UC-NRLF 
 
 lilllllllllll 
 
 P! ipiiilfi M 
 
 1 
 
 $B M3 E7S 
 
m 
 
 L I B R A R 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 OIKT OK 
 
 Received "^e^ , . , i8g/ . 
 
 3 Accessions No.4^:^^/^ Shelf No . 
 
 C^& ' 3 >> 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.arcJiive.org/details/echoesfromorientOOjudgrich 
 
ECHOES FROM 
 
 THE ORIENT 
 
 A BROAD OUTLINE 
 
 OF THEOSOPHICAL DOCTRINES. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM Q. JUDGE. 
 
 [OCCULTUS.tj 
 
 Reprinted from Kate Field's Washington. 
 
 -^■^ OP THR 
 
 'USIVERSIT7] 
 
 The Aryan Press, 
 
 Unh:^ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 The Path, 132 Nassau St. 
 1890. 
 
[^ L >J \S ^ 
 
 jf 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, in the 
 
 Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 D. C, by Wii.i.iAM Q. Judge. 
 
 ^:z 
 
 f/, 
 
DEDICATED lO 
 
 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky 
 
 WITH love 
 
 AND GRATITUDE 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
Antecedent Words. 
 
 'T'he title for these articles was chosen by Miss Kate 
 ^ Field when they were first sent for publication 
 in her new paper, Kate Field's Washington^ in Jan- 
 uary, 1890, and to her belongs all the credit for an 
 appropriate name. The use of the 710m de plume ' ' Oc- 
 cultus" was also the suggestion of Miss Field, since 
 it was intended that the personality of the author 
 should be hidden until the series was completed. 
 
 The restrictions upon the treatment of the subject 
 growing out of the popular character of the paper in 
 which they were published precluded the detail and 
 elaboration that would have been possible in a phil- 
 osophical or religious periodical. No pretense is 
 made that the subject of Theosophy as understood in 
 the Orient has been exhaustively treated, for, be- 
 lieving that millions of years have been devoted by 
 the sages who are the guardians of Theosophical 
 truth to its investigation, I think no one writer could 
 do more than to repeat some of the echoes reaching 
 his ears. 
 
 William Q. Judge. 
 New York^ September^ 1890. 
 
w^ 
 
 CHOES FROM THE l^RIENT. 
 
 HAT appears to the Western mind to be a very 
 strange superstition prevails in India about 
 wonderful persons who are said to be of immense 
 age, and who keep themselves secluded in places not 
 accessible to the ordinary traveler. So long has this 
 been current in India that the name applied to these 
 beings is well known in the Sanskrit language: " Ma- 
 hatma," a compound of two words, maha^ great, and 
 dtina^ soul. The belief in the existence of such per- 
 sons is not confined to the ignorant, but is shared by 
 the educated of all castes. The lower classes look 
 upon the Mahatmas as a sort of gods, and think most 
 of their wonderful powers and great age. The pun- 
 dits, or learned class, and educated Hindiis in gen- 
 eral, have a different view ; they say that Mahatmas 
 are men or souls with unlimited knowledge of nat- 
 ural laws and of man's history and development. 
 They claim also that the Mahatmas — or Rishees, as 
 they sometimes call them — have preserved the know- 
 ledge of all natural laws for ages, not only by tradi- 
 tion among their disciples, but also by actual records 
 and in libraries existing somewhere in the many un- 
 derground temples and passages in India. Some be- 
 lievers assert that there are also stores of books and 
 records in secluded parts all over that part of Thibet 
 which is not known to Europeans, access to them be- 
 ing possible only for the Mahatmas and Adepts. 
 
 The credence given to such a universal theory 
 grows out of an old Indian doctrine that man is a 
 
2 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 Spiritual being — a soul, in other words — and that this 
 soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth 
 in order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, 
 through repeated experience, as to enable one to as- 
 sume a body fit to be the dwelling-place of a Mahat- 
 ma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that partic- 
 ular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind. The 
 perfected men are said to know the truth about the 
 genesis of worlds and systems, as well as the develop- 
 ment of man upon this and other planets. 
 
 Were such doctrines held only in India, it would 
 be natural to pass the subject by with this brief men- 
 tion. But when it is found that a large body of peo- 
 ple in America and Europe hold the same beliefs, it 
 is interesting to note such an un- Western develop- 
 ment of thought. The Theosophical Society was 
 founded in New York in 1875, with the avowed ob- 
 ject of forming a nucleus for a Universal Brother- 
 hood, and its founders state that they believe the 
 Indian Mahatmas directed them to establish such a 
 society. Since its foundation it has gained members 
 in all countries, including people of wealth as well 
 as those in moderate circumstances, and the highly 
 cultured also. Within its ranks there flourish beliefs 
 in the Mahatmas of India and in Reifncarnation and 
 its twin doctrine, Karma. This last holds that no 
 power, human or divine, can save one from the con- 
 sequences of acts performed, and that in this life we 
 are experiencing the results due to us for all acts and 
 thoughts which were ours in the preceding incarna- 
 tion. 
 
 This has brought out a large body of literature in 
 books and magazines published in the United States, 
 England, India, and elsewhere. Newspapers are pub- 
 lished in the interest of the new-old cult in the vernac- 
 ular of Hindiistan and also in old Ceylon. Even Jap- 
 an has its periodicals devoted to the same end, and to 
 ignore so wide-spread a movement would bespeak 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 3 
 
 ignorance of the factors at work in our development. 
 When such an eminent authority as the great French 
 savant, Emile Bournouf, says that the Theosophical 
 movement must be counted as one of the three great 
 religious influences in the world to-day, there is no 
 need of an excuse for presenting its features in de- 
 tail to readers imbued with the civilization of the 
 West. 
 
 J N my former paper I merely hinted at the two princi- 
 pal doctrines promulgated by the Theosophical So- 
 ciety ; it is well now to notice the fact that the Society 
 itself was organized amid a shout of laughter, which 
 at intervals ever since has been repeated. Very 
 soon after it launched forth, its president. Col. H. S. 
 Olcott, who during our late war was a familiar figure 
 in Washington, found a new member in Baron Henry 
 Louis de Palm, who died and obligingly left his body 
 to the Colonel to be cremated. The funeral was 
 'held at Masonic Hall, New York, and attracted great 
 attention. It was Theosophical in its character. Col. 
 Olcott presided, a Spiritualist offered an invocation, 
 and a Materialist read a service. All this, of course, 
 drew forth satire from the press, but served the pur- 
 pose of gaining some attention for the young Society. 
 Its history since then has been remarkable, and it is 
 safe to say that no other similar body in this century 
 has drawn to itself so much consideration, stirred up 
 such a thinking among people on mystical subjects, 
 and grown so rapidly amid the loudest derision and 
 against the fiercest opposition, within the short space 
 of fifteen years. 
 
 While the press has been sneering and enemies 
 have been plotting, the workers in the Society have 
 established centers all over the world, and are to-day 
 engaged persistently in sending out Theosophical lit- 
 erature into every nook and comer of the United 
 
4 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 States. A glance at the Theosophical map shows a 
 line of Branches of the Society dotting a strip of 
 this country which reaches from the city of New 
 York to the Pacific Coast; at either end this belt 
 spreads out to take in Boston and New Orleans in the 
 East and San Francisco and San Diego in the West ; 
 while near the middle of the continent there is an- 
 other accumulation of centers. This is claimed to be 
 strictly and mystically Theosophical, because at each 
 end of the magic line of effort and at its central 
 point their is an accumulation of nuclei*. It is a fact 
 that the branches of the Society in America are rap- 
 idly running up into the first hundred. For some 
 little time there existed in Washington a Branch of 
 the Society called the Gnostic, but it never engaged 
 in any active work. After it had been once incontin- 
 ently dissolved by its president, who thereafter with- 
 drew, leaving the presidency in the hands of another, 
 the governing body of the American Theosophists 
 formally dischartered the Gnostic, and its members 
 joined other Branches. There is, however, to-day aS 
 Washington Branch named boldly after the much 
 lauded and belittled Mme. H. P. Blavatsky, while 
 the Theosophical map shows an accumulation of in- 
 fluences in Washington that point to an additional 
 Branch, and inquiry in official quarters discloses the 
 fact that the matter is already mooted. 
 
 The Theosophical map of which I have spoken is 
 a curiosity, an anomaly in the nineteenth century. 
 Few of the members are allowed to see it ; but those 
 who are say that it is a register of the actual state, 
 day by day, of the whole United States Section — a 
 sort of weather map, with areas of pressure and Theo- 
 sophical humidity in all directions. Where a Branch 
 is well founded and in good condition, the spot or 
 sensitive surface shows clearness and fixity. In cer- 
 tain places which are in a formative condition there 
 is another appearance symptomatic of a vortex that 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 5 
 
 may soon bring forth a Branch ; while, wherever the 
 principle of disintegration has crept into an existing 
 organization, there the formerly bright and fixed 
 spots grow cloudy. By means of this map, those 
 who are managing the real growth of the movement 
 can tell how it is going and aid it intelligently. Of 
 course all this sounds ridiculous in our age; but, 
 whether true or false, there are many Theosophists 
 who believe it. A similar arrangement would be de- 
 sirable in other branches of our civilization. 
 
 The grand theories of the Theosophists regarding 
 evolution, human races, religions and general civil- 
 ation, as well as the future state of man and the 
 various planets he inhabits, should engage our more 
 serious attention ; and of these I propose to speak at 
 another time. 
 
 III. 
 
 ^HE first Echo from the burnished and mysterious 
 ^ East which reverberated from these pages sound- 
 ed the note of Universal Brotherhood. Among the 
 men of this day such an idea is generally accepted as 
 vague and Utopian, but one which it will do no harm 
 to subscribe to ; they therefore quickly assent, and as 
 quickly nullify the profession by action in the opposite 
 direction. For the civilization of to-day, and especi- 
 ally of the United States, is an attempt to accentuate 
 and glorify the individual. The oft-repeated declara- 
 tion that any born citizen may aspire to occupy the 
 highest office in the gift of the nation is proof of this, 
 and the Mahatmas who guard the truth through the 
 ages while nations are decaying, assert that the re- 1 
 action is sure to come in a relapse into the worst forms * 
 of anarchy. The only way to prevent such a relapse 
 is for men to really practice the Universal Brother- 
 hood they are willing to accept with the tongue. 
 These exalted beings further say that all men are — 
 as a scientific and dynamic fact — united, whether they 
 
6 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 admit it or not ; and that each nation suffers, on the 
 moral as well as the physical plane, from the faults 
 of all other nations, and receives benefit from the 
 others also even against its will. This is due to the 
 existence of an imponderable, tenuous medium which 
 interpenetrates the entire globe, and in which all the 
 acts and thoughts of every man are felt and impressed, 
 to be afterward reflected again. Hence, say the 
 Adepts, the thoughts or the doctrines and beliefs of 
 men are of the higher importance, because those that 
 prevail among people of a low character are just as 
 much and as easily reflected upon the earth as are 
 the thoughts and beliefs of persons occupying a high- 
 er plane of culture. 
 
 This is a most important tenet, if true ; for, with 
 the aid of the discoveries just now admitted by science 
 respecting hypnotism, we are at once able to see that 
 an enormous hypnotizing machine is about. As this 
 tenuous medium — called by the men of the East 
 '^Akasa" and by the mediaeval philosophers the 
 "Astral Light" — is entirely beyond our control, we 
 are at the mercy of the pictures made in it and re- 
 flected upon us. 
 
 If to this we add the wonderfully interesting doc- 
 trine of Reincarnation, remembering also that the 
 images made in the Astral Light persist for centuries, 
 it is at once seen that upon returning again to earth- 
 life we are affected for good or evil by the conduct, 
 the doctrine and the aspirations of preceding nations 
 and men. Returning here now, for instance, we are 
 moved, without our knowledge, by the impressions 
 made in the Astral Light at the time when the In- 
 dians, the Spaniards and the harsh Puritans lived up- 
 on the earth. The words of the immortal Shakspere— 
 The evil that men do lives after them ; 
 The good is oft interred with their bones, 
 
 receive a striking exemplification under this doctrine. 
 For, as the evil thoughts and deeds are the more 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 7 
 
 material and therefore more firmly impacted into the 
 Astral Light, while the good, being spiritual, easily 
 fade out, we are in effect at the mercy of the evil 
 done. And the Adepts assert that Shakspere was,- 
 unconsciously to himself, inspired by one of their own 
 number. I shall refer again to this branch of the 
 subject. The scheme of evolution put forth by these 
 beings and their disciples is so broad, deep and far- 
 reaching as to stagger the ordinary mind. It takes 
 in with ease periods of years runliihg up into trillions 
 and quadrillions. It claims that man has been on 
 earth for millions of years more than science yet is 
 willing to admit. It is not bound by the narrow 
 scheme of biblical chronologists, nor startled by the 
 magnificent age of civilizations which disappeared long 
 ago. The keepers of this doctrine say that they and 
 their predecessors lived in those older times, and have 
 preserved not only the memory of them, but also 
 complete records. These records, moreover, are not 
 merely on perishable paper and palm leaf, but on im- 
 perishable stone. They point to such remains as 
 the statues twenty-seven feet high found on Easter 
 Island ; to rows of gigantic statues in Asia, that by 
 their varying heights show the gradual diminution of 
 human stature, which kept pace with other degener- 
 ations ; and, to crown all, they say that they possess 
 to-day in the East the immense and well guarded 
 collections of records of all sorts. Not only are these 
 1 records said to relate to the physical history of man, 
 but also to his astral and spiritual evolution. 
 
 Before closing this paper, I can only indicate one 
 of their basic doctrines in the scheme of evolution. 
 That is, that the evolution of the inner, astral form 
 of man came first in order, and continued for an im- 
 mense number of years before his physical structure 
 was built up around it. This, with other portions of 
 the doctrine, is vital and w411 aid much in an under- 
 standing of the complex questions presented to us by 
 
8 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 the history of the human race, both that which is 
 known and that which is still resting on conjecture. 
 
 IV. 
 
 T^HE records to which in my last paper I referred, 
 ■^ as having- been kept by the Adepts and now in 
 the possession of their present representatives and 
 successors — Adepts also — relate not only to the birth 
 of planets in this solar system, but also to the evolu- 
 tion and development of man, through the various 
 kingdoms of nature, until he reaches the most per- 
 fect condition which can be imagined. The evolu- 
 tion of the human being includes not only the genesis 
 of his mortal frame, but, as well, the history of the 
 inner man, whom they are accustomed to call the 
 real one. 
 
 This, then, brings us to a very interesting claim 
 put forward for the Wisdom Religion, that it pre-' 
 tends to throw light not only upon man's emotions 
 and mental faculties, but also upon his pre-natal and 
 post-mortem states, both of which are of the high- 
 est interest and importance. Such questions as, 
 "Where have I come from?" and, "What shall be 
 my condition after death?" trouble and confuse the 
 minds of all men, ignorant or cultured. Priests and 
 thinkers have, from time to time, formulated the- 
 ories, more or less absurd, as to those pre-natal and 
 post-mortem states, while the Science of to-day 
 laughs in derision at the idea of making any inquiry 
 into the matter whatever. Theologians have offered 
 explanations, all of which relate only to what they 
 suppose will happen to us after death, leaving en- 
 tirely out of view and wholly unanswered the natural 
 question, "What were we before we were born 
 here?" And, taking them on their own ground, 
 they are in a most illogical position, because, having 
 once postulated immortality for the soul — the real 
 man — they cannot deny immortality in either direc- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 9 
 
 tion. If man is immortal, that immortality could 
 never have had a beginning, or else it would have an 
 end. Hence their only escape from the dilemma is 
 to declare that each soul is a special creation. But 
 this doctrine of a special creation for each soul born 
 upon the earth, is not dwelt upon or expounded by 
 the priests, inasmuch as it is deemed better to keep it 
 discreetly in the background. 
 
 The Wisdom Religion, on the other hand, rem_aiiis 
 Ipg^cal from beginning to end. It declares that 
 man is a spiritual being, and allows of no break 
 in the chain of anything once declared immortal. 
 The Ego of each man is immortal; "always was 
 existent, always will be, and never can be non- 
 existent;" appearing now and again, and reappear- 
 ing, clothed in bodies on each occasion different, it 
 only appears to be mortal ; it always remains the sub- 
 stratum and support for the personality acting upon 
 the stage of life. And in those appearances as 
 mortal, the questions mooted above — as to the pre- 
 natal and post-mortem states — are of vital interest, 
 because knowledge or ignorance concerning them al- 
 ters man's thought and action while an actor on the 
 stage, and it is necessary for him to know in order 
 that he may so live as to aid in the grand upward 
 sweep of the evolutionary wave. 
 
 Now the Adepts have for ages pursued scientific 
 experimentation and investigation upon those lines. 
 Seers themselves of the highest order, they have re- 
 corded not only their own actual experiences beyond 
 the veil of matter, on both sides, but have collected, 
 compared, analyzed and preserved the records of ex- 
 periences of the same sort by hundreds of thousands 
 of lesser seers, their own disciples ; and this process 
 has been going on from time immemorial. Let 
 Science laugh as it may, the Adepts are the_oiilyi 
 true scientists, for they take into account every fac-i 
 tor in the question, whereas Science is limited byl 
 
lO ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 brain-power, by circumstance, by imperfection of in- 
 struments, and by a total inability to perceive any- 
 thing- deeper than the mere phenomena presented by 
 matter. The records of the visions and experiences 
 of the greater and lesser seers, through the ages, 
 are extant to-day. Of their mass, nothing has been 
 accepted except that which has been checked and 
 verified by millions of independent observations ; and 
 therefore the Adepts stand in the position of those 
 who possess actual experimental knowledge of what 
 precedes the birth of the Ego in a human form, and 
 what succeeds when the "mortal coil " is cast away. 
 This recording of experiences still g-oes on ; for the 
 infinity of the changes of Nature in its evolution per- 
 mits of no stoppage, no "last word," no final dec- 
 laration. As the earth sweeps around the sun, it not 
 only passes through new places in its orbit, but, 
 dragged as it is by the sun through his greater orbit, 
 involving millions of millions of years, it must in that 
 larger circle enter upon new fields in space and un- 
 precedented conditions. Hence the Adepts go far-' 
 ther yet and state that, as the phenomena presented! 
 by matter to-day are different from those presented a| 
 million years ago, so matter will in another million! 
 of years show different phenomena still. Indeed, 
 if we could translate our sight to that time, far back 
 in the past of our globe, we could see conditions and 
 phenomena of the material world so different from 
 those now surrounding us that it would be almost 
 impossible to believe we had ever been in such a 
 state as that then prevailing. And the changes 
 toward the conditions that will prevail at a point 
 equally remote in advance of us, in time, and which 
 will be not less than those that have occurred, are in 
 progress now. Nothing in the material world en- 
 dures absolutely unchanged in itself or its conditions, 
 even for the smallest conceivable portion of time. 
 All that />, is forever in process of becoming something 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. II 
 
 else. This is not mere transcendentalism, but is an 
 old established doctrine called, in the East, "the doc- 
 trine of the constant, eternal change of atoms from 
 one state into another." 
 
 V. 
 
 npHE ancient doctrine of the constant, eternal change 
 ^ of every atom from state to state, is founded 
 upon, or rather grows out of, another which postu- 
 lates that there is no such thing as dead matter. At 
 every conceivable point in the universe there are lives ; 
 nowhere can be found a spot that is dead ; and each 
 life is forever hastening onward to higher evolution. 
 To admit this, we must of course grant that matter 
 is never perceived by the eye or through any instru- 
 ment. It is but the phenomena of matter that we 
 recognize with the senses, and hence, say the sages, 
 the thing denominated "matter" by us is an illu- 
 sion. Even the protoplasm of the schools is not the 
 original matter ; it is simply another of the phenom- 
 ena. This first original matter is called by Paracelsus 
 and others primordial matter, the nearest approach 
 to which in the Eastern school is found in the Sans- 
 krit word viidaprakriti. This is the root of matter, 
 invisible, not to be weighed, or measured, or tested 
 with any instrument of human invention. And yet 
 it is the only real matter underlying all the phenom- 
 ena to which we erroneously give its name. But even 
 it is not dead, but full of the lives first referred to. 
 Now, bearing this in mind, w^e consider the vast 
 solar system, yet vast only when not compared with 
 the still greater aggregation of stars and planets 
 around it. The great sidereal year covered by the 
 sun in going through the twelve signs of the zodiac 
 includes over 25,000 mortal years of 365 days each. 
 While this immense circuit is being traversed, the 
 sun drags the whole solar system with him around 
 his own tremendous orbit, and we may imagine — for 
 
12 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 there are no observations on the point — that, while 
 the 25,000 years of travel around the zodiac have 
 been passing, the solar system as a whole has ad- 
 vanced along the sun's own orbit only a little distance. 
 But after millions of years shall have been consumed 
 in these progresses, the sun must bring his train of 
 planets to stellar space where they have never been 
 before; here other conditions and combinations of 
 matter may very well obtain — conditions and states 
 of which our scientists have never heard, of which 
 there never has been recorded one single phenom- 
 enon; and the difference between planetary condi- 
 tions then and now will be so great that no resem- 
 blance shall be observed. 
 
 This is a branch of cyclic law with which the 
 Eastern sages are perfectly familiar. They have in- 
 quired into it, recorded their observations, and pre- 
 served them. Having watched the uncountable lives 
 during cycles upon cycles past, and seen their be- 
 havior under different conditions in other stellar 
 spaces long ago left behind, they have some basis 
 upon which to draw conclusions as to what will be 
 the state of things in ages yet to come. 
 
 This brings us to an interesting theory offered by 
 Theosophy respecting life itself as exhibited by man, 
 his death and sleep. It relates also to what is gen- 
 erally called "fatigue." The most usual explana- 
 tion for the phenomenon of sleep is that the body 
 becomes tired and more or less depleted of its vital- 
 ity and then seeks repose. This, says Theosophy, is 
 just the opposite of the truth, for, instead of having 
 suffered a loss of vitality, the body, at the conclusion 
 of the day, has more life in it than when it waked. 
 During the waking state the life-waves rush into the 
 body with greater intensity every hour, and, we be- 
 ing unable to resist them any longer than the period 
 usually observed, they overpower us and we fall 
 asleep. While sleeping, the life waves adjust them- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. I3 
 
 selves to the molecules of the body; and when the 
 equilibrium is complete we again wake to continue 
 the contest with life. If this periodical adjustment 
 did not occur, the life current w^ould destroy us. Any 
 derangement of the body that tends to inhibit this 
 adjustment is a cause of sleeplessness, and perhaps 
 death. Finally, death of the body is due to the in- 
 equality of the contest with the life force ; it at last 
 overcomes us, and we are compelled to sink into the 
 grave. Disease, the common property of the human 
 race, only reduces the power of the body to adjust 
 and resist. Children, say the Adepts, sleep more 
 than adults, and need earlier repose, because the 
 bodily machine, being young and tender, is easily 
 overcome by life and made to sleep. 
 
 Of course, in so short an article, I cannot elaborate 
 this theory; but, although not probably acceptable 
 now to Science, it will be one day accepted as true. 
 As it is beginning to be thought that electricity is 
 all-pervading, so, perhaps, ere long it will be agreed 
 that life is universal even in what we are used to call- 
 ing dead matter. 
 
 As, how^ever, it is plain to any observant mind that 
 there seems to be more or less intelligence in the 
 operations of this life energy, we naturally approach 
 another interesting Theosophical doctrine as to the 
 beings and hierarchies directing this energy. 
 
 VI. 
 
 \A/hile studying these ancient ideas, we may as 
 ^ ' well prepare ourselves to have them clash with 
 many long-accepted views. But since Science has 
 very little save conjecture to offer when it attempts 
 to solve the great problems of genesis and cosmo- 
 genesis, and, in the act of denying old dogmas, al- 
 most always starts with a hypothesis, the Theosophist 
 may feel safe. In important matters, such as the 
 heat of the sun or the history of the moon there is 
 
14 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 no agreement between scientists or astronomers. 
 Newton, Pouillet, Zollner, Secchi, Fizcau, Waterston, 
 Rosetti, and others all differ about the sun, the di- 
 vergence between their estimates of its heat being 
 as high as 8,998,600 degrees. 
 
 If we find the Adepts stating that the moon is not 
 a mass thrown off from the earth in cooling, but, on 
 the contrary, is the progenitor of this globe, we need 
 not fear the jeers of a Science that is as imcertain 
 and unsafe in many things as it is positive. 
 
 Had I to deal only with those learned men of the 
 schools who abide by the last utterance from the 
 mouths of the leaders of Science, I should never at- 
 tempt the task of speaking of the beings and hierar- 
 chies who guide the lives of which I wrote in my 
 last. My pen would drop from a hand paralyzed by 
 negations. But the spiritual beliefs of the common 
 people will still be in vogue when the learned mater- 
 ialist has passed away. The great Immanuel Kant 
 said : ' ' I confess I am much disposed to assert the 
 existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to 
 place my own soul in the class of these beings. It 
 will hereafter, I know not where nor when, yet be 
 proved that the human soul stands, even in this life, 
 in indissoluble connection with all immaterial natures 
 in the spirit world, that it reciprocally acts upon 
 these, and receives impressions from them." And 
 the greater number of men think so also. 
 
 That there are hierarchies ruling in the universe is 
 not a new idea. It can be easily found to-day in the 
 Christian Church. The early fathers taught it, St. 
 Paul spoke of it, and the Roman Catholic Church has 
 it clearly now in the Book of Ritual of the Spirits of 
 the Stars. The four archangels who guard the four 
 cardinal points represent the groups of rulers in the 
 ancient system, or the heads of each group. In that 
 system the rulers are named Dhyan Chohans. Al- 
 though the Theosophical philosophy does not postu- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 15 
 
 late a personal God, whether extra- or intra-cosmic, 
 it cannot admit that Nature is left unaided in her 
 work, but asserts that the Dhyan Chohans aid her, 
 and are constantly occupied in directing- the all-per- 
 vading life in its evolutionary movement. Mme. 
 Blavatsky, speaking on this subject in her Secret 
 Doctrine^ quotes from the old Book of Dzyati thus : 
 
 *' An army of the Sons of Light stands at each an- 
 gle, the Lipika in the middle wheel." 
 
 The four angels are the four quarters, and the 
 "middle wheel " is the center of space; and that cen- 
 ter is everywhere, because as space is illimitable, the 
 center of it must be wherever the cognizing con- 
 sciousness is. And the same author, using the Dis- 
 ciple's Catechis7n^ writes: 
 
 "What is it that ever is? Space, the Anupadaka. 
 What is it that ever was? The germ in the Root. 
 What is it that is ever coming and going? The great 
 Breath. Then there are three eternals? No, the 
 three are one. That which ever is is one ; that which 
 ever was is one ; that which is ever being and becom- 
 ing" is also one ; and this is space. " 
 
 In this parentless and eternal space is the wheel in 
 the center where the Lipika are, of whom I cannot 
 speak; at the four angles are the Dhyan Chohans, 
 and doing their will among men on this earth are 
 the Adepts — the Mahatmas. The harmony of the 
 spheres is the voice of the Law, and that voice is 
 obeyed alike by the Dhyan Chohan and the Mahatma 
 — on their part with willingness, because they are the 
 law ; on the part of men and creatures because they 
 are bound by the adamantine chains of the law 
 which they do not understand. 
 
 When I said that nothing could be spoken about 
 the Lipika, I meant that, because of their mysterious 
 nature and incomprehensible powers, it is not possi- 
 ble to know enough to say anything with either sense 
 or certainty. But of the Dhyan Chohans and the 
 
l6 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 Adepts we may know something, and are often given, 
 as it were, tangible proof of their existence. For the 
 Adepts are living men, using bodies similar to ours ; 
 they are scattered all over the earth in all nations; 
 they know each other, but not according to mere 
 forms and Masonic signs of recognition, unless we call 
 natural, physical, and astral signs Masonic. They 
 have times when they meet together and are presided 
 over by some among their number who are more ad- 
 vanced in knowledge and power than the rest ; and 
 these higher Adepts again h^ve their communica- 
 tions, at which that One who presides is the highest ; 
 from these latter begins the communication with the 
 Dhyan Chohans. All in their several degrees do that 
 work which pertains to their degree, and although 
 only to the Highest can be ascribed any governance 
 or guidance of nature and mankind, yet the very 
 least occupies an important place in the whole 
 scheme. Freemasons and the numerous mock-Rosi- 
 crucians of the day will probably not unanimously 
 accept this view, inasmuch as these Adepts have not 
 submitted to their ritual ; but that there has always 
 been a widespread — and, if you please, a sometimes 
 sneaking — belief in such beings and orders, is not 
 difficult to discern or prove. 
 
 VII. 
 
 A N old argument for the existence of an extra-cos- 
 •^ mic — a personal — God, is this very intelligence 
 that appears to pervade nature, from which the con- 
 clusion is drawn that there is a being who is the in- 
 telligent director. But Theosophy does not admit 
 any such God, for he is neither necessary nor possi- 
 ble. There are too many evidences of implaca- 
 bility in the operations of nature for us to be able 
 for very long to cherish the notion of a personal 
 God. We see that storms will rage and overwhelm 
 good and bad together ; that earthquakes have no re- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 1 7 
 
 spect for age, sex or rank, and that wherever a nat- 
 ural law has to act it will do so regardless of human 
 pain or despair. 
 
 The Wisdom Religion in postulating hierarchies 
 such as those I have previously referred to, does not 
 thereby outline a personal God. The difference be- 
 tween the petsonal God — say Jehovah for one — and 
 the Lipika with the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans, is 
 very great. Law and order, good sense, decency and 
 progress are all subservient to Jehovah, sometimes 
 disappearing altogether under his beneficent sway; 
 while in the Wisdom Religion the Dhyan Chohans 
 can only follow the immutable laws eternally traced 
 in the Universal Mind, and this they do intelligently, 
 because they are in fact men become gods. As these 
 eternal laws are far-reaching, and as Nature herself 
 is blind, the hierarchies — the hosts at the angles — 
 have to guide the evolutionary progress of matter. 
 
 In order to grasp the doctrine better, let us take one 
 period of manifestation such as that we are now in. 
 This began millions of millions of years ago, suc- 
 ceeding a vast period of darkness or hibernation. It 
 is called Chaos in the Christian scheme. And pre- 
 ceding that period of sleep there were eternally 
 other periods of activity or manifestation. Now, in 
 those prior periods of energy and action the same 
 evolutionary progress went on, from and out of 
 which came great beings — men perfected and be- 
 come what to us are gods, who had aided in count- 
 less evolutions in the eternal past. These became 
 Dhyan Chohans and took part in all succeeding evo- 
 lutions. Such is the great goal for a human soul to 
 strive after. Before it the paltry and impossible re- 
 wards of the Christian heaven turn to dross. 
 
 The mistake must not be made of confining these 
 great evolutionary periods and the beings spoken of, 
 to our miserable earth. We are only in the chain. 
 There are other systems, other spaces where energy, 
 
1 8 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 knowledge and power are exercised. In the myster- 
 ious Milky-Way there are spots vast in size and incom- 
 prehensibly distant, where there is room for many 
 such systems as ours ; and even while we now watch 
 the assemblage of stars, there is some spot among 
 them where the vast night of death is spreading re- 
 morselessly over a once fair system. 
 
 Now these beings, under the sway of the law as 
 they are, seem perhaps to be sometimes implacable. 
 Occasions are met where to mortal judgment it 
 would seem to be wise or just to save a city from de- 
 struction, or a nation from decay, or a race from 
 total extinction. But if such a fate is the natural re- 
 sult of actions performed or a necessary step in the 
 cyclic sweep, it cannot be averted. As one of the 
 Masters of this noble science has written : 
 
 ' ' We never pretended to be able to draw nations in 
 the mass to this or that crisis in spite of the general 
 drift of the world* $ cosmic relations. The cycles must 
 run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light 
 and darkness succeed each other as day does night. 
 The major and minor yugas must be accomplished 
 according to the established order of things. And we, 
 borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and 
 direct some of its minor currents. If we had the 
 powers of the imaginary personal God, and the im- 
 mutable laws were but toys to play with, then, in- 
 deed, might we have created conditions that would 
 have turned this earth into an Arcadia for lofty souls. " 
 
 And so in individual cases — even among those who 
 are in direct relations with some Adept — the law can- 
 not be infringed. Karma demands that such and 
 such a thing should happen to the individual, and the 
 greatest God or the smallest Adept cannot life a finger 
 to prevent it. A nation may have heaped up against 
 its account as a nation a vast amount of bad Karma. 
 Its fate is sure, and although it may have noble 
 units in it, great souls even who are Adepts them- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. I9 
 
 selves, nothing can save it, and it will ' ' go out like a 
 torch dipped in water." 
 
 Such was the end of ancient Egypt, of whose 
 former glory no man of this day knows aught. Al- 
 though to us she appears in the historical sky as a 
 full-risen sun, she yet had her period of growth, 
 when mighty Adepts sat upon the throne and guided 
 the people. She gradually reached a high point of 
 power and then her people grew material; the 
 Adepts retired ; pretended Adepts took their place, 
 and gradually her glory weaned until at last the light 
 of Egypt became darkness. The same story was re- 
 peated in Chaldea and Assyria and also upon the sur- 
 face of our own America. . Here a great, a glorious 
 civiHzation once flourished, only to disappear as the 
 others did ; and that a grand development of civiliza- 
 tion is beginning here again is one of the operations of 
 the just and perfect law of Karma to the eye of the 
 Theosophist, but one of the mysterious workings of 
 an irresponsible providence to those who believe in a 
 personal God who giveth the land of other men to 
 the good Christian. The development of the Amer- 
 ican nation has a mysterious but potent connection 
 with the wonderful past of the Atlanteans, and is one 
 of those great stories outlined in the book of fate by 
 the Lipika to whom I referred last week. 
 
 vni. 
 
 A MONO the Adepts the rise and fall of nations and 
 ^^ civilizations are subjects which are studied un- 
 der the great cycHc movements. They hold that 
 there is an indissoluble connection between man and 
 every event that takes place on this globe, not only 
 the ordinary changes in politics and social life, but 
 all the happenings in the mineral, vegetable and ani- 
 mal kingdoms. The changes in the seasons are for 
 and through man ; the great upheavals of continents, 
 the movements of immense glaciers, the terrific erup- 
 
20 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 tions of volcanoes, or the sudden overflowings of 
 great rivers, are all for and through man, whether 
 he be conscious of it or present or absent. And 
 they tell of great changes in the inclination of the 
 axis of the earth, past and to come, all due to man. 
 
 This doctrine is incomprehensible to the Western 
 nineteenth century, for it is hidden from observation, 
 opposed to tradition and contradicted by education. 
 But the Theosophist who has passed beyond the ele- 
 mentary stages knows that it is true nevertheless. 
 "What," says the worshipper of Science, "has man 
 got to do with the Charleston earthquake, or with 
 the showers of cosmic dust that invade our atmos- 
 phere ? Nothing. ' ' 
 
 But the Adept, standing on the immeasurable 
 height where centuries lie under his glance, sees the 
 great cycles and the lesser ones rolling onward, in- 
 fluenced by man and working out their changes for 
 his punishment, reward, experience and development. 
 
 It is not necessary now to try to make it clear how 
 the thoughts and deeds of men effect any changes 
 in material things ; that I will lay down for the present 
 as a dogma, if you please, to be made clear later on. 
 
 The great subject of cycles has been touched upon, 
 and brings us close to a most facinating statement 
 made by the Theosophical Adepts. It is this, that the 
 cycles in their movement are bringing up to the sur- 
 face now, in the United States and America gener- 
 ally, not only a great glory of civilization which was 
 forgotten eleven thousand or more years ago, but 
 also the very men, the monads — the egos, as they 
 call them — who were concerned so many ages since in 
 developing and bringing it to its final lustre. In 
 fact, we of the nineteenth century, hearing of new 
 discoveries and inventions every day, and dreaming 
 of great advances in all arts and sciences, are the same 
 individuals who inhabited bodies among the powerful 
 and brilliant as well as wicked, Atlanteans, whose 
 
, ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 21 
 
 name is forever set immortal in the Atlantic Ocean. 
 The Europeans are also Atlantean monads ; but the 
 flower, so to speak, of this revival or resurrection, is 
 and is to be on the American continent. I will not 
 say the United States, for mayhap, when the sun of 
 our power has risen again, there may be no United 
 States for it to rise upon. 
 
 . Of course, in order to be able to accept in any de- 
 gree this theory, it is essential that one should be- 
 lieve in the twin Th'eosophical doctrines of Karma 
 and Reincarnation, To me it seems quite plain. I 
 can almost see the Atlanteans in these citizens of 
 America, sleepy, and not well aware who they are, 
 but yet full of the Atlantean ideas, which are only 
 prevented from full and clear expression by the in- 
 herited bodily and mental environment which cramps 
 and binds the mighty man within. This again is 
 Nemesis-Karma that punishes us by means of these 
 galling limitations, penning up our power and for the 
 time frustrating our ambition. It is because, when 
 we were in Atlantean bodies, we did wickedly, not the 
 mere sordid wicked things of this day, but high deeds 
 of evil such as by St. Paul were attributed to unknown 
 spiritual beings in high places. We degraded spir- 
 itual things and turned mighty powers over nature 
 to base uses ; we did in excelsis that which is hinted at 
 now in the glorification of wealth, of material goods, 
 of the individual over the spiritual and above the 
 great Man — Humanity. This has now its compensa- 
 tion in our present inability to attain what we want 
 or to remove from among us the grinding-stones of 
 poverty. We are, as yet, only preparers, much as we 
 may exalt our plainly crude American development. 
 Herein lies the very gist of the cycle's meaning. 
 It is a preparatory cycle with much of necessary de- 
 struction in it ; for, before construction, we must 
 have some disintegration. We are preparing here in 
 America a new race which will exhibit the perfec- 
 
22 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 tion of the glories that I said were being slowly 
 brought to the surface from the long forgotten past. 
 This is why the Americas are seen to be in a perpet- 
 ual ferment. It is the seething and bubbling of the 
 older races in the refining-pot, and the slow coming 
 up of the material for the new race. Here, and no- 
 where else, are to be found men and women of every 
 race living together, being governed together, at- 
 tacking nature and the problems of life together, 
 and bringing forth children who combine, each one, 
 two races. This process will go on until in the 
 course of many generations there will be produced 
 on the American continents an entirely new race; 
 new bodies ; new orders of intellect ; new powers of 
 the mind ; curious and unheard-of psychic powers, as 
 well as extraordinary physical ones ; with new senses 
 and extensions of present senses now unforeseen. 
 When this new sort of body and mind are generated 
 — then other monads, or our own again, will animate 
 them and paint upon the screen of time the pictures 
 of 100,000 years ago. 
 
 IX. 
 
 In dealing with these doctrines one is compelled now 
 * and then to greatly extend the scope and meaning 
 of many English words. The word "race" is one 
 of these. In the Theosophical scheme, as given out 
 by the sages of the East, seven great races are spoken 
 of. Each one of these includes all the different so- 
 called races of our modern ethnology. Hence the 
 necessity for having seven great root-races, sub-races, 
 family races, and countless offshoot races. The root- 
 race sends off sub-races, and these divide into family 
 groups; all, however, being included in the grea>t 
 root-race then undergoing development. 
 
 The appearance of these great root-races is always 
 just when the world's development permits. When 
 the globe was forming, the first root-race was more 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 2$ 
 
 or less ethereal and had no such body as we now in- 
 habit. The cosmic environment became more dense 
 and the second race appeared, soon after which the 
 first wholly disappeared. Then the third came on 
 the scene, after an immense lapse of time, during 
 which the second had been developing the bodies 
 needed for the third. At the coming of the fourth 
 root-race it is said that the present human form was 
 evolved, although gigantic and in some respects dif- 
 ferent from our own. It is from this point — the 
 fourth race — that the Theosophical system begins to 
 speak of man as such. 
 
 The old book quoted by Mme. Blavatsky has it in 
 this wise : 
 
 ' ' Thus two by two on the seven zones the third 
 race gave birth to the fourth;" and, 
 
 * ' The first race on every zone was moon-colored ; 
 the second, yellow, like gold; the third, red; the 
 fourth, brown, which became black with sin." 
 
 Topinard, in his Anthropology^ gives support to this, 
 as he says that there are three fundamental colors in 
 the human organism — red, yellow and black. The 
 brown race, which became black with sin, refers to 
 the Atlantean sorcerer race of which I spoke in my 
 last ; its awfully evil practices, both mental and phys- 
 ical, having produced a change in the color of the 
 skin. 
 
 The evolution of these seven great races covers 
 many millions of years, and it must not be forgotten 
 that when the new race is fully evolved the preceding 
 race disappears, as the monads in it have been gradu- 
 ally reincarnated in the bodies of the new race. The 
 present root-race to which we belong, no matter what 
 the sub-race or family we may be in, is the fifth. It 
 became a separate, distinct and completely-defined 
 race about one million years ago, and has yet many 
 more years to serve before the sixth will be ushered 
 in. This fifth race includes also all the nations in 
 
24 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 Europe, as they together form a family race and are 
 not to be divided off from each other. 
 
 Now, the process of forming the foundation, or 
 great spinal column, for that race which is to usher 
 in the sixth, and which I said is now going on in the 
 Americas, is a slow process for us. Obliged as we 
 are by our inability to judge or to count except by 
 relativity, the gradual coming together of nations and 
 the fusion of their offspring over and over again so 
 as to bring forth something new in the human line, 
 is so gradual as to seem almost without progress. 
 But this change and evolution go on nevertheless, and 
 a very careful observer can see evidences of it. One 
 fact deserves attention. It is the inventive faculty 
 displayed by Americans. This is not accorded much 
 force by our scientists, but the Occultist sees in it an 
 evidence that the brains of these inventors are more 
 open to influences and pictures from the astral world 
 than are the brains of the older nations. Reports 
 have been brought to me by competent persons of 
 children, boys and girls, who were born with most 
 abnormal faculties of speech, or memory or other- 
 wise, and some such cases I have seen myself. All 
 of these occur in America, and many of them in the 
 West. There is more nervousness here than in the 
 older nations. This is accounted for by the hurry 
 and rush of our civilization ; but such an explanation 
 really explains nothing, because the question yet re- 
 mains, ' ' Why is there such hurry and push and 
 change in the United States?" Such ordinary argu- 
 ments go in a circle, since they leave out of sight the 
 fundamental reason, so familiar to the Theosophist, 
 that it is human evolution going on right before our 
 eyes in accordance with cyclic laws. 
 
 The Theosophical Adepts believe in evolution, but 
 not that sort which claims an ape as our ancestor. 
 Their great and comprehensive system is quite able 
 to account for rudimentary muscles and traces of or- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 25 
 
 gans found complete only in the animal kingdom 
 without having to call a pithecoid ape our father, 
 for they show the gradual process of building the 
 temple for the use of the divine Ego, proceeding 
 ceaselessly, and in silence, through ages upon ages, 
 winding in and out among all the forms in nature in 
 .every kingdom, from the mineral up to the highest. 
 This is the real explanation of the old Jewish, Mason- 
 ic and archaic saying that the temple of the Lord is 
 not made with hands and that no sound of building 
 is heard in it. 
 
 X. 
 
 It is well now to say, more definitely than I have 
 ^ * as yet, a few words of the two classes of beings, 
 one of which has been much spoken of in Theosoph- 
 ical literature, and also by those on the outside who 
 write of the subject either in seriousness or in ridicule. 
 These two classes of exalted personages are the Ma- 
 hatmas and Nirmanakayas. 
 
 In respect to the ^lahatmas, a great many wrong 
 notions have currency, not only with the public, but 
 as well with Theosophists in all parts of the world. 
 
 In the early days of the Theosophical Society the 
 name Mahatma was not in use here, but the title 
 then was " Brothers." This referred to the fact that 
 they were a band of men w^ho belonged to a brother- 
 hood in the East. The most wonderful powers and, 
 at times, the most extraordinary motives were attrib- 
 uted to them by those who believed in their existence. 
 
 They could pass to all parts of the world in the 
 twinkling of an eye. Across the great distance that 
 India is from here they could precipitate letters to 
 their friends and disciples in New York. Many 
 thought that if this were done it was only for amuse- 
 ment ; others looked at it in the light of a test for the 
 faithful, while still others often supposed Mahatmas 
 acted thus for pure love of exercising their power. 
 
26 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 The Spiritualists, some of whom believed that Mme. 
 Blavatsky really did the wonderful things told of 
 her, said that she was only a medium, pure and sim- 
 ple, and that her Brothers were familiar spooks of 
 seance rooms. Meanwhile the press in general 
 laughed, and Mme. Blavatsky and her Theosophical 
 friends went on doing their work and never gave up 
 their belief in the Brothers, who after a few years 
 came to be called Mahatmas. Indiscriminately with 
 Mahatma the woryi Adept has been used to describe 
 the same beings, so that we have these two titles made 
 use of without accuracy and in a misleading fashion. 
 The word Adept signifies proficiency, and is not 
 uncommon, so that, when using it, some description 
 is necessary if it is to be applied to the Brothers. 
 For that reason I used Theosophical Adepts in a pre- 
 vious paper. A Mahatma is not only an Adept, but 
 much more. The etymology of it will make the 
 matter clearer, the word being strictly Sanskrit, from 
 7naha, great, and dttna, soul — hence Great Soul. This 
 does not mean a noble-hearted man merely, but a 
 perfected being, one who has attained to the state 
 often described by mystics and held by scientific men 
 to be an impossibility, when time and space are no 
 obstacles to sight, to action, to knowledge or to con- 
 sciousness. Hence they are said to be able to per- 
 form the extraordinary feats related by various per- 
 sons, and also to possess information of a decidedly 
 practical character concerning the laws of nature, in- 
 cluding that mystery for science — the meaning, oper- 
 ation and constitution of life itself — and concerning 
 the genesis of this planet as well as the races upon 
 it. These large claims have given rise to the chief 
 complaint brought forward against the Theosophical 
 Adepts by those writers outside of the Society who 
 have taken the subject up — that they remain, if they 
 exist at all, in a state of cold and selfish quietude, 
 seeing the misery and hearing the groans of the 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. i'j 
 
 world, yet refusing to hold out a helping hand except 
 to a favored few ; possessing knowledge of scientific 
 principles, or of medicinal preparations, and yet 
 keeping it back from learned men or wealthy capi- 
 talists who desire to advance commerce while they 
 turn an honest penny. Although, for one, I firmly 
 believe, upon evidence given me, in all that is 
 claimed for these Adepts, I declare groundless the 
 complaint advanced, knowing it to be due to a want 
 of knowledge of those who are impugned. 
 
 Adepts and Mahatmas are not a miraculous growth, 
 nor the selfish successors of some who, accidentally 
 stumbling upon great truths, transmitted them to ad- 
 herents under patent rights. They are human beings 
 trained, developed, cultivated through not only a life 
 but long series of lives, always under evolutionary 
 laws and quite in accord with what we see among men 
 of the world or of science. Just as a Tyndall is greater 
 than a savage, though still a man, so is the Mahatma, 
 not ceasing to be human, still greater than a Tyn- 
 dall. The Mahatma-Adept is a natural growth, and 
 not produced by any miracle ; the process by which 
 he so becomes may be to us an unfamiliar one, but it 
 is in the strict order of nature. 
 
 Some years ago a well-known Anglo-Indian, writ- 
 ing to the Theosophical Adepts, queried if they had 
 ever made any mark upon the web of history, doubt- 
 ing that they had. The reply was that he had no 
 bar at which to arraign them, and that they had 
 written many an important line upon the page of hu- 
 man life, not only as reigning in visible shape, but 
 down to the very latest dates when, as for many a 
 long century before, they did their work behind the 
 scenes. To be more explicit, these wonderful ?ne/i 
 have swayed the destiny of nations and are shaping 
 events to-day. Pillars of peace and makers of war 
 such as Bismarck, or saviors of nations such as Wash- 
 ington, Lincoln and Grant, owe their elevation, their 
 
28 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 singular power, and their astonishing grasp upon the 
 right men for their purposes, not to trained intellect 
 or long preparation in the schools of their day, but 
 to these very unseen Adepts, who crave no honors, 
 seek no publicity and claim no acknowledgment. 
 Each one of these great human leaders whom I have 
 mentioned had in his obscure years what he called 
 premonitions of future greatness, or connection with 
 stirring events in his native land. 
 
 Lincoln always felt that in some way he was to be 
 an instrument for some great work, and the stray 
 utterances of Bismarck point to silent hours, never 
 openly referred to, when he felt an impulse pushing 
 him to whatever of good he may have done. A 
 long array of instances could be brought forward to 
 show that the Adepts have made "an ineffaceable 
 mark upon diverse eras." Even during the great 
 uprising in India that threatened the English rule 
 there, they saw long in advance the influence Eng- 
 land and India would have in the affairs of the world 
 through the very psychic and metaphysical changes 
 of to-day, and often hastened to communicate, by 
 their own occult and wonderful methods, the news of 
 successes for English arms to districts and peoples in 
 the interior who might have risen under the stimulus 
 of imaginary reports of English disasters. At other 
 times, vague fears were spread instantly over large 
 masses of the Hindus, so that England at last re- 
 mained master, even though many a patriotic native 
 desired another result. But the Adepts do not work 
 for the praise of men, for the ephemeral influence of 
 a day, but for the future races and man's best and 
 highest good. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Cor an exhaustive disquisition upon Adepts, Ma- 
 
 hatmas and Nirmanakayas, more than a volume 
 
 would be needed. The development illustrated by 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. ^^ 
 
 them is so strange to modern minds and so extraor- 
 dinary in these days of general mediocrity, that the 
 average reader fails to grasp with ease the views ad- 
 vanced in a condensed article ; and nearly everything 
 one would say about Adepts — to say nothing of the 
 Nirmanakayas — requiring full explanation of recon- 
 dite laws and abstruse questions, is liable to be mis- 
 understood, even if volumes should be written upon 
 them. The development, conditions, powers, and 
 function of these beings carry with them the whole 
 scheme of evolution ; for, as said by the mystics, the 
 Mahatma is the efflorescence of an age. The Adepts 
 may be dimly understood to-day, the Nirmanakayas 
 have as yet been only passingly mentioned, and the 
 Mahatmas are misconceived by believers and deni- 
 ers alike. 
 
 But one law governing them is easy to state and 
 ought not to be difficult for the understanding. They 
 do not, will not, and must not interfere with Karma ; 
 that is, however apparently deserving of help an in- 
 dividual may be, they will not extend it in the man- 
 ner desired if his Karma does not permit it ; and they 
 would not step into the field of human thought for 
 the purpose of bewildering humanity by an exercise 
 of power which on all sides would be looked upon as 
 miraculous. Some have said that if the Theosophic- 
 al Adepts were to perform a few of their feats be- 
 fore the eyes of Europe, an immense following for 
 them would at once arise; but such would not be 
 the result. Instead of it there would be dogmatism 
 and idolatry worse than have ever been, with a reac- 
 tion of an injurious nature impossible to counteract. 
 
 Hypnotism — though by another name — has long 
 been known to them. The hypnotic condition has 
 often aided the schemes of priests and churches. To 
 compel recognition of true doctrine is not the way 
 of these sages, for compulsion is hypnotism. To 
 feed a multitude with only five loaves would be easy 
 
3d ECHOES FROM THE ORIENt. 
 
 for them ; but as they never act upon sentiment but 
 continually under the great cosmic laws, they do not 
 advance with present material aid for the poor in 
 their hands. But, by using- their natural powers, 
 they every day influence the world, not only among 
 the rich and poor of Europe and America, but in 
 every other land, so that what does come about in 
 our lives is better than it would have been had they 
 not had part therein. 
 
 The other class referred to — Nirmanakayas — con- 
 stantly engage in this work deemed by them greater 
 than earthly enterprises : the betterment of the soul 
 of man, and any other good that they can accomplish 
 through human agents. Around them the long-dis- 
 puted question of Nirvana revolves, for all that they 
 have not been distinctly considered in it. For, if 
 Max MUUer's view of Nirvana, that it is annihila- 
 tion, be correct, than a Nirmanakaya is an impossi- 
 bility. Paradoxically speaking, they are in and out 
 of that state at one and the same time. They are 
 owners of Nirvana who refuse to accept it in order 
 that they may help the suffering orphan. Humanity. 
 They have followed the injunction of the Book of the 
 Golden Precepts: ' ' Step out from sunlight into shade, 
 to make more room for others." 
 
 A greater part is taken in the history of nations by 
 the Nirmanakayas than anyone supposes. Some of 
 them have under their care certain men in every na- 
 tion who from their birth are destined to be great 
 factors in the future. These they guide and guard 
 until the appointed time. And such proteges but 
 seldom know that such influence is about them, es- 
 pecially in the nineteenth century. Acknowledgment 
 and appreciation of such great assistance are not re- 
 quired by the Nirmankayas, who work behind the 
 veil and prepare the material for a definite end. At 
 the same time, too, one Nirmanakaya may have many 
 different men — or women — whom he directs. As Pa- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 3 1 
 
 tanjali puts it, **In all these bodies one mind is the 
 moving cause. " 
 
 Strange, too, as it may seem, often such men as 
 Napoleon Buonaparte are from time to time helped 
 by them. Such a being as Napoleon could not come 
 upon the scene fortuitously. His birth and strange 
 powers must be in the order of nature. The far- 
 reaching consequences going with a nature like his, 
 unmeasurable by us, must in the eastern Theosophic- 
 al philosophy be watched and provided for. If he 
 was a wicked man, so much the worse for him ; but 
 that could never deter a Nirmanakaya from turning 
 him to his uses. That might be by swerving him, 
 perchance, from a path that would have plunged the 
 world into depths of woe and been made to bring 
 about results in after years which Napolean never 
 dreamed of. The fear of what the world might 
 think of encouraging a monster at a certain point 
 never can deter a sage who sees the end that is 
 best. And in the life of Napolean there are many 
 things going to show at times an influence more pow- 
 erful than he could grapple. His foolhardy march to 
 Moscow was perhaps engineered by these silent cam- 
 paigners, and also his sudden and disastrous retreat. 
 What he could have done had he remained in France, 
 no present historian is competent to say. The oft- 
 doubted story of the red letter from the Red Man 
 just when Napoleon was in a hesitating mood, may 
 have been an encouragement at a particular juncture. 
 ' ' Whom the gods would destroy, they first make 
 mad." Nor will the defeat at Waterloo be ever 
 understood until the Nirmanakayas give their rec- 
 ords up. 
 
 As a change in the thought of a people who have 
 been tending to gross atheism is one always desired 
 by the Sages of the Wisdom Religion, it may be sup- 
 posed that the wave of spiritualistic phenomena re- 
 sulting now quite clearly in a tendency back to a tini- 
 
32 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 versal acknowledgment of the soul, has been aided 
 by the Nirmanakayas. They are in it and of it ; they 
 push on the progress of a psychic deluge over great 
 masses of people. The result is seen in the litera- 
 ture, the religion and the drama of to-day. Slowly 
 but surely the tide creeps up and covers the once dry 
 shore of Materialism, and, though priests may howl, 
 demanding *'the suppression of Theosophy with a 
 firm hand," and a venal press may try to help them, 
 they have neither the power nor the knowledge to 
 produce one backward ripple, for the Master hand is 
 guided by omniscient intelligence propelled by a 
 gigantic force, and — works behind the scene. 
 
 XII. 
 
 npHERE have been so many secret societies during 
 ^ the Christian era, by whom claims were made 
 to knowledge of nature's secret laws, that a natural 
 question arises: "In what do the Theosophic East- 
 ern Sages differ from the many Rosicrucians and 
 others so often heard of ?" The old bookshelves of 
 Germany are full of publications upon Rosicrucian- 
 ism, or by pretended and genuine members of that 
 order, and to-day it is not uncommon to find those 
 who have temerity enough to dub themselves ' ' Rosi- 
 crucians." 
 
 The difference is that which exists between reality 
 and illusion, between mere ritualism and the signs 
 printed by nature upon all things and beings passing 
 forever up the road to higher states of existence. 
 The Rosicrucian and Masonic fraternities known to 
 history rely upon outward signs and tokens to indi- 
 cate the status in the order of their members, who, 
 without such guarantees, are only uninitiated out- 
 siders. 
 
 But the Sages we speak of, and their disciples, 
 carry with them the indelible mark and speak the 
 well-known words that show they are beings devel- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 33 
 
 Oped under laws, and not merely persons who, hav- 
 ing undergone a childish ordeal, are possessed of a 
 diploma. The Adepts may be called rugged oaks 
 that have no disguise, while the undeveloped man 
 dabbling in Masonic words and formulas is only a 
 donkey wearing a lion's skin. 
 
 There are many Adepts living in the world, all of 
 whom know each other. They have means of com- 
 munication unknown to modern civilization, by using 
 which they can transmit to and receive from each 
 other messages at any moment and from immense 
 distances, without using any mechanical means. We 
 might say that there is a Society of Adepts, provided 
 that we never attach to the word "society'' the 
 meaning ordinarily conveyed by it. It is a society 
 which has no place of meeting, which exacts no dues, 
 which has no constitution or by-laws other than the 
 eternal laws of nature ; there are no police or spies 
 attached to it and no complaints are made or received 
 in it, for the reason that any offender is punished by 
 the operation of law entirely beyond his control — his 
 mastery over the law being lost upon his infringing it. 
 
 Under the protection and assistance and guidance 
 of this Society of Adepts are the disciples of each 
 one of its members. These disciples are divided into 
 different degrees, corresponding to the various stages 
 of development ; the least developed disciples are as- 
 sisted by those who are in advance of them, and the 
 latter in a similar manner by others, until the grade 
 of disciple is reached where direct intercourse with 
 the Adepts is possible. At the same time, each 
 Adept keeps a supervisory eye upon all his disciples. 
 Through the agency of the disciples of Adepts many 
 effects are brought about in human thought and 
 affairs, for from the higher grades are often sent those 
 who, without disclosing their connection with mysti- 
 cism, influence individuals who are known to be main 
 factors in events about to occur. 
 
34 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 It is claimed that the Theosophical Society re- 
 ceives assistance in its growth and the spreading of 
 its influence from the Adepts and their accepted 
 disciples. The history of the Society would seem 
 to prove this, for unless there were some hidden 
 but powerful force operating for its advantage it 
 would have long ago sunk into obscurity, destroyed 
 by the storm of ridicule and abuse to which it has 
 been subjected. Promises were made, in the early 
 history of the Society, that assistance would at all 
 times be rendered, and prophecies were hinted that 
 it would be made the target for vilification and the 
 object of opposition. Both prophecies have been 
 fulfilled to the letter. 
 
 In just the same way as a polished diamond shows 
 the work which gives it value and brilliancy, so the 
 man who has gone through probation and teaching 
 under the Adepts carries upon his person the inefface- 
 able marks. To the ordinary eye untrained in this 
 department, no such indications are visible ; but those 
 who can see describe them as being quite prominent 
 and wholly beyond the control of the bearer. For 
 this reason that one who has progressed, say, three 
 steps along the way, will have three marks, and it is 
 useless to pretend that his rank is a step higher, for, 
 if it were, then the fourth mark would be there, 
 since it grows with the being's development. Now, 
 as these signatures cannot be imitated or forged, the 
 whole inner fraternity has no need for concealment 
 of signs. No one can commit a fraud upon or ex- 
 tract from them the secrets of higher degrees by 
 having obtained signs and pass-words out of a book 
 or in return for the payment of fees, and none can 
 procure the conferring of any advancement imtil the 
 whole nature of the man exactly corresponds to the 
 desired point of development. 
 
 In two ways the difference between the Adept fra- 
 ternity and the worldly secret societies can be seen — 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 35 
 
 in their treatment of nations and of their own direct 
 special disciples. Nothing is forced or depends upon 
 favor. Everything is arranged in accordance with 
 the best interests of a nation, having in view the 
 cyclic influences at any time prevailing, and never 
 before the proper time. When they desire to destroy 
 the chains forged by dogmatism, they do not make 
 the error of suddenly appearing before the aston- 
 ished eyes of the people; for they know well that 
 such a course would only alter the dogmatic belief inx 
 one set of ideas to a senseless and equally dogmatic \ 
 adherence to the Adepts as gods, or else create in I 
 the minds of many the surety that the devil was '• 
 present. 
 
 xni. 
 
 T*HE training of the disciple by the teachers of the 
 school to which the Theosophical Adepts belong 
 is peculiar to itself, and not in accord with prevailing 
 modern educational ideas. In one respect it is a 
 specialization of the pilgrimage to a sacred place so 
 common in India, and the enshrined object of the 
 journey is the soul itself, for with them the existence 
 of soul is one of the first principles. 
 
 In the East the life of man is held to be a pilgrim- 
 age, not only from the cradle to the grave, but also 
 through that vast period of time, embracing millions 
 upon millions of years, stretching from the beginning 
 to the end of a Manvantara, or period of evolution, 
 and as he is held to be a spiritual being, the continu- 
 ity of his existence is unbroken. Nations and civili- 
 zations rise, grow old, decline and disappear; but 
 the being lives on, spectator of all the innumerable 
 changes of environment. Starting from the great 
 All, radiating like a spark from the central fire, he 
 gathers experience in all ages, under all rulers, civil- 
 izations and customs, ever engaged in a pilgrimage 
 to the shrine from which he came. He is now the 
 
36 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 ruler and now the slave; to-day at the pinnacle of 
 wealth and power, to-morrow at the bottom of the 
 ladder, perhaps in abject misery, but ever the same 
 being. To symbolize this, the whole of India is dot- 
 ted with sacred shrines, to which pilgrimages are 
 made, and it is the wish of all men in that so-called 
 benighted land to make such a journey at least once 
 before death, for the religious duties of life are not 
 fully performed without visiting such sacred places. 
 
 One great reason for this, given by those who un- 
 derstand the inner significance of it, is that the places 
 I of pilgrimage are centers of spirituaLforce from 
 / which radiate elevating influences not perceptible to 
 the pig-sticking, wine-drinking trayeller. It is as- 
 serted by many, indeed, that aT most of the famous 
 places of pilgrimage there is an Adept of the same 
 order to which the Theosophical Adepts are said to 
 belong, who is ready always to give some meed of 
 spiritual insight and assistance to those of pure heart 
 who may go there. He, of course, does not reveal 
 himself to the knowledge of the people, because it is 
 quite unnecessary, and might create the necessity for 
 his going elsewhere. Superstitions have arisen from 
 the doctrine of pilgrimages, but, as that is quite 
 likely to come about in this age, it is no reason why 
 places of pilgrimage should be abolished, since, if the 
 spiritual centers were withdrawn, good men who are 
 free from superstition would not receive the benefits 
 they now may have. The Adepts founded these 
 places in order to keep alive in the minds of the peo- 
 ple the soul idea which modern Science and educa- 
 tion would soon turn into agnosticism, were they to 
 prevail unchecked. 
 
 But the disciple of the Adept knows that the place 
 of pilgrimage symbolizes his own nature, shows him 
 how he is to start on the scientific investigation of it 
 and how to proceed, by what roads and in which di- 
 rection. He is supposed to concentrate into a few 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 37 
 
 lives the experience and practice which it takes ordi- 
 nary men countless incarnations to acquire. His 
 first steps, as well as his last, are on difficult, often 
 dangerous places; the road, indeed, "winds up hill 
 all the way," and upon entering it he leaves behind 
 the hope for reward so common in all undertakings. 
 Nothing is gained by favor, but all depends upon 
 his actual nterit. As the end to be reached is self- 
 dependence with perfect calmness and clearness, he 
 is from the beginning made to stand alone, and this 
 is for most of us a difficult thing which frequently 
 brings on a kind of despair. Men like companion- 
 ship, and cannot with ease contemplate the possi- 
 bility of being left altogether to themselves. So, in- 
 stead of being constantly in the company of a lodge 
 of fellow-apprentices, as is the case in the usual world- 
 ly secret society, he is forced to see that, as he en- 
 tered the world alone, he must learn to live there in 
 the same way, leaving it is he came, solely in his own 
 company. But this produces no selfishness, because, 
 being accompanied by constant meditation upon the 
 unseen, the knowledge is acquired that the loneliness 
 felt is only in respect to the lower, personal, worldly 
 self. * 
 
 Another rule this disciple must follow is that no 
 boasting may be indulged in on any occasion, and 
 this gives us the formula that, given a man who 
 speaks of his powers as an Adept or boasts of his 
 progress on the spiritual planes, we can be always 
 sure he is neither Adept nor disciple. There have 
 been those in the Theosophical Society who gave out 
 to the world that they were either Adepts in fact or 
 very near it, and possessed of great powers. Under 
 our formula it follows that they were mere boasters, 
 with nothing behind their silly pretensions but vanity 
 and a fair knowledge of the weakness as well as the 
 gullibility of human nature ; upon the latter they play 
 for either their profit or pleasure. But, hiding them- 
 
38' ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 selves under an exterior which does not attract at- 
 tention, there are many of the real disciples in the 
 world. They are studying themselves and other 
 human hearts. They have no diplomas, but there 
 resides in them a consciousness of constant help and 
 a clear knowledge of the true Lodge which meets in 
 real secrecy and is never found mentioned in any 
 directory. Their whole life is a persistent pursuit of 
 the fast-moving soul which, although appearing to 
 stand still, can distance the lightning; and their 
 death is only another step forward to greater know- 
 ledge through better physical bodies in new lives, 
 
 XIV. 
 
 T ooKiNG back into the past the nineteenth-century 
 ^ historian finds his sight speedily striking a mist 
 and at last plunging into inky darkness. Bound 
 down in fact by the influence of a ridiculous dogma- 
 tism which allows only some six thousand j^ears for 
 man's life on earth, he is unwilling to accept the old 
 chronologies of the Egyptians or Hindus, and, while 
 permitting the assumption of vast periods for geo- 
 logical changes, he is staggered by a few millions of 
 years more or less when they are added to the length 
 of time during which humanity has peopled the 
 globe. The student of Theosophy, however, sees no 
 reason why he should doubt the statement made by 
 his teachers on this subject. He knows that the pe- 
 riods of evolution are endless. These are called 
 Manvantaras, because they are between two Manus, 
 or, two men. 
 
 These periods may be called waves whose succes- 
 sion has no cessation. Each grand period, including 
 within it all the minor evolutions, covers 311,040,- 
 000,000,000 human years; under a single Manu the 
 human years come and go, 306,720,000 in number, 
 and the lesser yugas — or ages — more immediately 
 concerning us, comprise of solar years 4,320,000. 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 39 
 
 During these solar revolutions the human races sweep 
 round and round this planet. Cave-dwellers, lake- 
 dwellers and those of a neolithic or any other age 
 appear and disappear over and over again, and in 
 each of those we who now read, write and think of 
 them were ourselves the very Egos whose past we 
 are trying to trace. 
 
 But, going deep into geological strata, the doubt of 
 man's existence contemporaneously with the plesio- 
 saurus arises because no fossil genus homo is discov- 
 ered in the same stratum. It is here that the 
 theories of the Theosophist come in and furnish the 
 key. Those hold that before man developed any 
 physical body he clothed himself with an astral form ; 
 and this is why H. P. Blavatsky writes in her Secret 
 Doctrifie : "it teaches the birth of the astral before 
 the physical body, the former being the model for the 
 latter." At the time of the huge antediluvian ani- 
 mals they absorbed in their enormous bodies so 
 much of the total quantity of gross matter available 
 for frames of sentient beings that the astral man re- 
 mained without a corporeal frame, as yet unclothed 
 "with coats of skin." For this reason he could ex- 
 ist in the same place with those huge birds and rep- 
 tiles without fear. Their massive proportions in- 
 spired him with no terror, and by their consumption 
 of food there was no lessening of his sustenance. 
 And, therefore, being of such a composition that he 
 left no impression upon mud or plastic rock, the 
 death of one astral body after another left no fossil 
 and no mark to be unearthed by us in company with 
 the very beasts and birds which were his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 Man was all this time acquiring the power to clothe 
 himself with a dense frame. He threw off astral 
 bodies one after another, in the ceaseless pursuit, 
 each effort giving him a little more density. Then 
 he began to cast a shadow, as it were, and the vast, 
 
4© ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 unwieldy animal world — and others as well — felt 
 more and more the draughts made upon it by the 
 coming man. As he thickened they grew smaller, 
 and his remains could not be deposited in any stratum 
 until such time as he had grown to sufficient hard- 
 ness. But our modern anthropologists have not yet 
 discovered when that was. They are ready enough 
 to make definite statements, but, learned as they are, 
 there are surprises awaiting them not so far off. 
 
 While, therefore, our explorers are finding, now 
 and then, the remains of animals and birds and rep- 
 tiles in strata which show an age far greater than 
 any assigned to the human race, they never come 
 upon human skeletons. How could man leave any 
 trace at a stage when he could not press himself into 
 the clay or be caught by soft lava or masses of vol- 
 canic dust? I do not mean, however, to say that the 
 period of the plesiosaurus is the period of the man 
 of astral body devoid of a material one. The ques- 
 tion of exact period may well be left for a more de- 
 tailed account ; this is only to point to the law and to 
 the explanation for the non-appearance of man's re- 
 mains in very early geologic strata. But the The- 
 osophic Adepts insist that there are still in the earth 
 bony remains of man, which carry his first appear- 
 ance in a dense body many millions of years farther 
 back than have yet been admitted, and these remains 
 will be discovered by us before much time shall have 
 rolled away. 
 
 One of the first results of these discoveries will be 
 to completely upset the theory as to the succession of 
 ages, as I may call it, which is given and accepted at 
 the present time, and also the estimation of the va- 
 rious civilizations that have passed from the earth and 
 left no trace except in the inner constitution of our- 
 selves — for it is held that we are those very persons^ now 
 in different bodies, who so long ago lived and loved 
 and died upon the planet. We began to make Karma 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 4I 
 
 then and have been under its influence ever since, 
 and it seems fitting that that great doctrine should 
 be taken up at another time for a more careful exam- 
 ination. 
 
 XV. 
 
 T^HE Oriental doctrine of reward and punishment of 
 ■ -^ the human Ego is very different from the the- 
 ological scheme accepted throughout Christendom, 
 since the Brahmins and Buddhists fix the place of 
 punishment and compensation upon this earth of 
 ours, while the Christian removes the "bar of God" 
 to the hereafter. We may not profitably stop to 
 argue upon logic with the latter ; it will be sufficient 
 to quote to them the words of Jesus, St. Matthew, 
 and the Psalmist. ' ' With what measure ye mete, it 
 shall be measured unto you again," said Jesus; and 
 Matthew declares that for every word, act, and 
 thought we shall have to answer, while David, the 
 royal poet, sang that those who serve the Lord should 
 never eat beggar's bread. We all know well that the 
 first two declarations do away with the vicarious 
 atonement; and as for the Jewish singer's notion, it 
 is negatived every day in any city of either hemi- 
 sphere. 
 
 Among the Ceylonese Buddhists the name of the 
 doctrine is Kamma; with the Hindus it is Karma. 
 Viewed in its religious light, it "is the good and bad 
 deeds of sentient beings, by the infallible influence 
 or efficacy of which those beings are met with due 
 rewards or punishment, according as they deserve, 
 in any state of being."* When a being dies, he 
 emits, as it were, a mass of force or energy, which 
 goes to make up the new personality when he shall 
 be reincarnated. In this energy is found the sum- 
 mation of the life just given up, and by means of 
 
 * The Rev. T P. Terunnanse, High-Priest at Dodanduwa, 
 Ceylon, 
 
42 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT, 
 
 it the Ego is forced to assume that sort of body 
 among those appropriate circumstances which to- 
 gether are the means for carrying out the decrees of. 
 Karma. 
 
 Hence hell is not a mythical place or condition af- 
 ter death in some unknown region specially set apart 
 by the Almighty for the punishment of his children, 
 but is in very truth our own globe, for it is on the 
 earth, in earth-lives experienced in human bodies, 
 that we are punished for bad deeds previously done, 
 and meet with happiness and pleasure as rewards for 
 old merit. 
 
 When one sees, as is so common, a good man suf- 
 fering much in his life, the question naturally arises, 
 "Has Karma anything to do with it, and is it just 
 that such a person should be so afflicted?" For those 
 who believe in Karma it is quite just, because this 
 man in a previous life must have done such acts as 
 deserve punishment now. And, similarly, the wicked 
 man who is free from suffering, happy and pros- 
 perous, is so because in a previous existence he had 
 been badly treated by his fellows or had experienced 
 much suffering. And the perfect justice of Karma 
 is well illustrated in his case because, although now 
 favored by fortune, he, being wicked, is generating 
 causes which, when he shall be reborn, will operate 
 then to punish him for his evil-doing now. 
 
 Some may suppose that the Ego should be pun- 
 ished after death, but such a conclusion is not logical. 
 For evil deeds cojiwiitted here on the objective plane could 
 not with any scientific or moral propriety be pii7iished on a 
 plane which is purely subjective. And such is the reason 
 why so many minds, both of the young and old, have 
 rejected and rebelled against the doctrine of a hell- 
 fire in which they would be eternally punished for 
 commission of sin on earth. Even when unable to 
 formulate the reason in metaphysical terms, they in- 
 stinctively knew that it would be impossible to re- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 43 
 
 move the scene of compensation from the very place 
 where the sin and confusion had been done and 
 created. When the disciples of Jesus asked him if 
 the man who was born blind was thus brought into 
 the world for some sin he had committed they had in 
 mind this doctrine of Karma, just as all the Hindus 
 and Buddhists have when they see some of their fel- 
 lows crippled or deformed or deprived of sight. 
 
 The theory above hinted at of the person at death 
 throwing out from himself the new personality, so to 
 speak, ready to await the time when the Ego should 
 return to earth seeking a new body, is a general law 
 that operates in a great many other instances besides 
 the birth or death of a being. It is that which is 
 used by the Theosophists to explain the relations be- 
 tween the moon and the earth. For, as the moon is 
 held by them to be the planet on which we lived be- 
 fore reaching the earth and before there was any 
 such earth whatever; and that, when our so-called 
 satellite came to die, all the energy contained in it 
 was thrown out into space, where in a single vortex 
 it remained until the time came for that energy to be 
 again supplied with a body — this earth— so the same 
 law prevails with men, the single units in the vast 
 aggregate which is known among advanced Theos- 
 ophists as the great Manu. Men being, as to their 
 material envelope, derived from the moon, must fol- 
 low the law of their origin, and therefore the Bud- 
 dhist priest says, as quoted: "At the death of a 
 being nothing goes out from him to the other world 
 for his rebirth ; but by the efficacy — or, to use a more 
 figurative expression, by the ray — of influence which 
 Kamma emits, a new being is produced in the other 
 world very identical with the one who died away," 
 for in this *'new being" is held all the life of the 
 deceased. The term "being," as applied to it may 
 be taken by us with some qualification. It is more 
 properly a mass of energy devoid of conscience and 
 
44 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 crowded with desires of the person from whom it ema- 
 nated ; and its special province is to await the return 
 of the individuality and form for that the new body in 
 which it shall suffer or enjoy. Each man is therefore 
 his own creator under the great Cosmic laws that 
 control all creations. A better term in place of 
 "creation" is "evolution," for we, from life to life, 
 are engaged in evolving out of the material provided 
 in this Manvantara new bodies at every turn of the 
 wheel of rebirth. The instruments we use in this 
 work are desire and will. Desire causes the will to 
 fix itself on objective life; in that plane it produces 
 force and out of that comes matter in its objective 
 form. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 \/ery many Western people say that this Oriental 
 ^ doctrine of Karma is difficult to understand, be- 
 ing fit only for educated and thoughtful persons. But 
 in India, Ceylon and Burmah, not to mention other 
 Asiatic countries, the whole mass of the people ac- 
 cept and seem to understand it. The reason for this 
 lies probably in the fact that they also firmly believe 
 in Reincarnation, which may be said to be the twin 
 doctrine to Karma. Indeed, the one cannot be prop- 
 erly considered without keeping the other in view, 
 for Karma — whether as punishment or reward — could 
 have no actual or just operation upon the Ego unless 
 the means for its operation were furnished by Rein- 
 carnation. 
 
 Our deserts are meted out to us while we are asso- 
 ciating in life with each other, and not while We are 
 alone, nor in separateness. If being raised to power 
 in a nation or becoming possessed of wealth is called 
 a reward, it would lose all value were there no people 
 to govern and no associated human beings with and 
 upon whom we could spend our wealth and who 
 might aid us in satisfying our manifold desires. And 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 45 
 
 SO the law of Reincarnation drags ns into life again 
 and again, bringing with us uncounted times the va- 
 rious Egos whom we have known in prior births. 
 This is in order that the Karma — or causes — gener- 
 ated in company with those Egos may be worked 
 out, for to take us off separately into an unknown 
 hell, there to receive some sort of punishment, or into 
 an impossible serio-comic heaven to meet our reward, 
 would be as impossible as unjust. Hence, no just- 
 hanged murderer absolved by priest or praising Jesus 
 can escape. He, together with his victim, must re- 
 turn to this earth, each to aid the other in adjusting 
 the disturbed harmony, during which process each 
 makes due compensation. With this doctrine we re- 
 store justice to her seat in the governance of men, 
 for without it the legal killing of the murderer after 
 condemnation is only a half remedy, since no pro- 
 vision is made by the State for the being hurled out 
 of the body nor for the dependants he may have left 
 behind, and, still further, nothing is done for those 
 who in the family of the murderer survive him. 
 
 But the Theosophical sages of all ages push the 
 doctrine of Karma beyond a mere operation upon in- 
 carnated men. They view all worlds as being bound 
 together and swayed by Karma. As the old Hindu 
 book, the Bhagavad- Gitd, says, ' ' all worlds up to 
 that of Brahma are subject to Karma." Hence it 
 acts on all planes. So viewing it, they say that this 
 world as it is now conditioned is the actual result of 
 what it came to be at the beginning of the pralaya 
 or grand death which took place billions upon billions 
 of years ago. That is, the world evolves just as man 
 does. It is born, it grows old, it dies, and it is rein- 
 carnated. This goes on many times, and during 
 those incarnations it suffers and enjoys in its own way 
 for its previous evolutions. For it the reward is a 
 greater advance along the line of evolution, and the 
 punishment is a degraded state. Of course, as I said 
 
46 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 in a former article, these states have man for their 
 object and cause, for he is the crown of all evolution. 
 And, coming down from the high consideration of 
 great cosmic spaces and phenomena, the Theosophist 
 is taught to apply these laws of Karma and Reincar- 
 nation to every atom in the body in especial and apart 
 from the total Karma. Since we are made up of a 
 mass of lives, our thoughts and acts affect those atoms 
 or lives and impress them with a Karma of their own. 
 As the Oriental thinkers say, ' ' not a moment passes 
 without some beings coming to life in us, acquiring 
 Karma, dying, and being reincarnated. " 
 
 The principal divisions of Karma are three in num- 
 ber. One sort is that now operating in the present 
 life and body, bringing about all the circumstances 
 and changes of life. Of this we see illustrations 
 every day, with now and then strange climaxes which 
 throw upon the doctrine the brightest light. One 
 such is immortalized in India by a building erected 
 by the favored son of fortune, as we would say, and 
 thus it came about. A Rajah had a very strange 
 dream, so affecting that he called upon his sooth- 
 sayers for interpretation. They said that their hor- 
 oscopes showed he was required next day to give an 
 immense sum of money to the first person he should 
 see after awaking, their intention being to present 
 themselves at an early hour. Next day the King 
 arose unusually early, stepped to his window, threw 
 it open, and there before him was a chandalah sweep- 
 ing up the dirt. To him he gave a fortune, and thus 
 in a moment raised him to affluence from abject pov- 
 erty. The chandalah then built a huge building to 
 commemorate his sudden release from the grinding 
 chains of poverty. 
 
 Another class of Karma is that which is held over 
 and not now in operation because the man does not 
 furnish the appropriate means for bringing it into 
 action. This may be likened to vapor held in sus- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 47 
 
 pension in the atmosphere and not visible to the eye, 
 but which will fall as rain upon the earth the moment 
 conditions are ripe. 
 
 The last chief class is that Karma which we are 
 making now, and which will be felt by us in future 
 births. Its appropriate symbol is the arrow shot for- 
 ward in the air by the archer. 
 
 XVII, 
 
 T 
 
 HE Spirit is not affected by Karma at any time or 
 under any circumstances, and so the Theosoph- 
 ical Adepts would not use the terms ' ' cultivation of 
 the Spirit." The Spirit in man, called by them Ish- 
 wara^ is immutable, eternal and indivisible — the fun- 
 damental basis of all. Hence they say that the body 
 and all objects are impermanent and thus deluding 
 to the soul whenever they are mistaken for reality. 
 They are only real on and for this plane and during 
 the time when the consciousness takes them up here 
 for cognition. They are therefore relatively real 
 and not so in an absolute sense. This can easily 
 be proved from dreams. In the dream state we lose 
 all knowledge of the objects which while awake we 
 thought real and proceed to suffer and enjoy in that 
 new state. In this we find the consciousness apply- 
 ing itself to objects partaking of course of the nature 
 of the experiences of the waking condition, but at 
 the same time producing the sensations of pleasure 
 and pain while they last. Let us imagine a person's 
 body plunged in a lethargy extending over twenty 
 years and the mind undergoing a pleasant or un- 
 pleasant dream, and we have a life just of that sort, 
 altogether different from the life of one awake. For 
 the consciousness of this dreamer the reality of ob- 
 jects known during the waking state is destroyed. 
 But as material existence is a necessary evil and the 
 one in which alone emancipation or salvation can be 
 obtained, it is of the greatest importance and hence 
 
48 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 Karma which governs it and through whose decrees 
 emancipation may be reached must be well under- 
 stood and then be accepted and obeyed. 
 
 Karma will operate to produce a deformed or de- 
 ficient body, to give in a good body a bad disposition 
 or vice versa ; it will cause diseases, hurts or annoy- 
 ances, or bring about pleasures and favorable situa- 
 tions for the material frame. So we sometimes find 
 with a deformed or disagreeable body a most en- 
 lightened and noble mind. In this case the physical 
 Karma is bad and the mental good. 
 
 This leads us to the sort of Karma that works 
 upon the mental plane. At the same time that an 
 unfavorable Karmic cause is showing forth in the 
 physical structure another and better sort is working 
 out in the mind and disposition or has eventuated in 
 conferring a mind well balanced, calm, cheerful, 
 deep, and brilliant. Hence we disco vor a purely 
 physical as compared with an entirely mental Karma. 
 Purely physical would be that resulting, say from a 
 removal from the ground of fruit peel which might 
 otherwise cause some unknown person to fall and be 
 hurt. Purely mental might be due to a life spent in 
 calm, philosophical thought and the like. 
 
 There is in one of the Hindu books a strange sen- 
 tence respecting this part of the subject, reading: 
 ' ' Perfection of body or superhuman powers are pro- 
 duced by birth or by herbs or by incantations, pen- 
 ances, or meditations. " 
 
 Among mental afflictions esteemed as worse than 
 any bodily hurt or loss is that Karma from a preced- 
 ing life which results in obscurity of such a character 
 that there is a loss of all power to conceive of the 
 reality of Spirit or the existence of soul — that is, ma- 
 terialism. 
 
 The last field of operation for this law may be said 
 to be the psychical nature. Of this in America we 
 have numerous examples in mediums, clairvoyants, 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 49 
 
 clairaudients, mind-readers, hysteriacs, and all sorts 
 of abnormal sensitives. There could be no clair- 
 voyant according to the Oriental scheme if the person 
 so afflicted, using as I think the proper term, had not 
 devoted much of previous lives to a one-sided de- 
 velopment of the psychical nature resulting now in 
 powers which make the possessor an abnormality in 
 society. 
 
 A very strange belief of the Hindiis is that one 
 which allows the possibility of a change of state by 
 a mortal of such a character that the once man be- 
 comes a Deva or lesser god. They divide nature into 
 several departments, in each of which are conscious 
 powers or entities called Devas^ to put it roughly. 
 Yet this is not so far apart from the ideas of some of 
 our best scientific men who have said there is no 
 reason why in each ray of the spectrum there may 
 not be beings to us unseen. Many centuries ago the 
 Hindu thinker admitted this, and pushing further on 
 declared that a man might through a certain sort of 
 Karma become one of these beings, with correspond- 
 ing enjoyment and freedom from care, but with the 
 certainty, however, of eventually changing back 
 again to begin the weary round of birth over again. 
 
 What might be called the doctrine of the nullifi- 
 cation of Karma is an application in this department 
 of the well-known law in physics which causes an 
 equilibrium when two equal forces oppose each other. 
 A man may have in his Karmic account a very un- 
 pleasant cause and at the same time a cause of op- 
 posite character. If these come together for ex- 
 pression at the same time they may so counteract 
 each other as that neither will be apparent and the 
 equilibrium is the equivalent of both. In this way 
 it is easy to understand the Biblical verse: "Charity 
 covereth a multitude of sins," as referring to the pal- 
 liative effect of charitable deeds as opposed to deeds 
 of wickedness, and giving a reason for the mediaeval 
 
5© ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 knight devoting some of the years of his Hfe to alms- 
 giving. 
 
 In the Bhagavad-Gftd, a book revered by all in 
 India, the highest place is given to what is called 
 Karma- Yoga or the Religion of the Performance of 
 Works and Duty, and there it is said: " He who, un- 
 attached to the fruits of his actions, performs such 
 actions as must be done, is both renouncer and dev- 
 otee ; not he who kindles no sacrificial fires and per- 
 forms no ceremonies. He who remains inert, re- 
 straining the organs of action, and pondering with 
 his heart on objects of sense, is called a false pietist 
 of bewildered soul. But he who, restraining his 
 senses by his heart and being free from interest in 
 acting, undertakes active devotion through the or- 
 gans of action, is praiseworthy." 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 npHAT the doctrine of Karma is unjust, imsympa- 
 * thetic, and fatalistic has been claimed by those 
 who oppose it, but such conclusions are not borne 
 out by experience among those races who believe in 
 it, nor will the objections stand a close examination. 
 The Hindus and Buddhists thoroughly believe in 
 Karma, convinced that no one but themselves pun- 
 ishes or rewards in this or any life, yet we do not find 
 them cold or unsympathetic. Indeed, in the rela- 
 tions of life it is well known that the Hindu is as lov- 
 ing and tender as his American brother, and there 
 are as many instances of heroic self-sacrifice in their 
 history as in ours. Some go further than this and 
 say that the belief in Karma and Reincarnation has 
 made the Hindu more gentle in his treatment of men 
 and animals than are the Europeans, and more spir- 
 itual in his daily life. Going deeper into their his- 
 tory, the belief in Karma is found side by side with 
 material works of great magnitude, and whose re- 
 mains to this day challenge our wonder, admiration, 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. ^1 
 
 and respect; it is doubtful whether we could ever 
 show such triumphs over nature as can be seen at any 
 time in the rock-cut temples of Hindustan. So it 
 would appear that this doctrine of ours is not likely 
 to produce bad or enervating effects upon the people 
 who accept it. 
 
 '.'But," says an objector, "it is fatalism. If Kar- i 
 ma is Karma, if I am to be punished in such aud such / 
 a manner, then it will come about so whether I will or / 
 not, and hence I must, like the Turk, say 'Kismet,* 
 and do nothing." Now, although the Mohammed- 
 an doctrine of Kismet has been abused as fatalism, 
 pure and simple, it was not so held by the Prophet 
 nor by his greatest disciples, for they taught that it 
 was law and not fate. And neither is Karma ame- 
 nable to this objection. In the minds of those who, 
 having vaguely apprehended Karma as applying to 
 one life only, do not give the doctrine its true majestic, 
 endless sweep, fatalism is the verdict. When, on the 
 other hand, each man is seen as the fashioner ofjthe 
 fate for his next fleeting earth personality, there can 
 be no fatality in it, because in his own hand is the 
 decree. He set in motion the causes which will in- 
 evitably have certain results. Just as easily he could 
 have made different causes and thus brought about 
 different results. 
 
 That there are a repeilant coldness and want of 
 tenderness in a doctrine which thus deals out inflex- 
 ible justice and compels us to forever lose our friends 
 and beloved relatives, once death has closed the door, 
 is the feeling of a few who make sentiment their 
 rule in life. But while sentiment and our own wishes :<^ 
 are nj^t the guiding laws of nature, there is no reason 
 even on the sentimental ground for this objection ; it 
 is due to a partial knowledge of the doctrine which, 
 when fully known, is found to be as full of opportun- 
 ity for the exercise of what is dear to the heart as 
 any other theory of life. The .same law that throws 
 
^2 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 US into life to suffer or enjoy, as may be deserved, 
 decrees that the friends and the relatives who are 
 like unto each other must incarnate together, until 
 by reason of differentiation of character they cannot 
 under any law of attraction remain in company. Not 
 unless and until they become different do they separ- 
 ate from each other. And who would wish to be 
 eternally tied to the side of uncongenial relatives or 
 acquaintances merely because there was an accident 
 of birth! 
 
 For our aid also this law works well and cease- 
 lessly. "Those whom you help will help you in 
 other lives," is the declaration. In ages past perhaps 
 we knew those who long since have passed up to 
 greater heights. The very moment in the long series 
 of incarnations we come near to where they are pur- 
 suing their pilgrimage, they at once extend assist- 
 ance, whether that be on the material or moral 
 planes. And it makes no difference whether one or 
 the other is aware of who is assisting or who is being 
 assisted. Inflexible law guides the current and brings 
 about the result. Thus the members of the whole 
 human family reciprocally act on one another, forced 
 into it by a law which is as kind as it is great, which 
 turns the contempt we bore in the past into present 
 honor and opportunity to help our fellows. 
 -f- There is no favoritism possible in nature; no man 
 has any privilege or gift which he has not deserved, 
 either as a reward or a compensation. Looking at 
 the present life spread before our limited vision, we 
 may see perhaps no cause why there should be any 
 such reward to an unworthy man, but Karma never 
 errs and will surely repay. And it not only rewards, 
 but to it solely belong those compensations which we 
 with revenge attempt to mete out. It is with this in 
 view that the holy writ of the Christians says, "Ven- 
 geance is mine; I will repay," for so surely as one 
 hurts another so is the certainty of Karma striking 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT, 53 
 
 the offender ; — but let the injured one beware that he 
 does not desire the other punished, for by Karma 
 will he be punished also. So from all this web of 
 life and ceaselessly revolving- wheel, Karma furnishes 
 the escape and the means of escape, and by reincar- 
 nation we are given the time for escape. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 j N the Egyptian Book of the Dead, chapter x describes 
 * the place where, after death, disembodied souls 
 remain in different degrees of perfection. Some 
 are shown as taking wheat three cubits high, while 
 others are only permitted to glean it — "he gleaned 
 the fields of Aanroo. " Thus some enjoy the perfec- 
 tion of spiritual bliss, while others attain only to 
 minor degrees in that place or state where divine 
 justice is meted out to the soul. 
 
 Devachan is the land of reward; the domain of 
 spiritual effects. The word spiritual here refers to 
 disembodiment; it must only be used as relative to 
 our material existence. The Christian demonstrates 
 this fact by the material entourage of his heaven. In 
 the Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky says: "'Death 
 itself is unable to deliver man from it [Karma], since 
 death is simply the door through which he passes to 
 another life on earth, after a little rest on its thresh- 
 old — Devachan." Devachan, then, is the threshold 
 of life. In the Hindii system it is etymologically the 
 place of the gods, Indra's heaven. Indra is the re- 
 gent of heaven, who gives to those who can reach 
 his realm long-enduring gifts of happiness and do- 
 minion. The B/iavagad-Gitd ^2iys\ "After enjoying 
 felicity for innumerable years in the regions of In- 
 dra, he is born again upon this earth.'' 
 
 For the x^urpose of this article, we assume that the 
 entire man, minus the body, goes into Devachan. 
 This, however, is not so. The post- mortefu division of 
 our sevenfold constitution given by Theosophy is 
 
54 ECHOfiS FROM THE ORlENt. 
 
 exact. It exhibits the basis of life, death and rein- 
 carnation. It shows the composite being, man, in 
 analogy with that other composite being, nature. 
 Both are a unity in diversity. Man, suspended in 
 nature, like her, divides and retinites. This seven- 
 fold division will be treated in a future article. 
 
 Devachan, being a state of prolonged subjective 
 happiness after the death of the body, is plainly the 
 heaven of the Christian, but with a difference. It 
 is a heaven made scientifically possible. Heaven it- 
 self must accord with the divine laws projected into 
 nature. As sleep is a release from the body, during 
 which we have dreams, so death is a complete sepa- 
 ration and release, after which in Devachan we dream; 
 until, on being again incarnated in a new body on 
 earth, we come once more into what we call waking| 
 existence. Even the human soul would weary of the 
 ceaseless round of rebirths, if some place or state 
 were not provided in which rest could be obtained ; 
 in which germinating aspirations, restricted by earth- 
 life, could have their full development. No energy 
 can be annihilated, least of all a psychic energy; 
 these must somewhere find an outlet. It is found 
 in^Devachan; this realization is the rest of the soul. 
 Its deepest desires, its highest needs are there en- 
 joyed. There every hope blooms out in full and 
 glorious flower. To prolong 'this blissful state, Hin- 
 du books give many incantations and provide innu- 
 merable ceremonies and sacrifices, all of them hav- 
 ing for end and aim a long stay in Devachan. The 
 Christian does precisely the same. He longs for 
 heaven, prays that he may go there, and offers up to 
 his God such propitiatory rites and acts as seem best 
 to him, the only difference being that he does not do 
 it half so scientifically as the Hindi!. The Hindu is 
 also more vivid in his conception of this heaven than 
 the Christian is. He postulates many places or con- 
 ditions adapted to the energic and qualitative differ- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 55 
 
 ences between souls. Kama-loka and other states 
 are where concrete desires, restricted by life in the 
 body, have full expression, while in Tribuvana the 
 abstract and benevolent thinkers absorb the joys of 
 lofty thought. The orthodox heaven has no such 
 proviso. It also ignores the fact that a settled mo- .' 
 notony of celestial existence would exhaust the soul| 
 — would be stagnation, not growth. Devachanic life 
 is development of aspiration, passing through the 
 various stages of gestation, birth, cumulative growth, 
 downward momentum and departure to another con- 
 dition, all rooted in joy. There is nothing in the 
 mere fact of death to mould a soul anew. It is a 
 group of psychic energies, and heaven must have 
 something in common with these, or why should it 
 gravitate there? Souls differ as men do. In Deva- \ 
 chan each one receives that degree1)f bliss which 
 it can assimilate; its own development determines 
 its reward. The Christian places all the snuffy old • 
 saints as high as other holy souls, sinking genius to 
 the level of the mediocre mass, while the Hindu 
 gives infinite variety of occupation and existence 
 suited to grave and gay, the soul of genius or of 
 poetry. No one sits in undesired seats, nor sings 
 psalms he never liked, nor lives in a city which might 
 pall upon him if he were forever compelled to walk 
 its pearly streets. The laws of cause and effect for- 
 bid that Devachan should be monotonous. Results 
 are proportionate to antecedent energies. The soul 
 oscillates between Devachan and earth-life, finding 
 in each conditions suited to its continuous develop- 
 ment, until, through effort, it reaches a perfection in 
 which it ceases to be the subject of the laws of action 
 and reaction, becoming instead their conscious co- 
 worker. 
 
 Devachan is a dream, but only in the sense in 
 which objective life can be called such. Both last 
 until Karma is satisfied in one direction, and begins I 
 
56 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 to work in the other. The Devachanee has no idea 
 of space or time except such as he makes for hitn- 
 self. He creates his own world. He is with all he 
 ever loved, not in bodily companionship, but in one 
 to him real, close and blissful. When a man dies, ^ 
 / the brain dies last. Life is still busy there after 
 death has been announced. The soul marshals up 
 all past events, grasps the sum total, the average 
 /tendency stands out, the ruling hope is seen. Their 
 i final aroma forms the keynote of Devachanic exis- 
 tence. The lukewarm man goes neither to heaven 
 nor hell. Nature spews him out of her mouth. Pos- 
 itive conditions, objective or subjective, are only 
 reached through positive impulsion. Devachanic dis- 
 tribution is governed by the ruling motive of the 
 soul. The hater may, by reaction, become the 
 lover, but the indifferent have no propulsion, no 
 growth. 
 
 XX. 
 
 It is quite evident to the unprejudiced inquirer that 
 Christian priests for some reason or other studi- 
 ously ignore the composite nature of man, although 
 their great authority, St. Paul, clearly refers to it. 
 \ He spoke of body, soul, and spirit, they only preach 
 j of body -and soul; he declared we had a spiritual 
 body, they remain misty as to the soul's body and 
 cling to an absurd resurrection of the material cask-, 
 et. It became the duty of Theosophists to draw the 
 attention of the modern mind once more to the Ori- 
 ental division of man's constitution, for through that 
 alone can an understanding of his state before and 
 after death be attained. The division laid down by 
 St. Paul is threefold, the Hindii one is of a sevenfold 
 character. St. Paul's is meant for those who require 
 broad outlines, but do not care to inquire into details. 
 Spirit, soul, and body, however, include the whole 
 seven divisions, the latter being a more complete an- 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 57 
 
 alysis; and it is suspected by many deep thinkers 
 that Paul knew the complete system but kept it back 
 for good reasons of his own. 
 
 An analysis of body discloses more than mere mo- 
 lecular structure, for it shows a force or life or power 
 that keeps it together and active throughout its nat- 
 ural period. Mr. Sinnett, in his Esoteric Buddhism^ 
 attempting to bring to his countrymen some know- 
 ledge of the Eastern system, called this Prdna or 
 /wa; others, however, call it Prdna alone, which 
 seems more appropriate, because the human as- 
 pect of the life force is dependent upon Prdna^ or 
 breath. 
 
 The spirit of St. Paul may be taken for our pur- 
 poses to be the Sanskrit Atmd. Spirit is universal, 
 indivisible, and common to all. In other words, there 
 are not many spirits, one for each man, but solely 
 one spirit which shines upon all men alike, finding as 
 many souls — roughly speaking — as there are beings 
 in the world. In man the spirit has a more complete 
 instrument or assemblage of tools with which to 
 work. This spiritual identity is the basis of the phi- 
 losophy; upon it the whole structure rests; to indi- 
 vidualize spirit, assigning to each human being his 
 own spirit, particular to him and separate from the 
 spirit of any other man, is to throw to the ground 
 the whole Theosophic philosophy, will nullify its 
 ethics and defeat its object. 
 
 Starting, then, with Atmd — spirit — as including the 
 whole, being its basis and support, we find the Hindu 
 offering the theory of sheaths or covers of the soul 
 or inner man. These sheaths are necessary the mo- 
 ment evolution begins and visible objects appear, so 
 that the aim of the soul may be attained in conjunc- 
 tion with nature. In this way, through a process 
 which would be out of place here, a classification is 
 arrived at by means of which the phenomena of life 
 and consciousness may be explained. 
 
58 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 The six vehicles (adopting Mr. Sinnett's nomen- 
 clature) used by the spirit and by means of which 
 the Ego gains experience are : 
 
 Body^ as a gross vehicle. 
 
 Vitality^ or Prdna. 
 
 Astral Body, or Linga ^artra. 
 
 Animal Soul, or Kama Rilpa. 
 
 Human Soul, or Manas. 
 
 Spiritual Soul, or Buddhi. 
 
 The Linga ^arira is needed as a more subtle body 
 than the corporeal frame, because the latter is in 
 fact only stupid, inert matter. Kama Riipa is the 
 body, or collection, of desires and passions; Manas 
 may be properly called the mind, and Buddhi is the 
 highest intellection beyond brain or mind. It is that 
 which discriminates. 
 
 At the death of the body, Prdna flies back to the 
 reservoir of force ; the astral body dissipates after a 
 longer period and often returns with Kama Riipa 
 when aided by certain other forces to seance-rooms, 
 where it masquerades as the deceased, a continual 
 lie and ever-present snare. The human and the spir- 
 itual soul go into the state spoken of before as Deva- 
 chan or heaven, where the stay is prolonged or short 
 according to the energies appropriate to that state 
 generated during earth-life. When these begin to 
 exhaust themselves the Ego is gradually drawn back 
 to earth-life, where through human generation it 
 takes up a new body, with another astral body, vital- 
 ity, and animal soul. 
 
 This is the *' wheel of rebirth," from which no 
 man can escape unless he conforms to true ethics and 
 acquires true knowledge and consciousness while 
 living in a body. It was to stop this ceaselessly re- 
 volving wheel that Buddha declared his perfect law, 
 and it is the aim of the true Theosophist to turn his 
 great and brilliant "Wheel of the Law" for the heal- 
 ing of the nations. 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 59 
 
 XXI. 
 
 H' 
 
 iGH in the esteem of the Hindu stands the ser- 
 pent, both as a symbol and a creature. Moving 
 in a wavy line, he figures the vast revolution of the 
 Sun through eternal space carrying the rapidly whirl- 
 ing Earth in her lesser orbit ; periodically casting his 
 skin, he presents a visible illustration of renewal of 
 life or reincarnation ; coiling to strike, he shows the 
 working of the law of Karma-Nemesis which, with 
 a basis in our actions, deals an unerring blow. As a 
 symbol with tail in mouth, forming a circle, he rep- 
 resents eternity, the circle of necessity, all-devouring 
 Time. For the older Initiates he spoke to them also 
 of the astral light which is at once devilish and divine. 
 Probably in the whole field of Theosophic study 
 there is nothing so interesting as the astral light. 
 Among the Hindus it is known as Akasa, which can 
 also be translated as sether. Through a knowledge 
 of its properties they say that all the wonderful phe- 
 nomena of the Oriental Yogis are accomplished. It 
 is also claimed that clairvoyance, clairaudience, me- 
 diumship, and seership as known to the Western 
 world are possible only through its means. It is the 
 register of our deeds and thoughts, the great picture 
 gallery of the earth, where the seer can always gaze 
 upon any event that has ever happened, as well as 
 those to come. Swimming in it as in a sea are be- 
 ings of various orders and also the astral remains of 
 deceased men and women. The Rosicrucians and 
 other European mystics called these beings Sylphs, 
 Salamanders, Gnomes, Undines, Elementals; the 
 Hindil calls them Gandharbhas or celestial musicians, 
 Yakshas, Rakshasas and many more. The ' ' spooks " 
 • of the dead — mistaken by Spiritualists for the indi- 
 viduals who are no more — float in this Akasic sub- 
 stance, and for centuries have been known to the 
 mystical Hindu as Bhuta, another name for devil, or 
 
6o ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 Pisacha, a most horrible devil ; neither of them any 
 more than the cast-off soul-body nearest earth', de- 
 void of conscience and only powerful for evil. 
 
 But the term "astral light," while not new, is pure- 
 ly of Occidental origin. Porphyry spoke of it when 
 referring to the celestial or soul-body, which he says 
 is immortal, luminous, and "star-like;" Paracelsus 
 called it the "sidereal light;" later it grew to be 
 known as astral. It was said to be the same as the 
 anima mundi or soul of the world. Modern scientific 
 investigators approach it when they speak of "lumin- 
 iferous ether" and "radiant matter." The great 
 astronomer, Camille Flammarion, who was a member 
 of the Theosophical Society during his life, speaks oi\ 
 the astral light in his novel Uranie and says: "The 
 light emanating from all these suns that people im- 
 mensity, the light reflected through space by all these 
 worlds lighted by these suns, photographs throughout 
 the boundless heaven the centuries, the days, the 
 moments as they pass. . . . From this it results 
 that the histories of all the worlds are travelling 
 through space without dispersing altogether, and that 
 all the events of the past are present and live ever- 
 more in the bosom of the infinite." 
 
 Like all unfamiliar or occult things the astral light 
 is difficult to define, and especially so from the very 
 fact that it is called "light." It is not the light as 
 we know it, and neither is it darkness. Perhaps it 
 was said to be a light because when clairvoyants saw 
 by means of it, the distant objects seemed to be il- 
 luminated. But as equally well distant sounds can 
 be heard in it, heavy bodies levitated by it, odors 
 carried thousands of miles through it, thoughts read 
 in it, and all the various phenomena by mediums 
 brought about under its action, there has been a use 
 of the term "light" which while unavoidable is none 
 the less erroneous. 
 
 A definition to be accurate must include all the 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 6 1 
 
 functions and powers of this light, but as those are 
 not fully known even to the mystic, and wholly terra 
 incognita for the scientist, we must be content with a 
 partial analysis. It is a substance easily imagined as 
 imponderable ether which, emanating from the stars, 
 envelopes the earth and permeates every atom of the 
 globe and each molecule upc^ it. Obeying the laws 
 of attraction and repulsion, it vibrates to and fro, 
 making itself now positive and now negative. This 
 gives it a circular motion which is symbolized by the 
 serpent. It is the great final agent, or prime mover, 
 cosmically speaking, which not only makes the plant 
 grow but also keeps up the diastole and systole of 
 the human heart. 
 
 Ver}^ like the action of the sensitive photographic 
 plate is this light. It takes, as Flammarion says, the 
 pictures of every moment and holds them in its grasp. 
 For this reason the Egyptians knew it as the Record- 
 er; it is the Recording Angel of the Christian, and 
 in one aspect it is Yama, the judge of the dead in 
 the Hindu pantheon, for it is by the pictures we im- 
 press therein that we are judged by Karma. 
 
 As an enormous screen or reflector the astral light 
 hangs over the earth and becomes a pow^erful uni- 
 versal hypnotizer of human beings. The pictures of 
 all acts good and bad done by our ancestors as by 
 ourselves, being ever present to our inner selves, we 
 constantly are impressed by them by way of sug- 
 gestion and go then and do likewise. Upon this 
 the great French priest-mystic, Eliphas Levi, says: 
 ' * We are often astonished when in society at being 
 assailed by evil thoughts and suggestions that we j 
 would not have imagined possible, and we are not 
 aware that we owe them solely to the presence of 
 / some morbid nefghbor ; this fact is of great impor- 
 tance, since it relates to the manifestation of con- 
 science — one of the most terrible and incontestable 
 secrets of the magic art. ... So diseased souls 
 
62 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 have a bad breath, and vitiate the moral atmosphere ; 
 that is to say, they mingle impure reflections with the 
 astral light which penetrates them, and thus estab- 
 lish deleterious currents."* 
 
 There is also a useful function of this light. As 
 it preserves the pictures of all past events and 
 things, and as there is nothing new under the sun, 
 the appliances, the ideas, the philosophy, the arts 
 and sciences of long buried civilizations are contin- 
 ually being projected in pictures out of the astral 
 into the brains of living men. This gives a meaning 
 not only to the oft-recurring "coincidence" of two 
 or more inventors or scientists hitting upon the same 
 ideas or inventions at about the same time and inde- 
 pendently of each other, but also to other events 
 and curious happenings. 
 
 Some self-styled scientists have spoken learnedly 
 of telepathy, and other phenomena, but give no suf- 
 ficient reason in nature for thought-transference or 
 apparitions or clairvoyance or the hundred and one 
 varieties of occurrences of an occult character no- 
 ticed from day to day among all conditions of men. 
 It is well to admit that thought may be transferred 
 without speech directly from one brain to another, 
 but how can the transference be effected without a 
 medium? That medium is the astral light. The 
 moment the thought takes shape in the brain it is 
 pictured in this light, and from there is taken out 
 again by any other brain sensitive enough to receive 
 it intact. 
 
 Knowing the strange properties of the astral plane 
 and the actual fate of the sheaths of the soul spoken 
 of in another article, the Theosophical Adepts of all 
 times gave no credit to pretended returning of the 
 dead. Eliphas Levi learned this well and said: 
 "The astral light combining with ethereal fluids 
 
 * Dogma et Ritual de Haute Magie. 
 
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 6^ 
 
 forms the astral phantom of which Paracelsus speaks. 
 This astral body being freed at death, attracts to 
 itself and preserves for a long time, by the sympathy 
 of likesness, the reflection of the past life; if a 
 powerfully sympathetic will draws it into the proper 
 current it manifests itself in the form of an appari- 
 tion. " But with a sensitive, abnormally constituted 
 person present — a medium, in other words, and all of 
 that class are nervously unbalanced — the strong will 
 is not needed, for the astral light and the living me- 
 dium's astral body recall these soulless phantoms, 
 and out of the same reservoir take their speech, their 
 tones, their idiosyncrasies of character, which the de- 
 luded devotees of this debasing practice are cheated 
 into imagining as the returned self of dead friend or 
 relative. 
 
 Yet all I have referred to here are only instances 
 of a few of the various properties of the astral light. 
 vSo far as concerns our world it may be said that as- 
 tral light is everywhere, interpenetrating all things ; 
 to have a photographic power by which it grasps pic- 
 tures of thoughts, deeds, events, tones, sounds, col- 
 ors, and all things ; reflective in the sense that it re- 
 flects itself into the minds of men; repellant from 
 its positive side and attractive from the negative; 
 capable of assuming extreme density when drawn in 
 around the body by powerful will or by abnorm- 
 al bodily states, so that no physical force can pene- 
 trate it. This phase of its action explains some facts 
 officially recorded during the witchcraft excitement 
 in Salem. It was there found that although stones 
 and other flying objects came toward the possessed 
 one they always fell as it were from the force of 
 gravity j'usf at the person s feet. The Hindu Yogi 
 gives evidence of a use of this condensation of the 
 astral light when he allows arrows and other pro- 
 jectiles to be thrown at him, all of them falling at his 
 feet no matter how great their momentum, and the 
 
64 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. 
 
 records of genuine Spiritualistic phenomena in thef 
 United States furnish similar experiences. / 
 
 The astral light is a powerful factor, unrecognizea 
 by science, in the phenomenon of hypnotism. Its 
 action will explain many of the problems raised by 
 Binet, Charcot and others, and especially that class 
 in which two or more distinct personalities seem to 
 be assumed by the subject, who can remember in 
 each only those things and peculiarities of expression 
 which belong to that particular stratum of their ex- 
 perience. These strange things are due to the cur- 
 rents in the astral light. In each current will be 
 found a definite series of reflections, and they are 
 taken up by the inner man, who reports them through 
 speech and action on this plane as if they were his 
 own. By the use of these currents too, but uncon- 
 sciously, the clairvoyants and clairaudients seem to 
 read in the hidden pages of life. 
 
 This light can therefore be impressed with evil or 
 good pictures, and these are reflected into the sub- 
 conscious mind of every human being. If you fill 
 the astral light with bad pictures, just such as the 
 present century is adept at creating, it will be our 
 devil and destroyer, but if by the example of even 
 a few good men and women a new and purer sort of 
 events are limned upon this eternal canvas, it will 
 become our Divine Uplifter. 
 
The Theosophical Society: 
 
 HOW TO JOIN IT. 
 
 'T^His Society is not a secret or political organization. 
 It was founded in New York in November, 1875. 
 Its objects are : 
 
 First. — To form a nucleus of a Universal Broth- 
 erhood OF Humanity, without distinction of race, 
 creed, or color. 
 
 Second. — To promote the study of Aryan and other 
 Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences, and dem- 
 onstrate the importance of that study. 
 
 Third. — To investigate unexplained laws of nature 
 and the psychical powers latent in man. 
 
 The Society appeals for support and encourage- 
 ment to all who truly love their fellow-men and de- 
 sire the eradication of the evils caused by the barriers 
 raised by race, creed, or color, which have so long 
 impeded human progress ; to all scholars, to all sin- 
 cere lovers of truth, wheresoever it may be foutid^ and 
 to all philosophers, alike in the East and in the West ; 
 and lastly, to all who aspire to higher and better 
 things than the mere pleasures and interests of a 
 worldly life, and are prepared to make the sacrifices 
 by which alone a knowledge of them can be attained. 
 
 The Headquarters are at Adyar, a suburb of Mad- 
 ras, India, where the Society has a property of 
 twenty-seven acres and extensive buildings, includ- 
 ing one for the Oriental Library and a spacious hall 
 
66 THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY: HOW TO JOIN IT. 
 
 wherein the General Council meets annually in Con- 
 vention, on the 27th of December. 
 
 The Society is composed of its Branches and mem- 
 bers, and is divided into four Sections, /. ^., India, 
 Ceylon, Europe, and America. Each Section is 
 autonomous and governs the Branches in its jurisdic- 
 tion without interference from Headquarters, provid- 
 ed only that the fundamental rules of the Society are 
 not violated. All Branches in America and the West 
 Indies are under the jurisdiction of the American 
 Section; these are all under the jurisdiction of the 
 General Convention held in India. 
 
 The President of the Society is Col. H. S. Olcott, 
 in India ; the Corresponding Secretary is H. P. 
 Blavatsky, London; the Vice-President, William Q. 
 Judge, New York. 
 
 Throughout the world there are about 180 Branches. 
 
 The American Section includes at this date the 42 
 Branches in the United States, in the principal cities. 
 
 Members are either Branch members or members- 
 at-large, the latter being those who are not in 
 Branches. 
 
 The Annual Convention of the American Section 
 is held on the fourth Sunday of April. At each Con- 
 vention an Executive Committee is elected, and dur- 
 ing the year administers the affairs of the Section 
 under the Constitution and Laws passed in Conven- 
 tion. This Committee for 1889-90 is: Gen. Abner 
 Doubleday, Mendham, N. J. ; Dr. J. D. Buck, 124 
 W. 7th St., Cincinnati, Ohio; Alexander Fullerton, 
 Box 2659, New York, N. Y. ; E. A. Neresheimer, 21 
 Maiden Lane, New York; Dr. J. W. B. LaPierre, 
 Box 71, Minneapolis, Minn.; Arthur B. Griggs, 
 Young's Hotel, Boston, Mass. ; William Q. Judge 
 (General Secretary), Box 2659, New York, N. Y, 
 
 The Society's literature is extensive and varied. 
 There are three magazines in English: T/ie Theoso- 
 phisty Adyar, Madras, India; monthly, $5.00 a year. 
 
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY: HOW TO JOIN IT. 6^ 
 
 Lucifer^ 7 Duke St., London, W. C, England; $4.25 
 a year. The Path, 132 Nassau St., New York, N. 
 Y. ; $2.00 a year. Other periodicals are in Asiatic 
 and other languages. 
 
 A circulating library of Theosophical books has 
 been established in New York by private subscrip- 
 tion, information as to which can be obtained by ad- 
 dressing ^'Theosophical Library, Box 2659, New 
 York P. O." 
 
 HOW TO JOIN. 
 
 Applicants become members by entering a Branch 
 or by being admitted as "at large." In each case an 
 application has to be signed and endorsed by two ac- 
 tive members in good standing. Branch Presidents, as 
 well as Councillors, the Executive Committee, and the 
 General Secretary, have the right to admit members- 
 at-large. Applications to enter a Branch must be 
 made to the Branch officers. Any member-at-large 
 can affiliate with a Branch by which he is acceped, 
 and those in Branches may sever that connection if 
 they see fit and be demitted as '' at-large. " Entrance 
 fee for members-at-large is $2,00, the annual dues 
 $1 . 00, and the diploma fee 50 cents. Branches charge 
 their own dues in addition. All members receive 
 the yearly Report, such documents as are from time 
 to time issued from the General Secretary's office, 
 and a copy of The Forum, an occasional pamphlet 
 containing questions and answers upon Theosophical 
 topics, and which it is intended to issue monthly as 
 near as may be. They are also entitled to the use 
 (under the rules) of the Circulating Theosophical Li- 
 brary established at the Headquarters, Room 25, 132 
 Nassau St., New York. Additions to this Library 
 are published in The Path. 
 
 Inquirers and applicants are requested to address 
 the General Secretary at the address given below. 
 
68 THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY: HOW TO JOIN IT. 
 
 enclosing' a stamp, and will receive receive from him 
 further information or application blanks. 
 
 William Q. Judge, 
 
 Gen. Secy American Section^ 
 P. O. Box 2659, 
 
 New York City. 
 
 ^^ OF THR ^ 
 
 ^university; 
 
ADVERTISEMENTS. 
 
 THE PATH, a Monthly Magazine devoted to the Broth- 
 erhood of Humanity, Theosophy in America, and the study 
 of Occult Science, Philosophy, and Aryan Literature. Ed- 
 ited by William Q. Judge. Subscription, $2.00 per year in 
 advance; single copies, 20 cents each. P. O. Box 2659, 
 New York. 
 
 Madame H. P. Blavatsky's Works. 
 
 THE SECRET DOCTRINE, the Synthesis of 
 Science, Religion, and Philosophy. Two vols, royal oct. 
 Cloth, $10.00; postage 50 cents extra. 
 
 ISIS UNVEILED, a Master Key to the Mysteries of 
 Ancient and Modem Science and Theology. Two vols, 
 royal oct. Cloth, $7.50. 
 
 THE KEY TO THEOSOPHY, a Clear Exposi- 
 tion of the Ethics, Science, and Philosophy of Theosophical 
 Tenets. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE S I L E N C E , Fragments 
 from the " Book of the Golden Precepts." Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 GEMS FROM THE E A S T , a Theosophical Birth- 
 day Book. Embellished with Sketches. Parchment, $1.00. 
 
 THE YOGA APHORISMS OF PATANJALI. 
 
 American Edition. Price: cloth, 75 cents; paper, 50 cents. 
 
 A WORKING GLOSSARY fortheUseof Students 
 of Theosophical Literature. 44 pages. Price: cloth, 75 
 cents : paper, 50 cents. 
 
 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT, aBroadOut- 
 line of Theosophical Doctrines. Being 21 Articles by Wil- 
 liam Q. Judge, reprinted from Kate Field's Washtngtoti. 
 Price, cloth, 50 cents. 
 
 THE BHAGAVAD-GITA. Dialogues of Krishna 
 aad Arjuna. A portion of the Mahabharata. Translated 
 from the Sanskrit. Aryan Press Edition. Cloth, 75 cents. 
 
 All orders for Theosophical Literature to be addressed to 
 *'The Path" Office, P. O. Box 2659, 
 
 132 Nassau St., New York. 
 

 7". 
 
^^ 
 
 UNIVEESITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, 
 BERKELEY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 
 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing 
 to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in 
 demand may be renewed if application is made before 
 expiration of loan period. 
 
 NOV 4 1f« 
 
 
 .^^ 
 
 <^ 
 
 JJi^^-