Book: Five Years Of Theosophy

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A deep consideration of all that we have written, will also give the
Theosophists an idea of what they demand when they ask to be put in the
way of gaining practically "higher powers." Well, there, as plainly as
words can put it, is the PATH .... can they tread it?

Nor must it be disguised that what to the ordinary mortal are unexpected
dangers, temptations and enemies also beset the way of the neophyte.
And that for no fanciful cause, but the simple reason that he is, in
fact, acquiring new senses, has yet no practice in their use, and has
never before seen the things he sees. A man born blind suddenly endowed
with vision would not at once master the meaning of perspective, but
would, like a baby, imagine in one case, the moon to be within his
reach, and, in the other, grasp a live coal with the most reckless
confidence.

And what, it may be asked, is to recompense this abnegation of all the
pleasures of life, this cold surrender of all mundane interests, this
stretching forward to an unknown goal which seems ever more
unattainable? For, unlike some of the anthropomorphic creeds, Occultism
offers to its votaries no eternally permanent heaven of material
pleasure, to be gained at once by one quick dash through the grave. As
has, in fact, often been the case many would be prepared willingly to
die now for the sake of the paradise hereafter. But Occultism gives no
such prospect of cheaply and immediately gained infinitude of pleasure,
wisdom and existence. It only promises extensions of these, stretching
in successive arches obscured by successive veils, in an unbroken series
up the long vista which leads to NIRVANA. And this too, qualified by
the necessity that new powers entail new responsibilities, and that the
capacity of increased pleasure entails the capacity of increased
sensibility to pain. To this, the only answer that can be given is
two-fold: (1st) the consciousness of Power is itself the most exquisite
of pleasures, and is unceasingly gratified in the progress onwards with
new means for its exercise and (2ndly) as has been already said--THIS is
the only road by which there is the faintest scientific likelihood that
"Death" can be avoided, perpetual memory secured, infinite wisdom
attained, and hence an immense helping of mankind made possible, once
that the adept has safely crossed the turning-point. Physical as well
as metaphysical logic requires and endorses the fact that only by
gradual absorption into infinity can the Part become acquainted with the
Whole, and that that which is now something can only feel, know, and
enjoy EVERYTHING when lost in Absolute Totality in the vortex of that
Unalterable Circle wherein our Knowledge becomes Ignorance, and the
Everything itself is identified with the NOTHING.




Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish?


The passage "to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve,"
occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by
superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings
of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness. In order to
determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the
word "selfishness" must first be ascertained.

According to an established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive
regard to one's own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or
self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the
advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding
those of others."

In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself
and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a
sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the
crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies
the perfect blank. Now, can an occultist be then said to be "selfish"
when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the
writer of the article on the Elixir of Life? It has been said over and
over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after occult
knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all
Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies
himself with the Father in Christian phraseology. For that purpose,
every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a
feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other
words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with
which we are all more or less affected. A study of the Law of Kosmic
Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution, the more does it
tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility of
Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her
purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of annihilation. The
occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal
philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to
attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya.
The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and
Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all
the nations and races, symbolizes the battle between unselfish and
selfish impulses, which takes place in a man, who tries to follow the
higher purposes of Nature, until the lower animal tendencies, created by
selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy thoroughly routed
and annihilated. It has also been often put forth in various
Theosophical and other occult writings that the only difference between
an ordinary man who works along with Nature during the course of Kosmic
evolution and an occultist, is that the latter, by his superior
knowledge, adopts such methods of training and discipline as will hurry
on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches in a comparatively
short time the apex which the ordinary individual will take perhaps
billions of years to reach. In short, in a few thousand years he
approaches that type of evolution which ordinary humanity attains in the
sixth or seventh Round of the Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression. It
is evident that an average man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or
rather in one incarnation. Now those, who have studied the occult
teachings concerning Devachan and our after-states, will remember that
between two incarnations there is a considerable period of subjective
existence. The greater the number of such Devachanic periods, the
greater is the number of years over which this evolution is extended.
The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to
be able to regulate his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the
duration of his Devachanic existence between two incarnations. In the
course of his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical
death and his next rebirth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual
sleep, the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state
of unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself
reborn, to continue his purpose. The period of this sleep may vary from
twenty-five to two hundred years, depending upon the degree of his
advancement. But even this period may be said to be a waste of time,
and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its duration so as
to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of
existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is his last
incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him. This
is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
convey when he says:

By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is
actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved
himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have
necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying
gradually during the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe
cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the
mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a
few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely
unconscious of, the World; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless
of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense
of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence....

The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist
controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other
writings. It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the
old gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more
ethereal ones, till at last the former sthula sarira is completely dead
and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation,
suited to his work. That body is essential to his purposes; as the
Elixir of Life says:--

To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials
to Work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers
by which infinitely more good can be done than without them. When these
are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive....

Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper
continues:--

The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the
mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more
self-denying and philosophical.

Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following
passage is entirely misunderstood:--

And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
people to ask the Theosophist "to procure for them communication with
the highest Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will
say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." ....But
let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the
result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?

Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness,
superficial critics neglect many profound truths. In the first place,
they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial
as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress,
new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good
can be done than without them. The more spiritual the Adept becomes the
less can he meddle with mundane gross affairs and the more he has to
confine himself to spiritual work. It has been repeated, times out of
number, that the work on the spiritual plane is as superior to the work
on the intellectual plane as the latter is superior to that on the
physical plane. The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but
only spiritually: they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with
worldly affairs. But this applies only to very high Adepts. There are
various degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for
humanity on the planes to which they may have risen. It is only the
chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree.
And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their
chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject
are aware. Each cycle produces its own occultists capable of working
for the humanity of the time on all the different planes; but when the
Adepts foresee that at a particular period humanity will he incapable of
producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions
they do provide by either voluntarily giving up their further progress
and waiting until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to enter
into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation so as to be ready for work
when the time comes. And although the world may not be aware of the
fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to remain
in statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit of
the future generations of humanity. In short, as the Adepts work
harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental law of their being, they
have, as it were, made a division of labour, according to which each
works on the plane appropriate to himself for the spiritual elevation of
us all--and the process of longevity mentioned in the Elixir of Life is
only the means to the end which, far from being selfish, is the most
unselfish purpose for which a human being can labour.

(--H.P. Blavatsky)




Contemplation


A general misconception on this subject seems to prevail. One confines
oneself for some time in a room, and passively gazes at one's nose, a
spot on the wall, or, perhaps, a crystal, under the impression that such
is the true form of contemplation enjoined by Raj Yoga. Many fail to
realize that true occultism requires a physical, mental, moral and
spiritual development to run on parallel lines, and injure themselves,
physically and spiritually, by practice of what they falsely believe to
be Dhyan. A few instances may be mentioned here with advantage, as a
warning to over-zealous students.

At Bareilly the writer met a member of the Theosophical Society from
Farrukhabad, who narrated his experiences and shed bitter tears of
repentance for his past follies--as he termed them. It appears from his
account that fifteen or twenty years ago having read about contemplation
in the Bhagavad Gita, he undertook the practice of it, without a proper
comprehension of its esoteric meaning and carried it on for several
years. At first he experienced a sense of pleasure, but simultaneously
he found he was gradually losing self-control; until after a few years
he discovered, to his great bewilderment and sorrow, that he was no
longer his own master. He felt his heart actually growing heavy, as
though a load had been placed on it. He had no control over his
sensations the communication between the brain and the heart had become
as though interrupted. As matters grew worse, in disgust he
discontinued his "contemplation." This happened as long as seven years
ago; and, although since then he has not felt worse, yet he could never
regain his original healthy state of mind and body.

Another case came under the writer's observation at Jubbulpore. The
gentleman concerned, after reading Patanjali and such other works, began
to sit for "contemplation." After a short time he commenced seeing
abnormal sights and hearing musical bells, but neither over these
phenomena nor over his own sensations could he exercise any control. He
could not produce these results at will, nor could he stop them when
they were occurring. Numerous such examples may be cited. While
penning these lines, the writer has on his table two letters upon this
subject, one from Moradabad and the other from Trichinopoly. In short,
all this mischief is due to a misunderstanding of the significance of
contemplation as enjoined upon students by all the schools of Occult
Philosophy. With a view to afford a glimpse of the Reality through the
dense veil that enshrouds the mysteries of this Science of Sciences, an
article, the Elixir of Life, was written. Unfortunately, in too many
instances, the seed seems to have fallen upon barren ground. Some of
its readers pin their faith to the following clause in that paper:--
Reasoning from the known to the unknown meditation must be practiced and
encouraged.

But, alas! their preconceptions have prevented them from comprehending
what is meant by meditation. They forget that the meditation spoken of
"is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to 'go out towards the
infinite,' which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration"--
as the next sentence shows. A good deal of light would be thrown upon
this subject if the reader were to turn to an earlier part of the same
paper, and peruse attentively the following paragraphs:--

So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined--
literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the
mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next. This
'next' is not a spiritual, but only a more ethereal form. Having by a
long training and preparation adapted it for a life in the atmosphere,
during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off
through a certain process .... we have to prepare for this physiological
transformation.

How are we to do it? In the first place we have the actual, visible,
material body--Man, so called, though, in fact, but his outer shell--to
deal with. Let us bear in mind that Science teaches us that in about
every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent; and
this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of
unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have
had the slightest suspicion of the fact.... Hence, if a man, partially
flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so
our astral, vital body .... may be made to harden its particles to the
atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out,
and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible
atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to gradually
get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die
and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace
them.... We can say no more.

A correct comprehension of the above scientific process will give a clue
to the esoteric meaning of meditation or contemplation. Science teaches
us that man changes his physical body continually, and this change is so
gradual that it is almost imperceptible. Why then should the case be
otherwise with the inner man? The latter too is developing and changing
atoms at every moment. And the attraction of these new sets of atoms
depends upon the Law of Affinity--the desires of the man drawing to his
bodily tenement only such particles as are necessary to give them
expression.

For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved
by nervous action expanding itself outwardly, must affect the molecular
relations of the physical man. The inner men, however sublimated their
organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical,
particles, and are still subject to the law that an "action" has a
tendency to repeat itself; a tendency to set up analogous action in the
grosser "shell" they are in contact with, and concealed within.--"The
Elixir of Life"

What is it the aspirant of Yog Vidya strives after if not to gain Mukti
by transferring himself gradually from the grosser to the next less
gross body, until all the veils of Maya being successively removed his
Atma becomes one with Paramatma? Does he suppose that this grand result
can be achieved by a two or four hours' contemplation? For the
remaining twenty or twenty-two hours that the devotee does not shut
himself up in his room for meditation is the process of the emission of
atoms and their replacement by others stopped? If not, then how does he
mean to attract all this time only those suited to his end? From the
above remarks it is evident that just as the physical body requires
incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the
inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or
unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress. This is
the real meaning of contemplation. The prime factor in the guidance of
the thought is Will.

Without that, all else is useless. And, to be efficient for the
purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a
single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued
strain, as nearly as can be continued and concentrated without one
single moment's remission.

The student would do well to take note of the italicized clause in the
above quotation. He should also have it indelibly impressed upon his
mind that:

It is no use to fast as long as one requires food.... To get rid of the
inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing
without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.

Without realizing the significance of this most important fact, any one
who for a moment finds cause of disagreement with any one of his family,
or has his vanity wounded, or for a sentimental flash of the moment, or
for a selfish desire to utilize the Divine power for gross purposes--at
once rushes into contemplation and dashes himself to pieces on the rock
dividing the known from the unknown. Wallowing in the mire of
exotericism, he knows not what it is to live in the world and yet be not
of the world; in other words, to guard self against self is an almost
incomprehensible axiom for the profane. The Hindu ought to know better
from the life of Janaka, who, although a reigning monarch, was yet
styled Rajarshi and is said to have attained Nirvana. Hearing of his
widespread fame, a few sectarian bigots went to his court to test his
Yoga-power. As soon as they entered the court-room, the king having
read their thoughts--a power which every chela attains at a certain
stage--gave secret instructions to his officials to have a particular
street in the city lined on both sides by dancing girls singing the must
voluptuous songs. He then had some gharas (pots) filled with water up
to the brim so that the least shake would be likely to spill their
contents. The wiseacres, each with a full ghara (pot) on his head, were
ordered to pass along the street, surrounded by soldiers with drawn
swords to be used against them if even so much as a drop of water were
allowed to run over. The poor fellows having returned to the palace
after successfully passing the test, were asked by the King-Adept what
they had met with in the street they were made to go through. With
great indignation they replied that the threat of being cut to pieces
had so much worked upon their minds that they thought of nothing but the
water on their heads, and the intensity of their attention did not
permit them to take cognizance of what was going on around them. Then
Janaka told them that on the same principle they could easily understand
that, although being outwardly engaged in managing the affairs of his
State, he could, at the same time, be an Occultist. He too, while in
the world, was not of the world. In other words, his inward aspirations
had been leading him on continually to the goal in which his whole inner
self was concentrated.

Raj Yoga encourages no sham, requires no physical postures. It has to
deal with the inner man whose sphere lies in the world of thought. To
have the highest ideal placed before oneself and strive incessantly to
rise up to it, is the only true concentration recognized by Esoteric
Philosophy which deals with the inner world of noumena, not the outer
shell of phenomena.

The first requisite for it is thorough purity of heart. Well might the
student of Occultism say with Zoroaster, that purity of thought, purity
of word, and purity of deed,--these are the essentials of one who would
rise above the ordinary level and join the "gods." A cultivation of the
feeling of unselfish philanthropy is the path which has to be traversed
for that purpose. For it is that alone which will lead to Universal
Love, the realization of which constitutes the progress towards
deliverance from the chains forged by Maya (illusion) around the Ego.
No student will attain this at once, but as our Venerated Mahatma says
in the "Occult World":--

The greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the
case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal
feelings, blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection,
will all give way to become blended into one universal feeling, the only
true and holy, the only unselfish and eternal one, Love, an Immense Love
for Humanity as a whole.

In short, the individual is blended with the ALL.

Of course, contemplation, as usually understood, is not without its
minor advantages. It develops one set of physical faculties as
gymnastics does the muscles. For the purposes of physical mesmerism it
is good enough; but it can in no way help the development of the
psychological faculties, as the thoughtful reader will perceive. At the
same time, even for ordinary purposes, the practice can never be too
well guarded. If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and
lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by
thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of
mediumistic faculties in themselves. As was repeatedly stated--the
Adept and the Medium are the two Poles: while the former is intensely
active and thus able to control the elemental forces, the latter is
intensely passive and thus incurs the risk of falling a prey to the
caprice and malice of mischievous embryos of human beings, and the
elementaries.

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