Chapter 33

For occult philosophy is no shadowy system of speculation like any of the hundred philosophies with which the minds of men have been overwhelmed; it is the positive Truth, and by the time enough of it is let out, it will be seen to be so by thousands of the greatest men who may then be living in the world. What will be the consequence? The first effect on the minds of all who come to understand it, is terribly iconoclastic. It drives out before it everything else in the shape of religious belief. It leaves no room for any conceptions belonging even to the groundwork or foundation of ordinary religious faith. And what becomes then of all rules of right and wrong, of all sanctions for morality? Most assuredly there are rules of right and wrong thrilling through every fibre of occult philosophy really higher than any which commonplace theologies can teach; far more cogent sanctions for morality than can be derived at second-hand from the distorted doctrines of exoteric religions; but a complete transfer of the sanction will be a process involving the greatest possible danger for mankind at the time. Bigots of all denominations will laugh at the idea of such a transfer being seriously considered. The orthodox Christian--confident in the thousand of churches overshadowing all western lands, of the enormous force engaged in the maintenance and propagation of the faith, with the Pope and the Protestant hierarchy in alliance for this broad purpose, with the countless clergy of all sects, and the fiery Salvation Army bringing up the rear--will think that the earth itself is more likely to crumble into ruin than the irresistible authority of Religion to be driven back. They are all counting, however, without the progress of enlightenment. The most absurd religions die hard; but when the intellectual classes definitively reject them, they die, with throes of terrible agony, may be, and, perhaps, like Samson in the Temple, but they cannot permanently outlive a conviction that they are false in the leading minds of the age. Just what has been said of Christianity may be said of Mahomedanism and Brahminism. Little or no risk is run while occult literature aims merely at putting a reasonable construction on perverted tenets--in showing people that truth may lurk behind even the strangest theologic fictions. And the lover of orthodoxy, in either of the cases instanced, may welcome the explanation with complacency. For him also, as for the Christian, the faith which he professes-- sanctioned by what looks like a considerable antiquity to the very limited vision of uninitiated historians, and supported by the attachment of millions grown old in its service and careful to educate their children in the convictions that have served their turn--is founded on a rock which has its base in the foundations of the world. Fragmentary teachings of occult philosophy seem at first to be no more than annotations on the canonical doctrine. They may even embellish it with graceful interpretations of its symbolism, parts of which may have seemed to require apology, when ignorantly taken at the foot of the letter. But this is merely the beginning of the attack. If occult philosophy gets before the world with anything resembling completeness, it will so command the assent of earnest students that for them nothing else of that nature will remain standing. And the earnest students in such eases must multiply. They are multiplying now even, merely on the strength of the little that has been revealed. True, as yet--for some time to come--the study will be, as it were, the whim of a few; but "those who know," know among other things that, give it fair-play, and it must become the subject of enthusiasm with all advanced thinkers. And what is to happen when the world is divided into two camps--the whole forces of intellectuality and culture on the one side, those of ignorance and superstitious fanaticism on the other? With such a war as that impending, the adepts, who will be conscious that they prepared the lists and armed the combatants, will require some better justification for their policy before their own consciences than the reflection that, in the beginning, people accused them of selfishness, and of keeping a miserly guard over their knowledge, and so goaded them with this taunt that they were induced to set the ball rolling.

There is no question, be it understood, as to the relative merits of the moral sanctions that are afforded by occult philosophy and those which are distilled from the worn-out materials of existing creeds. If the world could conceivably be shunted at one coup from the one code of morals to the other, the world would be greatly the better for the change. But the change cannot be made all at once, and the transition is most dangerous. On the other hand, it is no less dangerous to take no steps in the direction of that transition. For though existing religions may be a great power--the Pope ruling still over millions of consciences if not over towns and States, the name of the Prophet being still a word to conjure with in war, the forces of Brahmanical custom holding countless millions in willing subjection--in spite of all this, the old religions are sapped and past their prime. They are in process of decay, for they are losing their hold on the educated minority; it is still the case that in all countries the camps of orthodoxy include large numbers of men distinguished by intellect and culture, but one by one their numbers are diminishing. Five-and-twenty years only, in Europe, have made a prodigious change. Books are written now that pass almost as matters of course which would have been impossible no further back than that. No further back, books thrilled society with surprise and excitement, which the intellectual world would now ignore as embodying the feeblest commonplaces. The old creeds, in fact, are slowly losing their hold upon mankind--more slowly in the more deliberately moving East than Europe, but even here by degrees also--and a time will come, whether occult philosophy is given out to take their place or not, when they will no longer afford even such faulty sanctions for moral conduct and right as they have supplied in times gone by. Therefore it is plain that something must be given out to take their place, and hence the determinations of which this movement in which we are engaged is one of the undulations--these very words some of the foremost froth upon the advancing wave.

But surely, when something which must be done is yet very dangerous in the doing, the persons who control the operations in progress may be excused for exercising the utmost caution. Readers of Theosophical literature will be aware how bitterly our adept Brothers have been criticized for choosing to take their own time and methods in the task of partially communicating their knowledge to the world. Here in India these criticisms have been indignantly resented by the passionate loyalty to the Mahatmas that is so widely spread among Hindus--resented more by instinct than reason in some cases perhaps, though in others, no doubt, as a consequence of a full appreciation of all that is being now explained, and of other considerations beside. But in Europe such criticisms will have seemed hard to answer. The answer is really embodied, however imperfectly, in the views of the situation now set forth. We ordinary mortals in the world work as men traveling by the light of a lantern in an unknown country. We see but a little way to the right and left, only a little way behind even. But the adepts work as men traveling by daylight, with the further advantage of being able at will to get up in a balloon and survey vast expanses of lake and plain and forest.

The choice of time and methods for communicating occult knowledge to the world necessarily includes the choice of intermediary agent. Hence the double set of misconceptions in India and Europe, each adapted to the land of its origin. In India, where knowledge of the Brothers' existence and reverence for their attributes is widely diffused, it is natural that persons who may be chosen for their serviceability rather than for their merits, as the recipients of their direct teaching, should be regarded with a feeling resembling jealousy. In Europe, the difficulty of getting into any sort of relations with the fountain-head of Eastern philosophy is regarded as due to an exasperating exclusiveness on the part of the adepts in that philosophy, which renders it practically worth no man's while to devote himself to the task of soliciting their instruction. But neither feeling is reasonable when considered in the light of the explanations now put forward. The Brothers can consider none but public interests, in the largest sense of the words, in throwing out the first experimental flashes of occult revelation into the world. They can only employ agents on whom they can rely for doing the work as they may wish it done--or, at all events, in no manner which may be widely otherwise. Or they can only protect the task on which they are concerned in another way. They may consent sometimes to a very much more direct mode of instruction than that provided through intermediary agents for the world at large, in the cases of organized societies solemnly pledged to secrecy, for the time being at all events, in regard to the teaching to be conveyed to them. In reference to such societies, the Brothers need not be on the watch to see that the teaching is not worked up for the service of the world in a way they would consider, for any reasons of their own, likely to be injurious to final results or dangerous. Different men will assimilate the philosophy to be unfolded in different ways: for some it will be too iconoclastic altogether, and its further pursuit, after a certain point is reached, unwelcome. Such persons, entering too hastily on the path of exploration, will be able to drop off from the undertaking whenever they like, if thoroughly pledged to secrecy in the first instance, without being a source of embarrassment afterwards, as regards the steady prosecution of the work in hand by other more resolute, or less sensitive, labourers. It may be that in some such societies, if any should be formed in which occult philosophy may be secretly studied, some of the members will be as well fitted as, or better than, any other persons employed elsewhere to put the teachings in shape for publication, but in that case it is to be presumed that special qualifications will eventually make themselves apparent. The meaning and good sense of the restrictions, provisionally imposed meanwhile, will be plain enough to any impartial person on reflection, even though their novelty and strangeness may be a little resented at the first glance.

--Lay Chela

HISTORICAL

The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi

It is stated in Matsya Puran, chapter cclxxii., that ten Moryas would reign over India, and would be succeeded by the Shoongas, and that Shata Dhanva will be the first of these ten Maureyas (or Moryas).

In Vishnu Purana (Book IV. chapter iv.) it is stated that there was in the Soorya dynasty a king called Moru, who through the power of devotion (Yoga) is said to be still living in the village called Katapa, in the Himalayas (vide vol. iii. p. 197, by Wilson), and who, in a future age, will be the restorer of the Kshatriya race, in the Solar dynasty, that is, many thousands of years hence. In another part of the same Purana (Book IV. chapter xxiv.) it is stated that, "upon the cessation of the race of Nanda, the Moryas* will possess the earth, for Kautilya will place Chandragupta on the throne." Col. Tod considers Morya, or Maurya, a corruption of Mori, the name of a Rajput tribe.

* The particulars of this legend are recorded in the Atthata katha of the Uttaraviharo priests. -------

The Commentary on the Mahavanso thinks that the princes of the town Mori were thence called Mauryas. Vachaspattya, a Sanskrit Encyclopaedia, places the village of Katapa on the northern side of the Himalayas-- hence in Tibet. The same is stated in chapter xii. (Skanda) of Bhagavat, vol. iii. p. 325. The Vayu Purana seems to declare that Moru will re-establish the Kshatriyas in the nineteenth coming Yuga. In chapter vi. Book III. of Vishnu Purana, a Rishi called Koothoomi is mentioned. Will any of our Brothers tell us how our Mahatmas stand to these revered personages?

--R. Ragoonath Row

Editor's Note

In the Buddhist Mahavanso, Chandagatto, or Chandragupta, Asoka's grandfather, is called a prince of the Moryan dynasty as he certainly was--or rather as they were, for there were several Chandraguptas. This dynasty, as said in the same book, began with certain Kshatriyas (warriors) of the Sakya line closely related to Gautama Buddha, who crossing the Himavanto (Himalayas) "discovered a delightful location, well watered, and situated in the midst of a forest of lofty bo and other trees. There they founded a town, which was called by its Sakya lords, Morya-Nagara." Prof. Max Muller would see in this legend a made-up story for two reasons: (1) A desire on the part of Buddhists to connect their king Asoka, "the beloved of gods," with Buddha, and thus nullify the slanders set up by the Brahmanical opponents of Buddhism to the effect that Asoka and Chandragupta were Sudras; and (2) because this document does not dovetail with his own theories and chronology based on the fanciful stories of the Greek-Megasthenes and others. It was not the princes of Morya-Nagara who received their name from the Rajput tribe of Mori, but the latter that became so well known as being composed of the descendants of the Moryan sovereign of Morya-Nagara. Some light is thrown on the subsequent destiny of that dynasty in "Replies to an English F.T.S." (See ante.) The name of Rishi Koothoomi is mentioned in more than one Purana, and his Code is among the eighteen Codes written by various Rishis, and preserved at Calcutta in the library of the Asiatic Society. But we have not been told whether there is any connection between our Mahatma of that name and the Rishi, and we do not feel justified in speculating upon the subject. All we know is, that both are Northern Brahmans, while the Moryas are Kshatriyas. If any of our Brothers know more, or can discover anything relating to the subject in the Sacred Books, we shall hear of it with pleasure. The words: "The Moryas will possess the earth, for Kautilya will place Chandragupta on the throne," have in our occult philosophy a dual meaning. In one sense they relate to the days of early Buddhism, when a Chandragupta (Morya) was the king "of all the earth," i.e., of Brahmans, who believed themselves the highest and only representatives of humanity for whom earth was evolved. The second meaning is purely esoteric. Every adept or genuine Mahatma is said to "possess the earth," by the power of his occult knowledge. Hence, a series of ten Moryas, all initiated adepts, would be regarded by the occultists, and referred to as "possessing all the earth," or all its knowledge. The names of "Chandragupta" and "Kautilya" have also an esoteric significance. Let our Brother ponder over their Sanskrit meaning, and he will perhaps see what bearing the phrase--"for Kautilya will place Chandragupta upon the throne"--has upon the Moryas possessing the earth. We would also remind our Brother that the word Itihasa, ordinarily translated as "history," is defined by Sanskrit authorities to be the narrative of the lives of some August personages, conveying at the same time meanings of the highest moral and occult importance.

The Theory of Cycles

It is now some time since this theory--which was first propounded in the oldest religion of the world, Vedaism--has been gradually coming into prominence again. It was taught by various Greek philosophers, and afterwards defended by the Theosophists of the Middle Ages, but came to be flatly denied by the wise men of the West, the world of negations. Contrary to the rule, it is the men of science themselves who have revived this theory. Statistics of events of the most varied nature are fast being collected and collated with the seriousness demanded by important scientific questions. Statistics of wars and of the periods (or cycles) of the appearance of great men--at least those who have been recognized as such by their contemporaries; statistics of the periods of development and progress of large commercial centres; of the rise and fall of arts and sciences; of cataclysms, such as earthquakes, epidemics; periods of extraordinary cold and heat; cycles of revolutions, and of the rise and fall of empires, &c.: all these are subjected in turn to the analysis of the minutest mathematical calculations. Finally, even the occult significance of numbers in names of persons and cities, in events, and like matters, receives unwonted attention. If, on the one hand, a great portion of the educated public is running into atheism and scepticism, on the other hand, we find an evident current of mysticism forcing its way into science. It is the sign of an irrepressible need in humanity to assure itself that there is a power paramount over matter; an occult and mysterious law which governs the world, and which we should rather study and closely watch, trying to adapt ourselves to it, than blindly deny, and dash ourselves vainly against the rock of destiny. More than one thoughtful mind, while studying the fortunes and reverses of nations and great empires, has been struck by one identical feature in their history--namely, the inevitable recurrence of similar events, and after equal periods of time. This relation between events is found to be substantially constant, though differences in the outward form of details no doubt occur. Thus the belief of the ancients in their astrologers, soothsayers and prophets might have been warranted by the verification of many of their most important predictions, without these prognostications of future events implying of necessity anything very miraculous. The soothsayers and augurs having occupied in days of the old civilizations the very same position now occupied by our historians, astronomers and meteorologists, there was nothing more wonderful in the fact of the former predicting the downfall of an empire or the loss of a battle, than in the latter predicting the return of a comet, a change of temperature, or perhaps the final conquest of Afghanistan. Both studied exact sciences; for, if the astronomer of today draws his observations from mathematical calculations, the astrologer of old also based his prognostication upon no less acute and mathematically correct observations of the ever-recurring cycles. And, because the secret of this ancient science is now being lost, does that give any warrant for saying that it never existed, or that to believe in it, one must be ready to swallow "magic," "miracles" and the like? "If, in view of the eminence to which modern science has reached, the claim to prophesy future events must be regarded as either child's play or a deliberate deception," says a writer in the Novoye Vremja, "then we can point at science which, in its turn, has now taken up and placed on record the question, whether there is or is not in the constant repetition of events a certain periodicity; in other words, whether these events recur after a fixed and determined period of years with every nation; and if a periodicity there be, whether this periodicity is due to blind chance, or depends on the same natural laws which govern the phenomena of human life." Undoubtedly the latter. And the writer has the best mathematical proof of it in the timely appearance of such works as that of Dr. E. Zasse, and others. Several learned works treating upon this mystical subject have appeared of late, and to some of these works and calculations we shall presently refer. A very suggestive work by a well-known German scientist, E. Zasse, appears in the Prussian Journal of Statistics, powerfully corroborating the ancient theory of cycles. These periods which bring around ever-recurring events, begin from the infinitesimally small--say of ten years--rotation, and reach to cycles which require 250, 500, 700, and 1000 years to effect their revolutions around themselves, and within one another. All are contained within the Maha-Yug, the "Great Age" or Cycle of Manu's calculation, which itself revolves between two eternities--the "Pralayas" or Nights of Brahma. As, in the objective world of matter, or the system of effects, the minor constellations and planets gravitate each and all around the sun, so in the world of the subjective, or the system of causes, these innumerable cycles all gravitate between that which the finite intellect of the ordinary mortal regards as eternity, and the still finite, but more profound, intuition of the sage and philosopher views as but an eternity within THE ETERNITY. "As above, so it is below," runs the old Hermetic maxim. As an experiment in this direction, Dr. Zasse selected the statistical investigations of all the wars recorded in history, as a subject which lends itself more easily to scientific verification than any other. To illustrate his subject in the simplest and most easily comprehensible manner, Dr. Zasse represents the periods of war and the periods of peace in the shape of small and large wave-lines running over the area of the Old World. The idea is not a new one, for the image was used for similar illustrations by more than one ancient and medieval mystic, whether in words or pictures--by Henry Kunrath, for example. But it serves well its purpose, and gives us the facts we now want. Before he treats, however, of the cycles of wars, the author brings in the record of the rise and fall of the world's great empires, and shows the degree of activity they have played in the Universal History. He points out the fact that if we divide the map of the Old World into six parts--into Eastern, Central, and Western Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, and Egypt--then we shall easily perceive that every 250 years an enormous wave passes over these areas, bringing to each in its turn the events it has brought to the one next preceding. This wave we may call "the historical wave" of the 250 years' cycle.

The first of these waves began in China 2000 years B.C., in the "golden age" of this empire, the age of philosophy, of discoveries, of reforms. "In 1750 B.C. the Mongolians of Central Asia establish a powerful empire. In 1500, Egypt rises from its temporary degradation and extends its sway over many parts of Europe and Asia; and about 1250, the historical wave reaches and crosses over to Eastern Europe, filling it with the spirit of the Argonautic Expedition, and dies out in 1000 B.C. at the Siege of Troy."

The second historical wave appears about that time in Central Asia. "The Scythians leave her steppes, and inundate towards the year 750 B.C. the adjoining countries, directing themselves towards the south and west; about the year 500, in Western Asia begins an epoch of splendour for ancient Persia; and the wave moves on to the east of Europe, where, about 250 B.C., Greece reaches her highest state of culture and civilization--and further on to the west, where, at the birth of Christ, the Roman Empire finds itself at its apogee of power and greatness."