 extraordinary events as the birth of a Buddha. It is 
 a phenomenon frequently reproduced by the higher 
 adepts to this day ; and while a great deal recounted 
 in popular Oriental mythology is either purely fic- 
 titious or entirely symbolical, the re-incarnations of 
 the Dalai and Teshu Lamas in Tibet, at which 
 travellers only laugh for want of the knowledge that 
 might enable them to sift fact from fancy, is a sober, 
 scientific achievement. In such cases the adept states 
 beforehand in what child, when and where to be born, 
 he is going to re-incarnate, and he very rarely fails. 
 We say very rarely, because there are some accidents 
 of physical nature which cannot be entirely guarded 
 against ; and it is not absolutely certain that, with all 
 the foresight even an adept may bring to bear upon 
 the matter, the child he may choose to become — in 
 his re-incarnated state — may attain physical maturity 
 successfully. And, meanwhile, in the body, the adept 
 is relatively helpless. Out of the body he is just 
 what he has been ever since he became an adept ; but 
 as regards the new body he has chosen to inhabit, he 
 must let it grow up in the ordinary course of Nature, 
 and educate it by ordinary processes, and initiate it 
 by the regular occult method into adeptship, before 
 he has got a body fully ready again for occult work 
 on the physical plane. All these processes are im- 
 mensely simplified, it is true, by the peculiar spiritual 
 force working within ; but at first, in the child's body, 
 the adept soul is certainly cramped and embarrassed, 
 and, as ordinary imagination might suggest, very 
 uncomfortable and ill at ease. The situation would 
 be very much misunderstood if the reader were to 
 imagine that re-incarnation of the kind described 
 
170 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 is a privilege which adepts avail themselves of with 
 pleasure. 
 
 Buddha's birth was a mystery of the kind described, 
 and by the light of what has been said, it will be easy 
 to go over the popular story of his miraculous origin, 
 and trace the symbolic references to the facts of the 
 situation in some even of the most grotesque fables. 
 None, for example, can look less promising, as an 
 allusion to anything like a scientific fact, than the 
 statement that Buddha entered the side of his mother 
 as a young white elephant. But the white elephant 
 is simply the symbol of adeptship — something con- 
 sidered to be a rare and beautiful specimen of its 
 kind. So with other ante-natal legends pointing to 
 the fact that the future child's body had been 
 chosen as the habitation of a great spirit already 
 endowed with superlative wisdom and goodness. In- 
 dra and Brahma came to do homage to the child at 
 his birth — that is to say, the powers of Nature were 
 already in submission to the Spirit wicnin him. The 
 thirty-two signs of a Buddha, which legends describe 
 by means of a ludicrous physical symbolism, are 
 merely the various powers of adeptship. 
 
 The selection of the body known as Siddhartha, 
 and afterwards as Gautama, son of Suddhodana, of 
 Kapila-Vastu, as the human tenement of the enlight- 
 ened human spirit, who had submitted to incarnation 
 for the sake of teaching mankind, was not one of 
 those rare failures spoken of above ; on the contrary, 
 it was a signally successful choice in all respects, and 
 nothing interfered with the accomplishment of adept- 
 ship by the Buddha in his new body. The popular 
 narrative of his ascetic struggles and temptations, and 
 
Buddha. 171 
 
 of his final attainment of Buddhahood under the Bo- 
 tree, is nothing more, of course, than the exoteric 
 version of his initiation. 
 
 From that period onward, his work was of a dual 
 nature ; he had to reform and revive the morals of 
 the populace and the science of the adepts — for 
 adeptship itself is subject to cyclic changes, and in 
 need of periodical impulses. The explanation of this 
 branch of the subject, in plain terms, will not alone be 
 important for its own sake, but will be interesting to 
 all students of exoteric Buddhism, as elucidating some 
 of the puzzling complications of the more abstruse 
 " Northern doctrine." 
 
 A Buddha visits the earth for each of the seven 
 races of the great planetary period. The Buddha 
 with whom we are occupied was the fourth of the 
 series, and that is why he stands fourth in the list 
 quoted by Mr. Rhys Davids, from Burnouf — quoted 
 as an illustration of the way the Northern doctrine 
 has been, as Mr. Davids supposes, inflated by meta- 
 physical subtleties and absurdities crowded round the 
 simple morality which sums up Buddhism as pre- 
 sented to the populace. The fifth, or Maitreya 
 Buddha, will come after the final disappearance of the 
 fifth race, and when the sixth race will already have 
 been established on earth for some hundreds of thou- 
 sands of years. The sixth will come at the begin- 
 ning of the seventh race, and the seventh towards the 
 close of that race. 
 
 This arrangement will seem, at the first glance, out 
 of harmony with the general design of human evolu- 
 tion. Here we are, in the middle of the fifth race, 
 and yet it is the fourth Buddha who has been iden- 
 
172 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 tified with this race, and the fifth will not come till 
 the fifth race is practically extinct. The explanation 
 is to be found, however, in the great outlines of the 
 esoteric cosmogony. At the beginning of each great 
 planetary period, when obscuration comes to an end, 
 and the human tide-wave in its progress round the 
 chain of worlds arrives at the shore of a globe where 
 no humanity has existed for milliards of years, a 
 teacher is required from the first for the new crop of 
 mankind about to spring up. Remember that the 
 preliminary evolution of the mineral, vegetable, and 
 animal kingdoms has been accomplished in prepara- 
 tion for the new round-period. With the first infu- 
 sion of the life-current into the " missing link" species, 
 the first race of the new series will begin to evolve. 
 It is then that the Being, who may be considered the 
 Buddha of the first race, appears. The Planetary 
 Spirit, or Dhyan Chohan, who is — or, to avoid the 
 suggestion of an erroneous idea by the use of a sin- 
 gular verb, let us defy grammar, and say, who are — 
 Buddha in all his or their developments, incarnates 
 among the young, innocent, teachable fore-runners of 
 the new humanity, and impresses the first broad 
 principles of right and wrong, and the first truths of 
 the esoteric doctrine on a sufficient number of recep- 
 tive minds, to ensure the continued reverberation of 
 the ideas so implanted through successive genera- 
 tions of men in the millions of years to come, before 
 the first race shall have completed its course. It is 
 this advent in the beginning of the round-period of 
 a Divine Being in human form that starts the inera- 
 dicable conception of the anthropomorphic God in all 
 exoteric religions. 
 
Buddha. 173 
 
 The first Buddha of the series in which Gautama 
 Buddha stands fourth, is thus the second incarnation 
 of Avaloketiswara— the mystic name of the hosts 
 of the Dhyan Chohans or Planetary Spirits belong- 
 ing to our planetary chain — and though Gautama 
 is thus the fourth incarnation of enlightenment 
 by exoteric reckoning, he is really the fifth of the 
 true series, and thus properly belonging to our fifth 
 race. 
 
 Avaloketiswara, as just stated, is the mystic name 
 of the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans ; the proper 
 meaning of the word is manifested wisdom, just 
 as Addi-Buddha and Amitabha both mean abstract 
 wisdom. 
 
 The doctrine, as quoted by Mr. Davids, that " every 
 earthly mortal Buddha has his pure and glorious 
 counterpart in the mystic world, free from the de- 
 basing conditions of this material life — or, rather, that 
 the Buddha under material conditions is only an ap- 
 pearance, the reflection, or emanation, or type of a 
 Dhyani Buddha " — is perfectly correct ; the number 
 of Dhyani Buddhas, or Dhyan Chohans, or planetary 
 spirits, perfected human spirits of former world-periods, 
 is infinite, but only five are practically identified in 
 exoteric, and seven in esoteric, teaching, and this 
 identification, be it remembered, is a manner of speak- 
 ing which must not be interpreted too literally, for 
 there is a unity in the sublime spirit-life in question 
 that leaves no room for the isolation of individuality. 
 All this will be seen to harmonize perfectly with the 
 revelations concerning Nature embodied in previous 
 chapters, and need not, in any way, be attributed to 
 mystic imaginings. The Dhyani Buddhas, or Dhyan 
 
174 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 Chohans, are the perfected humanity of previous 
 manwantaric epochs, and their collective intelligence is 
 described by the name " Addi-Buddha," which Mr. 
 Rhys Davids is mistaken in treating as a compara- 
 tively recent invention of the Northern Buddhists. 
 Addi-Buddha means primordial wisdom, and is men- 
 tioned in the oldest Sanscrit books. For example, in the 
 philosophical dissertation on the " Mandukya Upani- 
 shad," by Gowdapatha, a Sanscrit author contempo- 
 rary with Buddha himself, the expression is freely 
 used and expounded in exact accordance with the 
 present statement. A friend of mine in India, a Brah- 
 min pundit of first-rate attainments as a Sanscrit scho- 
 lar, has shown me a copy of this book, which has never 
 yet, that he knows of, been translated into English, 
 and has pointed out a sentence bearing on the present 
 question, giving me the following translation: "Pra- 
 kriti itself, in fact, is Addi-Buddha, and all the Dhar- 
 mas have been existing from eternity." Gowdapatha 
 is a philosophical writer respected by all Hindoo and 
 Buddhist sects alike, and widely known. He was the 
 guru, or spiritual teacher, of the first Sankaracharya, 
 of whom I shall have to speak more at length very 
 shortly. 
 
 Adeptship, when Buddha incarnated, was not the 
 condensed, compact hierarchy that it has since become 
 under his influence. There has never been an age of 
 the world without its adepts ; but they have some- 
 times been scattered throughout the world, they have 
 sometimes been isolated in separate seclusions, they 
 have gravitated now to this country, now to that ; and 
 finally, be it remembered, their knowledge and power 
 has not always been inspired with the elevated and 
 
Buddha. 175 
 
 severe morality which Buddha infused into its latest 
 and highest organization. The reform of the occult 
 world by his instrumentality was, in fact, the result of 
 his great sacrifice, of the self-denial which induced him 
 to reject the blessed condition of Nirvana to which, 
 after his earth-life as Buddha, he was fully entitled, 
 and undertake the burden of renewed incarnations in 
 order to carry out more thoroughly the task he had 
 taken in hand, and confer a correspondingly increased 
 benefit on mankind. Buddha re-incarnated himself, 
 next after his existence as Gautama Buddha, in 
 the person of the great teacher of whom but 
 little is said in exoteric works on Buddhism, but 
 without a consideration of whose life it would be im- 
 possible to get a correct conception of the position in 
 the Eastern world of esoteric science — namely, San- 
 karacharya. The latter part of this name, it may be 
 explained — acharya — merely means teacher. The 
 whole name as a title is perpetuated to this day under 
 curious circumstances, but the modern bearers of it 
 are not in the direct line of Buddhist spiritual incar- 
 nations. 
 
 Sankaracharya appeared in India— no attention 
 being paid to his birth, which appears to have taken 
 place on the Malabar coast — about sixty years after 
 Gautama Buddha's death. Esoteric teaching is to the 
 effect that Sankaracharya simply was Buddha in all 
 respects, in a new body. This view will not be 
 acceptable to uninitiated Hindu authorities, who 
 attribute a later date to Sankaracharya's appearance, 
 and regard him as a wholly independent teacher, 
 even inimical to Buddhism ; but none the less is the 
 statement just made the real opinion of initiates in 
 
iy6 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 esoteric science, whether these call themselves 
 Buddhists or Hindus. I have received the informa- 
 tion I am now giving from a Brahmin Adwaiti of 
 Southern India— not directly from my Tibetan in- 
 structor — and all initiated Brahmins, he assures me, 
 would say the same. Some of the later incarnations 
 of Buddha are described differently as overshadowings 
 by the spirit of Buddha, but in the person of Sanka- 
 racharya he reappeared on earth. The object he had 
 in view was to fill up some gaps and repair certain 
 errors in his own previous teaching ; for there is no 
 contention in esoteric Buddhism that even a Buddha 
 can be absolutely infallible at every moment of his 
 career. 
 
 The position was as follows : — Up to the time of 
 Buddha, the Brahmins of India had jealously reserved 
 occult knowledge as the appanage of their own caste. 
 Exceptions were occasionally made in favour of 
 Tshatryas, but the rule was exclusive in a very high 
 degree. This rule Buddha broke down, admitting all 
 castes equally to the path of adeptship. The change 
 may have been perfectly right in principle, but it 
 paved the way for a great deal of trouble, and, as the 
 Brahmins conceived, for the degradation of occult 
 knowledge itself — that is to say, its transfer to un- 
 worthy hands, not unworthy merely because of caste 
 inferiority, but because of the moral inferiority 
 which they conceived to be introduced into the 
 occult fraternity together with brothers of low birth. 
 The Brahmin contention would not by any means 
 be, that because a man should be a Brahmin, it 
 followed that he was necessarily virtuous and trust- 
 worthy ; but the argument would be : It is supremely 
 
Buddha. 177 
 
 necessary to keep out all but the virtuous and trust- 
 worthy from the secrets and powers of initiation. To 
 that end it is necessary not only to set up all the 
 ordeals, probations, and tests we can think of, but 
 also to take no candidates except from the class 
 which, on the whole, by reason of its hereditary 
 advantages, is likely to be the best nursery of fit 
 candidates. 
 
 Later experience is held on all hands now to have 
 gone far towards vindicating the Brahmin appre- 
 hension, and the next incarnation of Buddha, after 
 that in the person of Sankaracharya, was a practical 
 admission of this ; but meanwhile, in the person of 
 Sankaracharya, Buddha was engaged in smoothing 
 over, beforehand, the sectarian strife in India which 
 he saw impending. The active opposition of the 
 Brahmins against Buddhism began in Asoka's 
 time, when the great efforts made by that ruler to 
 spread Buddhism provoked an apprehension on their 
 part in reference to their social and political ascen- 
 dency. It must be remembered that initiates are 
 not wholly free in all cases from the prejudices of 
 their own individualities. They possess some such 
 god-like attributes that outsiders, when they first 
 begin to understand something of these, are apt to 
 divest them, in imagination, even too completely of 
 human frailties. Initiation and occult knowledge, 
 held in common, is certainly a bond of union, among 
 adepts of all nationalities, which is far stronger than 
 any other bond. But it has been found on more 
 occasions than one to fail in obliterating all other 
 distinctions. Thus the Buddhist and Brahmin 
 initiates of the period referred to were by no means 
 
 N 
 
178 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of one mind on all questions, and the Brahmins very 
 decidedly disapproved of the Buddhist reformation in 
 its exoteric aspects. Chandragupta, Asoka's grand- 
 father, was an upstart, and the family were Sudras. 
 This was enough to render his Buddhist policy un- 
 attractive to the representatives of the orthodox 
 Brahmin faith. The struggle assumed a very em- 
 bittered form, though ordinary history gives us few or 
 no particulars. The party of primitive Buddhism 
 was entirely worsted., and the Brahmin ascendency 
 completely re-established in the time of Vikramaditya, 
 about 80 B.C. But Sankaracharya had travelled all 
 over India in advance of the great struggle, and had 
 established various matliams, or schools of philosophy, 
 in several important centres. He was only engaged 
 in this task for a few years, but the influence of his 
 teaching has been so stupendous that its very magni- 
 tude disguises the change wrought. He brought 
 exoteric Hinduism into practical harmony with the 
 esoteric " wisdom religion," and left the people amusing 
 themselves still with their ancient mythologies, but 
 leaning on philosophical guides who were esoteric 
 Buddhists to all intents and purposes, though in 
 reconciliation with all that was ineradicable in Brah- 
 minism. The great fault of previous exoteric 
 Hinduism lay in its attachment to vain ceremonial, 
 and its adhesion to idolatrous conceptions of the 
 divinities of the Hindu pantheon. Sankaracharya 
 emphasized, by his commentaries on the Upanishads, 
 and by his original writings, the necessity of pursuing 
 gnyanam in order to obtain vwksJia — that is to say, 
 the importance of the secret knowledge, to spiritual 
 progress and the consummation thereof. He was the 
 
Buddha. 179 
 
 founder of the Vedantin system — the proper meaning 
 of Vedanta being the final end or crown of knowledge 
 — though the sanctions of that system are derived by 
 him from the writings of Vyasa, the author of the 
 " Mahabharata," the " Puranas," and the " Brahma- 
 sutras." I make these statements, the reader will 
 understand, not on the basis of any researches of my 
 own — which I am not Oriental scholar enough to 
 attempt — but on the authority of a Brahmin initiate 
 who is himself a first-rate Sanscrit scholar as well as 
 an occultist. 
 
 The Vedantin school at present is almost co-exten- 
 sive with Hinduism, making allowance, of course, for 
 the existence of some special sects, like the Sikhs, the 
 Vallabacharyas, or Maharajah sect, of very unfair 
 fame, and may be divided into three great divisions — 
 the Adwaitees, the Vishishta Adwaitees, and the 
 Dwaitees. The outline of the Adwaitee doctrine is 
 that brahmum or purush, the universal spirit, acts 
 only through prakriti, matter, that everything takes 
 place in this way through the inherent energy of 
 matter. Brahmum, or Parabrahm, is thus a passive, 
 incomprehensible, unconscious principle, but the 
 essence, one life, or energy of the universe. In this 
 way the doctrince is identical with the transcendental 
 materialism of the adept esoteric Buddhist philosophy. 
 The name Adwaitee signifies not dual, and has 
 reference partly to the non-duality or unity of the 
 universal spirit, or Buddhist one life, as distinguished 
 from the notion of its operation through anthropo- 
 morphic emanations ; partly to the unity of the uni- 
 versal and the human spirit. As a natural conse- 
 quence of this doctrine, the Adwaitees infer the 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 Buddhist doctrine of Karma, regarding the future 
 destiny of man, as altogether depending on the causes 
 he himself engenders. 
 
 The Vishishta Adwaitees modify these views by 
 the interpolation of Vishnu as a conscious deity, the 
 primary emanation of Parabrahm, Vishu being re- 
 garded as a personal god, capable of intervening in 
 the course of human destiny. They do not regard 
 yogi or spiritual training, as the proper avenue to 
 spiritual achievement, but conceive this to be possible, 
 chiefly by means of BJiakti, or devoutness. Roughly 
 stated in the phraseology of European theology, the 
 Adwaitee may thus be said to believe only in salva- 
 tion by works, the Yishishta Adwaitee in salvation by 
 grace. The Dwaitee differs but little from the 
 Vishishta Adwaitee, merely affirming, by the designa- 
 tion he assumes, with increased emphasis the duality 
 of the human spirit and the highest principle of the 
 universe, and including many ceremonial observances 
 as an essential part of Bhakti. 
 
 But all these differences of view, it must be borne 
 in mind, have to do merely with the exoteric variations 
 on the fundamental idea, introduced by different 
 teachers with varying impressions as to the capacity 
 of the populace for assimilating transcendental ideas. 
 All leaders of Vedantin thought look up to Sankara- 
 charya and the mathams he established with the 
 greatest possible reverence, and their inner faith runs 
 up in all cases into the one esoteric doctrine. In 
 fact the initiates of all schools in India interlace with 
 one another. Except as regards nomenclature, the 
 whole system of cosmogony, as held by the Buddhist- 
 Arhats, and as set forth in this volume, is equally 
 
Buddha. 181 
 
 held by initiated Brahmins, and has been equally held 
 by them since before Buddha's birth. Whence did 
 they obtain it ? the reader may ask. Their answer 
 would be from the Planetary Spirit, or Dhyan Chohan, 
 who first visited this planet at the dawn of the human 
 race in the present round-period — more millions of 
 years ago than I like to mention on the basis of 
 conjecture, while the real exact number is withheld. 
 
 Sankaracharya founded four principal mathams, 
 one at Sringari, in Southern India, which has always 
 remained the most important ; one at Juggernath, in 
 Orissa ; one at Dwaraka, in Kathiawar ; and one at 
 Gungotri, on the slopes of the Himalayas in the 
 North. The chief of the Sringari temple has always 
 borne the designation Sankaracharya, in addition to 
 some individual name. From these four centres 
 others have been established, and mathams now exist 
 all over India, exercising the utmost possible influence 
 on Hinduism. 
 
 I have said that Buddha, by his third incarnation, 
 recognized the fact that he had, in the excessive 
 confidence of his loving trust in the perfectibility of 
 humanity, opened the doors of the occult sanctuary 
 too widely. His third appearance was in the person 
 of Tsong-ka-pa, the great Tibetan adept reformer 
 of the fourteenth century. In this personality he 
 was exclusively concerned with the affairs of the 
 adept fraternity, by that time collecting chiefly in 
 Tibet. 
 
 From time immemorial there had been a certain 
 secret region in Tibet, which to this day is quite un- 
 known to and unapproachable by any but initiated 
 persons, and inaccessible to the ordinary people of 
 
182 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 the country as to any others, in which adepts have 
 always congregated. But the country generally was 
 not in Buddha's time, as it has since become, the 
 chosen habitation of the great brotherhood. Much 
 more than they are at present, were the Mahatmas in 
 former times distributed about the world. The pro- 
 gress of civilization, engendering the magnetism they 
 find so trying, had, however, by the date with which 
 we are now dealing — the fourteenth century — already 
 given rise to a very general movement towards Tibet 
 on the part of the previously dissociated occultists. 
 Far more widely than was held to be consistent with 
 the safety of mankind was occult knowledge and 
 power then found to be disseminated. To the task of 
 putting it under the control of a rigid system of rule 
 and law did Tsong-ka-pa address himself. 
 
 Without re-establishing the system on the previous 
 unreasonable basis of caste exclusiveness,he elaborated 
 a code of rules for the guidance of the adepts, the 
 effect of which was to weed out of the occult body 
 all but those who sought occult knowledge in a spirit 
 of the most sublime devotion to the highest moral 
 principles. 
 
 An article in the Theosophist for March, 1882, on 
 " Re-incarnations in Tibet," for the complete trust- 
 worthiness of which in all its mystic bearings I have 
 the highest assurance, gives a great deal of important 
 information about the branch of the subject with 
 which we are now engaged, and the relations between 
 esoteric Buddhism and Tibet, which cannot be 
 examined too closely by any one who desires an 
 exhaustive comprehension of Buddhism in its real 
 signification. 
 
Buddha. 183 
 
 " The regular system," we read, " of the Lamaic 
 incarnations of * Sangyas ' (or Buddha) began with 
 Tsong-kha-pa. This reformer is not the incarnation 
 of one of the five celestial Dhyans or heavenly 
 Buddhas, as is generally supposed, said to have been 
 created by Sakya Muni after he had risen to Nirvana, 
 but that of Amita, one of the Chinese names for 
 Buddha. The records preserved in the Gon-pa 
 (lamasery) of Tda-shi Hlum-po (spelt by the English 
 Teshu Ltcmbo) show that Sangyas incarnated himself 
 in Tsong-kha-pa in consequence of the great degra- 
 dation his doctrines had fallen into. Until then there 
 had been no other incarnations than those of the five 
 celestial Buddhas, and of their Buddhisatvas, each of 
 the former having created (read, overshadowed with 
 
 his spiritual wisdom) five of the last named It 
 
 was because, among many other reforms, Tsong-kha- 
 pa forbade necromancy (which is practised to this 
 day with the most disgusting rites by the Bhons — 
 the aborigines of Tibet, with whom the Red Caps or 
 Shammars had always fraternized) that the latter 
 resisted his authority. This act was followed by a 
 split between the two sects. Separating entirely 
 from the Gyalukpas, the Dugpas (Red Caps), from 
 the first in a great minority, settled in various parts 
 of Tibet, chiefly its border-lands, and principally in 
 Nepaul and Bhootan. But, while they retained a sort 
 of independence at the monastery of Sakia-Djong, 
 the Tibetan residence of their spiritual (?) chief, 
 Gong-sso Rimbo-chay, the Bhootanese have been 
 from their beginning the tributaries and vassals of the 
 Dalai Lamas. 
 
 " The Tda-shi Lamas were always more powerful 
 
1 84 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 and more highly considered than the Dalai Lamas. 
 The latter are the creation of the Tda-shi Lama, 
 Nabang-lob-sang, the sixth incarnation of Tsong- 
 kha-pa, himself an incarnation of Amitabha or 
 Buddha." 
 
 Several writers on Buddhism have entertained a 
 theory, which Mr. Clements Markham formulates 
 very fully in his " Narrative of the Mission of George 
 Bogle to Tibet," that whereas the original Scriptures 
 of Buddhism were taken to Ceylon by the son of 
 Asoka, the Buddhism which found its way into Tibet 
 from India and China was gradually overlaid with 
 a mass of dogma and metaphysical speculation. 
 And Professor Max Miiller says: — "The most 
 important element in the Buddhist reform has always 
 been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical 
 theories. That moral code, taken by itself, is one of 
 the most perfect which the world has ever known ; 
 and it was this blessing that the introduction of 
 Buddhism brought into Tibet." 
 
 " The blessing," says the authoritative article in the 
 Theosophisty from which I have just been quoting, 
 " has remained and spread all over the country, there 
 being no kinder, purer-minded, more simple, or sin- 
 fearing nation than the Tibetans. But for all that, 
 the popular lamaism, when compared with the real 
 esoteric, or Arahat, Buddhism of Tibet, offers a 
 contrast as great as the snow trodden along a road 
 in the valley to the pure and undefiled mass which 
 glitters on the top of a high mountain peak." 
 
 The fact is, that Ceylon is saturated with exoteric, 
 and Tibet with esoteric, Buddhism. Ceylon concerns 
 itself merely or mainly with the morals, Tibet, or 
 
Buddha. 185 
 
 rather the adepts of Tibet, with the science, of 
 Buddhism. 
 
 These explanations constitute but a sketch of the 
 whole position. I do not possess the arguments nor 
 the literary leisure which would be required for its 
 amplification into a finished picture of the relations 
 which really subsist between the inner principles of 
 Hinduism and those of Buddhism. And I am quite 
 alive to the possibility that many learned and pains- 
 taking students of the subject will have formed, as 
 the consequences of prolonged and erudite research, 
 conclusions with which the explanations I am now 
 enabled to give, may seem at first sight to conflict. 
 But none the less are these explanations directly 
 gathered from authorities to whom the subject is no 
 less familiar in its scholarly than in its esoteric aspect. 
 And their inner knowledge throws a light upon the 
 whole position which wholly exempts them from the 
 danger of misconstruing texts and mistaking the 
 bearings of obscure symbology. To know when 
 Gautama Buddha was born, what is recorded of his 
 teaching, and what popular legends have gathered 
 round his biography, is to know next to nothing of 
 the real Buddha, so much greater than either the 
 historical moral teacher, or the fantastic demi-god of 
 tradition. And it is only when we have com- 
 prehended the link between Buddhism and Brah- 
 minism that the greatness of the esoteric doctrine 
 rises into its true proportions. 
 
1 86 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 NIRVANA. 
 
 A COMPLETE assimilation of esoteric teaching up to 
 the point we have now reached will enable us to 
 approach the consideration of the subject which 
 exoteric writers on Buddhism have generally treated 
 as the doctrinal starting-point of that religion. 
 
 Hitherto, for want of any better method of seeking 
 out the true meaning of Nirvana, Buddhist scholars 
 have generally picked the word to pieces, and 
 examined its roots and fragments. One might as 
 hopefully seek to ascertain the smell of a flower by 
 dissecting the paper on which its picture was painted. 
 It is difficult for minds schooled in the intellectual 
 processes of physical research — as all our Western 
 nineteenth-century minds are, directly or indirectly — 
 to comprehend the first spiritual state above this life, 
 that of Devachan. Such conditions of existence 
 are but partly for the understanding, a higher faculty 
 must be employed to realize them, and all the more 
 is it impossible to force their meaning upon another 
 mind by words. It is by first awakening that 
 higher faculty in his pupil, and then putting the 
 pupil in a position to observe for himself, that the 
 regular occult teacher proceeds in such a matter. 
 
 Now there are the usual seven states of Devachan, 
 suited to the different degrees of spiritual enlighten- 
 
Nirvana. i 87 
 
 ment which the various candidates for that condition 
 may obtain ; there are rupa and arupa /ocas in 
 Devachan — that is to say, states which take (sub- 
 jective) consciousness of form, and states which 
 transcend these again. And yet the highest 
 Devachanic state in arupa /oca is not to be compared 
 to that wonderful condition of pure spirituality which 
 is spoken of as Nirvana. 
 
 In the ordinary course of Nature during a round, 
 when the spiritual monad has accomplished the 
 tremendous journey from the first planet to the 
 seventh, and has finished for the time being its exis- 
 tence there — finished all its multifarious existences 
 there, with their respective periods of Devachan 
 between each — the Ego passes into a spiritual con- 
 dition different from the Devachanic state, in which, 
 for periods of inconceivable duration, it rests before 
 resuming its circuit of the worlds. That condition 
 may be regarded as the Devachan of its Devachanic 
 states — a sort of review thereof — a superior state to 
 those reviewed, just as the Devachanic state belonging 
 to any one existence on earth is a superior state to 
 that of the half-developed spiritual aspirations or 
 impulses of affection of the earth-life. That period — 
 that intercyclic period of extraordinary exaltation, 
 as compared to any that have gone before, as com- 
 pared even with the subjective conditions of the 
 planets in the ascending arc, so greatly superior to 
 our own as these are — is spoken of in esoteric science 
 as a state of partial Nirvana. Carrying on imagina- 
 tion through immeasurable vistas of the future, we 
 must next conceive ourselves approaching the 
 period which would correspond to the intercyclic 
 
1 38 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 period of the seventh round of humanity, in which 
 men have become as gods. The very last, most 
 elevated, and glorious of the objective lives having 
 been completed, the perfected spiritual being reaches 
 a condition in which a complete recollection of all 
 lives lived at any time in the past returns to him. 
 He can look back over the curious masquerade of 
 objective existences, as it will seem to him then, 
 over the minutest details of any of these earth-lives 
 among the number through which he has passed, 
 and can take cognizance of them and of all things 
 with which they were in any way associated, for in 
 regard to this planetary chain he has reached omni- 
 science. This supreme development of individuality 
 is the great reward which Nature reserves not only 
 for those who secure it prematurely, so to speak, by 
 the relatively brief, but desperate and terrible 
 struggles which lead to adeptship, but also for all 
 who, by the distinct preponderance of good over evil 
 in the character of the whole series of their incarna- 
 tions, have passed through the valley of the shadow 
 of death in the middle of the fifth round, and have 
 worked their way up to it in the sixth and seventh 
 rounds. 
 
 This sublimely blessed state is spoken of in esoteric 
 science as the threshold of Nirvana. 
 
 Is it worth while to go any further in speculation 
 as to what follows ? One may be told that no state 
 of individual consciousness, even though but a phase 
 of feeling already identified in a large measure with 
 the general consciousness on that level of existence, 
 can be equal in spiritual elevation to absolute con- 
 sciousness in which all sense of individuality is 
 
Nirvana. 189 
 
 merged in the whole. We may use such phrases as 
 intellectual counters, but for no ordinary mind — 
 dominated by its physical brain and brain-born 
 intellect— can they have a living signification. 
 
 All that words can convey is that Nirvana is a 
 sublime state of conscious rest in omniscience. It 
 would be ludicrous, after all that has gone before, to 
 turn to the various discussions which have been 
 carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism as to 
 whether Nirvana does or does not mean annihilation. 
 Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling 
 with which the graduates of esoteric science regard 
 such a question. Does the last penalty of the law 
 mean the highest honour of the peerage? Is a 
 wooden spoon the emblem of the most illustrious 
 pre-eminence in learning ? Such questions as these 
 but faintly symbolize the extravagance of the ques- 
 tion whether Nirvana is held by Buddhism to be 
 equivalent to annihilation. And in some, to us 
 inconceivable, way the state of para-Nirvana is 
 spoken of as immeasurably higher than that of 
 Nirvana. I do not pretend myself to attach any 
 meaning to the statement, but it may serve to 
 show to what a very^transcendental realm of thought 
 the subject belongs. 
 
 A great deal of confusion of mind respecting 
 Nirvana has arisen from statements made concerning- 
 
 o 
 
 Buddha. He is said to have attained Nirvana while 
 on earth ; he is also said to have foregone Nirvana, 
 in order to submit to renewed incarnations for the 
 good of humanity. The two statements are quite 
 reconcilable. As a great adept, Buddha naturally 
 attained to that which is the great achievement of 
 
190 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 adeptship on earth, — the passing of his own Ego- 
 spirit into the ineffable condition of Nirvana. Let it 
 not be supposed that for any adept such a passage is 
 one that can be lightly undertaken. Only stray 
 hints about the nature of this great mystery have 
 reached me, but, putting these together, I believe I am 
 right in saying that the achievement in question is 
 one which only some of the high initiates are qualified 
 to attempt, which exacts a total suspension of anima- 
 tion in the body for periods of time compared to 
 which the longest cataleptic trances known to ordinary 
 science are insignificant, the protection of the phy- 
 sical frame from natural decay during this period by 
 means which the resources of occult science are 
 strained to accomplish ; and withal it is a process 
 involving a double risk to the continued earthly life 
 of the person who undertakes it. One of these risks 
 is the doubt whether, when once Nirvana is attained, 
 the Ego will be willing to return. That the return 
 will be a terrible effort and sacrifice is certain, and 
 will only be prompted by the most devoted attach- 
 ment, on the part of the spiritual traveller, to the idea 
 of duty in its purest abstraction. The second great 
 risk is that allowing the sense of duty to predominate 
 over the temptation to stay, a temptation, be it remem- 
 bered, that is not weakened by the notion that any 
 conceivable penalty can attach to it — even then it is 
 always doubtful whether the traveller will be able to 
 return. In spite of all this, however, there have 
 been many other adepts besides Buddha who have 
 made the great passage, and for whom those about 
 them at such times have said the return to their 
 prison of ignoble flesh, — though so noble ex JiypotJiesi 
 
Nirvana. 191 
 
 compared to most such tenements, — has left them 
 paralyzed with depression for weeks. To begin the 
 weary round of physical life again, to stoop to earth 
 after having been in Nirvana, is too dreadful a 
 collapse. 
 
 Buddha's renunciation was in some inexplicable 
 manner greater again, because he not merely returned 
 from Nirvana for duty's sake, to finish the earth-life 
 in which he was engaged as Gautama Buddha, but 
 when all the claims of duty had been fully satisfied, 
 and his right of passage into Nirvana for incalculable 
 aeons entirely earned under the most enlarged view of 
 his earthly mission, he gave up that reward, or rather 
 postponed it for an indefinite period, to undertake a 
 supererogatory series of incarnations for the sake of 
 humanity at large. How is humanity being benefited 
 by this renunciation ? it may be asked. But the 
 question can only be suggested in reality by that 
 deep-seated habit, we have most of us acquired, of 
 estimating benefit by a physical standard, and even 
 in regard to this standard of taking very short views 
 of human affairs. No one will have followed me 
 through the foregoing chapter on the Progress of 
 Humanity without perceiving what kind of benefit it 
 would be that Buddha would wish to confer on men. 
 That which is necessarily for him the great question 
 in regard to humanity, is how to help as many people 
 as possible across the great critical period of the fifth 
 round. 
 
 Until that time everything is a mere preparation 
 for the supreme struggle, in the estimation of an 
 adept, all the more of a Buddha. The material 
 welfare of the existing generation is not even as dust 
 
192 
 
 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 in the balance in such a calculation ; the only thing 
 of importance at present is, to cultivate those 
 tendencies in mankind which may launch as many 
 Egos as possible upon such a Karmic path that the 
 growth of their spirituality in future births will be 
 promoted. Certainly it is the fixed conviction of 
 esoteric teachers — of the adept co-workers with 
 Buddha— that the very process of cultivating such 
 spirituality will immensely reduce the sum of even 
 transitory human sorrow. And the happiness of 
 mankind, even in any one generation only, is by no 
 means a matter on which esoteric science looks with 
 indifference. So the esoteric policy is not to be 
 considered as something so hopelessly up in the air 
 that it will never concern any of us who are living 
 now. But there are seasons of good and bad harvest 
 for wheat and barley, and so also for the desired 
 growth of spirituality amongst men ; and in Europe, 
 at all events, going by the experience of former great 
 races, at periods of development corresponding to 
 that of our own now, the great present uprush of 
 intelligence in the direction of physical and material 
 progress is not likely to bring on a season of good 
 harvests for progress of the other kind. For the 
 moment the best chance of doing good in countries 
 where the uprush referred to is most marked, is held 
 to He in the possibility that the importance of spiri- 
 tuality may come to be perceived by intellect, even in 
 advance of being felt, if the attention of that keen 
 though unsympathetic tribunal can but be secured. 
 Any success in that direction to which these explana- 
 tions may conduce, will justify the views of those — 
 but a minority— among the esoteric guardians of 
 
Nirvana. 193 
 
 humanity who have conceived that it is worth while 
 to have them made. 
 
 So Nirvana is truly the key-note of esoteric 
 Buddhism, as of the hitherto rather misdirected 
 studies of external scholars, The great end of the 
 whole stupendous evolution of humanity is to culti- 
 vate human souls so that they shall be ultimately 
 fit for that as yet inconceivable condition. The 
 great triumph of the present race of planetary spirits 
 who have reached that condition themselves, will be 
 to draw thither as many more Egos as possible, We 
 are far as yet from the era at which we may be in 
 serious danger of disqualifying ourselves definitively 
 for such progress, but it is not too soon even now 
 to begin the great process of qualification, all the 
 more as the Karma which will propagate itself 
 through successive lives in that direction will carry 
 its own reward with it, so that an enlightened pursuit 
 of our highest interests, in the very remote future, 
 will coincide with the pursuit of our immediate 
 welfare in the next Devachanic period, and the next 
 rebirth. 
 
 Will it be argued that if the cultivation of spiri- 
 tuality is the great purpose to be followed, it matters 
 little whether men pursue it along one religious 
 pathway or another ? This is a mistake which, as 
 explained in a former chapter, Buddha, as Sanka- 
 racharya, set himself especially to combat — viz. the 
 early Hindu belief that moksha can be attained by 
 bJiakti irrespective of gnyanam — that is, that salva- 
 tion is obtainable by devout practices irrespective 
 of knowledge of eternal truth. The sort of salvation 
 we are talking about now is not escape from a 
 
 O 
 
194 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 penalty, to be achieved by cajoling a celestial 
 potentate — it is a positive and not a negative 
 achievement— the ascent into regions of spiritual 
 elevation so exalted that the candidate aiming at 
 them is claiming that which we ordinarily describe 
 as omniscience. Surely it is plain, from the way 
 Nature habitually works, that under no circum- 
 stances will a time ever come when a person, 
 merely by reason of having been good, will suddenly 
 become wise. The supreme goodness and wisdom of 
 the sixth-round man, who, once becoming that, will 
 assimilate by degrees the attributes of divinity itself, 
 can only be grown by degrees themselves, and 
 goodness alone, associated, as we so often find it, 
 with the most grotesque religious beliefs, cannot 
 conduct a man to more than Devachanic periods of 
 devout but unintelligent rapture, and in the end, if 
 similar conditions are reproduced through many 
 existences, to some painless extinction of individuality 
 at the great crisis. 
 
 It is by a steady pursuit of, and desire for, real 
 spiritual truth, not by an idle, however well-meaning 
 acquiescence in the fashionable dogmas of the nearest 
 church, that men launch their souls into the subjective 
 state, prepared to imbibe real knowledge from the 
 latent omniscience of their own sixth principles, and 
 to re-incarnate in due time with impulses in the same 
 direction. Nothing can produce more disastrous 
 effects on human progress, as regards the destiny 
 of individuals, than the very prevalent notion that 
 one religion, followed out in a pious spirit, is as good 
 as another, and that if such and such doctrines are 
 perhaps absurd when you look into them, the great 
 
Nirvana. 195 
 
 majority of good people will never think of their 
 absurdity, but will recite them in a blamelessly 
 devoted attitude of mind. One religion is by no 
 means as good as another, even if all were prod uctive 
 of equally blameless lives. But I prefer to avoid all 
 criticism of specific faiths, leaving this volume a 
 simple and inoffensive statement of the real inner 
 doctrines of the one great religion of the world which 
 — presenting as it does in its external aspects a 
 bloodless and innocent record — has thus been really 
 productive of blameless lives throughout its whole 
 existence. Moreover, it would not be by a servile 
 acceptance even of its doctrines that the development 
 of true spirituality is to be cultivated. It is by the 
 disposition to seek truth, to test and examine all 
 which presents itself as claiming belief, that the great 
 result is to be brought about. In the East, such a 
 resolution in the highest degree leads to chelaship, to 
 the pursuit of truth, knowledge, by the development 
 of inner faculties by means of which it may be 
 cognized with certainty. In the west, the realm of 
 intellect, as the world is mapped out at present, truth 
 unfortunately can only be pursued and hunted out 
 with the help of many words and much wrangling 
 and disputation. But at all events it may be hunted, 
 and, if it is not finally captured, the chase on the 
 part of the hunters will have engendered instincts 
 that will propagate themselves and lead to results 
 hereafter. 
 
 O 2 
 
196 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 In all Oriental literature bearing on the constitution 
 of the cosmos, frequent reference is made to the days 
 and the nights of Brahma ; the inbreathings and the 
 outbreathings of the creative principle, the periods of 
 manvantara, 1 and the periods of pralaya. This idea 
 runs into various Eastern mythologies, but in its sym- 
 bolical aspects we need not follow it here. The pro- 
 cess in Nature to which it refers is of course the 
 alternate succession of activity and repose that is 
 observable at every step of the great ascent from 
 the infinitely small to the infinitely great. Man has 
 a manvantara and pralaya every four-and-twenty 
 hours, his periods of waking and sleeping ; vegetation 
 follows the same rule from year to year as it subsides 
 and revives with the seasons. The world, too, has its 
 manvantaras and pralayas, when the tide-wave of 
 humanity approaches its shore, runs through the 
 evolution of its seven races, and ebbs away again, and 
 such a manvantara has been treated by most exoteric 
 religions as the whole cycle of eternity. 
 
 The major manvantara of our planetary chain is 
 
 1 As transliterated into English, this word may be written 
 either manwantara or manvantara j and the proper pronuncia- 
 tion is something between the two, with the accent on the 
 second syllable. 
 
The Universe. 197 
 
 that which comes to an end when the last Dhyan 
 Chohan of the seventh round of perfected humanity 
 passes into Nirvana. And the expression has thus 
 to be regarded as one of considerable elasticity. It 
 may be said indeed to have infinite elasticity, and 
 that is one explanation of the confusion which has 
 reigned in all treatises on Eastern religions in their 
 popular aspects. All the root-words transferred to 
 popular literature from the secret doctrine have a 
 seven-fold significance at least, for the initiate, while 
 the uninitiated reader, naturally supposing that one 
 word means one thing, and trying always to clear up 
 its meaning by collating its various applications, and 
 striking an average, gets into the most hopeless 
 embarrassment. 
 
 The planetary chain with which we are concerned 
 is not the only one which has our sun as its centre. 
 As there are other planets besides the earth in our 
 chain, so there are other chains besides this in our 
 solar system. There are seven such, and there comes 
 a time when all these go into pralaya together. 
 This is spoken of as a solar pralaya, and within the 
 interval between two such pralayas, the vast solar 
 manvantara covers seven pralayas and manvantaras 
 of our— and each other — planetary chain. Thought 
 is baffled, say even the adepts, in speculating as to 
 how many of our solar pralayas must come before 
 the great cosmic night in which the whole universe, 
 in its collective enormity, obeys what is manifestly 
 the universal law of activity and repose, and with all 
 its myriad systems passes itself into pralaya. But 
 even that tremendous result, says esoteric science, 
 must surely come. 
 
198 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 After the pralaya of a single planetary chain there 
 is no necessity for a recommencement of evolutionary 
 activity absolutely de novo. There is only a resump- 
 tion of arrested activity. The vegetable and animal 
 kingdoms, which at the end of the last corresponding 
 manvantara had reached only a partial development, 
 are not destroyed. Their life or vital energy passes 
 through a night, or period of rest ; they also have, so 
 to speak, a Nirvana of their own, as why should they 
 not, these foetal and infant entities ? They are all, 
 like ourselves, begotten of the one element. As we 
 have our Dhyan Chohans, so have they in their 
 several kingdoms elemental guardians, and are as 
 well taken care of in the mass as humanity is in 
 the mass. The one element not only fills and is 
 space, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic 
 matter. 
 
 When, however, the hour of the solar pralaya 
 strikes, though the process of man's advance on his 
 last seventh round is precisely the same as usual, 
 each planet, instead of merely passing out of the 
 visible into the invisible, as he quits it in turn, is an- 
 nihilated. With the beginning of the seventh round 
 of the seventh planetary chain manvantara, every 
 kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there 
 remains on each planet, after the exit of man, merely 
 the may a of once living and existing forms. With 
 every step he takes on the descending and ascending 
 arcs, as he moves on from globe to globe, the planet 
 left behind becomes an empty chrysaloidal case. At 
 his departure there is an outflow from every kingdom 
 of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher forms in 
 due time, they are nevertheless liberated, and to the 
 
The Universe. 199 
 
 day of the next evolution they will rest in their 
 lethargic sleep in space, until brought into life again 
 at the new solar manvantara. The old elementals 
 will rest till they are called on to become in their 
 turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable, and animal 
 entities on another and a higher chain of globes on 
 their way to become human entities, while the ger- 
 minal entities of the lowest forms— and at that time 
 there will remain but few of such— will hang in space 
 like drops of water suddenly turned into icicles. 
 They will thaw at the first hot breath of the new 
 solar manvantara, and form the soul of the future 
 globes. The slow development of the vegetable 
 kingdom, up to the period we are now dealing with, 
 will have been provided for by the longer inter- 
 planetary rest of man. When the solar pralaya 
 comes, the whole purified humanity merges into 
 Nirvana, and from that intersolar Nirvana will be 
 reborn in the higher systems. The strings of worlds 
 are destroyed, and vanish like a shadow from the 
 wall when the light is extinguished. "We have 
 every indication," say the adepts, " that at this very 
 moment such a solar pralaya is taking place, while 
 there are two minor ones ending somewhere." 
 
 At the beginning of the new solar manvantara the 
 hitherto subjective elements of the material worlds, 
 now scattered in cosmic dust, receiving their impulse 
 from the new Dhyan Chohans of the new solar 
 system (the highest of the old ones having gone 
 higher), will form into primordial ripples of life, and, 
 separating into differentiating centres of activity, 
 combine in a graduated scale of seven stages of 
 evolution. Like every other orb of space, our earth 
 
200 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 has, before obtaining its ultimate materiality, to pass 
 through a gamut of seven stages of density. Nothing 
 in this world now can give us an idea of what that 
 ultimate stage of materiality is like. The French 
 astronomer Flammarion, in a book called La Resur- 
 section et la Fin des Mondes, has approached a con- 
 ception of this ultimate materiality. The facts are, 
 I am informed, with slight modifications, much as 
 he surmises. In consequence of what he treats as 
 secular refrigeration, but which more truly is old age 
 and loss of vital power, the solidification and desic- 
 cation of the earth at last reaches a point when the 
 whole globe becomes a relaxed conglomerate. Its 
 period of child-bearing has gone by ; its progeny are 
 all nurtured ; its term of life is finished. Hence its 
 constituent masses cease to obey those laws of 
 cohesion and aggregation which held them together. 
 And becoming like a corpse, which, abandoned to the 
 work of destruction, leaves each molecule composing 
 it free to separate itself from the body, and obey in 
 future the sway of new influences, " the attraction of 
 the moon," suggests M. Flammarion, " would itself 
 undertake the task of demolition by producing a 
 tidal wave of earth particles instead of an aqueous 
 tide." This last idea must not be regarded as 
 countenanced by occult science except so far as it 
 may serve to illustrate the loss of molecular cohesion 
 in the material of the earth. 
 
 Occult physics pass fairly into the region of 
 metaphysics, if we seek to obtain some indication of 
 the way in which evolution recommences after a 
 universal pralaya. 
 
 The one eternal, imperishable thing in the uni- 
 
The Universe. 201 
 
 verse, which universal pralayas themselves pass over 
 without destroying, is that which may be regarded 
 indifferently as space, duration, matter or motion ; 
 not as something having these four attributes, but as 
 something which is these four things at once and 
 always. AncL evolution takes its rise in the atomic 
 polarity which motion engenders. In cosmogony the 
 positive and the negative, or the active and passive, 
 forces correspond to the male and female principles. 
 The spiritual efflux enters into the veil of cosmic 
 matter ; the active is attracted by the passive prin- 
 ciple, and if we may here assist imagination by 
 having recourse to old occult symbology — the great 
 Nag — the serpent emblem of eternity, attracts its 
 tail to its mouth, forming thereby the circle of eternity, 
 or rather cycles in eternity. The one and chief attri- 
 bute of the universal spiritual principle, the uncon- 
 scious but ever active life-giver, is to expand and 
 shed ; that of the universal material principle is to 
 gather in and fecundate. Unconscious and non- 
 existing when separate, they become consciousness 
 and life when brought together. The word Brahma 
 comes from the Sanscrit root brih, to expand, grow, 
 or fructify, esoteric cosmogony being but the vivify- 
 ing expansive force of Nature in its eternal evolution. 
 No one expression can have contributed more to 
 mislead the human mind in basic speculation con- 
 cerning the origin of things than the word " creation." 
 Talk of creation, and we are continually butting 
 against the facts. But once realize that our planet 
 and ourselves are no more creations than an iceberg, 
 but states of being for a given time — that their 
 present appearance, geological or anthropological, 
 
202 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 is transitory and but a condition concomitant of 
 that stage of evolution at which they have arrived — 
 and the way has been prepared for correct thinking. 
 Then we are enabled to see what is meant by the one 
 and only principle or element in the universe, and by 
 the treatment of that element as androgynous ; also 
 by the proclamation of Hindu philosophy that all 
 things are but Maya — transitory states — except the 
 one element which rests during the maha-pralayas 
 only — the nights of Brahma. 
 
 Perhaps we have now plunged deeply enough into 
 the fathomless mystery of the great First Cause. It 
 is no paradox to say that, simply by reason of igno- 
 rance, do ordinary theologians think they know so 
 much about God. And it is no exaggeration to say 
 that the wondrously endowed representatives of 
 occult science, whose mortal nature has been so far 
 elevated and purified that their perceptions range 
 over other worlds and other states of existence, and 
 commune directly with beings as much greater than 
 ordinary mankind, as man is greater than the insects 
 of the field, it is the mere truth that they never 
 occupy themselves at all with any conception remotely 
 resembling the God of churches and creeds. Within 
 the limits of the solar system, the mortal adept knows, 
 of his own knowledge, that all things are accounted 
 for by law, working on matter in its diverse forms, 
 plus the guiding and modifying influence of the 
 highest intelligences associated with the solar system, 
 the Dhyan Chohans, the perfected humanity of the 
 last preceding manvantara. These Dhyan Chohans, 
 or Planetary Spirits, on whose nature it is almost 
 fruitless to ponder, until one can at least realize the 
 
The Universe. 203 
 
 nature of disembodied existence in one's own case, 
 impart to the reawakening worlds at the end of a 
 planetary chain pralaya such impulses that evolution 
 feels them throughout its whole progress. The 
 limits of Nature's great law restrain their action. 
 They cannot say, let there be paradise throughout 
 space, let all men be born supremely wise and good ; 
 they can only work through the principle of evolution, 
 and they cannot deny to any man who is to be 
 invested with the potentiality of development 
 himself into a Dhyan Chohan, the right to do evil, if 
 he prefers that to good. Nor can they prevent evil, 
 if done, from producing suffering. Objective life is 
 the soil in which the life-germs are planted ; spiritual 
 existence (the expression being used, remember, in 
 contrast merely to grossly material existence) is the 
 flower to be ultimately obtained. But the human 
 germ is something more than a flower-seed ; it has 
 liberty of choice in regard to growing up or growing 
 down, and it could not be developed without such 
 liberty being exercised by the plant. This is the 
 necessity of evil. But within the limits that logical 
 necessity prescribes, the Dhyan Chohan impresses 
 his conceptions upon the evolutionary tide, and com- 
 prehends the origin of all that he beholds. 
 
 Surely as we ponder in this way over the magni- 
 tude of the cyclic evolution with which esoteric 
 science is in this way engaged, it seems reasonable 
 to postpone considerations as to the origin of the 
 whole cosmos. The ordinary man in this earth-life, 
 with many, certainly some hundred, earth-lives to 
 come, and their very much more important inter- 
 incarnation periods (more important, that is, as 
 
204 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 regards duration and the prospect of happiness or 
 sorrow) also in prospect, may surely be most wisely 
 occupied with the inquiries whose issue will affect 
 practical results, than with speculation in which he is 
 practically quite uninterested. Of course, from the 
 point of view of religious speculation resting on no 
 positive knowledge of anything beyond this life, 
 nothing can be more important or more highly prac- 
 tical than conjectures as to the attributes and probable 
 intentions of the terrible, personal Jehovah, pictured 
 as an omnipotent tribunal, into whose presence the 
 soul at its death is to be introduced for judgment. 
 But scientific knowledge of spiritual things throws 
 back the day of judgment into a very dim perspec- 
 tive, the intervening period being filled with activity 
 of all kinds. Moreover, it shows mankind that 
 certainly, for millions and millions of centuries to 
 come, it will not be confronted with any judge at all, 
 other than that all-pervading judge, that Seventh 
 Principle, or Universal Spirit, which exists every- 
 where, and, operating on matter, provokes the exis- 
 tence of man himself, and the world in which he 
 lives, and the future conditions towards which he is 
 pressing. The Seventh Principle, undefinable, incom- 
 prehensible for us at our present stage of enlighten- 
 ment, is of course the only God recognized by esoteric 
 knowledge, and no personification of this can be 
 otherwise than symbolical. 
 
 And yet, in truth, esoteric knowledge, giving life 
 and reality to ancient symbolism in one direction, as 
 often as it conflicts with modern dogma in the other, 
 shows us how far from absolutely fabulous are even 
 the most anthropomorphic notions of Deity associated 
 
The Universe. 205 
 
 by exoteric tradition with the beginning of the world. 
 The Planetary Spirit, actually incarnated among men 
 in the first round, was the prototype of personal 
 deity in all subsequent developments of the idea. 
 The mistake made by uninstructed men in dealing 
 with the idea is merely one of degree. The personal 
 God of an insignificant minor manvantara has been 
 taken for the creator of the whole cosmos, a most 
 natural mistake for people forced, by knowing no 
 more of human destiny than was included in one 
 objective incarnation, to suppose that all beyond was 
 a homogeneous spiritual future. The God of this life, 
 of course, for them, was the God of all lives and worlds 
 and periods. 
 
 The reader will not misunderstand me, I trust, to 
 mean that esoteric science regards the Planetary 
 Spirit of the first round as a god. As I say, it is 
 concerned with the working of Nature in an im- 
 measurable space, from an immeasurable past, and 
 all through immeasurable future. The enormous 
 areas of time and space in which our solar system 
 operates is explorable by the mortal adepts of esoteric 
 science. Within those limits they know all that takes 
 place, and how it takes place, and they know that 
 everything is accounted for by the constructive will 
 of the collective host of the Planetary Spirits, ope- 
 rating under the law of evolution that pervades all 
 Nature. They commune with these Planetary Spirits, 
 and learn from them that the law of this, is the law 
 of other solar systems as well, into the regions of 
 which the perceptive faculties of the Planetary Spirits 
 can plunge as the perceptive faculties of the adepts 
 themselves can plunge into the life of other planets 
 
206 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of this chain. The law of alternating activity and 
 repose is operating universally ; for the whole cosmos, 
 even though at unthinkable intervals, pralaya must 
 succeed manvantara, and manvantara, pralaya. 
 
 Will any one ask to what end does this eternal 
 succession work ? It is better to confine the question 
 to a single system, and ask to what end does the 
 original nebula arrange itself in planetary vortices of 
 evolution, and develope worlds in which the universal 
 spirit, reverberating through matter, produces form 
 and life and those higher states of matter in which 
 that which we call subjective or spiritual existence 
 is provided for. Surely it is end enough to satisfy any 
 reasonable mind that such sublimely perfected beings 
 as the Planetary Spirits themselves come thus into 
 existence, and live a conscious life of supreme know- 
 ledge and felicity, through vistas of time which are 
 equivalent to all we can imagine of eternity. Into 
 this unutterable greatness every living thing has the 
 opportunity of passing ultimately. The Spirit which 
 is in every animated form, and which has even 
 worked up into these, from forms we are generally in 
 the habit of calling inanimate, will slowly but cer- 
 tainly progress onwards until the working of its 
 untiring influence in matter has evolved a human 
 soul. It does not follow that the plants and animals 
 around us have any principle evolved in them as yet 
 which will assume a human form in the course of the 
 present manvantara ; but though the course of an 
 incomplete evolution may be suspended by a period 
 of natural repose, it is not rendered abortive. Even- 
 tually every spiritual monad — itself a sinless uncon- 
 scious principle, will work through conscious forms 
 
The Universe. 207 
 
 on lower levels, until these, throwing off one after 
 another higher and higher forms, will produce that in 
 which the God-like consciousness may be fully evoked. 
 Certainly it is not by reason of the grandeur of any 
 human conceptions as to what would be an adequate 
 reason for the existence of the universe, that such a 
 consummation can appear an insufficient purpose, 
 not even if the final destiny of the planetary spirit 
 himself, after periods to which his development from 
 the mineral forms of primaeval worlds is but a child- 
 hood in the recollection of the man, is to merge his 
 glorified individuality into that sum total of all 
 consciousness, which esoteric metaphysics treat as 
 absolute consciousness, which is non-consciousness. 
 These paradoxical expressions are simply counters 
 representing ideas that the human mind is not 
 qualified to apprehend, and it is waste of time to 
 haggle over them. 
 
 These considerations supply the key to esoteric 
 Buddhism, a more direct outcome of the universal 
 esoteric doctrine than any other popular religion, for 
 the effort in its construction has been to make men 
 love virtue for its own sake and for its good effect 
 on their future incarnations, not to keep them in 
 subjection to any priestly system or dogma by terri- 
 fying their fancy with the doctrine of a personal judge 
 waiting to try them for more than their lives at their 
 death. Mr. Lillie is mistaken, admirable as his 
 intention has been, and sympathetic as his mind 
 evidently is with the beautiful morality and aspiration 
 of Buddhism, in deducing from its Temple ritual the 
 notion of a Personal God. No such conception 
 enters into the great esoteric doctrine of Nature, of 
 
2o8 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 which this volume has furnished an imperfect sketch. 
 Nor even in reference to the farthest regions of the 
 immensity beyond our own planetary system, does 
 the adept exponent of the esoteric doctrine tolerate 
 the adoption of an agnostic attitude. It will not 
 suffice for him to say, " As far as the elevated senses 
 of planetary spirits, whose cognition extends to the 
 outermost limits of the starry heavens — as far as 
 their vision can extend, Nature is self-sufficing ; as to 
 what may lie beyond, we offer no hypothesis." What 
 the adept really says on this head is, " The universe 
 is boundless, and it is a stultification of thought to 
 talk of any hypothesis setting in beyond the bound- 
 less — on the other side of the limits of the limitless." 
 That which antedates every manifestation of the 
 universe, and would lie beyond the limit of manifes- 
 tation, if such limits could ever be found, is that 
 which underlies the manifested universe within our 
 own purview— matter animated by motion, its Para- 
 brahm or Spirit. Matter, space, motion, and dura- 
 tion, constitute one and the same eternal substance 
 of the universe. There is nothing else eternal 
 absolutely. That is the first state of matter, itself 
 perfectly uncognizable by physical senses, which deal 
 with manifested matter, another state altogether. 
 But though thus in one sense of the word materialistic, 
 the esoteric doctrine, as any reader of the foregoing 
 explanations will have seen, is as far from resembling 
 the gross narrow-minded conception of Nature, which 
 ordinarily goes by the name of Materialism, as the 
 North Pole looks away from the South. It stoops 
 to Materialism, as it were, to link its methods with 
 the logic of that system, and ascends to the highest 
 
The Universe. 209 
 
 realms of idealism, to embrace and expound the most 
 exalted aspirations of Spirit. As it cannot be too 
 frequently or earnestly repeated — it is the union of 
 Science with Religion — the bridge by which the most 
 acute and cautious pursuers of experimental know- 
 ledge may cross over to the most enthusiastic 
 devotee, by means of which the most enthusiastic 
 devotee may return to Earth and yet keep Heaven 
 still around him. 
 
2io Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE REVIEWED. 
 
 LONG familiarity with the esoteric doctrine will alone 
 give rise to a full perception of the manner in which 
 it harmonizes with facts of Nature such as we are all 
 in a position to observe. But something may be 
 done to indicate the correspondences that may be 
 traced between the whole body of teaching now set 
 forth and the phenomena of the world around us. 
 
 Beginning with the two great perplexities of 
 ordinary philosophy — the conflict between free-will 
 and predestination, and the origin of evil, it will 
 surely be recognized that the system of Nature now 
 explained enables us to deal with those problems 
 more boldly than they have ever yet been handled. 
 Till now the most prudent thinkers have been least 
 disposed to profess that either by the aid of meta- 
 physics or religion could the mystery of free-will and 
 predestination be unravelltd. The tendency of 
 thought has been to relegate the whole enigma to the 
 region of the unknowable. And, strange to say, this 
 has been done contentedly by people who have been 
 none the less contented to accept as more than a 
 provisional hypothesis the religious doctrines which 
 thus remained incapable of reconciliation with some 
 of their own most obvious consequences. The 
 omniscience of a personal Creator, ranging over the 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 211 
 
 future as well as the past, left man no room to 
 exercise the independent authority over his own 
 destinies which nevertheless it was absolutely neces- 
 sary to allow him to exercise in order that the policy 
 of punishing or rewarding him for his acts in life 
 could be recognized as anything but the most gro- 
 tesque injustice. One great English philosopher, 
 frankly facing the embarrassment, declared in a 
 famous posthumous essay that, by reason of these 
 considerations, it was impossible that God could be 
 all-good and all-potent. People were free to invest 
 him logically with one or other of these attributes, 
 but not with both. The argument was treated with 
 the respect due to the great reputation of its author, 
 and put aside with the discretion due to respect for 
 orthodox tenets. 
 
 But the esoteric doctrine comes to our rescue in 
 this emergency. First of all it honestly takes into 
 account the insignificant size of this world compared 
 to the universe. This is a fact of Nature which the 
 early Christian church feared with a true instinct, 
 and fought with the cruelty of terror. The truth 
 was denied, and its authors were tortured for many 
 centuries. Established at last beyond even the 
 authority of papal negations, the Church resorted to 
 the " desperate expedient," to quote Mr. Rhys David's 
 phrase, of pretending that it did not matter. 
 
 The pretence till now has been more successful 
 than its authors could have hoped. When they 
 dreaded astronomical discovery, they were crediting 
 the world at large with more remorseless logic than 
 it ultimately showed any inclination to employ. 
 People have been found willing as a rule to do that 
 
 P 2 
 
212 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 which I have described esoteric Buddhism as not 
 requiring us to do, to keep their science and their 
 religion in separate water-tight compartments. So 
 long and so thoroughly has this principle been 
 worked upon, that it has finally ceased to be an 
 argument against the credibility of a religious dogma 
 to point out that it is impossible. But when we 
 establish a connection between our hitherto divided 
 reservoirs, and require them to stand at the same 
 level, we cannot fail to see how the insignificance of 
 the earth's magnitude diminishes in a corresponding 
 proportion the plausibility of theories that require us 
 to regard the details of our own lives as part of the 
 general stock of a universal Creator's omniscience. 
 On the contrary, it is unreasonable to suppose that 
 the creatures inhabiting one of the smaller planets 
 of one of the smaller suns in the ocean of the universe, 
 where suns are but water-drops in the sea, are exempt 
 in any way from the general principle of government 
 by law. But that principle cannot co-exist with 
 government by caprice, which is an essential condition 
 of such predestination as conventional discussions of 
 the problems before us associate with the use of the 
 word. For be it observed that the predestination 
 which conflicts with free-will is not the predestination 
 of races, but individual predestination, associated 
 with the ideas of divine grace or wrath. The pre- 
 destination of races, under laws analogous to those 
 which control the general tendency of any multitude 
 of independent chances, is perfectly compatible with 
 individual free-will, and thus it is that the esoteric 
 doctrine reconciles the long-standing contradiction of 
 Nature. Man has control over his own destiny. 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 213 
 
 within constitutional limits, so to speak ; he is 
 perfectly free to make use of his natural rights as far 
 as they go, and they go practically to infinity as far 
 as he, the individual unit, is concerned. But the 
 average human action, under given conditions, taking 
 a vast multiplicity of units into account, provides for 
 the unfailing evolution of the cycles which constitute 
 their collective destiny. 
 
 Individual predestination, it is true, may be asserted, 
 not as a religious dogma having to do with divine 
 grace or wrath, but on purely metaphysical grounds — 
 that is to say, it may be argued that each human 
 creature is fundamentally, in infancy, subject to the 
 same influence by similar circumstances, and that an 
 adult life is thus merely the product or impression of 
 all the circumstances which have influenced such a 
 life from the beginning, so that, if those circumstances 
 were known, the moral and intellectual result would 
 be known. By this train of reasoning it can be made 
 to appear that the circumstances of each man's life 
 may be theoretically knowable by a sufficiently 
 searching intelligence ; that hereditary tendencies, 
 for example, are but products of antecedent circum- 
 stances entering into any given calculation as a 
 perturbation, but not the less calculable on that 
 account. This contention, however, is no less in 
 direct conflict with the consciousness of humanity, 
 than the religious dogma of individual predestination. 
 The sense of free-will is a factor in the process which 
 cannot be ignored, and the free-will of which we are 
 thus sensible is not a mere automatic impulse, like 
 the twitching of a dead frog's leg. The ordinary 
 religious dogma and the ordinary metaphysical 
 
214 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 argument both require us to regard it in that light ; 
 but the esoteric doctrine restores it to its true 
 dignity, and shows us the scope of its activity, 
 the limits of its sovereignty. It is sovereign over 
 the individual career, but impotent in presence of 
 the cyclic law, which even so positive a philosopher 
 as Draper detects in human history — brief as the 
 period is which he is enabled to observe. And none 
 the less does that collateral quicksand of thought 
 which J. S. Mill discerned alongside the contradic- 
 tions of theology — the great question whether specu- 
 lation must work with the all-good or all-potent 
 hypothesis — find its explanation in the system now 
 disclosed. Those great beings, the perfected efflo- 
 rescence of former humanity, who, though far from 
 constituting a supreme God, reign nevertheless in 
 a divine way over the destinies of our world, are 
 not only not omnipotent, but, great as they are, are 
 restricted as regards their action by comparatively 
 narrow limits. It would seem as if, when the stage 
 is, so to speak, prepared afresh for a new drama of 
 life, they are able to introduce some improvements 
 into the action, derived from their own experience 
 in the drama with which they were concerned, but are 
 only capable, as regards the main construction of the 
 piece, of repeating that which has been represented 
 before. They can do on a large scale what a 
 gardener can do with dahlias on a small one ; he can 
 evolve considerable improvements in form and colour, 
 but his flowers, however carefully tended, will be 
 dahlias still. 
 
 Is it nothing, one may ask in passing, in support 
 of the acceptability of the esoteric doctrine, that natural 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 215 
 
 analogies support it at every turn ? As it is below, so 
 it is above, wrote the early occult philosophers ; the 
 microcosm is a mirror of the macrocosm. All Nature 
 lying within the sphere of our physical observation 
 verifies the rule, so far as that limited area can 
 exhibit any principles. The structure of lower 
 animals is reproduced with modifications in higher 
 animals, and in Man ; the fine fibres of the leaf 
 ramify like the branches of the tree, and the micro- 
 scope follows such ramifications, repeated beyond the 
 range of the naked eye. The dust-laden currents of 
 rain-water by the roadside deposit therein " sedimen- 
 tary rocks " in the puddles they develope, just as the 
 rivers do in the lakes and the great waters of the 
 world over the sea-bed. The geological work of a pond 
 and that of an ocean differ merely in their scale, and 
 it is only in scale that the esoteric doctrine shows the 
 sublimest laws of Nature differing in their jurisdiction 
 over the man, and their jurisdiction over the planetary 
 family. As the children of each human generation are 
 tended in infancy by their parents, and grow up to 
 tend another generation in their turn, so in the whole 
 humanity of the great manvantaric periods, the men of 
 one generation grow to be the Dhyan Chohans of the 
 next, and then yield their places in the ultimate pro- 
 gress of time to their descendants, and pass themselves 
 to higher conditions of existence. 
 
 Not less decisively than it answers the question 
 about free-will, does the esoteric doctrine deal with 
 the existence of evil. This subject has been dis- 
 cussed in its place in the preceding chapter on the 
 Progress of Humanity ; but the esoteric doctrine, it 
 will be seen, grapples with the great problem more 
 
216 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 closely than by the mere enunciation of the way 
 human free-will, which it is the purpose of Nature 
 to grow and cultivate into Dhyan Chohanship, 
 must by the hypothesis be free to develope evil 
 itself, if it likes. So much for the broad principle 
 in operation, but the way it works is traceable in 
 the present teaching as clearly as the principle 
 itself. It works through physical Karma, and 
 could not but work that way, except by a suspen- 
 sion of the invariable law that causes cannot but 
 produce effects. The objective man born into the 
 physical world is just as much the creation of the 
 person he last animated, as the subjective man who 
 has in the interim been living the Devachanic 
 existence. The evil that men do lives after them, 
 in a more literal sense even than Shakespeare in- 
 tended by those words. It may be asked, how can 
 the moral guilt of a man in one life cause him to 
 be born blind or crippled at a different period of 
 the world's history several thousand years later, of 
 parents with whom he has had, through his former 
 life, no sort of physical connection whatever ? But 
 the difficulty is met, by considering the operation 
 of affinities, more easily than may be imagined at 
 the first glance. The blind or crippled child, as 
 regards his physical frame, may have been the 
 potentiality rather than the product of local cir- 
 cumstances. But he would not have come into 
 existence unless there had been a spiritual monad 
 pressing forward for incarnation and bearing with 
 it a fifth principle (so much of a fifth principle as 
 is persistent, of course) precisely adapted by its 
 Karma to inhabit that potential body. Given 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 217 
 
 these circumstances, and the imperfectly organized 
 child is conceived and brought into the world, to be 
 a cause of trouble to himself and others — an effect 
 becoming a cause in its turn — and a living enigma 
 for philosophers endeavouring to explain the origin 
 of evil. 
 
 The same explanation applies with modifications 
 to a vast range of cases that might be cited to 
 illustrate the problem of evil in the world. Inci- 
 dentally, moreover, it covers a question connected 
 with the operation of the Karmic law that can hardly 
 be called a difficulty, as the answer would probably 
 be suggested by the bearings of the doctrine itself, 
 but is none the less entitled to notice. The selective 
 assimilation of Karma-laden spirits with parentage 
 which corresponds to their necessities or deserts, is 
 the obvious explanation which reconciles rebirth with 
 atavism and heredity. The child born may seem to 
 reproduce the moral and mental peculiarities of 
 parents or ancestors as well as their physical likeness, 
 and the fact suggests the notion that his soul is as 
 much an offshoot of the family tree as his physical 
 frame. It is unnecessary to enlarge here on the 
 multifarious embarrassments by which that theory 
 would be surrounded, on the extravagance of 
 supposing that a soul thus thrown off, like a spark 
 from an anvil, without any spiritual past behind it, 
 can have a spiritual future before it. The soul, 
 which was thus merely a function of the body, would 
 certainly come to an end with the dissolution of that 
 out of which it arose. The esoteric doctrine, how- 
 ever, as regards transmitted characteristics, will afford 
 a complete explanation of that phenomenon, as well as 
 
2i 8 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 of all others connected with human life. The family 
 into which he is born is, to the re-incarnating spirit, 
 what a new planet is to the whole tide of humanity 
 on a round along the manvantaric chain. It has 
 been built up by a process of evolution working on a 
 line transverse to that of humanity's approach ; but 
 it is fit for humanity to inhabit when the time comes. 
 So with the re-incarnating spirit, it presses forward 
 into the objective world, the influences which have 
 retained it in the Devachanic state having been 
 exhausted, and it touches the spring of Nature, so 
 to speak, provoking the development of a child which 
 without such an impulse v/ould merely have been a 
 potentiality, not an actual development ; but in 
 whose parentage it finds — of course unconsciously 
 by the blind operation of its affinities — the exact 
 conditions of renewed life for which it has prepared 
 itself during its last existence. Certainly we must 
 never forget the presence of exceptions in all broad 
 rules of Nature. In the present case it may some- 
 times happen that mere accident causes an injury to 
 a child at birth. Thus a crippled frame may come 
 to be bestowed on a spirit whose Karma has by no 
 means earned that penalty, and so with a great 
 variety of accidents. But of these all that need be 
 said is that Nature is not at all embarrassed by her 
 accidents ; she has ample time to repair them. The 
 undeserved suffering of one life is amply redressed 
 under the operation of the Karmic law in the next, 
 or the next. There is plenty of time for making the 
 account even, and the adepts declare, I believe, that, 
 as a matter-of-fact, in the long-run undeserved 
 suffering operates as good luck rather than other- 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 219 
 
 wise, thereby deriving from a purely scientific 
 observation of facts a doctrine which religion has 
 benevolently invented sometimes for the consolation 
 of the afflicted. 
 
 While the esoteric doctrine affords in this way an 
 unexpected solution of the most perplexing pheno- 
 mena of life, it does this at no sacrifice in any 
 direction of the attributes we may fairly expect of a 
 true religious science. Foremost among the claims 
 we may make on such a system is that it shall 
 contemplate no injustice, either in the direction of 
 wrong done to the undeserving, or of benefits 
 bestowed on the undeserving ; and the justice of 
 its operation must be discernible in great things 
 and small alike. The legal maxim, de minimis non 
 curat lex, is means of escape for human fallibility 
 from the consequences of its own imperfections. 
 There is no such thing as indifference to small 
 things in chemistry or mechanics. Nature in physical 
 operations responds with exactitude to small causes 
 as certainly as to great, and we may feel instinctively 
 sure that in her spiritual operations also she has no 
 clumsy habit of treating trifles as of no consequence, 
 of ignoring small debts in consideration of paying 
 big ones, like a trader of doubtful integrity content 
 to respect obligations which are serious enough to be 
 enforced by law. Now the minor acts of life, good 
 and bad alike, are of necessity ignored under any 
 system which makes the final question at stake, 
 admission to or exclusion from a uniform or ap- 
 proximately uniform condition of blessedness. Even 
 as regards that merit and demerit which is solely 
 concerned with spiritual consequences, no accurate 
 
220 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 response could be made by Nature except by means 
 of that infinitely graduated condition of spiritual 
 existence described by the esoteric doctrine as the 
 Devachanic state. But the complexity to be dealt 
 with is more serious than even the various conditions 
 of Devachanic existence can meet No system of 
 consequences ensuing to mankind after the life now 
 under observation, can be recognized as adapted 
 scientifically to the emergency, unless it responds to 
 the sense of justice, in regard to the multifarious acts 
 and habits of life generally, including those which 
 merely relate to physical existence, and are not deeply 
 coloured by right or wrong. 
 
 Now, it is only by a return to physical existence 
 that people can possibly be conceived to reap with 
 precise accuracy the harvest of the minor causes they 
 may have generated when last in objective life. 
 Thus, on a careful examination of the matter, the 
 Karmic law, so unattractive to Buddhist students, 
 hitherto, in its exoteric shape, and no wonder, will be 
 seen not only to reconcile itself to the sense of justice, 
 but to constitute the only imaginable method of 
 natural action that would do this. The continued 
 individuality running through successive Karmic 
 rebirths once realized, and the corresponding chain 
 of spiritual existences intercalated between each, 
 borne in mind, the exquisite symmetry of the whole 
 system is in no way impaired by that feature which 
 seems obnoxious to criticism at the first glance, — the 
 successive baths of oblivion through which the re- 
 incarnating spirit has to pass. On the contrary, that 
 oblivion itself is in truth the only condition on which 
 objective life could fairly be started afresh. Few 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 221 
 
 earth-lives are entirely free from shadows, the recol- 
 lection of which would darken a renewed lease of life 
 for the former personality. And if it is alleged that 
 the forgetfulness in each life of the last, involves waste 
 of experience and effort, and intellectual acquire- 
 ments, painfully or laboriously obtained, that objection 
 can only be raised in forgetfulness of the Devachanic 
 life in which, far from being wasted, such efforts and 
 acquirements are the seeds from which the whole 
 magnificent harvest of spiritual results will be raised. 
 In the same way the longer the esoteric doctrine 
 occupies the mind, the more clearly it is seen that 
 every objection brought against it meets with a 
 ready reply, and only seems an objection from the 
 point of view of imperfect knowledge. 
 
 Passing from abstract considerations to others 
 partly interwoven with practical matters, we may 
 compare the esoteric doctrine with the observable 
 facts of Nature in several ways with the view of 
 directly checking its teachings. A spiritual science 
 which has successfully divined the absolute truth 
 must accurately fit the facts of earth whenever it 
 impinges on earth. A religious dogma in flagrant 
 opposition to that which is manifestly truth in respect 
 of geology and astronomy, may find churches and 
 congregations content to nurse it, but is not worth 
 serious philosophical consideration. How then does 
 the esoteric doctrine square with geology and 
 astronomy ? 
 
 It is not too much to say that it constitutes the only 
 religious system that blends itself easily with the 
 physical truths discovered by modern research in 
 those branches of science. It not only blends itself 
 
222 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 with, in the sense of tolerating, the nebula hypothesis 
 and the stratification of rocks, it rushes into the arms 
 of these facts, so to speak, and could not get on with- 
 out them. It could not get on without the great 
 discoveries of modern biology ; and, as a system 
 recommending itself to notice in a scientific age, it 
 could ill afford to dispense with the latest acquisitions 
 of physical geography. 
 
 The stratification of the earth's crust is, of course, 
 a plain and visible record of the inter-racial cata- 
 clysms. Physical science is emerging from the habits 
 of timidity which its insolent oppression by religious 
 bigotry for fifteen centuries engendered, but it is still 
 a little shy in its relations with dogma, from the 
 mere force of habit. In that way geology has been 
 content to say, such and continents, as their shell- 
 beds testify, must have been more than once sub- 
 merged below and elevated above the surface of the 
 ocean. It has not yet grown used to the free applica- 
 tion of its own materials to speculation which 
 trenches upon religious territory. But surely if 
 geology were required to interpret all its facts into a 
 consistent history of the earth, throwing in the most 
 plausible hypotheses it could invent to fill up gaps in 
 its knowledge, it would already construct a history 
 for mankind which in its broad outlines would not be 
 unlike that sketched out in the foregoing chapter on 
 the Great World Periods ; and the further geological 
 discovery progresses, our esoteric teachers assure us, 
 the more closely will the correspondence of the 
 doctrine and the bony traces of the past be recog- 
 nized. Already we find experts from the Challenger 
 vouching for the existence of Atlantis, though the 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 223 
 
 subject belongs to a class of problems unattractive 
 to the scientific world generally, so that the considera- 
 tions in favou of the lost continent are not yet 
 generally appreciated. Already thoughtful geologists 
 are quite ready to recognize that in regard to the 
 forces which have fashioned the earth, this, the period 
 within the range of historic traces, may be a period 
 of comparative inertia and slow change ; that cata- 
 clysmal metamorphoses may have been added 
 formerly to those of gradual subsidence, upheaval, 
 and denudation. It is only a step or two to the 
 recognition as a fact, of what no one could any longer 
 find fault with as a hypothesis, that great continental 
 upheavals and submergences take place alternately; 
 that the whole map of the world is not only thrown 
 occasionally into new shapes, like the pictures of a 
 kaleidoscope as its coloured fragments fall into new 
 arrangements, but subject to systematically recurrent 
 changes, which restore former arrangements at 
 enormous intervals of time. 
 
 Pending further discoveries, however, it will, 
 perhaps, be admitted that we have a sufficient blocfk 
 of geological knowledge already in our possession to 
 fortify the cosmogony of the esoteric doctrine. That 
 the doctrine should have been withheld from the 
 world generally as long as no such knowledge had 
 paved the way for its reception can hardly be con- 
 sidered indiscreet for the part of its custodians. 
 Whether the present generation will attach sufficient 
 importance to its correspondence with what has been 
 ascertained of Nature in other ways remains to be 
 seen. 
 
 These correspondences may, of course, be traced 
 
224 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 in biology as decisively as in geology. The broad 
 Darwinian theory of the Descent of Man from the 
 animal kingdom is not the only support afforded by 
 this branch of science to the esoteric doctrine. The 
 detailed observations now carried out in embryology 
 are especially interesting for the light they throw on 
 more than one department of this doctrine. Thus 
 the now familiar truth that the successive stages of 
 ante-natal human development correspond to the 
 progress of human evolution through different forms 
 of animal life, is nothing less than a revelation, in its 
 analogical bearings. It does not merely fortify the 
 evolutionary hypothesis itself, it affords a remarkable 
 illustration of the way Nature works in the evolution 
 of new races of men at the beginning of the great 
 round-periods. When a child has to be developed 
 from a germ which is so simple in its constitution 
 that it is typical less of the animal — less even of the 
 vegetable— than of the mineral kingdom, the familiar 
 scale of evolution is run over, so to speak, with a 
 rapid touch. The ideas of progress which may have 
 taken countless ages to work out in a connected 
 chain for the first time, are once for all firmly lodged 
 in Nature's memory, and thenceforth they can be 
 quickly recalled in order in a few months. So with 
 the new evolution of humanity on each planet as the 
 human tide-wave of life advances. In the first round 
 the process is exceedingly slow, and does not advance 
 far. The ideas of Nature are themselves under 
 evolution. But when the process has been accom- 
 plished once, it can be quickly repeated. In the 
 later rounds the life-impulse runs up the gamut of 
 evolution with a facility only conceivable by help of 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 225 
 
 the illustration which embryology affords. This is 
 the explanation of the way the character of each 
 round differs from its predecessor. The evolutionary 
 work which has been once accomplished is soon 
 repeated ; then the round performs its own evolution 
 at a very different rate, as the child, once perfected 
 up to the human type, performs its own individual 
 growth but slowly, in proportion to the earlier stages 
 of its initial development. 
 
 No elaborate comparison of exoteric Buddhism 
 with the views of Nature, which have now been set 
 forth — briefly indeed, considering their scope and 
 importance, but comprehensively enough to furnish 
 the reader with a general idea of the system in its 
 whole enormous range — will be required from me. 
 With the help of the information now communicated, 
 more experienced students of Buddhist literature 
 will be better able to apply to the enigmas that may 
 contain, the keys which will unlock their meaning. 
 The gaps in the public records of Buddha's teaching 
 will be filled up readily enough now, and it will be 
 plain why they were left. For example, in Mr. Rhys 
 Davids' book, I find this : " Buddhism does not 
 attempt to solve the problem of the primary origin 
 of all things ;" and quoting from Hardy's " Manual 
 of Buddhism," he goes on, "When Malunka asked 
 the Buddha whether the existence of the world is 
 eternal or not eternal, he made him no reply ; but 
 the reason of this was that it was considered by the 
 teacher as an inquiry that tended to no profit." In 
 reality the subject was manifestly passed over because 
 it could not be dealt with by a plain yes or no, with- 
 out putting the inquirer upon a false scent ; while to 
 
 Q 
 
226 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 put him on the true scent would have required a 
 complete exposition of the whole doctrine about the 
 evolution of the planetary chain, an explanation of 
 that for which the community Buddha was dealing 
 with, was not intellectually ripe. To infer from his 
 silence that he regarded the inquiry itself as tending 
 to no profit, is a mistake which may naturally enough 
 have been made in the absence of any collateral 
 knowledge, but none can be more complete in reality. 
 No religious system that ever publicly employed 
 itself on the problem of the origin of all things, has, 
 as will now be seen, done more than scratch the 
 surface of that speculation, in comparison with the 
 exhaustive researches of the esoteric science of 
 which Buddha was no less prominent an exponent 
 than he was a prominent teacher of morals for the 
 populace. 
 
 The positive conclusions as to what Buddhism 
 does teach — carefully as he has worked them out — 
 are no less inaccurately set forth by Mr. Rhys Davids 
 than the negative conclusion just quoted. It was 
 inevitable that all such conclusions should hitherto 
 be inaccurate. I quote an example, not to dispar- 
 age the careful study of which it is the fruit, but to 
 show how the light now shed over the whole subject 
 penetrates every cranny, and puts an entirely new 
 complexion on all its features. 
 
 " Buddhism takes as its ultimate fact the existence 
 of the material world, and of conscious beings living 
 within it ; and it holds that everything is subject to 
 the law of cause and effect, and that everything is 
 constantly, though imperceptibly, changing. There 
 is no place where this law does not operate ; no 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 227 
 
 heaven or hell therefore in the ordinary sense. There 
 are worlds where angels live whose existence is 
 more or less material according as their previous 
 lives were more or less holy ; but the angels die, 
 and the worlds they inhabit pass away. There 
 are places of torment where the evil actions of men 
 or angels produce unhappy beings ; but when the 
 active power of the evil that produced them is 
 exhausted, they will vanish, and the worlds they 
 inhabit are not eternal. The whole Kosmos — earth 
 and heavens, and hells — is always tending to renova- 
 tion or destruction, is always in a course of change, a 
 series of revolutions or of cycles, of which the begin- 
 ning and the end alike are unknowable and unknown. 
 To this universal law of composition and dissolution, 
 men and gods form no exception ; the unity of forces 
 which constitutes a sentient being must sooner or 
 later be dissolved, and it is only through ignorance 
 and delusion that such a being indulges in the 
 dream that it is a separable and self-existent 
 entity." 
 
 Now, certainly this passage might be taken to show 
 how the popular notions of Buddhist philosophy are 
 manifestly thrown off from the real esoteric philoso- 
 phy. Most assuredly that philosophy no more finds 
 in the universe than in the belief of any truly en- 
 lightened thinker— Asiatic or European — the un- 
 changeable and eternal heaven and hell of monkish 
 legend ; and "the worlds where angels live," and so 
 on — the vividly real though subjective strata of the 
 Devachanic state — are found in Nature truly enough. 
 So with all the rest of the popular Buddhist concep- 
 tions just passed in review. But in their popular 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 form they are the nearest caricatures of the corre- 
 sponding items of esoteric knowledge. Thus the 
 notion about individuality being a delusion, and the 
 ultimate dissolution as such of the sentient being, is 
 perfectly unintelligible without fuller explanations 
 concerning the multitudinous aeons of individual life, 
 in as yet, to us, inconceivable, but ever progessive, 
 conditions of spiritual exaltation, which come before 
 that unutterably remote mergence into the non-indi- 
 vidualized condition. That condition certainly must 
 be somewhere in futurity, but its nature is something 
 which no uninitiated philosopher, at any rate, has 
 ever yet comprehended by so much as the faintest 
 glimmering guess. As with the idea of Nirvana, so 
 with this about the delusion of individuality, writers 
 on Buddhist doctrine derived from exoteric sources, 
 have most unfortunately found themselves entangled 
 with some of the remote elements of the great doc- 
 trine, under the impression that they were dealing 
 with Buddhist views of conditions immediately succeed- 
 ing this life. The statement, which is almost absurd, 
 thus put out of its proper place in the whole doctrine, 
 may be felt, not only as no longer an outrage on the 
 understanding, but as a sublime truth, when restored 
 to its proper place in relation to other truths. 
 The ultimate mergence of the perfect Man-god or 
 Dhyan Chohan in the absolute consciousness of para- 
 nirvana, has nothing to do, let me add, with the 
 " heresy of individuality," which relates to physical 
 personalities. To this subject I recur a little later 
 on. 
 
 Justly enough, Mr. Rhys Davids says, in reference 
 to the epitome of Buddhist doctrine quoted above : 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 229 
 
 " Such teachings are by no means peculiar to Bud- 
 dhism, and similar ideas lie at the foundation of 
 earlier Indian philosophies." (Certainly by reason of 
 the fact that Buddhism, as concerned with doctrine, 
 was earlier Indian philosophy itself.) " They are to 
 be found indeed in other systems widely separated 
 from them in time and place ; and Buddhism, in 
 dealing with the truth which they contain, might 
 have given a more decisive and more lasting utter- 
 ance, if it had not also borrowed a belief in the 
 curious doctrine of transmigration, a doctrine which 
 seems to have arisen independently, if not simulta- 
 neously, in the Valley of the Ganges and the Valley 
 of the Nile. The word transmigration has been used, 
 however, in different times and at different places for 
 theories similar, indeed, but very different ; and 
 Buddhism, in adopting the general idea from post- 
 Vedic Brahminism, so modified it as to originate, 
 in fact, a new hypothesis. The new hypothesis, 
 like the old one, related to life in past and future 
 births, and contributed nothing to the removal 
 here, in this life, of the evil it was supposed to ex- 
 plain." 
 
 The present volume should have dissipated the 
 misapprehensions on which these remarks rest. 
 Buddhism does not believe in anything resembling 
 the passage backwards and forwards between animal 
 and human forms, which most people conceive to be 
 meant by the principle of transmigration. The 
 transmigration of Buddhism is the transmigration of 
 Darwinian evolution scientifically developed, or 
 rather exhaustively explored, in both directions. 
 Buddhist writings certainly contain allusions to for- 
 
230 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 mer births, in which even the Buddha himself was now 
 one and now another kind of animal. But these had 
 reference to the remote course of pre-human evolution, 
 of which his fully opened vision gave him a retrospect. 
 Never in any authentic Buddhist writings will any 
 support be found for the notion that any human 
 creature, once having attained manhood, falls back 
 into the animal kingdom. Again, while nothing in- 
 deed could be more ineffectual as an explanation of 
 the origin of evil, than such a caricature of transmi- 
 gration as would contemplate such a return, the pro- 
 gressive rebirths of human Egos into objective exis- 
 tence, coupled with the operation of physical Karma, 
 and the inevitable play of free-will within the limits 
 of its privilege, do explain the origin of evil, finally 
 and completely. The effort of Nature being to grow 
 a new harvest of Dhyan Chohans whenever a plane- 
 tary system is evolved, the incidental development of 
 transitory evil is an unavoidable consequence under 
 the operation of the forces or processes just mentioned, 
 themselves unavoidable stages in the stupendous 
 enterprise set on foot. 
 
 At the same time the reader, who will now take up 
 Mr. Rhys Davids' book and examine the long passage 
 on this subject, and on the skandhas, will realize how 
 utterly hopeless a task it was to attempt the deduc- 
 tion of any rational theory of the origin of evil from 
 the exoteric materials there made use of. Nor was 
 it possible for these materials to suggest the true ex- 
 planation of the passage immediately afterwards 
 quoted from the Brahmajala Sutra : — 
 
 "After showing how the unfounded belief in the 
 eternal existence of God or gods arose, Gautama goes 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 231 
 
 on to discuss the question of the soul, and points out 
 thirty-two beliefs concerning it, which he declares to 
 be wrong. These are shortly as follows : ' Upon 
 what principle, or on what ground, do these mendi- 
 cants and Brahmans hold the doctrine of future exis- 
 tence ? They teach that the soul is material, or is 
 immaterial, or is both or neither ; that it will have 
 one or many modes of consciousness ; that its per- 
 ceptions will be few or boundless ; that it will be in a 
 state of joy or of misery or of neither. These are 
 the sixteen heresies, teaching a conscious existence 
 after death. Then there are eight heresies teaching 
 that the soul material or immaterial, or both or neither, 
 finite or infinite, or both or neither, has one uncon- 
 scious existence after death. And, finally, eight others 
 which teach that the soul, in the same eight ways, 
 exists after death in a state of being neither con- 
 scious nor unconscious. Mendicants,' concludes the 
 sermon, ' that which binds the teacher to existence 
 (viz. tanka, thirst) is cut off, but his body still remains. 
 While his body shall remain, he will be seen by gods 
 and men, but after the termination of life, upon the 
 dissolution of the body, neither gods nor men will see 
 him.' Would it be possible in a more complete and 
 categorical manner to deny that there is any soul — 
 anything of any kind which continues to exist in any 
 manner after death ? " 
 
 Certainly, for exoteric students, such a passage as 
 this could not but seem in flagrant contradiction with 
 those teachings of Buddhism which deal with the suc- 
 cessive passages of the same individuality through 
 several incarnations, and which thus along another 
 line of thought may seem to assume the existence of 
 
232 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 a transmissible soul, as plainly as the passage quoted 
 denies it. Without a comprehension of the seven 
 principles of man, no separate utterances on the 
 various aspects of this question of immortality could 
 possibly be reconciled. But the key now given leaves 
 the apparent contradiction devoid of all embarrass- 
 ment. In the passage last quoted Buddha is speaking 
 of the astral personality, while the immortality recog- 
 nized by the esoteric doctrine is that of the spiritual 
 individuality. The explanation has been fully given 
 in the chapter on Devachan, and in the passages 
 quoted there from Colonel Olcott's " Buddhist Cate- 
 chism." It is only since fragments of the great reve- 
 lation this volume contains have been given out 
 during the last two years in the Theosophist, that the 
 important distinction between personality and indi- 
 viduality, as applied to the question of human immor- 
 tality, has settled into an intelligible shape ; but there 
 are plentiful allusions in former occult writing, which 
 may now be appealed to in proof of the fact that for- 
 mer writers were fully alive to the doctrine itself. 
 Turning to the most recent of the occult books in 
 which the veil of obscurity was still left to wrap the 
 doctrine from careless observation, though it was 
 strained in many places almost to transparency, we 
 might take any one of a dozen passages to illustrate 
 the point before us. Here is one : — 
 
 " The philosophers who explained the fall into ge- 
 neration their own way, viewed spirit as something 
 whollydistinct from the soul. They allowed its presence 
 in the astral capsule only so far as the spiritual emana- 
 tions or rays of the "shining one" were concerned. Man 
 and soul had to conquer their immortality by ascend- 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 233 
 
 ing toward the unity, with which, if successful, they were 
 finally linked, and into which they were absorbed, so to 
 say. The individualization of man after death de- 
 pended on the spirit, not on his body and soul. Al- 
 though the word ' personality ' in the sense in which 
 it is usually understood, is an absurdity if applied 
 literally to our immortal essence, still the latter is a 
 distinct entity, immortal and eternal per se, and as in 
 the case of criminals beyond redemption, when the 
 shining thread which links the spirit to the soul from 
 the moment of the birth of a child, is violently 
 snapped, and the disembodied entity is left to share 
 the fate of the lower animals, to dissolve into ether, 
 and have its individuality annihilated — even then the 
 spirit remains a distinct being." l 
 
 No one can read this — scarcely any part, indeed, of 
 the chapter from which it is taken — without perceiving, 
 by the light of the explanations given in the present 
 volume, that the esoteric doctrine, now fully given 
 out, was perfectly familiar to the writer — though I 
 have been privileged to put it for the first time into 
 plain and unmistakable language. 
 
 It takes some mental effort to realize the difference 
 between personality and individuality, but the craving 
 for the continuity of personal existence — for the full 
 recollection always of those transitory circumstances 
 of our present physical life which make up the per- 
 sonality — is manifestly no more than a passing weak- 
 ness of the flesh. For many people it will perhaps 
 remain irrational to say that any person now living, 
 with his recollections bounded by the years of his 
 childhood, is the same individual as some one of quite 
 1 " Isis Unveiled," vol. i. p. 315. 
 
234 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 a different nationality and epoch who lived thousands 
 of years ago, or the same that will reappear after a 
 similar lapse of time under some entirely new condi- 
 tions in the future. But the feeling " I am I," is the 
 same through the three lives, and through all the hun- 
 dreds ; for that feeling is more deeply seated than the 
 feeling, " I am John Smith, so high, so heavy, with 
 such and such property and relations." Is it incon- 
 ceivable — as a notion in the mind — that John Smith, 
 inheriting the gift of Tithonus, changing his name 
 from time to time, marrying afresh every other gene- 
 ration or so, losing property here, coming into posses- 
 sion of property there, and getting interested as time 
 went on in a great variety of different pursuits — is it 
 inconceivable that such a person in a few thousand 
 years should forget all circumstances connected with 
 the present life of John Smith, just as if the incidents 
 of that life for him had never taken place ? And yet 
 the Ego would be the same. If this is conceivable in 
 the imagination, what can be inconceivable in the in- 
 dividual continuity of an intermittent life, interrupted 
 and renewed at regular intervals, and varied with 
 passages through a purer condition of existence. 
 
 No less than it clears up the apparent conflict be- 
 tween the identity of successive individualities and the 
 " heresy " of individuality, will the esoteric doctrine 
 be seen to put the " incomprehensible mystery " of 
 Karma, which Mr. Rhys Davids disposes of so sum- 
 marily, on a perfectly intelligible and scientific basis. 
 Of this he says that because Buddhism " does not 
 acknowledge a soul," it has to resort to the desperate 
 expedient of a mystery to bridge over the gulf between 
 one life and another somewhere else, the doctrine, 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 235 
 
 namely, of Karma. And he condemns the idea as a 
 " non-existent fiction of the brain." Irritated as he 
 feels with what he regards as the absurdity of the 
 doctrine, he yet applies patience and great mental 
 ingenuity in the effort to evolve something that 
 shall feel like a rational metaphysical conception out 
 of the tangled utterances concerning Karma of the 
 Buddhist scriptures. He writes : — 
 
 " Karma, from a Buddhist point of view, avoids 
 the superstitious extreme, on the one hand, of those 
 who believe in the separate existence of some entity 
 called the soul ; and the irreligious extreme on the 
 other of those who do not believe in moral justice 
 and retribution. Buddhism claims to have looked 
 through the word soul for the fact it purports to 
 cover, and to have found no fact at all, but only 
 one or other of twenty different delusions which 
 blind the eyes of men. Nevertheless, Buddhism is 
 convinced that if a man reaps sorrow, disappoint- 
 ment, pain, he himself and no other must at some 
 time have sown folly, error, sin, and if not in this 
 life, then in some former birth. Where, then, in the 
 latter case, is the identity between him who sows 
 and him who reaps ? In that which alone remains 
 when a man dies, and the constituent parts of the 
 sentient being are dissolved, in the result, namely, 
 of his action, speech, and thought, in his good or 
 evil Karma (literally his doing), which does not die. 
 We are familiar with the doctrine, ' Whatever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap,' and can therefore 
 enter into the Buddhist feeling that whatever a man 
 reaps that he must also have sown ; we are familiar 
 with the doctrine of the indestructibility of force, and 
 
236 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 can therefore understand the Buddhist dogma (how- 
 ever it may contravene our Christian notions) that no 
 exterior power can destroy the fruit of a man's deeds, 
 that they must work out their full effect to the 
 pleasant or the bitter end. But the peculiarity of 
 Buddhism lies in this, that the result of what a man 
 is or does is held not to be dissipated, as it were, into 
 many separate streams, but to be concentrated 
 together in the formation of one new sentient being 
 — new, that is, in its constituent parts and powers, 
 but the same in its essence, its being, its doing, its 
 Karma." 
 
 Nothing could be more ingenious as an attempt 
 to invent for Buddhism an explanation of its 
 " mystery " on the assumption that the authors of 
 the mystery threw it up originally as a " desperate 
 expedient " to cover their retreat from an untenable 
 position. But in reality the doctrine of Karma has 
 a far simpler history, and does not need so subtle 
 an interpretation. Like many other phenomena 
 of Nature having to do with futurity, it was declared 
 by Buddha an incomprehensible mystery, and 
 questions concerning it were thus put aside, but he 
 did not mean that because it was incomprehensible 
 for the populace, it was incomprehensible or any 
 mystery at all for the initiates in the esoteric doctrine. 
 It was impossible to explain it without reference to 
 the esoteric doctrine, but the outlines of that science 
 once grasped, Karma, like so much else, becomes a 
 comparatively simple matter, a mystery only in the 
 sense in which also the affinity of sulphuric acid for 
 copper, and its superior affinity for iron, are also 
 mysteries. Certainly esoteric science for its "lay 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 237 
 
 chelas" at all events, like chemical science for its 
 lay chelas, — all students, that is to say, of its mere 
 physical phenomena,— leaves some mysteries un- 
 fathomed in the background. I am not prepared to 
 explain by what precise molecular changes the higher 
 affinities which constitute Karma are stored up in the 
 permanent elements of the fifth principle. But no 
 more is ordinary science qualified to say what it is in 
 a molecule of oxygen, which induces it to desert the 
 molecule of hydrogen with which it was in alliance 
 in the raindrop, and attach itself to a molecule of 
 the iron of a railing on which it falls. But the speck 
 of rust is engendered, and a scientific explana- 
 tion of that occurrence is held to have been given 
 when its affinities are ascertained and appealed to. 
 
 So with Karma, the fifth principle takes up the 
 affinities of its good and evil deeds in its passage 
 through life, passes with them into Devachan, where 
 those which are suitable to the atmosphere, so to 
 speak, of that state, fructify and blossom in pro- 
 digious abundance, and then passes on, with such 
 as have not yet exhausted their energy, into the 
 objective world once more. And as certainly as 
 the molecule of oxygen brought into the presence 
 of a hundred other molecules will fly to that with 
 which it has the most affinity, so will the Karma- 
 laden spiritual monad fly to that incarnation with 
 which its mysterious attractions link it. Nor is 
 there in that process any creation of a new sentient 
 being, except in the sense that the new bodily 
 structure evolved is a new instrument of sensation. 
 That which inhabits it, that which feels joy or sorrow, 
 is the old Ego — walled off by forgetfulness from its 
 
238 Esoteric Buddhism. 
 
 last set of adventures on earth, it is true, but reaping 
 their fruit nevertheless — the same " I am I " as 
 before. 
 
 " Strange it is," Mr. Rhys Davids thinks, that 
 "all this," the explanation of Buddhist philosophy 
 which esoteric materials have enabled him to give, 
 " should have seemed not unattractive, these 2300 
 years and more, to many despairing and earnest 
 hearts — that they should have trusted themselves 
 to the so seeming stately bridge which Buddhism 
 has tried to build over the river of the mysteries 
 
 and sorrows of life They have failed to see 
 
 that the very keystone itself, the link between one 
 life and another, is a mere word — this wonderful 
 hypothesis, this airy nothing, this imaginary cause 
 beyond the reach of reason — the individualized and 
 individualizing grace of Karma." 
 
 It would have been strange indeed if Buddhism 
 had been built on such a frail foundation ; but its 
 apparent frailty has been simply due to the fact that 
 its mighty fabric of knowledge has hitherto been 
 veiled from view. Now that the inner doctrine 
 has been unveiled, it will be seen how little it 
 depends for any item of its belief on shadowy 
 subtleties of metaphysics. So far as these have 
 clustered round Buddhism they have merely been 
 constructed by external interpreters of stray doc- 
 trinal hints that could not be entirely left out 
 of the simple system of morals prescribed for the 
 populace. 
 
 In that which really constitutes Buddhism we 
 find a sublime simplicity, like that of Nature herself 
 — one law running into infinite ramifications — 
 
The Doctrine Reviewed. 239 
 
 complexities of detail, it is true, as Nature herself 
 is infinitely complex in her manifestations, however 
 unchangeably uniform in her purposes, but always 
 the immutable doctrine of causes and their effects, 
 which in turn become causes again in an endless 
 cyclic progression. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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