Theosophical Society,
Annie
Besant
The Inner Government of the World
By
Annie Besant
Lectures delivered at the North Indian
Convention, T.S.,
held
at
Return to Annie Besant
Selection
CONTENTS
LECTURE I
Ishvara;
the Builders of a Cosmos; The Hierarchy of our World;
the
Rulers; the Teachers;
the Forces
LECTURE II
The Method of
Evolution; The
Sub-Races; The Manus
LECTURE III
The Divine Plan; Its
Sections; Religions and
Civilisations; The Present
Part of the Plan
LECTURE I
Ishvara; the
Builders of a Cosmos; Hierarchy of our World;
the Rulers;
Teachers; the Forces
FRIENDS:
I want to put before you, if I can in these three lectures, a
certain view of the world, and of the way in which that world is guided and
directed. As this meeting is a public meeting, there is one statement I think
that I ought to make, which it would not be necessary to make, if it were
composed of members of the Theosophical Society. It is important to remember
that in the Theosophical
Society we have no authority on matters of opinion. Every member is
free to work out his own theory of life, to choose his own line of thought, and
no one has the smallest right to dictate to any member what he should choose or
what he should think. In the Theosophical Society there is only one condition
which
binds a member,
namely, the recognition of Universal Brotherhood. Outside that
every member is
absolutely free. He may belong to any religion, or he may belong to no religion
at all. If he belongs to a religion, he is never asked to leave
it, to change
it, but only to try to live up to its teachings of spiritual life,
recognising the unity of
all, to live in harmony with people of his own faith
and people of
other faiths. When we speak of Theosophy,
we may take the word in one of two senses. The first, what it should be to the
individual. In that sense there is no difference between Theosophy and the ancient Brahmavidya of India, the Para Vidya,
and the Gnosis of the Greek - no difference at all. It is the
recognition that man can
realise God. It is called, in the Upanishad “the
knowledge of Him by
whom all things are known”. It is a difficulty rather of our
language that we
speak in that sense of “knowledge”, because knowledge implies a duality, or
indeed a triplicity - the Knower, the Known, and the
Relation
between them -
whereas when the Spirit of man, who comes forth from Ishvara,
realises his own
nature, it is no longer a case of thinking or of knowing. It is
a case of realising that identity. You know it is written again in
the
Upanishad: “He who says ‘I know’, he knows not,” because the very
word knowledge is an error in this realisation. In
that, we do not say, “I know”; we say, “I am”. This gives the primary meaning
of the word “Theosophy”.
Then it is also used in a secondary sense: a certain body of teachings. No one
of these
particular teachings is
binding on any member. The whole of these teachings
together are the
teachings the Society is formed to put forward in the world,
but it does not
make them binding on its members. That policy rests on a very
sure foundation.
The foundation is that no man can really believe a truth, until
he has grown to
the extent which enables him to see it as truth for himself. A
teaching is not
really a part of your spiritual life; it comes within the mental
life, into that
part of your nature which is said to be knowledge, the
intellect; and that is
able to see that which is akin to itself. The truth in
you recognises the truth outside you,
when once the inner vision is open. Hence,
in the Society, the study of the great fundamental truths of all
religions is
one of its objects. Members are not asked whether they believe in
them or not.
They are left to study them, in the full conviction that just as
when the eyes
are open the man who is not blind sees by the light of the sun, he
is not asked
to believe in the light, so is truth in the mental world. As soon
as the eyes of
the inner nature, the eyes of the intellect, are open, it is not a
question of
argument, but a question of sight. You recognise
the truth because the faculty
of truth in your own nature shows that it exists. You see by it, as
you see by
the light of the sun. As long as a man is blind, the sun to him as
light is
nothing. When the eyes are opened then no argument is necessary as
to the
existence of the light by which he sees. Truth is regarded in that
way, and
hence the student is left to study until for himself he knows the
truth of any
doctrine. The teachings which are spread by the Society are those
which you
find in every great religion. If, for instance, you take a book
published by the
They are given in the Hindi form. If you take the Theosophical
text-book, used for teaching in schools where all religions are taught, where
there are boys whose
parents hold particular religions, you have those truths given
which are common
to all religions. The only difference is that in the Theosophical
text-book, the
various Scriptures of the world in different religions are quoted
in support of
them, while in the Hindu text-book only the Hindu Scriptures are
quoted. That is
the only difference so far as the great ideas are concerned; the
ideas are
identical.
You will understand that in all that I say now, I am dealing with
things as they appear to me. They are not binding upon any particular member,
for the duty of each is to think for himself. They do not commit the Society as
a Society, because that only puts forward acceptance of Universal Brotherhood
as a condition of admission. That which I say, I am responsible for. What I say
is the result of my own study. It is for every one of you, Theosophists or
non-Theosophists, member or non-member, to use your own intellect, your own
judgment, your own conscience, in weighing every statement that I make. You
ought not to take them ready-made as truth for you. Everyone must use his own
thought, and not simply go by that of another. Especially is that so, because I
am going to deal with abstruse subjects. Speaking of them as truths, I am
speaking largely on my own knowledge and also, in addition to that, taking
certain statements congruous with what I know, but applied to a much larger
area of facts then I myself am yet able to reach. For I am going to say a few
things about the larger Kosmos of the solar systems, which I am not able to
examine for myself. I am only dealing with the subject before you as a whole,
and will deal with that part briefly.
But it is necessary, in order to give you as it were a fairly
complete view,
because there are many other solar systems about which I know
nothing. Most of us speak about many facts of science which we have not been
able to verify; for instance, I am unable in astronomy to verify the statements
of great astronomers as regards the situation and the relations of our vast
solar system. I have not studied astronomy. If I had studied, I could not have
attained to the knowledge of great experts in that particular science. But if I
find them teaching on the solar system the facts that they have observed and
collected by telescope and by the many other ways, like the spectroscope, that
they have of examining the composition of planets other than our own, I should
take this from them, if
their new facts were, generally speaking, congruous with what we
know as regards our own constitution, its relationship to certain other bodies
mathematically worked out, and so on. We are exactly in a similar position in
dealing with what are called occult statements; namely, statements of facts as
regards a particular order of existence, with some of which we can come into
contact in our own world, the existence of which to some extent we can find out
from the history of our own world; there are others as to which we find ourselves unable to make discoveries, to
gain first-hand knowledge; as to them, a large number of statements have been
made about them by far more highly developed
persons than ourselves. It is as true of occult science as it is true of astronomy,
that a large part of it is taken on trust from experts. Certain parts of it may
be found out by ourselves, by our own study; other parts cannot. The conditions
are similar to those in astronomy, or in any other science. We must give to the
study a large amount of time.
We must study along certain lines which have been verified over and
over again. We must go on to first-hand knowledge, which is the best but the
most laborious way of acquiring knowledge. This, however, demands, to begin
with, a certain amount of faculty for the particular science.
You may find, for instance, a man who could never become a great
astronomer - no matter how long he studied; a man who is deficient in
mathematical power could never become a really great astronomer, because the
higher mathematics are wanted in much of the astronomical study. If a man is by
nature very stupid in that science, he could never become a great astronomer.
So it is also with
occult study. There are a number of persons who have not got the faculty
to
begin with. It depends upon their past, upon the line of evolution
along which
they have come. Progress depends upon whether they have the
faculty, how much time they are ready to give to the study, how far they are
conforming to the rules laid down by experts for beginners in the study, and so
on. But admitting that there is a great difference between the reception given
to occult science and the reception given to astronomical statements made by
experts, everybody, practically every educated person, is willing to receive
the testimony of the greatest astronomers to facts which they are themselves
unable to observe or to verify. It is not a matter of life and death if they
are wrong. But when you
come to deal with statements of occult science, some of which you
find in the
great Scriptures of the world, some of which you find in the
ancient histories
of the world, there is much unfair scepticism
in modern thinkers. Histories are
thrown aside as legendary and mythical. Scriptures are thrown aside
as
superstition, though they contain the ideas of ancient peoples,
much more
learned than ourselves. Hence the difficulty of Occultism in
justifying itself;
a man must take it just on the lines I have put to you as to
astronomical
science. But the man of the day is ready to receive science which
are based on
apparatus. Where people make very elaborate apparatus, such as
telescopes,
spectroscopes, all kinds of things of extraordinary fineness and
delicacy, they
appeal to the mind of the day, especially in the West; they for the
moment are
most advanced, it is said, in ordinary sciences. That is the way
the mind works.
It looks out to the objects and builds up its theories by
observation,
comparison, classification, and so on. Anything that goes along
that line easily
justifies itself to the ordinary modern mind. They do not
challenge. Occultism
works in a different way. It works by the development of new organs
which are
within the man, instead of by the manufacture of apparatus which is
outside the
man. Now the development of the inner senses, the inner powers of
observation,
can only be done under certain rules, rules which affect the body
and the
conduct of the man. It is much easier to buy a telescope and look
at the moon
through it, than it is to develop your own nature along lines to
which evolution
has not as yet accustomed us. There lies the difficulty of occult
study. A
person will be willing to submit to a discipline, will not resent
it, if it is
carried on in the laboratory of science, but he does resent it if
it comes to
him with the authority of the great Knowers
of the past. It is along the line of
facts thus obtained that I am going to speak to you. Therefore you
must take
them from that standpoint, and understand that I am not asking you
to believe a
thing because I say it. I am only putting before you a theory of
the Government
of the World which has many facts to recommend it in history and in
religion,
but which may be challenged by those who do not accept ancient
history, who do not accept the great Scriptures of the world of religion - and
some which I am going to add from my own study, I will begin with that which I
am unable
definitely to verify. I can only put to you certain reasons for
accepting it.
Now broadly stated they are these. We have a solar system
consisting of certain
planetary bodies revolving round the central sun. These bodies are
studied, and
said by ordinary science to be moving under certain definite forces,
under
certain definite laws of nature, as we call them, which by
observation have been
established and re-verified over and over again. According to that
scientific
view, our solar system is to a certain extent a self-contained
body. The central
sun in a sense controls the movements of the planetary bodies which
circle round it. And outside the solar system you have space, practically empty
space.
But science tells us there are a great many solar systems. We are
only one out of a group. It tells us that the solar systems are in groups; and
that we belong to a
group - the whole group circling round another sun far, far, far
off in the
depths of space; so that we are not wholly self-contained. We are
under other
influences and are moving in obedience, as a whole group system, to
other laws.
We do not trouble much about that because we have little
opportunity of
observation. Any part of the argument of science there is
practically an
induction from certain ascertained facts. You make a theory that if
there were a
body exercising certain powers of attraction and repulsion, if your
particular
part moves in a way which is not accounted for by anything you can
discover,
then there must be something as yet unknown to you causing these
other
movements which you cannot trace to any force existing within our
own solar
system. I know very little about that, and do not want to say
anything more
about it.
I come down to our own solar system; which is quite difficult
enough for us. We find there the sun and the planets. We know, so far, that the
sun and these planets are composed of certain kinds of matter. It has been
found out by science that the constitution of the matter of every planet
contains substances which we find in our own. But they are in very different
conditions. One or two may be man-bearing, may have humanity developing upon
them. Others obviously cannot have anything like humanity such as we know it
here. These vague statements are made as all that experts are able to give even
about our own solar system. When we come to the great Scriptures of the world,
we find a very definite assertion that all
these forms of matter, the globes in the planetary system, are emanated
from a Mighty Being who goes by the name, among Hindus, of Ishvara,
as we should say in English, the Lord, the Ruler. Indeed the Being, the
existence of that Being, cannot be definitely proved except along the way that
I have mentioned in the beginning - the gaining of knowledge of Him by finding
Him in yourselves. Religion tells us that all things around us, visible and
invisible, are forms in which One Life is found. As far as our own world is
concerned, the proof of that becomes more and more accessible and valuable to
us. We may almost guess, looking at other human beings, that the life in each
is very much the same as the life in ourselves. We all think, we all feel, we
all act, we have similar passions, similar emotions, similar divisions of
thought, similar faculties and capacities of the mind, and so on, differing in
degree but not differing in essentials. Now science begins to tell us that
there is One Life in all things that science has recognised
as being alive. That has been shown very largely in our own time. Science has
long recognised that the nature of life in the animal
is the same as the nature of life in the man. It has been recognised
in the West only very lately that the life in the vegetable again differs in
degree, but not in kind. That wonderful discovery is due, as you know, to an
Indian, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, once a professor
in the
Never forget that Jagadish Chandra Bose
asserted this in his first great lecture
in
and in man-he asserted it there in the face of the Royal Society;
in the face of
all the materialistic thinkers of
concluded that famous lecture with the sentence that he was only
proving what
his ancestors had sung on the banks of
One Life and people call it by many names. Over and over again in
the Upanishads and in all that great literature of
The same One Life manifests in the vegetable, and there it
manifests as ichchha, desire. In the animal the same One Life shows out much more strongly as
ichchha and also as chit, thought; but the whole
shows itself forth in man, who sees before and after and becomes self
conscious. That has been there for hundreds of years, for centuries, for
millennia, but not put in the scientific form that suits scientists of the
twentieth century. Based on that, following that direction, accepting that
great truth from the past Rshis, Jagadish
Chandra Bose went to work and proved it on the physical plane, showed it by
physical apparatus, showed experiments that demonstrated it beyond the
possibility of doubt. It was not accepted at first; he was not believed. The
world of science of the West was not prepared to say that an Indian scientist,
moving on the lines of his own great Scriptures, had proved a thing that none
of them had discovered, much less proved. But the day of his triumph arrived.
His facts were accepted.
His conclusions were shown to be true. As you know he is now a
Fellow of the Royal Society - the highest recognition of scientific genius,
that
give. That grew out of the Scriptures. These facts we may now take
as
scientifically proved, but it is not yet sufficiently worked out in
minerals.
Only a beginning of truth is there indicated. In the minerals,
fatigue is found.
When the mineral rests; the fatigue disappears. Your machine gets
tired. The
workman will tell you so. It does not want mending, it only wants
rest. Then it
recovers its elasticity and goes on again. The proof that it has
life, and not
only what they would call lifeless reaction, is not yet complete.
Personally I
am prepared to take it from the old teachings, and also from my own
knowledge of the evolution of mineral life.
So far you are dealing with very large questions. As to the sun
there is much discussion going on. Does the sun lose or gain energy? Does it
lose it, by giving out continual heat to other things, or is that recuperated
by things that fall upon the sun, and so build it up faster than it decays? We
are ready to accept temporarily the theory adopted by the astronomers on that.
I believe the sun is the garment of a Great Being, is a centre of Life, a
mighty Self-Conscious Life. So do Hindus. Generally Narayana
is spoken of as the great Being in the Sun. The Sun in that sense is the
manifestation, the body, of the Ishvara of the
system.
You find in Theosophical teachings, which go along the lines of
these ancient
faiths, the term Logos (Word) is used for the Deity, the Ishvara of the system.
Many Theosophists, who have studied, accept this view regarding the
Sun of our
system as the body of our Logos, Ishvara,
but no stress is laid on it, nor is it
often mentioned. We speak sometimes of the Solar Logos, making that
distinction, because we believe, as the Hindus believe, that there are many Ishvaras of higher and higher rank, culminating in One.
Remember how the Bhagavata speaks about that, of the
great ranks of Ishvaras rising one above the other.
We confine ourselves for all practical purposes to the Ishvara
of our own system, and, as you know, the great mantra of Gayatri
is an appeal to God in the Sun. That is the reason, of course, why, in so many
religions, people turn to the
East in their prayers. It is not at all peculiar to the Hindus, the
turning to
the rising sun, worshipping, not the outer body as a sun, but God
in the Sun.
Everything in our solar system depends upon the Sun’s Life, heat
and light. It
is the fount of all the energy by which the solar system exists,
and has in it
the unfathomable energy of the Divine.
When you come to ask how the solar system originated, you will find
that the occult teaching goes somewhat beyond the verbal teaching of the sacred
books. Some of these use the word which signifies Ichchha,
Desire. Sometimes you find the word Breath, Prana, which is a very accurate term.
The Highest Ishvara emanates the root of matter. The Ishvara of our solar system working on what science calls
that which is before the nebula, Ether, the Ether of Space, isolates a portion
of that by a Ring He makes round it, and within that Ring-enclosed space our
solar system is formed, His Breath going into this Ether forms the primary
bubbles - there are no better words to express the action - and out of these
the atoms of the solar system are formed by aggregation. I am only stating that
fact because it has to some extent been verified by observation; that
aggregations, which are pre-atomic aggregations, of these bubbles exist. We
need not go further into it.
Who is it who, gathering up the material brought into existence by
the Life-Breath of the Logos, the Life-Breath of Ishvara,
builds it into aggregations? Primarily again the action of Ishvara
Himself, in the Aspect of Brahma.
Now we come to the division of the divine Life into three great
forms of manifestation, and it is Brahma who, taking this rough material,
shapes it by several stages, which we call sub-planes, into what ultimately
become chemical atoms. We come now quite down to our own world. After an
immense amount of formed material is thus brought into existence by the thought
of Brahma, we say that the Creative Activity is at work. Then there comes
another great wave of Life which shapes the atoms into forms, not merely
molecular forms, but forms like minerals, like vegetables, like animals, like
savage, mindless men. All that goes on through ages, that building of the
planes and their inhabitants by Those mentioned in the rough outline printed on
the first page of this lecture, who are called the Builders of a Cosmos. Now
these Builders of the system are the mighty Beings who come out of another, a
previous Cosmos, and have been united to Ishvara,
have gained moksha of the highest description, have
entered as it were into the body of the Ishvara
Himself, and become one with Him. All the first Builders of a Cosmos are those
great and mighty Devas, who are brought over by the Ishvara of the Cosmos as Builders of His worlds. Here again
we speak on the authority of the great Scriptures, and on other occult
teachings.
I am for the moment concerned with our own solar system. Now, in
the highest sense of the word, the Occult Hierarchy of the Cosmos would mean Ishvara and the great Builders of the whole system, the
great Beings who rule and guide and sustain and direct the whole of our solar
system. We cannot reach Them at all. We have to come down much lower. We have
to come down to our own world. As soon as we come to our own world, we come to
a manageable sphere of knowledge given in outline in the great books, and this is
largely verifiable, by study, by those of us who have a turn of mind that way -
just as we speak of a turn of mind in mathematics or geology - and who are
willing to undergo the discipline which makes it possible to obtain first-hand
information. So we come to the Occult Hierarchy of our own world, composed of
the Rulers, the Teachers, and the Forces.
You notice those triple divisions. They are related to the triple
nature
of Ishvara, which, in all the things
which come forth from Him, appears in the
life-side which animates the forms. You must always be on the
look-out for that
triplicity. You have it
in yourself, in your own consciousness. You know very
well it has three ways of working, no more, no less. You have Jnanam, Ichchha
and Kriya. You have Awareness, which recognises things outside itself, and
evolves into Jnanam, Knowledge. Then Ichchha, Desire in the lower form, and
Will, Power, in the higher. Then, Kriya,
Activity. And only when these three are
developed, do you find the self-conscious being. Thus he analyses
his own
consciousness. He finds in himself the triplicity
which shows the presence of
Ishvara in his own
nature. That triplicity is recognised
everywhere. Western
science recognises it in its analysis of
the mind. No one who has studied the
subject can possibly deny it, whether in the ancient books or in
the modern
books of psychology. The West is rather more vague, because the
western
languages are not as adapted to the subtler forms of study as the Samskrt. You
must remember that a language is built up by the thoughts of the
people who use
it. In the West, in dealing with the subtler side of science, they
have to fall
back upon other languages, and create new words for the new things
they find out in psychology. So you get a long list of words which the
psychologist who keeps himself level with the science of the day must know and
understand. So the English language is becoming enriched. Many of the words in
it are words adopted from Samskrt, and also from
Greek and Latin, which are the classical languages of
We thus come; down to our own world. Only one other point we have
to notice in passing, because I spoke of only two great waves of Life - the one
working on the material given by the Breath of the Logos, and the second which
forms that material into the shapes of the forms which we find in our own
world. The third great Life wave is that which in man, and in man alone; brings
the higher and the lower together, the Spirit which is brought into direct
contact with the
matter of the lower sub-planes; this is the result of the third
great impulse
from Ishvara, in which the Spirit, which
is a fragment of Himself, takes
definite possession of the body through which it has to work, not
only on the
physical but on all the lower planes, the larger worlds within
which our world
exists. These are, as you know, the physical plane, the astral
plane - I call it
the emotional - and half of the mental plane, the worlds of the lower
bodies.
Then the higher mental world, or the world of the Intellect, the
world of
Buddhi, of self-realisation, of
intuition, and that of Atma, the reproduction of
the divine Spirit in ourselves, are the higher of the fivefold
universe. That is
the man in the perfection of his parts, the stages of his
consciousness and the
bodies in which they work. I need not dwell on this, but merely
recall to you
the well-known facts. You know the various categories of the bodies
- the Sthula
Sharira and the Sukshma Sharira, and then the Koshas, given in the Vedanta, the
subdivisions of the bodies.
We are not concerned today with that organism of man, though you
must bear it in mind, but with the existence on our globe of an Occult
Hierarchy, showing out the three great groups. That Hierarchy came to us from
elsewhere.
Here as I speak, I hesitate for a moment. I was going to say that I
spoke from my own knowledge. But I had better explain. It is perfectly possible
to develop a faculty of “looking backwards”, and to read what are called the
“Occult Records” of the world far beyond ordinary history; going back to those,
to that which science is beginning to call the “memory of the world”, it is
beginning to
recognise it as a
reality that all events remain in that memory
of the world;
science makes what seems at first the rather startling statement
that if you
could go out to a certain distance from our world to some other
globe; you might
there see the events which happened in our world thousands of years
ago. It
sounds a little startling if you happen to hear it for the first
time. Sight
depends on the travelling of light. But vision, as we know it,
could not cross
the huge spaces required. But if it could, a person on a distant
globe would see
events which had happened here long after they had happened. Why do
you hear the sound of gun-fire an appreciable time after you see the flash,
since flash and sound are simultaneous? Because sound travels more slowly than
light. Light travels so swiftly that we do not appreciate the time between the
gun-fire and its flash a mile or so away. Still light travels at a certain
definite rate. A
“light-year” is the distance in miles over which light travels
during a year.
Astronomical distances are so great that they are measured in
light-years.
Suppose you took a thousand light-years, and that you were able to
see from the
huge distance traversed into the state of the globe a thousand
years ago, when
the light left it, then looking at our world you would see what was
happening a
thousand years ago. To understand this you only want a little
thought, a little
imagination. It is quite plain and simple, if you think. The events
are all
there all the way along. But to see them at any point there must be
an organ of
vision. If you can only get that, then you can see the history of
the world by,
as it were, travelling back towards the world along the light-ray
looking at the
records in this light. That is, in effect, exactly what the
Occultist does
although it is not done in that way, but from a point by which the
records pass
like a cinematographic film. It is a clumsy analogy, but it will
serve. The
Occultist calls it the Akashic Record. Science groping after it
says it must be
there, but it cannot deal with it. Naturally. It can be dealt with
only by the
development of certain faculties in man. In that way I speak of
what I have
“seen”. In that way I said that I knew that the Hierarchy came from
elsewhere,
because I have seen the coming to our world of those great Lords of
Light; I am
told They came
from Shukra, Venus, which gave to our world the
beginnings of its Occult Hierarchy. That is beyond my powers of research I saw
only the arrival. There are certain traditions in some of your books which
speak about the coming
of the great Lords. You read in them, for instance, of the four Kumaras. Where
did They come from? Who were They? They came to the world from
somewhere. The Occult Records and Hindu books say of the great Ones that. They
came from Shukra. They came to our world because our
world was ready, was at a stage of the evolution of men capable of receiving
that great wave of Life which made the intellect of man possible. And They came because, without guidance from higher Beings, the
intellect would have gone wrong, plunged amid a world of passion and animal
nature, with which it was filled, to the great destruction of the forward
evolution of human beings.
Now in the Theosophical books that period of the Coming is called
the middle of the Third Race. We are now in the Fifth Race, your own Root-Race.
The Fourth Race, as you know, includes the Chinese, the Japanese, the
Mongolians, and so on. Those belong to the Fourth Race, which exceeds the Third
and Fifth in numbers. The Third Race people are dying out, save where they have
intermarried with later Races. In ordinary ethnology they are spoken of as
Lemurian. We use that word in the Theosophical books also. The Lemurians, the
Third Race, went through the subdivisions, or sub-races, and in the middle of
the evolution of that Race came the Sons of the Light, the Sons of the Fire, as
They are called in some of the books. They founded the Occult Hierarchy of our
world. The greatest of your Rshis belong to that
Body. I just spoke of the Four Kumaras.
They were of Those who originally came to our world for its
helping, and who are still with us. Of Them it is that you read as living in
the
Then we come to the great Group of the Teachers of mankind. In that
you find all the Founders of the great religions, the Buddhas Religious, as you
find the Manus in the first. We shall go more fully into that - the Buddhas,
the Founders of world-faiths, the Teachers. They all belong to that great
Group. Then there comes the third Group which I have called here the Forces.
The reason why I use that word is that each of these Groups uses a particular
kind of force for its work. The Rulers use a particular kind of force, the
Teachers use a particular kind of force, and the others comprise all, the
remaining forces that carry on the activities of the world. The first great
group of Rulers act by Will-Power. This, as I said, in the lower form is Ichchha, in the higher form, Will. Will or Power is the
natural characteristic of the Rulers. It is that force, the force of the Will,
by which the Rulers, the Occult Rulers, of the world work. Then when you come
to the great teaching Group, there you find that they work by Jnanam, Knowledge. They, as Teachers, have the detailed
knowledge of our world, so that just when a new religion is to begin, then we
shall see a new type of man has been formed. When the new type is formed by the
Rulers, the Teachers step in to teach that new type, and to help it to evolve.
The third great Group, the Group of Kriya, Activity,
which I shall simply call here the, Forces - for want of a better word perhaps
- these bring about all the activities of our world, and they again are
directed by a Group of great Beings, so that you may think of this Occult
Government of the World as divided into three Groups according to the
qualities, or the Aspects, of Ishvara Himself.
The Groups are the same in their nature as you will see, or as you
may see, in your Shastras; so that if you look at the
names in the Hindu Shastras, you will see Mahadeva, in whom the characteristic is Ichchha
(Will); then Vishnu, whose great characteristic is Jnanam
(Wisdom); and then Brahma, whose great characteristic is Kriya
(Action). You see how orderly the whole thing is - Ishvara
at the centre of all with his triple manifestation; the copy of Saguna Brahman, the Sachchidananda
Brahman, manifested in the totality of the universe.
Then you come by a long descent, as it were, to the Ishvaras of systems, and there the great triplicity comes in of what you may call specialised forms, the Ishvaras
there showing out the three Aspects in the three corresponding Gunas. It is the Government of a World in the system.
Coming down much lower, there you will find these three again, separated for
the work that is to be done. Thus we have the Rulers characterised
by Will, the Teachers characterised by Wisdom, the
Forces characterised by Activity - all in perfect
order of sequence, so that if you learn the arrangement of the inner world, you
will be able to ascend step by
step, and realise that the arrangement that
you find in the great Scriptures of
the world is the highest. There is then that in the lower, the
lower being
fashioned after the likeness of the higher, the Supreme reflecting
Himself
downwards and downwards, till you come to the single globe. The analogy
is
perfect. So it is written: “As above, so below”. We come thus to
our own Occult Hierarchy, whom you think of as Rshis,
the mighty Ones who appear from time to time in your Puranas
and Itihasas, in the early days walking among men,
consoling men, helping men, when each Race is being founded. Of course the
lecture of tonight is one as to which, for most of you, verification is
impossible, but the sketch of these things is necessary in order
that you may
have a big picture, and then come down through that picture to our
own little
spot of world - quite an insignificant place in the enormous
universe. Here we
should be able to study more closely. Here we should be able to
find out really
what is going on, the Forces behind those who are apparently the
rulers, the
teachers and the actor in our world, the true Inner Government of
the World, by
Power, by Wisdom, by Activity, as manifested in the Occult
Hierarchy of our
world, with the Four Kumaras at its head.
LECTURE II
The Method of Evolution; The Building of Man;
The Building of Races and Sub-Races; The Manus.
FRIENDS:
You will remember that last night we left off, at the point where
we were considering the especial Government of our own world, the Occult
Hierarchy as it is called, the Beings composing that having come to our earth
in the middle of the third human Race from the planet Shukra
(Venus). I pointed out to you that you will find in the Hierarchy the threefold
division which is the reflexion of Ishvara Himself in the three aspects in which He reveals
Himself. Thinking for a moment of the Supreme Brahman, the Brahman with
qualities, the Saguna Brahman, we notice that there
we had this triple division that reappears all the way down on the Life-side,
the Consciousness-side, of beings in the Kosmos, so far as we know anything
about it, and presumably it would be found outside our Cosmos in the same way,
as the inevitable result of the Unity of the Supreme with His three Aspects,
neither more nor less. Then thinking of the Ishvara
of a single system, a single solar system like our own, we recognise
the same triplicity, and then speaking of the Occult
Hierarchy itself, we find that in that Hierarchy also we find the same triplicity. Looking at it for a moment from the outside
standpoint, as we sometimes call the personifications, the anthropomorphic
Deity, we have in all the Trinities of the religions, just as in the Trimurti here, the recognition of the three Aspects in One.
We think of the Brahma, Who creates the universe. We think of the Vishnu, who
supports and maintains it. We think of the Mahadeva,
the Mighty Being who gives to man that immortal spark of Divinity, which is the
source of all evolution in the human race as in the sub-human. So we come to
see that it was a natural thing that in the Hierarchy itself - the direct
Governors of our world, embodying in that Inner Government of the World the
divine qualities - it was natural that we should find this same triple division as we had
found it in the larger Cosmos outside. And so I put it to you, that we found in
that the Rulers, that we found the Teachers, that we found all the Activities
which I summarised under the name of the Forces,
remembering that in that word “Forces” we have the spring of all the activities
in the Cosmos outside the ruling and the teaching; so that we may think for a
moment of a great picture, as it were, in which as the head of the Rulers there
stands the Mahadeva, the One Ruler behind all who
exercise the
function of rule. So again we may think of the Teachers as
distributing to the
world the Wisdom Aspect, which is incarnate, as it were, in Vishnu,
that Wisdom that the Hebrew Scriptures speaks of as “mightily and sweetly
ordering all things”. And then in Brahma, Activity, the Third Aspect, activity
carried on by all the forces distributed under their own heads, we have the
expression of the Love of the Supreme shown in His own manifestation in the
emanation of the
world. Among the legends and tales in sacred books we find one
answer to the
question so often heard and so seldom answered: “Why did God
emanate, or create, the world?” We find the answer given: “Because the Supreme
Love, God, desired to be loved”, and as the lives that came forth from Him were
the fragments of His own Life, by that very unity of origin, there was the love
to Him from whom they came of the intelligent beings thus emanated. That is
only one of the many answers, a beautiful and poetical one, containing a
profound truth, that the great mark of the Love of the Deity is shown in His
Activity.
You will find in the different religions of the world that they all
recognise this Activity and Power and Wisdom on the
part of the Supreme Lord of the Universe; but some, with regard to the Activity,
prefer to call it Love, creation being the great sign of love, looking at it
from the standpoint of ourselves; then the Aspects are called Power, Wisdom and
Love. You will find in other religions, as for instance the Greek, the idea
that one of the three great qualities of the Deity is Beauty rather than Love.
To the Greek Beauty most appealed, so that it struck him as the characteristic
of the divine manifestation. And that view of Divinity has been repeated and
reiterated by modern science. The more science investigates into the
innumerable beings that are the embodiments of the divine Love in our world,
the more does science find that Beauty is their inevitable sign of
manifestation. You may go beyond the power of human sight.
You may call upon the microscope to help you in studying that which
is too minute for the unassisted human eye to see. The higher the power of the
microscope the more wondrous is the detail in the manifestation of the Beauty.
So that in these invisible objects which no eye of man can see
without this mechanical magnifying power, you wilt find beautiful forms traced
on the surface of the body, living creatures with wonderful forms of curves,
angles and lines delicately arranged in admirable perfection, so that when the
Greek tells us
that “God manifests as Beauty”, we find that manifestation in His
universe
bears out well the old Greek idea. It is right that we should not
forget that,
because in the more modern religion of Christianity, there was a
great revolt
against this idea of the loveliness of the universe and the beauty
of the human
body, which was part of the inspiring thought of the Greek world.
We find in
that view that beauty is a thing that leads man away from God,
instead of being
the manifestation of His innermost nature. We know that the Puritan
idea in the
Protestant side of Christianity disliked objects of beauty as
temptations,
instead of accepting them as the manifestation of the supreme
Beauty. On account of this idea of beauty, men lost that side of Divinity characterising all the
activities of the Supreme.
Coming to our Hierarchy, divided in this triple fashion, let us pause for a moment on this
grouping in order to take it up a little more closely; let us take it up in two
words that I have used in speaking of today’s lecture at the end of the
subjects that will be treated - the Manus and the Buddhas. The Manus come under
the line of Rulers. I want to pause for a moment on this great manifestation of
Power or Will. There is very much in your Puranas
that throws great light on these more obscure subjects, and because the phrases
used have not been always understood, much that was given for the helping and
teaching of men has slipped out of the minds of those to whom these great
Scriptures were given as a treasure for the helping of the world. There are in
all religions, in fact in all the organisations,
whether called exactly religions or not, which grew out of the impulse of the
Hierarchy, a certain number of symbols, of names and analogies, which seem to
have been utilised by the great Knowers
of the past, so that, putting them into the teaching for the helping of the
world, that might remain, even when their meaning was forgotten owing to the
efflux of time: so that they might remain as witnesses to the depth and the
fullness of the original teaching given to the great Aryan Race; so that in the
later days there might be one more witness of the ancient knowledge. Thus they
might see that all through the millennia of their history, that knowledge was
really imbedded in their sacred books, and that they had their witnesses ever
ready to come forward into the light, when the evolution of that Race, having
gone forward from the time when as children it learnt from its teachers, as in
its youth and young maturity it threw away much of the knowledge, as then,
growing into maturer manhood, it should regain the
knowledge of the past, and realise that there was the
whole trend of its evolution, that throughout the whole of it that teaching
remained from its early days. We find, then, in the Puranas
that name that I mentioned yesterday as connected with this first great group
of Rulers, the name of the four Kumaras. There is not
very much said about Them. Not many explanations are given. But they are spoken
of as “the Four”, the “One and the Three”. He who is spoken of as the Eldest
among Those - as to whom time may be said only to be a name, for They are
beyond its illusions - He is called Sanat Kumara, the
Eternal, the Ancient; in later days He is thought of as the Eldest, but it is
better to think of Him as the Eternal, to whom and in whom time is not.
Time is but one of the ways in which the limited consciousness
tries to measure by itself, in order to gain more clarity in its thought, tries
to measure out intervals by which and in which it is able to think; for the
order in time is only a succession of the true measure of time in moods of
consciousness, not the
movement of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. These are only adopted
by the human
mind in order that they may have a fixed measure, but one to which
the truth
does not correspond. And so we have this idea of the Eternal, who
is beyond
time, and to whom all succession is simultaneity, who is sometimes
spoken of as
the “Eternal Now”. Their conception is one. We have to try, however
feebly, to
grasp it with this limited consciousness of ours, which speaks of a
past, a
present and a future. It is not realised
that there is a possibility of the
whole three being really simultaneous, and mutually affecting each
other, the
future affecting the past, as the past is said also to influence
the future. But
that is a thing more for us to think out for ourselves in
contemplation than to
try to explain to each other. Our language, which has been founded
on the very
idea of succession, cannot express in any intelligible fashion that
where
succession is not. And the Eternal is the only word we have
practically, which
conveys, however dimly, however poorly, that great thought of
“Now”. So that
that word Eternal is never to be confused with everlasting,
Remember that word
is the word rightly given to that great Being beyond our knowing,
who is spoken
of in the Puranas as the Eldest Kumara,
the great Being we call Sanat Kumara,
The Eternal. Then the Three who are with Him, dwellers in that
mystic City of
Shamballa, the White
Island Youth, are the remaining Kumaras, called the
Pupils of Him who is the Head of the Inner Government of our World.
H.P.B. speaks of the Three, and of Their name derived from
Buddhism, which speaks of Them as the Pratyeka
Buddhas, the “Solitary Buddhas”. It is not at all a good name; it is a name
which has been given a connotation wholly inapplicable to that great height of
super-human existence. But They are given the name, because the word Buddha has
been applied specially to the Supreme Teacher. And because They did not teach,
Their work being that of the Rulers and not of the Teachers, men in their
blindness, dimly groping after the fact of this great existence, spoken of Them
as solitary Buddhas - alone, isolated, and even went so far as to apply to them
the monstrous adjective “selfish”. So foolish, so childish, are human beings in
trying to judge of Lives so far exalted beyond their own. The Secret Doctrine
uses the phrase: “Higher than the Three is only One, in Heaven and in Earth”.
Many students wonder what the phrase means. H.P.B. often took her words from
statements made by Hindu and Buddhist friends. It was simple enough in reading
of the Four Kumaras, that They were the Heads of all
power and Rulers in our world, to realise that we
were really face to face with the Mighty Four at the head of the Group of
Rulers, and the Three and One is only the obvious division between the Head and
the Three who come next to Him in the Inner Government of the World.
Leaving those Four and coming, as it were, downwards, we then come
to the great sub-group of the Manus. They come nearer to our possibility of
understanding. Their work is very clearly laid down. They are specially related
to the evolution of Races. Wherever a great Race is to be born into the world -
Root-Race we call it because so many sub-races spring from it - then we see a
Manu at work. The two with whom we are chiefly concerned at the present stage
of the evolution of our globe, are the Manu of the Fourth Race and the Manu of
the Fifth Race. There is only one Manu to a Race. We have to remember that from
the beginning. There are certain great Beings marked out in the Occult
Hierarchy who are to be the Fathers of the Races. As I said, the two with whom
we are now most concerned are the Manu of the Fifth and Fourth Races. Vaivasvata Manu, as you know, is the Manu of the Fifth, or
the great Aryan Root-Race, that Race which is sometimes spoken of as the “Sons
of Manu”. You have for instance the stotras which
specially speak of the sons of Manu because there is this peculiarity about the
work of a Manu, that the whole of the Root-Race takes origin in him. He is
literally the Father of His Race. About the very early days of the fourth
Root-Race we do not know as much as we do about the early days of
the Fifth.
We only know of a great Being spoken of generally as the Manu of
the Fourth Race, and as still charged with the care of the larger part of the
population of the
globe. He looks after those hundreds of millions of Asiatic
peoples, of whom the chief are the Chinese and the Japanese, the Japanese
comparatively small in
number, but great in development and in power. The Japanese caught
hold of
western ideas, sucked them dry, and then threw them away again,
having utilised
all that was useful for themselves in those ideas, and every one
that they
accepted they stamped with their own mark, just as you might stamp
coin made of gold from any mint. If you want to coin it, you send it to the
mint, and have it
stamped with the image of your own Nation. So the Japanese have
done with
western thought and organisation. They, under the direction of their Manu, the
impulse that He sent to them through their earthly ruler sent all
over the
western world numbers of their cleverest men, sent them on a great
mission to
the West, to learn how they managed their affairs, how they organised, and how
they worked. They travelled far and wide
in the world, looked into the ways of
all Nations, their industry, their education, their political
institutions, and
all other things that make up the outer life of a Nation, and they
came back to
instead of their own beautiful garments. I remember talking to Mr. Swinburne one
day, the great poet in
drawling. He said in this kind of dreamy drawling way: “There is
only one thing
that God on the Day of Judgment will never forgive the Japanese”. I
said in
answer: “What is that, Mr. Swinburne?”
because I knew he did not believe in the
Day of Judgment. I rather wondered what he was driving at. He half
shut his eyes
in the queer dreamy way that I have just mentioned, and spoke of
the Japanese
adoption of the western dress. Swinburne
was a great lover of beauty. The thing
that disgusted him in the new Japanese civilisation
was this phase of it. They
put aside their own beautiful men’s and women’s dress, and dressed
in the
fashion of
disgusted with them. There was a truth in his quaint remark,
because
persistence in that would have denationalised
the Japanese, and they would have
no longer struck their own note in the chord of the music of the
world. But they
soon threw aside all that outside folly, and utilised
what they had learnt in
the West. The Chinese having learnt less, being a people too
self-contained, too
shut off from the rest of the world, were not ready for the work
which was then
wanted, which was the saving of the eastern ideals. This was
assigned to Japan,
because India - which was the heart and home of eastern ideals,
from whom the
Japanese had learnt their eastern thought, their eastern beauty -
because India
was then at the moment of her greatest peril, which now, thank God,
has passed
away, when there was the danger that she would become westernised, taking the
outer appearance instead of anything which was valuable in western
thought and
culture. Then her young graduates were more proud of their
knowledge of Spencer
and Huxley than of the knowledge of their own maturer
philosophers and
scientists; then there was the danger that Indian religion, that
sublime faith
of Hinduism, given to the Root-stock of the Aryan Race for the
helping of the
whole world, that that should be looked on as childish babblings;
when that
moment came, it was the only moment that really threatened her true
life. It was
not menaced by the dangers through which she has passed. She has
had many
invasions, she has had partial conquests, she has had many
foreigners coming
within her borders; but she has conquered and assimilated them all,
no matter
how they came, or she cast them aside. You all know that the Greeks
came and
went away, but they have left India richer for the traces of the
art that they
had imprinted on hers. The Musalmans came
and conquered parts of
they were assimilated, and today are Indians by right of a thousand
years of
residence. None of these was a danger to India, for India was
stronger than
they. It was only when she began to be really westernised
that the moment of her
peril came; in the other cases she had taken