THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP/PART 4

 

THE FUTURE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY.

 

METHODS OF FUTURE SCIENCE. MAN’S COMING DEVELOPMENT.

 

 

 

 

 

BROTHERS, - The task that lies before us this morning is by no means an easy one. Hitherto I have been tracing for you the progress of the individual; hitherto I have been trying to show you how a man who thus determined on his future might be able step by step to rise from the life of the world to the life of the disciple, and how he might anticipate the progress of humanity, how he might accomplish in a few short years what the race will accomplish in the course of untold millennia. But this morning a different task lies before us. I am going to try to trace for you that progress through the ages. I am going to try to lay before you, necessarily ex­ceedingly briefly, the great stages of human progress, taking humanity as a whole. So that we shall, as it were, have a bird’s-eye view of evolution, realize not only the past out of which we have grown into the present, but the future that lies before us as a race.  It is the progress of nations with which I propose to deal, the unfolding of humanity with which we are now concerned. And in trying such a flight as that I feel almost as though I were asking you to mount with me upon the back of Vishnu’s vehicle, Garuda the mighty bird, and sweep through the atmosphere of untold ages, glancing downwards at the landscapes over which we pass. I feel that I shall leave you and myself well nigh breathless after the transit. It is easier for me in one way than it is for you, because by often dwelling on the thought it has become more familiar, while to many of you the ground may perhaps be almost strange, and the Theosophical conception of evolution through the ages may be new in its detail. I shall necessarily be compelled to pass rapidly from point to point without elucidation, and shall therefore be sweeping you over many difficulties rather perhaps by the speed of the transit than by a complete and detailed comprehension of the whole. But let me say this to you: I may be mistaken in some of the details that I may give; I may be in error in some of the smaller points of this vast picture; but the outline as a whole is true; it is not mine, it comes from else­where; and although the weakness of the representer may cause error in detail, the fundamental ac­curacy of the sketch is an accuracy on which you may rely.

 

Man in the vision of the Great Ones who were his earliest Teachers, Rulers and Guides, is not man as he is today, for he is not all that he is meant to be, all that he shall yet become. I do not mean by that that his progress has on the whole been unsatisfac­tory. It has not. The place in evolution he has reached, surrounded with difficulties, with doubts, with much of suffering, is a place which on the whole, looked at from the highest standpoint, is fairly satisfactory, considering the shortness of the time that lies behind him, short in the divine measure­ment, although so long measured by mortal years. Certainly man as he is today is by no means what man is in the minds that projected his pilgrimage, in the sight of Those who started him on his evolution. He has come downwards; he has passed his lowest  point; a mighty climbing lies in front of him, at the end of which humanity, perfected and glorious, shall indeed be very different from what it is today, shall be as it was projected in the divine thought.

 

The universe, you must bear in mind all through, consists of seven great and distinct regions, thrown out as it were from the divine Mind, thrown from within outwards or from above downwards, which­ever expression you prefer - a mighty universe in seven planes or regions. Each plane is distinct in its material, although the essence of all is one and the same, Paramatma whence all proceeds. As this outpouring of the divine thought took shape by the divine will in the manifested universe, and as plane after plane was formed, each plane was characterized by the difference of the density of its material, by the difference of the number of enwrappings in which the primal energy was veiled. So that speaking broadly, you may conceive of this great  Cosmos with the LOGOS who gave it birth, you may conceive of it as a mighty solar system, the sun representing the LOGOS and, coming outwards, orb after orb, each orb representing a plane of the universe. Those within would be those in which the  matter was subtlest and the energy was least fettered; those outside would be those in which the matter was growing denser, and the energy was more crippled by this density of the material by which it was enfolded.

 

Next you have to realize that each of these regions has its own inhabitants, and that the course of evolution is the sweeping outwards from the centre to the circumference and then the returning inwards from the circumference towards the centre. As the Great Breath goes outwards and matter comes into existence, becoming denser and denser, there will be a point at which matter will be at its densest and energy at its feeblest, at which form will be at its most rigid and life at its most hidden; so that this outward process will be a process in which matter will be densifying and form will be increasing in rigidity, while life will be becoming more and more veiled in its manifestation. On the other hand when there is the returning of the Breath, the bringing again of this creative activity as it were to the centre,  matter will grow more and more subtle, life will become more and more unveiled, until finally the Great Breath will draw in from this manifested  Cosmos all the world’s experiences that have been gained. The humanity which was the object and outcome of this evolutionary process will have become divine and ready for yet mightier stages of advance. And following that great sweep outwards we realize that as we follow it there is as regards the inhabitants a process towards individualization as they pass into denser matter. So that looking at the inhabitants of these planes, as they lie behind us, we shall see what is called the elemental  essence gradually taking to itself more and more definite forms; its evolution, being on the descending arc, lies in its becoming more separated and taking more material forms; it is a process downwards into matter whereas the evolution now of mankind, being on the ascending arc, lies in its rising into unity and taking more subtle forms, for it is a process upwards into the unveiled life.

 

You may roughly grasp in this way an idea of the  Cosmos as a whole, and you will understand that in the planes that are less dense than the physical, we have not only evolving and ascending humanity but also the involving and descending elemental essence. In the mineral world is the turning point, for there the densest stage has been reached. In the upward evolution the mineral and the vegetable kingdoms of this physical world occupy the physical plane and do not pass to a consciousness beyond it; as evolution proceeds the animal world takes one step upwards, and the animal has to live on what is called the astral plane as well as on the physical; man is intended in the thought of his Builders to conquer and occupy during this evolution five out of the seven planes of the universe. He is intended to func­tion and to be master on the physical, to function and to be master on the astral, to function and to be  master on the plane above the astral, the mental, which includes the Svarga of the Hindu, the Devachan of the Theosophist; we may use another term that better expresses the whole range of that state of consciousness, the term Sushupti, a state now known during earth-life only by the exceptionally experienced and developed, but which in the course of evolution will be experienced by the majority of the human race. Above this comes the fourth, or Turiya plane, the plane of Buddhi, and above that yet again the plane of Nirvana, or Turiya-tita. So that you get five distinct regions of the Universe which humanity is meant to occupy in the course of this evolution - the physical, the astral, the sushuptic, the turiyic and the nirvanic. Those are the stages of expanding consciousness through which man has to pass, if he is to succeed in the pilgrimage which he has to make. The individual may take these steps more rapidly by Yoga, but the majority of the race is to accomplish this evolution only in the course of ages; not quite the whole race, but the majority of human kind, ere this Manvantara is over, will have conquered all these planes of expanded con­sciousness and will be functioning upon the whole five, Man will then have formed to himself vehicles in which consciousness can work on each plane. And when we look at man to-day we know that in him there is the possibility of the unfolding of this five-fold life, the five-fold vehicles which will occupy these different regions and make him, as he is meant to be, master and lord of this manifested universe.

 

Two planes yet lie above and beyond, which will not be touched by the majority of mankind in this evolution at all - two planes which are mere names for us, names conveying no definite meaning, so high are those spheres beyond our loftiest imaginings. These are that which is spoken of as Paranirvana and that which is still higher, Mahaparanirvana. What these states are we cannot even dream. These are the seven stages of the  Cosmos. Humanity as a majority is to conquer and occupy five of them, and some of humanity’s children will reach to the yet higher that remain; but for the bulk of our race its evolution is within the five-fold universe.

 

That may perhaps give you a hint - I have no time to work it out in this lecture - as to what underlay the controversy that arose as to the “five” and “seven” in Nature. There has been much dispute as to that, especially between some of the Theosophists and some of our Brahmana brothers. The Brahmanas claimed the five-fold classification, whereas the Theosophists insisted on the seven-fold. The truth is that the total classification is seven-fold as you will find in the sacred Books, the seven-fold fire dividing itself, hinted at here and there in the Upanishads. But the present evolution is an evolution of the five-fold nature only, the evolution symbolized in the five pranas familiar in Hindu literature. I only say this in passing because so many disputes are disputes which need not arise if people understood each other a little better than they do; if instead of fighting over mere appearances they would look beneath the surface, they would generally find a point of union. As I say, I have not time to dwell upon it, but it is here that really lies the key to the riddle of the five and the seven.  Mankind as a whole develops five vehicles for the five-fold evolution, whereas those who are the very flower of humanity reach two stages that lie still beyond.

 

Now studying the evolution of humanity, we find the First and the Second Races employed in the evolution of form, and in the evolution of the lower or animal nature; that is they developed the physical body with the etheric double (which in theosophical books has been called the Linga Sharira) and the kamic or passional nature - that which you find in the animal and also find in man. Coming to the Third Race of humanity we find that special help was given to it when it had reached its midmost point; it was not that humanity could not have developed in the course of ages without that special help, but that such help enormously quickened the process and made its evolution far more rapid than otherwise it would have been. The great Kumaras, Those who are spoken of as Manasaputras, Sons of Mind, the first fruits of a past evolution, Those came to humanity in order that They might hasten its growth, might quicken its development, and by throwing out a spark from Their own essence They gave that impulse we have read of, by which Manas, or the individual soul, was born in man.

 

The outcome of that special help was, as I have said, a great increase in the rapidity of human evolu­tion. And then was formed that vehicle known as Karana Sharira, or causal body. It is the “body of Manas” that lasts through the whole life of the reincarnating soul. It lasts from life to life, carrying on the result of each to the next. Therefore is it called the causal body, because in this body there are the causes which unfold themselves into effects on the lower planes of earthly life.

 

Now the plan of human development from that time forward is this: the causal body being formed there was a vehicle in which everything could be laid up and accumulated, the receptacle and the storehouse of experience. Passing into earthly life and throwing out, in the way I explained to you before, a projection of itself, its earthly life is spent in the gathering of experience, in the collecting in the physical world of certain facts, certain knowledge, that which as a whole we call the experience of life. Passing through the gateway of death man has to assimilate the experience that he has gathered, and he lives a life out of the body, when he is no longer to be seen in the physical world, but is dwelling on the astral and the devachanic planes that lie beyond it. There he works out certain effects and assimi­lates the experiences he gathered on earth, working them into his own nature. Each life gives him certain results; these results are taken and worked up into faculties and powers. If a man for instance exercised during his physical life much power of thought, used much effort to understand, to accu­mulate knowledge, to develop his mind, then during the period that intervenes between death and birth, he is employed in turning all these efforts of his into  intellectual capacities, with which he will return for his next birth in this world; so also all his higher aspirations, his spiritual hopes, his spiritual longings, will be worked into the essence of his nature, during the time which intervenes between his death and his next birth. When he returns again to earth he will be born under circumstances which will facilitate his growth, and he will bring with him the developed spiritual capacities which he can use for further  development during his next life upon earth.

 

You see how perfectly regular are the stages of growth in the body that lasts from life to life. The Karana Sharira puts out a projection from itself on the lower planes, and gathers a harvest of experience; then it withdraws it with its experiences towards itself, letting it remain in the lower regions of Devachan for the assimilation of that experience and the building it into faculty, into power, into capacity; then it withdraws it wholly into itself as the containing vehicle of consciousness; and then comes another putting forth of this now more highly  developed life, which shows on the lower planes the powers it has gained in this way. Thus there should be a steady and continuous advance, life after life, the Karana Sharira being the receptacle of all the experiences, and being the permanent man into which the whole of these experiences are built.

 

Realizing that, you will understand what is meant by the “pilgrimage of the soul”: each life should find a man greater in his mind, greater in his moral powers, greater in his spiritual faculties. That is the plan of evolution. It is carried out very imperfectly, and hence the enormous length of the pilgrimage. It is carried out with many turns and twists and wanderings into by-ways and travelling along devious paths, instead of pursuing a straight and upward road. Therefore humanity is long in its journeying and the evolution needs such myriads of millennia to accomplish. None the less it shall be accomplished, for such is the Divine Will for humanity, and that cannot be finally frustrated how­ever much delay may be made in its accomplishment.

 

Evolution proceeded through the second half of the Third Race and onwards into the Fourth. Now in the Fourth Race grew up that mighty civilization of Atlantis which reached its highest point in the great sub-race of which you have heard a few words even from Western science - the Toltec. It was a civilization which was marvellous in its accomplish­ments; but there was this difficulty in connection with it. Man was very low down on the ascending arc, and was deeply immersed in matter. His mental faculties were very largely what we should now call psychic, and it was necessary that they should be veiled for a time in order that intellectual power might be evolved and make a higher evolution in the future possible for humanity. Therefore the great kosmic law, that law that nothing can resist, swept the race into a great but a very material civilization. This disappearance of the psychic faculties was quickened to some extent by the deliberate action of the higher and ruling classes in the Toltec empire of Atlantis. They deliberately for their own selfish purposes tried to dwarf, tried to stunt, the use of the psychic faculties in the lower classes of the population, lower in evolution and therefore in the social scale: and in order to make them more apt instruments for their own purposes they used their occult knowledge for the deliberate dwarfing of their psychic faculties. In this way the faculties were artificially stunted in excess of the working of the great kosmic law; and this makes me remind you of one thing that is worth thinking out for yourselves at leisure. That is, that no man can resist the great sweep of kosmic law; no man can stop the mighty march of the divine evolution; but man may co-operate with it or work against it. He may work for good or for evil. Recognizing the wisdom and grandeur of the march he may work with it for duty’s sake and in submission to the divine will; or he may try to grip for his own personal gain some of these forces of nature, and use them for his own transient, for his own personal and selfish gratification, instead of for the carrying out of the divine purpose. Where a man uses for selfish purpose these great forces of the  Cosmos he makes his individual Karma bad, although the tendency of the great Karma of the race remains unaffected; thus the individual may mar his own future; while he is within the wide sweep of the kosmic law, he may make misery for himself in the narrow circle of his own individual development; for if he uses kosmic law selfishly he will reap a selfish harvest, and so within this one great law both happy and unhappy individual Karmas are made. I say that, recommending it to you for detailed consideration, for it may solve for you some of the puzzles men often feel how Karma can be a divine law by which man is swept onwards, seeming like a destiny imposed on him, while he yet knows that his own will is relatively free; he can choose his own path but within this mighty sweep.

 

As I say then, in that civilization of the past, man used this great law of the  Cosmos for his own selfish purposes, and the final result was the destruction of Atlantis, the total sweeping away of that civilization, save for such wrecks of it as remained here and there in the world, especially in South America in the civilization of Peru, where some faint traces of its glory were left; so beautiful were these even in their degradation that when Peru was conquered by the Spaniards from the West they stood marvelling before the happiness of the community, before the sweetness, the gentleness, the purity of the people who lived there, the wisdom of the government and the prosperity of the nation as a whole; that civil­ization which was slain by the Spaniards, trampled under foot by their advancing hosts, that was the last faint gleam of the civilization that I speak of which was so grand at its zenith, which had so  great a fall, and was swept away by the catastrophe that made the Atlantic waves roll where once fair lands stretched.

 

Passing onward swiftly from that, we come to the evolution of our own race. To follow the remainder of this evolution you must remember that the LOGOS of our system reveals Himself in three-fold aspect. You know that in every great religion the Trimurti, or the Trinity, is the representation of the manifested God; and you know also, at least the more thought­ful and philosophic among you know, that the Three are but a three-fold manifestation of the One; the three aspects of the one - unmanifested Existence, that can be known only as it is manifested in the Universe. And you know that in the three-fold LOGOS there is seen the aspect of Power, the aspect of Wisdom, the aspect of Love.

 

Now all human activities bear the impress of this three-fold LOGOS; all human activities may be classed under one or another of these headings - they fall under the heading of power, of wisdom, or of love, and under these three all races of men are grouped, and all activities of nations and individuals are classed. I take that classification because in a subject so complex as is mine this morning the classification gives us a set of little boxes into which you may put the different parts of the subject of the lecture for your further thought and consideration. Remember that the three are one. Remember that they interpenetrate each other. Remember that these divisions are divisions of phenomenal appear­ance and not of essence; but inasmuch as we are in the world of phenomena and the separation is phenomenal, we may fairly take it, and we shall not be misled by it if we realize the fundamental unity from which all proceeds.

 

Suppose then we take the three-fold classification and sub-divide a little more: under Love we shall find those activities of mind will naturally fall which have to do on the one side with religion, on the other side with philanthropy, using both the words in their widest sense, religion meaning the service of those above us, philanthropy meaning the service of those around us and below us; so that under this one head of Love we include the whole of the human activities which pay homage and service to Those who are above us in evolution, and give help and compassion and assistance to all who are below and around us. Taking the division of the Gods and men, religion would have to do with the direct service of the Gods - and how much that means you will see in a few moments - while philanthropy would have to do with the direct service of men, in this physical plane at first, of the men we see around us. Under the heading of Wisdom will come all those activities of the human mind, both lower and higher, that we can divide further into science, philosophy and art. There we have three great fields of the activities of the mind that fall under the heading of wisdom; not that knowledge itself is wisdom, but it is the material out of which, by a spiritual alchemy, wisdom is evolved, for spiritually transmuted knowledge be­comes wisdom; so we put all these activities of knowledge under the heading of wisdom as a whole. And then under the heading of Power will come all those human activities that have to do with the governing of man, with the exercise of administra­tive and executive functions, with the building of the nations, with the forming of communities, with every­thing in which power is exercised; and under this also come those creative faculties in man which are his by virtue of his birthright as the offspring of the Divine - those creative faculties that so few under­stand, that so few exercise with knowledge, which are the great means for human elevation, and the great force for human advance. All the efforts of the divine Teachers in the past and in the present are directed to bring these great fields of activity under intelligent human cultivation, so that they may be rightly tilled by man and that by such tillage his evolution may be ensured. All their efforts tend to give a right direction to these activities, that whether they be of love or of wisdom or of power, they may be sent along the right road for the general evolution of mankind. For this has every great re­ligion been founded; for this has every noble code of morals been proclaimed; for this has every strong impulse towards intellectual development been in­tended; and for this in our own days is man given the fuller re-statement of all the ancient truths, under that name of Divine Wisdom which, in its Anglicized Greek form, is now familiar to you as Theosophy. It is but another re-statement of the old truth, another effort of the same Teachers to guide those activities of human life.

 

At the present time it is needed most especially; for if you look abroad in the world you will find that in each great department of human activity man seems to have come well-nigh to the limit of his powers. He has conquered the physical plane; he has so brought it into subjection that the physical is occupying far too much of his attention and interest, and the realities of the higher planes are veiled from his vision. If we look at the activities of life we find as to religion that materialism is fighting against it from one side and superstition is undermining it from the other; so that against religion there are turned two daggers in the hands of humanity each of which is menacing its life - the scepticism that disbelieves, and the superstition that misbelieves. Both are fatal to human progress along this particu­lar line of activity. When you turn from religion to philanthropy in the modern world, you find human misery too vast and too great for men to be able to grapple with it; where modern civilization is the most successful, where modern civilization is the most triumphant, there you find the greatest aggregate of suffering, and the most horrible misery which can crush human life; when you look at these miseries you not only see that philanthropy is helpless against them, but they are giving birth to resentment, to class hatreds, to threats of revolution and of anarchy. Thus civilization is menaced from its very foundation, and men know not how to meet the danger, for they have lost the spirit of love.

 

And if from love you turn to wisdom you find that there is difficulty everywhere in its three great fields. Science seems to have come to the end of its material resources. Its apparatus is so marvellously delicate that no further development seems within reach, its balance so marvellously accurate that it can weigh what seems an unperceivable part of a grain; and yet they say that there are substances imponderable even for their delicate balances. Science is almost at the end of its resources so far as its methods are concerned; and against its will it is being pressed upon by forces of a subtler and far more mysterious kind than it has been wont to recognize. If we look into the laboratory of the chemist, into the study of the scientific man, there seem to be pressing in forces that he cannot deal with by weight or measure; they puzzle him by their reality, while at the same time they are against every method of his science, they are against every­thing that he thinks he knows of nature. In philo­sophy you find the struggle between materialism which is proven to be inadequate and idealism which fails to find a steady and unassailable foundation; and you find also in the realm of art - that art is tending to barrenness, to sterility, that no great new things are being produced but only inferior copies of the old; sterile, barren, it has lost its creative power.

 

And if you turn to the third great activity I have spoken of, the activity of power, what do you see in the modern world? Nation after nation trying ex­periments; they have lost the divine rulers that once were there, able to govern the nations and to guide them along the path of prosperity and of happiness; they are trying to make up for the loss of these divine kings by having a many-headed king that is called the People: instead of the divine king­ship of mighty Initiates they have what is called self-government and the methods of democracy - as  though by multiplying ignorance by a sufficiently big multiplier, you might be able to multiply it into knowledge. You find so far as the creative power is concerned that the very knowledge of it is gone, and people would be ridiculed who should speak of it, so far has man lost sight of his inheritance that is divine.

 

What does all this tell us? It tells us that mankind as a whole is going to take another step onwards. It tells us that we have reached one of those transition periods, where the old being outworn must give place to the new growth and the new development; under all the turmoil and the trouble, under all the distress and the perplexity, there are slowly forming within humanity the seeds of its next advance, which shall give back to these three great types of activity the ancient power with a new development, the ancient definiteness with new lines of progress opening; for while evolution does not go backward, retracing its past steps and reproducing its ancient forms, it goes on a spiral which reproduces on a higher  level all that was best on the lower; and upon such a spiral humanity is treading now, to accomplish with new powers and wider possibilities that which in the past we see under different forms.

 

Consider love. When humanity takes its next step upwards - and already there are signs here and there that it is preparing for it - having made the physical vehicle perfect, its work will be to perfect its second vehicle of consciousness, that in which it is to function freely on the astral plane. As thou­sands of years go by, mankind will develop this second vehicle of consciousness, and the majority will be able to function in it on the astral plane as easily and as readily as they function in the physical body on the physical plane today. Not quite the whole of mankind, for all men are not equal, as the modern absurdity pretends; but a great mass of men will take this step forward in evolution, will develop that astral body and function in it completely, and so the progress of humanity will go on.

 

What difference will this step make? In religion the open vision of humanity will bring within its scope that plane of existence called the astral, where many of the greater Intelligences manifest themselves in form, for the helping and the teaching of men. Men will learn to see and know the Beings whose existence has been proclaimed to them by every mighty faith; they will know Them as now they know, or think they know, the physical bodies around them. They will know the beings of the at present unseen world. So that the majority of men will share with the advanced people of the present that first-hand knowledge that is now so rare, that first-hand certainty which will render scepticism for ever impossible. No man can be a sceptic as to the unseen world when he knows in his ordinary waking consciousness the existence of those beings surrounding us on every side, any more than you can be sceptical as to the existence ­of your fathers and mothers and your children. (I am not discussing the philosophic question of the Real and the Unreal; I am dealing with the phenomenal universe, and use words in the ordinary sense in which they are employed amongst us in our intercourse with each other.) When this step is taken, religion will so far change its character that that which is known and proclaimed by seers and prophets will be known by all men, and will be a matter within their experience and their daily cogniz­ance, and the result will be that scepticism will be impossible, as it is impossible as regards much of the science of the present day. Superstition will be slain as much as scepticism. Superstition lives in darkness. It lives by human ignorance; it lives and grows and flourishes, and is a curse to the nations because some men who have the tradition of know­ledge without its reality use that tradition for the enslavement of their fellow-men; and these, being ignorant, are terrified by the claim to knowledge and they bow down before those who assume to hold its keys, even though the keys be rusty and turn not in the locks at all. And we shall find, as you find today, that as men’s eyes are opened superstition becomes impossible. You do not know the mischief that superstition works on the other side of death. You do not know the misery and the terror that too many souls undergo when they pass from the body  into the world which to them is unknown, and is crowded for them with all the imaginary terrors with which superstition dominated by pretended knowledge has peopled it; especially is this the case in the West where men talk about eternal hell, and tell people that after death there is no growth and no progress, that a sinful man is plunged into the lake of fire and  brimstone, there to spend the countless ages of eternity without hope of salvation, without hope of escape. You cannot imagine what the effect of that is on souls passing into the other world through the gateway of death, and imagining that all this is, or even may be true, imagining that they may be victims of this horror that they have heard of from their ignorant teachers; great are the difficulties they have who help the souls on the other side, to gradually do away with the terror and to make them understand that law is everywhere, and that malice and malig­nity are not found amongst the ruling powers of the  Cosmos. So, as I say, scepticism will be im­possible, superstition will be impossible; there will be other difficulties, other problems, other obscurities, but these twin enemies of man, scepticism and superstition, will be slain beyond resurrection when that day shall come for humanity.

 

And with love also on its philanthropic side the gain will be great; so much more can be done for man from that plane than from the physical. Physical activities make a great fuss, and have comparatively small results. You see a man running about making laws, and doing this and that in the world of the state and of society, and you think how great is his work, how wonderful are his results. But how small and petty they are in comparison with the results which flow from unseen labour done in quiet­ness and silence, without speech of tongue, without effort of the physical body, done by the working of the mind in the subtler medium which affects men’s thoughts more than their bodies, which in­fluences their minds more than their outward frames. When humanity rises on to that higher plane, then this influence will be far more widely spread than it is today, and misery, crime and wretchedness will be met by working on the minds of men, purifying them and raising them, and thus lifting them above the possibilities that engulf them now. Do you realize, you to whom I am now speaking, that every one of you who generates an impure or revengeful or angry or sordid thought, sends out that thought into the world of society as a living force, as an active entity, which plays upon society, which is taken in by the weakest, by the most receptive, by the least developed, so that out of those thoughts of so-called respectable men there are scattered the seeds of crime through the lower masses of the people, and the sins of these which show out in actions belong very largely to the Karma of those whose thoughts have given them birth. That is not known as widely as it should be known. It is not believed as it should be believed. Every man who feels revenge sends out into the astral world a power for destruction; and when some weak creature comes along with a bad Karma behind him, and bad circumstances surrounding him, with impulses which are not under his control and passions which are stronger than his mind, these evil thoughts come down upon him, all these angry thoughts from men living in respectable conditions in society, and if he be stimulated by some wrong, maddened by some injury, these impel him to strike a blow which we call murder; though he holds the knife in his physical hand, the blow is largely struck by the thoughts of many men whose revengeful feelings are of the essence of murder, although they appear not in outward form. You will not get rid of crimes in the lower strata of society until you purify the thoughts of the higher classes, of those who are educated and can understand the nature of things. And when all this is seen and known, when the astral world lies open to men’s vision, there will be a new force available to help and to raise mankind; for men will no longer disbelieve in the power of thought, they will then appreciate their responsibility for the thoughts they generate, and will send out loving and helping influences instead of the degrading influences that go out so often today. Then also we shall find that direct help is possible, as it is indeed given now from that higher region; for the discoveries that men of science are making often come to them from that world by direct play on their minds. When a man of science takes a new departure, when a man, say like Sir William Crookes, discovers the genesis of atoms - one of the finest generalizations of modern science - do you think he has climbed up to that from below? I tell you that such ideas come from above and not from below. It is thus that the Teachers work on the minds of those who have some special capacity which is able to be utilized; and out of the world of thought, through the astral plane where thoughts are active function­ing entities, they occasionally influence particular individuals in order that the progress of the world may be quickened and the growth of humanity may be facilitated. The reason why this is not done more frequently today is this: that until man’s moral nature grows, it is not well that he should have too much knowledge of the unseen forces that lie behind the veil; he would misuse them instead of utilizing them, use them for oppression and for selfish pur­poses instead of for the lifting and helping of man.  Therefore it is that knowledge is not more widely given; therefore it is that science is not more helped. Science, as one of the Great Ones said, must become the servant of humanity for it to receive very much help from Those who are above all else the Helpers and Saviours of the race.

 

In another way more rapid progress will be made in the days towards which we are looking. In education I suppose it has hardly struck you when dealing with children, when dealing with very young lads, how great are the possibilities that lie within them, if only their teachers had knowledge enough to directly foster the good and to dwarf and starve out the evil in them. You know that round every man there is visible to the trained eye, say to the eye of the Yogi, what is called an aura, which shows the development of the mind, the nature of the character, which gives definite information as to the stage of advancement reached by the soul that dwells in that body, and as to the characteristics and attributes of that soul. Every one of you bears around him this record of his own state, the clearly seen evidence of the stage that he occupies in evolu­tion; round each one of you there is this atmos­phere that shows your thoughts, that shows your character, that is as legible to the trained eye as are the physical features to the physical eye, and is far more instructive as regards the character of the man. Now when a young child comes into the world and passes through the early stages of its growth, there is this peculiarity about its aura: it brings with it the karmic outcomes of its past, but a large number of the mental and moral tendencies that it brings over from the past are present in it in germ and not in full fructification. If you take the aura of a young child it is comparatively clean; its colours are pure and transparent, not dense and muddy and thick as they are in grown-up men and women; within that aura lie the germs of tendencies which may be developed. Some are good and some are evil. The trained eye, distinguishing these characteristics, might cultivate the good and starve out the evil by bringing suitable influences to bear on the child. If you want a healthy plant from a seed, you must take it and put it into good soil, and you must water it and let the sunshine play on it. All the essentials of the plant are in the seed, but all the plant is not yet in manifestation, and according to the soil that you give it, the care you take of it, the air that plays upon it, the sunshine that warms it - according to these will be the greater or the less development of the seed; it may be made to grow into great beauty or it may be stunted and dwarfed in its growth. So it is to a great extent with the little child. A child is born; it has in it the germ, say, of anger, of hot and passionate temper. Suppose that those around it are endowed with know­ledge and wisdom, they will know how to deal with it. It should never be allowed to hear an angry word, it should never be allowed to see a passionate action. Every one around it should be gentle and loving and self-controlled; and there should never be sent to the germ that is within the child the stimulating force of the anger of older people that is like a force to make it grow more rapidly, to intensify it and force it to fructification. You should take care that round the children there should be influences that will stimu­late all that is good, all that is noble, and all that is pure. And if you did that for every child humanity would go forward at a racing speed, whereas it goes forward with the gait of a cripple at the present time. Ignorance clouds men’s minds and they know not how to train the young; there is failure round us, failure that will not exist when man rises to wider knowledge and educates by sight instead of blindly as he does today, educates with knowledge instead of ignorance. This need of real education explains why in the ancient days every boy was sent to a Guru. That ancient institution was meant to give to the child the advantage of a trained mind playing on his and the help of an insight that went beyond the insight of an ordinary man. The Guru used to be a man who knew: the Guru used to be a man who could see, and the child passed into his hands because under such training the evil was dwarfed and the good was developed. As the real Gurus have gradually dis­appeared mankind has lost that great advantage; but it will come back when knowledge is spread amongst the people, and when a higher stage of development makes this nobler education possible.

 

All through the sphere of knowledge the methods will be changed. The doctor will no longer be obliged to guess at a disease from outside symptoms but will diagnose by vision and not by reasoning; men already are beginning to diagnose by the use of what are called clairvoyant faculties; instead of the doctor being shut out by the density of the physical body, he utilizes the clairvoyant whose sight pierces through physical matter, who can see the disease, who can see exactly what is wrong with any one of the organs of the body; he by this vision, giving the necessary information to the doctor, enables him to act with perfect definiteness and to trace the action of his drugs. Think how different all medical science would be if the doctor had that clairvoyant vision, and if what is now held only by a few were generally spread amongst them, so that they might diagnose with certainty and trace the  action of every remedy with the precision that comes from sight. So with chemistry: how much more might the chemist do than he can today if his eyes were opened, how much more if he could trace all the stages of the combination of his materials, if he could make his compounds by vision instead of very often by guess-work, waiting for the result of an experiment before he is a sure of the result coming about. How much of accident might be avoided, how much might this knowledge quicken the progress of science. A hint is given how such progress can be made in an article that can be found in the November (1895) number of Lucifer. You will see there how the limits of knowledge will enlarge when the mind has made manageable its vehicle upon the astral plane. And so with psychology: when men shall communicate with each other by thought in­stead of by the slow methods of pen and print, how thought will speed from brain to brain, com­municating ideas without the clumsy processes that we use today. You will see at once what that means to humanity from the mere standpoint of this lower world. It means that separation will be a thing of the past, no mountain or sea will be able to divide man from man, friend from friend, relative from relative. It means that when men have conquered this region of nature they will be able to  communicate with each other, mind with mind, no matter where they may travel, no matter in what land they may dwell; for to the mind there are no limitations of space and time as there are in the lower world. When man has perfected his astral vehicle he will always be within reach of those he loves, and separation will have lost its pain, as death also will have lost its power to divide. Take the life of man as it is today, take the life of nations as it is lived in the present, and you know that death and separation are two of the great sorrows that oppress humanity. Both of these will have lost their chief wounding power when man has taken this great step forward; both these will have lost their power to divide when man has reached that higher stage. That which only disciples have to­day shall then be shared by the majority; and how much fairer will be the lower life of man when these influences are swept away from disturbing him.

 

So also, of course, with philosophy with its then keener knowledge of the possibilities of matter and its then keener insight into the realities of life. So too with the writing of history, when all history shall be written from the akashic records and not in order to gratify the passions of a political party or to sup­port some theory of human growth or to strengthen  some hypothesis of scientific imagination. All history lies in the akasha; its records are there imperish­able and indestructible; not one act of humanity that is past but is registered there, not one fact of human history that is not written there for the eyes that are able to see. The time will come when all history will be written from that, instead of in the ignorant way that it is written now, and men when they want to know the past will look back into the imperishable records and use them for swifter development, utilizing past experience to promote a swifter growth of humanity.

 

And what art will be when these new powers come within the reach of man, only those perhaps can estimate who to some extent use them now. Possi­bilities of new forms beautiful beyond expression, of colours dazzling beyond all imagination, colours unknown in the physical world that take existence in the subtler matter of the astral plane - colours that none can describe because a colour that is not known cannot be understood by verbal description. All those will come within the region of art, and all marvellous possibilities of the subtler senses.

 

And what of will and power? Then divine kingship will return to earth; then men will take their places in society according to the stage of develop­ment that they have reached, and not according to mere guess-work as they do today. All men will be able to see what they themselves and others are, for, printed on each man’s aura, visible to all  men’s sight, will be his mental attributes and moral capacities, and therefore the place in human society that he is best fitted to take. Then we shall find young men trained for work for which their capacities fit them, for which their powers give possibility of achievement; there will not be the discontent there is today, for discontent arises out of faculties that are frustrated in their accomplishment and from a sense of injustice that works in the mind of men when they feel that they have powers and no opportunity of showing them, when they feel that they have capacities that they are not able to expand. If they were wise they would know, of course, that their circumstances were karmic. But now we are dealing with the masses, and not with the more thoughtful individuals. For them dis­content will be impossible when each man is in the place for which his visible faculties fit him, and so there will be again a really orderly society. Then also we shall know better how to deal with the lower types of humanity. We shall not punish our criminals but cure them; we shall not slay them but educate them. We shall be able to see the very point at which help is needed; and there will be wisdom to reform instead of anger to punish. Not only will society change by thus working on the very natures of men, but the entire outside world will also change its appearance; all the animal world will come under the moulding power of man. He will no longer be a tyrant and oppressor as he is now; but he will be a helper and educator and teacher of the lower animal world. He will do what he was meant to do - be the helper and the trainer of the brute, and not its ill-user and its oppressor, as he so largely is today. I need not say that forms of cruelty will gradually fade away; no longer will animal blood stain the earth as it stains it so deeply now; no longer will animals fly from man with dread and horror, knowing him as enemy instead of recognising him as friend; for we shall be passing onwards towards a golden age when all living things shall love instead of hate.

 

I have given you what seems a fairy tale, but it is only the next stage of man’s growth, it is only the result of the conquest of the astral plane, of that­ which is next to the physical. What shall it be when man rises still higher, and occupies in full and waking consciousness the manasic or mental plane? I can only take one or two of the points and show you how the expanding consciousness will triumph. If in those far-off days there should be an orator and an audience, how different then would be the; oratory and how different would be the effect on the people. Instead of their hearing words, articulate sounds that reach the ears, and convey so imperfectly and inadequately but a small portion of the thought, they would see thought as it really is; thought springing out before their eyes radiant in colour, beautiful in sound, exquisite in shape, and they would be spoken to as it were in music, they would be spoken to in colour and in form, until the whole hall would be full of perfect music and perfect colour and perfect shapes. For that is the oratory of the future when men have conquered that higher plane of conscious­ness and of life. Do you think I dream? I tell you there are those today who can go to that plane of consciousness and know it and feel it and see it, who are behind the veils that blind the majority and shut out from their view the wider possibilities of life. For as a man standing on the top of a tower can see all the country round, and as from every part of the landscape there come to him colours and sounds and forms, but if he goes down the tower by the staircase he can only see as much of the landscape as a window in the wall may permit him to see: so is it with the life of man on the mental plane. Knowledge flows in to him on every side. Not through the senses as we know them, but through a single sense that answers to every vibration that comes from without. And as man goes down into the lower bodies it is just as though he descended into the tower; he can only see as much as the eyes and the ears and the nose - the little windows in the wall­ - enable him to know of the outside world; for the senses are only windows, and the wall of the body  shuts us in, and only as we rise above the body are we able really to see the world around us in its glory, in its beauty and in its wonders.

 

Then again life will be so much mightier. All the greatest intellectual thoughts come from that region through the astral. The mightiest mental agencies for helping man in the physical world today are being sent down from the manasic region by those who are able to function there. The disciples of the Masters are there in waking consciousness, working for the helping of man, working, for the raising of humanity; and every one who has passed those  great portals of Initiation, about which yesterday I spoke to you, lives in that region working there for the helping of man. The disciple may work in the physical world; but he works far more in the higher and more effective region. There his greatest activities are carried on; there his furthest-reaching services are rendered. And when the majority of men rise to that region, how numerous will be the workers, how vast the congregation of the helpers! Only a few hundreds are functioning there today for the helping of the millions of mankind, and the work is imperfectly done because of the small number of the workers. But when the bulk of humanity rises there how swift will be the growth out of the lower stages in men. Mankind will be elevated with a speed that we can scarcely imagine today.

 

Higher yet and higher to another region that man shall conquer; that region where all is one and man knows himself as one with every manifested thing; the region called Turiya, which man shall occupy ere the Manvantara closes, that region which is now open to the waking consciousness only in the last stage of discipleship that I spoke to you about yesterday; into this the Seventh Race of men shall climb and this shall occupy. In that extended consciousness there is no separation that divides man from man; each knows himself to be one with others; feels as they feel, thinks as they think, knows as they know - a consciousness that stretches out to embrace myriads; and then the brotherhood of man becomes an accomplished fact. There the essence of things is seen, and not only the appearances; there realities are seen, and not only phenomena. The one Self is recognised that lives in all; hatred is for evermore impossible to the man who knows.

 

And above that still one step further, that no words of mine can image, that no phrase of mine can represent, that which the Sages have spoken of as Nirvana, which they have tried to explain and have failed, because human language is inadequate to the task, and from their efforts to impart their own knowledge only misunderstanding has resulted. It is consciousness so great that it is unimaginable, it is consciousness embracing the whole universe and therefore seems as unconsciousness to men’s limited apprehension; but I tell you that the life of Nirvana, the life of the mighty Ones that have attained it, is a consciousness beside which our consciousness is as that of the stone, in the limitations that bind it, in the blindness that darkens it, and in the incapacity of its methods. There is life there beyond all dreams of living, activity there beyond all possibilities of our thinking, life which is one and yet that spreads it­self forth in manifested activities, where the LOGOS is the manifested Light, the beams whereof shine out through all regions of the world. That too is man’s goal for this Manvantara, that too he shall know when the Seventh Race has run its course; and the first fruits of our humanity who know it now shall find Themselves surrounded by countless myriads who then shall know it. Then the Life of the LOGOS  for untold periods, then the perfect reflection of the LOGOS in Those who have grown into His image and likeness, until a new universe is to be born, until a new  Cosmos is to come into activity. And These, in Their turn a LOGOS, shall build a new universe, shall train a new humanity. Such is the future that awaits us; such the glory to be revealed.

 

END OF THIS BOOK

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