THE CANADIAN THEOSOPHIST
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VOL. XVI., No. 3 HAMILTON, MAY 15th, 1935 Price 10 Cents
A SONG OF EMPIRES
ON THE OCCASION OF THE JUBILEE
OF KING GEORGE AND QUEEN MARY.
By Wilson MacDonald
The world is a burial-ground of empires:
Empires that were born in the thunder of guns,
Empires that endured in the refuge of cannon,
Empires that went down leaning on the broken-reed of a sword.
The death-germ was in them at birth - one and all.
They arose without love, they ruled without love, they triumphed without love
They had all weapons but this eternal one, -
This weapon that alone can make empires endure.
They were all alike, these dead commonwealths,
And they all went down in the same manner,
Leaning on the broken reed of a sword.
No enemy conquered them, no foe destroyed them:
A slow erosion ate them to the core,
An erosion of hate, an acid of intolerance, a quicklime of cruelty.
They arose clean-limbed and they went down
Weary and palsied and utterly broken.
They arose with the hunger of conquest in their vision:
They went down with the bandage of night on their eyes.
When Babylon descended to her desert couch,
Her bards sang: "Great is Babylon; she cannot pass;"
Or if they sang this not they were hated of men.
When poisons seeped into the heart of Roman legions,
And the foul plague of Lesbos gnawed their souls,
The bards of Caesar's kingdoms cried without shame:
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"Great is Rome's empire; she shall never pass;"
Or if they sang this not they were hated of men.
And now the bards from London to Bombay,
From Montreal to Melbourne sing in chorus:
"Great is the Empire of Britain; she will not pass;"
And he who sings this not shall be hated of men.
Come, then, contempt and hatred, for this is my song:
"All empires that glory in the music of cannon
Shall go down leaning on the broken reed of a sword."
Thebes had her jubilee; Babylon had her festival;
Soldiers marched, fire sang, and swords flashed,
And these shall have their jubilees no more.
Now comes another empire to her gala day;
And has she read no warning on old tombs?
And has she learned no lesson from the ages,
From the dead kingdoms sleeping in the sand?
Empire of Britain! I have watched your sea-horses
Riding, fast riding, foam-covered and tearing the cloak of the wind,
I have viewed your gay, scarlet battalions
Rhyming across London until her worn floor
Was singing with cadence that moved like an epic -
A rhyme that was echoed in Melbourne, Calcutta, Toronto,
In Capetown, Hong Kong and Dunedin.
I have heard your steel falcons scream down the blue alleys
That lead to the sun.
And I looked and I heard without pride or heart beat or passion
For I saw in all these less than the beauty of bubbles
That burst and are gone.
Empire of Britain, there is an old chemist
Who is puttering today with chemicals and test-tubes
In a dark room with broken, stained windows
Somewhere in Berlin or Moscow, or Tokio or Naples,
He may slip from that room unobserved, on the morrow
And gather your battleships and your proud armies
And the loud flock of your sky-riding falcons:
He may gather them easily as a child gathers flowers:
There is another army, O Britain, that waits your review,
No test-tube can harm them, no cannon can reap them,
They wear no uniform; they carry no gun;
And they have never marched at an empire's jubilee.
These are they who bring truth like sweet bread from the oven;
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These are they who bring beauty like wine from cool cellars;
These are they, who bring love like the sunshine of noon.
Their food is the manna that fell from the lips
Of a Nazarene Carpenter in an old hour
That was fragrant with wisdom -
A food that protecteth more surely than battleship armour;
A food whose white fragrance shall linger in Heaven
Long after the last silver ride of a star.
O Britain, my Britain; it is your lover who sings:
Grateful is he for the deep, purple flagon
Which your singers have left in the cellars of song.
Grateful is he for the chains you have broken.
Grievous is he for your mighty stupidities,
Blundering Britain, bowed under traditions,
With magnificent genius for blundering through.
Lo what a paradox! I behold you marching -
Opium-trader and emancipator of slaves,
Fine as a morning star, base as a serpent's tongue.
Now on your Jubilee shall you flash starlight
Or hiss with the poison of war?
Shall swords kindle fire in the slow, English sun?
Shall your splendid King, the blue-eyed, fine-mannered,
The lover of firesides, whose very presence is peace -
Shall he ride down a plumed canyon of warriors
Dressed in the trappings of Caesar, or shall he go riding
Meekly arrayed as a King who rode into Jerusalem?
The world is a burial-ground of empires,
That went down leaning on the broken reed of a sword,
They had their jubilees: soldiers marched; swords flashed:
And these shall have their jubilees no more!
Now comes another empire to her gala day:
God of the English Lanes, turn well her eyes
That she may read the warning on old tombs,
That she may learn some wisdom from the ages,
From the dead kingdoms sleeping in the sand.
Toronto, April 17.
(Copyright, 1935.)
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INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY AND WRITINGS OF PLATO
By Thomas Taylor
(Continued from Page 42)
From this magnificent, sublime, and most scientific doctrine of Plato, respecting the arcane principle of things and his immediate progeny, it follows that this ineffable cause is not the immediate maker of the universe, and this, as I have observed in the Introduction to the Timaeus, not through any defect, but on the contrary through transcendency of power. All things indeed are ineffably unfolded from him at once, into light; but divine media are necessary to the fabrication of the world. For if the universe was immediately produced from the ineffable, it would, agreeably to what we have above observed, be ineffable also in a secondary degree. But as this is by no means the case, it principally derives its immediate subsistence from a deity of a fabricative characteristic, whom Plato calls Jupiter, conformably to the theology of Orpheus. The intelligent reader will readily admit that this dogmas is so far from being derogatory to the dignity of the Supreme, that on the contrary it exalts that dignity, and, preserves in a becoming manner the exempt transcendency of the ineffable. If therefore we presume to celebrate him, for as we have already observed, it is more becoming to establish in silence those parturitions of the soul which dare anxiously to explore him, we should celebrate him as the principle of principles, and the fountain of deity, or in the reverential language of the Egyptians, as a darkness thrice unknown. * [* Psalm xviii:11; xcvii:2.] Highly laudable indeed, and worthy the imitation of all posterity, is the veneration which the great ancients paid to this immense principle. This I have already noticed in the Introduction to the Parmenides, and I shall only observe at present in addition, that in consequence of this profound and most pious reverence of th, first God, they did not even venture to give a name to the summit of that highest order of divinities which is denominated intelligible. Hence, says Proclus, in his Mss. Scholia on the Cratylus, "Not every genus of the gods has an appellation; for with respect to the first Deity, who is beyond, all things, Parmenides teaches us that he is ineffable; and the first genera of the intelligible gods, who are united to the one, and are called occult, have much of the unknown and ineffable. For that which is perfectly effable cannot be conjoined with the perfectly ineffable; but it is necessary that the progression of intelligibles should terminate in this order, in which the first effable subsists, and that which is called by proper names. For there the first intelligible forms, and the intellectual nature of intelligibles, are unfolded into light. But, the natures prior to this being silent and occult, are only known by intelligence. Hence the whole of the telestic science energizing theurgically ascends as far as to this order. Orpheus also says that this is first called by a name by the other gods; for the light proceeding from it is known to and denominated by the intellectual gods."
With no less magnificence therefore than piety, does Proclus thus speak concerning the ineffable principle of things. "Let us now if ever remove from ourselves multiform knowledge, exterminate all the variety of life, and in perfect quiet approach near to the cause of all things. For this purpose, let not only opinion and phantasy be at rest, nor the passions alone which impede our anagogic impulse to the first be at peace; but let the air, and the universe itself, be still. And let all things extend us with a tranquil power to communion with the ineffable. Let us also standing there, having transcended the intelligible (if we contain any thing of this kind), and with nearly closed eyes adoring as it were the rising sun, since it is not lawful for any being whatever in-
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tently to behold him, - let us survey the sun whence the light of the intelligible gods proceeds, emerging, as the poets say, from the bosom of the ocean; and again from this divine tranquillity descending into intellect, and from intellect employing the reasonings of the soul, let us relate to ourselves what the natures are from which in this progression we shall consider the first God as exempt. And let us as it were celebrate him, not as establishing the earth and the heavens, nor as giving subsistence to souls, and the generations of all animals; for he produced these indeed, but among the last of things. But prior to these, let us celebrate him as unfolding into light the whole intelligible and intellectual genus of gods, together with all the supermundane and mundane divinities as, the God of all gods, the Unity of all unities, and beyond the first adyta - as more ineffable than all silence, and more unknown than all essence, - as holy among the holies, and concealed in the intelligible gods." Such is the piety, such the sublimity, and magnificence of conception, with which the Platonic philosophers speak of that which is in reality in every respect ineffable, when they presume to speak about it, extending the ineffable parturitions of the soul to the ineffable cosensation of the incomprehensible one.
From this sublime veneration of this most awful nature, which, as is noticed in the extracts from Damascius, induced the most ancient theologists, philosophers, and poets, to be entirely silent concerning it, arose the great reverence which the ancients paid to the divinities even of a mundane characteristic, or from whom bodies are suspended, considering them also as partaking of the nature of the ineffable, and as so many links of the truly golden chain of deity. Hence we find in the Odyssey, when Ulysses and Telemachus are removing the arms from the walls of the palace of Ithaca, and Minerva going before them with her golden lamp fills all the place with a divine light,
. . . . . paroithe de pallas Athene
Chruseon luchnon echrusa phars perikalles epoiei.
Before thee Pallas Athene bore a golden cresset and cast a most lovely light. Telemachus having observed that certainly some one of the celestial gods was present,
Emala tis deos endon, of ouranon eurun echousi.
Verily some God is within, of those that hold the wide heaven. Ulysses says in reply, "Be silent, restrain your intellect (i.e. even cease to energize intellectually), and speak not."
Siga, kai kata son noon ischana, med' ereeine.
Hold thy peace and keep all this in thine heart and ask not hereof.
-Book 19, Odyssey.
Lastly, from all that has been said, it must, I think, be immediately obvious to every one whose mental eye is not entirely blinded, that there can be no such thing as a trinity in the theology of Plato, in any respect analogous to the Christian Trinity. For the highest God, according to Plato, as we have largely shown from irresistible evidence, is so far from being a part of a consubsistent triad, that he is not to be connumerated with any thing; but is so perfectly exempt from all multitude, that he is even beyond being; and he so ineffably transcends all relation and habitude, that language is in reality subverted about him, and knowledge refunded into ignorance. What that trinity however is in the theology of Plato, which doubtless gave birth to the Christian, will be evident to the intelligent from the notes on the Parmenides, and the extracts, from Damascius. And thus much for the doctrine of Plato concerning the principle of things, and his immediate offspring, the great importance of which will, I doubt not, be a sufficient apology for the length of this discussion.
In the next place, following Proclus and Olympiodorus as our guides, let us consider the mode according to which Plato
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teaches us mystic conceptions of divine natures: for he appears not to have pursued every where the same mode of doctrine about these; but sometimes according to a divinely inspired energy, and at other times dialectically, he evolves the truth concerning them. And sometimes he symbolically announces their ineffable idioms, but at other times he recurs to them from images, and discovers in them the primary causes of wholes. For in the Phaedrus being evidently inspired, and having exchanged human intelligence for a better possession, divine mania, he unfolds many arcane dogmas concerning the intellectual, liberated, and mundane gods. But in the Sophista dialectically contending about being, and the subsistence of the one above beings, and doubting against philosophers more ancient than himself, he shows how all beings are suspended from their cause and the first being, but that being itself participates of that unity which is exempt from all things, that it is a passive,* one, but not the one itself, being subject to and united to the one, but not being that which is primarily one. In a similar manner too, in the Parmenides, he unfolds dialectically the progressions of being from the one, through the first hypothesis of that dialogue, and this, as he there asserts, according to the most perfect division of this method. And again in the Gorgias, he relates the fable concerning the three fabricators, and their demiurgic allotment. But in the Banquet he speaks concerning the union of love; and in the Protagoras, about the distribution of mortal animals from the gods; in a symbolical manner concealing the truth concerning divine natures, and as far as to mere indication unfolding his mind to the most genuine of his readers. [* It is necessary to observe, that, according to Plato, whatever participates of any thing is said to be passive to that which it participates, and the participations themselves are called by him passions.]
Again, if it be necessary to mention the doctrine delivered through the mathematical disciplines, and the discussion of divine concerns from ethical or physical discourses, of which many may be contemplated in the Timaeus, many in the dialogue called Politicus, and many may be seen scattered in other dialogues; here likewise, to those who are desirous of knowing divine concerns through images, the method will be apparent. Thus, for instance, the Politicus shadows forth the fabrication in the heavens. But the figures of the five elements, delivered in geometrical proportions in the Timaeus, represent in images the idioms of the gods who preside over the parts of the universe. And the divisions of the essence of the soul in that dialogue shadow forth the total orders of the gods. To this we may also add that Plato composes politics, assimilating them to divine natures, and adorning them from the whole world and the powers which it contains. All these, therefore, through the similitude of mortal to divine concerns, exhibit to us in images the progressions, orders, and fabrications of the latter. And such are the modes of theologic doctrine employed by Plato.
"But those," says Proclus, "who treat of divine concerns in an indicative manner, either speak symbolically and fabulously, or through images. And of those who openly announce their conceptions, some frame their discourses according to science, but others according to inspiration from the gods. And he who desires to signify divine concerns through symbols is Orphic, and, in short, accords with those who write fables respecting the gods. But he who does this through images is Pythagoric. For the mathematical disciplines were invented by the Pythagorean in order to a reminiscence of divine concerns, to which through these as images, they endeavour to ascend. For they refer both numbers and figures to the gods, according to the testimony of their historians. But the enthusiastic character, or he who is divinely inspired, unfolding the truth itself concerning the gods essentially, perspicuously ranks among the highest initiators. For these do not think proper to
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unfold the divine orders, or their idioms, to their familiars through veils, but announce their powers and their numbers in consequence of being moved by the gods themselves. But the tradition of divine concerns according to science is the illustrious, prerogative of the Platonic philosophy. For Plato alone, as it appears to me of all those who are known to us, has attempted methodically to divide and reduce into order the regular progression of the divine genera, their mutual difference, the common idioms of the total orders, and the distributed idioms in each."
Again, since Plato employs fables, let us in the first place consider whence the ancients were induced to devise fables, and in the second place, what the difference is between the fables of philosophers and those of poets. In answer to the first question then, it is necessary to know that the ancients employed fables looking to two things, viz. nature, and our soul. They employed them by looking to nature, and the fabrication of things, as follows. Things unapparent are believed from things apparent, and incorporeal natures from bodies. For seeing the orderly arrangement of bodies, we understand that a certain incorporeal power presides over them; as with respect to the celestial bodies, they have a certain presiding motive power. As we therefore see that our body is moved, but is no longer so after death, we conceive that it was a certain incorporeal power which moved it. Hence, perceiving that we believe things incorporeal and unapparent from things apparent and corporeal, fables came to be adopted, that we might come from things apparent to certain unapparent natures; as, for instance, that on hearing the adulteries, bonds, an' lacerations of the gods, castrations of heaven, and the like, we may not rest satisfied with the apparent meaning of such like particulars, but may proceed to the unapparent, and investigate the true signification. After this manner, therefore, looking to the nature of things, were fables employed,.
But from looking to our souls, they originated as follows: While we are children we live according to the phantasy, but the phantastic part is conversant with figures, and types, and things of this kind. That the phantastic part in us therefore may be preserved, we employ fables in consequence of this part rejoicing in fables. It may also be said that a fable is nothing else than a false discourse shadowing forth the truth: for a fable is the image of truth. But the soul is the image of the natures prior to herself; and hence the soul very properly rejoices in fables, as an image in an image. As we are therefore from our childhood nourished in fables, it is necessary that they should be introduced. And thus much for the first problem, concerning the origin of fables.
In the next place let us consider what the difference is between the fables of philosophers and poets. Each therefore has something in which it abounds more than, and something in which it is deficient from the other. Thus, for instance, the poetic fable abounds in this, that we must not rest satisfied with the apparent meaning, but pass on to the occult truth. For who endued with intellect, would believe that Jupiter was desirous of having connection with Juno, and on the ground, without waiting to go into the bed-chamber. So that the poetic fable abounds, in consequence of asserting such things as do not suffer us to stop at the apparent, but lead us to explore the occult truth. But it is defective in this, that it deceives those of a juvenile age. Plato therefore neglects fable of this kind, and banishes Homer from his Republic; because youth on hearing such fables, will not be able to distinguish what is allegorical from what is not.
Philosophical fables, on the contrary, do not injure those that go no further than the apparent meaning. Thus, for instance, they assert that there are punishments and rivers under the earth: and if we adhere to the literal meaning of these we shall not
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be injured. But they are deficient in this, that as their apparent signification does not injure, we often content ourselves with this, and do not explore the latent truth. We may also say that philosophic fables look to the enemies of the soul. For if we were entirely intellect alone, and had, no connection with phantasy, we should not require fables, in consequence of always associating with intellectual natures. If again, we were entirely irrational, and lived according to the phantasy, and had no other energy than this, it would be requisite that the whole of our life should be fabulous. Since, however, we possess intellect, opinion, and phantasy, demonstrations are given with a view to intellect; and hence Plato says that if you are willing to energize according to intellect, you will have demonstrations bound with adamantine chains; if according to opinion, you will have the testimony of renowned persons; and if according to the phantasy, you have fables by which it is excited; so that from all these you will derive advantage.
Plato therefore rejects the more tragical mode of mythologizing of the ancient poets, who thought proper to establish an arcane theology respecting the gods, and on this account devised wanderings, castrations, battles and lacerations of the gods, and many other such symbols of the truth about divine natures which this theology conceals; - this mode he rejects, and asserts that it is in every respect most foreign from erudition. But he considers those mythological discourses about the gods as more persuasive and more adapted to truth, which assert that a divine nature is the cause of all good, but of no evil, and that it is void of all mutation, comprehending in itself the fountain of truth, but never becoming the cause of any deception to others. For such types of theology Socrates delivers in the Republic.
All the fables therefore of Plato guarding the truth in concealment, have not even their externally apparent apparatus discordant with our undisciplined and unperverted anticipations of divinity. But they bring with them an image of the mundane composition in which both the apparent beauty is worthy of divinity, and a beauty more divine than this is established in the unapparent lives and powers of its causes.
In the next place, that the reader may see whence and from what dialogues principally the theological dogmas of Plato may be collected, I shall present him with the following translation of what Proclus has admirably written on this, subject.
"The truth (says he) concerning the gods pervades, as I may say, through all the Platonic dialogues, and in all of them conceptions of the first philosophy, venerable, clear, and supernatural, are disseminated, in some more obscurely, but in others more conspicuously; - conceptions which excite those that are in any respect able to partake of them, to the immaterial and separate essence of the gods. And as in each part of the universe and in nature itself, the demiurgus of all which the world contains established resemblances of the unknown essence of the gods, that all things might be converted to divinity through their alliance with it, in like manner I am of opinion, that the divine intellect of Plato weaves conceptions about the gods with all its progeny, and leaves nothing deprived of the mention of divinity, that from the whole of its offspring a reminiscence of total natures may be obtained, and imparted to the genuine lovers of divine concerns.
"But if it be requisite to lay before the reader those dialogues out of many which principally unfold to us the mystic discipline about the gods, I shall not err in ranking among this number the Phaedo and Phaedrus, the Banquet and the Philebus, and together with these the Sophista and Politicus, the Cratylus and the Timaeus. For all these are full through the whole of themselves, as I may say, of the divine science of Plato. But I should place in the second rank after these, the fable in the Gorgias, and that in the Protagoras, likewise the assertions about the provid-
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ence of the gods in the Laws, and such things as are delivered about the Fates, or the mother of the Fates, or the circulations of the universe, in the tenth book of the Republic. Again you may, if you please, place in the third rank those Epistles through which we may be able to arrive at the science about divine natures. For in these, mention is made of the three kings; and many other divine dogmas worthy the Platonic theory are delivered. It is necessary therefore, regarding these, to explore in them each order of the gods.
Thus from the Philebus, we may receive the science respecting the one good, and the two first principles of things (bound and infinity) together with the triad subsisting from these. For you will find all these distinctly delivered to us by Plato in that dialogue. But from the Timaeus you may obtain the theory about intelligibles, a divine narration about the demiurgic monad, and the most full truth about the mundane gods. From the Phaedrus you may learn all the intelligible and intellectual genera, and the liberated orders of the gods, which are proximately established above the celestial circulations. From the Politicus you may obtain the theory of the fabrication in the heavens, of the periods of the universe, and of the intellectual causes of those periods. But from the Sophista you may learn the whole sublunary generation, and the idiom of the gods who are allotted the sublunary region, and preside over its generations and corruptions. And with respect to each of the gods, we may obtain many sacred conceptions from the Banquet, many from the Cratylus, and many from the Phaedo. For in each of these dialogues more or less mention is made of divine names, from which it is easy for those who are exorcised in divine concerns to discover by a reasoning process the idioms of each.
"It is necessary, however, to evince that each of the dogmas accords with Platonic principles and the mystic traditions of theologists. For all the Grecian theology is the progeny of the mystic doctrine of Orpheus; Pythagoras first of all learning from Aglaophemus the origins of the gods, but Plato in the second place receiving an all-perfect science of the divinities from the Pythagoric and Orphic writings. For in the Philebus, referring the theory about the two forms of principles (bound and infinity) to the Pythagoreans, he calls them men dwelling with the gods, and truly blessed. Philolaus, therefore, the Pythagorean, has left for us in writing admirable conceptions about these principles, celebrating their common progression into beings, and their separate fabrication. Again, in the Timaeus, endeavouring to teach us about the sublunary gods and their order, Plato flies to theologists, calls them the sons of the gods, and makes them the fathers of the truth about these divinities. And lastly, he delivers the orders of the sublunary gods proceeding from wholes, according to the progression delivered by theologists of the intellectual kings. Further still, in the Cratylus he follows the traditions of theologists respecting the order of the divine processions. But in the Gorgias he adopts the Homeric dogma, respecting the triadic hypostases of the demiurgi. And, in short, he every where discourses concerning the gods agreeably to the principles of theologists; rejecting indeed the tragical part of mythological fiction, but establishing first hypotheses in common with the authors of fables.
"Perhaps, however, some one may here object to us, that we do not in a proper manner exhibit the every where dispersed theology of Plato, and that we endeavour to heap together different particulars from different dialogues, as if we were studious of collecting many things into one mixture, instead of deriving them all from one and the same fountain. For if this were our intention, we might indeed refer different dogmas to different treatises of Plato, but we shall by no means have a precedaneous doctrine concerning the gods, nor will there be any dialogue which presents us with an all-perfect and entire procession of-
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the divine genera, and their coordination with each other. But we shall be similar to those who endeavor to obtain a whole from parts, through the want of a whole prior * to parts, and to weave together the perfect, from things imperfect, when, on the contrary, the imperfect ought to have the first cause of its generation in the perfect. For the Timaeus, for instance, will teach us the theory of the intelligible genera, and the Phaedrus appears to present us with a regular account of the first intellectual orders. But where will be the coordination of intellectuals to intelligibles? And what will be the generation of second from first natures? In short, after what manner the progression of the divine orders takes place from the one principle of all things, and how in the generations of the gods, the orders between the one, and all-perfect number, are filled up, we shall be unable to evince.
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* A whole prior to parts is that which causally contains parts in itself. Such parts too, when they proceed from their occult causal subsistence, and have a distinct being of their own, are nevertheless comprehended, though in a different manner, in their producing whole.
(To Be Continued.)
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THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD
A FRAGMENT OF THOUGHT
By Mabel Collins
(Continued from Page 45.)
VI.
Indolence is in fact, the curse of man. As the Irish peasant and the cosmopolitan gypsy dwell in dirt and poverty out of sheer idleness, so does the man of the world live contented in sensuous pleasures for the same reason. The drinking of fine wines, the tasting of delicate food, the love of bright sights and sounds, of beautiful women and admirable surroundings, - these are no better for they cultivated man, no more satisfactory as a final goal of enjoyment for him, than the coarse amusements and gratifications of the boor are for the man without cultivation. There can be no final point, for life in every form is one vast series of fine gradations; and the man who elects to stand still at the point of culture he has reached, and to avow that he can go no further, is simply making an arbitrary statement for the excuse of his indolence. Of course there is a possibility of declaring that the gypsy is content in his dirt and poverty, and because he is so, is as great a man as the most highly cultured. But he only is so while he is ignorant; the moment light enters the dim mind the whole man turns towards it. So it is on the higher platform; only the difficulty of penetrating the mind, of admitting the light, is even greater. The Irish peasant loves his whiskey, and while he can have it cares nothing for the great laws of morality and religion which are supposed to govern humanity and induce men to live temperately. The cultivated gourmand cares only for subtle tastes and perfect flavors; but he is as blind as the merest peasant to the fact that there is anything beyond such gratifications. Like the boor he is deluded by a mirage that oppresses his soul; and he fancies having once obtained a sensuous joy that pleases him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction by endless repetition, till at last he reaches madness. The bouquet of the wine he loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving him with no thoughts but those of sensuous desire; and he is in the same hopeless state as the man who dies mad with drink. What good has the drunkard obtained by his madness? None; pain has at last swallowed up pleasure utterly, and death steps in to terminate the agony. The man suffers the final penalty for his persistent ignorance of a law of nature as inexorable as that of gravitation, a law which forbids a man to stand still. Not twice can the same cup of pleasure be tasted; the second time it must contain either a grain of poison or a drop of the elixir of life.
The same argument holds good with re-
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gard to intellectual pleasures; the same law operates. We see men who are the flower of their age in intellect, who pass beyond their fellows and tower over them, entering at last upon a fatal treadmill of thought, where they yield to the innate indolence of the soul and begin to delude themselves by the solace of repetition. Then comes the barrenness and lack of vitality, - that unhappy and disappointing state into which great men too often enter when middle life is just passed. The fire of youth, the vigour of the young intellect, conquers the inner inertia and makes the man scale heights of thought and fill his mental lungs with the free air of the mountains. But then at last the physical reaction sets in; the physical machinery of the brain loses its powerful impetus and begins to relax its efforts, simply because the youth of the body is at an end. Now the man is assailed by the great tempter of the race who stands forever on the ladder of life waiting for those who climb so far. He drops the poisoned drops into the ear, and from that moment all consciousness takes on a dullness, and the man becomes terrified lest life is losing its possibilities for him. He rushes back on to a familiar platform of experience, and there finds comfort in touching a well-known chord of passion or emotion. And too many having done this, linger on, afraid to attempt the unknown, and satisfied to touch continually that chord which responds most readily. By this means they get the assurance that life is still burning within them. But at last their fate is the same as that of the gourmand and the drunkard. The power of the spell lessens daily as the machinery which feels loses its vitality; and the man endeavors to revive the old excitement and fervour by striking the note more violently, by hugging the thing that makes him feel, by drinking the cup of poison to its fatal dregs. And then he is lost; madness falls on his soul as it falls on the body of the drunkard. Life has no longer any meaning for him, and he rushes wildly into the abysses of intellectual insanity. A lesser man who commits this great folly wearies the spirits of others by a dull clinging to familiar thought, by a persistent hugging of the treadmill which he asserts to be the final goal. The cloud that surrounds him is as fatal as death itself, and men who once sat at his, feet turn away grieved, and have to look back at his early words in order to remember his greatness.
VII:
What is the cure for this misery and waste of effort? Is there one? Surely life itself has a logic in it and a law which makes existence possible; otherwise chaos and madness would be the only state which would be attainable.
When a man drinks his first cup of pleasure his soul is filled with the unutterable joy that comes with a first, a fresh sensation. The drop of poison that he puts into the second cup, and which, if he persists in that folly, has to become doubled and trebled till at last the whole cup is poison, - that is the ignorant desire of repetition and intensification; this evidently means death, according to all analogy. The child becomes the man; he cannot retain his childhood and repeat and intensify the pleasures of childhood except by paying the inevitable price and becoming an idiot. The plant strikes its roots into the ground and throws up green leaves; then it blossoms and bears fruit. That plant which will only make roots or leaves, pausing persistently in its development, is regarded by the gardener as a thing which is useless and must be cast out.
The man who chooses the way of effort, and refuses to allow the sleep of indolence to dull his soul, finds in his pleasures a new and finer joy each time he tastes them, - a something subtle and remote which removes them more and more from the state in which mere sensuousness is all; this subtle essence is that elixir of life which makes man immortal. He who tastes it and who will not drink unless it is in the cup finds life enlarge and the world grow great be-
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fore his eager eyes. He recognizes the soul within the woman he loves, and passion become peace; he sees within his thought the finer qualities of spiritual truth, which is beyond the action of our mental machinery, and then instead of entering on the treadmill of intellectualism he rests on the broad back of the eagle of intuition and soars into the fine air where the great poets found their insight; he sees within his own power of sensation, of pleasure in fresh air and sunshine, in food and wine, in motion and rest, the possibilities of the subtile man, the thing which dies not either with the body or the brain. The pleasures of art, of music, of light and loveliness, - within these forms, which men repeat till they find only the forms, he sees the glory of the Gates of Gold, and passes through to find the new life beyond which intoxicates and strengthens, as the keen mountain air intoxicates and strengthens, by its very vigour. But if he has been pouring, drop by drop, more and more of the elixir of life into his cup, he is strong enough to breathe this intense air and to live upon it. Then if he die or if he live in physical form, alike he goes on and finds new and finer joys, more perfect and satisfying experiences, with every breath he draws in and gives out.
CHAPTER II - THE MYSTERY OF THE THRESHOLD
I.
There is no doubt that at the entrance on a new phase of life something has to be given up. The child when it has become the man, puts away childish things. Saint Paul showed in these words, and in many others which he has left us, that he had tasted of the elixir of life, that he was on his way towards the Gates of Gold. With each drop of the divine draught which is put into the cup of pleasure, something is purged away from that cup to make room for the magic drop. For Nature deals with her children generously: man's cup is always full to the brim; and if he chooses to taste of the fine and life-giving essence he must cast away something of the grosser and less sensitive part of himself. This has to be done daily, hourly, momently, in order that the draught of life may steadily increase. And to do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own schoolmaster, must recognize that he is always in need of wisdom, must be ready to practice any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly against himself, in order to gain his end. It becomes evident to any one who regards the subject seriously, that only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the Golden Gates. He must be capable of testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction every joy existence has to give; and he must be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and that without suffering from the denial. When he has accomplished the development of this double possibility, then he is able to begin sifting his pleasures and taking away from his consciousness those which belong absolutely to the man of clay. When those are put back, there is the next range of more refined pleasures to be dealt with. The dealing with these which will enable a man to find the essence of life is not the method pursued by the stoic philosopher. The stoic does not allow that there is joy within pleasure, and by denying himself the one loses the other. But the true philosopher, who has studied life itself without being bound by any system of thought, sees that the kernel is within the shell, and that instead of crunching up the whole nut like a gross and indifferent feeder, the essence of the thing is obtained by cracking the shell and casting it away. All emotion, all sensation, lends itself to this process, else it could not be a part of man's development, an essential of his nature. For that there is before him power, life, perfection, and that every portion of his passage thitherwards is crowded with the means of helping him to his goal, can only be denied by those who refuse to acknowledge life as apart from matter. Their mental position is so absolutely arbitrary
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that it is useless to encounter or combat it. Through all time the unseen has been pressing on the seen, the immaterial over-powering the material; through all time the signs and tokens of that which is beyond matter have been waiting for the men of matter to test and weigh them. Those who will not do so have chosen the place of pause arbitrarily, and there is nothing to be done but let them remain there undisturbed, working that treadmill which they believe to be the utmost activity of existence.
(To Be Continued.)
GOD SAVE THE KING!
A somewhat unusual amount of platitude has appeared in print about the Silver Jubilee of His Majesty, King George the Fifth. There is still a modicum of opinion that rests itself on the theory of the Divine Right of kings, and against this there were various expressions, more or less spiteful or malicious, the result largely of ignorance of the terms on which King George and his people are related.
A little history should convince anyone that royalty in Britain is as democratic an institution as any other branch of the Government. The King holds office under the Act of Succession, that is, by the will of the people as expressed through Parliament, and its terms may be modified at any time, and have so been modified on several occasions. The Throne is the result of an evolution of the people's will, which included the beheading of one monarch, and the dethronement of another. The British people have the kind of king they want and will take none other.
The Throne perfects the stability of the democratic form of government which has been evolved. There is nothing less democratic in loyalty to the King than there is in loyalty to Parliament and the Prime Minister. In his relations with the people the King has the advantage over the Prime Minister in abstaining from partisanship, of more personal dealings, more intimate communications, and a domestic familiarity that always endears gentle and simple to each other. The twenty-five years of King Georges reign have ripened this intimacy, ands his family have become the kin of the whole nation. It was impossible that they should not be beloved, since in all their relations they have been comfortably human, and strictly constitutional. No man in the Empire has filled his job more dutifully than King George.
Theosophists should be familiar with the doctrine of hierarchies. Every nation is an entity, is born, matures, declines, and disappears. It is reincarnated in due course in another cycle, and develops its karmic destiny. The cycles and their periods are treated with great secrecy by those who know, and even the New Testament testifies that of certain days and hours no man knoweth. This however does not silence some who think they can tell.
It is obvious that in any entity there must be a unifying consciousness and that this consciousness manifests itself in various ways. There is emotion in the mob; thought in the government; devotion among the wise; service from the dutiful; defense by the valiant; aspiration among the consecrated; sacrifice from those who know. The synthesizing integrity of any nation ought to lead its members to respect its several components, and to render them loyalty according to their service. We must not expect the highest ideals to govern all the people, but ideals must somehow be represented and embodied in their life and purpose.
It is a mystery how the elements of a nation through many millenniums should become transfigured into something transcending our present humanity, but the process continues from age to age, during which the great Law casts down the mighty from their seat and exalts the humble and meek as their merit calls. No one who did not observe it could imagine that a caterpillar could change into a chrysalis,
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a tiny skinful of formless fluid, and that from this chaotic paste there should spring into life a creature of loveliness, tinted, winged, lightsome as a zephyr. There is a unifying consciousness through all that insect life and its metamorphoses.
No less does the life of a nation gather its elements to its central fire. We all pass through every stage of experience, and instead of criticizing the King it is well for each to consider how he might do as well or better when his turn comes. There are positive and negative elements in the nation, destructive and integrative, and the balance must be preserved if the nation is to survive. When all elements are conscious of their true function and fill it, the national life is rich and full.
When any section regards its interests as more important than another's the national life suffers.
We can view the Jubilee ceremonies as a true manifestation of the sympathy begotten between its members in a nation whose functions have been faithfully performed. Among many tributes paid to His Majesty, few have touched the realities of the situation more directly than that of George Lansbury, one of about a dozen members of Parliament who belong to The Theosophical Society, and prominent in the Labour Party, who wrote:
"Those who, like myself, are theoretically Republican, join heartily and completely with the most ardent Tories in congratulations to the King and Queen.
"While the present accepted practice of constitutional monarchy prevails through the British dominions we shall never give a second's support to any proposed suggestion for a change.
"It says much for our form of government and the King's kindly toleration, good common sense and understanding, that distressing as are the problems of today, we can at least say the trouble of the past has been overcome with a minimum of violence and disorder accompanied by a very large measure of goodwill."
The magic of the Radio and its thrilling message - "London calling the Empire", was a striking example of that unifying consciousness manifesting even on the physical plane through the miracle of wireless. The King's voice echoed across the seas in the hearts of millions. He was considerate of all his people, and dedicated himself anew to their service. He grieved for those out of work, and foresaw the future that belonged to the young. He had a special message to the children who in days to come would be citizens of British land.
The Prime Minister had his sober word. "His advisers have come and gone but for him there has been no respite. The days have mounted into months and the months into years, and he has had to endure - winning, however, the devotion of all called to understand and serve him."
So proceeds the slow ascending pilgrimage of the nation, with changing fortunes and brightening ideals, some too high as yet for all to follow, but clear and unswerving, as Wilson MacDonald has made plain in his challenging Ode. But all will reach the heights at last.
We are all brothers of the King; and there are mightier Brethren still. Are we worthy of them?
MR. WILSON MacDONALD
Mr. Wilson MacDonald has been recognized by such critics as W.E. Phelps of New York as the leading poet now writing on this continent. Of course there will be some who will contest this claim, according to their prejudices, their creed, or their special education. Mr. MacDonald has again and again confounded the critics by his achievements, by their variety, their versatility, their beauty, their profundity, their breadth of view and their progressive outlook.
He has written a truly wonderful poem on the Roy al Jubilee, full of towering lines, loyal to the highest ideals, and in the private opinion of leading newspaper
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men in Toronto it is the finest thing that has been written for the occasion. But no newspaper in Toronto had the courage or the wisdom to print it, an historic refusal in the view of one Toronto writer. Had the Poet Laureate written it, it would have been hailed as one of the brightest leaves of his laurels. If he could have written it doubtless he would.
We have no freedom of the press in Canada, little independence of opinion, and newspapers like the Toronto Globe, The Toronto Mail and Empire and the Toronto Star, should feel that they have been false to their stewardship as wardens of Canadian literature.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling, speaking to the St. George's Society on the evening of the 6th, remarked that we had gone quite far enough on that road which was paved with good intentions. There is much outcry both for and against war, and for and against peace, but there are few who are willing to say the things that the baser phases of power and authority do not wish to be said.
We are honoured in being able to present. Mr. MacDonald's poem to our readers, and if they can possess themselves of his other works - Songs of the Prairie Land, The Miracle Songs of Jesus, Ode on the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation, Out of the Wilderness, and A Flagon of Beauty (The Pine Tree Publishing Co., 477 Sherbourne Street, Toronto), they will know that the voice of Poetry is never dead.
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OUR "EXILES"
They following appears in "On the Watch-Tower" (The Theosophist for May) in response to a suggestion that a friend makes to Dr. Arundale to make it possible for all "exiles" to return to membership in The Theosophical Society:
"No one should ever exile himself from membership, however much the Society may seem temporarily to be colored by some specific sectarianism. In a Society composed of 30,000 ardent seekers after Truth, there must needs be sectarianism, dogmatism, the flaunting of authority, iconoclasm and all the other 'isms' which either need emphasizing or are just the signs of a seeker of Truth having found a toy he has never seen before. I do not want to denude the Society of these 'isms:' but rather to welcome them, doing my best to keep them in their due place, and ever presenting the Society to the world as a movement which includes and does not exclude. The `exiles' - they have mostly exiled themselves - should have realized that the Society cannot, does not and never will, become subordinate to any of the waves of movements which from time to time surge through our membership.
"Suppose such a wave to appear in the near future, or suppose another President sent forth such a wave as did our late President. Suppose that wave to be supremely uncongenial to me personally and to my sense of the real purpose of the Society. Am I going to leave the Society because I am out of sympathy with such a wave, or with the policy of the majority? Am I going to leave the Society because I believe it is being wrongly guided, and I feel myself to be in a helpless, and perhaps hopeless, minority? To do this is, in my Judgment, not only weak, but a deplorable lack of appreciation and of confidence in the basic principles of the Society. For my own part, I believe in the Society above all persons, above all movements, above all colorings with which it may be temporarily associated. And I am not going to allow any persons or interpretations, however much they may be momentarily engulfing the Society, to drive me out, or to cause me to lose confidence in the eternal purposes on which the Society is based. My allegiance is to the Society and to its Three Objects. Persons may come and movements may go, but the Society and its Three Objects will go on forever, and I hope I with them. Therefore, there should never have been any `exiles', and I trust that during my Presidentship there will be no more."
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THE CANADIAN THEOSOPHIST
THE ORGAN OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN CANADA
Published on the 15th of every month.
[Seal here]
Editor - Albert E. S. Smythe.
Entered at Hamilton General Post Office as Second-class matter.
Subscription, One Dollar a Year.
OFFICERS OF THE T.S. IN CANADA
GENERAL EXECUTIVE
- Dudley W. Barr, 14 Huntley St., Toronto.
- Felix A. Belcher, 250 N. Liagar St., Toronto.
- Maud E. Crafter, 345 Church Street, Toronto.
- William A. Griffiths, 37 Stayner Street, Westmount, P.Q.
- Nath. W. J. Haydon, 584 Pape Avenue, Toronto.
- Frederick B. Housser, 10 Glen Gowan Ave., Toronto.
- Kartar Singh, 1720 Fourth Ave. W., Vancouver, B.C.
GENERAL SECRETARY
- Albert E. S. Smythe, 33 Forest Avenue, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
*****
OFFICIAL NOTES
We have received the first issue of "Ancient Wisdom", a four-page monthly, quarto size, edited by our old friend Mr. L. W. Rogers. Mr. Rogers is an old newspaper man, and does not confine himself entirely to Ancient Wisdom, but tastes vary and we wish him success.
We regret to learn of the death of Pekka Ervast, the Finnish writer and Theosophist which occurred some months ago. He published two little books last year, one a dramatic presentation of scenes from the life of Madame Blavatsky and the other on The Sermon on the Mount. His earnest spirit will be greatly missed.
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The Panama Theosophist for March reports: "The public speaking course by the Blavatsky Institute of Canada, which some of the members of the Lodge started studying some month. ago, is producing good results as are shown in the interesting talks on Theosophical subjects given at Lodge meetings. Much useful work is expected of the group in the near future." We note that our contemporary of the Canal Zone is also among those who attribute to A.B. what belongs to A.E.S.S.
Mr. Sidney A. Cook, president of the American Theosophical Society, has been appointed American Representative for the Diamond Jubilee Convention of the T.S. to be held at Adyar from December 26 to January 5, 1936. Mr. Cook is to arrange with Steamship Companies and Tourist Agencies for special concessions to visitors for the convention. He will furnish the necessary certificates to those who wish to attend. It is estimated that the trip can be taken for about $750.
Dr. Arundale and the officials at Adyar are most anxious to have it understood that visitors to the Headquarters cannot be accommodated, unless previous engagements have been made. Permission for this privilege must be sought and no one will be permitted to stay at Adyar until such permission has been granted. A 36-page booklet has been prepared for those who desire to apply, and special forms may be had from the General Secretary for the use of those who wish to apply. All visitors must be supplied with return tickets.
We regret to say that a considerable number of our members are still in arrears for the current year's dues. It is less than five cents a week but appears to be too much for many. We have no power to remit the dues or we would be glad to do so. Those who do not pay will be placed on the Inactive List and cannot be counted among our members till they pay the arrears. The dues for 1935-6 will be due on July 1st, when all members according to the constitution must send in their dues to retain membership. We hope they do not regard this as a penalty, but a privilege.
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It is always a pleasure to us to have our contemporaries copy articles from our columns and we freely grant permission for such privilege, provided that no alteration be made and that credit be given The Canadian Theosophist. We acknowledge the compliment paid by the Swedish Teosofisk Tidskrift for March which translates Capt. P.G. Bowen's fine article, "The Way Towards Discipleship." On the other handy Gnosis, the splendidly printed Uruguayan magazine copies in March issue three articles from our columns, one by Mr. Morris, one by Mr. Housser and one by Mr. Barr but there is no mention of The Canadian Theosophist. There are other articles from other contemporaries but no credit given them either, which is not according to journalistic ethics.
The General Secretary went on a 330-mile drive with two friends on April 16 and about 4 o'clock in the afternoon when driving slowly - under 30 miles an hour, through a showery, sleety, snowy day, the car suddenly skidded. The General Secretary, who was in the back seat, was flung violently across the car, his head striking the window frame, cutting and contusing it, and his collar bone was broken, his right side being also badly bruised. Dr. Marcellus was obtained from Iroquois, near which the accident occurred, and the bone was set and bandaged. After completing the business next day which was the occasion of the journey, the party returned, and Dr. Stevenson of Hamilton attended Mr. Smythe. The bone has made excellent progress towards setting, and an early recovery is anticipated. Correspondents will please excuse delays consequent on the accident. The warmth and kindness of many visitors and friends and the profusion of lovely flowers sent Mr. Smythe is gratefully acknowledged.
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A charter has been granted to the new Kitchener Lodge, as of date May 1st, 1935. This is the first Lodge chartered since January, 1922.
MR. BELCHER'S WESTERN TOUR
As already announced in The Canadian Theosophist, Mr. Felix A. Belcher, the senior member of the General Executive T.S. in Canada, has planned a tour of the western territory at his own expense during the summer. With the exception of Edmonton and Saskatoon, he hopes to visit all the chief points where we have lodges or groups of members, with the object of holding meetings of the members only or chiefly.
During the last few years, Mr. Belcher has had marked success in Toronto in holding study classes in the Secret Doctrine, and he believes that our members could be stimulated to awakened and renewed interest in real and practical Theosophy by such study.
In Canada we have always endeavored to keep away from the tendency to present our members with and have them accept Theosophy on authority. Members must develop their own intuition, their own sense of Truth, by the use of their own reason, through their own study and experience. Those who develop in this way become real Theosophists, and cannot be "shaken out". Dr. Arundale has recently declared for a campaign on "straight Theosophy", and if this means anything, it means an appeal to Alaya, the Universal Oversoul, which all men possess, and of which they so little avail themselves.
Mr. Belcher would like to demonstrate to the members and lodges the advantage of such Secret Doctrine study classes as he proposes, and as he can spend from two to six days at each point to be visited, there would be ample opportunity to go into the subject fully, and we believe with much benefit to the members.
Mr. Belcher hopes to leave Toronto not later than June 20th, and to be back again in time for the Fraternization Convention, August 23-25. He will visit Winnipeg, Regina, Medicine Hat, Vulcan, Calgary, Banff, Salmon Arm, Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, or other points on Vancouver
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Island, and returning by Vancouver, take the southern route by Penticton, Summerland, and perhaps Nelson, with a return visit to Winnipeg on the way home.
We should like to have the cooperation of members and lodges for Mr. Belcher's visit. All that is asked is his entertainment en route, and as he is one of those who follow the simple life, nothing onerous is involved.
We trust this proposal will make a direct appeal, and it is requested that all who receive this letter will write at once to the General Secretary, T.S. in Canada, 33 Forest Avenue, Hamilton, Ont., stating to what extent they can cooperate, so that the itinerary may be arranged at the earliest possible moment for publication in the June magazine. It is not intended that public meetings be held, as the gatherings can be assembled in members homes, or wherever convenient.
Immediate attention is respectfully requested.
THE GENERAL ELECTIONS
Only a portion of the members have voted as yet for the General Executive, the General Secretary having been reelected by acclamation. Ballots must reach the General Secretary's office by May 25, and in order to do so those who have not voted must mail their ballots immediately on receipt of this notice. All who are in good standing and entitled to vote have had ballots sent to them.
In mailing ballots if the envelope is closed a three cent stamp is necessary. One lady trusted to the Government to deliver her ballot without a stamp. We had' to pay six cents for her privilege. Another lady thought one cent was enough but as she sealed her envelope it wasn't. It only cost us four cents.
We have been asked to repeat the personal notes about candidates given last year. Here they are as nominated this year, with the two new candidates:
Felix A. Belcher - One of Toronto's oldest members. President West End Lodge. Generous supporter of Theosophy.
Maud E. Crafter - Indispensable worker at Headquarters; in charge of office routine and correspondence.
Mrs. Lilian Currie - President of Hamilton Lodge for second year. A member for many years.
William A. Griffiths - One of Montreal's earnest members; treasurer of Lodge.
Nath. W. J. Haydon - Former President, Boston Lodge; earnest student and well known correspondent.
Fred. B. Housser - Editor of Modern Theosophy section of magazine. Financial editor of Toronto Star.
Kartar Singh - Valuable worker and active for international amity.
Lt.-Col. E. L. Thomson - An active member of Toronto Lodge. Is a member of Toronto Lodge Board of Directors and chairman of House Committee.
Wash. E. Wilks - Dr. Wilks was a member of the Executive many years; secretary Orpheus Lodge.
THE FRATERNIZATION CONVENTION
The Third Fraternization Convention differs from most in being an entirely voluntary gathering. Those who come do so because they wish to do so. They represent themselves and no one else. They are free to think and speak as they please, and the programme will be as elastic as it is possible for the Committee to make it. Of course the object of the Convention is to promote Theosophy, but Theosophy without any man's dilutions. It will be as near straight Theosophy as average people can reach. There are not likely to be any professing Arhats or others who wish more respect paid them than is usual in public, but we hope that there will be a number of sincere and earnest students who will be able to tell what life has done to them and what life has meant to them. Life ought to be Brotherhood, and it may be many more things, beautiful things,
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true things, things of love and service. We shall hope to have our speakers talk of these things and of whatever else stirs their hearts. The dates are August 23
-25, and the place The Theosophical Hall, 52 Isabella Street, Toronto.
WHITE LOTUS DAY IN TORONTO
Through the efforts of Mr. R. Marks the proceedings started with a pleasant innovation in the form of a salad supper, attractively laid out by Mrs. Marks and Mrs. Dustan, for the benefit of invited guests from Hamilton, St. Catharines, Kitchener and the local committee. About thirty-five sat down and afterwards brief addresses on methods of propaganda were made by Messrs. R. Marks, A. Watt, C. Williams, F. A. Belcher, D. W. Barr, Walter Hick, Mrs. Currie and Mrs. Knapp. The consensus of opinion was that while efforts to make Theosophy known on a larger scale were desirable, yet a large membership was inadvisable - even if practicable. Small and numerous groups were likely to be much more efficient and lasting than any one large central controlling body.
About two hundred were present at the regular evening meeting, which was addressed by Mr. Barr as chairman, on the parallel between the imperial celebration and our Theosophical anniversary. By Mr. Williams on Practical Theosophy and H.P.B. as the chief exemplar; Mr. Watt on Theosophy, Past and, Present; Mrs. Knapp on The Path; Mr. Belcher on Changes in the last Sixty Years, more particularly in the public attitude of the Church; Mr. Hick in similar changes in Science; with readings from the Gita by Mr. Harold Anderson and from the Light of Asia by Mr. Reg. Thornton.
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The greatest mistake made by present day Socialists, is that they envy the drop of sea-spray possessed by the so-called wealthy, instead, of pitying their burden. - Heart of Rama, Lucknow.
ADYAR ANNUAL REPORT
We have already noted various points in the President's address, but the full report calls attention to the statistics of the Society. These are tabulated in a different form than before and not over accurately. Canada, for example is credited with a discrepancy of 45, though this figure was given in our annual report as the number lapsed for non-payment of dues, and is so noted on page 114 of they present report. This shows a lack of coordination. We presume several other "discrepancies" may be subject to similar explanation.
The total in last year's report was 30,836; the present total membership is given as 29,745. This means a loss of 1091, but the Adyar statement says the loss is 1270. Surely another discrepancy.
The headquarters funds benefitted through donations and legacies to the ex-tent of 40,602 rupees, including 16,851 from the MacDouall bequest, and 15,000 rupees from the Albert Schwarz legacy. Neither the headquarters nor the Library budgets have been balanced this year nor last.
A rapid glance through the reports of the National Secretaries leaves the impression that the National Societies are still more affected by psychic revelations and psychic leadership than by the synthetic study of comparative religion, philosophy and science. However, common sense will eventually find its way. Several items may be noted. The United States feels it is better to save 500 old members from dropping out than to get 500 new ones; of whom a great proportion would soon be lost. England proposes to arrange for cooperation with sympathetic organizations to deal with the vital questions of practical Brotherhood. India reflects that the outside world will judge us only by our life of spirituality, self-sacrifice, and service. Australia announces the Society there now free of debt, the burden of earlier squandering. Broadcasting is re-
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corded as the most successful propaganda plan. Germany has been troubled by a young man who alleged he had been appointed General Secretary by the Secret Police. To have been successful he should have said by the White Lodge! The present General Secretary has been deprived by the Government of his position as professor of philosophy in the University of Bonn. Austria tells of an effort to start a Youth Lodge, sustained for a year, but then abandoned. The spirit of the young bloweth where it listeth, and can only be lured by realities. A remarkable hypothesis, the World-Ice theory of the Austrian scientist, Ing. Hans Horbiger, is represented by Dr. Oskar Hugl to be in full agreement with certain passages in the Secret Doctrine. Denmark insists on the necessity of synthetic treatment of all subjects at issue. This is likely to produce that nucleus of Brotherhood - the rhythm of the Inner Life. Ireland rejoices over a successful Summer School, attended by over 50, many of them from England. This prospect lures. Miss J. M. Nichols is the new General Secretary. Mexico is full of plans for a campaign in the interests of Mr. Krishnamurti.
These reports should be studied across the world. We do not act always like true cosmopolites.
REVIEW
" A SEARCH IN SECRET INDIA "
This book by Paul Brunton is one of the most useful books written since the death of Madame Blavatsky. While Mr. Brunton slurs the memory of H.P.B. in a passage misrepresenting or misapprehending her methods, which differed completely from that which he describes on pages 44-45, he proceeds throughout his book to confirm all that she taught and finally winds up in accepting the philosophy which she propounded. Not, perhaps, in its fullness, but to the extent that he had developed his inner life he became a disciple of Raj Yoga.
The interesting part of the book is the account he gives of his gradual acquisition of facts which he sets out to disbelieve, but is compelled in spite of his incredulity to face. And very wonderful is the gracious complacence with which sage after sage meets his enquiries, unfolding to him as much as he can bear with the true tolerance which scarcely any Western could extend to an Oriental.
Sir Francis Younghusband reminds us in a foreword that in India, as everywhere else, there is much spurious spirituality through which a way must be found before the truth can be discovered. But it requires in reality little common sense to recognize the pretenders, and one fancies that here in the West people accept the fraudulent professors of occultism more readily than would be the case in the East.
There are accounts given of interviews with a number of men who are at least adepts, if not still more highly evolved. We need not include Meher Baba in this class, though in some respects Mr. Brunton found him worthy of attention. The presence of the Great Sages in India in times past he found to be everywhere received. "When those great sages - Rishis, we call them - began to withdraw from society, then our own decline also began," one Hindu tells him. He is assured that he will meet one of the Rishis in due course, and some of our skeptical Theosophical students who discredit the idea of the Mahatmas should read all that follows.
Brunton meets magicians also, such as Mahmoud Bey who controls elementals, and works phenomena with their aid. Like the Spiritualists, he calls them spirits. A curious female adept, Hazrat Babajan, is described at Poona. A long time is spent at the Adyar river but the Theosophical Society is not mentioned. On the other hand some very remarkable people are found which it would be much to the credit of the T.S. to have known and enlisted in the work of the Society. This is true of many of the Yogis and other Sages who appear ins these pages, all superior in
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teaching and achievement to anything we have been told about in recent years.
Had Mr. Brunton been a member of the Adyar Society one wonders what position he would have attained in its ranks or would the rivalry of the seven Arhats have edged him out of place. It is a sad reflection to think that the T.S. spent money printing the follies of "Man: Whence, How and Whither," not to mention "The Lives of Alcyone", when they might have been printing a book like this of Mr. Brunton's. The Anchorite of the Adyar river is a case in point to whom about 20 pages of chapter Five are devoted.
The following chapter is entitled The Yoga which Conquers Death, and justifies the title. Chapter Eight gives a worthy account of Sankaracharya, "the Spiritual Head of Southern India," and his present-day successor, who proves to be the final authority for Mr. Brunton's illumination. His adventures at the Hill of the Holy Beacon must be read in full to be appreciated, but here will be found the reason why Christianity in its modern form can never compete with the living religions of India and other countries where a knowledge of the spiritual world is still preserved.
Frankly, in the West we know nothing of the Ouranos of the New Testament and in India they do know and can instruct those who desire to learn. Even Theosophical Students will be surprised to read the account of an appearance in the Mayavi-rupa of His Holiness Shri Shankara. Mr. Brunton comments on the difficulty of the scientific mind to accept these things, but what are we to think of the scientific training that makes the difficulty? This is obviously true of the chapter on astrology, which the author cannot bring himself to accept, even when the predictions which he regards as a "ridiculous impossibility", in one case receive "ample confirmation."
He is introduced to the Brahma Chintra of Tibet which appears to be nothing else than H.P.B.'s Secret Doctrine. From the lips of His Holiness Sahabji Maharaj, the uncrowned kin of a city which is founded on the principles of a Theosophical commonwealth and embodies all the appliances and mechanics of the West, with the ethics of the highest social development, he learns of a religion that when first established its first fifty years are pure and vital. "Later it degenerates into a mere philosophy; its followers become talkers - not religiously-living men. Finally, it descends for its last and longest phase, into the arms of hypocritical priests. In the end, hypocrisy becomes accepted as religion."
The Radha Soami, which is the socialistic society out of which has arisen the model city of Dayalbagh, is a model for all similar attempts in the West. Chapters 16 and 17 present the greatest revelation of practical occultism since Madame Blavatsky taught her pupils. But the whole book should be studied by those who seek for truth. We may take one paragraph from the final inspired pages.
"There is That in man which belongs to an imperishable race. He neglects his true self almost completely, but his neglect can never affect nor alter its shining greatness. He may forget it and entirely go to sleep in the senses, yet on the day when it stretches forth its hand and, touches him, he shall remember who he is and recover his soul."
Readers will find this volume as attractive as Talbot Mundy's "Om" or Mrs. L. Adams Beck's "The Way of the Stars" or "The Garden of Vision".
CORRESPONDENCE
A MAKER OF VIOLINS
Editor, Canadian Theosophist: - I am one of the fortunate owners of the April Edition of the Canadian Theosophist containing Mr. Pryse's intensely interesting article on Paracelsus. We are indeed favored to still have Mr. Pryse contribute from his vast store of occult knowledge
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and experience to your much needed and valued Magazine.
Isn't it marvelous that a gentleman of his erudition and devotion to Higher Philosophy has at his advanced age successfully explored the realms of physical science, contributed so wisely to the principles of acoustics in relation to the violin?
He ranks today as one of the most ingenious and inventive Violin Makers and his accomplishments are genuine contributions to the great Art of Violin-making. His versatility is simply astounding and merits the attention of the coming generations.
It proves beyond peradventure of doubt that a man maybe either a born or trained Mystic and yet at all times be capable to wrestle with the everyday problems of Life.
In analyzing his latest invention I was struck with his brilliant logic and ability in tracing a sound Phenomenon to its source and his resourcefulness in selecting and developing material, its quality, size, weight, shape and application thereof to its proper place with striking results.
I have had the opportunity to examine many of the great violins of the greatest of the Italian Masters, such as Antonious Stradivarius, Joseph Guarnerius, Nicolo Amati, Paolo Magogini and many more. It gives me great pleasure to be able to say that never in my experience as a connoisseur of violins and the Art of Violin-making have I ever heard a new instrument which approaches the rich, mellow and yet full tones of the latest instruments created by our esteemed friend Mr. Pryse. These instruments truly represent the highest achievement in tone-production today.
These violins will now be available to Music Lovers from us or from Mr. Pryse directly.
Ernest. E. Lanz,
Violin Expert of Schenck's Music House,
139 So. Broadway,
Los Angeles, California.
THE DUNLAP TELESCOPE
We have refrained from emphasizing the extraordinary national resources and achievements of Canada, but we are inclined to think that the Dominion is not as highly estimated as it might be. When Mrs. Besant was first invited to visit Toronto a New York official expressed indignation at the idea of her being asked to go "to the backwoods of Canada," and we fear something of this attitude still survives. Frequently tourists from the south come up here during the summer with skis and furs and sleeping bags expecting to escape freezing to death. Toronto has the largest University in the British Empire. Ontario has other Universities at Kingston, London, Hamilton and Ottawa. The following account of the new Telescope now being installed near Toronto in memory of the late D. A. Dunlap, will perhaps better indicate the educational level of Canada. Professor Chant has on several occasions addressed the Toronto Theosophical Society, as have other professors of the University. The, following article is from, a local newspaper:
Toronto, May 4. - The largest telescope in the British Empire at the Dunlap observatory at Richmond Hill, Ont., is nearing completion. Some night in the near future, Professor C. A. Chant and his associates will realize their fondest dreams when they begin studying the heavens through the giant 74-inch lens, presented to the University of Toronto by Mrs. D. A. Dunlap and her son, D. Moffat Dunlap.
Second Largest
The monster mirror will be two inches larger than the one at Victoria, B.C. This, however, according to Prof. Chant, will not give an appreciable advantage. They will, as a matter of face, be virtually twins. The position of the new telescope will place it 800 feet above sea level. Besides being the largest in the British Empire it will be the second largest in the world, surpassed only by the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson in California.
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The mirror was cast on June 21, 1933, at Corning, N.Y., and was then shipped to England, where it has been undergoing a delicate grinding and polishing. The huge monocle is 74 inches in diameter, 12 inches thick at they edge and 11 inches in the centre. To ensure a perfect, flawless mirror, the pyrex of which it is made, was poured at a temperature of 1,500 degrees centigrade, or 2,700 degrees fahrenheit. It was then allowed to cool to 900 degrees F., before it was placed in an annealing oven for three months while the temperature was minutely lowered.
"It was necessary to do this," said Professor Chant, head of the department of astronomy at the University of Toronto, and who will be in charge of the new observatory, "in order that it would show no strain or flaws. It came out perfect."
Magnifies 40,000 Times
The mirror will have a magnification of 40,000 times that of the human eye. It will magnify to such an extent that cities the size of Toronto, Winnipeg, or Calgary would be clearly visible on the moon, if the moon had such cities. The Great Lakes, if the orb had any, would be as plainly seen by the observer. A freighter on the lake, however, would not be seen. Professor S. H. Hogg, a young scientist, who was an attendant astronomer at the Dominion astrophysical observatory at Victoria, and who came to Toronto to work on the new telescope, admitted that the outline of a group of buildings such as the Canadian National Exhibition buildings or the University of Toronto might be seen, but he would not commit himself further.
There on the high ground north of Toronto, the astronomers will work like salesmen during the Christmas rush, from sun set to dawn, taking spectroscopic pictures of the heavens. Victoria has in the last 15 years taken and filed some 23,000 such photos. Nor will the scientists be the only ones to view the moon. In all probability the observatory will be opened to the public one night a week, so that housewives and office workers may see they moon magnified 40,000 times.
Takes Accurate Pictures
The observatory which has been under construction for the past four years, is now awaiting installation of the mirror. The administration building of cut stone provides space for offices, a library, and for the laboratories necessary for accurate measurement of the photographic plates. The building which houses the telescope, has a 61-foot dome weighing 80 tons, and which rests on 24 rollers, each 27 inches in diameter. This permits rotation of the dome as the planets in the heavens shift their positions..
Watching an object in the sky is not the easy job which may be imagined. Stars and all heavenly bodies are continually shifting, and it is necessary that the telescope be accurately pointed at the moving object. The difficulties encountered may be compared with the keeping of a gun pointed at a one-inch target twenty miles away while the target moves at the rate of five feet per second. Movement of the image by only a thousandth of an inch while it is being photographed will make a serious defect in the resulting picture.
The value of a telescope during an eclipse of the sun is seen in the photographs it will permit, which will show the leaping prominences extending a distance of 567,000 miles. With the arrival of the mirror, the scientists enter the final stage of the work. It is expected that the observatory will be formally opened on May 31, the 70th birthday of Prof. Chant.
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To tell a man that it is wicked to be selfish is useless; he must be shown that it is both short-sighted and foolish; and that in his ignorance of the Law, he is shutting himself away in the darkness, refusing the crown which is his birthright. Here the Buddhist teaching on the power of thought is seen to be of great value. - Buddhism, the Science of Life, p. 46.
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THEOSOPHY AND THE MODERN WORLD
Conducted by F. B. Housser
IMMORTABILITY
In an Easter article in the Toronto Daily Star, the writer C. H. Huestis, examines the concept of immortality as set out in the Old and New Testaments.
"If one goes to the Old Testament for light on the subject, he returns with a very tiny candle. The Old Testament people believed in a place of departed spirits for good and bad with no separate compartments, but nobody wanted to go there."
"When one turns from the Old Testament to the New and reads the references of Jesus to a life beyond, one could wish He had been more clear and definite or that His reporters had understood him better. There can be no doubt that Jesus had confidence in His own survival, but outside the fourth gospel, which has little historic value, what he really said seems to have been interpreted largely in the light of current Hebrew and Graeco-Roman ideas. Belief in survival, which after Jesus' death became so profound as to dominate the preaching of the early church and to occupy an important place in the writings of St. Paul, was due chiefly to the assurance of the continued life of their Master which came to his disciples from appearances after his resurrection. As to the veridical character of these appearances, one may ask whether Christianity could have survived as a religion without them."
Immortability Explained
The writer then summarizes the conclusions set forth in a book by Dr. S. D. McConnell entitled "Immortability."
"In the matter of survival, orthodox theology draws the line between man and the lower animals; man is immortal, but the brutes `perish'. The author holds that the line should not be drawn between man and animals, but between one kind of man, and the rest of created beings, between the physical man and the `psychical' man as St. Paul would put it. Not only, he holds, are the most of the human race not immortal, but they never were, and what is more important, they never will be. Immortality is an achievement. In fine, it is not a question of immortality but of immortability."
The word 'immortality' means `not subject to death' and hence, by inference `eternal'. But eternalness cannot be achieved; it is and it cannot begin nor end. What then can be `immortability' which means `the ability to achieve immortality? Certainly not the ability to achieve eternalness and so possibly it means the power to become not subject to death. But the end of every physical body is death and therefore the word must mean the capacity to survive as a conscious entity after the death of the body or, perhaps after the deaths of many physical bodies.
Mahatma Letters
These points are discussed in several places in the Mahatma Letters and Dr. McConnell's statement that "Immortality is an achievement" is supported.
"We call `immortal' but the one LIFE in its universal collectivity and entire or Absolute Abstraction; that which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break in its continuity." - M.L. 129.
But K.H. - the Mahatma just quoted - also points out that there is the possibility of achieving a qualified immortality and in other letters where the word is used in reference to human immortality, it carries this qualified meaning.
"Therefore the earliest Chaldeans had several prefixes to the word immortality, one of which is the Greek, rarely-used term - pan-aeonic immortality, i.e. beginning
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with the manvantara and ending with the pralaya of our Solar Universe. It lasts the aeon or the `period' of our Pan, or 'all nature'. Immortal then is he in the pan-aeonic immortality, whose distinct consciousness and perception of Self under whatever form - undergoes no disjunction at any time. Not for one second during the period of his Egoship ....Suffice for you, for the present to know, that a man, an Ego like yours or mine, may be immortal from one to the other round. Let us say I begin my immortality at the present fourth round, i.e. having become a full adept (which unhappily I am not,) I arrest the hands of Death at will, and am finally obliged to submit to it, my knowledge of the secrets of nature put me in a position to retain my consciousness and distinct perception of Self as an object to my own reflective consciousness and cognition; and thus avoid all such dismemberments of principles, that as a rule take place after the physical death of average humanity, I remain as Koot Hoomi in my Ego throughout the whole series of births and lives across the seven worlds and Arupa-lokas until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth race men of the full fifth Round beings. I would have been, in such a case, 'immortal' for an inconceivable (to you) long period, embracing many milliards of years. And yet am 'I' truly immortal, for all that? Unless I make the same, efforts as I now do, to secure for myself another such furlough from Nature's law, Koot Hoomi will vanish and may become a Mr. Smith or an innocent Babu, when his leave expires." - M.L. 129 and 130.
And again on page 276. "When the Seeress" (Mrs. A.B. Kingsford) is made to reveal that 'Immortality is by no means a matter of course for all' that `souls shrink away and expire' . . . . she is delivering herself of actual incontrovertible facts".
The Spirit in man, the Atma, is Immortal, is one with the Eternal Life, the Absolute which has no beginning nor end, but the continuing consciousness of the Ego, its `qualified immortality' must be achieved and retained through the power of immortability - for which word we thank Dr. McConnell.
HOMINOIDS
Hominoid is a word used by Sir Ambrose Fleming, F.R.S., in his Presidential Address to the Victoria Institute, London, England, to mean "pre-Adamitic races of beings which may have had more than animal intelligence and powers, but were not `man' in the psychical and spiritual powers or possibilities in the Biblical sense of the word.... Between true man and anthropoid apes, there may have been some species of hominoids created."
Sir Ambrose is an eminent scientist but in his address he maintained that the account of the creation of man given in the book of Genesis is literally true and that "evolutionary theory is totally at variance with the scriptural teaching concerning man's original perfection." He also considers that this creation took place in the year 5411 B.C. and thus gives to mankind exactly 1407 more years of existence than the reverend Bishop Usher who fixed the date as 4004 B.C.
Sir Ambrose, of course, had to avoid many scientific hurdles in his address and in an article in the April Modern Thinker, Sir Arthur Keith calls him back and takes him over the jumps and even makes a foray into the ranks of the fundamentalists. He pointed out that there are two accounts of creation in Genesis, that if we begin man's history with a single pair in the Garden of Eden, there is a difficulty of answering the question as to where Cain obtained his wife, and the further difficulty of explaining how Enoch - Adam's grandson - could found a city.
Scientific Hurdles
Sir Arthur Keith points out that anthropologists maintain that they have found not only stone instruments in the oldest of the Post-Pliocene deposits, but that they
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have discovered fossil fragments of at least three very different kinds of humanity who were in existence as the Pliocene period came to an end. Sir Ambrose apparently accepted these discoveries but said that they threw no light on the antiquity (or creation) of man and dismissed them from serious consideration.
He had a little more difficulty with the Cromagnon and Neanderthal man. The Cromagnon he accepted as "the antediluvian men of the Biblical Narrative" who had strayed into Europe from Asia. Anthropologists claim that there is definite evidence that the Cromagnons came into Europe during the last phase of the glacial period; and even Sir Ambrose admits that there is evidence, not altogether negligible, that a last glacial epoch may have ended not much more than seven to ten thousand years ago. How then did they arrive there some five thousand years before their ancestor Adam was created? Neither is there any evidence that the Cromagnons came from Asia; They apparently came into Europe from the West (Atlantis).
Secret Doctrine
Neanderthal man, Sir Ambrose considers, was a `hominoid'. But Genesis does not say anything about hominoids and so possibly like the little girl in the well-known story `he just thought it up hisself'.
Recent theories put forward by advanced thinkers in science are very close to the teachings given in the Secret Doctrine concerning the origin of the anthropoid apes, namely that they were a later order of life and the half brothers of man - and the antiquity of the human race is something upon which they do not make positive statements. The Secret Doctrine figure of eighteen million years may yet be accepted.
Sir Arthur Keith makes one statement in his article which opens up another line of thought, namely, "To suggest that at any stage or that at every stage a creative power, bearing a human shape is bending over and guiding the development of every growing egg, human or otherwise, is a thought which seems absurd to men of science." While this is absurd, the orthodox scientific attitude is also absurd which postulates that a single cell and its millions of descendants, have within themselves the power to shape a human form, that the cells which are to form the heart and lungs and skin and bones, each go to their appointed places in the human frame, by virtue of a power inherent within them. The Secret Doctrine postulates that there is a subtle pattern body, `bearing a human shape' which influences this.
"SCIENCE VIEWS THE SUPERNATURAL"
Fifty years ago Physical Science called the Supernatural "fancy and hallucination". Today a few scientists are discussing and investigating the Supernatural and admitting the reality of some super normal phenomena. This is a tremendous step forward from the physical into the metaphysical, and one that is of great interest to Theosophical students.
The Reality of Cryptesthesia
In an article in the April "Forum", Aldous Huxley reviews the evidence of the Psychical Research Society of the past fifty years and admits the reliability of a great amount of the evidence gathered. He says, "The reality of at least one class of supernormal phenomena has been demonstrated, it seems to me, beyond all reasonable doubt. Cryptesthesia, as Richet calls it, includes telepathy or thought-transference, clairvoyance, psychometry, water divining, and all other forms of abnormal perception not passing through ordinary channels of the senses".
Healing, Fire-Walking and Seances
Another point referred to is mental healing and the work of investigation by psychologists in this direction. They are more or less agreed that the mind can both heal and produce disease. He next discusses fire-walking and says, "If the ac-
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counts of fire-walking are reliable, we have evidence that certain minds can cause altogether abnormal modifications in all the three classes of matter - the matter composing the bodies that belong to these minds, the matter of other human bodies, and the matter of which the rest of the world is formed". He says with regard to mediums and seances that science "must be content to suspend judgement" as there have been so "few properly controlled experiments with physical mediums".
Survival After Death
The next important topic taken up is the problem of survival after death, and what it is that survives, and communication between the dead and living. He merely discusses different theories and does not attempt to criticize or explain, and ends his article by saying - "The view that survival is purely spiritual seems to find some support in the fact that the spirits . . . . . . reveal themselves in most cases as being distinctly inferior in mental capacity to the living men and women they once inhabited. If the soul is what Homer, Professor Broad, and with qualifications, even orthodox Christians, imagine it to be, a thing which can attain perfection only in conjunction with a physical body - this decline of power after death is precisely what we should expect."
Occult Science has much to say about the soul, and while not agreeing with the views of Spiritualism, has an explanation for this "decline of power". In the Key To Theosophy, (p. 130), it is said, "We believe with the Spiritualists and the Spiritists in the existence of `spirits', or invisible beings, endowed with more or less intelligence. But while in our teachings their kinds and genera are legion, our opponents admit of no other than human disembodied 'spirits', which to our knowledge, are mostly kamalokic shells."
- M. E. D.
"HEART"
H.P. Blavatsky tells us in the Secret Doctrine (III:582) that "The heart is the king, the most important organ in the body of man. The spot in the heart which is the last of all to die is the seat of life, the centre of all, Brahma, the first spot that lives in the foetus, and the last that dies. This spot contains potentially mind, life, energy, and will. The heart is the centre of spiritual consciousness, as the brain is the centre of the intellectual."
In the March copy of the magazine "Clinical Medicine and Surgery" there appears a review of the book; "Heart, signs of Agni Yoga", which is published under the seal of the Maitreya Brotherhood. The reviewer pays tribute to its treasure of metaphysical lore and adds that many passages, if correctly interpreted, are of distinct `clinical value'. The book is recommended to "enlightened physicians and all searchers after truth".
Pulse and Aura
The book, "Heart", is both a challenge and a light to the modern physician as well as being a source book of value to students of occultism. Various lines along which research work may prove fruitful are indicated. The following extracts are but two selected from many given..
"Let us once again turn to the quality of the pulse. Not the beat of the pulse so much as the observation of its quality will give the picture of the heart's vitality. Until one succeeds in photographing auras, one may now begin already to observe the pulse, not during illness but during good health, marking what sensations affect the changes of pulse and precisely how. If the aura gives evidence of the presence of illness the quality of the pulse offers the entire scale of reactions. But the aura is something transcendental for the majority, whereas the pulse provides a completely physical manifestation. But how solicitously and cautiously one should understand the study of the pulse."
"Much of that which is nearest remains uninvestigated. Have perspiration and saliva been exhaustively examined? We read of poisonous saliva. We know of
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beneficial saliva. We have heard of the varied properties of perspiration and yet neither of these secretions has been investigated. The sweat of labour and the sweat of overeating will not be alike. The saliva of anger and the saliva of aid are different. But these symptoms are primitive. Every human state produces a special chemical reaction. In studying this truly cosmic multiformity of the microcosm, one may arrive at an understanding of the physical and spiritual worlds. With an intelligent man the reactions will be varied. One may learn how greatly the sweat of prayer differs from the sweat of self-interest. In comparing such contrasting reactions, one may trace the products of psychic energy. Thus close are the future scientific achievements."
Metaphysical Researches
Medical science is already realizing the effects of emotions on the functioning of the physical body. The emotions of fear and hate have been definitely proven to have a direct effect on certain glands, the juices of which perform most important functions in the human organism. It is interesting to note that the study of the ductless glands has really only begun and already the discoveries are startling. The emotional plane and the mental are so close to each other in the majority of mankind that the study of the effect of thoughts on the physical vehicle will doubtless be one of the next steps in medical research.
The appearance in a professional magazine of the standing of `Clinical Medicine and Surgery' of a review of a metaphysical book on the subject of Yoga would indicate that not only in physics and mathematics has science quite openly discarded its purely materialistic point-of-view, but also in the field of medical research, conservative though it must necessarily be.
- M. J. B.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE NEW AGE
A significant change in viewpoint is gradually coming about in the science of psychology. In the past materialistic era in science, behaviorism seemed to be the most popular psychology. It was an utter negation of anything higher than the machine in man. He was just a mechanism, his habits and actions were determined solely by the force of outer circumstances. Behaviorism permeated our whole life. It entered into national advertising. It saturated our educational system, with disastrous results to the young. It was extremely popular inn medicine, and was the favorite of the scientist. Everything was nerve and gland. Behaviorism was the logical corollary to materialistic evolution.
Freudianism
The Freudian psychologies also had a vogue and still have, for that matter. These were perhaps not quite so mechanistic as Behaviorism but, if not, were even worse, for they reduced all the higher things in man to the level of sex. All thoughts, all ecstasies of the spirit, all the loving-kindnesses we might display, our dreams, and mental aberrations, all had their roots in the sex life of the animal which we were; roots which frequently went back to the baby at its mother's breast.
There was little to choose between the two - Behaviorism and the Freudian psychology.
Jung's Psychology
Jung made an advance one the Freudian psychology for he recognized. a realm of thought common to the whole race of mankind. This he called the "unconscious". From it, it was said, emerged the sex life of Freud, and from it also came those racial images and memories which are given to us in myth and legend, in poetry and drama, and in the creative works of the true artist. Yet the existence of higher spiritual and mental realms seems never to have occurred to Jung.
The New Thought
And now we have the beginnings of the new psychology, one conforming to the changing scientific attitude of the day. A
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scientist, A. N. Whitehead, gives us our first clue as to the form this new psychology will take. He says in Science and the Modern World:
"The doctrine which I am maintaining is that the whole concept of materialism only applies to very abstract entities, the products of logical discernment. The concrete enduring entities are organisms, so that the plan of the whole influences the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it. In the case of an animal, the mental states enter into the plan of the total organism and thus modify the successive subordinate organisms until the ultimate smallest organisms, such as electrons, are reached. Thus an electron within a living body is different from an electron outside of it, by reason of the plan of the body. The electron blindly runs either within or without the body; but it runs within the body in accordance with its character within the body; that is to say, in accordance with the general plan of the body and this plan includes the mental state. But this principle of modification is perfectly general throughout nature, and represents no property peculiar to living bodies. This doctrine involves the abandonment of the traditional scientific materialism and the substitution of an alternative organism."
The New Psychology
A new school of psychology, which promises to revolutionize thinking in the biological and social sciences, has been developed at Columbia University.
Based' upon the scientific attitude that characterizes the work of Einstein, Planck and Heisenberg, the new system breaks with the mechanistic conception of man and adopts the non-mechanistic philosophy developed by the new physics in the study of the atom.
The new school rejects the dogma that man is a machine, insisting that he must be conceived as a unified living system whose behavior expresses a purpose to maintain its unity. This is called "the theory of self-consistency" and is the result of seven years of study and research by Prescott Lecky, instructor in the Department of Psychology.
Clinical Technique Applied
A clinical technique built up from this theory has been successfully applied to the treatment of longstanding defects in academic subjects, such as spelling and mathematics, to feelings of social inadequacy, occupational maladjustments, and marriage problems.
Mr. Leeky explains that the new theory overthrows the old concepts of behaviorism and psychoanalysis, and sets up for the first time a concept of the structure of the mind as a unified organization rather than as a plurality of habits and instincts. He sees science on the brink of the greatest revolution in thought since the time of Newton. The keynote will be the concept of individuality contributed by the new physics.
- W. F. S.
A SILENT REVOLUTION
The above is the title of an editorial which recently appeared in the London Times commenting on a two-day debate in the House of Lords on the problem of capitalism and Socialism.
"The debate as a whole", says The Times, "must have deepened the impression that western society is in a period of transition, a transition no less profound than that by which the feudal system passed into the individualist and capitalist system . . . . . The great transition through which society is passing is one which proceeds apace, whatever government may be in power, and its final form will doubtless be very different from what even the most discerning prophet anticipates."
This is doubtless the crisis which the founders of the Theosophical society in 1875 saw coming in the twentieth century and it becomes more apparent daily that only by the application of the ethic and philosophic principles laid down by them can western society hope to pull through the transition of which The Times speaks
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without falling into anarchy of every description.
Speaking before the King of Norway and all the officialdom of that country Major C.H. Douglas, the social creditor, predicted recently that unless the money power of the world can be wrested peacefully from the hands it has been in for the past two hundred years, the monopoly it represents will destroy society by war. All unprejudiced economic students would probably agree with this.
Ethics and Economics
The Times believes that the key note of the new order will be "service rather than profit". This suggests, it thinks, that the age into which we are now entering wild be a synthesis of the two preceding ages - the feudalistic and capitalistic.
"In the medieval world economic considerations were, in theory at least, subordinate to ethics", says The Times. "This was notably shown in the prohibition of usury, though the ban was by no means always observed. The age which followed (capitalism) saw a complete divorce between economics and ethics, and its motto was `Business is business'. The right of money to bear interest was recognized and approved."
"The task before us now," The Times goes on, "is to insure once more the supremacy of ethics over economics while preserving all the immense advantages won by the capitalist system."
The sentiments expressed by The Times are such as every Theosophist would say Amen to, but whether the middle ages were any more ethical than the present age may be questioned.
The difference between that age and ours, seems to have been that whereas today economic considerations over-ride everything else, then ecclesiastical considerations were the dominant factor. There is no good reason for supposing that church rule was any more beneficent or ethical than bank rule. It may be hoped that we are moving toward an age when we shall be through with both of them.
A CONTINENT CHANGING
The transformation of a large area of the United States into a replica of the Sahara desert is now a certainty if the dust storms, which have been sweeping over Colorado, Kansas and other states continue at their present rate, which it is expected they will. This may have taken place before another decade has gone by.
Few people in the east realize how rapidly these storms are laying waste an area which, it was estimated in a recent report of the United States Department of Agriculture, produces about 15 per. cent of the total agricultural output of the United States. The ten-year average wheat production of Colorado is at the rate of approximately 13 million bushels a year. This year the estimate is only for 1,088,000 bushels.
In Kansas the ten-year average is 177 million bushels per annum. This year the crop is for only 78 million bushels. Storms last for days at a time making travel by automobile dangerous and making it necessary to close schools. Civilization in places is buried several feet under sand and earth. It is easy to see how, in places like the Gobi desert, cities have long been covered and civilizations possibly greater than ours lost to the memory of man. This is now happening here in North America within the life-time of a man.
HOME-MAKING IN RUSSIA
Without any trace of sex discrimination, the women of Russia are at liberty to enter all jobs and professions, receiving equal pay for equal labor. They have been called "The World's most modern women". As a whole are they entirely satisfied in this unique position? Evidently there are, and always will be, problems which economic freedom alone cannot solve; this however does not alter the fact that a step has been made in the right direction.
Russian women are apparently falling in love, marrying, and having babies. They desire a loving husband, with whom
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an interest can be shared in books, art, music and all the things that go toward the creation of a true home.
Last December, the Central Organization of Communist Youth conducted a Symposium dealing with the problems of reconciling the duties imposed upon the youth of Russia by the task of Socialist upbuilding with the requirements of their private lives - love, the home, family, etc. Several illuminating letters appear in an article called "Youth in Search of Home and Family" (Magazine Digest, March, 1935). These letters reveal the inner struggles of the younger generation who have worked for the Soviet.
Discontent Apparent
For the most part the letters lead one to believe that in spite of the almost fanatical devotion to the `Cause' the finer emotions necessary to human relationship have survived. One letter from a young wife, however, brings to light the fact that her husband's unreasoning devotion to what he considered his first duty, resulted in an inhuman attitude. Their baby was seriously ill and he dismissed his responsibility with the remark, "You are the mother, it is your duty to look after the children." Consequently she was obliged to leave the child alone while she procured supplies, drugs, etc. The baby died. "The problem of the family is not a trifling matter," concludes the heartbroken mother. "A family like mine isn't a family at all. What should a young communist family be like?"
A male worker replying to the above question expresses belief that happiness in private life will not be possible for at least another six years. He doubtless was in a sulk while writing, for although professing to love his wife he finds her terribly obstinate. He sides with the father who was too busy to bother about the fate of his sick child.
It may be difficult for those of us who have taken the home as a matter of course to understand young Russians who wax sentimental about their tiny living quarters, "The Haven of Rest" or "Peaceful Refuge", as they refer to them. These people were denied the privacy of home-life in their childhood. This has increased their appreciation of a home and added to their determination to provide one for their own children. The latest Soviet policy, indicated in Stalin's recent statement that "As long as family and children exist, these interests must not be neglected" is significant.
Theosophical View
Theosophy recognizes home life as necessary for the development of humanity at a certain stage. The training and experience one receives in the smaller household is said to be a preparation for added responsibilities in the larger one. The woman who learns how to create an atmosphere of serenity in her home, who is an intelligent guide to her children and an understanding companion to her husband must, to a large degree, practice selflessness. When her duties leave her free to enter the greater household of the world, she should be better equipped to do something about it. "The first of the Theosophical duties is to do one's duty by all men and especially, by those to whom one's specific responsibilities are due, because one has either voluntarily undertaken them or because one's destiny has allied one to them." (Key to Theosophy, p. 202).
According to Theosophical philosophy, "Happiness or rather contentment may follow the performance of duty, but is not and must not be the motive for it." (Key to Theosophy, p. 192). If the object of doing our duty is for the attainment of personal happiness and not for the happiness of others we will probably remain restless seekers.
Russian men and women have worked unitedly for an ideal. Woman's effort alone did not bring about her economic freedom. It came through the combined effort of both sexes working according to the Theosophical conception of brotherhood - "full recognition of equal rights and privileges for all, and without distinction of race, colour, social position or birth."
- R. S.
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