Mystics

"The object of this book is to suggest certain lines of thought as to the deep truths underlying Christianity, truths generally overlooked, and only too often denied. The generous wish to share with all what is precious, to spread broadcast priceless truths, to shut out none from the illumination of true knowledge, has resulted in a zeal without discretion that has vulgarised Christianity, and has presented its teachings in a form that often repels the heart and alienates the intellect. The command to "preach the Gospel to every creature" (S. Mark xvi. 15.) —though admittedly of doubtful authenticity—has been interpreted as forbidding the teaching of the Gnosis to a few, and has apparently erased the less popular saying of the same Great Teacher: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.")(S. Matt vii. 6.)"

"It would be fatal to ignore the facts marshalled by Comparative Mythologists. Rightly understood, they may be made serviceable instead of mischievous. We have seen that the Apostles and their successors dealt very freely with the Old Testament as having an allegorical and mystic sense far more important than the historical, though by no means negating it..."

"The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution."

"There is one thing that is eating the heart out of India, and that is modern materialism. There is one thing which is poisoning the mind of India, and that is the kind of science which is the teacher of materialism and works against Spirituality in the mind. How should I be able to tell you of the moral regeneration of India unless first I can strike at that which is piercing her heart and sucking out her very lifeblood. So--as I have been trained in the science of the West, trained in the knowledge of the physical Universe which is so much used to make men believe that nothing but the physical remains--I take for my first subject this undermining of materialism by science, and I attack it with the weapons that were once used to build it up."

"A man who is a spiritual man--a religious teacher--regards the universe from the standpoint of the Spirit from which everything is seen as coming from the One. When he stands, as it were, in the centre, and he looks from the centre to the circumference, he stands at the point whence the force proceeds, and he judges of the force from that point of radiation and he sees it as one in its multitudinous workings, and knows the force is One; he sees it in its many divergencies, and he recognises it as one and the same thing throughout. Standing in the centre, in the Spirit, and looking outwards to the universe, he judges everything from the standpoint of the Divine Unity and sees every separate phenomenon, not as separate from the One but as the external expression of the one and the only Life. But science looks at the thing from the surface. It goes to the circumference of the universe and it sees a multiplicity of phenomena. It studies these separated things and studies them one by one. It takes up a manifestation and judges it; it judges it apart; it looks at the many, not at the One; it looks at the diversity, not at the Unity, and sees everything from outside and not from within: it sees the external difference and the superficial portion while it sees not the One from which every thing proceeds."

"If people want to eat meat, they should kill the animals for themselves... Nor should they say that if they did not do it the slaughter would still go on... Every person who eats meat takes a share in that degradation of his fellow-men; on him and on her personally lies the share, and personally lies the responsibility."

"Of this same visit to Lahore, November, 1883, Damodar himself gives many details. Of the Mahatma K.H. he says: "There I was visited by Him in body, for three nights consecutively, for about three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and in one case even went to meet Him outside the house. Him whom I saw in person at Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and the same again whom I, in visions and trances, had seen at His house, thousands of miles off, to reach which in my astral Ego I was permitted, owing, of course, to His direct help and protection. In those instances, with my psychic powers hardly developed yet, I had always seen Him as a rather hazy form, although His features were perfectly distinct, and their remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul's eye and memory. While now at Lahore, Jammu, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different. In the former cases, when making pranam (salutation) my hands passed through His form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the same in features, though far more imposing in His general appearance and bearing than Him I had so often looked upon in the portrait in Mme. Blavatsky's possession, and in the one with Mr. Sinnett..."

"There was one policy with regard to the Masters, the phenomena worked by her, and Their communications, which she would not tolerate: the attempts to separate the occult from the philosophical, and to evade the criticism and the hostility of an ignorant world by exalting the philosophical at the expense of the occult. To do this, she repeatedly declared, was to invite the destruction of the Society. She was bitterly conscious of the unfairness with which she had been treated, and of the way in which many Theosophists were willing to sacrifice her to the mob, while profiting by her teachings, and declaring that the Theosophical Society had its own foundation, and could continue to exist, even if she were regarded as a fraud."

"Study in one school of psychology came to what seemed a terrible conclusion. It was the school of Lombroso in Italy. He declared, and many others followed him, that the visions of the prophets, of the saints, of the seers, all their testimony to the existence of superphysical worlds, were the products of disordered brains, of diseased or over-strained nervous apparatus. He went further, and he declared that the manifestation known as genius was closely allied to insanity, that the brain of the genius and the brain of the madman were akin, until the phrase "genius is allied to madness," became the stock axiom of that school."

"What H. P. Blavatsky was the world may some day know. She was of heroic stature, and smaller souls instinctively resented her strength, her titanic nature. Unconventional, careless of appearances, frank to unwisdom — as the world estimates wisdom — too honest to calculate against the dishonesty of others, she laid herself open to continual criticism and misunderstanding. Full of intellectual strength and with extraordinary knowledge, she was humble as a little child. Brave to recklessness, she was pitiful and tender. Passionately indignant when accused of sins she loathed, she was generous and forgiving to a repentant foe. She had a hundred splendid virtues, and a few petty failings. May the Master she served with unfaltering courage, with unwavering devotion, send back to us again "the Brother you know as H. P. B., but we — otherwise.""

"It is not right that the continued crucifixion of the Teacher should be regarded with complacency, while the world profits by the teachings, nor that she should be branded as fraud and impostor who brought to this age the truths now gaining such world-wide acceptance. It is but just that her defence should be obtainable so long as she is slandered. Therefore I — who reverence her as my first Teacher, and who keep her in my heart with unceasing gratitude as the one who led me to my Master, whom I have now served with ever-increasing thankfulness for more than eighteen years — place here on record the facts of the past, with such comment as seems necessary."

"Sixteen years and a half have gone since Helena Petrovna Blavatsky passed away from this mortal world. Yet attacks are still made upon her veracity, upon her character, and good and sympathetic men still turn away from the Theosophical Society with: " Oh ! I do not care to belong to it ; it was founded by Mme. Blavatsky, who was convicted of fraud by the Psychical Research Society." The articles which defended her at the time have long been out of print, and are forgotten. Dr. Hodgson, the writer of the S.P.R. report, became a believer in phenomena far more wonderful than those which he denied in his youthful self-confidence, and also became himself the victim of misrepresentation and ridicule. The large circulation of Mme. Blavatsky's priceless works, the spread of the ideas which she spent her life in learning and teaching, the growth of the Theosophical Society which she founded at the orders of her Master, and with the aid of her colleague Colonel H. S. Olcott. the ever-increasing literature published by her pupils — all these form her substantial defence, the justification of her life's work. p. 1"

"Madame Fadeeff: proceeds: "The phenomena produced by the mediumistic power of my niece Helena are very curious and wonderful... so much force concentrated in a single individual — a whole group of the most extraordinary manifestations emanating from a single source... is certainly exceedingly rare and perhaps unparallelled... when she was here this power was in a condition far inferior to that which it has now reached... Helena... cannot be compared with anyone else. As child, as young girl, as woman, she was always too superior to her environment to be appreciated at her real value. She received the education of a girl of good family. She was well brought up, but was not at all learned, and as for scholarship, of that there was no question. But the unusual richness of her intellectual nature, the delicacy and swiftness of her thought, her marvellous facility in understanding, grasping and assimilating the most difficult subjects, such as would require from anybody else years of laborious study; an eminently developed intelligence, united with a character loyal, straightforward, frank, energetic — these gave her such an unusual superiority, raised her so high above the ordinary level of the insipid majority of human societies, that she could never avoid attracting general attention, and the consequent envy and animosity of all those who, in their trivial inferiority, felt wounded by the splendor of the faculties and talents of this really marvellous woman."

"Helena Petrovna was married, as a girl of seventeen, to an old man, and promptly took flight from her husband, on discovering what marriage meant, and roamed about the world in search of knowledge. In August, 1851... on a moonlight night, as her diary tells us, beside the Serpentine, " I met the Master of my dreams." He then told her that he had chosen her to work in a society, and some time afterwards, with her father's permission, she went into training for her future mission, passing through seven and ten years of probation, trial and hard work...."

"Yet is he able ever to bend down into the storm to lift another above it, without losing his own foothold on the rock of the Divine, consciously recognised as himself. Such are truly Masters, and Their peace may now and then be felt, for a time at least, by those who are striving to tread the same path, but who have not yet reached that same rock of the Self­-conscious Divine."

"When men tell us that the great religious teachers are neuropaths, that Buddha, Christ, S. Francis, are neuropaths, then we are inclined to cast our lot with the abnormal few, rather than with the normal many. We know what they were. They were men who saw far more and knew far more than we; what matters it whether we call their brains normal or abnormal? In these men's consciousness is a ray of the Divine splendour; as Browning says: Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of His Light For us in the dark to rise by. And if in those cases the brain change from a normal to an abnormal state, then humanity must ever remain thankful to abnormality. That was the first answer which may be made to this statement of Lombroso, and you find a man like Dr. Maudsley, the famous doctor, asking whether there is any law that nature shall use only for her purposes what we call the perfect brains? May it not be that for her higher performances she needs brains which are different from the ordinary, the normal brains of man?"

"Madame Fadeeff: "She was well brought up, well educated as a woman of the world, that is to say, very superficially. But as to serious and abstract studies, the religious mysteries of antiquity, Alexandrian Theurgy, ancient philosophies and philologies, the science of hieroglyphs, Hebrew, Samskrit, Greek, Latin, etc., she never saw them even in a dream. I can swear to it. She had not the least idea of the very alphabet of such things.... my niece spoke to me about them (the Masters of Wisdom), and that very fully, years ago. She wrote to me that she had seen and reknitted her connection with several of them before she wrote her Isis. Why should she have invented these personages? With what object ? and what good could they do her if they did not exist? Your enemies are neither wicked nor dishonest, I think; they are, if they accuse you of that, only idiotic."

"Nowhere, perhaps, is it more necessary to understand this than when we are studying the story of Jesus, surnamed the Christ, for when we do not disentangle the intertwisted threads, and see where symbols have been taken as events, allegories as histories, we lose most of the instructiveness of the narrative and much of its rarest beauty."

"This downflow of monadic life is accompanied by much increased flow between the buddhic and manasic perma­nent atoms, and the latter seems to awaken, sending out thrills in every direc­tion. Other manasic atoms and molecules gather round it, and a whirling vortex is seen on the three upper sub-planes of the mental plane."

"The difference between White and Black Magic lies in the motive which determines the Will; when that Will is set to benefit others, to help and bless all who come within its scope, then is the man a White Magician, and the results which he brings about by the exercise of his trained Will are beneficial, and aid the course of human evolution. He is ever expanding by such exercise"

"But when the Will is exercised for the advantage of the lower self, when it is employed for personal ends and aims, then is the man a Black Magician, a danger to the race, and his results obstruct and delay human evolution."

"The time has now come for a fuller communication than is represented by this delicate thread in its original form, and it, as it were, widens out. This is but a clumsy way of picturing the fact that the Ray from the Monad glows and increases, assuming more the form of a funnel: “The thread between the Silent Watcher and his shadow becomes stronger and radiant." - The Secret Doctrine"

"The Will of the Black Magician has the strength of iron, pointing ever to the personal end, and it strikes against the great Will, and sooner or later must shiver itself into pieces against it."

"On the next two planes, the spiritual - those of wisdom and power, the buddhic and the atmic - goes on the specific evolution of the Initiate, after the first of the Great Initiations. These five planes form the field of the evolution of consciousness, until the human merges in the divine."

"When the Self has grown so indifferent to the vehicles in which he dwells that their vibrations can no longer affect him; when he can use them for any purpose; when his vision has become perfectly clear; when the vehicles offer no opposi­tion, since the elemental life has left them, and only the life flowing from himself animates them; then the Peace enfolds him and the object of the long struggle is attained."

"He has then realised the peace of the Master, the one who is utterly master of his vehicles, and therefore master of life and death. Capable of receiving into them the tumult of the world and of reducing it to harmony; capable of feeling through them the suffer­ings of others, but not sufferings of his own; he stands apart from, beyond, all storms."

"Men fear that Christianity will be weakened when reason studies it, and that it is "dangerous" to admit that events thought to be historical have the deeper significance of the mythical or mystical meaning. It is, on the contrary, strengthened, and the student finds, with joy, that the pearl of great price shines with a purer, clearer lustre when the coating of ignorance is removed and its many colours are seen."

"Looking just at these purely physical things, and trying to understand them as signs of the line along which mankind will be evolved, we remember that whenever a new sub-race has appeared a new great Teacher has come to start it on its way. There we find one of the strongest reasons for looking to the coming of the great Teacher within a comparatively short time: that there is in the making a new type, and that always in the past that has been accompanied by the manifestation of a World Teacher. Is it likely, we say, that what has happened over and over again — is it likely that, when looking back over our own great race, we see how the Teacher has come with each of these offshoots that we can trace in the past, that, as we see the beginning of a new vista when another type is developing, then the sequence of Teachers will be broken, and that one type for the first time will be left unguided, with none to shape its spiritual aspirations, with none to lay the foundation of the civilization that it will be its destiny to build?"

"And we put that on one side as one of the proofs — a very important proof when you realize that it is dealing with physical things that every one of you can judge about for yourselves. And we look to see if there are other reasons why we should expect a World Teacher; and the next thing we notice is that now, as in the time when the Christ came to the earth, you are face to face with a great civilization which has become strong, luxurious, and dominant, but which is carried on side by side with an enormous amount of misery and of wretchedness; which, while on one side it is undoubtedly magnificent, is on the other side as undoubtedly miserable, downtrodden, and depressed. How is our civilization to progress further along the lines on which it is going today? Take the social conditions as you see them around you now. Look on the terrible unrest in every country in the civilized world. You cannot take up a newspaper without seeing in one column after another references to labor troubles... where millions are being driven to the very verge of starvation in the frightful labor war that is desolating our land today. p. 139"

"It is impossible to have those convulsions in the labor market without driving thoughtful men to consider the question of new departures, of re-organization, of a change in a system which is palpably breaking down before our eyes. And there is a strange indication, that comes from that American country where our new subrace is arising, of a possibility of an organization of industry, which, though at the moment it be on distinctly anti-social lines, has yet in it the possibility of growing into an organization that would serve society. I mean that flowering of the competitive system into trusts, in which you destroy a large amount of competition, in which one great trade is organized — granted for the benefit of those, a few, who have the control of it... we are beginning to feel the need of a new organization, of a new type of civilization, and that exactly fits in with the coming of a new sub-race, and demands by all the testimony of the past the coming of a World Teacher. p. 140"

"Welcome sister, the ever unfortunate mother India takes you to her bosom. Now she has nothing precious of which she can make a present to you; but she is ready to receive you with Shamit (sacrificial fuel), Kushahan (a seat made of sacrificial grass), Padya (water for washing the feet with), Arghya (respectful oblation) and sweet words. What has brought you sister, here? India is now lifeless. Here is now no chanting of the Vedas, no Tapobana (garden for practising religious austerities), no twice-born, no uttering of Mantras (mystical incantation) Now the cry of the famine-stricken people rends the sky. We, the inhabitants of Berhampore, give a garland of flowers round your neck; please take it, simple sister, with your characteristic affability. You are now a learned daughter of mother India, you are honoured throughout the world and your reputation is world-wide. We are glad to see you."

"She loved India with a fervor and devotion all her own. Our country’s philosophy, our history or legends, our spiritual heritage, our achievements in the past, our sorrows in the present, our aspirations for the future were part and parcel of Mrs Annie Besant’s own life."

"As the World's Parliament of Religions 1893 was to meet at Chicago in the following September, and as it had been arranged that our Society should participate in it, I deputed the Vice-President, Mr. Judge, to represent me officially, and appointed Mrs. Besant special delegate to speak there on behalf of the whole Society. How great a success it was for us and how powerfully it stimulated public interest in our views will be recollected by all our older members. Theosophy was presented most thoroughly both before the whole Parliament, an audience of 3,000 people, and at meetings of our own for the holding of which special halls were kindly given us. A profound impression was created by the discourses of Professor G. N. Chakravarti and Mrs. Besant, who is said to have risen to unusual heights of eloquence, so exhilarating were the influences of the gathering. Besides these who represented our Society especially, Messrs. Vivekananda, V. R. Gandhi, Dharmapala]], representatives of the Hind Vedanta, Jainism, and Buddhism respectively, captivated the public, who had only heard of the Indian people through the malicious reports of interested missionaries, and were now astounded to see before them and hear men who represented the ideal of spirituality and human perfectibility as taught in their respective sacred writings."

"Annie Besant’s book where she put forward the idea that theosophical mystical energies could be portrayed as colours or abstract shapes was practically the invention of abstract art. A lot of artists rushed out and read it and suddenly thought, ‘oh God you could, you could portray love as a colour, or depression as a colour” All of a sudden abstract art happens, a flowering out of occultism."

"Besant was an amazing teacher who wrote many books and played a key role in the early years of the Theosophical Society]]."

"Those who are willing to work, those who are willing to toil, those who are willing to sacrifice, they shall be the peaceful army that He shall lead to the conquest of the great ideal Society, which they shall build under His direction and make practicable under His inspiration; and they, perhaps more than any other proof, are the sign of the new departure, are the welcome and the heralds of the coming Teacher. p. 148"

"If glancing back to the history of the past, you are able to see there something of the promise of the future; if you realize something of the changing world around you, the physical earth showing signs of alteration; if you see the beginnings of the new type, of the new sub-race; if you understand something of the problems around us and the hopelessness of trying to solve them along lines previously used; if you realize the growing expectation, the looking for the coming of One to lead and to guide, and then you realize that while He is preparing for His coming, His children are preparing to welcome Him and are getting ready to march under His banner and to carry out His will; then I think that... to some of us, there will rise up the hope, nay, the certainty, that we are on the eve of mighty changes to be carried out under a World Teacher, Who shall come to our help. Who shall act as our Guide; and as that thought grows strong in your hearts, life will grow full of hope, full of joyful expectation."

"You will realize that the world is not left alone, that the troubles of the present are but the birth-pangs out of which a new civilization shall be born; and that just as in the coming of a longed-for son the pain is forgotten in the joy of welcome, so, the troubles of our time, menacing and terrible as they are, are but that hour that precedes the dawning, are but the sufferings that precede the birth; and that we also shall ere very, very long realize that change is upon us, that the Teacher is with us, that hope has changed into realization, and that the longing for the coming has altered into the delight of the come."

"The great Teachers have all spoken with one voice. They have told us: 'Love one another.' They have told us that hate ceases not by hatred at any time, that hatred ceases but by love; but although that was taught by the Lord Buddha twenty-five centuries ago, although the Christ in His exquisite Sermon on the Mount pressed that same eternal teaching in words familiar to you all, where do we find one nation that puts these principles into practice, where is a single organization which is built according to that moral law? p. 145"

"The significance of Annie Besant’s political activities lay in building up step a heightened sense of public resentment against the iniquitous and oppressive British rule in India, which other political leaders were to seize on to launch a full-scale anti-imperial agitation in the country in 1919. Thus it was from Annie Besant’s intellectual and moral capital that Mahatma Gandhi was to derive immense resources to sharpen his weapons of satyagraha to fight the British and to free the country from the fetters of foreign rule."

"The Obscenity Trial. On 24 March 1877 Annie worked with Bradlaugh to republish Dr Charles Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy [1832] (a pamphlet that advocated the use of contraceptive practice); an act that led to the arrest of Besant and Bradlaugh on 6 April 1877 for transgressing the Obscene Publications Act 1857. The following ‘Obscenity trial’ was held on 18 June... both were proclaimed guilty. However, the sentence was overturned on a technicality so Besant and Bradlaugh were able to walk free. The arrest and trial were widely publicised across the country and while Annie lost her ‘good name’ in the process, the associated press coverage succeeded in propelling the pamphlet’s informative advice far beyond their initial reach... Annie acknowledged in 1886 that ‘I had long since given up my social reputation’ and spent the remainder of the decade openly professing socialism and dedicating her efforts to the unemployed and downtrodden. This endeavour led her to the plight of the Bryant and May ‘match girls’ working in the Bow factory in 1888 for whom she commanded a strike, successfully leading to the establishment of the Matchmakers Union and better wages – the event for which she has become most famous..."

"We need a leader, one greater than ourselves, who, seeing these mighty problems that to us are insoluble, will point us to the road along which we may walk to their solution, one who will apply to the tangle of earthly life these fundamental truths of morality which are unchanging and eternal, but which have never yet been thoroughly applied to human society, or to the organizing of men on the principles there laid down."

"The subject of the unfolding of conscious­ness in the beings whose field of evolution is a solar system is one of considerable difficulty; none of us may at present hope to do more than master a small portion of its complexity, but it may be possible to study it in such fashion as may fill up some of the gaps in our thinking, and as may yield us a fairly clear outline to guide our future work."

"We cannot, however, trace this outline in any way satisfactory to the intelligence, without considering first our solar system as a whole, and endeavouring to grasp some idea, however vague that idea may be, of “the beginnings” in such a system."

"What is life or consciousness—for the two terms are synonymous? It is the power to answer to vibrations, the power to respond—that is consciousness. Evolution is the unfolding of a continually increasing power to respond. The whole universe is full of the vibrations of Íshvara, of God. He sustains and moves the whole. Consciousness is the power in us to answer to those vibrations. All powers lie hidden within us as the oak tree lies hidden in the acorn. But it is in the process of evolution that the sapling slowly grows out of the seed. In Eternity, in the Now, all is existent, perfect; in Time only is there succession, the unfolding of one thing after another. In the changeless Point everything is present: Space is but the field for diverse sequences. Hence Time and Space are the basic illusions, and are yet the fundamental conditions of thinking. Keep, I pray you, that definition of consciousness in mind, for it will govern the remainder of our study. p.17"

"That which we know as Yoga is the method by which evolution is quickened in the individual, and all the powers of the Self, up to the threshold of divinity, may by it be brought into manifestation in the man of the present. That is why Yoga training was necessary for the ancient scientist; he must develop in himself the three aspects of God, if he were to understand them as manifested in the universe around him. Now, at our own stage of evolution, it is specially the life of Brahmâ—or the Brahmâ aspect of God—with which the human mind is coming into touch, because the mind in man is the reflection of the universal mind in Kosmos. That life is the life that is the force in the atom, that vivifies every atom, nay, that brings the atom into existence, as we shall see, and remains during the whole of the growth of the universe as the fundamental life that keeps those atoms as active particles building up innumerable forms."

"We have learned that the matter in a solar system exists in seven great modifications, or planes; on three of these, the physical, emotional (astral), and mental­ - often spoken of as “the three worlds”, the well-known Triloki, or Tribhuvanam, of the Hindu cosmogony - is proceeding the normal evolution of humanity."

"Over and over again he would be led by desire into excess, and each time he would experience the painful consequences, until at last he learned moderation, i.e., he learned to conform his bodily acts in this respect to physical law; for he found that there were conditions which affected him and which he could not control, and that only by observing them could physical happiness be insured. Similar experiences flowed in upon him through all the bodily organs, with undeviating regularity; his outrushing desires brought him pleasure or pain just as they worked with the laws of Nature or against them, and, as experience increased, it began to guide his steps, to influence his choice. It was not as though he had to begin his experience anew with every life, for on each new birth he brought with him mental faculties a little increased, and ever-accumulating store. p. 278"

"The main preparation to be made for receiving in the physical vehicle the vibrations of the higher consciousness are: its purification from grosser materials by pure food and pure life; the entire subjugation of the passions, and the cultivation of an even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the turmoil and vicissitudes of external life; the habit of quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the mind away from the objects of the senses, and from the mental images arising from them, and fixing it on higher things; the cessation of hurry, especially of that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps the brain continually at work and flying from one subject to another; the genuine love for the things of the higher world, that makes them more attractive than the objects of the lower, so that the mind rests contentedly in their companionship as in that of a well-loved friend. p. 316"

"And it is not only in the labor world that we feel that this deadlock is seen. Along many other lines of human thought and human activity there is the same feeling that we have worn out our old methods and need a new departure in order that progress may be continued. You see it in the world of Art where the old ideals are fading away, and efforts in every direction are being made to body out new forms of art, new conceptions of the beautiful for the growing longings of man. You see it not only in the world of industry and art but in the world of science — the same demand for a new departure because the old methods are beginning to be outworn, and along these lines no further progress seems possible. Endings in every direction! p. 141"