Class _X 
 Book 
 
 [/ 3 
 
 Copyright N°, 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
* / 
 
 Material Sphere, 
 mingling of thoughts 
 and feelings which 
 belong only to the 
 human world 
 
 ZTT<T 
 
 8u^' 
 
 ITsT 
 
 TTTO 
 
 (Earth) 
 
 Yaj (Veneration) 
 
 Ui > 
 
 Manava(Man) 
 
 SPIRITUAL 
 SPHERE 
 
 V 
 
 OD 
 
 Irradiation of the Odic 
 Fluid on the spheres of 
 the Soul of man (blue) 
 and of the fluidic astral 
 body (red and violet) 
 
FIRST PRINCIPLES OF 
 ESOTERISM 
 
 A TEXT-BOOK 
 
 FOR STUDENTS OF THE FIRST DEGREE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ORIENTAL ESOTERIC SOCIETY 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 AND ELSEWHERE 
 
 BY 
 
 AGNES E. MARSLAND 
 
 H 
 
 THE ORIENTAL ESOTERIC PUBLISHING CO. 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 

 Copyright 1910 
 
 BY 
 
 Agnes E. Marsland 
 
 All rights, including translation, reserved. 
 
 Permission to copy or translate will be readily given 
 upon application to the Author. 
 
 j 
 
 THE CARNAHAN PRESS 
 WASHINGTON, D, C. 
 
 ©CI.A265174 
 
* 
 
 <*- 
 
 a 
 
 ^ 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 U 
 
 TO ALL CLIMBERS 
 
 This Book is Dedicated by 
 
 ONE WHO LOVES THE HEIGHTS 
 
 "Celui qui veut monter le chemin 
 doit se fatiguer" Babu. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IN issuing this text-book for the use of students of the 
 Oriental Esoteric Society of the U. S. A., it may be 
 advisable to say a few words on its general scope. 
 My object has been to present in an orderly sequence the 
 "First Principles" upon which a balanced and symmetri- 
 cal knowledge of Occultism rests, and to point out the 
 essential connection between this and a pure, true life. 
 
 In order not to swell the work into an inconvenient 
 size, many points that require further elucidation to the 
 mind of the reader are but briefly touched upon, and 
 may be too scantily treated. This can hardly be avoided 
 as my object is to condense as much as possible, con- 
 sistently with clearness ; and, besides, books can never 
 explain as lucidly as the living teacher. In the com- 
 monest art or science, the teacher or master is indispens- 
 able, much more so with the greatest of all arts and 
 sciences — the Art of Living and the Science of Wisdom 
 or the Sacred Science. All readers of this book, there- 
 fore, are invited to correspond with the teachers of the 
 O. E. S. on practical questions and on individual and 
 personal problems. 
 
 I wish to express my thanks to all those who have 
 helped me in the work and from whose writings I have 
 quoted, directly or indirectly. My deepest gratitude h 
 due to my revered Master, Dr. A. de Sarak, the Thibetan 
 Adept who first opened my eyes to the truths of 
 Esoterism, and from whose lessons I have quoted ex- 
 tensively throughout the book. 
 
 The instruction is graduated to meet the needs of those 
 who have familiarized themselves with the ordinary 
 Oriental teachings; it is in no way exhaustive but sug- 
 gestive, and if it stimulates the ardor and inspires the 
 will of the disciple to attempt greater and ever steeper 
 heights, it will not have failed in its object. 
 
 A. E. M. 
 

LIST OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 Colored Frontispiece. . . .THE THREE WORLDS 
 
 Diagram No. i, Constitution of Man 40 
 
 Diagram No. 2, Odic fluid 49 
 
 Diagram No. 3, Spiritual Intelligence 52 
 
 Preface 5 
 
 Introduction 13 
 
 CHAPTER I. EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 
 
 Esoterism in the early Christian Church 21 
 
 Loss of the Inner Teachings 22 
 
 Causes of agnosticism and atheism 22 
 
 The Centers of Esoterism in the Orient 23 
 
 The Chinese and Sanscrit languages, tangible 
 
 demonstrations of past civilizations 24 
 
 The Order of the Initiates of Thibet 25 
 
 The New Era 27 
 
 The three classes of aspirants to Initiation 29 
 
 Ritual and discipline 29 
 
 Methods of Development 30 
 
 The "First Principle of Esoterism" 31 
 
 CHAPTER II. GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 
 
 Early conceptions of the Deity 32 
 
 Is Religion the result of man's imagination? 33 
 
 The Absolute, Parabrahm 34 
 
 The Personal God 34 
 
Page 
 
 God the Father 35 
 
 How the birth of a new Religion takes place 35 
 
 The Destiny of Man 35 
 
 Unity, Fraternity and the one Great Brotherhood 37 
 
 Brahma, Vishnu and Siva 38 
 
 The Solar Logos 38 
 
 The Supreme Breath 39 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 
 
 Difficulties of the western investigator 41 
 
 The three-fold nature of Life 42 
 
 Body, Life and Will . 43 
 
 The threefold body, the threefold life or the 
 
 Soul, and the threefold Will or the Spirit 44 
 
 Harmony between the teachings of the Orient 
 
 and the Occident 44 
 
 Location of the Principles in the human body . . 45 
 
 The Sympathetic Ganglia 45 
 
 The Magnetic Fluids 46 
 
 Man's present status in evolution 48 
 
 CHAPTER IV. PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC 
 FLUID 
 
 Occultism and the Constitution of Man 50 
 
 The three Life-Principles . 51 
 
 The Role of the Spleen in the organic functions 53 
 Why is the Spleen the "graveyard for the red- 
 blood corpuscle ?" 54 
 
 The chief end and aim of the subconscious 
 
 activities of man 55 
 
 The Spleen — the Occult Organ 56 
 
 The Odic Fluid and occult powers 56 
 
CHAPTER V. MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNI- 
 VERSAL SCHEME 
 
 Page 
 
 An illustration by analogy 60 
 
 The visible but a reflection of the real 64 
 
 Character of the astral substance 65 
 
 Dangers of experimenting in this field 66 
 
 Astral world should be entered only for positive 
 
 creation 66 
 
 Creation on the three planes 67 
 
 Clairvoyance and Clairaudience 69 
 
 The Book of the Angel of Judgment 70 
 
 CHAPTER VI. INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 
 
 The dawn of the Solar System 71 
 
 Ishwara 71 
 
 The Three 72 
 
 The Seven and the Twelve 72 
 
 The Elder Brethren 72 
 
 The Great Sacrifice 73 
 
 The source of the Real Man 73 
 
 Atman, Paranirvana, Parabrahm 74 
 
 Illustration of the luminous ball showing the 
 
 involution of the human soul 74 
 
 Individuality and Personality 77 
 
 Illustration of the snail showing the evolution 
 
 of the human soul 77 
 
 Persistence of the personality not immortality.. 79 
 
 CHAPTER VII. REINCARNATION AND IM- 
 MORTALITY 
 
 Questions asked by the thoughtful man 80 
 
 Reincarnation the only key to these problems . . 83 
 
Page 
 
 This earth-life one of many expressions 84 
 
 History of one cycle of the soul's experiences.. 85 
 
 Conception 87 
 
 Birth 88 
 
 First, Second and Third Inflow of the Ego 89 
 
 Responsibility for faults or diseases 91 
 
 Heredity 91 
 
 Desire, the law of the soul 91 
 
 Reincarnation and the Life of a Day 94 
 
 The Heaven- wo rid and Devakan 95 
 
 The knowledge of past incarnations 96 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. THE LAW OF KARMA 
 
 The Law of Cause and Effect in Science 97 
 
 The Law in Religion 97 
 
 The oriental conception of God 99 
 
 The God of Justice, Love and Mercy 100 
 
 Infinite Patience 100 
 
 Man's three-fold personal Karma 101 
 
 The object of life — progress, not pleasure 102 
 
 The use to be made of uncongenial people 103 
 
 Karma, a law of minute detail 105 
 
 Illustration of the weaver 106 
 
 The tangle of cross-threads of personal ties 107 
 
 The Karma of the community, the race, the 
 
 planet 107 
 
 Illustration of the growth of a city 108 
 
 Every cause followed by its effect, nothing lost 109 
 
 Karma as affected by motive 109 
 
 Illustration of the alarm of fire no 
 
 Escape from Karma 112 
 
 The building of the immortality 113 
 
CHAPTER IX. METHODS OF INSTRUCTION 
 
 Page 
 
 The two paths 115 
 
 Education versus instruction 116 
 
 Freedom of student 117 
 
 Pride, scepticism, argument, doubt and discus- 
 sion are foes to spiritual advancement 118 
 
 Humility of Lanu — favorable; criticism — un- 
 favorable 118 
 
 The Guru 119 
 
 Work in our Centers 120 
 
 Object of existence and methods of attainment. . 121 
 
 Will, the first of Powers 121 
 
 Two ways of living — synthetic and analytical . . 122 
 
 Creation and synthesis 122 
 
 Equilibrium and the Akasha 123 
 
 Generation 123 
 
 The mark of the Great Soul 124 
 
 The power of poise 125 
 
 The Doctrine of the Heart versus the Doctrine 
 
 of the Eye 127 
 
 Illustration of the Lighthouse 128 
 
 Intellectualism and analysis versus synthesis 128 
 
 Synthesis, concentration and creation 129 
 
 Tests given by the Order in actual experience, 
 
 not in writing or viva voce 130 
 
 Esoterism the life of paradoxes 131 
 
 Faults of body and faults of the mind 132 
 
 Sacrifice, Silence and Service 135 
 
 The Adeptate 138 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Picture to yourselves a high and rocky moun- 
 tain whose lofty crown rises peak above peak 
 cleaving the sky, while its foot is buried in ob- 
 scurity. The upper part of this mountain is 
 bathed in glorious sunshine, and it also radiates 
 a light of its own, the sources of which are not 
 at once apparent. The paths leading up to these 
 heights are precipitous and almost inaccessible, 
 nor can it be imagined from below that any 
 climber could affront the dangers of the ascent; 
 yet as we fix our gaze upon the most lofty height 
 we see that this realm is peopled by glorious 
 Beings, centers of life and energy, the Sources, 
 as we now perceive, of that radiance we had ob- 
 served. We know, by some inner sense of in- 
 tuition, as we still gaze, that upon These Be- 
 ings lies the burden of the evolution of humanity, 
 and that if They still dwell upon earth albeit in 
 these sublime heights, it is of Their own free- 
 will, because They have chosen to remain in 
 touch with humanity and to aid in its progress. 
 
 From the base of the mountain, aeons and 
 aeons ago, They started, as we see so many 
 another start today, and outstripping the race, 
 
 13 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 They surmounted obstacle after obstacle, climbed 
 from plane to plane, always serving, always will- 
 ing to suffer, until we find Them substantially 
 omniscient as far as the laws and conditions of 
 our own solar system extend. One with the 
 Universal Order, working in perfect harmony 
 with the Ruler of the earth, Lords of Nature's 
 hidden forces, these Great Souls give their all 
 in the service of the human race. 
 
 The sides of the mountain are threaded with 
 paths and crowded with human beings. These 
 paths are varied and meandering at the foot, and 
 shrouded in darkness, but about a third of the 
 way up the mountain the clouds of darkness roll 
 back, and those who have reached this twilight 
 are able, if they look upward, to catch a 
 glimpse of that summit which is so bright over- 
 head. Here there are many paths to choose 
 between, some of them with more promise of 
 pleasure and ease than others* and some men 
 turn one way and some another, but we notice 
 that so long as they keep their gaze steadily 
 upon the light above they make progress. When, 
 however, they have arrived into the zone of 
 daylight, much discrimination is needed; for 
 some paths, though apparently with an upward 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 5 
 
 grade, soon begin to go downward and land 
 the unfortunate traveler in swamps and morasses 
 from which he has great difficulty in extricating 
 himself. 
 
 The zone of daylight is very wide and includes 
 a great part of the whole mountain side. Here 
 the paths run together so that they are less and 
 less numerous and more obstructed the higher 
 they lead, yet those who are treading them keep 
 steadily onwards, and, as they approach the 
 brightness of the summit, even before they come 
 into the light, we see that they are aided from 
 time to time by messengers from above, who 
 take their hand when the step is too steep, who 
 stand between them and the precipice when their 
 nerve is ready to fail them at the dizzy height, 
 and who guide the climber while always leav- 
 ing him perfect freedom. And, as we look, 
 we know that these climbers will surely arrive, 
 for we see them already almost at the little 
 portal which leads into the realm above; already 
 their faces glow and their garments catch the 
 light, and, aided by Those Who Know, their 
 progress is sure if they Will. 
 
 The summit of the mountain to which these 
 aspiring souls are climbing is seen to be a center 
 
1 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of great activity, an activity so harmonious and 
 calm, however, that it has been described as a 
 state of ecstatic contemplation. It is indeed 
 difficult for us, amid the hurry and bustle of 
 our own civilization to form any idea of this 
 life of harmonious co-working with God and 
 with the great Lord of our earth, nor can we 
 have any conception of the calm of its intense 
 activity. The shining ones who dwell there glow 
 with a radiance which seems to be part of their 
 own effulgence; they are the centers of energy 
 from which the whole world is fed; and, as in 
 a mighty army, each one both obeys and is 
 obeyed in accordance with His powers and re- 
 sponsibilities, for even here there are degrees of 
 attainment. 
 
 In the Agrouchada Parikai we read that the 
 Initiates of Thibet are presided over by the 
 Supreme Council, but regarding this body no- 
 thing is given out save that it is the heart of the 
 world and from it men receive their spiritual 
 light and life, that it guards and protects, governs 
 and feeds the human race. 
 
 This illustration may serve to give symbol- 
 ically an idea, however faint and unworthy, of 
 the relations of the Great Masters and Initiates 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 to our earth and its humanity. In perfect know- 
 ledge and perfect love the Initiates of the Great 
 Brotherhood execute the commands of Infinite 
 Wisdom and Compassion in serving the earth, 
 and they express a ray of this light and energy 
 through each one of our Centers in the world. 
 The Oriental Esoteric Centers are, as it were, 
 the outstretched hand of those Elder Brethren 
 Who have already climbed the mountain ahead 
 of us and Who beckon us ever onward and 
 upward. They are Centers fed from above with 
 that food which the great Masters deem ex- 
 pedient, and it is their function in the world to 
 give forth to others what they have received. 
 
FIRST PRINCIPLES OF 
 ESOTERISM 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 
 
 In all the great religions of the world there 
 have been two classes or grades of instruction, 
 the Exoteric, or outer, and the Esoteric, or 
 inner — both true, both vital, but differently de- 
 signed in order to meet the needs of the two 
 grand divisions into which mankind naturally 
 falls. There are those who crowd all the num- 
 beiless steps of the ladder of material know- 
 ledge, and those who already know all that the 
 ordinary religion and science of the day can 
 teach them and are in training for the Adeptate. 
 
 To enter upon such training is to step out of 
 the slow, semi-conscious evolution of the race, 
 and to work consciously in harmony with law. 
 Man does not reach heaven by a single bound, 
 but he evolves, by orderly and slow degrees, for 
 there is grade beyond grade of human advance- 
 ment — each grade an evolution from that which 
 
 19 
 
20 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 precedes it. The average civilization of the age 
 and time takes him a certain distance without 
 requiring from him much beyond obedience to 
 a few clearly understood laws of ethics; then 
 comes the stage when he feels the need of higher 
 truth, of more complete understanding. From 
 that moment it is possible for him to consciously 
 hasten his development. If he chooses to go up 
 higher, he must take upon himself new duties, 
 master new fields of knowledge, submit to severe 
 and rigid discipline, and bring to bear upon his 
 task new faculties, latent, indeed, in all, but in 
 the disciple emergent, definite, capable of being 
 brought under conscious control. Thus he rises, 
 step by step into those transcendent spheres of 
 which it is written, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard," where dwells the purified soul of the 
 Adept, the conscious co-worker with God. 
 
 In the Orient these two classes, the exoteric 
 and the esoteric, have always been well defined, 
 and two recognized methods of teaching have 
 existed, to meet their different needs. Exoter- 
 ism is that teaching which can be given to the 
 masses without danger of misunderstanding. It 
 consists of a series of rules of life, grounded on 
 profound scientific principles, but simply ex- 
 
EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 21 
 
 pressed in terms suited to the state of the per- 
 sons to be instructed, and calculated to prepare 
 them for a knowledge of the inner doctrine. 
 But the secrets of Esoterism and the ancient 
 mysteries are only given to the one who has suc- 
 cessfully met the outer tests and proved himself 
 worthy of higher teachings; they are nowhere 
 to be found in writing, nor are they even com- 
 municated by word of mouth — they are the 
 natural heritage of the awakened soul. 
 
 When the Christian religion was founded it 
 possessed both of these distinct schools whose 
 standards were as far apart then as they are to- 
 day — the teachings for the people, and those for 
 the disciple. This is clearly shown in the Scrip- 
 tures: when the Lord Issa — (the Esoteric name 
 of the Lord Jesus) — was asked by the young 
 lawyer the way to attain eternal life, He pointed 
 first to the path of virtue and afterwards to the 
 higher way of complete self-surrender. And 
 there are repeated references to "the mysteries," 
 the "hidden wisdom," the "oracles of God," the 
 "mystery of the faith," showing that the early 
 Christians were well aware of the existence of 
 this inner school. 
 
 Then came the Councils of Nicaea and of 
 
22 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 Constantinople (A. D. 325, and A. D. 381) by 
 whose decrees the Early Church became trans- 
 formed into Christianity, religion sinking into a 
 religion, world-wide in its influence for good, 
 indeed, but exoteric, and lacking all the more 
 definite precepts of Esoterism. 
 
 Thus the secret teachings faded into a memory 
 and were forgotten so far as the Western World 
 was concerned; the Mysteries became mysteries 
 indeed, unknown and almost incomprehensible to 
 the modern Christian. 
 
 Therefore we have today the anomalous spec- 
 tacle of the good man, already morally and in- 
 tellectually balanced, spiritually minded, ready for 
 a reasonable faith, who, finding no one to point 
 him the way, lapses into agnosticism, atheism or 
 indifference. The agnostic is often a high- 
 minded man, loving truth and justice, who in- 
 sists on looking with his own eyes and refuses 
 to do his thinking by custom and convention — a 
 fact which proves him already somewhat in ad- 
 vance of his race and ready to step higher. But 
 the religion of the day offers him no reasonable 
 or logical faith; when he would believe, he can- 
 not, and the legitimate cravings of his soul re- 
 
EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 23 
 
 main unsatisfied. He needs higher, fuller teach- 
 ing. Where is he to find it? 
 
 In the Orient this inevitable stage of growth 
 is foreseen and provided for. There, after a man 
 has successfully met all the problems and ex- 
 periences of the outer life, has been trained and 
 disciplined in the Universities, in business and 
 in the domestic relations — he still recognizes 
 that he has but learned his lesson on the lowest 
 plane, the physical. Then he prepares in earnest 
 to devote himself to the Higher Life, so that he 
 may, some day, be held worthy to be received into 
 one of the Great Centers of Learning in which are 
 taught the truths of the Ancient Wisdom. 
 
 For there is, in truth, an actual organized body 
 of living Teachers, having in Their charge the 
 keeping of the Sacred Science. Now they live 
 secluded, owing to the hostile attitude which, for 
 many centuries, mankind has shown; but once 
 the whole world knew and honored the Religion 
 of the Initiates. No man rose so high in the 
 state, in philosophy, science, or generalship that 
 to be admitted to the knowledge of the Mys- 
 teries was not considered a greater honor than 
 any the world could bestow. Now the Mys- 
 teries have ceased to be openly celebrated, but 
 
24 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 the great centers, from which they originally 
 sprang, still exist, as they have existed from 
 untold ages, in the hidden fastnesses and plateaux 
 of the Himalayas of Thibet and India, as well as 
 in Central China, Chaldaea and Egypt. 
 
 From these centers, age after age, as the world 
 needed guidance, leaders have been sent forth. 
 As far back as the records of our race can carry 
 us, we catch glimpses of great beings, law-givers, 
 philosophers, sages, magi, kings and priests, all 
 of whom, if we may trust the general outline of 
 history, were in possession of powers and of 
 knowledge which have since become lost tem- 
 porarily to all but the few — who know. 
 
 When we consider the languages of these 
 ancient civilizations, notably the Chinese and the 
 Sanscrit, we find them monuments of intellectual 
 and spiritual expression. Rich in imagery, yet 
 capable of clear-cut and concise statements in the 
 field of science and intellect, they are evidently 
 the product of highly-evolved beings; for those 
 who could have needed such wealth of language 
 to express their thoughts must have been men of 
 great ideas and powers. The Sanscrit language, 
 now dead to civilisation and spoken only by Those 
 Who made it what it is, may serve us as a link, 
 
EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 25 
 
 carrying back our thought in a tangible way to 
 these ancient times and aiding us to conceive 
 the theory of the universe which Esoterism 
 teaches. This ancient language opens a store- 
 house of spiritual truth — it is the natural out- 
 pouring of a people who were already far beyond 
 us, as we stand today, spiritually, intellectually, 
 and scientifically. 
 
 In its records we read that many hundreds of 
 centuries ago the ancient sages, those great souls 
 who consecrated their entire lives, generation 
 after generation, to the investigation of the laws 
 of the universe, resided in the Orient, in the 
 heights of the Himalayas. Working alone in 
 the silence they transmitted the knowledge which 
 they acquired to trusted disciples only, who, 
 starting from the data supplied by these great 
 Masters, made many more discoveries and trans- 
 mitted them in turn; so that, today, the body 
 of Initiates is in possession of knowledge which 
 the generality of men would be incapable of 
 suspecting, and whose results, if they should be 
 suddenly revealed (even a few of them), would 
 appear to material scientists as miraculous and 
 even as impossible of belief. Nor has this know- 
 ledge been acquired by imagination or by intui- 
 
26 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 tion alone, but by experiments which can be re- 
 peated and verified by those who are willing to 
 submit to the necessary conditions. 
 
 In this aspect, certainly, the Sacred Science 
 deserves the respectful consideration of all men 
 of science. Its transcendent truths come to us 
 with authority derived from their own nature, 
 and emphasized by their hoary antiquity; never- 
 theless they do not rest their claim upon authority. 
 They make that strong appeal to individual cred- 
 ence which is made by the truths of chemistry 
 and physics — namely, that what one man an- 
 nounces as truth can be verified by another in 
 actual experiment. And this method, super- 
 ficially supposed to be the discovery of modern 
 science, has been employed by the Initiates now 
 for many centuries, so that the verification of 
 each truth has been repeated hundreds — nay, 
 many thousands of times. 
 
 The fact noted above that the experimenter 
 must submit to the conditions imposed ought not 
 to excite surprise. In chemical experiments dur- 
 ing which poisonous gases may be released, or 
 in experiments with explosives, the teacher who 
 should not impose conditions to secure the safety 
 
EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 2.J 
 
 of his pupils would be accounted criminally negli- 
 gent. The tests required of the student of the 
 Occult Sciences are of precisely this nature. The 
 forces to be investigated are so stupendous that 
 only those who have developed themselves 
 spiritually beyond the thrall of envy, jealousy, 
 hatred and kindred passions can control them 
 ""-^without widespread devastation. Not to the first- 
 comer will the Veil of Isis be at once lifted ; many 
 and arduous are the tests, almost insurmountable 
 the obstacles, next to impossible the conditions 
 over which the aspirant is required to triumph, 
 and many years of ardent endeavor may be the 
 price which he has to pay for the solution of 
 even the simplest of Nature's riddles. But never 
 has an earnest disciple been turned away ; to him 
 who knocks the door shall be opened, and to him 
 who asks it shall be given. 
 
 For many centuries, few have knocked at these 
 ancient portals, for the mind of the world has 
 been bent on wars, conquest and the lust of 
 wealth; men have lived in the indulgence of the 
 desires of the flesh and the defence of the physical 
 being. Now, however, with the New Era, is com- 
 ing about a new order of things; the soul is 
 weary of strife and useless toil and again men 
 
28 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 are knocking and asking as of old for the light 
 of truth. 
 
 And in answer to this growing demand, feeble 
 though it is at present, the Great Masters of 
 Esoterism have sent out once again from Their 
 midst, envoys, teachers with powers to establish 
 schools and Centers of Instruction in all coun- 
 tries where the cry is heard, so that the hungry 
 may be fed and the aspiring soul may be brought 
 in touch with the Divine Mysteries. 
 
 There are in general three fairly distinct stages 
 of interest shown in those students who approach 
 our Centers of Initiation: 
 
 First, there are those whose intellectual curi- 
 osity has been aroused in some one of the usual 
 ways and who desire to learn more about those 
 scientific points which the Order professes to be 
 willing to elucidate. Or they have had experi- 
 ences of a psychic nature, phenomena which the 
 science of the day does not attempt to explain. 
 These persons will be satisfied, to a great ex- 
 tent, by books and scientific investigations and 
 teachings — their interest being for the most part 
 in outer manifestations. 
 
 Second, there are those who desire personal de- 
 velopment. Suffering or perhaps disaster has 
 
EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 29 
 
 driven the soul in upon itself, and it craves a 
 solution of life's inequalities; it would know the 
 reason of the disappointments and the dark side 
 of life and learn how best to bear its suffering 
 with courage and equanimity. For these, and 
 for all who are seeking something for themselves 
 there are inner teachings which will guide the soul 
 into the higher path, weaning him gradually away 
 from the thought of selfish attainment to that of 
 service, so that he may be prepared to receive 
 those greater truths which are given to Active 
 Members of the Order. 
 
 And third, there are those who seek the bond 
 of Union, Love and Peace, to unite themselves 
 with all those who are working together for the 
 good of humanity, standing shoulder to shoulder 
 for the uplifting of the race; giving without 
 stint of their time, of their means, and of them- 
 selves for the good of all. 
 
 To these the Order gives special exercises, a 
 Ritual, and discipline, so that they may attain 
 that spiritual and psychic advancement which can 
 only be undertaken safely by those who work 
 fraternally, with order and method, having shown 
 in frequent tests the purity and unselfishness of 
 their motives. Men who are thus systematically 
 
30 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 trained attain to a Clear Vision in the imma- 
 terial, spiritual world, their inner faculties of 
 sight and hearing become exceedingly sensitive 
 and acute, and they perceive spiritual truths as 
 readily as their physical senses perceive the 
 objects of the world, or as their intellect grasps 
 the climax of a train of reasoning. 
 
 Esoterism, then, begins where Exoterism ends : 
 it takes the "good man" by the hand, after he 
 has learned all that the sectarian religions of the 
 day can teach him, and bids him climb yet higher. 
 Those far-off vistas which his faith but vaguely 
 senses, it declares true; his hopes and spiritual 
 aspirations it bids him realize; it presents him 
 with a new science in religion, as well as re- 
 ligion in all true science ; it teaches him, step by ^ 
 step, as he is able to learn, the mysteries of the 
 nature of God and the laws of the Universe; it 
 offers him a vast field of scientific research after 
 he shall have developed within himself the powers 
 necessary to experiment in safety; it bids him 
 relinquish the ratiocination of intellectual attain- 
 ment for wisdom, and it promises him the aid 
 of Those Who Know in the realization of all his 
 aspirations — in short, it teaches him to round out 
 all the phases of his being, balancing the intel- 
 
EXOTERISM AND ESOTERISM 3 1 
 
 lectual by the spiritual, and curbing the emotions 
 and desires of the lower nature. 
 
 Thus his higher powers develop naturally, with- 
 out using any method of artificial forcing, and he 
 attains to that perfection of knowledge which 
 gives him the power to direct the forces of Na- 
 ture and to perform so-called miracles. 
 
 The true Lanu (disciple) however remains ever 
 humble and unobtrusive, he does not seek after 
 X^ powers or desire them — he asks for nothing but 
 gives everything, for well he knows that if 
 Esoterism offers all things, it demands all in re- 
 turn. All or nothing it asks; all or nothing it 
 gives ! 
 
32 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 
 
 Man is naturally religious and turns towards 
 some One greater than himself for aid and in- 
 spiration ; the tiny spark within him is ever seek- 
 ing after the Great Light, as the sunflower, em- 
 blem of the Soul, follows the path of her Lord. 
 In the morning her golden petals unclose and 
 greet the first ray of His arising — at noon she 
 worships towards the south, nor ever loses sight 
 of His glory while daylight lasts. Thus does man 
 throughout his many lives seek after God. 
 
 Each age and each people have had their own 
 conception of God, although these conceptions 
 have varied in form with the development of the 
 different races, all the way from the cruel and 
 arrogant tyrant to the sublime and mystical ideals 
 of the advanced philosophies of the Orient. The 
 ignorant savage worships the medicine-man of his 
 tribe, and brings him servile offerings, so that 
 by their means he may propitiate the evil spirits 
 
GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 33 
 
 whom he has been taught to fear. Later and 
 more civilized races worship a Personal God and 
 serve Him, while they fear death, hell and the 
 devil, and strive by every means to escape from 
 them. But the characteristics with which men 
 endow their Personal God vary so widely that 
 we may almost say that each man creates his 
 own idea of God and worships his own creation ; 
 certain it is that if we could compare ideas, your 
 God would not be my God, nor mine yours. 
 
 This has led many, especially scientists, to 
 argue that there is no God — in very truth — but 
 only an anthropomorphic, man-created deity, and 
 that all systems of religion are buik up from be- 
 low, the result of man's fertile imagination; that 
 therefore Truth, per se, is non-existent, since all 
 the most varied conceptions claim to be true, 
 although apparently they are in the last degree 
 contradictory of each other. 
 
 If we would find order in this chaos of con- 
 flicting opinions, we must turn to the Orient, 
 Cradle of religion and philosophy, and delve into 
 its most sacred mysteries. There we shall find 
 the inner esoteric doctrine of the One God, The 
 Absolute, of Whom, and by Whom, and from 
 Whom are all things. It is the doctrine of 
 
34 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 Absolute Being, far away beyond all the power of 
 man to conceive or express in thought or lan- 
 guage, beyond attributes, beyond qualities, be- 
 yond the highest reach of human thought. "Para- 
 brahman/' we read in the Secret Doctrine, "be- 
 ing the Supreme All, the ever-invisible Spirit and 
 Soul of Nature, changeless and eternal, can have 
 no attribute; the term 'Absolute' very naturally 
 precluding any idea of the finite or conditioned 
 from being connected with it." 
 
 This conception of The Absolute, The One 
 God, Parabrahm, cannot be grasped or under- 
 stood by the intelligence, but it is nevertheless 
 the basis of all true religion; and though incon- 
 ceivable to the human mind, yet it is postulated 
 more or less clearly in every known theory of the 
 Universe, and is granted by the awakened soul 
 without question, like so many another mystery; 
 for the soul is the home of That Which 
 Knows, and it recognises Truth. 
 
 Parabrahm, The Grand Whole of all that is, 
 or was, or ever shall be, is however not the God 
 to whom we have been taught to address our 
 worship ; nor indeed could we approach in words 
 that which is unthinkable. We need the per- 
 sonal touch of a Father to guide our faltering 
 
GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 35 
 
 footsteps, and so when man lifts his heart to his 
 highest ideal, to Parabrahm, he clothes this inner, 
 super-conscious knowledge of the One God with 
 a more or less personal conception, according to 
 the degree of his evolution. Thus all Religion 
 is from Above first of all, and afterwards from 
 below also, as the mind of man adapts the Divine 
 Inflow to his own ideals and conceptions. 
 
 The same law is seen to obtain in the birth of 
 the individual soul : the Above wakens the below, 
 and causes it to aspire towards Itself. Again, 
 in the birth of a Great Religion, the New Nir- 
 manakaya, or World-Redeemer, descends into a 
 sleeping world, and arouses those whose hour has 
 struck. It is ever the Fire from above which 
 kindles the sacrifice upon the altar! 
 
 Truly the Universe is One, and all birth is One, 
 and God is One ! 
 
 Man also is One, for though seemingly so com- 
 plex a being, and so varied in his manifestations, 
 there is but one part, the Spirit, which is real 
 and permanent, and it is by the development of 
 this Divine Nature that man is destined to know 
 God — to become God — not the Absolute cer- 
 tainly, but that Personal God who has so far 
 
36 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 been the object of the worship of enlightened 
 humanity. 
 
 Man then bears, in a state of potency, as a 
 germ, a Divine Nature. 
 
 But this Divine Germ, whence did he derive it ? 
 
 To this we answer that unless we accept its 
 creation by a miracle, or we give credence to the 
 still more incomprehensible theory of a blind, 
 yet omnipotent chance, we are unable to explain 
 the Divine qualities of man otherwise than by a 
 filiation equally Divine. If man can become God, 
 if he can accomplish that prodigious ascension 
 which surpasses the most sublime hopes, it is be- 
 cause, Son of God, he has received from his 
 Father the gift of His own nature. And if it has 
 been possible for man to receive from God so sub- 
 lime an inheritance, we can but conclude that the 
 Supreme Being, the Perfect One, is not only a 
 possibility but a reality; that, not only He will 
 exist when time shall be no more, but that He 
 exists now, in all the splendor of His Wisdom 
 and His Love. And since He exists, it can only 
 be at the end, and as the result of a past evolu- 
 tion, exactly similar in its essential features to 
 that in which we find ourselves today. God, 
 then, must be regarded as a Divine Reality, the 
 
GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 7>7 
 
 fruit of an anterior evolution; and Man, in his 
 true, spiritual nature, is seen to be the Son of 
 God, mounting step by step toward the Divine 
 Fatherhood. 
 
 All Life is One, eternal, indestructible, the Soul 
 of the Universe, which also is One. Everything 
 in the Universe, being part of that One, is in 
 relation with every other thing, and also with the 
 whole, just as we see it to be in the case of the 
 physical body, where an injury to one member 
 affects, more or less severely, all the others. "If 
 one member suffer, all the members suffer with 
 it ; or if one member be honored, all the members 
 rejoice with it." 
 
 Thus fraternity, true brotherhood, is not only 
 . an ideal to be aspired to, it is a universal law and 
 a fact in nature; for everything in this physical ^ 
 world exists by reason of the mutual helpfulness 
 that all parts render to one another. All beings 
 belong to one great brotherhood, all are "sparks 
 from the hearth of Myalba." 
 
 In the Orient, where for many centuries men 
 have concentrated all their life-energies in 
 search after the hidden truths of God and the 
 human soul, we find a logical and reasonable 
 religion, as well as a sublime philosophy. 
 
38 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 "Upon inaugurating an active period," (the 
 birth of a Universe) says the Secret Doctrine, 
 "an expansion of the Divine Essence from 
 without inwardly, and from within outwardly, 
 occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable 
 law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is 
 the ultimate result of the long chain of cos- 
 mical forces thus progressively set in motion. " 
 
 In obedience to this same law there issue 
 from the One Being, Three Great Beings, — 
 Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, 
 and Siva the Transformer — from These come 
 forth Seven, then Twelve, Great Beings, the 
 Creators and Fathers of all below Them, and 
 so on downwards in endless succession, every 
 Great Being the God and Father of myriads of 
 lesser beings to which he gives birth and whom 
 he sustains. Thus the Solar Logos is the Name 
 given to the Great Being Who rules and up- 
 holds our Solar System, which is indeed His 
 body and manifestation. Below Him again in 
 dignity and power, but infinitely greater than 
 we can yet conceive, is the Great One Who is 
 the God and Father of our earth, "of Whom 
 and through Whom and by Whom" we are. 
 
 All these came forth in obedience to law 
 
GOD, MAN AND THE UNIVERSE 39 
 
 from the Absolute, a part of His Very Being; 
 therefore They are not many but One; and 
 when man raises his eyes to heaven, he praises 
 the One, by whatever Name he calls Him, for 
 what he sees and adores is the hidden Fire, 
 Parabrahm, the Supreme Breath, and not the 
 Personal semblance which masks it. He who 
 separates his personal God from others in his 
 mind and says: "Mine is the only true God," 
 worships something less than the Absolute and 
 is an idolator, whatever his creed; for there 
 is but One God and He is the Sublime 
 Whole. 
 
4Q 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF MAN 
 THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES 
 ARayof Universal Substance. 
 
 Spiritual / 
 Principles\ 
 
 Centre of J*j 
 Attraction'-:^ 
 
 Material ,/ 
 Principles \ 
 
 A+ma 
 
 THE SPIRIT 
 
 Buddhi 
 
 SPIRITUAL SOW. 
 
 Manas 
 
 HUM AM SOUL 
 
 r^ KamaRupa 
 
 **/ ANIMAL SOUL 
 
 Linga Sharira 
 
 ASTRAL BODY 
 
 Jiva 
 
 VITALITY 
 
 Rupa 
 
 DIAGRAM I. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 41 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 
 
 The occidental mind, trained in all the 
 materialism of the vigorous and literal West, 
 necessarily finds it difficult to enter the field 
 of Oriental Thought. This is true, first, be- 
 cause of the exclusively philosophical terms in 
 which the esoteric teachings are given — terms 
 wholly incompatible with the usual habit of 
 western expression; and second, on account of 
 the difficulties of the language itself. To the 
 oriental mind Sanscrit is a powerfully sugges- 
 tive instrument of expression. Rich in imagery, 
 it leads by subtle and alluring paths to the very 
 heights of knowledge, and the disciple, ever 
 eager to learn — to know, is led irresistibly on 
 and on, deeper and deeper into the mystery, 
 farther and farther into the heights. On the 
 other hand, the western tongues into which 
 the Ancient Wisdom must be translated, offer 
 no such facilities for intricate and subtle 
 
42 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 investigation, and consequently the free passage 
 of the spirit of esoterism is obstructed or at 
 least clouded. 
 
 This difficulty, therefore, has led many writ- 
 ers on oriental philosophy to employ — for the 
 sake of their vibrations — Sanscrit words and 
 phrases, and the occidental reader complains of 
 the "technical terms" — terms over which con- 
 secutive thought trips and stumbles till the 
 rationality of the text is lost in a maze of defi- 
 nitions, that however do not define. Unfor- 
 tunately the western languages are destitute of 
 even the vocal elements to express such strange 
 and unfamiliar thought - forms as esoterism 
 presents. Nevertheless, by careful comparison 
 and by the parallel of objective knowledge, a 
 medium of comprehension may be established. 
 
 We take therefore the seven mystic names 
 applied to the seven philosophical divisions of 
 being, as represented by the oriental writers. 
 These the western student may readily under- 
 stand, for they can be located or at least ap- 
 proximated in the physical body. 
 
 The Western doctrine of the three-fold nature 
 of life is indeed the trinity out of which, with 
 a little doubling up, we shall see the seven 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 43 
 
 principles of the Orient appear. For if man 
 is three-fold in nature, body, soul and spirit, 
 so body, in its turn, is three-fold, soul three- 
 fold and spirit also three-fold, in manifesta- 
 tion — ostensibly nine in all, but the accompany- 
 ing chart will show the overlapping of the folds 
 that makes the third principle of the body to be 
 the first principle of the soul, and in the same 
 way the third plane of the soul becomes the 
 first plane of the spirit. 
 
 For the present we will follow the occi- 
 dental methods and begin with the lowest prin- 
 ciple (the Oriental always works from above 
 downward), pointing out the manifestation of 
 each principle in the visible man — the man of 
 material organs and of so-called immaterial 
 thoughts, emotions and desires, contrasting the 
 Oriental with the Occidental concepts. 
 
 In the teachings of the Occident we have, 
 first the physical body with its vast and intricate 
 system of cells and of circulating mediums. 
 Second, Vitality. The body lives under the 
 double influence of the blood and of the net- 
 work of nerve cells called the sympathetic sys- 
 tem. Life is carried continuously to every part 
 of the organism by the blood, but a reserve is 
 
44 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 always held in the Sympathetic Ganglia. Third, 
 Will. The body moves — has volition under the 
 influence of the will, which controls the actions 
 of the different parts by means of the motor 
 and sensory nerves. 
 
 Let us now examine the teachings of the 
 Orient and bring out the harmony which exists 
 between these two poles of thought, so that we 
 may smooth the way of the investigator and 
 make it possible for him to understand and per- 
 haps to see the truth of and accept the seven- 
 fold classification. We have, first, Rupa — which 
 the higher occultism holds to be complex in 
 organism, consisting of cells: differing from 
 each other in form and function, all of which 
 corresponds to the scientific conclusion of the 
 Western mind. Second, Prana — the energy of 
 this aggregate of cells. Third, the Astral Body. 
 
 BODY 
 
 Oriental Occidental 
 
 i. rupa the Physical Body 
 
 2. prana Vitality 
 
 3. The astral body Will to move 
 
 Thus we have located the first three principles, 
 and shown that the Orient and the Occident are 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 45 
 
 thus far in harmony in their teachings. Let 
 us now see whence comes the fourth principle, 
 and following that, the three superior principles 
 which are given by occultism to the constitution 
 of man. 
 
 The third principle, the Astral Body, is known 
 by Oriental Science to have other functions than 
 that of directing the movement of the various 
 fluids in circulation. It is a condensation of the 
 life force itself, in other words the Body of Life, 
 and we use it again as the first of a new group 
 of three principles, representing three aspects of 
 life, just as the three principles which we have 
 examined above are three aspects of body. 
 
 Fourth, the nervous ganglia of the chest and 
 abdomen — the Grand Sympathetic — are not only 
 the mysterious motor-power of our organism but 
 also the dynamo of the subconscious or instinctive 
 mind, and this instinctive mind, called by the 
 Orientals Kama Rupa, the Body of Desire, is the 
 fourth principle. It is the Life of Life, the very 
 center of life itself. 
 
 Following the nervous system of the physical 
 structure a step farther, we locate in the brain the 
 psychic powers, the faculties of the Intelligence, 
 Reason and Memory, and these constitute the 
 
46 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 Fifth Principle, known as Manas, or the Human 
 Soul. 
 
 Thus we have completed our second group of 
 three principles and this group constitutes the 
 Life or Soul of Man: 
 
 SOUL 
 
 Oriental Occidental 
 
 3. The astral body the Condensation 
 
 of the Magnetic 
 Fluids or the 
 Body of Life. 
 
 4. KAMA rupa, the 
 Animal Soul, Desire 
 or the Instinctive Na- 
 ture the Life of Life. 
 
 5. manas, the Human 
 Soul, Intellect, Reason, 
 
 Memory the Directing 
 
 power of the Life. 
 
 Yet Intellect, that marvellous faculty of which 
 man is so proud, is but the lowest of the mani- 
 festations of a third group — Spirit; for, as 
 Esoterism ranks Wisdom above Knowledge, so 
 it values spirituality above intellectuality. This 
 third group, then, is composed of three mani- 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 47 
 
 festations of Pure Spirit, the 5th, 6th and 7th 
 Principles. 
 
 The 5th Principle forms the basis or body of 
 spiritual activities. 
 
 As to the 6th Principle, Buddhi, only a Master 
 or an Adept has evolved to a knowledge of 
 Spiritual Wisdom. In those few souls, who are 
 so far in advance of the present humanity, this 
 Principle is manifested in the development of 
 special brain cells at the top of the head. 
 
 But above and beyond all this — wholly incom- 
 prehensible except to the vision of a Master is 
 that 7th Principle, Atma, the Spirit of the 
 Spiritual Man. 
 
 Thus we have our third group of Principles, 
 descriptive of the Spiritual Nature of man, as 
 follows: 
 
 SPIRIT 
 
 Oriental Occidental 
 
 5. manas, Intellect and 
 
 Soul activities the Body of Spirit. 
 
 6. buddhi, Wisdom the Life of the Spirit. 
 
 7. atma Pure Spirit. 
 
 In the present cycle the average man is occu- 
 pied in developing his 5th Principle and bring- 
 
48 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 ing his lower kamic nature into subservience to 
 the mandates of Reason. The two faculties, 
 Reason and Memory, which mark his progress 
 are however very imperfect; his body is coarse, 
 notwithstanding its complexity; his intelligence 
 is uncertain; his Will has not even the firmness 
 of instinct ; his affection is still egotistical : he has 
 yet many stages to pass before attaining the full- 
 ness of his growth. Therefore the 7th Principle 
 cannot be located in Man at the present stage 
 of his development ; it is, however, to be seen by 
 those whose vision is clear and strong, hovering 
 above the head, like a radiant sun, (Diagram 2) 
 the center of all the energies and the fount of all 
 the possibilities of the Being. As man evolves, 
 this center of energy, this Divine Spark of 
 Spiritual Intelligence, comes more and more into 
 manifestation, and becomes more closely identi- 
 fied with the life of the individual. His evolu- 
 tion continues with regularity and continuity 
 towards its goal, Divinity ; for some day man will 
 know himself as God. He will have reached this 
 perfection, little by little, having mounted, by 
 degrees, slowly and laboriously, all the steps of 
 the immense Cosmic Spiral. 
 
 And since gradual evolution, in ever widening 
 
DIAGRAM 2. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN 49 
 
 cycles, is the law that governs manifestation in 
 the Universe, so man climbs, day by day and age 
 after age, towards the consciousness of his Di- 
 vine Sonship. 
 
 "Just as from a blazing fire are thrown off, on 
 every side, thousands of sparks, each one resem- 
 bling its parent; even so does the diversity of 
 creations come forth from that which is imper- 
 ishable and return to it." 
 
50 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND THE ODIC FLUID 
 
 In the last chapter we deviated for a moment 
 from our text, Esoterism, to show that a real 
 basic harmony exists between the Orient and the 
 Occident in their teachings as to the nature and 
 constitution of man, although the ways in which 
 they express themselves are different. For the 
 Oriental mind, being contemplative, expresses 
 from the center outwards or from above down- 
 wards; while his more active and practical 
 brother of the Occident builds up his subject 
 from below, a plan which, in deference to his 
 way, we follow in our parallel. We will now 
 return to our former Esoteric view-point, and 
 give these same teachings as presented by the 
 Occultist. 
 
 The theory of Occultism holds man to be of a 
 three-fold nature ; a life principle, a plastic medi- 
 ator, and a physical body. 
 
 I. The life principle— intelligent, conscious 
 
PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 5 1 
 
 and perceptive — is that which gives rise to the 
 psycho-vibratory currents, those currents which, 
 radiating from the Center of Spiritual Intelli- 
 gence on the cerebro-spinal and ganglionic sys- 
 tems (see diagram 2, 1 e) produce the different 
 functions of life in the internal viscera. This 
 same life principle also interprets the inflowing 
 currents from the organs at the surface — that 
 stand as sentinels on the borders to report the 
 contact of universal life. 
 
 2. The plastic mediator. This principle in- 
 cludes the whole of these currents, both those 
 which flow from the life-principle and those 
 which return to it; and since, in the human 
 organism, there is not one single point that does 
 not reflect a nervous current, the plastic mediator 
 permeates the whole of the human form with the 
 Odic fluid of which it is composed. It is called 
 "mediator" because in reality it is the intermedi- 
 ary between the life-principle and the physical 
 body; and it is called "plastic" since it can take 
 any form whatever, owing to its fluidic nature, 
 just as a liquid adapts itself exactly to the vase in 
 which it is contained. 
 
 This fluidic form, when externalised, presents 
 an etheric double of the human form, and may be 
 
52 
 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 perceived, shining with a phosphorescent light, 
 by those persons who are sensitive, or by those 
 who possess double vision. It can also be photo- 
 graphed by a method which is explained later in 
 the chapter. 
 
 3. A physical body, purely material, without 
 life in and of itself, without feeling, without 
 
 DIAGRAM 3. 
 
 movement, or any of the other conditions proper 
 to organic matter. 
 
 These then are the three life-principles of man, 
 and the occultist is prepared to show how, from 
 the interaction of these with each other, all the 
 infinite variety of man's relations with God, the 
 
PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 53 
 
 Universe and his fellow-man, are made possible. 
 As we are dealing here only with "First Prin- 
 ciples of Esoterism" we can but point to the most 
 evident and easily proven of these, and put the 
 beginner in the way of demonstrating for him- 
 self the existence of the plastic mediator and 
 even of the Spiritual Intelligence (IE) pictured 
 in diagram 3 above the head of man. 
 
 To the mind of the Western Savant who would 
 accept the theory of the plastic mediator or 
 etheric double, a great difficulty presents itself, 
 for he naturally asks how this double can live, 
 and whence it derives its nourishment. 
 
 This question calls for an explanation of the 
 functions of one of the organs of the human 
 machine concerning which very little is known 
 to western science. That organ is the spleen. 
 
 It has been thought by different peoples that 
 the spleen modified in some way the affections 
 and moral sentiments. But the influence it is 
 supposed to exert varies in different countries. 
 In France, for example, it is thought to produce 
 gaiety, whilst in England it is considered the 
 organ of sadness and nostalgia. However that 
 may be, the spleen, being the most voluminous 
 of the glandular organs of the body, it would be 
 
54 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 very surprising if it did not play some grand 
 role in the organic functions. The "remarkably 
 large and tortuous artery" (Leonard) brings it a 
 supply of rich, red arterial blood that would seem 
 to be far too great for the needs of an organ 
 whose duties to the body were as small and in- 
 significant as those which have, so far, been at- 
 tributed to it by western scientists. One fact is 
 known however, although its significance still 
 escapes the investigator, and that is that the 
 blood which has passed through the splenic pulp 
 is impoverished of hematic elements and rich in 
 lymphatic. The red corpuscles have suffered in 
 the spleen a special operation, that has trans- 
 formed them into leucocites or white corpuscles. 
 The deduction that the ordinary scientist 
 draws from this, "that the spleen is the grave- 
 yard for the red blood corpuscle" (Prof. C. H. 
 Stowell as quoted by Leonard) is far short of 
 indicating the real function of this organ; but 
 occult science knows it to be the Center of rela- 
 tion between the plastic mediator and the physi- 
 cal body. It knows the work of the spleen to 
 consist in receiving from the red corpuscle of the 
 blood its store of vitality; and this vitality, as 
 Odic fluid, nourishes and sustains the plastic 
 mediator and etheric double of man. 
 
PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 55 
 
 If this contention be true, and it can be proven, 
 it shows the materialistic scientist to be in error 
 in supposing that the physical processes of the 
 body are planned for the benefit of the physical, 
 visible man; for the red hematic corpuscle of 
 arterial blood which is thus diverted to the use 
 of the invisible man is acknowledged to be the 
 synthetic and definitive result of all organic opera- 
 tions, from the elaboration and purging of the 
 food taken in, to its assimilation in the capillaries 
 of the duodenum. Not the support of the physi- 
 cal body but that of the plastic mediator is thus 
 seen to be the first and principal aim of the sub- 
 conscious activities of man, and this teaching is 
 in accord with religion, as indeed is occult 
 science always. Not the body but the soul of 
 man is the link with his true divine nature and 
 with God, and, in spite of himself, his activities 
 are being directed towards the preservation in- 
 tact of that link. 
 
 In all the experiments of Occult Science and in 
 the demonstrations of Occult Powers the spleen 
 is in great activity, for it has to furnish fluid 
 and life to the plastic mediator and to the etheric 
 double, both of which vibrate under the strain 
 with so great a mobility that the body could not 
 
56 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 resist without the sustaining aid of this organ. 
 Therefore it has been called, and rightly, the 
 Occult Organ. 
 
 The supreme cause — the origin and manifesta- 
 tion of all occult phenomena — is the fluidic, vital 
 Odic Force, which exists throughout all nature 
 and, carried by the nervous currents of the plastic 
 mediator, permeates not only every part of the 
 human organism, but every other being as well. 
 It is through this fluid that man comes in touch 
 with the occult world, for by means of the Will it 
 puts him in communication with all living 
 beings, visible or invisible. It circulates through 
 all the nervous centers in a double current of 
 Magnetic and of Odic fluids, and this circulation 
 forms what is known as Odic Respiration. 
 Also it becomes the vehicle and conductor of 
 that incessant worker in the immense human 
 laboratory — the Will. 
 
 In fact, by means of this fluid the whole uni- 
 verse is in movement. All breathes, all gravi- 
 tates, all tends to perfection, all maintains a 
 majestic equilibrium in and by it. It is the 
 source of life, not only in the microcosm, but 
 also in the macrocosm. 
 
 When the Plastic Mediator is seen by the sen- 
 
. PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID $J 
 
 sitive, or is photographed, it is surrounded by a 
 phosphorescent aureola of Odic Fluid, which is 
 its proper radiation. Such a photograph may be 
 obtained by establishing a current of astral light 
 between the exteriorized plastic mediator of a 
 sensitive, and the objective of a camera. Or 
 this radiation may be seen by introducing the 
 subject into a dark room and observing him 
 from a little distance. After a short time, a 
 phosphorescence will be seen, more or less 
 clearly, at the part of the room where he is 
 seated, and if the observation is continued it will 
 show the outline of the body, and take on pris- 
 matic hues of red or blue rays according to the 
 intensity of the force of the vibration. The red 
 color corresponds to the left side of the body of 
 the human being, and the blue to the right side. 
 
 All of these phenomena will not show them- 
 selves at the first sitting, but will appear gradu- 
 ally from time to time as the investigations pro- 
 ceed. 
 
 Those beings who possess a greater quantity 
 of Odic force have a proportionate power over 
 other beings who possess less of it. This ex- 
 plains the power exerted by such a man as 
 Napoleon Bonaparte for instance. Obscure in 
 
58 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 station, insignificant in stature, he yet radiated a 
 force that made him obeyed by all about him, and 
 even by those at a distance; for the Odic Fluid 
 can act upon the absent as well as on those pres- 
 ent, if it is rightly understood and directed by 
 a firm will. But even Napoleon failed, for only 
 the Occultist can continue to stand for all time 
 alone against the world, and so the great man, 
 who is not truly an Adept, sooner or later falls, 
 and his work perishes. Ambition, pride and a 
 domineering selfish nature may bear a man for a 
 time on the crest of a great wave of success, 
 but where there is no depth of spiritual energy 
 the wave breaks on the sand, turns over and over, 
 and drags down to destruction that which it has 
 but now uplifted. 
 
 It takes an energy of the highest order, with- 
 out a particle of self-seeking, the true Divine In- 
 telligence (see chart 2, I E) to attain to power 
 over Nature's forces that shall never fail, and 
 this height is reached as yet by few. 
 
 The Atharva Veda says: "He who has pene- 
 trated into the secret of the wherefore of things, 
 who has raised himself by meditation to the 
 knowledge of Immortal Principle, who has morti- 
 fied his body and advanced his soul, who knows 
 
PLASTIC MEDIATOR AND ODIC FLUID 59 
 
 the mysteries of Being and Non-Being, who 
 knows all the transformations of the vital mole- 
 cule, from Brahma to man, and from man again 
 to Brahma, this one is in communication with the 
 Pitris, and he commands the Occult Forces of 
 Nature". 
 
6o FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSAL SCHEME 
 
 Not only is it necessary for man to know his 
 own nature but he must also realize, to the full, 
 his place in the universal life. He is but a single 
 cell of the Great Life, and, as he must function 
 in union with his associate cells, the more intelli- 
 gently he does so, the more of harmony will he 
 establish in the vast complex organism, the 
 Cosmos. 
 
 The general scheme of the Universe, as taught 
 by Occultism may be outlined in a few words by 
 means of an illustration. 
 
 A steamer launched on an immense ocean sails 
 toward the port' assigned as the end of the voy- 
 age. All which the steamer contains is carried 
 forward together, and yet each traveller is free 
 to arrange his cabin as he pleases ; he may go up 
 on the bridge-deck to contemplate the Infinite, 
 or he may descend into the hold ; he may drowse 
 away the days, wrapped in his rug in a secluded 
 
man's place in the universal scheme 6i 
 
 corner, or he may mingle with his fellow-pas- 
 sengers. The journey goes on day by day for 
 the whole, but each one is free to act as he will, 
 being merely subservient to the general law. 
 All social classes are represented on this boat, 
 from the poor emigrant who sleeps on the deck 
 wrapped in a sack, to the rich man in his cabin e 
 de luxe ; but the rains, the storms and the sun- 
 shine are the same for all ; and so is the speed of 
 the onward rush of the great ship through the 
 battling waves; and all will arrive at the same 
 port at the same time. 
 
 The analogy may be further unfolded in the 
 detail and equipment of the ship, and in the 
 power that moves its mighty engines. In them 
 a blind force (steam) generated by a special 
 factor (heat) is conducted to an unconscious, 
 complex machine, causing it to operate by fixed 
 laws ; thus driving the ship forward, through 
 calm or tempest to its desired haven. But this 
 blind force, with its allied machinery, even though 
 under the direct control of the skilled engineer, 
 would as readily, and quite as likely, drive the 
 ship on the rocks as on its safe and proper course, 
 without a master-mind which can see and control 
 its direction. 
 
62 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 This master-mind is the Captain. In his chart 
 room with his instruments, and on the lofty 
 bridge, where he can see over the entire length 
 of the ship and all about her, with his knowledge 
 of the laws of navigation, he figures with mathe- 
 matical exactness the location of his vessel on 
 the great ocean, and directs her further progress 
 toward the far-off destination. He does not di- 
 rectly control the engines, that, with their power- 
 ful throbs, seem to make the ship a thing of life ; 
 he does not feed the passengers; he does none 
 of the detailed work of operating the giant or- 
 ganism, and yet his will is law in every minutest 
 detail, and in a moment of danger is rigorously 
 enforced. The Captain holds in the hollow of 
 his hand the fate of every individual soul on 
 board, so far as the voyage is concerned. 
 
 Let us now make the application: — The Uni- 
 verse may be compared to an immense steamer, 
 of which He whom we call God is the Captain. 
 With His greater intelligence, he guides its pro- 
 gress through time and space, by orders to His 
 inferior officers, each of whom is in charge of, 
 and skillfully controls his own department. Na- 
 ture is the machinery, the entire mechanism, 
 which drives the whole system forward blindly 
 
man's place in the universal scheme 63 
 
 according to fixed laws. Human beings are the 
 passengers. These are ignorant of the methods 
 and laws by which the ship traverses the track- 
 less waste of waters; they occupy themselves as 
 they please during the voyage, each according 
 to his own tastes and inclinations. But the offi- 
 ers know when a storm is coming and they put 
 in action all the powers of their science to pre- 
 vent disaster. While the ordinary passenger is 
 content to be acted upon by fate and passively 
 endures, as he may, the conditions about him, the 
 officers react on those same conditions, controll- 
 ing and changing them. Having powers, they 
 use them in serving the ignorant, directing the 
 progress of those more advanced, and protecting 
 all. 
 
 Thus it is seen to be most essential that we 
 learn something of the hidden forces which play 
 upon us — forces which, though invisible to our 
 ordinary sight, we yet sense with that finer sensi- 
 tiveness awakening in many of us. 
 
 In chapter 4 we have said that there is, besides 
 the visible man, an invisible being who dwells 
 in union with the physical man and causes him 
 to live and act. And this is true also of the 
 "Grand Man," the Cosmos, and of every other 
 
64 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 Being, whether Universe, Sun, Planet or indi- 
 vidual — the visible presentation is only a reflec- 
 tion of the Real, which is invisible but potent. 
 
 The teachings of esoterism tell us of the ex- 
 istence of an etheric substance throughout the 
 entire universe, which Occultists name "Akasa," 
 or the Astral Light, and they say that the Soul 
 of man is a mass of astral light, forming a union 
 between the outer or physical man and the inner 
 or spiritual being. 
 
 The earth floats in the ether, or Akasa, as do 
 fish in the ocean; all the objects which constitute 
 our world are continually bathed in the Astral 
 Light, and more than bathed, they are interpene- 
 trated with it, for matter forms no obstacle to its 
 passage. Unconsciously, during sleep, we per- 
 ceive the objects which constitute the astral 
 world, just as during our waking hours we see 
 the objects of the physical world; and the objects 
 of this etheric, intangible and extremely chang- 
 ing environment are not less real on their plane 
 than are the physical objects on the physical 
 plane. Being plastic, the astral substance is elu- 
 sive and shifting to the last degree; it responds 
 to every nascent thought, it gathers like a thun- 
 der-cloud to simulate passion, its pictures come 
 
man's place in the universal scheme 65 
 
 and go with equal inconsequence — apparently as 
 changing and unstable as the wave of the ocean. 
 We say "apparently" with intention, for though 
 on the lower subplanes conditions prevail which 
 seem to be fraught with danger, this is not the 
 case to the disciple who enters this realm from 
 above. 
 
 To the extreme mobility of astral matter is add- 
 ed a power of illusion, almost a love of decep- 
 tion it might be called, which is the cause of the 
 downfall of many a too-curious investigator. On 
 this plane, truly, "Appearances are deceptive" to 
 everyone except the trained occultist, for he alone 
 understands the laws of this plane, and can draw 
 the right conclusions from what he sees. This 
 is why many of the details described by clair- 
 voyants prove to be inaccurate ; the medium may 
 be sincere and describe faithfully that which he 
 believes he sees, but, being untrained, he is de- 
 ceived by "Maya." 
 
 We can say nothing in detail here in "First 
 Principles" concerning the many kinds of ele- 
 mentals, elementaries and unevolved beings 
 which crowd this world ; in a later work we will 
 give some illustrations of their forms and explain 
 their nature B and origin; but the astral world is 
 
66 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 not one where the disciple will find great spiritual 
 upliftment, and if he is wise he will put away all 
 curiosity and desire concerning it until with a 
 strong will, indomitable courage, pure motive and 
 humility, he is master of himself. Then he may 
 safely confront its many dangers. 
 
 There is however one function of this ocean 
 of astral substance which must be touched upon 
 — that of creation. In this intermediary world 
 whose vibrations vary from the subtlest aspira- 
 tion where they approach the spiritual realm, 
 down to the lowest desire of the animal, there 
 float the thoughts of men — thoughts of every 
 form and hue, some beautiful, others truly awful. 
 These thoughts flow in currents, those of a kind 
 approaching each other, seeking like vibrations 
 with their own. When man withdraws his at- 
 tention from the physical to think deeply, he en- 
 ters this world and attracts to himself such 
 thought-currents as he is able to command, and 
 from them he takes that which he is seeking. 
 
 Besides the thoughts, the desires also of men 
 (and animals) take form and substance in the 
 astral— from the aspiration of the spiritually en- 
 lightened to the lust of the brute — desires of 
 evil, desire of selfish aggrandizement of all 
 
man's place in the universal scheme 67 
 
 kinds, desire of money, all sorts of ambitions as 
 well as the pure desire of intellectual achieve- 
 ment and spiritual light. These desires are inter- 
 woven inextricably with the thought-substance 
 of which they form the nucleus or life (for there 
 is hardly a thought of ours that does not owe its 
 birth to desire), and they cause it to vibrate with 
 an intensity that varies with the depth of the 
 emotion. 
 
 All creation takes place by means of this ocean 
 of etheric substance, and in accordance with its 
 laws, however unconscious the operator may be 
 of the means he is employing or the laws he is 
 obeying. All things are first created in the Di- 
 vine World in principle, or in potentiality of be- 
 ing; this principle then passes on to the astral 
 plane and there manifests in negative — that is, 
 all that was luminous in the principle becomes 
 obscure, and vice-versa, all that was dark be- 
 comes luminous. It is not the exact image of 
 the principle which is manifested, it is the mould 
 of that image. The mould being once obtained, 
 creation on the astral plane is finished. 
 
 Then commences creation on the physical plane 
 in the visible world. The astral form, acting 
 upon matter gives birth to the physical form just 
 
68 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 as a mould gives form to a vessel, and thus the 
 sublimest ideal of the artist, drawn from the 
 spiritual plane by the force of his aspiration, is 
 moulded in the astral, then formed in the physi- 
 cal — clothed in colors on the canvas, hewn in 
 stone or marble. The form which is obtained 
 on the physical plane is but the reflection of a 
 reflection; and in following the law of all re- 
 flections it has lost in brilliance of tone and clear- 
 ness of outline; nevertheless it is the best we 
 have at present, and it serves to raise the heart 
 of man nearer to the realm of truth. Without the 
 mediation of the astral substance, even this would 
 have been impossible, for the spiritual cannot 
 manifest in terms of the physical, nor can mat- 
 ter grasp spirit; there must be a medium of in- 
 terpretation. 
 
 Without aspiration, thought, desire, imagina- 
 tion and faith in the invisible, how could man 
 soar? These are the stars of man's firmament — 
 stars that lift his eyes to the pure realm of spirit 
 and set him gazing into the depths of space. 
 "Without the stars/' it has been asked, "what 
 would man have become ?" 
 
 The existence of this etheric substance, Akasa, 
 throughout the entire Universe is one of the 
 
man's place in the universal scheme 69 
 
 basic teachings of esoterism, and it offers the 
 scientific explanation of all super-conscious and 
 sub-conscious activities. It also shows the pos- 
 sibility of clairvoyance, clairaudience and other 
 psychic phenomena. The superconscious activi- 
 ties are those in which the human soul comes in 
 touch, by means of the higher astral vibrations, 
 with the spiritual realm; the subconscious show 
 man's life on the lower astral — the plane of in- 
 stinct or Kama Rupa. When a person is clair- 
 voyant the outer sensibilities have, from some 
 cause, become blunted; a passing inferiority is 
 thus induced in the condition of the body, and at 
 the same time a superiority in the condition of 
 perception. The medium may voluntarily throw 
 himself into this state, or it may be induced hyp- 
 notically by another, or again it may be sponta- 
 neous, the result of weakness. In any case the 
 effect is the same, for the subject becomes sensi- 
 tive, as we say, to more subtle vibrations than 
 those which were normally possible for him to 
 respond to, and so having withdrawn his atten- 
 tion temporarily from the outer, he perceives 
 those finer vibrations of the Astral Light to 
 which he is ordinarily blind. The same expla- 
 nation applies to the clairaudient whose spiritual 
 
70 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 hearing becomes in a similar way so abnormally 
 acute that a whole new world of sound is opened 
 up to him, and all animate and inanimate Na- 
 ture finds voice. At times he even catches a 
 far-off, ineffable harmony — a "music of the 
 spheres'' beyond words. 
 
 The Akasa is the reservoir of events, past, 
 present and future; it is therefore to the Akasic 
 records that the Adept has recourse when it be- 
 comes necessary to trace out the details of any 
 period of the world's history, to revive an ancient 
 race, or to look forward into the future and see 
 that which shall be. Here are preserved the 
 trace of all effects produced by spiritual causes, 
 as well as all the acts and all the thoughts pro- 
 ceeding from matter and from spirit, so that the 
 Akasa has been rightly named, "The Book of the 
 Angel of Judgment." 
 
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 71 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 
 
 When we go back into the far-off past, a past 
 so remote that the mind is powerless in its efforts 
 to image an epoch so distant — when we look 
 back to the dawn of the Solar System, more than 
 nineteen and a half hundred millions of years 
 ago, as we are told by the oldest Occult records, 
 "We see Ishwara, as a mountain of light, appear- 
 ing to illumine the darkness." "Then," we are 
 told, "Ishwara unfolds himself, and there appear 
 in a higher state of activity all the hierarchies 
 of Beings who formed the life of the preceding 
 Universe; all the Intelligences, all the forms, all 
 the souls, and all the bodies." From the very 
 point where they were left when the total de- 
 struction overtook them, they start again to take 
 up their evolution. 
 
 In this prodigious descent of the Invisible to- 
 wards the Visible, of Spirit into matter, a rig- 
 orous order is preserved. First we see, issuing 
 forth in wondrously magnificent outline, three 
 
J2 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 mighty and divine forms — the Three Great 
 Persons which, under one name or another, all 
 religions revere and all philosophies recognize — 
 the three whom the Orientals know as Brahma, 
 the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver; and Siva, 
 the Destroyer. Then, in the Light which ema- 
 nates from these glorious Forms, we see the 
 Grand Cosmic Entities, those "Seven" Great Be- 
 ings — Archangels — Sephiroth, the "Seven Spir- 
 its in the Sun" — it matters little the name by 
 which They are known to different peoples. And 
 as we gaze still further into the glory which ra- 
 diates from the seven we see the twelve — 
 those who conduct the evolution of the Chains, 
 of the Globes, and of the Races. And following 
 these comes a hierarchy of divine men who, in 
 the ages of the past, have raised themselves above 
 the level of humanity. These are the "fruit" of 
 the past Universes, and They descend into the 
 inferior worlds only to instruct and to liberate 
 the human masses. They are the great souls, 
 "Mahatmas," the Masters of Wisdom and Com- 
 passion, our Elder Brothers, to Whom we al- 
 ways turn for inspiration and for aid, Who oc- 
 cupy in the evolutionary series a necessary place 
 between God and man. 
 
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 73 
 
 Thus, then, is accomplished the great sacri- 
 fice, — the putting forth of Himself by the Logos, 
 in order that in the fullness of time many indi- 
 vidualities may be drawn back into the Great 
 Source, to share consciously with Him that bliss 
 which is His very nature and essence. 
 
 Thus does Spirit descend into matter, and tak- 
 ing on ever increasing limitations, it is crucified, 
 dies and is buried in matter. Yet "after three 
 days" does it rise again, and begin the ascent to- 
 wards the Source from whence it came. 
 
 But the true Man — the Real Being within us 
 never appears upon the earth. That which we 
 see and recognize as a personality is only an ema- 
 nation — an efflux from the Real Man who for- 
 ever lives the perfect Life in a sphere unknown 
 to the worldly personality. Indeed, this worldly 
 personality, in its present state of development, 
 is quite incapable of understanding its True Self. 
 The Real Man, who in occultism is designated 
 the self, is the permanent part of the human be- 
 ing, and it remains in the sphere of reality — 
 that last and highest sphere beyond the six other 
 spheres which, though more or less elevated, are 
 spheres of appearance only. The True Man is 
 not found in the material world, nor in the astral 
 
74 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 world, nor in the mental world, neither in the 
 world of Devakan, nor in the Buddhic; not even 
 in the spiritual world. For all these personali- 
 ties, if we may call them so, are capable of trans- 
 formation, and in consequence are relatively mor- 
 tal ; that is to say, they are not Eternal. 
 
 The source then of the real being must be 
 sought in the bosom of the absolute. And since 
 the true man is in the absolute, it follows that 
 he is not in any of the personalities which he en- 
 souls; for he is atman or Spiritual Principle, 
 paranirvana and parabrahm — the Great 
 Whole, the Principle of Universal Mind, the 
 Creator of All ! 
 
 The septenary chain, Body, Vitality, Fluidic 
 Form, Animic Form, Astral, Mental, and Physi- 
 cal Bodies, are not the self, the true man ; for, 
 as we have seen, He is not visible to the Being 
 on earth as yet. He can never descend to the 
 earth, or to any of the other planets till his evolu- 
 tion shall be entirely complete. 
 
 This problem is very difficult of comprehen- 
 sion, but we will try by means of an illustration 
 ta give a slight idea of it. Suppose that the true 
 being of man were a luminous ball, vibrating by 
 the energy of its own existence far above all the 
 
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 75 
 
 spheres of which we have spoken. When the 
 true being wills to constitute a human person- 
 ality it sends forth into the realm nearest to it a 
 ray which gathers about itself from the Spiritual 
 Substance of that realm a sheath or covering, or- 
 ganizes it into a body, and descends thus clothed 
 into the next lower sphere. Here it repeats the 
 process, adding a second and outer covering; — 
 it then descends into the physical world, taking 
 a physical body suitable to the needs of that 
 sphere. In other words it lowers its vibrations as 
 it descends from plane to plane, taking- upon it- 
 self the limitations of each sphere in succession. 
 This process is indeed continued in each of these 
 realms throughout the whole life and is pro- 
 longed through all the lives, whether physical, 
 astral or spiritual. 
 
 The True Human Being, which we will call 
 "The Human Monad'' exists then beyond and 
 outside of these seven states, (if subdivided). It 
 is composed of energies to be manifested, and 
 the Ray which it projects into the seven spheres 
 of manifestation, is a group of these energies; 
 the function of this group being to manifest it- 
 self on all the planes of existence. When it 
 has completed its manifestation, it returns to 
 
j6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 the Monad from which it was sent forth, bring- 
 ing in its harvest of experiences which it has 
 gathered during its stay upon the different planes 
 of manifestation. The Essence, that last an- 
 alysis of the experiences of the personality which 
 has finished its course upon the physical, astral 
 and spiritual planes, re-enters within the Monad ; 
 and in time a new group of energies, constitut- 
 ing a new personality, is sent forth to accom- 
 plish, in turn, a series of manifestations upon 
 the seven planes. And this goes on from the 
 beginning to the end of a Manvantara or period 
 of 306 million 720 thousand years, seven of which 
 Manvantaras constitute the evolution of a Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 And so we see that it is an illusion to think 
 that the physical, astral or spiritual personality 
 of one single life can subsist throughout one en- 
 tire Manvantara. That of each personality 
 which does persist is the modification suffered by 
 the group of energies, manifested under the 
 mask of the personality. Each manifestation 
 leaves throughout the Manvantara a residue, 
 which has, however, as little resemblance to the 
 personage as the little heap of ashes, remaining 
 after burning a corpse, resembles the living man. 
 
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION JJ 
 
 The personalities, as we know them, are in truth, 
 destroyed, (on this point we agree with the 
 materialists), but personality is one thing, In- 
 dividuality is another. The one is lost, the other 
 remains. And so the materialists err because 
 they make no distinction between the essence and 
 its outer shell ; they do not know that this essence, 
 being of a different nature cannot suffer the 
 same fate as the personality. This fades away, 
 since it is but illusion, — like the form of the 
 body when burned; but the Individuality, the 
 reality, enriched with the result of experiences, 
 remains, like the little heap of ashes. 
 
 Each personality is nothing more or less than 
 an experiment made by the Monad. It is, as it 
 were, a kind of probe, which the Monad plunges 
 into the three spheres of existence to take know- 
 ledge of them, and which it afterwards draws 
 back, bringing with it its record of experiences. 
 Have you ever watched a snail? Did you ob- 
 serve the use which it makes of its horns? See 
 it advance them slowly as if to take notice of 
 the surroundings in which it finds itself; and 
 every time they come up against an obstacle, a 
 new substance, a vibration, a sensation of any 
 kind whatever, immediately it draws them in, as 
 
78 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 if to listen to their account of the experience. 
 The Monad may be compared, not inaptly, with 
 the snail. Each time the snail puts out her horns 
 symbolizes the projection of a personality into 
 the world of manifestation by the Monad ; each 
 time that the horns are withdrawn corresponds 
 to the death of the personality — but the snail 
 remains always the snail. It does not die. 
 
 The Monad contains within itself a sum of 
 energies destined to test all possible varieties of 
 human existence; and each group of energies 
 which it projects forms a new personality. It 
 takes the Monad the whole length of a Manvan- 
 tara to incarnate all the groups of energies which 
 we may consider as its constituent molecules; 
 and it is evident that, after having completed 
 the series of the incarnations of all its different 
 groups of energies, the Monad is no longer the 
 same as it was before these incarnations; for 
 each group of energies has, by experiences on the 
 seven planes of manifestation, contributed modi- 
 fications to the inner texture of the Monad. It 
 cannot have enriched its experience and yet 
 remain the same. 
 
 At the end of a Manvantara, therefore, the 
 Monad is called to a different destiny from that 
 which lay before it at the commencement. And 
 
INVOLUTION AND EVOLUTION 79 
 
 this is how we must understand the gaining of 
 our Immortality. Immortality is not the herit- 
 age of any one of the personalities which we 
 know ; it belongs only to that part of the person- 
 ality which has been likened to the heap of ashes 
 — to that essence which remains, and which is 
 made up of the experience gained, and the con- 
 sequent modifications suffered, by the monadic 
 energies on the seven planes. 
 
 Now, though during life on the physical plane 
 our personality lives also on the astral and the 
 spiritual planes, still its manifestation on these 
 two last-mentioned planes does not necessarily 
 end at the same time as the death of the body 
 occurs. And so the Spiritists are not wrong in 
 believing in the persistence of personalities after 
 the physical death ; their error is in the belief that 
 this persistence demonstrates the Immortality 
 of the personality. These personalities fade out 
 eventually on the astral and spiritual planes, just 
 as the body falls to pieces on the physical plane ; 
 but the energies which form their essence, bear 
 back to the Monad their harvest of experience 
 which the Monad assimilates, and in so doing 
 works in its inner texture changes in preparation 
 for the destinies that await it in a future Man- 
 vantara. 
 
8o FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 
 
 The world of today is seeking ardently in 
 every field of investigation for some tangible 
 evidence of the truth of immortality ; but for the 
 most part these researches have been fruitless. 
 It is true that there are various schools profess- 
 ing to demonstrate the persistence of the person- 
 ality; but the proofs they offer, although con- 
 vincing to themselves, are found to have but little 
 scientific coherence, and are, indeed, capable of 
 many other interpretations besides the one given 
 by those who present them. The thoughtful man 
 is not prepared to yield full credence to any theory 
 founded alone on phenomena — he has too often 
 been deceived in the past by appearances — and 
 he looks back of these for a reasonable and in- 
 telligible plan, that shall appeal to something 
 more than his curiosity and love of the marvel- 
 lous. This plan he does not find. 
 
 Disappointed, yet hopeful, he turns to the field 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 8l 
 
 of science; here he is sure of finding, at least, 
 definite and careful investigation and elimination 
 of all vague speculation; and by uniting the re- 
 sults of the researches of these savants with the 
 phenomena of the former school, he thinks that 
 he will be able to arrive at a conclusion. But 
 the scientist meets him with scepticism, and 
 some ridicule: in all his experience with scalpel, 
 bistury and microscope, never has he come upon 
 anything other than physical manifestation; 
 therefore there is nothing more, he illogically 
 assumes. Just what life is, he is unable to say; 
 but it began at birth and will end with death, of 
 that he is confident ! 
 
 From this picture of death as the end of all 
 things, the soul of man recoils and almost in 
 despair, he returns to the religion of his infancy. 
 But even here he finds no comfort, for the teach- 
 ings appear to his manhood both vague and con- 
 tradictory, as well as cruel and altogether irre- 
 concilable with his inner convictions of the good- 
 ness and justice of God. If life, he argues to 
 himself, begins in the cradle, it must end in the 
 tomb, as indeed the materialists declare, for that 
 which has a beginning must also have an end. 
 And better it were for many that it should so end, 
 
82 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 he feels, for it has been for most men but one long 
 and bitter experience; and even annihilation, as 
 taught by the materialist, would be more merci- 
 ful than an eternity of torment, though both, as 
 it seems to him, would be equally unjust and il- 
 logical. Point by point his intelligence brings in 
 question all the doctrines of the religions about 
 him: " Where is the proof of life beyond the 
 grave ?" it asks. "Who are the 'good?' Why are 
 they good? Is it good to desire happiness for 
 oneself when multitudes are in torment? Is 
 a God good who, being omnipotent, can look 
 down on such misery and injustice as are in the 
 world and not find a remedy ? How about death- 
 bed conversions? Is it just that some should be 
 born depraved, while others, seemingly, have only 
 good impulses and are therefore pure? How 
 can a God who is Love consign to eternal punish- 
 ment any of his creatures however rebellious? 
 No father among us would treat thus his own 
 child." 
 
 These are but a few of the questions that form 
 a barrier in the path of the thoughtful man when 
 he approaches any of the religions of our day ; to 
 them and to a host of others equally insistent, he 
 seeks in vain an answer. 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 83 
 
 There is but one teaching that offers a key to 
 all these problems — Reincarnation. 
 
 Does man's life begin at birth ? Reincarnation 
 says : "No, it does but continue what has always 
 been." Aeons and aeons ago, there came forth 
 from the Creator a Divine Germ; for long ages 
 it has involved — descended into matter — now it 
 is evolving, consciously learning from every ex- 
 perience, whether of pleasure or of pain, and is 
 returning to pure spirit, bearing with it the treas- 
 ures of its varied experiences. 
 
 The life of man did not begin, but it came 
 forth from the source of all life. From the time 
 that the first vital undulation, issued from Nir- 
 vana, to the present, it continues its work; each 
 wave manifesting as an individual soul. Infinite 
 in number, these living undulations constitute all 
 manifested life in all worlds. The personalities 
 which we see masquerading in our world as 
 human beings, are, as it were, beads threaded 
 upon these life-waves, as the beads of a chaplet 
 are upon their string. Each bead may differ in 
 a marked way from its neighbor but the string 
 is always the same and serves to unite them all. 
 Thus while the vital undulation remains the 
 same, and the individual is ever the same indi- 
 
84 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 vidual, yet the personalities are numerous and 
 varied enough to include all human experience. 
 At one time rich at another poor, in one life 
 high in rank in the next humble and obscure, now 
 man, now woman, the individual soul passes 
 through every possible experience and mounts 
 step by step from the foot to the summit of the 
 hill of life. 
 
 Many and varied have been its school terms, 
 from the first day when it studied in the humblest 
 place in the lowest class. Through all the 
 grades, it has passed, failing often, but gradually 
 advancing in knowledge of the world, in self- 
 control and in the consciousness of the powers 
 latent within. And every one of such school- 
 days represents a life, as the word is generally 
 used — a term of years beginning with birth and 
 ending with the change called death. This little 
 span in which we find ourselves today is but one 
 of many, it is relative, not conclusive, and those 
 who are suffering now are having an experience 
 that is necessary for them and that is, indeed, 
 the direct result of some unlearned lesson in their 
 past. When they shall have patiently and cheer- 
 fully met their present adverse conditions and 
 triumphed over them, the cloud will pass over of 
 its own accord. 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 85 
 
 All life is in cycles. Thus a day of twenty- 
 four hours is one entire cycle, consisting of morn- 
 ing, noon, and night; and seven days form an- 
 other and larger cycle. Beyond these we have 
 months and years, the larger cycle always includ- 
 ing the lesser and itself forming part of another 
 still greater. In a human life, we have some 
 very interesting cycles of seven years, the periods 
 of seven, fourteen, and twenty J one, marking 
 distinct epochs in the evolution of the individual. 
 After three times seven, there are also two other 
 cycles of seven that are well-marked — seven times 
 seven, or forty-nine, and ten times seven, or the 
 allotted threescore years and ten. And accord- 
 ing to the Law of Cycles, this whole life of 
 seventy or more years is but one of many similar 
 lives, all of which together go to make up one 
 grand life. Not that this one grand life is separ- 
 ate and alone, even; for many of such grand 
 cycles go to make up still greater and greater 
 cycles of which we can have absolutely no con- 
 ception at our present stage of evolution. 
 
 With this wider horizon much of the apparent 
 injustice and inequality of the present dispensa- 
 tion is done away, and we begin to recognize the 
 presence of law and exact retribution in those 
 
86 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 very circumstances that before had distressed 
 us. We catch a glimpse of the workings of a 
 law of infinite patience and wisdom, offering 
 unlimited opportunity to every soul to learn and 
 to triumph — the law of a God who wills that 
 every soul shall be saved, and Who provides the 
 way of that salvation so clearly and impartially 
 that it is impossible for the most unworthy to 
 wander for ever. 
 
 Reincarnation teaches us that before a soul 
 comes forth into our world as a babe, it has rested 
 for a longer or a shorter period in the heaven- 
 world, where it has assimilated the harvest of the 
 experiences of its former incarnate states. Here 
 the desires of the past life have been purified, 
 the old failings worked off, the past more or less 
 obliterated ; every good thought, good deed, good 
 aspiration has been recollected, gone over and 
 steeped anew in the quickening spirit, so that it 
 may be strengthened and may thus aid in the 
 progress of the soul when it shall incarnate 
 anew. At last there comes a time when this 
 work is completed, the stimulus of past experi- 
 ence grows weak, and desire, which is the law of 
 the soul, begins to turn towards the laying in of 
 a fresh store of earthly joys, thoughts, feelings 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 87 
 
 and emotions; it desires re-birth so that it may 
 again meet in the flesh its loved-ones, or that it 
 may realize some ambition that remained un- 
 fulfilled in the past life, or, in short, that it may 
 experience again some of the thousand delights 
 that are, and can be, the object of life on earth. 
 When these desires awake, the soul passes into 
 the sphere of waiting souls and rests there until 
 a suitable outlet can be arranged for it by the 
 Lords of Karma who care for this realm. All its 
 past is again reviewed, all its gains, all its losses 
 are instantly apparent to these Great Ones, and 
 the soul rises or falls to one of the seven planes 
 of waiting where its own state of evolution places 
 it in order of merit. 
 
 Some parents, at the moment of conception, 
 are able to rise to a very great height of aspira- 
 tion, and in so rising, they may touch a soul on 
 one of these higher planes and afford it an oppor- 
 tunity of re-birth. If, however, as is too often 
 the case, there is no such aspiration or desire 
 for the advancement of the race, the soul attract- 
 ed by the parents will be one of those waiting 
 on the lower planes. 
 
 Now, immediately, commences a series of 
 changes. Guided by the Lords Who watch over 
 
88 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 it, the soul begins its approach toward those who 
 have attracted it; it undergoes change after 
 change, puts on vesture after vesture, limitation 
 after limitation, ever suffering and sacrificing, 
 yet impelled by desire, the law of the soul. 
 Every different vesture brings a new burden 
 and weight to the soul, and causes new suffer- 
 ing and new sacrifice. Just as is the case in the 
 Great Sacrifice described in the last chapter, so 
 is the case in this lesser sacrifice: the soul be- 
 comes more and more bound by conditions. 
 
 Meanwhile, whilst the soul is approaching the 
 parents, the parents also are preparing a suitable 
 temple for the soul that is coming to them ; and 
 the first cry of the child marks the entrance of the 
 first inflow from the Ego. The temple, the baby- 
 body, is, naturally, not able at first to bear a 
 great strain, it could not receive the whole force 
 of the ego at once; there are therefore, certain 
 definite periods and stages of growth and of the 
 inflow of force. The first inflow takes place at 
 birth. Before that time, the ego has over- 
 shadowed the mother, and aided her in building 
 the body, but there has been no direct control 
 from within. From birth onwards the ego 
 dwells within, or to be more correct, we would 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 89 
 
 say, he guides the organism from within, and 
 every seventh year sees a new influx, new con- 
 ditions either in the body, the emotional, psychic 
 or spiritual natures. At about seven years of 
 age the child begins to ask questions and to 
 require intellectual food, then it can be sent to 
 school; this is the sign of the second inflow. 
 Again at fourteen, the ego makes a further ap- 
 proach and pours into the organism the crea- 
 tive energies ; this is the third inflow and the 
 ego is now in full physical manifestation. The 
 further changes which take place every seven 
 years throughout the earth-life are equilibrations 
 rather than inflows, and are due to activities on 
 the higher planes of being. 
 
 These explanations will confirm the view 
 which has always been put forward by religion — 
 that man's nature is from above as well as from 
 below. His body, it is true, has been prepared 
 by evolution through all the kingdoms, mineral, 
 vegetable and animal, it is subject to change and 
 is mortal, but not so the informing spirit, the 
 Ego; this is individual and never dies: it is, 
 indeed, that vital undulation which comes forth 
 from Nirvana and, after a series of trials and 
 transformations lasting throughout one Man- 
 vantara, returns thither. 
 
go FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 The individual struggles from dawn to eve, 
 from his first appearance in this world, to the 
 time he goes out of it, with the problems and 
 difficulties of each day; sometimes he triumphs, 
 often he fails — but always he learns, whether 
 gaining or losing apparently in the fight, and all 
 of these experiences serve him as stepping-stones 
 to his immortality. It is in this way, indeed that 
 he builds his future. 
 
 There is no chance attending our birth-place 
 or family, for every detail of all our past lives 
 is taken into account by the Great Lords of 
 Karma in guiding the reincarnating soul to those 
 circumstances best calculated to evolve his bud- 
 ding tendencies, and to those persons to whom he 
 has been intimately bound in a former life by 
 love or by hate, or by some other strong emotion. 
 
 As the child grows, he manifests the character- 
 istics that marked him in a past life; he makes 
 mistakes which are foreign to the family in which 
 he finds himself, yet in many ways he resembles 
 them. This agreement, and at the same time 
 disagreement, has been a great puzzle to those 
 who give an undue importance to the influence of 
 heredity, but can be well understood in the light 
 of what has been said above ; for it was these very 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 91 
 
 similarities in desire (known as heredity,) which 
 attracted this particular ego to these parents in 
 the first instance, because the traits of the parents, 
 whether good or evil, offer to the child an oppor- 
 tunity of manifesting his own good or evil pro- 
 pensities. 
 
 It is therefore unjust for a man to charge to 
 his parents those faults which he has allowed to 
 master him; they are his own, and his parents 
 did but give him the opportunity of once more 
 facing them and conquering or being conquered 
 by them. They are responsible for their weak- 
 nesses, and he for his. Nor, on the other hand, 
 can parents rightly hold themselves responsible 
 for the vices of their sons, except in so far as they 
 might, by early training, have strengthened their 
 moral nature. The soul of each individual is 
 ruled by desire, and until these desires are puri- 
 fied and eliminated, the suffering consequent on 
 ignorance and self-seeking will continue. 
 
 The teaching of rebirth is pictured very beauti- 
 fully in many of the ways of nature. With the 
 illustration of the coming forth of the butterfly 
 from its chrysalis, all are familiar ; we know that 
 the forest tree, today bare, leafless and apparently 
 dead, will put forth its buds as soon as spring- 
 
92 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 time comes and in the summer be alive and heavy 
 with foliage and fruit, and that it will continue 
 around this cycle for perhaps hundreds of years ; 
 we see the perpetual alternation of night and day 
 — a period of rest always preceding the activity 
 and work of the day, and essential to its success 
 — everywhere we find analogies and illustrations 
 of Reincarnation, some of them indeed most sug- 
 gestive and exactly analogous in every detail and 
 similar in their evolution and general features 
 to the larger cycle of Life, of which they form a 
 part. 
 
 Thus if we regard the life of a man during one 
 day, we shall find it to be very similar to that 
 life viewed as a whole. When we awake in the 
 morning, we arouse ourselves with difficulty from 
 the slumber in which we have been steeped, and 
 it is some time before our waking activity reaches 
 its zenith — probably towards noon of the day. 
 From this time on, our strength wanes, until, 
 when the sun sets, we are willing to take up the 
 "night-ties" of our life, and rejoice in the loving 
 activities of the home, the family, leisure and 
 sleep — all of which are as essential to the round- 
 ing out of a well-ordered life as are the very 
 evident occupations of the day. We are all well 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 93 
 
 acquainted with the cycle we have just sketched, 
 and if we would apply this to the teaching of 
 reincarnation, it throws much light on the soul's 
 experience. The analogy is indeed so close be- 
 tween the whole life and the life of a day, that 
 we have worked it out in detail in Lesson iv of 
 the Correspondence Course, to which we recom- 
 mend our readers who wish to pursue the sub- 
 ject further. 
 
 All life is cyclic. When at first it comes forth, 
 it is weak and has little power of manifestation, 
 like the new-born child; gradually it gathers 
 strength and up to a certain point its activities 
 increase; they culminate, then decline from 
 maturity into old age. Then the life enters the 
 second half of the cycle, corresponding to night, 
 where its activities are similar to those of sleep — 
 the general renewal of the powers through the 
 immersion of the individual soul in the Over 
 Soul, or spiritual principle. After a period of 
 rest, there follows invariably another time of 
 activity as regularly as day follows night. 
 
 By analogy, the whole life of the man is sym- 
 bolized in the life of one day of the world's time, 
 and his life in the heaven-world by a night's sleep ; 
 for, asleep on the physical plane, the soul is but 
 
94 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 the more untrammelled in its activities in higher 
 realms. In the morning, he, like the child, is 
 under the influence of the night's slumber, and 
 as he awakens more and more to the realities 
 of life, he reaches the noon of strength and 
 activity. Later, as his physical powers lessen 
 with the declining sun, his higher moral nature 
 matures, desire for earthly experience diminishes, 
 as his power of triumphing outwardly lessens, 
 and night finds him ready, like a tired child, to 
 rest once again on the bosom of Nature, the 
 good nurse, who carries him back to the "Dweller 
 in the Heart" the Lord of that realm and the 
 Source of that refreshment and spiritual strength 
 which he needs ; and here he again resumes those 
 relations that are necessary to his life but which 
 had been temporarily suspended by his work in 
 the world. 
 
 The soul may rest in this heaven-world for 
 many years or for few, according to the law 
 governing its destiny. If its merits in the past 
 have been great, it will have much to assimilate 
 and to learn, as well as a great deal of actual 
 constructive work to do, so that long periods of 
 time often elapse between the incarnations of 
 those who are well-evolved. There are also 
 many other very intricate considerations govern- 
 
REINCARNATION AND IMMORTALITY 95 
 
 ing the time of rebirth, into which we do not in- 
 tend to enter here. And even in the case of 
 those of a very low order of development, who 
 are lacking in moral strength, there are still very 
 few who have not to their credit, when they pass 
 from this terrestrial life some atom of ideality, 
 some intellectual aspiration, some unselfish action, 
 which will produce an effect for them in the world 
 of Devakan, or the higher heaven, the intensity 
 and duration of which will be always proportion- 
 ate to their cause and which will make for them 
 a season of joy and of realization a thousand- 
 fold exceeding their deserts. If they have had 
 but one moment of ideality, this single moment 
 will bear its fruits ; this one note sounded on the 
 lyre of life will be reproduced and will resound 
 in prolonged harmony. The Devakanic state is, 
 indeed, that realm where all our aimless aspira- 
 tions come to fruition, our fallen hopes are real- 
 ized and the dreams of our objective life become 
 realities. The soul in this state enjoys a bliss 
 beyond anything of which we can conceive; nor 
 is there any disappointment possible, for the 
 heaven of each one is his own creation, the work 
 of his own aspirations and therefore exactly 
 adapted to his capacities and capable of ful- 
 filling his every wish. 
 
g6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 But just as the physical life may be divided 
 into periods, so the Devakanic state has its 
 periods of increase, of intensity, then of gradual 
 exhaustion, and after this, a time of entire ob- 
 livion — not death — followed by a new incarna- 
 tion or physical rebirth. 
 
 And this cycle is repeated from the beginning 
 to the end of a Manvantara. 
 
 Born again into a new personality we recom- 
 mence work, creating new causes, which will lead 
 to new effects and these in their turn will be as- 
 similated and harvested in a future Devakanic 
 state. 
 
 "He, therefore," remarks an Adept, "who, by 
 means of a long succession of incarnations and 
 reincarnations, reaches, at last, the end of the 
 chain of births and becomes a Buddha, or he 
 who has attained to this happy state by a path 
 which is well understood, and which puts him in 
 possession of the complete development of his 
 psychic faculties — this one has arrived at full 
 knowledge; and in one of these births, the one 
 that precedes the Great Victory, he will be able 
 to contemplate all his past lives, as they unroll 
 themselves before his eyes like a vast panorama, 
 giving him the spectacle of the varied and 
 diverse scenes that they caused to exist." 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA 97 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE LAW OF KARMA 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton, in formulating his first Law 
 of Movement, gave expression to one of the 
 modes of Karma on the physical plane when he 
 said: "Action and reaction are equal and oppo- 
 site in direction." Science proclaims the law of 
 cause and effect. Logic proceeds from the prin- 
 ciple that consequences are true to their ante- 
 cedents. Mill says: "Invariability of succession 
 is found by observation to obtain between every 
 fact in Nature and some other fact which has 
 preceded it." All of our common experience 
 teaches us to act according to our own estimate 
 of the consequences to follow ; we work or rest, 
 indulge ourselves or make sacrifices, scheme and 
 plan, eat and drink, for the most part with regard 
 to the effects of our activities upon our life as a 
 whole. Thus do we observe the law of Karma 
 on the physical plane and in the realm of thought. 
 
 Despite this universal acceptance by individuals 
 
98 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 of the law of cause and effect as it applies to their 
 personal affairs, the religions of Christendom 
 have failed to recognize it as a moral principle. 
 All great teachers have proclaimed, as with one 
 voice, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
 also reap." This principle is distinctly set forth 
 in the scriptures of all ages. Still, many Christ- 
 ians seek an escape for the sinner, by which his 
 "reaction" will not be "equal and opposite in di- 
 rection" to his action. Others, with greater 
 courage and sincerity, recognize the law of com- 
 pensation in the visible world and seek the prin- 
 ciple of eternal and universal retributive justice, 
 securing to every man the exact reward of his 
 deeds, a principle which shall repair all human 
 wrongs, make always for readjustment, and tend 
 to equilibrium in the physical and harmony in 
 the moral world. This ideal of justice, which 
 has thus far failed of intelligible expression in 
 the religious teachings of the western world, is 
 fully recognized in the Orient as the law of 
 Karma. 
 
 To those who believe that we have but this 
 one life, in which each must work out the sal- 
 vation of his own soul, there is great inequality 
 in the distribution of Nature's benefits. Some 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA 99 
 
 men are born poor and others rich, some are in- 
 telligent and others are imbecile, some live many 
 years and others but a few moments. The 
 justice of God can not be seen by him whose life 
 is one long agony resulting from no fault of his 
 own in this existence. The heart of the "good 
 man," who knows no other teaching, aches for 
 these tortured souls, and sometimes he turns 
 away perforce from all religions, an atheist or 
 an agnostic. 
 
 The law of Karma on the other hand discloses 
 a God of strict justice, meting out to every man 
 what he has himself earned and has created in the 
 realm of cause and effect. But it shows also a 
 God of love and mercy, offering numberless 
 opportunities to triumph over the lower nature. 
 Many lives are necessary to accomplish so great 
 a task, and the soul passes through a countless 
 series of incarnations, to gain self-knowledge and 
 self-mastery. Those who will not learn from 
 gentleness must learn from pain. One single 
 thought or aspiration toward the good, one un- 
 selfish, pure desire in the whole life assures the 
 soul another opportunity. Even the weakest son 
 of the Great Father has time and occasion to learn 
 the lessons which his stronger brother has per- 
 
IOO FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 haps mastered in a few incarnations. Those who 
 fail are not condemned. The God of justice is 
 also a God of infinite patience, and gives to every 
 soul the opportunity to try again and again until 
 every difficulty is surmounted and every weakness 
 strengthened. The God of love wills that every 
 soul shall be saved. Under this dispensation of 
 mercy not one can go astray. 
 
 All religions agree that the soul of man is 
 accountable for its actions. It is this sense of 
 responsibility that separates man from the lower 
 creations ; it is the supreme mark of his divinity. 
 Karma and Reincarnation are the bases upon 
 which all true religion rests — Karma showing 
 man courageously encountering his weaknesses, 
 time after time, until he learns to master them 
 and to know himself; Reincarnation providing 
 him with the means to this arduous but glorious 
 achievement. 
 
 Karma recompenses and chastises with abso- 
 lute impartiality. It respects no personality, and 
 its action may not be modified even by means of 
 prayers. The same wondrous order that describes 
 in the heavens the distinct yet interdependent 
 ellipses of the planets prevails also in the moral 
 world. Every life expresses that quality to 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA 101 
 
 which the individual has earned a right by work 
 done and by victories gained in a past incar- 
 nation. 
 
 Man comes to earth with a three-fold personal 
 Karma. First, there is his mass of unpaid debt, 
 accumulated from the experiences of all his past 
 lives. While much of this has been liquidated 
 during his various incarnations, a balance re- 
 mains that he has not yet been able to discharge. 
 This, in the Sanscrit, is called Samchita. As this 
 balance is the result of more than one past life, it 
 may be too heavy and complicated to be laid upon 
 the debtor's shoulders at one time, or in one life ; 
 therefore in the second place the Lords of Karma, 
 the Masters who aid in the administration of the 
 law, select from his liabilities a portion of his 
 past Karma, with which he is to begin a new life. 
 This is called Prarabdha, or the destiny of his 
 present incarnation. Third, there is the new 
 Karma, the new combination he is to make, called 
 Kriamana. Over Samchita and Prarabdha the 
 man has no control. In the past they were his 
 own creation, since he made the causes of which 
 they are the effects. Now he can work only in 
 the third field, by accepting the old conditions 
 and making from them a new future. 
 
102 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 Man in the hands of Karma is like a child in 
 the home of its parents. Food and clothing, 
 opportunities for instruction, all are freely. and 
 lovingly provided; but not the wisest of fathers 
 or the tenderest of mothers can say to what use 
 their child will put these advantages. They can- 
 not grow for him or learn for him. His future 
 is in his own hands, and for it he is responsible. 
 Even his very presence in that family is due to 
 causes which he set up in the long past, for we 
 are born of the parents who can provide us with 
 the opportunity to follow out some unsatisfied 
 desire of long ago, to develop some trait of char- 
 acter, or to gratify some ambition. 
 
 The purpose of life is progress, not pleasure. 
 He who believes that the chief object of life here 
 and hereafter is happiness concentrates all his 
 energies on the pursuit of some desire or aspira- 
 tion which he expects will bring him pleasure. 
 His concept of heaven is usually a state of bliss- 
 ful enjoyment for himself and his loved ones, 
 with a selfish disregard for the tortures of others. 
 On the other hand he who knows the law of Re- 
 incarnation thinks lightly of present pleasure or 
 enjoyment, but is intent rather upon the prepara- 
 tion of a better future in another incarnation. 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA IO3 
 
 To this end he suffers humbly and without com- 
 plaint the bufferings of fortune, recognizing in 
 these present untoward circumstances the work- 
 ing of the law. For him life holds no chance hap- 
 penings. He knows that destiny demands that he 
 develop along particular lines and that Karma 
 provides him with the necessary experiences and 
 places him in a certain family, nation, and race, 
 according to the requirements of his awakening 
 nature. At some stages of his growth pain is his 
 most effective teacher; therefore he gratefully 
 accepts a life of struggle and suffering, the con- 
 flict being always between the spiritual self who 
 knows and is striving upward toward freedom, 
 and the astral or kamic nature which desires to 
 enjoy. 
 
 If man rightly understood the meaning of this 
 life and its purpose he would welcome many per- 
 sons and experiences that he now puts away 
 from him as unpleasant and wearisome. From 
 this point of view it is not the one who comes to 
 us with a smiling face and gracious words who 
 is in reality our friend, but rather the one who 
 does not hesitate to tell us an unpalatable truth, 
 who gives us pain, who is a constant thorn in 
 our side, who is perhaps even malicious or hostile. 
 
104 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 For such an one r though uncongenial, even 
 impossible, is more useful than the one who is 
 always gentle. Every time we are able to turn 
 aside one of his intended thrusts with some lov- 
 ing word he gives us the opportunity to pay an 
 old debt. It was for this reason that the Lord 
 Issa, and all the other Adepts before him, en- 
 joined upon their disciples to love their enemies. 
 For love alone can triumph over the law of 
 Karma and loose its bonds. 
 
 Life on one plane is death on another. The 
 struggle between the higher and lower natures 
 of man continues throughout all his earth lives. 
 When he attains to peace man will have become 
 divine and will reincarnate no more. 
 
 A man who is at the head of a large organiza- 
 tion comes in direct contact with many thousands 
 of people. Every such touch, however slight, is 
 not only the result of some cause in the past of 
 each man, but is also the beginning of a new 
 activity. Each one attracted into the organization 
 is the better or the worse for the encounter. These 
 lives have flowed into the central stream because 
 of the general trend of individual ideas and the 
 particular Karmic ties and debts which each has 
 made in some former life. It is not by chance 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA IOS 
 
 that we choose, or think we choose, the men to 
 serve us or to work with us. The universal law 
 brings to us those who belong to our work or to 
 us personally, or to some one associated with us. 
 Karma adjusts every detail of our daily life. 
 Man is, it is true, master of these conditions ; he 
 can take or refuse those who are sent to him ; he 
 can work with or against the law of Karma, and 
 thus shorten or prolong the time of his earthly 
 ordeal; — but he cannot escape until he has paid 
 the uttermost farthing of his debt. This is the 
 law. Nor does the wise man desire to be freed 
 until he has fully atoned for every evil action 
 and thought. 
 
 For the most part man works in his ignorance 
 against the law and for ages he is forced to re- 
 incarnate again and again, so that the strands 
 of his tangled web may be patiently unraveled 
 and rewoven into the Great Plan. To the onlooker 
 the mass of threads lying before the weaver are 
 hopelessly confused. It would appear that they 
 could never take their place in a pattern. To the 
 weaver, however, each strand is in its right place, 
 and for each he has a use. The ordinary man 
 cannot see, through the apparent complications 
 of life, the working out of a plan, but those with 
 
I06 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 a clearer understanding of the law are content 
 to let the Great Weaver work out his pattern and 
 use them as his threads, in whatever way may be 
 best. They are not anxious about the apparent 
 confusion among the threads which have not yet 
 been woven into the fabric. They trust and wait. 
 The law which governs in the world of affairs 
 controls us in our social ties. Not one of these 
 is idly formed, however ignorant we may be of 
 the force which brings us together. You love 
 some one with all the strength of your soul. 
 Why? Because you have known this one before ; 
 he possesses certain qualities of attraction which 
 bind your soul to his. He also loves you, and 
 for the moment you are happy. But he may sud- 
 denly turn from you and say that he loves you 
 no more. Then you feel that you are the most 
 unhappy of beings. You are in despair. Yet this 
 is just the moment when your future happiness 
 is being prepared out of this very debt of suffer- 
 ing which you are paying. For pain comes to us 
 to lead to better things, and the more we suffer 
 the more quickly we progress, for what is past 
 will never come again. He who is wise will even 
 rejoice instead of regretting the breaking of a 
 bond of love, for he will know that this separa- 
 tion severs one more of the ties that hold him to 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA 107 
 
 earth. Every personal association by which we 
 unite our life to that of another interweaves with 
 our own the strands of his Karmic responsibili- 
 ties and increases our sufferings and our difficulty 
 in eventually loosing ourselves from them. All 
 love that depends upon the bodily presence of the 
 loved one, every smile and word of affection 
 sent out without a profound knowledge of the 
 higher law, will be the cause of tears and suffer- 
 ing. Blessed is the Adept, who, loving all hu- 
 manity, feeling for the sorrows of all, is freed 
 from the plane of Maya. All must traverse this 
 vale of woe, must live again and again according 
 to the attachments formed in each incarnation, 
 and until all of these Karmic debts are paid, we 
 can not come to the end of our incarnations. 
 
 If the individual is thus the center of a tangle 
 of cross threads of other lives, knotted with his 
 own beyond the power of loosing, how much 
 more intricate becomes the problem when we con- 
 sider that the law affects humanity in groups, the 
 city, the state, the country, the race, the planet? 
 Each one of these groups, great or small, has its 
 rope of many strands to weave into the Great Plan, 
 and each as an individual is evolving through 
 struggles, failures and victories — Karma. Con- 
 
108 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 sider the city as a type of the group, under the 
 influence of this law. It is an individual, a being, 
 a growing developing entity, with a Karmic his- 
 tory, comprising the sum-total of the good and 
 evil traits of its past inhabitants. It is a mass of 
 unfinished business, unrealized ideals, unsatisfied 
 ambitions. It includes the Karma of the first 
 man, the man who founded it, and that of all 
 who have ever lived in it, of all those who have 
 ever touched it in any manner or degree. And 
 with this confused mass the city deals, day by 
 day, and year by year, working off the old and 
 creating new Karma, corresponding in nature to 
 the purity or the corruption of its administration. 
 Each member of the community bears his share 
 of the burden. Although he may avoid office, 
 he cannot escape the Karma of his city, and his 
 future is appreciably influenced by every move 
 made by those in authority as well as by every 
 dweller, however humble his role. 
 
 The law works in precisely the same manner 
 in the evolution of the larger organizations of 
 men, the greater groups, the wider spheres of 
 human activity. There is no place in all the field 
 of man's endeavor, in all the realm of physical 
 or moral existence, where the Karma of the 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA 109 
 
 whole is not influenced by that of the individual. 
 
 Christ suggested the infinite scope of this law 
 when he said, "Are not five sparrows sold for 
 two farthings ? and not one of them is forgotten 
 before God." 
 
 How inspiring is the knowledge that not even 
 the weakest aspiration of the most rebellious 
 soul, struggling upwards to the light, is lost, 
 and that every cause must have its effect, not 
 only in the life of the individual but of the race, 
 the planet, the universe ! A good thought sounds 
 and resounds in the Akasha throughout eternity. 
 Nothing can be lost, for the law of Karma 
 gathers up the fragments of all energies. 
 
 This vital connection between every living 
 being and the Creator, between the humblest 
 and the most exalted of men, between all parts 
 of the universe, presents yet another aspect when 
 we come to consider the motives of men and to 
 take account of all the emotions, desires, inher- 
 ited tendencies and habits of thought which lead 
 to any action. We must see that even the sim- 
 plest movement may bear many interpretations 
 and may lead to various and opposite Karmic re- 
 sults. For the nature of the effect will depend 
 upon the motive. For example : An alarm of fire 
 
IIO FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 is heard and three men start to run at full speed 
 to the scene; each man is making Karma by his 
 action, but the kind of Karma he makes, and 
 the effects to which it will give rise in the future, 
 depend upon various causes, chiefly his motive in 
 hastening to the fire. Suppose that the first 
 man is actuated solely by curiosity and an excit- 
 able temperament and that he merely watches the 
 progress of the fire with the rest of the crowd: 
 he will receive both immediately and later the 
 due effect of his deed; he will have accentuated 
 his propensities both as to curiosity and excita- 
 bility, and attracted towards himself the danger- 
 ous fire elemental. Suppose that the second man 
 runs because he is afraid a friend is in danger, 
 but when he arrives at the scene he is too para- 
 lyzed with fear to be of service, and does nothing 
 to help ; his Karma will be better than that made 
 by the first, because he is moved by love, or at 
 least by interest in his neighbor ; still, the results 
 will not be wholly good, for an opportunity is 
 afforded him to serve and through his former 
 habits of fear-thought and lack of control over 
 his emotions he is unable to take advantage of it. 
 But suppose the third man, knowing that a cool 
 head and an unflinching courage are needed, has- 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA III 
 
 tens to the spot and unknown, unsolicited, un- 
 noticed, lends a hand wherever it is required, and 
 when the danger is over retires, unthanked, with- 
 out even measuring his own service in his 
 thoughts; this man will make good Karma, for 
 without thought of reward he is moved by pure 
 love of his fellow, and of the universal life. 
 
 We cannot know how long it will be, as men 
 count years, before the results of our present ac- 
 tivities are seen. Only unimportant causes have 
 immediate effects. The more far reaching the 
 idea the longer it will be in realization, for its 
 sphere of influence covers a larger field. The 
 wing of an army is easier to manoeuver than the 
 main body, while a single regiment is easier still 
 of management. But we do know that day by 
 day, in every act of our lives, especially in every 
 motive, thought and feeling, our new Karma 
 grows on the one hand as we touch other lives, 
 and dwindles on the other hand as we learn the 
 lessons presented to us and are able to render 
 good for evil. At the end of life the sum of all 
 the causes left over is laid by in store. These 
 causes are assimilated in the long sleep that fol- 
 lows active life in the world. The lesser tangles 
 and loose ends are smoothed and straightened and 
 
112 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 the weak places are strengthened, so that, in 
 the next incarnation, the soul comes forth, justly 
 clothed in a garment woven from a stuff of its 
 own making. All those desires that remained 
 unsatisfied in the past life of the man become 
 causes in his new life ; his past ideals become his 
 present circumstances; his former tendencies 
 have endowed him with qualities; the ambitions 
 he pursued without success in his previous in- 
 carnation he can now attain. It is as if he were 
 a boy again and, having slept over night, goes 
 on his way to school in the morning, refreshed 
 and recruited, to take up all his activities from 
 the place where he left them the day before, hav- 
 ing grown and advanced toward maturity during 
 the night. 
 
 Is there no way to escape? Are we to be 
 forever bound upon the wheel of Karma? Does 
 every life see us paying off old debts only to 
 make as many new ones? There is the same 
 escape for the race that there is for the school 
 boy. So long as the boy is in the lower classes 
 he must remain subject to the discipline of the 
 school ; but when he has graduated, having passed 
 through all the experiences and learned all the 
 lessons which school life affords, he is then 
 freed from its laws, he is no longer bound be- 
 
THE LAW OF KARMA II3 
 
 cause he has transcended them and his obedience 
 is not only ready and willing, but it is also in- 
 telligent. So the man who lives in the world but 
 not of it, who works ardently yet without looking 
 for personal gain, who loves and serves all men 
 irrespective of what they may do or say to him, 
 this one is free from Karma. He has graduated 
 from the school of life. 
 
 Those who recognize the law of Karma con- 
 sciously build up their own immortality from 
 day to day and from life to life. They purify 
 every thought and action, knowing that upon 
 them is based their own destiny. They learn to 
 act for the good of all, regardless of the reac- 
 tion. They rise above the operation of the law 
 of Karma, and, transcending cause and effect, 
 build, not only their own immortality, but the 
 destiny of the planet. 
 
 As a stone, cast into a calm lake, causes ripples 
 to spread in ever widening circles until at last 
 the whole surface is moved, so is the influence of 
 one strong life — nay, of one pure thought! 
 
 In the Vedas we read: 
 
 "Sow a thought and reap an action ; 
 Sow an action and reap a habit ; 
 Sow a habit and reap character; 
 Sow character and reap a destiny !" 
 
114 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "Learn above all to separate head-learn- 
 ing from Soul Wisdom, the "Eye" from 
 the "Heart" doctrine . . . The doctrine 
 of the eye is for the crowd; the doctrine 
 of the heart for the elect" 
 
 —VOICE OF THE SILENCE. 
 
 METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 
 
 At this moment, when the fate of the race 
 stands trembling upon the threshold of the New- 
 Era, it becomes necessary, above all things, to 
 point out clearly to the disciple the path to fol- 
 low, and to give forth in plain language the main 
 principles and methods by which the awakening 
 soul may be guided. 
 
 "Fiat Lux," Let there be Light, is the cry of 
 the New Era, — light upon our social problems, 
 light for our intellectual upliftment, but, above 
 all, let the light shine forth from the spiritual 
 nature of man ! 
 
 And the dawn is with us. The barriers that 
 have hitherto shut us in, and separated us from 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER II5 
 
 the world of the invisible, are already down, as 
 anyone who enters the field of psychic science 
 may see. It is now plain that man can receive 
 impressions by other and more subtle means than 
 through the physical senses — Thought-transfer- 
 ence has proved it again and again. A new 
 world is open to the man who wills, and throngs 
 are stepping forward over the threshold. 
 
 To all such we say, "Pause," for there are, as 
 ever, two paths opening before the aspirant : the 
 broad and pleasant way, strewn with the beauti- 
 ful flowers of phenomena sought for their own 
 sake, and fed by streams of flattery and adulation ; 
 and the steep and narrow path, whose thorns 
 tear the feet of the disciple, and whose waters 
 are ofttimes bitter to the taste. The broad way 
 is full of brilliant promises to the one who is 
 looking for ease, for greatness, for powers, or for 
 any of the good things of life ; while the narrow 
 path makes no such appeal; it is rugged and 
 arduous. And these two paths will present them- 
 selves before the seeker continually, until he shall 
 have made his final choice of one or the other; 
 therefore it is that we say "Pause, and consider I" 
 The narrow path demands the exercise of Will, 
 Self-Sacrifice and Constancy ; but he who follows 
 
Il6 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 it is more than repaid, for its discipline develops 
 the dormant faculties of the real man, and enables 
 him to learn at the fountain-head the secrets of 
 Nature. It alone leads to the goal ; the pleasant 
 path leads nowhere ! 
 
 The instructions of the Order of the Initiates 
 of Thibet take the disciple by the hand from the 
 very place where he finds himself — -whether 
 he be in distress and doubt, or whether he has 
 already reached the higher plane of faith and 
 certainty. They show him the plan of his life 
 and a reason for his experiences, and they teach 
 him how to choose safely for himself among the 
 varied inducements held out to him on all sides. 
 The Guru, or Instructor, knows that all true 
 advancement is to be attained by the evolving of 
 the innate qualities of the disciple, and not by 
 the amount of knowledge imbibed ; he, therefore, 
 allows every soul to learn its own lesson in the 
 way it chooses, and when some apparently take 
 a downward path for a time, he does not make 
 any attempt to hold them; for their very down- 
 ward trend shows him that they have yet back 
 work to make up, qualities to evolve, Karma to 
 work off, before they can continue the ascent. 
 Occult Science prefers to educate (E'duco) 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER II7 
 
 to bring forth out of man that which sleeps with- 
 in, rather than to instruct; and to this end he is 
 left free to receive or to reject, to eat or to go 
 hungry. If he is sceptical and refuses to receive 
 a truth, or if he is careless and allows a teaching 
 to pass by him unnoticed, the Guru remains silent, 
 well aware that whatever the disciple is ready to 
 accept, he will recognize and appropriate, while 
 no amount of argument, explanation or demon- 
 stration will enable him to recognize what he is 
 unable to receive. 
 
 Nor is the instruction delivered as a science 
 already-made, which the student has but to learn 
 by heart; Esoterism is not the same for any two 
 persons, for it consists in evolving the peculiar 
 virtue of each one and thus awakening the in- 
 dividual soul. The Master leaves the student 
 free to do his own thinking. One day, for ex- 
 ample, he will give a demonstration of the dis- 
 integration and reintegration of matter, or of the 
 power of the "vril." These will arouse the at- 
 tention and thought of the disciple if he is hum- 
 ble, or will stir his curiosity and perhaps stimu- 
 late his doubt and criticism if he has not yet 
 learned humility. In any case they will arrest 
 his attention and set him thinking, and therefore 
 
Il8 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 growing. Then, some other day, after allowing 
 a short interval for the germination of the seed 
 sown, the Guru will present the scientific principle 
 back of cohesion and of force; and if the dis- 
 ciple is alert and intelligent he will make his own 
 connection between the principle of to-day and 
 the earlier demonstration, and this one realiza- 
 tion will open his eyes to a whole field of thought, 
 and will explain many other phenomena of the 
 same nature as those presented. If however he 
 is one of those persons who "know it all," this 
 attitude of his will at once shut the door to all 
 progress in any school whatever. Argument, 
 doubt and discussion are also deadly foes to 
 spiritual advancement. 
 
 The Guru is so far in advance of those whom 
 he instructs, that his disciples, who are called 
 Lanus and afterwards Chelas, revere him and 
 yield him a willing and glad obedience, as to a 
 superior being. This attitude of humility on the 
 part of the one who learns is very favorable to 
 the reception of high spiritual teaching. When, 
 on the other hand, there is no such vast difference 
 to be seen in the spiritual attainment of teacher 
 and taught, when all are living the same life, all 
 equally intent upon their own aims and ambitions, 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER II9 
 
 all seeking after happiness here and hereafter, 
 and living with regard to what can be enjoyed 
 on this plane, — the layman, who sees that his 
 pastor is not so very far in advance of himself, 
 has not that deep reverence for his teachings that 
 he should have. He is even ready, at the first 
 opportunity, to criticise the actions of his supe- 
 rior, and thus he closes his own door to progress ; 
 for the spirit of criticism or judgment is inimical 
 to all true advancement. Every Great Teacher 
 has emphasized this truth: "Judge not!" "Who 
 art thou that judgest another ?" "Be ye there- 
 fore as little children," we read in our own 
 Scriptures; and the same spirit is to be found 
 throughout all the Sacred Books of the Orient. 
 The Guru has passed through all the grades 
 of earth's school and graduated. He has learned 
 far in advance of those about him the lore of 
 Nature and material forces. Nor is his wisdom 
 limited to this planet, for, in his flights through 
 space, he has investigated, at first hand, the con- 
 ditions of life in other worlds, so that the Solar 
 System, its laws, conditions and destiny, hold no 
 mystery for him. He has raised himself by a 
 determined and systematic line of effort, carried 
 on through many lives, from the lower ground 
 
120 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 on which the Chela stands, step by step to his 
 present opportunity to serve; and this height, 
 this difference of attainment, is recognized and 
 revered. Every word of such a teacher is treas- 
 ured, his every wish is sacred, while to minister 
 to his material welfare is a privilege eagerly 
 sought for and embraced; for the Guru is felt 
 by the disciple to be the open door between the 
 world and God, between his own soul and the 
 Divine, inasmuch as he enters at will the invisible 
 world of spirit and is in immediate touch with the 
 Great Masters of Wisdom and Compassion, those 
 who show forth the Divine Presence and declare 
 God's Will. 
 
 The instruction given in our Centers in the 
 Occident takes a line between these two extremes ; 
 for, although our Western teachers, who conduct 
 the work of the Members, are not Gurus, and do 
 not therefore excite the same feeling of venera- 
 tion toward themselves, yet they are provided 
 with the teachings of the Order in writing, and 
 are, at times, supported by a Guru, or even by a 
 Great Master in person. Being thus upheld and 
 fed with the Water of Life direct from its Source, 
 our Centers attract to themselves those strong 
 souls in the world who belong to the particular 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 121 
 
 work which the New Era is bringing, and form 
 them into a band of brotherhood which is reach- 
 ing around the world. 
 
 The Order of the Initiates of Thibet teaches 
 that the object of all existence is to know and 
 love God, and the method of attaining to such 
 knowledge is by service. Silently and secretly 
 the disciple is bidden to sacrifice himself and to 
 serve his fellow-man — his energies being at all 
 times directed towards a single aim, "the ad- 
 vancement of the Holy Cause of Eternal Truth." 
 
 Will is the first of powers. Will supplies the 
 initial vibration which makes possible any act of 
 creation. The cultivation of the Will is therefore 
 of prime importance to the disciple and he is 
 taught to lose no single opportunity that his outer 
 life ofifers of stimulating its activity. By means 
 of the Will, man can steer a straight path through 
 all the difficulties which beset him in the world, 
 neither stumbling nor turning aside even when 
 confronted by problems which are apparently im- 
 possible of solution. He uses the power which 
 he has at his disposal today upon the unpleasant- 
 nesses and the obstacles of today, obliging him- 
 self to serve when he would rather rule, to work 
 when he would rather play, to love when he would 
 
122 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 sooner hate. And by these small victories his 
 Will is strengthened and he is able to meet the 
 trials of tomorrow. 
 
 There are two ways of living, the one creative 
 and the other productive, the one synthetic and 
 the other analytical. Both of these aspects are 
 good and each has its place in the life of the 
 disciple. Creation is however first and must be 
 always predominant: he must be first of all and 
 above everything else a creator, for this is his 
 birthright. It is to this end that he has so lately 
 been endowed with the higher faculties of reason 
 and memory, imagination, intuition and percep- 
 tion. The Will acts upon all these faculties; it 
 supplies the initial vibration, and as man learns 
 to use this power and direct it on to the higher 
 planes, he brings forth from the realms of the 
 unknown, not material children in his own physi- 
 cal image, but children of his higher nature. 
 
 In all the teachings of the Order which are 
 given out along the lines of generation, the at- 
 tention of the disciple is always fixed on the 
 higher intellectual and spiritual planes; the in- 
 struction is given by means of symbols and the 
 mind is never allowed to fall to the material 
 plane, this being accounted as the grossest and 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 123 
 
 least important manifestation of a sacred truth. 
 The Great Initiates teach us that all evolution, 
 whether physical, psychic, mental or spiritual is 
 effected through generation ; and when this truth 
 is recognized, the morality resulting from its true 
 appreciation will be seen to be something infi- 
 nitely more than a matter of convention only; it 
 is the expression in life of a principle which re- 
 quires the correlation of all planes in "universal 
 equilibrium, which must be ever harmonious and 
 perfect." 
 
 Equilibrium in nature is the point towards 
 which all forces tend. A cup of hot water set 
 in a room of moderate temperature will radiate 
 its heat until the water reaches the mean tem- 
 perature of the air about it. A pendulum, if 
 disturbed and set swaying will continue to vibrate 
 to and fro as long as the force of the impul- 
 sion lasts, but each outswing will be less than the 
 one before it until at last it comes to rest. Thus 
 the forces of the Universe come forth into mani- 
 festation, from One issue Two or Duality; these 
 two separate, opposite each other, then gradually 
 return to that Unity and equilibrium from which 
 they came forth. Since this is the perpetual law 
 of the Universe, the man who understands it and 
 
124 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 holds himself at the center, can make use of all 
 obstacles and opposing forces and cause them to 
 serve his own purposes, while he remains ever 
 poised, calm and concentrated. We see this 
 power of poise in all great leaders of men and 
 in those who hold in their hands the safety and 
 welfare of thousands. In the life of the disciple, 
 especially, poise is an outward sign of advance- 
 ment. It is not always the eloquent speaker or 
 the brilliant writer who is the Great Soul, but the 
 one who is calm and poised at critical moments. 
 When we observe a man serene in all great 
 crises and at the same time active in serving 
 others, who is always at his best in a moment of 
 danger, and whose equilibrium is never disturbed 
 by any of the so-called accidents of life — then we 
 know that this one is stayed upon some power 
 greater than the common. 
 
 We have known occasions, however, when an 
 apparent equilibrium and self-control have been 
 due to weakness rather than strength. A man 
 has been known to receive the news of complete 
 financial ruin and make no sign of suffering; 
 another will see his home broken up through 
 some calamity over which he has no control, and 
 though his happiness is destroyed, yet he may re- 
 main unmoved. 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER 125 
 
 But this immobility is not necessarily a sign of 
 strength; it may result from apathy or inertia. 
 True poise includes something more than an out- 
 ward calm, something higher than stolid indiffer- 
 ence ; it rests upon an inner activity and power to 
 reconstruct, and the disciple will always show, in 
 addition to a serene bearing, a great activity in 
 serving his fellow and the power to rebuild what 
 disaster has torn down. This creative power of 
 reconstruction is one of the marks of greatness 
 in any of the walks of life. Take, for example, 
 the characteristics and the exigencies of the life 
 of some man whose profession places him in a 
 position of great responsibility. This creative 
 power of which we are speaking, is of the first 
 importance, for instance, to the Captain of an 
 Ocean-liner, for, at a moment's notice he may be 
 called upon to face the direst peril — not to him- 
 self and his own life alone, but to the thousands 
 whose lives, at that instant, touch his own, both 
 those on land and those about him on sea. If 
 we have ever observed the Captain at such a 
 moment of danger, we have found him quick, 
 resourceful, energetic in command, but calm al- 
 most to apparent indifference — caring for each 
 one on the ship individually, as well as collect- 
 
126 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 ively, but at the same time keenly alive to every 
 favoring circumstance of wind and wave, and able 
 to take advantage of these in his efforts to save 
 the boat. This is not the calmness of indiffer- 
 ence although outwardly it resembles it, nor is it 
 a want of sympathy, but it is the poise of attain- 
 ment — the result of a life well-spent; it is not 
 the outcome of a moment's emotion but the 
 natural culmination of a long series of efforts 
 through many lives. 
 
 And this supreme moment, which to the ordi- 
 nary man may come but once or twice in a life- 
 time, is a constant quantity in the life of the dis- 
 ciple. This quality which we have seen displayed 
 in the Captain at a time of great strain, is the 
 faculty that the disciple is required to cultivate 
 and use at every moment. The Will of the dis- 
 ciple must be ever on the alert, strong enough and 
 quick enough to meet any emergency however 
 overwhelming or sudden, and every minute of 
 his life must be to him like the moment of danger 
 was to the Captain — a focussing point of the 
 whole of his activities, bringing up to his assist- 
 ance all the knowledge and wisdom he has made 
 his own during the whole of his present and 
 former lives. The true disciple lives at this 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I27 
 
 high state of tension, each moment is to him of 
 value, upon every situation, however trivial, he 
 brings to bear all the forces born of past ex- 
 periences, and having but one aim — the service 
 of God and of his fellow-man — he is always at 
 peace. 
 
 Esoterism is very difficult. Its demands upon 
 the disciple are imperative, dominant and all- 
 embracing. It requires of him not alone intel- 
 lectual study, but a changed life ; not alone moral- 
 ity, but spirituality. 
 
 In the "Voice of the Silence," as we quoted at 
 the head of our chapter, the disciple is bidden to 
 choose the doctrine of the "heart" rather than 
 the doctrine of the "eye." This has ever been 
 the teaching of the Great Masters whom we fol- 
 low. The doctrine of the heart is synthetic. 
 All its energies are focused at the center and in 
 the inner man. For this it cares first of all, be- 
 cause it recognizes that at the center is the life. 
 The doctrine of the eye, on the other hand is an- 
 alytical ; it thinks much of the instruments through 
 which the manifestation of life is made possible, 
 and its attention is outward into the mazes of in- 
 tellect and of phenomena. The teachings of our 
 Order to students of the first degree have little 
 
128 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 to say concerning body and the outer man, but 
 much about the inner fire of his Divine nature. 
 
 The individual is often compared to a light- 
 house, set up on a wild and rocky shore to light 
 the forlorn and shipwrecked mariner. Every 
 day the disciple feeds and trims his lamp, for 
 the brilliancy of the central flame, the Divine 
 Spark, is the one essential to the lighthouse, and 
 the brighter it burns, the more useful the beacon. 
 His first care and devotion are therefore given to 
 the light itself and its dazzling clearness ; but he 
 does not, on this account, neglect to brighten the 
 reflectors and all the outer windows through 
 which the light must shine. The more the energy 
 of his being is concentrated in feeding the flame, 
 the more surely will he purify his instruments 
 and clear the outer channels, the windows of his 
 lighthouse. He whose light burns pure will have 
 clean windows. He, however, who concentrates 
 his attention on the outer and makes his first 
 consideration the purification of the outer en- 
 velope, is meanwhile putting the main object of 
 life, the awakening of the spirit, into the second 
 place. 
 
 We have dwelt for a moment here upon the 
 principle of intellectualism and analysis which 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I29 
 
 is not our own method, so that the disciple may 
 well distinguish between the two schools. An- 
 alysis is good in its place, but this is second and 
 never first in the spiritual life. Synthesis, on 
 the other hand, leads to concentration, and this 
 again to creation; and so our own school lays a 
 great stress upon the development of the creative 
 power in man. While teaching the action and 
 interaction of the positive and negative in nature, 
 it always warns the disciple against falling into 
 mechanical and negative habits of thought. It 
 requires him to be always "up and doing." be- 
 lieving that it is better to attempt and fail, than 
 to remain inert and passive. He who would ad- 
 vance must learn to concentrate his forces, and 
 this he will not do by thinking, or by speaking, 
 or by reading even, — but by action on the physi- 
 cal plane and by concentration on the spiritual. 
 In the early days of his awakening, reading and 
 the hearing of lectures will fan the tiny flame; 
 at that early stage, talking with those who are 
 more advanced than himself will be of great serv- 
 ice, and may hasten his development; but all of 
 these things are scattering and dissipating to his 
 own forces. They cause him to take in food 
 from without, and spend his own strength in as- 
 
I30 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 similating it, and while this is a very necessary 
 preparation for work, yet it is not work in it- 
 self: if no fruit is born of that flower, then is 
 that flower barren and useless. So, let the dis- 
 ciple understand that, though reading and talk- 
 ing and the hearing of lectures are all good, yet 
 Silence is better; for in the Silence the Soul 
 grows. 
 
 In the awakening of the Soul and its after de- 
 velopment, the teacher makes use, not only of in- 
 struction both synthetic and analytical, of demon- 
 stration and the enunciation of principle, but also 
 of a still more powerful and vital method — dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 The disciple is not understood to know a thing 
 until he has experienced it. He has not con- 
 quered a fault, in the opinion of his teacher, until 
 he has been tried in every possible part of his 
 nature experimentally along that particular line. 
 Thus the tests of the Order are not given in 
 writing but in the blood of the heart. The stu- 
 dent is not presented with a question upon some 
 one of life's problems and required to put down 
 on paper what he would do under given circum- 
 stances; but, by the guidance of the Masters of 
 the Order, the Karma of that soul is so grouped 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I3I 
 
 as to bring him the very circumstances that will 
 try to the uttermost his powers of choice. He 
 will be led, step by step apparently without the 
 intervention of any unusual agency, but never- 
 theless under the invisible guidance of the 
 Master, into situations where he must inevitably 
 either fall or stand upright, and where he will 
 learn a useful lesson in either case. If he falls 
 he will learn to know his own weakness and will 
 have opportunity of strengthening himself; if he 
 is able to stand upright and to resist the tempta- 
 tion, his victory will give him added energies to 
 attempt and undertake the impossible in the 
 future. For the Esoteric disciple is always re- 
 quired to attempt the impossible and it is thus 
 that he builds his immortality. The doing of the 
 possible and the apparent is for the ordinary man ; 
 but he who creates, who brings forward some 
 form of activity which has until now been latent, 
 and who is thereby a benefactor of the race, is 
 always scaling impossible heights. 
 
 As we have said, Esoterism is not an easy 
 path, but it is the way that is opening out before 
 a great many souls at the present time, and each 
 one enters upon this path when his hour has 
 struck. It is a path full of paradoxes for it looks 
 
132 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 at life from the standpoint of the soul, whereas 
 the world in general always considers the person- 
 ality. The discipline, and therefore the difficul- 
 ties of esoterism all center about this point. The 
 laws of the world refer to the outer life of the 
 citizen, and decree what he shall or shall not do ; 
 esoterism teaches what he must be and its laws 
 all have to do with self-control and the use of 
 the spiritual powers. Little is said of ordinary 
 vices and faults of body, for it is understood that 
 the aspirant is already an exemplary citizen ; but 
 the greatest stringency is required to be exercised 
 over the thoughts and desires of the lower man ; 
 for he who enters upon this path and then per- 
 mits himself to indulge in jealousy, or any form 
 of hatred, is in danger of being torn to pieces by 
 the very forces he invoked to his aid when he 
 entered. And what is true of the individual is 
 equally true of groups of men; so long as the 
 aim is high and unselfish, and the thoughts pure, 
 the group is strong and united; but as soon as 
 the individuals begin to have selfish ideas of 
 something to be gained for themselves as apart 
 from the interests of the whole, they are on the 
 downward path. Beware, O disciple, of separat- 
 ing thyself, even for a moment, in thy thoughts 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I33 
 
 ' from the whole ; for from separate desire comes 
 jealousy of those more favored, then dissatis- 
 faction, intolerance and hatred with all its 
 train will follow, and these will consume thy soul 
 with fierce burning. When the candidate ap- 
 proaches our Order for Initiation, he tears down, 
 by that action a part of the wall which until now 
 has shut out from him "the knowledge of good 
 and evil," and while receiving the beneficent in- 
 fluence of the good, he is also more open to the 
 evil suggestions of less evolved entities. It be- 
 hoves him therefore to fortify himself and watch 
 carefully his thoughts and desires. Having 
 entered one of our Centers, he will perhaps be 
 offered his choice, in one way or another, between 
 remunerative work for himself and less lucrative 
 employment in serving the Order or the world. 
 If he chooses work for the world, then will fol- 
 low the temptation to personal self-seeking even 
 in the work. He will be tried in every part of 
 his nature, and observed under the tests by the 
 Master who is guiding him; ambition will be 
 presented to him in a very specious and subtle 
 way; or it will be suggested to him that his aid 
 is essential to the work and he will be tempted 
 to pride; his prejudices will be stirred; his lower 
 
134 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 nature will constantly assert itself in favor of 
 ease and comfort or of enjoyment, all for the 
 sake of the work. Every day will bring its own 
 problem, and unless he is very pure-hearted he 
 will inevitably fall sometimes. The disciple, 
 however, who has entered upon the path of eso- 
 terism does not "stay fallen." He is no sooner 
 down than he rises quickly to his feet, and with 
 more care continues his way. Thus every fall is 
 a step upwards. 
 
 In the beginning of his discipleship, the prin- 
 cipal discipline centers around the elimination of 
 the personality, and the killing out of such faults 
 as criticism and the others we have enumerated; 
 but every day, month by month and year by year, 
 the disciple becomes both freer and more tightly 
 bound; for by one of those strange paradoxes 
 which mark the esoteric life, the more freedom 
 he attains from the bonds of his lower nature 
 the more closely does he cling to the ties of his 
 inner spiritual Self. Therefore the law by which 
 he lives becomes daily more stringent as he is 
 more exacting with himself; and what would 
 have been a virtue and a great victory yesterday is 
 today but an ordinary stepping-stone. The height 
 which was before him last year is today behind 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I35 
 
 his back and another height with still more 
 glorious promise is ahead of him — and this is life. 
 
 At this period Silence and Secrecy begin to be 
 required, in order that by adding them to Sacri- 
 fice, which he has already been practising, the 
 Lanu may gather to a center his deeper and inner 
 forces. We see this in nature, when the seed 
 germinates in the darkness and the silence of the 
 earth, undergoing changes of which it is little 
 conscious. All this is secret. 
 
 It is unfortunate that this word, with so pro- 
 found a meaning, should have been used in re- 
 cent years to cloak the baser designs of men, so 
 that today, if anything is spoken of as being 
 "secret" the ordinary person at once imagines 
 something too shameful to bear the light. Thus 
 secret societies are supposed to be banded to- 
 gether for the protection of persons and things 
 which are below the normal standard of morality 
 in the world, instead of beyond and above, as in 
 ancient times. There must always be secret 
 things so long as men are not full-grown. So 
 long as the race is still advancing, there will al- 
 ways be inequalities of intellectual acquirement 
 and of spiritual growth ; and every such inequal- 
 ity involves a "secret." For example, two dear 
 
I36 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 friends may be most congenial and closely united, 
 but however much they may wish to share every 
 confidence, there will always be some subtler 
 shades of meaning that each understands his own 
 way, there will be some lines of thought along 
 which the one knows that the other cannot fol- 
 low him, there will be some ideals that one has 
 but the other does not share, though he would. 
 No two souls are alike, and the differences con- 
 stitute the secrets of each one — the heights of 
 their natures which are theirs alone — the depths 
 into which no other soul can follow them. The 
 real word "secret" is synonymous with "sacred," 
 and this is the sense in which it is used in esoter- 
 ism. And the "secrets" of Secret Societies may 
 be, and sometimes are, of the same nature; for 
 what is true of the individual is true of the com- 
 munity. Those persons who are more nearly 
 alike in ideals or in habits of thought will come 
 together into a group, and many things that 
 they know and do, will, of necessity, be secrets 
 from another group of persons with different 
 ideals, just as the ideals of this second group will 
 be secrets from the first group ; not because either 
 one of these is engaged in any operations of a 
 doubtful nature, but simply that they look at life 
 
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION OF THE ORDER I37 
 
 from a side which the others could not, if they 
 would, understand. 
 
 Esoterism, as we explained in our first chapter, 
 is, above all things, secret. It appeals to the 
 deeps and the heights whence the soul cries out 
 to the "Father who seeth in secret." Every 
 heart has a sacred place which is open to God 
 alone. This is the place of the Silence in his own 
 soul, and from it will issue both sacrifice and 
 willing service ; for it is at once the dwelling of 
 the disciple and of the Most High. All service 
 to be truly acceptable must be both secret and 
 sacrificial, just as sacrifice must be in secret, and 
 as silence must bind all three in one whole. 
 
 S stands for Esoterism; it also symbolizes the 
 three duties of the disciple : Sacrifice, Silence and 
 Service. This is why the serpent, or the letter 
 S is so prominently displayed in all the insignia 
 of Occult and Esoteric Orders. The Old Ser- 
 pent, so well known to Bible students, is used in 
 occultism to represent the Great Force latent 
 throughout all nature which the disciple learns 
 to use with more and more certainty and power 
 as he advances from plane to plane of evolution. 
 Very little in explanation of this force is given 
 out to Members of the first degree, for whom this 
 
I38 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF ESOTERISM 
 
 text-book is primarily written, this degree being, 
 for their own safety, one of preparation, by the 
 methods we have outlined, for the awakening of 
 the higher powers. The soul of man evolves 
 continually and for ever, and even the Adeptate, 
 in which it reaches an exalted state of human 
 evolution has its degrees of evolution. By labor- 
 ious, personal discipline and by arduous work, 
 often reaching through many incarnations, the 
 Adept takes step after step, Initiation after In- 
 itiation, and always he sees before him other 
 steps leading towards Divinity. 
 
 It has been said: "Speech is for Time, Silence 
 for Eternity/' and truly the Silence surrounding 
 these Great Souls is awful, and the Secrets which 
 they hold but cannot yet communicate, give us, 
 who sometimes catch a glimpse of their faces, 
 some appreciation of the great gulf which still 
 separates the race of today from the man that 
 shall be. 
 
 Will ! Be Able ! Dare ! and Keep Silence ! for 
 To think is to create ! 
 
 "HE WHO FEELS HIS HEAKT BEAT PEACEFULLY, 
 HE SHALL HAVE PEACE." 
 
GENERAL PURPOSES 
 
 i. To form a chain of Universal Brotherhood 
 based upon the purest altruism, without 
 distinction of race, creed, caste or color; 
 in which reign tolerance, order, discipline, 
 liberty, compassion and love. 
 
 2. To study the Occult Sciences of the Orient, 
 
 and to seek by meditation, concentration 
 and a special line of conduct to develop 
 those powers which are in man and his 
 environment. 
 
 3. To provide a practical philosophy of life, 
 
 that shall aid man in meeting the problems 
 and enduring the trials of life with forti- 
 tude. 
 
 4. The mainspring of the Center is Service. 
 
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE TEACHINGS 
 
 All the Centers under the direction of the 
 Society have certain definite teachings and 
 methods of development. Some of these are : 
 i. The Universe is One, therefore all are united 
 in Universal Brotherhood. 
 
 2. The existence of a Supreme Deity. 
 
 3. Man is a Spiritual Being and, as such, is 
 
 responsible for his actions. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPMENT 
 
 1. The ascendancy of the Spiritual Man. 
 
 2. The development of the individuality or soul 
 
 nature. 
 
 3. The entire submission of the personality, or 
 
 man of emotions and desires, to the higher 
 nature. 
 
 4. The cultivation of the Will and its practice 
 
 in the daily life, in harmony with the 
 Divine Will. 
 
 5. Non-Resistance, or the Law of Love. 
 
 6. The realization of positive thought-force, and 
 
 the rejection of the negative states of fear, 
 doubt or morbidity. 
 
 7. The strict accomplishment of all the duties 
 
 of the daily life without any thought of 
 reward, leaving the results to the Divine. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 The Society at Washington has a carefully se- 
 lected Library of books, periodicals and pamph- 
 lets relating to Oriental Philosophy and Ethics, 
 Theosophy, Occultism, Psychical Research and 
 allied subjects. These may be consulted free 
 in the Reading Room, or borrowed upon pay- 
 ment of a small rental. Books are loaned by 
 mail to persons in any part of the world. 
 
 There is also a Free Division, which loans books 
 and pamphlets free by mail to inquirers; and 
 a Sales Division which supplies all current 
 books on these subjects. 
 
 All receipts from the sale or loan of books are 
 added to the Library Fund. 
 
 For information respecting the Library, address 
 
 THE LIBRARIAN, 
 
 1443 Q Street N. W., Washington, D. C 
 
MAY 23 1910 
 
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