Book: Five Years Of Theosophy

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Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of the old civilizations and
the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly
schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses;
though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious
records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made
bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if
spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the
fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of
the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and
Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon
"heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas
of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory--thus
obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and
treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless
Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations--still,
despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of
mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what
science has often called "most curious coincidences." Europe has no
very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her
successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the
barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior
nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests
who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an
antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record
themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not
scrupled to deny one to others--whenever the concession excited a
sacrifice of biblical prestige.

No "traces of old civilizations" we are told! And what about the
Pelasgi--the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus?
What about the Etruscans--the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for
the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That
which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a
whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people
described as are the Pelasgi--a highly intellectual, receptive, active
people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary,
though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else,
subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the
most astounding strength; who are even suspected of having been the
inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from
which all European alphabets are derived--who were they? Could they be
shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg
(Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby
demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to
2247 "B.C.." And who were the Etruscans?

Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the
high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say--prehistoric) Tursenoi
of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history; their
Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when
they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their
northern latitudes"--only a few centuries elapsed? Shall it be still
urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology,
accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and
civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but
"a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"? Or, that the Trojan war could not
have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed
somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no
means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle,
Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records
millenniums older? If the Christian historian, hampered by his
chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to
stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously
fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's
consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get
at the truth? And if these incompetent builders of Universal History
can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological
and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has
access to quite different--and we make bold to say, more trustworthy--
materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend
Western historical infallibility? He believes--on the strength of the
documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in
India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of
giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation
of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement.
That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when
Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone. And,
having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took
the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made
civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of
the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the
Christian era; and to crown all with the definite help later of the
Normans and Saxons--two thousand years before they could build their
medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans;
and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as
civilized; then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently
styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the
Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously
earlier time. Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so
many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the
nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness--since
they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence
to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of
this age--about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii,
their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of
the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were
exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the
archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum
were taken; and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of
sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the
gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi;
so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men
are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the
proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Modern Florence
lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in
her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns. And so also
Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by
modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic
civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names
Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."

When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were
the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious
Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with
writing--as proved by their inscriptions--than the Phoenicians, then
only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data
and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no
appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in
the Past?"

"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its
offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?"
More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the
titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments,
to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages." Its
civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively
indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences.
What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even
approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the
geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its
ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile
furniture: or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and
micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and
cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed
by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of
the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the
Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly
crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the
hand of Time--lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm--the
question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern
reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few
days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand
civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are
made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And
why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the
lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in
nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know
nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those
very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old:
they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of
"Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress
within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's
correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: "This
rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery
follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you
look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which,
following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in
enunciating, you are not the first to explain them." We learn more
easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood. If, as
averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great
Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe
were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic
Rishis. That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the
secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which
is now simply improving upon details.



Question IV.--Is the Moon immersed in matter?


No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela"
his "views of the moon," for publication. With Selenography, modern
science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may
ever hope to become. It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and
105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature.
Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to--



Question V.--About the mineral monad.


Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is
"authorized by the Adepts." Why not? The term "monad" applies to the
latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the
vegetable and the animal. The monogenist may take exception to the term
and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a
corporealist, may not. As to the other class of scientists, they would
take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it
"unscientific." What relation does the monad bear to the atom? None
whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at
present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism
classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable
and ranked among algae; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics.
Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course,
from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its
constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements. In short,
the mineral monad is one--the higher animal and human monads are
countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain
mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four
kingdoms? The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in
man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad"
applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual
vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual
Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. The
composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems
necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is
made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a
centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the
animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm. Now the
Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable
and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the
lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of
progression.

It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity
trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and
after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human
being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad
of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the
correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every
atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that
form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or molecule of
ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated
by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons. But
it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has
not yet become individualized: a sequential manifestation of the one
Universal Monas. The ocean does not divide into its potential and
constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the
evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into
individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to
the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos,
in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists while accepting this
thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the
evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the
"Mineral Monad" is one. The term merely means that the tidal wave of
spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The
"Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable
kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by
Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their
degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad--not the
atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through
which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.

And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there
are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious
perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are
endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable
nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the
vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening
sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined
the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered. There
are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of
elementals, or nascent centres of forces--from the first stage of the
differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree--i.e., from full
unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces
the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming
the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"--
considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side;
the mineral kingdom; three stages in the objective physical side--these
are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into
matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from
the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo
ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to
Nirvana--the vanishing point of differentiated matter. Perhaps a simple
diagram will aid us:--

[[Diagram here]]

The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes
into concrete matter; the point D indicates the evolutionary position
of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion
(a); c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages
of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the
spiritual impulse (through the elementals--of which little is permitted
to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of
matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of
organic life, vegetable, animal, human. What is total obscuration of
spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis--matter; and this
idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A. The arrows show the line of
travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding
again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line,
d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.

The monogenists have had their day. Even believers in a personal god,
like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in
the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress
consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the
vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is
the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first
appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp.
205-6). The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an
all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its
lowest and most concrete terrestrial state; in man the monad is fully
developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according
to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles. In
the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state--but one
degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*

----------
* The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of
evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness.
----------



Question VIII.--Sri Sankaracharya's Date


It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any
particular event in the ancient history of India; and this difficulty
is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists,
whose labours in this direction have but tended to thicken the confusion
already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often
altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy.
The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on
examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based. The
writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an
imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and
of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of
Hindu writers and pundits. Very often, facts and dates are taken by
these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries
on the assumption that they are correct without any further
investigation by themselves. Even when a writer gives a date with an
expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes
the same date as if it were absolutely correct. One wrong date is made
to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often
deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical. And
consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these
writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology
constructed by them will have to be carefully examined. It will be
convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before
proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of
Sankaracharya.

I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices
engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether
rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old. We
do not mean to say that any one of these writers would now seriously
think of defending the said doctrine. Nevertheless, it had exercised a
considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began
to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology. If an antiquity of
five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected
with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be
rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding
the truth of the statement.

II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda
can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even
when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the
Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial
investigator untainted by Christian prejudices. The maximum limit of
Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament;
and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of
the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other,
should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic
and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history.

III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas
containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a
subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a
philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after
the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era.
Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin,
in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries
preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first
time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five
thousand years.

IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by
Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat
philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the
Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high
antiquity to their own religion. In consequence of this erroneous
impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is
declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha.
For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the
Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ. This is
indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus.

V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to
one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often
assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of
cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of
different writers. By this process of reasoning they have discovered
two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis. We do
not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to
identity of personality. But we cannot but protest against such
assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them,
merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or
establishing a favourite hypothesis.

VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the
chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of
the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language
and Indian literature. The time required for this growth is often
estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the
time required for the gradual development of the various strata
composing the earth's crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a
proper method in making these calculations. It will be wrong to assume
that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of
another within the same limits. The peculiar characteristics of the
nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into
consideration in attempting to make any such calculation. The history
of the said nation is equally important. Any one who examines Max
Muller's estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda
periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to
these considerations. The time allotted to the growth of these four
"strata" of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary.

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