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The value of that chronology--which places virtually the "primitive
Indo-Germanic-period" before the ancient Vedic period (!)--may, in
conclusion, be illustrated by an example. Rough as may be the
calculations offered, it is impossible to go deeper into any subject of
this class within the narrow limits prescribed, and without recourse to
data not generally accessible. In the words of Prof. Max Muller:--"The
Code of Manu is almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which, as
yet, has not been assailed by those who doubt the antiquity of
everything Indian. No historian has disputed its claim to that early
date which had from the first been assigned to it by Sir William Jones"
("Hist. Sans, Lit." p. 61). And now, pray, what is this extremely
"early date?" "From 880 to 1200 B.C.," we are told. We will then, for
the present purpose, accept this authoritative conclusion. Several
facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:--(1) Manu in
his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once
mentions Bengal; the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days
when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of
Bengal. It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his
sacrificial horse. [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika
Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.] (2) In the Ayun a list of the
Hindu kings of Bengal is given. Though the date of the first king who
reigned over Banga cannot be ascertained, owing to the great gaps
between the various dynasties; it is yet known that Bengal ceased to be
an independent Hindu kingdom from 1203 after Christ. Now if,
disregarding these gaps, which are wide and many, we make up the sum of
only those chronological periods of the reign of the several dynasties
that are preserved by history, we find the following:--

24 Kshatriya families of kings reigned for a period of 2,418 years
9 Kaista kings " " " " 250 "
11 Of the Adisur families " " " 714 "
10 Of the Bhopal family " " " 689 "
10 Of the Pala dynasty (from 855 to 1040 A.D.) " " 185 "
10 The Vaidya Rajahs reigned for a period of " " 137 "
--------
Years . . . . 4,393 "

If we deduct from this sum 1,203, we have 3,190 years B.C. of successive
reigns. If it can be shown on the unimpeachable evidence of the
Sanskrit texts that some of the reigns happened simultaneously, and the
line cannot therefore be shown as successive (as was already tried),
well and good. Against an arbitrary chronology set up with a
predetermined purpose and theory in view, there will remain but little
to be said. But if this attempt at reconciliation of figures and the
surrounding circumstances are maintained simply upon "critical, internal
evidence," then, in the presence of these 3,190 years of an unbroken
line of powerful and mighty Hindu kings, the Orientalists will have to
show a very good reason why the authors of the Code of Manu seem
entirely ignorant even of the existence of Bengal--if its date has to be
accepted as not earlier than 1280 B.C.! A scientific rule which is good
enough to apply to the case of Panini ought to be valid in other
chronological speculations. Or, perhaps, this is one of those poor rules
which will not "work both ways?"

--A Chela




THEOSOPHICAL


What is Theosophy?


According to lexicographers, the term theosophia is composed of two
Greek words--theos "god," and sophas "wise." So far, correct. But the
explanations that follow are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy.
Webster defines it most originally as "a supposed intercourse with
God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman
knowledge by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some
ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German
fire-philosophers."

This, to say the least, is a poor and flippant explanation. To
attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus,
Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional misrepresentation, or
ignorance of the philosophy and motives of the greatest geniuses of the
later Alexandrian School. To impute to those, whom their contemporaries
as well as posterity styled "theodidaktoi," god-taught, a purpose to
develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by "physical
processes," is to describe them as materialists. As to the concluding
fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them upon some of the
most eminent leaders of modern science; those in whose mouths the Rev.
James Martineau places the following boast: "Matter is all we want;
give us atoms alone, and we will explain the universe."

Vaughan offers a far better, more philosophical definition. "A
Theosophist," he says, "is one who gives you a theory of God or the
works of God, which has not revelation, but inspiration of his own for
its basis." In this view every great thinker and philosopher,
especially every founder of a new religion, school of philosophy, or
sect, is necessarily a Theosophist. Hence, Theosophy and Theosophists
have existed ever since the first glimmering of nascent thought made man
seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own independent
opinions.

There were Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that
the Christian writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic
Theosophical system to the early part of the third century of their era.
Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of
the Ptolemies; and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant called
Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic, and signifying a priest consecrated to
Amun, the god of Wisdom. But history shows its revival by Ammonius
Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School. He and his disciples
called themselves "Philaletheians"--lovers of the truth; while others
termed them the "Analogists," on account of their method of interpreting
all sacred legends, symbolical myths, and mysteries, by a rule of
analogy or correspondence so that events which had occurred in the
external world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of
the human soul. It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all
sects, peoples, and nations under one common faith--a belief in one
Supreme, Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power, governing the universe by
immutable and eternal laws. His object was to prove a primitive system
of Theosophy, which, at the beginning, was essentially alike in all
countries: to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and quarrels,
and unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common mother;
to purify the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured, from
all dross of human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure
philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or
Zoroastrian systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical School
along with all the philosophies of Greece. Hence also, that
pre-eminently Buddhistic and Indian feature among the ancient
Theosophists of Alexandria, of due reverence for parents and aged
persons, a fraternal affection for the whole human race, and a
compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals. While seeking to
establish a system of moral discipline which enforced upon people the
duty to live according to the laws of their respective countries, to
exalt their minds by the research and contemplation of the one Absolute
Truth; his chief object, in order, as he believed, to achieve all
others, was to extract from the various religious teachings, as from a
many-chorded instrument, one full and harmonious melody, which would
find response in every truth-loving heart.

Theosophy is, then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine
once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization. This
"Wisdom" all the old writings show us as an emanation of the Divine
Principle; and the clear comprehension of it is typified in such names
as the Indian Buddh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the
Hermes of Greece; in the appellations, also, of some goddesses--Metis,
Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia; and, finally, the Vedas, from the
word "to know." Under this designation, all the ancient philosophers of
the East and West, the Hierophants of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryavart,
the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all knowledge of things occult and
essentially divine. The Mercavah of the Hebrew Rabbis, the secular and
popular series, were thus designated as only the vehicle, the outward
shell, which contained the higher esoteric knowledges. The Magi of
Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and
secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants had their
apporiheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mysta became an
Epopta--a Seer.

The central idea of the Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme
Essence, Unknown and Unknowable; for "how could one know the knower?"
as inquires Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Their system was characterized by
three distinct features, the theory of the above-named Essence: the
doctrine of the human soul; an emanation from the latter, hence of the
same nature; and its theurgy. It is this last science which has led
the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of materialistic
science. Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine
powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of Nature, its
votaries were first decisively termed magicians--a corruption of the
word "Magh," signifying a wise or learned man. Sceptics of a century ago
would have been as wide of the mark if they had laughed at the idea of a
phonograph or telegraph. The ridiculed and the "infidels" of one
generation generally become the wise men and saints of the next.

As regards the Divine Essence and the nature of the soul and spirit,
modern Theosophy believes now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Dev
of the Aryan nations was identical with the Iao of the Chaldeans, and
even with the Jupiter of the less learned and philosophical among the
Romans; and it was just as identical with the Jahve of the Samaritans,
the Tiu or "Tiusco" of the Northmen, the Duw of the Britons, and the
Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute Essence, the One and All,
whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldean Kabalistic, or the
Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same
result. The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires
into darkness and is itself Darkness (for human intellect), was made the
basis of all things; and we can find the idea in all its integrity in
the philosophical systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza. Therefore, whether a
Theosophist agrees with the Kabala which, speaking of En-Soph, propounds
the query; "Who, then, can comprehend It, since It is formless, and
non-existent?" or, remembering that magnificent hymn from the Rig Veda
(Hymn 129, Book x.), inquires:

"Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? Whether his will
created or was mute. He knows it--or perchance even He knows not."

Or, again, he accepts the Vedantic conception of Brahma, who, in the
Upanishads, is represented as "without life, without mind, pure,"
unconscious, for Brahma is "Absolute Consciousness." Or, even finally,
siding with the Svabhavikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but
"Svabhavat" (substance or nature) which exists by itself without any
creator--he is the true follower of pure and absolute Theosophy. That
Theosophy which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take
up the labours of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the
One Substance--the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine
Wisdom--incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed by any ancient or modern
religious philosophy, with the exception of Judaism, including
Christianity and Mohammedanism. Every Theosophist, then, holding to a
theory of the Deity "which has not revelation but an inspiration of his
own for its basis," may accept any of the above definitions or belong to
any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within the boundaries of
Theosophy. For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source
of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or
known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus
giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy. True
Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing
that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity
neither wills nor creates; but from the infinite effulgence everywhere
going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and
invisible things is but a ray containing in itself the generative and
conceptive power, which, in its turn, produces that which the Greeks
called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon, the archetypal
man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or the Divine Male.
Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis, or continued existence, and in
transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes of the personal ego,
which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles
by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental, supreme
spirit) and Jivatma (individual spirit) of the Vedantins.

To fully define Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects.
The interior world has not been hidden from all by impenetrable
darkness. By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia, or
God-knowledge, which carries the mind from the world of form into that of
formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled, in every age and every
country, to perceive things in the interior or invisible world. Hence,
the "Samadhi," or Dhyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu ascetics; the
"Daimonlonphoti," or spiritual illumination of the Neo-Platonists;
the "sidereal confabulation of soul," of the Rosicrucians or
Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the
modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though
various as to manifestation. The search after man's diviner "self," so
often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a
personal God, was the object of every mystic; and belief in its
possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of humanity, each
people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call "Noetic
work" that which the Yogi and the Shrotriya term Vidya. "By reflection,
self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to
the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty--that is, to the
Vision of God. This is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To unite one's
soul to the Universal Soul," says Porphyry, "requires but a perfectly
pure mind. Through self contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of
body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true
knowledge and wonderful insight." And Swami Dayanund Saraswati, who has
read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough
Vedic scholar, says in his "Veda Bhashya" (opasna prakaru ank. 9)--"To
obtain Diksha (highest initiation) and Yog, one has to practise
according to the rules..... The soul in the human body can perform the
greatest wonders by knowing the Universal Spirit (or God) and
acquainting itself with the properties and qualities (occult) of all the
things in the universe. A human being (a Dikshit or initiate) can thus
acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances." Finally,
Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great
naturalist, says, with brave candour: "It is spirit that alone feels,
and perceives, and thinks, that acquires knowledge, and reasons and
aspires..... There not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted
that the spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of
sense, or can, perhaps, wholly or partially quit the body for a time and
return to it again; the spirit communicates with spirit easier than
with matter." We can now see how, after thousands of years have
intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists* and our own highly
civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of such an
enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as
well as upon the physical realms of Nature, over twenty millions of
people today believe, under different form, in those same spiritual
powers that were believed in by the Yogis and the Pythagoreans, nearly
3,000 years ago.

--------
* The reality of the Yog-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman
writers, who call the Yogis Indian Gymnosophists--by Strabo, Lucan,
Plutarch, Cicero (Tusculum), Pliny (vii. 2), &c.
--------

Thus, while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving
all the problems of life and death, when he had once obtained the power
of acting independently of his body, through the Atman, "self," or
"soul;" and the old Greeks went in search of Atmu, the Hidden one, or
the God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of the Thesmophorian
mysteries; so the spiritualists of today believe in the capacity of the
spirits, or the souls of the disembodied persons, to communicate visibly
and tangibly with those they loved on earth. And all these, Aryan
Yogis, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists, affirm that
possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never embodied
spirit--the real self--are not separated from either the Universal Soul
or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their
qualities, as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no
limitation. And that when this difference is once removed--according to
the Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary
liberation of the imprisoned soul, and according to spiritualists,
through mediumship--such a union between embodied and disembodied
spirits becomes possible. Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogis, and,
following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists,
maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united to, or
rather become as one with, God several times during the course of their
lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the
Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to
be put aside as entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi,
the only controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of
extreme mysticism, was its claim to include that which is simply
ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous perception. In the
case of the Yogis, who maintained their ability to see Iswara "face to
face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern logic of the
followers of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. As to the
similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of
Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to
"God-seeing" within these last hundred years--Jacob Bohme and
Swedenborg--this pretension would and should have been philosophically
and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are
spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
phenomenalism of spiritualism.

The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and
masters, or hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient
Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from
India. Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his
higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and
initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the
demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or
under-meaning. "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi,
the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus. "He is
not an atheist who denies the existence of the gods, whom the multitude
worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the
multitude." In his turn, Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence
pervading the whole world of Nature, what are styled the gods are simply
the first principles."

Plotinus, the pupil of the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us that the
secret gnosis or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees-opinion,
science, and illumination. "The means or instrument of the first is
sense, or perception; of the second, dialectics; of the third,
intuition. To the last, reason is subordinate; it is absolute
knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object
known." Theosophy is the exact science of psychology, so to say; it
stands in relation to natural, uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge
of a Tyndall stands to that of a school-boy in physics. It develops in
man a direct beholding; that which Schelling denominates "a realization
of the identity of subject and object in the individual;" so that under
the influence and knowledge of hyponia man thinks divine thoughts, views
all things as they really are, and, finally, "becomes recipient of the
Soul of the World," to use one of the finest expressions of Emerson.
"I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay
on the Oversoul." Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy
cultivated every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly
familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy
or "ceremonial magic," so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the
Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the Theosophists. It is but
Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other Eclectics, added to
Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant of the true meaning of
the esoteric divine symbols of Nature, man is apt to miscalculate the
powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and mentally
with the higher celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the
theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the
evil, dark powers which lurk around humanity, the undying, grim
creations of human crimes and vices, and thus fall from theurgia (white
magic) into goetia (or black magic, sorcery). Yet, neither white nor
black magic are what popular superstition understands by the terms. The
possibility of "raising spirits," according to the key of Solomon, is
the height of superstition and ignorance. Purity of deed and thought
can alone raise us to an intercourse "with the gods" and attain for us
the goal we desire. Alchemy, believed by so many to have been a
spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the
teachings of the Theosophical School.

It is a noticeable fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus,
Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything
to writing. The reason for it is obvious. Theosophy is a double-edged
weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish. Like every ancient
philosophy it has its votaries among the moderns; but, until late in
our own days, its disciples were few in numbers, and of the most various
sects and opinions. "Entirely speculative, and founding no schools, they
have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy; and no doubt,
when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give
new directions to human thought," remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie,
himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, "The
Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia" (articles "Theosophical Society of New York,"
and "Theosophy," p. 731).* Since the days of the fire-philosophers, they
had never formed themselves into societies, for, tracked like wild
beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist often
amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant.

----------
* "The Royal Masonic Cycloptedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and
Biography." Edited by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie IX. (Cryptonymus) Hon.
Member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2, Scotland. New York J.
W. Bouton, 706, Broadway. 1877.
--------

The statistics show that, during a period of 150 years, no less than
90,000 men and women were burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft. In
Great Britain only, from A.D. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000
persons were put to death for compact with the "Devil." It was but late
in the present century--in 1875--that some progressed mystics and
spiritualists, unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of
Spiritualism started by its votaries, and finding that they were far
from covering the whole ground of the wide range of phenomena, formed at
New York, America, an association which is now widely known as the
Theosophical Society.

(--H.P. Blavatsky)




How a "Chela" Found his "Guru"

[Being Extracts from a private letter to Damodar K. Mavalankar, Joint
Recording Secretary of the Theosophical Society.]

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