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 3 1924 097 286 128 
 
In compliance with current 
 
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 Library produced this 
 
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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 D. B. Vail 
 
§lj0tt0ljts 011 f apuad f ita 
 
 A SERlBS 07 TWELVE LECTURES BEAD BEFORE THF. 
 BRANCH THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY KC'MBHAKONAM- 
 
 BY 
 
 A BRAHMIN F. T. S. 
 
 VOIi. I. 
 
 Foinf end the "woy^—lwivever dimly, and lost atnong the 
 
 host — as does the Evening Star to those ivho tread their path in 
 
 darJrat^ss. 
 
 (Voice of the silence) 
 
 Published by the 
 
 XTTMBHAKONAM BRANCH THEOSOPHICAL 
 SOCIETY 
 
 FiJkHTSe AT THE Sst YlDYA. P»H3g 
 
 KUilBHAKONAM. 
 
 1893. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The lectures here offered to the public were written last 
 year to be read on twelve consecutive Sundays before the 
 Branch Theosophical Society at Kumbakonum. Though the 
 ludience was small, it was regular. At the request of friends 
 one of the lectures was again read before the last convention 
 at Adyar. The nature and treatment of the subject interested 
 the friends and sympathisers so much that they asked the 
 writer to publish all the lectures. So it was resolved to 
 publish theip in the "Theosophist." 
 
 In accordance with that resolution, the first few pages 
 of this book were published in the "Theosophist;" but here a 
 new difficulty was esperienced. The lectures which form a 
 serial each depending on the preceding and supposing a 
 knowledge of all that goes before for its own clear grasp were 
 thought ill suited for publication in a monthly journal. 
 Whether real^ or fancied, this was one of the reasons that 
 ompted the publishers to embody the lectures in a book 
 
 her than allow them to see the light in the pages of the 
 
 heosophist" 
 
 One other reason may be adduced since it was a factor 
 ^ietermining this course of publication and it is this. If the 
 tures are worth anything and capable of producing any 
 J least effect on the public mind in a theosophical direction 
 tlic e is no reason why that effect should nob be wrought at 
 '^'C'" i without delay. Further it has often been represented 
 I. the cycle we are passing through, is one of the most 
 1 1 in the history of the present race. A stress has been 
 
laid hj H. P. B. on the impulse that we create now since tha 
 is to be the initial and moulding impulse of the opening cyclel 
 "Why then should there be delay? The twelve lectures nc^ 
 offered to the public take the reader to the middle of the ithl 
 chapter. The puranic symbology of the tenth chapter wil] 
 alone take another book like this in case this mode of expo- 
 sition is liked by the public. The short period that yet re-1 
 mains of the passing cycle will be over by three fourths i! 
 publication in a journal is resorted to and this was a stronc 
 reason for inducing us to publish these lectures in a book iorui 
 
 Some excuse is needed for attempting to understand tli( 
 real philosophy of the Gita when the entire world is full of il 
 glory. Thousands are the editions of the book and comi 
 mentaries thereon. "What need is there for another booi 
 called "Some Thoughts on Gita"? But the kind reader wi$ 
 remember that it is only the glorious thing that extorf 
 homage. Where there is glory there is also truth behind tk 
 dazzling cover. Sufficient homage can never be paid ti 
 Truth. It deserves all the pains that can be bestowed I; 
 finding it out. The present effort can bf* considered as o|i 
 more tribute of homage and the theosophists who are trod 
 stanchest advocates of collective labour must excuse tm 
 Bramhin F. T. S. the author of these lectures. 
 
 Besides this there is one more important thingto be consider! 
 The Bagavat Gita has not yet been considered from the sta: 
 point of the world-old doctrine called the Puranic doctrini 
 India- There are lots of onesided commentaries but i ^fp( 
 few of non-sectarian ones. Just as some European translator? 
 the Gita have as the crown of their labors arrived at the cg>. 
 sion that the Gita philosophy teaches men to sit idle to .^j 
 unto liberation, thus unknowingly provoking the d 
 
 \, 
 
 ncr 
 
 ua. 
 
 smile of the Bramhins, likewise among the latter the f / .-ij 
 
been men who going through the Gita and commenting on it 
 tha-'^^ S^^^^ length have come to the conclusion that ritualistic and 
 cle^acrifiicial acts of sheep-slaughter continued through life with 
 noA| "goody goody" devotion to the Lord will take men on the 
 4tpath of hberation and that that is the intention of the Gita 
 wilieachiug. I need scarcely inform the reader that such an 
 ^pokdvocate must necessarily belong to the school of Karma- Yoga 
 ^gin its Kali-Yugaic degradation. There are other commentaries 
 .v-vritten by advocates of other schools in which one set of 
 ■deas is brought into prominence and other sets of ideas 
 "connected with other aspects of the truth are thrown into the 
 5hade for sectariau purposes. One philo?opher of the Adwaita 
 ' thSchool laying stress on Sanyasa or renunciation will tire out 
 f itais readers by his argument that Karma and Gnyana must 
 jomiot exist in the same person as per Bagavat Gita and will quote 
 Dooli good lot of sayings from the poem. Another philosopher of 
 wilhe opposite school of Visistadwaita will argue out that 
 tortSarma must never be turrendered by any gnyanee and will , 
 I thoickoutan.equally good numberof sayings in his own defence. 
 1 trhe poor unsophisticated reader who takes to these conflicting 
 )d itommentaries is obliged to hang between heaven and earth 
 ; onike the mythical king Thrusanku, with a doleful look in his 
 3 thountenance, as are at present the vast majority of the old 
 thichool scholars of India. 
 
 ! 
 
 The only way of getting out of the difficulty is to go 
 
 3reqirect to the fountain head itself and to understand the Gita 
 
 I 
 
 an' ' cording to the old Puranic stand-point the standpoint of 
 
 le le Veda — ^the Secret Doctrine of H. P. "B. But the old 
 
 1 3r)eople of the Puranic school always wrote in symbols and 
 
 )rs f ''ey have to be understood before the Puranic literature is 
 
 ''irstood. But though the symbology can not be completely 
 
 5d by uninitiated persons the broad out-linee of their 
 
 :)phy can be understood as H. P. B has given them out 
 
to the present generation and all posterity to come. A student 
 of H.P.B. knowing a little of Sanscrit and reading the Sanscrit 
 works with the aid of her writings can, I think, bring to the 
 surface a lot of old ideas and thus benefit the eager aspirants 
 of anciont lore in Europe and America. From this it must 
 not b e supposed that such a service has been done by the 
 Bramhin. F. T. S. who wrote these lectures. No such thing 
 is even professed. The only thing that can be claimed is that 
 the following lectures are the out-pourings of a grateful heart 
 — the heart of an earnest Bramhin. F. T. S. born in a great 
 Pundit family of Southern India and enabled to call himself a 
 Bramhin only because H. P. B came in time to his aid and 
 destroyed all thoughts of flying into the arms of the Padrees. 
 
 A. BRAITlHin F. T S. 
 
SOME THOUGHTS ON BAGAVAD GITA. 
 
 Deae Beothees 
 
 As is well known, the Gita forms part of the great epic poem 
 called the Mahabharata and is, so to say, the crown of that 
 group of poems. It is therefore necessary to understand 
 something about the Mahabharata before we can under- 
 stand the propriety of the Gita forming part of the Mahabha- 
 rata itself. Now this poem, like the Ramayana and a number of 
 other poems in the Sanskrit language, has several aspects, 
 and each person is at liberty to confine his study to the 
 aspect which interests him most. The aspect of the Maha- 
 bharata best understood by the world at large is- its his- 
 torical side, though even here some scholars extensively 
 informed as they are on historical subjects have committed 
 many blunders. It is a marked piece of obstinacy on the 
 part of modern investigators, both western and eastern, that 
 they will pay no respect to Hindu ideas and traditions. These 
 are cast to the winds before the spirit of time-contracting po- 
 licy adopted by the Christians who compress history within 
 the narrow space of 5ooo years. The Christian is excusable, 
 for he is caught in the net of shadows that emanated from 
 the brains of the early Christian Fathers, but foi* the Hindu 
 the only excuse is that the present age closes the first 5000 
 years of Kaliyuga. 
 
 The tradition prevailing in almost every portion of the 
 Indian continent, from the rocky heights of the North to the 
 plains of the South, is that the scene of Mahabharata war 
 was enacted in the beginning of Kaliyuga, about 5000 years 
 ago. As Mr. Sundaramayya says, it was the karmic punish- 
 ment for the selfish spirit that had been developed during 
 the previous cycles. In the puranic phraseology of India, 
 men had become Rakshashas on account of the decline of 
 Dharma. Every cycle, be it 4,320,000 years, or 5000 years or 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 a year, or a day, commences with the Deva and ends with 
 the Rakshasa. About 5000 years ago, there was a most critical' 
 turning point in the history of this Karmabhumi. It was the 
 end of a great cycle and the beginning of a new one, the 
 Kaliyuga, the yuga fore-ordained by the will of Brahma, or 
 the law of cosmic evolution, for the development of heteroge- 
 neous personal elements. The times demanded the appear- 
 ance on the stage of life of a great soul, a Maha-Purusha, to 
 adjust the old order of things and give the initial impulse to 
 a new order. That Maha-Purusha is the Jagat-Guru Sri- 
 Krishna: not a personal God as some would make him, but 
 an entity embodied for the time, from the manasic planes of 
 nature. He represents, as every Yogee and pundit will grant, 
 the ray of dark glory that dwells in the lotus of the human 
 heart. The embodied Krishna is merely one of those divine 
 beings who, living in the noumenal planes of nature, watch 
 over and protect the field of human evolution. 
 
 To return to the epic of Mahabharata. It is an account 
 of the doings of the great heroes who fought to settle how Kali- 
 yuga was to begin, all written down in a most beautiful symbolic 
 fashion. Some may be disposed to ask — why was the ac- 
 count drawn up in a symbolic way; why did not the writer 
 put it in plain language? To this if I mistake not , an answer, 
 a complete one to him who has thought over it, has been 
 given by H. P. B., in the first volume of the '' Secret Doctrine". 
 I refer you all to that page of the book which describes Sound 
 as one of the Karmic agencies wielded by man. The ancient 
 philosophers seem thus to have had a great objection to the 
 literature which by describing purely scenes of human car- 
 nage, tends to inflame mankind, as do to-day the novels of 
 Reynolds dealing to largely with the fairy-land, supposed to 
 reside in a woman's smile. Fortius reason, the ancient 
 initiate historians conveyed information under a veiled garb. 
 The account of exploits therein given is more like a fight be- 
 tween the angels and the Satanic host than one between hu- 
 man beingp. Much instruction, moral and spiritual, is im- 
 bedded in the account of the heavenly war. Advantage is 
 taken of the opportunity to describe man and the cosmos, tho 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 9 
 
 relation between tlie two, &c.&c. The kernel 0|£ truth, from 
 the standpoint of history, is always ready when the proper 
 man, whose curiosity alone is entitled to be satisfied in thes0 
 matters, comes to seek it. 
 
 Now the Mahabharata is one of such historical epics, full of 
 Ynorai lessons and a mine of gold to him who hankers after a 
 knowledge of the supersensuous planes of nature. The poem 
 has a very great value to the historian, a greater value to 'thai 
 moralist and a still greater one to the student of Theosophy, 
 since the great war between the lower and higher selves of 
 human beings is described in detail. The war is called the 
 Bharata war for a very strong reason. Those who have read 
 the ordinary Theosophical writings will recollect the chain of 
 seven globes described as the field of human evolution. 
 These same seven globes are described in our Puranas a« the 
 earth of seven islands or Saptadwipa-medini. These seven 
 islands or globes of the earth chain are said to exist on four 
 planes. Numbers one and seven exist on plane one; number^ 
 two and six exist on plane two; numbers three and five exist 
 on plane three, b^lobe number four is the balance between 
 one and seven and is therefore the battle-ground between the 
 divine and the gross elements of man's constitution. These 
 four planes represent the principles of the lower quarfeernary, 
 the linga Sarira, the Nephesh or Prana, Kama and the turn- 
 ing point, Manas. It is because Manas is the turning poiiifi 
 in the cycle that H. P. B. has considered it under the two as- 
 pects, higher and lower, the higher the attainer and experi- 
 encer of spiritual heights and the lower, the soul of the lowfer 
 three, the triangle that completes embodiment. Manas is 
 therefore the battle-ground of the forces coiitainfed in the 
 microcosm and consequently the Bharatakhandam of our 
 Pouranikas, The stage of evolution that we have reached is 
 the very starting point of the great struggle. 
 
 The two important figures, Arjuna and Krishna, must 
 be very clearly grasped before one can properly understand a 
 great part of what is said in the Bhagavatgita. A cpmmqn 
 saying goes in India that they are Nara and Narayana, ajid 
 the saying is, I think, quite true- Nara or irjuna, ig th© 
 
 B 
 
10 SoHfi THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. 
 
 human Monad of evolution, tke manvantaric shadow, on tlie 
 screen o£ Prakriti, of the Atmic ray, one with Atma or the 
 central spiritual sun, -which is called Narayana in our Piii'anas 
 and the TJnmanifested Logos in theosopliical works. There 
 is a common Sanscrit saying "The Mind alone is to man the 
 cause of Tjoth bondage and release fi"om conditioned existence." 
 Mind is the central point of all existence and Atma manifest- 
 ed, and it is the human Ego that is at liberty to work tOAvards 
 the north pole of Devas and unconditioned existence or the 
 south pole of Rakshasas or conditioned bondage. In the 
 present stage of evolution, Manas is personal in its nature and 
 if it seeks to work towards the north pole or Atma, it has to 
 work itself out of all personal elements. It is during this 
 process of working one's self out of personal elements that the 
 situation described in the first chapter of the Bhagavatgita. 
 occurs. Numerous affections spring up, for son and daughter, 
 brother and sister and other relations established in the land 
 of embodying matter. "The whole future cannot but be a waste. 
 It is but a future of woe." The entity thinks as above and"will 
 gladlytake a retrograde step to the land of kinship and condi- 
 tioned existence. It will gladly renounce all battle if some 
 encouragement and instruction do not come from higher 
 sources. The fighter needs most of what is called viveham, or 
 the discrimination between the true and the false, the light 
 and the shadow. He has to completely grasp the situation, 
 the laAvs of universal and cosmic developments in all their 
 departments. He has to understand the law of Karma and 
 he will have to go on performing duties in life irrespective 
 of all prudential and worldly consideration. It will not do, 
 if a man goes on performing his duties in the fond hope that 
 he will reap the reward of it and attain imto the ocean of 
 conscious bliss known as Nirvana or Moksha^ Such a hope 
 of reward will be quite detrimental to progress. Thus all 
 pleasure and pain, whether in experience or expectation, will 
 have to be packed up in a bundle and thrown aside by one 
 who wants to knoAV the triith irrespective of all consequences. 
 We shall understand the necessity for all this if we only 
 realize that the universe is described as One Essence under 
 an infinite variety of manifestations. If a man wants to 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 11 
 
 merge himself into that One or to estabhsh his existence on 
 the highest manasic plane, he must of course cultivate a feel- 
 ing of oneness or the feeling of universal brotherhood — the 
 great cause for which the present Theosophical effort is made. 
 
 The first chapter of the Gita, giving merely the circum- 
 stances under which instruction was given to Arjuna by Sri 
 Krishna &c., I intend to pass on at once to a consideration 
 of the succeeding chapters. 
 
II 
 
 Dear Brothers 
 
 I have already touched upon the initial mental attitude 
 of the practical student of Brahmayidya, represented by the 
 attitude of alfection for relations of the earth and of a blank 
 despair as regards the things of the spirit. The student nefcds 
 true discrimination a discrimination that shall realize "the 
 fullness of the seeming void and the voidness of the seeming 
 full," The discourses of Sri Krishna commenced in the 
 second chapter of the lay are intended to produce that dis- 
 crimination or a knowledge of the secret doctrine, the six as- 
 pects of "which are the six schools of philosophy that are said 
 to exist in India, Every one must have heard that the Veda 
 has six angas or auxiliaries, and those who have had the 
 benefit of reading the theosophical works may conceive the 
 Veda and the auxiliaries as forming a double triangle of 
 knowledge with a central point. This central point is of 
 course the Secret Doctrine or the thread doctrine, which may 
 be called after the fashion of the Pouranic teachers, the 
 Pouranio or ancient doctrine or the Vedic doctrine. Accord- 
 ing to the conception that I have been trying to give, true 
 discrimination is produced only from the central stand-point, 
 or only by a complete study of and meditation on, the Secret 
 Doctrine; while the solitary studies of the o';her Schools of 
 philosophy are only one-sided views concerned with the 
 different aspects of the central and eternal truth- The read- 
 er will please bear in mind in this connection that our Poura- 
 nic philosophers described the eternal truth that underlies 
 the birth, growth and decline of all cosmic systems as a seven 
 tongued fire, as illustrated in the saying:— 
 
 (Harivamsa-creation in the lotus) "Narayana becoming a yo- 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 13 
 
 gee, or a fire of seven forms, dries up with his burning rays 
 the waters of all the oceans." If therefore the number seven 
 is the number of the eternal type, it necessarily follows that 
 that number must assert itself on all manifested planes, be 
 they the planes of the highest Dhyan-Chohans, meaning 
 Bramha-Rishis, or the planes of the Dhyanis , or ever-liberat- 
 ed entities. One may guess the nature of the school to which 
 our teacher H. P. B. belonged, from the great stress she laid on 
 the number seven, which she gladly carried to even the highest 
 manifested planes of existence, even though these planes are 
 represented by numbers one and four in our ordinary Vedan- 
 tic works. 
 
 To return now to the subject in hand. We must 
 remember that the Bhagavat-Gita is supposed by all thinkers 
 to represent the only true doctrine, or the highest philosophy 
 of the ancients; and can therefore be grasped by us only if we 
 place ourselves in a mood completely void of wrong conceits 
 and fully receptive of the truths on the ground of intuition. 
 We all differ from each other only in the degrees to which 
 we have grasped the truth or received the light which illumi- 
 nates the field of knowledge, and I am therefore entitled to 
 the fullest leniency from any readers when I err, since I am 
 like them a seeker after truth. In my expositions I am re- 
 solved to be bound only by my own thought and knowledge 
 and I would advise all readers to stand each on his own feet 
 irrespective of what has been said on the Gita by modern ex- 
 ponents. In trying to understand such an occult Sanscrit 
 work as the Bhagavatgita, I think it is very essential to think 
 in the language of the book, and I shall explain a few Sans- 
 crit terms that very often occur, for the meanings of terms 
 must be correctly grasped. 
 
 The most important term, as all know, is Parabrahm. 
 There is not one word in the whole range of Sanscrit litera- 
 ture that has such a mysterious grandeur about it as this 
 Parabrahm. As a result therefore of this awful grandeur, 
 tending to abstract tlie mind from the plane of the earth to 
 the prime fount of all majesty and sublimity, we find that 
 every religious partizan in India is careful to assert that th« 
 
14 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 God of Ill's own special worship is Parabrahm to the exclu- 
 sion of the other gods. The word Brahm is derived from the 
 root bi-ih to expand, to grow, and the adjective Brahmic is 
 applied to any cosmic principle which has the tendency to 
 manifest itself as something. A certain cosmic essence which 
 sustains all this manifested solar system by its own circula- 
 tion, and called technically food or annam in the Upanishads, 
 is Brahmic in its character. 
 
 The body of the four Vedas consisting of various man- 
 trie formulae representing in sound the pulsations and beats 
 of life, that working on the principle called food, has produ- 
 ced this wondrous world harmonious in the adjustment of its 
 parts, is called by the name Brahm. From this point of view 
 of the Vedas, which take into consideration mainly the Vedic 
 intonated chanting or pronunciation, this entire world is but 
 the Veda in manifestation, and I have no doubt that this view 
 of the Vedas is the view taken by the Pouranic philosophers. 
 On the above line of understanding the word Brahmic, several 
 other oosmicprinciples deserve the qualitative Brahmic. Butthat 
 Thing or No-Thing, which is the basis of all these cosmic princi- 
 ple and upon which all these are strung and in which they all 
 grovr is called the highest Brahm or Parabrahm, which is 
 therefore no principle. The prefix para means transcendent, 
 and Parabrahm is that which transcends the consciousness of 
 even the highest yogees, and can only be described by nega- 
 tives and is so descrit: ed in the Hindu Sastras. It is called 
 the No-Thing by the Buddhists on account of that meta- 
 physical necessity which makes the Hindu philosophers 
 resort to a negative mode of description; and so the modern 
 Hindus who take objection to the word No-Thing must first 
 find fault with their own philosophers. Is there Parabrahm 
 or not? so asks a modern Vedantist, Now let us consider 
 what the word means when it is used by a conditioned man. 
 It necessarily means "is such." The best answer therefore 
 to the question — Is there Parabrahm? is the silence of Lord 
 Buddha towards the wandering monk Vachagotta. The 
 same is the answer to the question — Is there not Parabrahm? 
 The i/iai of the Vedas neither is, uor is not. Non-existenco 
 
Some thotjghts on the Gita. 1 5 
 
 is only a negative kind of existence, and I request all my 
 readers to fully consider ^this idea. Parabrahm may therefore 
 be considered as the absolute ground of all manifestation or 
 the absolute silence which is, and underlies all sound or the 
 No-Word wbich precedes and is Word. Parabrahm is neither 
 Prakriti nor Purusha, neither object nor subject, has neither 
 will nor consciousness and in fact is nothing that we can 
 postulate. It is the bare possiblity of everytbing in the in- 
 finite cosmos and hence called Beness in the "Secret Doctrine". 
 I may also add in this connection that this Beness is the point 
 of mystic union of Prakriti and Purusha. If we refer to the 
 lectures of Mr, T. Subba Row, we shall well find that it is 
 called the abode of Sri Krishna who stands in the Gita for 
 what is called the Unmanifested Logos in Theosophical writ- 
 ings. 
 
 Tliis Unmanifested Logos is called by various names in 
 the Sanscrit writings, but the most prominent of them is the 
 word Narayana, the Pouranic name for the Yedantic Param- 
 atma. It is therefore of extreme importance to under- 
 stand the meaning of this term. It may facilitate perhaps a 
 grasp of the situation if I mention that the Pouranic philo- 
 sophers have sometimes written about the solar system we are 
 concerned with, and occasionally about the entire universe. 
 The spirit of ideation of one solar system is called Brahma in 
 Sanscrit, and in what relation Brahma stands to our solar 
 system, in the same relation does Narayana stand to the entire 
 universe. This absolute, unconditioned Purusha is therefore 
 the spirit of absolute thought, 'and the supreme secret yet un- 
 revealed to the ken of even the highest intelligences. I say 
 unrevealed because the secret is behind the universal veil 
 called the Avyaktam. Just as what is called ether by European 
 scientists is the sea in which all orbs of the solar system are 
 said to live, float and move; so likewise this Avyaktam is the 
 root of all meterial manifestation, enveloping the entire 
 universe and shrouding the secret from the view of even the 
 
16 Some thoughts on. the Gita. 
 
 greatest seers. For this reason, the Unmanifested Logos is 
 called Avyakta Murti in Sanscrit;and in this connection I 
 may mention the well known couplet which runs "that which 
 is beyond the Ayyaktam is known to the knowers of Narayan." 
 To those of you who have read the Gita lectures, the express- 
 ion — the veil of Parabrahm — will naturally occur. The late 
 Adwaitee philosopher, T. Subba Row, said, that to the Logos, 
 Parabrahm appears as Mulaprakriti. So far as I have read the 
 
 Bhagavat Gita and understood it, I find that Krishna identifies 
 himself with the All-Self of the universe — Narayna, and gives 
 his teachings. If my view is correct and consequently Krishna 
 -.be the Narayana, the veil of Parabralm is a fatally misleading 
 expression. No Pouranic philosopher ever talked of an 
 objective something to this un-conditioned Mukta and in fact, 
 they confess their complete ignorance of this unconditioned 
 existence, Vyasa says: — ^ %Jr ^t%?5?ItF °^ifi ^f^gH^fcT i 
 "No entity can conceive distinctly this inconceivable Puru- 
 sha," and I think the expression — veil of Parabrahm, is a 
 very misleading one. Narayana then is the spirit of all con- 
 sciousness of the entire universe , the endless truth and 
 wisdom, as said in the Sruti. The entire universe is in him 
 as a stream of ideation as himself. If desirable, he may be 
 described as the Chidahas, or the field of subjective light or 
 intelligence, in whom the ideas underlying the evolution of 
 all solar systems ever are. A right comprehension of the 
 ancient philosophy of India seems to me to thoroughly depend 
 upon our comprehension of the meaning of this centre which 
 is everywhere, containing the law of the universe idealized. 
 Narayana is therefore Dharmarupi- An individualized ray of 
 this central spiritual sun is the Jivatma or Nara, and Ayana 
 means resort. The compound word Narayana means the 
 ultimatum of all such rays, or the Paranirvana of Buddhistic 
 phlosophers. 
 
SOMS THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. • 17 
 
 The stream of ideation that exists in and constitutes 
 Narayana, must not be conceived as a species of pleasant lake 
 always in a heavenly calm. The proper idea would be that 
 this lake is being moved in a most harmonious and graceful 
 way by a bird which is everywhere in that lake — the swan of 
 eternity, or the supreme Hamsa. This lake of ideal waters, 
 being thus subject to a pulsation of its own, the wondrous 
 laws of harmony observable in the evolution of solar systems, 
 their action and interaction, spring into existence. NarayanaC 
 is likewise the bird of eternity or endless time in whom limit- 
 ed times of yugas, cycles and subcycles have their being. 
 
 There is another way of deriving this word Narayana, 
 from which we gather that he is the cosmic incubus, or spirit, 
 which over-shadows and vivifies the cosmic waters. These 
 waters are of course the abstract space, or the "ever-invisible 
 robe of the eternal parent" in its first manifestation. In 
 this connection I have to say something about the conception 
 called "waters" by the Pouranic thinkers. "When the word 
 water is mentioned scientific friends generally take the water 
 of their sense-experience and in consequence smile deri- 
 sively at the ancients. I think this is quite unjustifiable. By 
 waters created at first by Brahma, the ancients meant an all- 
 pervading supstance, the base of all material manifestation. 
 From this standpoint the entire universe is one vast body of 
 water and every manifested globule is but a limited part of 
 the vast ocean, condensed and made to appear as it is by the 
 various potencies residing in the ocean itself. I need not go 
 into a description of these potencies, or Yedic Gods, since it is 
 not required, but it should be remembered that there are 
 oceans within oceans and that the ocean which is the base of 
 our existence as embodied entities is the salt ocean. Those 
 who have read the Vishnu Purana will recollect the seven 
 zones mentioned there and the salt ocean the innermost of 
 them. So then Narayana is he who vivifies the primordial 
 Vaters. 
 
 There is one other 'aspect in which this supreme, central, 
 spiritual sun can be viewed, and in fact it is the Pouranic 
 view. This aspect is that of the eternal Yagna-Purusha. 
 
 
 
18 Some TnouGiiTs on the Gita. 
 
 Yagna-Puruslia is he -who presides over tlie Yagna, or the 
 sacrificial ceremonies prescribed in the rituahstic portion of 
 tlje Yedas, and he is therefore the Purusha of sacrifice. 
 There is not one single idea -of the ancients that has been so 
 ill-understood and consequently .abused by the moderns as 
 this sublime idea of Yagna. "When I sa^ sublime, I do not 
 mean that it should be understood that Yagna as practised 
 at present is advocated by me. I have no doubt that the 
 true Yagna has deteriorated as much as any other thing, 
 man included. This wh&le solar system being conceived of 
 as one vast mechanism, with an exquisite adjustment of its 
 parts in all major details, is only the physical expression of 
 Yishnu, or the ethereal basic substance, as Tve may under- 
 stand the word for the present. All the harmonies observa- 
 ble in the manifested cosmos are only the result of the harmo- 
 nioui^ly working energies that resolve ether into the express- 
 ion that we recognize. All planets, worlds, human beings, 
 &c., are only parts of the body, each functioning in subordi- 
 nation to the daw which governs the whole. The evolution, 
 preservation and destruction oi the world is therefore one 
 vast process eaUed Yagna, which takes place in the body of 
 Yagna Purusha, or the psychical body of natnre. Humanity 
 taken collectively is the heart and brain of this Purusha and 
 therefore all the Karma generated by humanity, physica'', 
 mental, or spiritual, determines mainly the character of this 
 Yaghic process. The great and ancient Brahmins, who 
 guided the Aryan race in its infancy, are all Yagnikas and 
 the rules of life they followed, or required of other Brahmins, 
 is given in our Smritis; and those who have either read the 
 Smritis or considered deeply the ordinary Brahminical life in 
 our villages, will see how very nonreceptive of personal ele- 
 ments a Yagnika's life ought to be. The body of such a 
 man living the life is a real dharma-hshetram, or a place in 
 which good is generated, every action being performed witli 
 the desire of increasing the good of the entire manifested 
 world, since it is a part of the whole and as such is bound to 
 work for the good of the whole. Every sound spoken is in 
 the line of the eternal Veda, the song sung by nature's life 
 energies in her majestic march from the dawn to the night of 
 
SoiTE THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. ^" 
 
 Bralima's day. The Yagnika's mind is in perfect rapport 
 with the mind of Brahma and is one with it. 
 
 Jt has been said by some Europeans that the Hindu doss 
 everything religiously including e<ating and drinking. A 
 Yagnika Brahmin will answer:— "Yes, I have no right to eat, 
 drink and live for my personal sake. In fact personality is a 
 myth. \iii are all rays of the unmanifested glory, one with 
 his nature, and his messengers, and hence we have no right 
 to do anything except on his behalf. Every function given 
 us, was given us by the grand Patriarch Brahma for his own 
 service and kenco there is no act which we do without dedi- 
 cating it to him who is the source of all life." j 
 
 1 have no time or knowledge bo go into the detailis of the 
 special Yagnic processes described in the ritualistic portion 
 of the Vedas, but I request my readers not to dismiss with 
 contempt any part of the ancient Vedic v.'-ritings without 
 anxious effort to study and understand them. I have no 
 doubt that what is apparently most absurd is in fact an ex- 
 position of some profound esoteric truth and will amply repay 
 us if only we sit down to understand it. Coming back thus 
 to the word Yagua-Purusha, Narayana is the highest Yagna- 
 Purusha named in our Puranas. This Purusha has no form 
 but is the ground from which fire, water, Akasa, all emanate. 
 These are all forces which, ouce ideas in tiie constitution of 
 the "Eternal type," become working forces down below. 
 Various other forms of the Yagna of our solar system are 
 given and these must be understood Avith due refevence to 
 the plane of manifestation. The form Garuda, or the Eai««le, 
 with his outstretched wings is one form. The boai' with his 
 two tusks, projecting face and four legs standing Wr a parti- 
 culm' geometrical figure, is another form. 
 
 I shall not trouble with any furthei- words about 
 Yagna but shall pass on to other matters. The central 
 spiritual sun that I have been desoribmg to you is as I said 
 Bramha or Hiranyagarba of the entire universe. The objective- 
 aspect under which alone lae is cognizable by the Chohanic 
 hierarchies lower doAvn in the scale is the avyaktam of the 
 saukhyas wliiQh avyaktam stands for what ia called Para- 
 
20 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 bratatam by tte Yogees. The Pouranikas tell us that on the 
 occurence of Maha-pralaya Narayana absorbs the life of th© 
 Devas, men and Rakshasas and that Lakshmi forms then his 
 body, the starting point of all manifestation. It is because 
 that the supreme secret is viewed under a double aspect of an 
 eternal parent and an invinsible robe, the Parabramham the 
 field of all possibilities, but only a field negation to us is a 
 metaphysical necessity to the Pouranikas. As you all know, 
 Parabramham is the supreme abode of Krishna and as I said 
 it is a metapysical necessity of thought on the adwaitic lines. 
 I shall now give you a short account of how the lotus in 
 ■which Bramha holds his sway came into existence and before 
 going to that I shall describe all evolution into two grand 
 parts, Prabhavam end Bhavam translateable into the superior 
 and inferior natures. That part of the macrocosmic evolution 
 which goes on, on certain fixed lines of harmony without the 
 de p-elopment of any conflicting individual wills is the manifestation 
 of individual and macrocosmic superior nature. When Prak- 
 rit! attains her Vikaram or develops powers antagonistic to 
 the laws of universal harmony, inferior nature may be said to 
 be manifested- Everything shines in the world only by 
 contrast. If there be no darkness, there will be no light. 
 If evolution and destruction of cosmic systems were to 
 proceed on the perfectly even lines of superior Nature, 
 cosmic expansions will have no object and become a farce. 
 None i e no ray of the spitual sun or jiva will be wiser for 
 having worked in that monotonous field of fatality. Poura- 
 nikas say that the superior Nature cannot shine if it does 
 not develop an inferior nature to stand in contrast. So then 
 we can for the present consider the cosmic processes up to 
 the stage in which Bramha comes into existence as superior 
 stage of manifestation and I shall therefore begin to describe 
 it in a few sentences. 
 
 The first great effort towards the manifestation of the 
 solar system in the universal waters is described in the Pura- 
 nas as the dream of Markandeya. Now you all know that 
 Markandeya is a great Rishee of everlasting life, that he has 
 been the witness of good many pralayas and that the Rishee 
 is very fond of peregrination from one holy place to another. 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 21 
 
 This means that the Rishee symbolizes the ideation and image 
 of what the world is to be as they impress themselves on the 
 cosmic waters. Markandeya is the spirit of the highest 
 ideation residing in the unmanifested logos and periodically 
 assisting with his ideal energy the construction of the world 
 with all her holy places in the different strata of its existence. 
 The statement that Markandeya is a Rishee of everlasting 
 life simply means that he is connected with the life energy 
 of the solar system as it swings from the manifested Bramha 
 to the unmanifested Narayana. If you understand by the 
 Puranic names of Rishees, isolated individuals doing some 
 magical feats, the whole thing loses its value. These Rishees 
 in most cases represent the spirit working in planes and 
 sub-planes of cosmic existence. There may be several thou- 
 sands of entities who have attained into such a high state of 
 existence as to be above the pralayas occuring during the 
 daily routine of Bramha's life. These entities working har- 
 moniously la subordination to one law, form one spirit, the 
 spirit of pre-Bramhic ideation and that spirit is Markandeya. 
 The dream of Markandeya is divided into two parts and the 
 first part is so deep a dream that the Rishee fails to know his 
 own self. His individuality extremely rarified on account of 
 the infinity trying to impress itself on him, seems almost 
 snapped and so Markandeya goes back to where he came from 
 i e. the belly of Lord Narayana. A second time he emerges 
 from the mouth and this time he understands himself and his 
 function and goes back to the belly supporting the entire 
 future manifestation by his own dream. 
 
 A vital activity has been given to the waters by the 
 fire of ideation and a vital action set in. It may be conceived 
 as a kind of thrill sent through the waters and this thrill 
 produced in time the five Mahabootams out of which alone 
 any manifestation is possible. Out of these five maha- 
 bootams the cosmic lotus was produced. The lotus as you all 
 know symbolizes a world system and the system that was 
 now manifested is of course the solar system that we are con- 
 cerned with in its incipient stage. The base in which the 
 lotus may be said to be manifested is the Bramhic light or 
 
22 Some thoughts on the Gita.. 
 
 Tejas called Akaa. The Avord Alcas means tliat Tvhicli shines 
 everywhere and it may be taken as the periodical manifesta- 
 tion of the abstract space or avyaktam the universal screen 
 wrapping up the eternal parent. The spirit of consciousness 
 that rules over the lotus manifested in Akas is called Bramha 
 •who is sometimes called the Yogee in the lotus. The re- 
 mark that I made about Markandeya must be f pplicd to the 
 lotus Yogee Bramha. It is not one specific individual but is 
 the genius that gives the law to the life of lots of indivi- 
 duals who have attained unto the state. As I have already 
 said, this logos Bramha stands in the same relation to our 
 solar system as Narayana stands to the entire universe- He 
 contains in himself the law of the evolution of the whole word 
 and is, if I mistake not, the ultimatum of all Jivas who want to 
 pass beyond the pale of conditioned existence. In our Pura- 
 nas, He is said to be made up of the minds of all bhootas and 
 it is not therefore a wrong idea if we postulate that he who 
 will keep a firm hold of his Manas or individuality and Avill 
 preserve his self -consciousness through all the heights of 
 spiritual development that he may attain unto, Avill attain un- 
 to Lord Bramha the manasic Yogee of the lotus isle. 
 
 Now because I have called by the name Bramha the 
 state ultimately attainable by those who will keep a firm 
 hold of their manas you must not conclude that that state is 
 what is called Bramha-lokam in Sanscrit writings. It is not 
 so. The real Bramha-lokam is the unmanifested logos not 
 attainable at present but attainable in the future after the 
 lapse of a period of time not yet known 1 think to even 
 adepts. But the harmonious laws that govern the develop- 
 ment of one solar system in all its parts, tending to take 
 away teil after veil as time progresses, eouclusively prove 
 that each sueoessive kalpa the solar system evolves on a 
 higher plane and that when the proper time comes the uni- 
 versal screen called the Avyaktam will be removed. Then 
 will come the true Nirvana or the Paranirvana of the Budhists 
 or the Bramha-lokam of our Pouranic philosophers and then 
 the self-consciousness of these entities will merge into the 
 self -consciousness of the AH -self. The Bramha- loka that t 
 liave mentioned is the supreme abode of Vialinu or '_' 
 
Some thoitghts ok the Gita. 23 
 
 This 13 not fhe vie^v taken by the philosophers called 
 the Bankhyas in India. They do not concur in the view that 
 the avyaktara or the abstract space is the veil of any Puru- 
 shottama doing Bramhic duties for a number of solar systems. 
 They merely take it as the field in which solar systems are 
 born to grow and die and so when the solar system in which 
 we all evolve, die at the end of a number of kalpas, it will be 
 dissolved in avyaktam and will bft reborn again under the in- 
 fluence of the undying energy which once worked out the 
 manifestations and when such a rebirth occurs, all the entities 
 that once lived in the previous world kalpas must be reborn 
 as a matter of necessity. Maheswara or the 'energy of tho 
 avyaktam is the ultimatum of all entities and there is no 
 justification to push things still further. Because there is a 
 Bramhic state beyond the veil of this solar system, there is no 
 reason to think that there is a corresponding state beyond the 
 avyaktam, the Parabrahmam, the ocean in which worlds are 
 born to grow and die under the action of undying energy or 
 Sakti. To this the philosophers of the other school would 
 answer "yes the avyaktam that yon consider as Parabramham 
 is only the Moolaprakriti or the root which supplies the girb 
 to all. There must be a Mooia-Purusha to supply the intelli- 
 gence which is everywhere observable. The Maheswaric in- 
 telligence that is observable in all bodies and in Avyaktam is 
 but the shadow on the screen, of the ultimate Purusha or 
 Narayana. Prakrit! and Purusha are the Asat and Sat aspects 
 or the negative and positive poles of Parabramham to talk of 
 which is much less wise than not to talk of it." There is a 
 middling course between the lines marked out by these two 
 Bets of philosophers and they lay a stress on cosmic ideation. 
 The first school that keeps in the line o^ the All-ego or Nara- 
 yana may be considered as the Secret School or the Sa.nkhya- 
 Yoga school. The Sankhya school also in its pristine purity 
 was in the line of the All-ego though it varried from the first 
 school in it? conception of the ultimatum. This third school 
 may be considered as the Yoga School and the ultimatum is 
 what is called the Karya-Bramha lokam or the lokam of 
 Karya Bramha or the ideal elements that underlie the solar 
 system. To attain unto the goal of this school is to get a 
 
24 SOMK THOUOHTS ON THE GlTA. 
 
 function into the ideal constitution of this solar system and to 
 support it by the energy of ideation. The entities that at- 
 tain the goal may be called as passive yogees since they have 
 identified themselves with cosmic ideation in both aspects of 
 good and evil and they are all swimmers with the stream. I 
 request you all my friends to take up some good Sanscrit work 
 or the "Secret Doctrine" and think for yourselves on these 
 matters- Then only things will take a clear shape in your 
 minds. 
 
 The powers that preside over Yoga and Sankhya 
 philosophies are called Narayana Yogee and Kapila in our 
 Sanscrit Puranas. The first is called Yoga Oharya and the 
 other is called Sankhyacharya and good deal depends upon 
 understanding the natures of these two powers. These three 
 names Bramha, Narayana Yogee, and Kapila stand for the 
 three great things under which the whole universe may be 
 viewed, the knower, knowledge and known and these three are 
 traceable to the unmanif ested logos or the All-self, his ideation, 
 and the objective aspect which he presents to all who are 
 down below in the scale. Bramha represents as I have already 
 said the self-conscious individuality and those who wUl keep 
 a firm hold on this individuality are Sdukhya Yogees or stu- 
 dents who will view Sankhyam and Yogam as one. The 
 school represented by Narayana Yogee lay a stress on idea- 
 tion and those others who belong to Sankhya school, lay a 
 stress on Avyaktam and all kshetrams or bodies that are born 
 of avyaktam. These three schools are Satwic, Rajasic and 
 Tamasic aspects of the truth. In the Puranas it is said that 
 Bramha becoming Sambhoo divided himself into two parts 
 Narayana and Kapila and these are perhaps the Sanscrit 
 names of the two Bodhisatwas who are represented in the 
 notes on "The Seven Portals" and who are said to live in the 
 garden of Amitabha shedding their light on the span of the 
 three worlds. 
 
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE GITA. 
 
 Deae Brothees 
 
 1 . In my last lecture I touched upon the yogee in the lotus, 
 Lord Bramha and this requires very deep 'consideration on 
 your part, since everything of the course of progress "which a 
 practical' student of Bramha-Vidya marks out for himself, 
 turns upon a proper understanding of this Yogee. I lay a 
 special stress on this theoretical understanding of the Poura- 
 nic characters, since that alone will lead the student through 
 all the difficulties and dangers of soul development. There is 
 not one department of human action in which the ideal does 
 not precede the practical. No general moves his army with- 
 oat previously studying the topographical features of the 
 country through which the army has to pass and no. architect 
 raises his edifice without previously doing it in his, mind. This 
 law must be applied with very great rigouf to the practical 
 student of Bramha-Vidya in which much more, important 
 things are at stake than in any business of practical ordinary 
 human life. Nothing can be so absurd as to do a Yogic prac- 
 tice, the why and wherefore of which is not imderstood even 
 on any broad lines. The Pouranic philosophers tell us that 
 the Kaliyuga is a cycle m which light and shadow stand in 
 the ratio of one to four and consequently there is too large a 
 degree of glitter in proportion to the gold. A great number 
 of professors of sham occultism, some of them of a little pheno- 
 menal power, are observable in India and the practices they 
 teach are calculated to produce the most injurious results if 
 adopted on simple faith. The one sovereign remedy against 
 evils of the kind is discrimination or knowledge of Atma and 
 Non-Atma. This is as you may know the first of the four 
 sadhanas or accomplishments mentioned in our Vedantic works 
 and this is understood by our modern Yedantees in a most 
 extraordinary way. They say that Parabramham is truth 
 and everything else is illusory as' illusory, as serpent in a rope. 
 
 D 
 
26 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 Very startling consequences have followed in the traia of this 
 mental position — a position that will throw off everything to 
 the region of Asat and illusion and will accept as the only 
 truth Parabramham, the bare field of possibilities and nega- 
 tion. Our modern Adwaitees are therefore complete nihilists 
 and they spurn with contempt the entire body of knowledge 
 handed down to us in the Vedas, Itihasas and Puranas. Not 
 so ought to be* the position of a man who understands the 
 first accomplishment properly. He ought to understand the 
 workings of the evolutionary energy which working from an 
 unknown root down to the gross sensuous plane of our ex- 
 , perience, has produced various strata of life, with basic subs- 
 tances appropriate to those strata and corresponding laws on 
 the subjective and objective aspects of those strata to govern 
 the function of the entities who inhabit those planes. What 
 is only a matter of subjective perception to beings of a lower 
 plane may become objective to beings of a higher plane. The 
 experiences of an entity on a lower plane considered for the 
 time as Ms own experiences may turn out as the atomic 
 motions of the body when that same entity goes out for a 
 higher plane. What is therefore very real in one plane may 
 -turn out to be utterly frivolous from a higher plane and 
 therefore the first accomplishment is a knowledge of the 
 various conditionings created by Nature in her own unfold- 
 ment. In fact knowledge of Atma & unatma means knowledge 
 of self and world evolution and the relation between the two. 
 
 2. ' Atma means as you all know the self or the ego or an 
 individualized centre of consciousness around which aU world- 
 ly experiences in their dual aspect of subjective and objective 
 cluster and arrange themselves. It is as it were one of the 
 foci from which emerge rays of light to illumine the cosmic 
 waters and in which also converge the rays sent back by 
 those waters. In theosophical- writings, it is called the self- 
 conscious individuality or the Higher Manas. From this 
 point of view, you will see that the Higher Manas is the most 
 important principle or the central pivot of the human consti- 
 tution or the true soul. It is the thread which ought to be 
 caught hold of by one who wants to know the truth and lift 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 2? 
 
 liimseli out of tliis conditioned existence; To this it may be 
 objected that Atma represents the 7th principle of the theo- 
 sophical septenary and that the Manas is far lower in the scale. 
 But the plain answer is that the 7th principle is the ulti- 
 mate state attainable by the self after crossing the ocean of 
 conditioned existence or samsara. To return now to the lotus 
 Yogee Bramha, He represents the root of all manasic powers 
 in Nature and is therefore the heart of all Nature. You will 
 find that in every incarnation of Vishnu as a horse, as a dwarf, 
 as a man-lion &c, Bramha takes the place of the heart. To 
 follow the workings of this Yogee in all his manwantaric pro- 
 gramme, is to follow the doctrine of the heart and to become 
 a disembodied Bramhin living in lokas of light and doing the 
 duties of a Yogee of the time's circle. In theosophical langu- 
 age it is to become a Bodhisatwa, a son of the Dhyanees or in 
 Sanscrit a Bramhin, a son of Bramha, the lotus Yogee. 
 
 t. I shall now proceed to place before you an analysis of 
 the second chapter of the Bagavat Gita, explaining as I go 
 along the Sanscrit terms that frequently occur in Sanscrit 
 writings and require to be thoroughly understood in order 
 that the Secret Doctrine and the Bagavat Gita may be 
 correctly grasped. The instructions given by Sri-Krishna to 
 Arjuna were given as you know on the field of war and 
 Arjuna then was in a peculiar frame of mind. All that he 
 loved on earth and all for which life was worth living in the 
 eye of Arjuna, were there on the field arrayed against him, 
 resolved to subjugate Arjuna and make him bite the dust of 
 the ground. He felt himself involved in a blank despair and 
 the laws framed to govern the phenomenal life and calculated 
 to secure for man happiness now and Swargam hereafter, re- 
 curred to his mind and kept it in a state of extreme stupor in- 
 capable of judgment and unable to decide which way it ought 
 to turn. Sri-Krishna says "sages grieve not for the living or 
 the dead". This is only another form of the advice given in 
 the "Voice of Silence" "Be of good cheer disciple; observe 
 the golden rule" To be of good cheer under all circumstances 
 good or bad is one of the indispensable rules of life to a stu- 
 
28 iSoME THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. 
 
 dent of Bramlia-Vidya, for that alone preserves that equani- 
 mity of mind comparable to the smiling stillness of the lotus 
 Sower in the lake, generated by a conviction of one being an 
 immortal entity unconditioned by space and time. Tor, what 
 indeed can happen to the divine entity which informs a 
 human being? Nothing, for, that entity is of the plane of life 
 eternal. All changes that can happen and do happen to him, 
 appertain to the domain of the garb and not to the ego. The 
 garb itself may grow old and die and become as shining as 
 that of a devachanee but the entity changes not. Pain and 
 pleasure, heat and cold are but the changes of state of the garb 
 with all her sensual lights and it is the duty of a man who 
 attains unto wisdom, to treat them with that trifling indiffer- 
 ence which such changing states deserve. He who makes a 
 great fuss of such trifles, cannot attain unto immortality since 
 he chooses to identify himself with them. 
 
 4. This identification with trifles is precisely what is 
 called identification with Asat. Now ^sat and Sat are two 
 most important terms in ancient metaphysics and a word 
 about them will not be out of place. Sat is what is perma- 
 nent & changeless in relation to something which is temporary 
 and changing. Therefore the eternal Sat in the universe is 
 what I was describing as Narayana and the Asat is the shadow 
 which follows him in all his ideation. Asat is therefore the 
 off-spring of Avyaktam and holds its sway in the domain of 
 Prakriti and all her changes in the subjective and objective 
 domains. Por example all the lower group of men's ideas 
 generated on the gross plane of our earth and incapable of 
 being assimilated by the self-consious individuality and carried 
 to higher planes of existence, is one group of Asat but the 
 group of spiritual ideas and aspirations that can be claimed 
 by the individuality as its own is comparatively Sat. So Sri- 
 . Krishna says "to exist is not the character of^at as has been 
 settled by the knowers of truth." He therefore who thi-ows 
 all his life energies in the grooves of Asat must therefore take 
 on the character of Asat and be ever changing from degrees 
 of pain to degrees of pleasure, from life to death and back from 
 
Some thoughts on tee Gita. 29 
 
 death to life. But the spiritual sun by which all this mani- 
 fested universe is pervaded and illumined is unchanging and 
 no entity however exalted is able to destroy it. These bodies 
 in which the spiritual entities are clothed are subject to the 
 law of birth and death, born as they are in the region of 
 Asatj while the entities themselves are immortal. As an old 
 worn out cloth is rejected and a new cloth is put on by a man 
 likewise does the spiritual entity throw out an old worn-out 
 body and don on a new one and these alone are called death 
 and birth. 
 
 6. In addition to these considerations on the spiritual 
 side of the question, considerations which tend to shew that- 
 all death processes that occur in virtue of the Karmic laws of 
 Nature, are only adjustments on the physical plane, there is 
 the consideration that Arjuna was born as a Kshatriya, to do 
 such karma on the field of battle. Circumstances over which 
 he had no control had brought about the great war and had 
 called Arjuna to do the feats of a warrior on battle field 
 against his kith and kin arrayed as his foes and the foes of 
 the just cause that Arjuna represented. Was Arjuna to re- 
 treat from the field leaving his foes to exult in victory over a 
 just cause, actuated by personal considerations born in the 
 domain of flesh that one has his step brother and that another 
 was his maternal uncle's son or was Arjuna to cast these 
 fleshly considerations to the winds, stand by the cause he re- 
 presented and vindicate the great cause of justice? Certainly 
 the latter course and Sri -Krishna gave his sound advice. 
 
 6. The instructions given may be understood from the 
 .stand point of the occult aspirant with very great facility. It 
 must not be thought that the ultimate goal of Bramha Yidya 
 is attainable while a man retains his affections for the things 
 • of the earth. On the other hand, there is reason to think that 
 only very small progress is possible for the indulgers in such 
 affections. These mental ties cannot last on a plane of life in 
 which the human entity has to renounce all specializations 
 . and to retain an immense love for humanity taken as a whole 
 consenting to remain for an endless time, as the clean water 
 
30 Some tboughts o?f thh Oita. 
 
 where with the mental dirt of the world shall be washed. 
 As I have already said, the stage of development must be 
 considered as one in which the occult student is called upon 
 to renounce all hankerings of the earthly plane and hence 
 feels a blank despair. But such renunciation must not be 
 made in the hope that' a great reward lies behind such renun- 
 ciation. That will be ;a thing that will mar the progress of 
 the student towards reaching an impersonal status. The 
 renunciation must be made or the battle must be fought not 
 with reference to any point that can be attained but because 
 such fighting is the law or the practice of a simple duty. The 
 following sloka my friends deserves our most careful consider- 
 ation. 
 
 "View in the same light 0' Arjuna considerations of pain and 
 pleasure, profit and loss, defeat and victory and thus prepare 
 for war. Thus fighting, your conduct brings attain you no 
 pollution." Further on the Teacher says "your duty is to 
 act and not look to the fruit of such action." There is one 
 thing more which was urged on the consideration of Arjuna 
 by the Teacher and that is this — All the diflB.culties which a 
 student has to fight with on his way to the goal, are difficulties 
 which he must some day encounter since the entire world is 
 working steadily towards it. If a man finds difficulty in look- 
 ing on the body as but a shadow not deserving the very seri- 
 ous consideration bestowed upon it by a man of the world, he 
 will do well to. remember that death is a sure goal towards 
 which the body works. What good can there be in attaching 
 to the body an importance which was not intended by Nature? 
 Likewise the laws of cosmic development studied for count- 
 less ages by a series of great men of spiritual perfection, lead 
 them to think that the world steadily works towards the goal 
 
Some thouohts on the- Gita,. 31 
 
 wtich is attainable now by a man who takes Bramlia Vidya 
 -as his life guide. All the sacrifices which such a man is called 
 upon to make are all parts of Nature's programme of work for 
 future ages, it is therefore simple silliness to cry like a 
 child for these play things though so valued by earthly mind- 
 ed men. 
 
 7. My dear brothers, if you go on reading the second 
 chapter of Bagavat Gita carefully, you will find that the 
 Teacher himself gives two sets of instructions from two stand- 
 points, those of Sankhya and Yoga. In Sloka 39, He says 
 "I have said all this from the Sankhya point of view and now 
 hear about the Yogic Budhi", It is therefore very important 
 for you to get very clear ideas about the meanings of these 
 two terms. Already I gave a hazy idea about the two schools 
 headed by Yoga Charya and Sankhya-Charya. But as we pro- 
 gress with our study of the Bagavat Gita, things will have 
 to take a clear shape in our minds. Sankhya is defined by 
 Sri Sankara Charya as one whose mind is ever centred in 
 Parabramham, and whose minds are quite settled about Para- 
 martha or the ultimate truth and who are perfect sanyasees 
 from their very birth in the full conviction that Atma is 
 neither doer nor en j oyer. A Yogee is defined by him as one 
 whose spiritual vision is not perfect and who consequently 
 attributes action and enjoyment to Atma and who therefore 
 aims at adjustment of the relation of the phenomenal world 
 to himself in order to satisfy his own individual aspirations. 
 I shall not now go into an expansion of this explanation but 
 the essence of it must be very plain to you. I have already 
 informed you that the central school of philosophy may be 
 called the Sankhya — Yogic school which has therefore two 
 aspects. One aspect of it is Sankhya or the wisdom aspect. 
 It has to do with a student's conception of the Eternal truth 
 in Nature as contrasted with all that is transitory and chang- 
 ing or with the student's discrimination of Atma and Anatma. 
 The other aspect of the Sankhya Yoga is the Yogic aspect 
 or the karmic aspect which has relation to the functions 
 which a student has to do as he reaches a higher and higher 
 state of spiritual development. Sankhya is gnyanam and 
 
S2 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 Yogam is karma. Those therefore who perfect themselves 
 spiritually mentally nerturing the idea that he is one -with 
 the all, and that all breathe in him as he breathes in all and 
 who at the same time keep themselves as aloof as possible 
 from the wheel of the world's karma, are Sankhyas. ^ Those 
 others who identify themselves with the world's karma and 
 at the same time perfect themselves for a higher and, higher 
 state of existence so that, that karma may best be guided, are 
 Yogees. The third class of people who perfect themselves 
 spiritually so that they may know the truth and who 
 at the same time take the burden of the world's karma 
 upon themselves so that they may raise the karmic status of 
 humanity, are Sankhya Yogees or wisdom Yogees. Of these . 
 three classes, the first class represents the intellect or wisdom 
 of this manifested solar system, the second class represents 
 the spiritual or ideal life and the third class represents the 
 heart or the centre of all spiritual hfe and propeller of all 
 wisdom energies among people. In order that we may get 
 into the way of our Pouranic expression, we may say that 
 the Sankhyas have for their goal the eastern half of the womb 
 of the great Aditi, the Sankhya Yogees have for their goal, the 
 western half of the womb and the Yogees have the centre as 
 their goal, Aditi's womb meaning the cosmic lotus in which 
 we all function. 
 
 8. Up to Sloka 39 of Chapter ii. Sin Krishna was des- 
 cribing in what state of mind Arjuna should ever place him- 
 self and that state of mind was for looking down on all visible 
 Nature as one vast canvas of changing mayavic shadowy 
 forms, a canvas born in the region of phantasy and function- 
 ing on account of the vivifying rays of light emanating from 
 the only truth — Atma, the spiritual sun of the world. Why 
 not then severe all connection with this visible Nature and 
 retire from all life's concern? To this question Sri Krishna 
 gives the answer of karma* Yoga freed from the bonds of 
 karma. As the Teacher would have it, this karma Yoo-a 
 though simple in its Nature keeps a man free from all fears. 
 When the word karma Yoga is mentioned, that would 
 probably get mixed up with the sacrificial rites founded 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 33 
 
 on the dead letter interpretation of the Vedas. The Teacher 
 was anxious to keep Arjuna's mind away from all such wrong 
 notions that have sprung from ignorance and selfishness and 
 so denounces such cruel practices in unreserved language. 
 As I have already said, the cosmos in all its departments is 
 the Veda in its expression and so Krishna points out to 
 Arjuna, that the Vedas have reference to the manifested 
 worlds and calls upon him to rise superior to them, in tran- 
 qiiillity of mind and unsullied purity of heart. He points out 
 that the Bramhin possessed of wisdom, finds in that wisdom 
 a sufficiency that includes all minor wealths sought after by 
 those who have not risen superior to the charm of the three 
 manifested lokas. 
 
 9. After giving this caution the Teacher gives his ideas 
 of Yoga the central point of which is contained in the sentence 
 
 which means "your duty is to act and does not at all extend 
 to the fruit." Yoga is defined by him as that state of mind 
 which is ready to act and indifferent to the fruits thereof 
 whether agreeable or disagreeable. This state of mind is 
 called Budhi Yoga which is by far superior to ordinary 
 karma. All thinking men as Sri Krishna says ought to take 
 refuge in this Budhi Yoga which of course is not the Yoga of 
 the ignorant who are actuated by prospect of fruit. All great 
 men who have, attained unto the changeless state on the other 
 shore of this Samsario ocean, have done so by the aid of the 
 complete renunciation of the fruits of karma. To this the 
 question may arise as to how this Budhi Yoga may be attained 
 by men. To this the answer given is, that only when one's 
 mind is illuminated by knowledge of Atma and Anatma and 
 cleared of all the fogs of ignorance and illusion by study and 
 thought, he begins to distinguish the truth from untruth and 
 
becdiii^S lilSifferent to tfce tfifles whicli are attainable as tlie 
 fruits of selfisH Karmia. WHen tHe mind is thiis accustomed 
 loj practice to reiisaiii perfectly indifferent to all the earthly 
 ■good that is attainable a^ Icarmic fruit, it begins to gravitate 
 towards the regibii of true existence and develops subtle j^ogic 
 spiritual vision. Such petsons are the true knowers. 
 
 iO. On Arjuna asking his Teacher to say some thing 
 more about what sort of men the kuowers are, Sri Krishna 
 cpntinues "The knowers are those who have perceived the un- 
 changing gloriosis light upon wliich all these fleeting earthly 
 things are strung, who have realized that their selves are 
 entities residing in that glorious light and hence unchanging 
 and eternal and who have consequently renounced all desires 
 for (the trifles in their eyes) earthly fruits tending only to wards 
 strengthening the cord of connection between themselves and 
 the shadowy cages in which they are imprisoned. The tone 
 of life of these knowers may be said to be absolute tranquillity 
 of heart imperturbable by gusts of pain and pleasure. These 
 may act upon their bodies but their minds retain their heavenly 
 <calm. They remain masters of the bodies, giving energy 
 ito the senses to come in contact with the world and takinar 
 tTiat same energy back unto themselves when the senses are 
 not required to be used. Such men are the knowers. Their 
 state can be attained by men, only if they transfer all the 
 energy of existence to their higher selves and completely 
 subjugate their senses to their minds after a long struggle. 
 The senses are the enslavers of the mind but must be brought 
 into subjection to their ligitimate master." 
 
 11. After thus describing to Arjuna, the character of the 
 'knowers who have risen superior to all Maya, the Teacher 
 gives the root and the links of the chain of ignorance which 
 kas made all humanity as pitiable slaves to Maya. The two 
 stanzas in which the links of that particolored chain are men- 
 tioned are, so admirably succint and pregnant with meaning 
 that they deserve to be committed to memory by all of you. 
 The root of all evil liee in the thought of wordly enjoynients. 
 
Some THoutiB'rs ox thk Gita. SS- 
 
 for, the frequent thinkmg on them gives -rise to an -affinity 
 between them and the thinker or more;Strictly the thinker's .life 
 energy. When this affinity grows sufficiently strong by 
 thought nu^'ture^ the thinker grpws uneasy at the abs,enoe of 
 the wordly fruit and slowly but steadily develops a note in 
 his heart. "0 I wish to have it," The feeble note attains in 
 time to a high pitch and then it means "I must have it^ He 
 who comes in my way will know jnj strength". This is the 
 4th link in the chain, wrong thought being the first link,, bad 
 affinity being. the second and kama being the third. The 4th.- 
 link being anger is the murky cloud which clouds the Akasic 
 lights. When this cloud becomes sufficiently thick, man loses, 
 his spiritual meniory. He becomes unwilling to admit that he ■ 
 survives the death of the outer case.. This is the 6th stasre or 
 loss of memory, the thickness of the ,dark clou^ or want of 
 discrimination between truth a-nd falsehood, right ajiid wrong, 
 good and evil, being the 6th stage. . The loss of spiritual 
 memory leads tothelossofBudhi, deprives him of all intuition 
 and leaves no room for even a glimmer of, higher light to shine 
 in him. The loss of Budhi is the .7|th. stage. This seveiith 
 means spiritual death. or man is in this stage a .walking corpse, 
 void of all .intuition and higher instincts or a human .beaiSt. 
 
 12. This human beast is really ina most pitiable condi- 
 tion. It is a .vessel plying in the samsaric waves without 
 rudder and ballast. It goes where the wind drives it and 
 knows no quietude. The direct opposite of this human beast 
 is the man who has purified the grpund of his thought and 
 rooted out the plant of -evil. To him there is neither pleasure 
 nor pain except when he assumes them to swim with' the cur- 
 rent of human life when he is embodied. The real man is in 
 the field of undying light and enjoys a -heavenly peace that, 
 nothing can ruffle. The senses are simple instruments stuck 
 ,up in his coat and he uses them or lays them aside as he likes 
 in his -perfect independence. 'The question may arise as lo 
 what4he<knowerig busy with, all the time he does not use Sis 
 instruments. To this Sri -Krishna replies in the following 
 celebrated Sloka : ^ 
 
36 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 wliic]! means "tHat wliicli is night to all beings, there keeps 
 awake the Yogee of well-subdued lower nature and where all 
 those beings keep awake, there occurs the night to that Yogee 
 of true vision." Of course this sloka has ^o reference to the 
 day and night on the plane of the body and under our experi- 
 ence. The day and night must be understood as referring to 
 the plane of the mind. In this connection you must remember, 
 my dear brothers, that Manas in the great field of evolution 
 to human beings. We are men only that we have some manasic 
 energy and not that we have a particular form. Manas 
 then is the source of bondage and at the same time source of 
 freedom. All soul development and all initiations must begin 
 and end here. It is in this field that the superior light of the 
 eternal lokas are poured and it is in this same field that Maya 
 throws her dark shadows. If Manas be conceived as a sphere, 
 one half of that sphere is under the rule and illumination of 
 true spiritual light and the other half is under the rule of the 
 mayavic shadow. Siuce there are various degrees of true 
 manasic development among men, we may conceive this 
 manasic sphere as inhabited all over. However we can take two 
 typical men, the ordinary man and the spiritual man. The 
 spiritual man of true vision is in the land of true Hght and the 
 ordinary man having Mayavic light as the life of his being, is 
 in the" land of the reflected light or Mayavic shadow as I have 
 called it. If you now conceive this manasic sphere as rotating 
 daily to produce the phenomena of day and night or waking 
 or sleeping, you find the manasic day of the Yogee as the 
 night of the ordinary man and vice versa. "What is true light 
 and reality to the Yogee is perfect darkness to the ordinary 
 man and what is reality to the latter is but a perfect myth 
 and lie to the Yogee. Having thus instructed Arjuna about 
 the true Sankhya-Yogic wordly life and duty, the Teachei^ con- 
 cludes by saying. 
 
Some thoughts on the gita. 37 
 
 "This is the Bramhic condition, Arjiina, having attained 
 which no man errs about the truth. If a Yogee remains in 
 this condition until the last day of activity, he will attain 
 unto Bramhic Nirvana." 
 
BAGAVAT aiTA CHAPTEE 3. 
 
 My Dear Brothers 
 
 The subject of the third chapter of the Bagavat Gita is 
 Avhat is called Karma- Yoga in India and this word means the 
 Yoga ■which is based on Karma or action. As I have already 
 said, there are several schools of thought and practice in India 
 and these schools differ from each other in that each school 
 accentuates one of the seven aspects of the Eternal Type or 
 what is called tlie unmanifested logos. The philosophy of 
 the school of Kai-ma-Yoga is the subject that has to be under- 
 stood and it is therefore of vital importance to grasp what is 
 intended to be understood by the word Karma used in Eastern 
 philosophy. In a future part of Sri-Krishna's instruction, 
 the Teacher defines Far na as the tendency of the creative ( r 
 evolutionary energy to bring about the existence of bhootas 
 or manifested forms. Karma may therefore be conceived to 
 be that, which guides the universal power or Sakti, in the 
 construction, preservation and destruction of the universe in 
 all the seven planes. It is an admitted fact that a thing once 
 done tends to repeat itself and establish itself as the habit. A 
 man who exercises his thought in one direction at any time, 
 thereby moulds himself in such a way, that the^same thouo-ht 
 may recur again with facility. The same is admitted in all 
 practical departments. This tendency which establishes it- 
 self as a habit is what is called Karma. To take another 
 example, the energy which propels a pendulum from one end 
 of its sweep to the other may be said to be Sakti or force. 
 But the tendency that has developed in the force to move the 
 pendulum in one direction rather than in any other may be 
 said to be the Karma of the pendulum or force. Going from 
 this example to the grand details of the universe, the ancient 
 philosophers maintained that the details which may be said to 
 be a series of breaths, twirls, or unfoldings, each with a minor 
 series in itself, are conducted according to a certain order or 
 tendency which they caUe^the Karma oPthe universe. Karma 
 
SoiIE TIIOOGHTS (CT TH£ GiTA. 3(7 
 
 is therefore tho law of action of the cosmic energy. It is 
 really the impress that^has been left on the cosmic breath by 
 previous world-evolutions. That impress cannot be traced to 
 any first beginning, since we cannot conceive when the cosmic 
 energy began to act. The universal evolution is there- 
 fore one vast curve beginning from an unknown beginning 
 and ending in an unknown end, if there bo a beginning or 
 end. All speculations therefore ars confined to a limited 
 portion of this vast curve, the portion that comes within' the 
 spiritual ken of the greatest seers of our solar system. That 
 screen which cuts off the two arms of this curve and is the 
 bounding line of all speculation is the avyaktam of the iSan- 
 khyas or the objective aspect of the central spiritual Sun 
 called the JSTarayana. 
 
 2. j^ow taldng this avyakfcam as the seventh plane of 
 manifestation, there are six planes below this seventh and the 
 cosmos may be said to first function on the seventh plane 
 and to go on transferring its energy to the lower planes until it 
 reaches the first or the grossest ]Dlane . The energy then goes 
 back gradually to higher and higher planes until it reaches 
 back the seventh plane. All this time the cosmos exists, 
 however rarefied its form may be and so my friends yoii must 
 not think that a pralaya means complete destruction on both 
 objective and subjective sides of Nature, of our solar system. 
 That is not the idea of our Pouranic philosophers. Vyasa says 
 
 q^ '^^ ^^rfg^l^^R^rfl? II 
 
 which meaifis "when, that Bramhic day closes, all these worlds 
 enter that great Yogee Narayam, the great <jhangele8S Hsmsa. 
 Their death on the plane of Narayana is birth to us, dearth 
 
40 Some thoughts on the, gita, 
 
 and birtli being like the sun-rise and sunset here" The cos- 
 mos therefore is a group of uiidulatory aud curling motions 
 ■working 'on seven different bases till they get manifested on 
 the first or lowest plane and working back again towards the 
 seventh plane or north pole called avyaktam. The lower half of 
 this sphere of progress may be called the sphere of manifes- 
 tation and the higher the sphere of non-manifestation, from 
 our stand-point, corresponding to the day and night of Bramha 
 as they are called. This may be called the cycle of Bramha's 
 day which is a small part of the major cycle of Bramha's 
 age of 100 years. I shall not go into a comparison of the 
 major with the minor cyle and drag you into what you may 
 call hair-splitting speculations. The cycle of Bramha's day 
 is sufficient for the present and let me call the centre of the 
 sphere of progress, Bramha, who is called lq our Yedantic 
 works the first Jiva. All the harmonious workings of the 
 different energies that working on seven different basic sub- 
 stances, produce the seven manifestations of our world in 
 their cyclic order, are all guided as it were by the habits pre- 
 viously acquired or in simple language by the law of cosmic 
 karma. This same thrag is expressed in our Puranas by the 
 statement that Bramha creates all bhootas according to the 
 Karma generated by them in previous kalpas- Karma is there- 
 fore the supreme master who gives the law to the processes 
 of cosmic evolution. This law is what is technically called 
 Dharma in Sanscrit writings and he who follows the cosmic 
 Karma in his development is he who follows the path of 
 Dharma. 
 
 3. Prom the view taken of Karma as I have done it, you 
 will see that no plane of the highest spirituality be that the 
 plane of the nirvanees, is outside the Karmic wheel and when 
 it is said in the Sanscrit writings and even in the Bagavat Gita 
 that men cross the karmic ocean, it must be understood with 
 some allowance. The entities that have' now succeeded in 
 going outside the Karmic wheel, have done so, only if that 
 wheel be taken as the one that turns now. The cosmos is not 
 going in one groove all the days of Bramha, but it is going on 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita 41 
 
 a higher and higher status as it fulfills its mission.. Those 
 "w^ho have attained unto a rest in a state of spirituality not 
 reachable now, will therefore in a future day come within thei 
 action of the wheel, with perhaps a punishment for the great 
 duties neglected for long ages. Some of you who have paid 
 attention to our writings. will quite differ from me in the view 
 that I have taken of the future fate of the entities who seek 
 bliss in nirvana, necessarily dissociating themselves in thought 
 and action from the all or the manifested Nature. The fami- 
 liar saying "he no more returns, he no more returns" will 
 recur to your minds and you may say within yourselves "0* 
 this man is bidding defiance to our Srutis and he is saying 
 some new f angled thing caught up iii the Theaophical domain" 
 My friends I beg to ask in return how you can know the truth 
 if it is not welcome from where ever it comes. Our own wri- 
 tings are useless to us, if we only allow our minds to be 
 swayed by the dogmatic interpretations put upon them by the 
 modern Adwaitees and their predecessors who lived some 
 centuries ago, the Vedantic controversialists. No ancient 
 philosopher ever thought of setting a boundary to natural 
 action saying thus far it goes and no farther, as do the 
 moderns. If you take any Purana and read it carefully over 
 with unbiassed minds and with due allowance to the law of 
 the Puranic literature or anthropomorphization, you will find 
 that various sets of Eishees are sitting in various places and 
 contemplating as to what is the ultimatum of all this cosmic 
 function. You will also find Bramha or the evolutionary law 
 personified saying that he does not know the nature of the 
 ultimate and that he is performing Tapas to find it out at a 
 distant future date. In the face of lots of confessions of this 
 kind, it is simply absurd to say "there there is nirvana, the 
 bourne from which no traveller returns." Even without 
 going to written authorities on the subject, it seems to me to 
 be a mistake to talk of Eternal rest in this unbounded universe 
 functioning in subordination to the law of alternate activity 
 and passivity asserting itself from the highest heavens to the 
 lowest depths. All nirvanas talked of by even the greatest 
 master minds are undei-standable to me only if they represent 
 
4^. 'WsA TlDUiSHTg ON THfi GlTA. 
 
 •^ni ot thd Passive fJerSbSs Irdm bnfe Single night to the pieridd 
 6i El whote age of Bra&haij' miiltiplifed by itself Several times 
 oier if reqtiifeS. If it be trtle that & sleeping man atv&kes^ 
 next niorhiiigi it milat \)6 equally triiei that an entity who 
 elijoyS §b longet f est iii a Mgher loksj awakes -vrhen the 
 fefteishliig daiSFii of that lokA seta in. That higher loka may 
 bis cm WblJ 6i the highest plknes coming within the cognizahefei 
 <^f aiiy 6f the highest seers* 
 
 4. Bnfc yoti may ask if there is iio State ffoni Which there 
 i^ ho' r'et'iirn. arid if those Tesichers who talked of Such states 
 admil 6f ho jtissbifit^tiori. To this, I beg to answer that tib 
 siich S'feity re^i3.Miii^ at all the mrv'dria or Moksha of Our 
 Vedatitic ddsScriptioA ii pbsSiblfe; The slow tortoise inust oriift 
 day beat the -sleej)in§; hate arid any who sleeps in his infinites 
 pilgniSiijgB iriii^'t losb in |)it)pdftidri tb the lehgth fef his steep; 
 We can howe-vret coSceive th&t \ state is possible in Which ail 
 eiitity advaricei in i3e^elb|)BSeht aS the obsttiio developirieiit 
 pix>i6eeds and Which at the same timie is fair ^perior tb the 
 staf^ 'of the of diiiaiy iria!ii at any givein inlbineht. Such 
 i:^pP6Vement cim be possible only if that state iS thai bj a 
 seK-cbriicious entity like Bii-Erishna compelled by the law 
 of that state tb work, work for the s'lifflerinig nian. These 
 entities ai-fe all Mukta^ sb far as they iteinSelves are coricerned 
 •feiit 'are Badhas siiice they generate the hfe of the spiritual 
 'side of the Karmic wheel arid thus turil it for inan's good. 
 They are ]biried ah to the Whole afld cannot dissociate theih- 
 selveS froin it. lii fact it is the goal of Sankhya-Yoga and 
 you ihust adriiit that it is nibt a place of eternal nirvanic rest. 
 Seb "what H. P. iB. say^ — "KrioTjir that the stream bf supef- 
 hum'an khbwlbdge and the Deva-Wisdom thou hast Won inust 
 from thyself the chainTiel of Alaya be poiired forth iiltb 
 another lied. Know 0' thbu of tte Secret Path, its piire 
 fresh Water ^ ihust be llSefd tb sweeter make tii'6 ocean's bittet 
 Waves-thab mighty sea of Sbrfbw fo'fmba bf the tears bf ihe'n." 
 jMfy dear Mends, if ybiti meditate on bVei-y -w-bfd of 'this 
 quotation, you will understand the nktiif e of this Sahk^h^a- 
 Yogic goal— a 'goal on wMchthe greWest Strefe's has bben laid 
 
Some mmq^.TS oij the g;ta. !^^ 
 
 by our Fouraaio philosophers, not howpjer TP»dh tglkeci ©I fey 
 oiir inoderii Ad-yraitees. Qur Pouyajjip philp^opkprs.S^fill-nP^ 
 admit of arty tme !Miukti outeide of thg g^ryice pf fh.§ yagmar 
 PuTHsha and gjnoe it is extj::em,ely imppj'tant to iii^fjgrstaji/i 
 plearly what, ia meant by Yagna-Purusha ua ordep ^9 Tinder^ 
 fitand what is meant by Karma- Yog.a, I .§baU say a i§W WiV^ 
 about it. 
 
 5. I have already inforined you that the Yagua pr Yagija 
 
 Purusha is the great machine pf ^1| Na^jire in it? pgychip 
 
 aspect. In this xjonneGtion I may inform you that Qup ancipjp;^ 
 
 philosophers viewed the entire Nature arid ej,eEy bjtof^t 
 
 under three aspects always co-existing aiidthey may be ca{LI.gd 
 
 matter, force and consciousness. The ]E.urope_au in.ye.st'jgaifcors 
 
 .of physical science vho want to arrive by itheir methpcis ajt 
 
 .the ultimate .structural .energies qf m^aterial bodies, .^1 mpsii 
 
 ,of -them grant that avery. atom conceivable is a.ceatr.e pf lEoffig. 
 
 A body is quite Impossjibl^ in theabsfnce.pf jthe.cpnoeptign 
 
 of a .certain quantity of atomic energy pOB-ditiOined [by spajpg^. 
 
 Tihe atom or as I .shall .caU it the alpmic base iu which the 
 
 .cosmos is now .manifested, is in ifa^t /the ,st.ate of .re^t 
 
 presented by the middle principle iorce.as it .approaches onp 
 
 end ,of its line of action. 5Ihe word force npt 'b^hlg Rery 
 
 ^expressive, I shall say breath andjome of pur Yedjc s?tnt§^ces 
 
 -state that cosmic breath or Yayu .or air is ;the .eeiitre upcm 
 
 ■which everything is strung. Thi§| breath is the energy of life 
 
 and may ;be conceived as oscillating between jtwopulesr-dtiljfe 
 
 objective and the subjeotive or substance and conaoiousneas. 
 
 You must not think my friends that when -the breath ..reaches 
 
 the pole of substance consciousness is lost and vice versa. 
 
 "Vyhqreyi^r tl^e breath may WQr|c,^.all,the three,exist,,that is, it 
 
 works with its itwo sides. Therefore as it is oi-dinarily said, the 
 
 ;■ ■ - • o ..,' ■ ■ \ ... _( .. ■-■■ ;, „x ^ t ..ri,' ofi.'f ifTr _f o-rr 
 
 .cpsiups ip ,pne grand conspipusnes^s ,;:?yith .ap many grades as 
 ,th^re;^re iu,tb,e galaxy, of the jMaster.atom. ^p.;eYiery particle 
 ,pf .m^'tt^r .blithe .uniyerse .h^ ^jjt an, element of .^Oiq^piousnef a 
 in ,it, ;If you ,Tsrill ..pny thjjgk ^Y,er ^j^^ .jaripus , graiies "of 
 ,cpn^cipTisixpss,exhj]3itedin,the,sca frpm a, man ^p 
 
 JP^ iSE0%ge»;l¥,i4ea of ,^:£^tJcb,5)f _§and ^a;^^^^ 
 
44 Some thoitghts on the Gita. 
 
 element In it will not be so difficult for assimilation. If in 
 your conception you try to descend from the superior conscious- 
 ness you possess, to the outermost limits which I shall call 
 hazy blankness, you will have no objection to invest fefeling 
 plants with the title of conscious and you take one step more, 
 you come to the domain of minerals which may be called 
 sleeping vegetation essence. Even European physicists who 
 blend physics with metaphysics are disposed to g^ant that 
 Nature conducts all her processes intelligently. It will be 
 impossible for yon to understand owe ancient philosophy if 
 you dissociate these three from one another. If from three 
 we take seven, even then you must consider all seven as one 
 manifesting as seven- The ancients compared Samsara or the 
 manifested Nature to a ti-ee. The one is the root and the 
 many are the branches and the leaves. Just as the one sap 
 drawn up by the root from the nourishing ground, nourishes 
 the branches and leaves or contains in itself the essences 
 required for the latter, likewise too, one basic cosmic root con- 
 tains in itself potentially all that is required for the 3 or 7 or 
 49 planes and subplanes of cosmic existence. So everything 
 correlates with every other thing. Larger the sphere of 
 command obtained by a thing in the Nature's tree, the nearer 
 it is to the root. Hence it is that in proportion to the sphere 
 of loving action by which a man unselfishly benefits others, 
 he raises himself in spiritual development. I shall not in this 
 connection praise the Theosophical society and its brotherhood 
 platform since you all know it, even thoiigh many of you do 
 . not come boldly forward to shake hands with us and work in 
 the neglected cause. 
 
 6. Now if you will grant that the entire cosmos is one 
 vast machine with a most beautiful adjustment of parts, 
 manifested on the atomic basis, you must also grant that 
 underneath this objective aspect and serving as its support 
 there must be a psychical manifestation corresponding to what 
 I have called breath and made up of what may be called 
 force-matter. Further below there must be the cosmos made 
 up of the substance of consciousness. This substance is of 
 
Some teoughts ok the gita., ji5 
 
 course subjectiye to us and is described in the Puranas as, a 
 kind of superior Tejas or pure flame. These three aspects 
 are the Bhoo-loka, Bhuvar-loka and Swarga-loka correspond- 
 ing to Sthoola Sarira, 8ookshma Sarira and Karana Sarira of 
 the cosmos. This Sookshma counterpart, of the cosmos is 
 what may be called the body of the Yagna-Purusha. It is 
 the store-house of all vital life and all energies that get into 
 manifestation during the whole day of Bramha. This triune 
 classification not being su£B.cient, the Pouranic philosophers 
 have adopted the septenary classification and that may be 
 arrived at by dividing the objective aspect into three and the 
 subjective as three and keeping the central aspect intact. 
 The central being the very life of the objective cosmos as that 
 life hinges on to the subjective planes is what is called Eanm 
 in Theosophical writings. All of you being Hindoos wilf 
 recollect the saying " sr3nT^R^m?I?T" meaning, Prajapati or 
 creative spirit was first impelled by Kama. ' This kama, th& 
 organic life it develops, the etherial body that is developed by 
 the organic life and the gross form or the base on which every 
 thing rests, form what is called in Theosophical literature the 
 lower quaternary. The quaternary is dominated over by the 
 higher triad or the three aspects of consciousness — Manas, 
 Budhi and Atma. According to this septenary classification, 
 Yagna-Purusha is the intelligence which presides over the 
 Kamic body on its way to develop the organic life of the 
 cosmos. 
 
 7 . Now you must remember that n 11 evolutionary processes 
 in Nature are but vital processes taking place in the Yagnic 
 body. All pralayas are impulsive actions taking place in the 
 body as it goes to a higher stage and all creations are, the same 
 though apparently they are like retrograde curves. Evolution 
 is not a circle that starts from a certain point and returns to 
 the same point but is a spiral as otherwise there would be no 
 improvement and progress in, all Nature. Now my friends 
 you must remember that there can be nothing on the plane 
 of effect, that has not already been on the plane of the cause. 
 This is a very broad statement and it mil jiot be noY a fit, 
 
46 Some thqughts on the Gita. 
 
 thing for me to work this idea in words and subject it to the 
 test of logie and all her methods of question and analysis. 
 The most -wonderful laws of harmony that strike dumb an 
 explorer of Natural phenomena and Natural machinery, must 
 as a necessity be the laws of harmony that guide the vital 
 processes of the Yagmc body. The laws which govern cycles, 
 suboyeles and yugas, which accentuate in their progress the 
 development of the various principles in the cosmos, each 
 principle taking the lead in the appropriate yuga and other 
 principles functioning in subordination to the main one, 
 correspond as it were to one grand piece of music and so there 
 is very much in the statement that Nature sings which I 
 request, my friends, you will kindly think oyer. It is not a 
 .statement made by the Grecian philosopher alone but it is a 
 common saying in India that saraswati is singing a great song. 
 As an indication of this, you wiU find that the pictures of 
 of Saraswati have all got a Vina in one hand, the Vina having 
 seven strings and Saraswati being the wife of Bramha or 
 the energy that guides the Bramhic expansive processes. The 
 great song of Nature is said to be known to Mahatmas who 
 have undertaken the ;duty of appearing at the beginning of 
 every Yuga and teaching apart of it to the man of the world 
 for his guidance. 
 
 8. Now the Hindu pretension is tiiat the Veda that they 
 chant is a miniature representation of that great song of 
 Nature or at least a part of it. I have once before informed 
 you that the cosmos in its details is but an expression of the 
 Veda, as the Pouranic philosophers will have it. Now these 
 statements will have to be grasped by you very clearly if you 
 want to grasp the ancient Doctrine and so I request you will 
 all think over the various things said about the Veda in this 
 country. The Veda is the body of the Yagna-Purusha and 
 in fact whatever you learn about it 13 so much knowledge of 
 Yagna or oosmio expansive processes. It is a very wonder- 
 ful thing that I have been noting the last few years that lota 
 .of things are spoken and written about the Veda by both the 
 Eastern and Westwu investigators and. nothing is sg/id that 
 
Some thotjghts on the QtnA. 47 
 
 at ill approaches the idefts bf the PbUfaiiie philoiephfeM* 
 These philosojihelrs who lived I think s6tti6 thS^Salids of ye&fS 
 before the birth of Chirst and who apparently ffiade it theif 
 life's business to think and comment on the Veda for the good 
 of all men and who had the grieat adrant^^ge of li^^ng -With 
 the world's greatest initiates, who had not yet retreated tec ^e 
 Hill^ to keep aloof frbiil the is^orld's aiirio polluti{>ti, thfes6 totisb 
 it least fee tJl'edited with knowing the Yeda much mbre than 
 dhy mbdehi can: possibly know it. Yet tio ihod^rH Beeftis tb 
 cai'e a jot tot the Poiirknic tiew of the Yeda and all ■isaite 
 ifituch for abtiigirig thih^ hbt tinderstbbd. Taking a& an illus- 
 tration thb stateiiieiit that thb VedAs are eter-nal. Idbubtif 
 thei^e be talf a dbzed Hih'dbos who have iiiot doiidcitiiied the 
 stateineht several tiihes iil his life and abiised the Pourftnib 
 jihilbsopher whb s^^d ^o. Biit if people biily toderstand what 
 th'6 Pburahica meant by the Yeda, they tirbuid fihd thb istate* 
 iireiit as tiii'bbjectionable a«8 that matter and eiiergy ar 6 in- 
 deisfriibtible; By Yeda is meant a ^sbng to b6 fehanfed irf 6* 
 affective of the ijaeahiil'g bf thb wbrds that febinpbsie the sOng, 
 fbr it is sMd th^t fewaiia, is the life'of the YtfedAi It will be 
 seen hbw a j)t i& "the laittser saying if you bbnsidei" that the 
 Yeda is s'alid to bb thb b'ody of Yagna-Purusha knd ^ 'Stich id 
 made tip bt h'arn^ynibns tiibtions heaviitg aiad felling that, 
 Wbr'kiVi'g in the nolinlenal uniVef*i*e, haVe 'prbdubbd all thb 
 kariDtoili^ ^fbbivablb byinan. "lEhbobsmic evcAution Iflay 
 be oii ^iif bf thfe Sfeven plMes of Natufe but the iftotibnS are 
 indestructible and only transfer themselves from one plan© to 
 another according to the stage of development. So the Yeda 
 which is tjoHrpOsbd of lot of iiiantrtb fbilimlae ^abh saeTed to 
 'o'nb ^b^ie pi^iheiple bl" sub-prinSij)lei, ea<sh feeitt'g a Mtteatil #f 
 'fe'uiid Slightly dr ifiol-e differing fexfta othet Streams, 1 Say 
 ■the YedaTS^Mnriaitute *ep*bl8b!atatioia tof the Varibts ipa*ts bf 
 %h'e &6ii^ of NiituTb. it batenbt be 'deStrbybd 'sb Ibngias thb 
 iiri^nal laistB. When a Yuga^ralaya bobitts and -aS a cbn'Sb- 
 'tfietfefe aiiew hTfiiitaiiity ^iricaittatas 'on "the gbbb, tb ?feaigtio'ft 
 •iih the ebsliiie -ste^ttnto'^w^afch iA*rb|>i'eMeiited by *h6 new Yuga', 
 '^Tiepai^ tif ^hb ^Eteenal Vbda%l^ch% rbqilii'bdffbr^thb^bW 
 -eie^bsis i^ tatf ght% in'aii 'by thb gi^atYftgiakatS-bi'-tlie-^iSiia. 
 
48 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 tins who follow the workings of the Yagna-Purusha and who 
 have adopted the whole humanity as their children and whom 
 no pralayas can destroy. 
 
 9. Some of you may ask where those great Yagnika 
 Bramhins are and the reply is given by Parasara in Vishnu- 
 Purana when hfe ■ describes the Loka-Loka mountain. The 
 word loka-loka means both cognizable and incognizable. It is 
 the Hmiting line of the bhoo-loka ahd lies far beyond the 
 seven zones into which Nature has divided the bhooloka. On 
 that mount which we may call plane of matter, are function- 
 ing the great Yagnika Bramhins whose treasure is the Veda 
 and who support the entires evolutionary processes of the bhoo- 
 loka. If you want to get very clear ideas on the subject, I 
 should recommend to you to use the torch which was lately 
 placed at the service of Humanity by H. P. B. and which alone 
 has been guiding some men through the mysterious domain of 
 Pouranic thought. Had this ego dressed herself in a Bramhin 
 garb and spoken to India, all of us would have flocked to her 
 and done Ppoja to her and sunk ourselves a little deeper in 
 the mire of fetishism. She apparently wanted not this dark 
 consequence and has made all efforts to rouse into activity, 
 the thinking fibre in the Indian brain. If, my friends, you 
 will not come forward to understand her, and make others 
 understand her, woe to the Karma- Yoga of this country and 
 aU who help in the fall of this sacred land into the mire of 
 fetishism. 
 
 10. To return now to the subject of the Veda, it scarcely 
 needs any saying to you that the Vedas are four in number- 
 the Eik, the Yagus, the Sama and the Atharva. These four 
 are said to have emanated from the four mouths of Bramha 
 who holds his council on the top of Mount Meru. You have 
 already heard of one Bramha who lives in the lotus and so it 
 is essential that you should know the difference between the 
 two Bramhas though it is not expressly stated in our Puranas 
 so far as known to me.. I have already informed you that 
 Brainha in the lotus stands in the same gelation to our, solar 
 
Some THOUGHTS on the Gita." ' 49 
 
 system as Narayana stands to the entire univfer'se* He there- 
 fore is the supreme secret of this cosmos and is the spirimal 
 soul of it. It is the fountain from which all spirituail souls i:* 
 the manwantaric wheel of activety are obtained and is, 1 
 thinkjXmattainable except after a programme of work continued 
 for a series of kalpas. He is Atma and those who attain untb 
 Nirvana are only attainers untoi the light sent through this 
 Atma or the Kght of the logos acting on the cosmic substance 
 in its first manifestation. The Bramha of the f our^iaces is the 
 cosmic quaternary viewed as one or is the spirit* of ideation? , 
 which rides the quaternary or the ma,nif ested cosmos. He is c 
 the Yagna Purusha himself considered in the ideal aspect. He . 
 is therefore the ideal Psychical energy and hence called also 
 Karya Bramha or Bramha of effect. The two Bramhas are- 
 as the Higher Mainas and Lower Manas in the human septe- 
 nary or as the sun and the moon. The Yagna-Purusha or 
 Bramha of four faces is the evolutionary field intended by 
 Nature for producing that superior fruit known as impersonal 
 life the fruit that the lotus Yogee assimilates. 
 
 11. One more word about the Vedar and^ I proeeed toi 
 Karma- Yoga. You will see throughout our Puranas some 
 distinctions drawn between the Vedas when certain occult 
 symbols are mentioned. "When for example a certain avatar 
 is made by Vishnu at junctures" of great world-periods, the 
 Pouranikas naturally describe the body in which Vishnu in- 
 carnates, but then, they say that one Veda takes the place of 
 one part of the body and another Veda takes another place 
 and so on. Even in the Bagavat Gita in chapter X Sri Krishna 
 says that he is Sama-Veda among the Vedas, a statement 
 which, wrongly understood by our modern dead letter pundits, 
 has led them to wrangle with each other as to which Veda is 
 the best. It is therefore very important for us to 'catch at 
 least a hazy idea of the distinction intended to be drawn 
 between the Vedas in their character. In the first place I 
 would advise you to remember that the word Vishnu almost 
 invariably indicates what is called the Yagnic body or the 
 Natural psychic body. Since world eYolution splits up into 
 
 G 
 
50 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 periods, Vishnu is wrpresented as making avatars, taking 
 ^particular forms and bringingabout lite required world adjust- 
 ments shoying- the Eakshasas into Patala or the abyss and 
 giving the supremacy to the Devas. These are all adjust- 
 ments of the psychic body ^brought tubout by the inviolable 
 law of cosmic karma. Please remember the authentic saying 
 ■'^ I ^^: which means "Yishnu is surely Tagna". In 
 the Vishnu Purana second part, you will see that the power 
 that resides Iil the sun is represented as the three-sided Vedic 
 power, that/the power as E,ik creates, as Yajus preserves and 
 as Sama destroys. Kik is therefore the creative song of the 
 Devas iu the Sim, Yajus the song of preservation and Sama 
 the song of destruction of the Devas in the sun and ■cons- 
 truction of ihe Devas iu the moon. Rik therefore is the 
 song of the Devas and Sama the song of the Pitris and 
 Yajus the intermediate song. The functions of the Vedas 
 must of course vary according to the stand point. If 
 you take the Pitris, Sama is their constructive song, and Rik 
 is their destructive note. The three Vedas correspond to 
 ®very -trinity in Nature and I request you will search for 
 further informations in the much abused Puranas. 
 
BAGAVAT GITA CHAPTER 3, 
 
 V. 
 
 My Dear Beothbrs 
 
 Last time I tried to give you an idea of what was intended 
 to be conveyed to our minds by the words Veda and Yagna 
 used by our Pouranic philosophers. I shall now proceed tO' 
 describe what is meant by Karma Yoga, but before I proceed^ 
 I beg to give you one caution. Those of you who have read 
 the Theosophical writings of H. P. B. are apt to have your 
 minds replete with such words as Nermanakaya, Dharmakaya 
 and Sambhoga-kaya, Budha Bodhi and others. Those of you 
 who have resolved to do me the honor of thinking over what 
 I have said and what I am going to say in future, are likely 
 to plunge into a process of identification of the Theosophical 
 names with the Sanscrit names which will certainly give risb 
 to lot of confusion. It vnll prevent or diminish to a great 
 extent the inestimable benefit of reading and trying to under- 
 stand the Theosophical works. Though on a careful com- 
 parison of various systems of thought discussed by our pundits 
 in their usual dead letter fashion with the Doctriae lately ex- 
 pounded to the world by H. P. B, I am fully convinced that, 
 that Doctrine is our Pouranic one, still I would strongly advise 
 you not to plunge wildly into identifying efforts. There is 
 one mighty reason for not doing it and that is this — none of 
 us have fully understood either H. P. B. or her imcient prede- 
 cessors in the Pouranic hne. The Puranas are all as you 
 know in a very veiled garb and to understand them completely 
 is to know everything and hence we get very much puzzled 
 when we read those books and do not know the head or tail 
 of it. What a painful thing to hear that 60,000 Eishis of 
 mighty spiritual development called Balakhilyas are hanging 
 to a garden tree in Yasista's hermitage, all having the form 
 of bats! Yet there are lots of such Rishees doing duty in various 
 parts of the cosmos in its triune aspects, some married and. 
 
52 SOMB TBTOUGRTS ON TEE GiTA. 
 
 having lots of cMldren, others remaining as bachelors for all 
 time to come and yet others now remaining as bachelors but 
 marrying at the beginning of every Yuga. Some Mahatmas are 
 incarnations of wrath others of "patience sweet that nought 
 can ruffle." Lots of other instances mentioned in the Puranas 
 can be multiplied. As in the Puranas, so in the Vedas. One 
 is three-legged and another is one-legged some are ever in 
 water, others in fire and others still in air. So what set of 
 Rishees mentioned are identifiable with for example Nirmana- 
 kayas mentioned in Theosophical writings? The latter are 
 human beings but the Pouranic and Vedic Eishees are the 
 conscious aspects of the various powers that work in the body 
 of Yagna-Purusha and so good many of them are made to 
 preside over the various mantrams in the^Vedas. 
 
 2. The words Nirmanakaya, Amitabha &c were used by 
 
 H. P. B. to the exclusion of Sanscrit names with a deep 
 
 intention. The secret Doctrine is a thing which as she said 
 
 could not be revealed to the world at;large indiscriminately 
 
 at the present stage and so she has'given the broad outlines 
 
 of it in plain English language using Sanscrit terms only when 
 
 necessary. Had she used a Sanscrit work like the Vishnu 
 
 Purana as a text to give out what she has done independently 
 
 of Sanscrit writings, the risks must inevitably have been 
 
 great. For, then, the whole secret doctrine would have been 
 
 given to the world in almost complete detail, the collection of 
 
 the 18 Puranas containing as I think almost e very thin o- occult. 
 
 Those who catching up the scent would be able to travel 
 
 through the whole Puranic wildnerness and know it, would 
 
 also be enabled to do lot of mischief to the world in the 
 
 absence of th'^ necessary moral growth to control the use of 
 
 power lying in knowledge. Others of duller wit would have 
 
 been confused irrecoverably. The Puranic jungle would to 
 
 them get still more tangled and the beneficial results of the 
 
 Theosophical effort to India, already deplorably small would 
 
 have been made smaller. For these reasons, H, P, B gave 
 
 out a part of what she knew thinking that each one in the 
 
 world may understand himself and the religious traditions by 
 
SoifE THOUGHTS ON THB GiTA 53 
 
 wliicli lie is. surrounded. "What H. P. B. wrote must there- 
 fore be thoroughly thought over and understood by you be- 
 fore you can read the same thoughts in the .old fashion. 
 
 3. I have also to request you not to misunderstand the 
 ■word Bramhin that I have been using. If you take into your 
 brain, anything like a modern Bramhin living wholly for his 
 own sake, you are thoroughly mistaken. Bemember the old 
 saying m^mt ^rWK^^: : or that Bramhin* is the protection of 
 all humanity and then you will understand by the word an 
 ideal Bramhin, pure and unselfish physically psychically and 
 spiritually. In fact the sacred word Bramhin indicates one 
 who is void of all desire but to serve humanity or a servant 
 of humanity in the department of humanity's spiritual interests. 
 Human evolution is like the growth of a garden.'^ The garden 
 is divided into various parts for various seed beds and the 
 best seed bed of all is the Bramhinical and the modern 
 Bramhins are but the weeds that grow on the original bed. 
 The once glorious products have been carried by evolutionary 
 circulation into other nationaUties and I fancy that so many 
 unselfish workers for Theosophy in England and America 
 are so many bramhins in different garbs. 1 therefore request 
 that you will kindly take all the f amihar words I use to indi- 
 cate the ideals and not the present represetitatives. 
 
 4. I have once given you the meaning of the- word karma 
 applied to cosmic evolution. The same applied to human 
 conduct and human evolution is the propelling force of 
 humajiity. Karma may be defined to be the fdi^e generated 
 by a human centre to act on the exterior world, and the 
 reactionary influence that is in turn generated froin the ex- 
 terior world to act on him may be called karmic influence and 
 the visible result that is produced by this influence under 
 proper conditions may be called karmic fruit. The law of 
 Karma is the simple law of action and reaction and the diffi- 
 culty experienced by good many of you in understanding it, 
 is due to the lack of proper knowledge concerning the nature 
 of cosBaic and human constitutions ani. the relation between 
 
54 Some thoughts oh the Gita. 
 
 the two. This difficulty has another reason for its existence 
 and that is that we have all got into the habit of viewing the 
 universe as a vast group of isolated bodies having very little 
 connection with each other while the fact is that the imiverse 
 is one in its essence and many in its manifestation, descend- 
 ing from a homogenuity on the highest plane to more and 
 more marked heterogenuity as it reaches the lower planes. 
 If the two difficulties I have mentioned be got rid of by un- 
 prejudiced thought and study, you will be forced to accept 
 the doctrine of Karma as a necessary solution for the various 
 problems of life that beset us on every side. The subject of 
 Karma has been so beautifully expounded of late by Theoso- 
 phic writers put on the line by H. P. B. that I have very 
 little to say on the subject and I would strongly advise you 
 to read such expositions. I would only say as much as is 
 required to understand the sacred word Yagna or Ijya, since 
 upon that depends the whole idea of the Karma- Yogees. In 
 the first place, you must remember all that I said about 
 Yagna. — Purusha or the psychic body of Nature. The four 
 Vedas which compose the Yagnic body correspond to the 
 foui cosmic priaciples, body, astral body, Prana and Manas. 
 
 5. The body is in truth nothing but a way of limitation by 
 which one can be called as different and distinct from another 
 and the base upon which everything else has to stand. It is 
 the last aspect of the cosmic breath in the line of limitation. 
 The limitation of the astral body or astral essence is the exis- 
 tence which may be called Bhoolokic. The limiting power 
 when it transfers itself to the plane of Prana or the nephesh 
 produces the phenomenon called death and the body which is 
 set on foot is called as you may know the kamic body or 
 Sookshma — ^Sarira. I would advise you to avoid this latter 
 word Sookshpaa — Sarira since that means simply subtle body 
 and used with that meaning iu several Sanscrit works. When 
 that word is used to indicate the Kamic body which of course 
 is subtler than the gross frame and when in consideration of 
 the fact the Kamic body loses cohesion and disintegrates ihta 
 Kamic eleinentals when the human entity establishes itself 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 55 
 
 in Devachan, it is said by our ■well-meaning theosopMsts that 
 the Sookshma — Sarira dies in Kama-loka and that the entity 
 goes to swargam clothed in Karana sarira, the Vedantio 
 students of India who have also heard a good deal of Sook- 
 shma and Bhoota — Sookshma become enraged and fly at the 
 theosophists and cry out "0 bosh, what absurd nonsense 
 this man preaches in the name of something he styles 
 theosophy." As a result of this brawl in words many a dead- 
 letter Vedantist become the enemy of the Theosophical 
 Doctrine which if you only learn and think over, you will all 
 exclaim in heart's glee "verily this is the truth that I sought 
 and that shall be known by all." Tor this reason intonation, 
 on words is not desirable and intonation on thought is the 
 thing we want. 
 
 6. To return then to the Kamic body, I called it the 
 resultant of the action of the Kmiting breath on Prana. If 
 you remember that Prana is in its true aspect the endless 
 active element that circles about the great heart called the- 
 Narayana, during manwantaric periods, and includes ia its 
 sweep th.e ideation of the Dhyanees and also the growth of 
 our paddy fields, I need scarcely tell you that the Prana that 
 I refer [to is the aspect of it that gives rise to desires and 
 emotions in a human being and sustains the body by them, 
 I call it Prana at all for the reason that we have Bhuvarloka, 
 the second of lour three lokas into consideration and that^ 
 every trinity J^that we can think of must have a certain 
 correspondence with the primordial trinity, Nara, Nari» 
 Viraj or thought, motion and form or idea, life and body. 
 The three lokas called Bhoo, Bhuvar and Suvar differ 
 only in the accentuations on substance, Prana and idea. As 
 to the nature of the Kamic body, you may learn a good deal 
 by a reference to Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Budhism and I 
 shall not detain you upon it. The motor energy of the 
 Kamic body gradually transfers itself to the spirituo-ideal 
 aspect of man's constitution and the limiting breath also 
 follows it and forms a devachanic entity thinkable as distinct 
 from other similar entities. PleasebearinlQind that the nature. 
 
56 Some thoughts on the giti. 
 
 called hoiaogenuity asserts itself more and more as we rise 
 to lokas of increasing spirituality. 
 
 7. What I called spirituo — -ideal constitution is what is 
 known as swarga in btir Sanscrit works and tlie entities that 
 are functioning there are called the Pitris which of course 
 means fathers. These Pitris are often heard of in a sort of 
 antithetical way to the Devas in our Puranas and this has led 
 some of our Hindoos many theosophists included to think 
 that the Pitris aild Devas are in two distinct spheres of life. 
 Now Pitris and Devas always exist together, the Devas 
 giving the consciousness and the Pitris forming the body. 
 The two are relative terms. If the Pitris be water the 
 Devas are the fire in the water. If the Pitris be fire, the 
 Devas are the flame in that fire. If the Pitris be the flame, 
 the Devas are the conscious principle that actuates the flame 
 and gives to the flame the power of illumining the world and 
 making it exist as a. fa,ctor of our consciousness. Prom the 
 highest to the lowest plane of hfe, the Pitris furnish the ob- 
 jective aspect and the Devas the subjective aspect and life 
 itself is a stream that forms the middle line. Please to kindly 
 bear this in mind that no confusion may arise when these two 
 words occur in your study of theosophical works. When 
 instead of three lokas the cosmos is divided more accurately 
 into seven lokas, you may assort the three higher lokas. to the 
 Devas the three lower to the Pitris and the middle to the 
 life stream which may be conceived as the point in which the 
 Deva essence is changed into Pitric essence or the no loka 
 is made fit to appear as a loka down below or the unmani- 
 fested becoijaes the manifested. 
 
 8. In this connection it may be well to inform you that 
 the Devas and !]^itris are not necessarily human entities in the 
 higher lokas but are also centres of force that form the basic 
 substances that form the lokas: in their dual aspects.' These 
 arc called elementals in our theosophical works and Devas in 
 Sanscrit; It is stated in our Vedas that if an agnihortri 
 
SOMS THOf-QHT^ 0|* THE- GI-T4.. ^ _ 
 
 Bramlfin who has been doing his karma for sw^g-am, dies 
 hepe, he goes directly to that loka after death and tH^^ the 
 Pitria there eat him. This does not mean that there are 
 human entities in Bwargam with open months who devour 
 the new arrivers but is simply a statement shewing that the 
 new comers are clothed in or are absorbed into the Pitric 
 substance that forms the loka as we now are under absorption 
 by the gross elements of ouf loka. Now you must remember 
 that the three lokas Bhoo, Bhuvar and Suvar are the triun© 
 naanifested aspects of one cosmic base and that base I called 
 the psychical body of Nature or Yagnic body. All the pro- 
 cesses of Hf e in the three lokas are conducted according to the 
 laws of life that spring from Yagna-Purusha's being, with due 
 margins for man's free will. This entire process of cosmic 
 life and growth is one vast Yagna and he who contributes by 
 his own Karma done consciously and with full knowledge and 
 design, towards the life and growth, is a Yagnika. Since the 
 cosmic expansion is not like the growth of a tiny plant 
 which can be very considerably influenced by the will of ^ 
 gardener, no Yagnika can dictate to Nature but can move 
 only in the line marked out by cosmic Karma. A Yagnika 
 can therefore be considered as a cultivator in the cosmic 
 garden and before & proper idea of this cultivating process 
 can be formed, it is extremely an important thing to remem- 
 ber that Pindandam or the microcosmicmanis an exact minia- 
 ture representation of the Bramhandam or the macrocosmie 
 Nature. Just as the macrocosm is a vast group of circling 
 life arranged about the universal heart Narayana, likewise is 
 the body of man in all its parts and in all its aspects, gross 
 and subtle, a group of circling life arranged about the true 
 human ego---the Higher Manas; All the higher manasic egos; 
 are rays of the central spiritual sun and collectively form the 
 manas of the Yagna- Purusha. These manasic egos may be 
 here, or located in more subtle planes, but they are yet the . 
 m^n,^s of the Purusha ia their several planes. The humanity, 
 that; we form, furmishes manasically the manas required for 
 tjie- evolution of this gross- plane and a-s such the manufactories 
 of tke highest Karma. 
 
 H 
 
£3 Some THOtrGETs on the Gita. 
 
 9. Those of you who have considered the great influence 
 of thought on kama, of kama on nervous system, of the ner- 
 vous motion on the gross frame, "will realize the great poiver 
 which human thought exercises on the natural evolution of 
 the gross world. In virtue of the position of the human 
 Manas in the constitution of the Yagnic body, man is daily 
 wielding a great power which he does not imderstnnd. So long 
 as the power exercised, and the Karma generated, assist the 
 course of Nature, on the lines marked out by Nature's Karma, 
 or the lines of motion in which the impress of corresponding 
 previous evolution compels her to move, the world is a world 
 of harmony. There is no friclion and the march of Nature 
 produces a gust of joy ard satisfaction. "When however in 
 course of time the principle of Kama becomes intensified in 
 human beings, giving rise to the foimaticnof personal desires 
 not in keeping with the unifying spii it cf cosmic evolution, 
 disharmony begins to manifest itself in Nature tending to 
 strain the action of her wheels. Each man applies himself to 
 the cosmic tree anxious to pluck the fruit he wants, and eat. 
 The tree is subjected to a strain in eyerj branch and leaf and 
 every where the strained parts of the tree give the reactionary 
 blow to the strainers. The world becomes a scene of evil 
 and sorrow and men think of good and evil without thinking 
 of and perceiving the existence of the tree, the tree of all 
 human fruit. What is called Eakshasa Bhavam or disposition 
 is developed, making men say "What care I for the world if 
 I could have that heart's desire of mine." 
 
 10. You will all recognize that the above is precisely the 
 stage in which we all stand a group of dissociated units with 
 nothing to cement them, each with abundle of desires peculiarly 
 its own and quite out of all harmony with Nature's law. This 
 degradation is largely due to the suffocation of India's ancient 
 spirituality as remarked in the occult world and this spiritu- 
 ality can be restored only when each man in India capable of 
 thought on problems of life, will understand India's ancient 
 philosophy and make it a matter of hfe. The spirit of that 
 life is what I have been calling Yagua and this word is deri- 
 
SOMB THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. 6? 
 
 ved from the root Yag to -worship, and Yagna is an act of 
 •worship of the deity, or any act of duty done to him to serve 
 his purposes. I think I have read in Isis Unveiled a quotation 
 from the works of a christian fanatic father that Satan achie- 
 ved his greatest victory on the day he got his own existence 
 denied by the men of the world. I think we can put it thus: 
 Satan achieved his greatest victory on the day he got his per- 
 sonality and the personality of his enemy, recognized by men, 
 for you see that the direst consequences have followed from 
 this personalization of divine and material principles, es- 
 pecially in this country India. I need not dwell on the 
 enormous waste of energy in our country in the construction, 
 and adornment of our temples, in guilding temple-roofs, in 
 making golden and silver vahanas for our idols, in the very 
 face of the fact that millions are suffering from poverty' and 
 ignorance and that there is crying need of outlay in thw 
 directionofeducationaljtheosophical, andtechnicalinstitutions. 
 All these evils can be partially remedied only if you, gentler 
 men, throw off the preseijt lethargy in which Indian downfall 
 has plunged you, acquire a knowledge of the soul-satisfying 
 Aryan philosophy and disseminate the elementary principles, 
 of it among the masses and the monie'd men. You must have , 
 for your motto, the motto of our ancient Yagnikas, that the 
 world is manifested Bramham and that to do good to the 
 world in the direction of its true progress is to do service ta 
 Bramham or to do Bramhic karma. 
 
 11. Now my friends, it is a fact of your knowledge th&t 
 we, a small band of theosophists,. who have got at asmallpart 
 of the ancient philosophy through the labors of HL P. B,"haVe 
 been trying during the last few years to carry the knowledge 
 to your minds and to thas make jcm fellow workers in that 
 cause. It ,is a fact well-known to us that to uiiderstand 
 theosophy is to become a theosophical worker, and so we have 
 been trying to make youunderstand the elementary principles 
 of -the ancient philosophy called Bramha-Vidya in India and 
 tieosophy in Europe. We haive devoted all the leisure, that 
 'w^ have, to the study of works on Bramha-Vidya, all the 
 
Sd Some thoughts ok the gita. 
 
 spare money available to the publication of pampMefs and 
 books bearing on that subject, and all the energy available to 
 the writing and reading of lectures before Hindu audiences. 
 The effect, if I am not thoroughly blind, is out of allproportioin, 
 to the effort made, and it is even a doubt if a mOuse has been 
 caught by the mountains moved. If there is any reason why 
 the theosophists should continue their work in this country of 
 teeming miUions almost all with eyes closed and ears shut, 
 all stariag at shadows with down-cast heads, it is the hope of 
 the words of H.P. B.in the voice of silence "Remember O' thou 
 that -fightest for man's liberation, each failure is success and 
 each sincei'e attempt wins its reward in time." ■ These noble 
 words reverbrating in the ears of the workers give them a 
 degree of encouragement that is scarcely conceivable by easy- 
 going outsiders and llixury-going theosophists who have not 
 gi^en one half hour to the consideration of the well-being of 
 our„ country. How long is this state of things to last? How 
 loAg. are the Branch Theosophical societies to reniain confined 
 f o numbers five and six with no power to make a move to- 
 wards; thoi moral and mental improvement of the people 
 aponnd? How long are these people to go on using their 
 ^ungs in trying to make the public aHve to the awful impor- 
 taiice of interpreting the ancient Sanscrit works in a rational 
 manner suited to the present state of intellectual advance- 
 ment and making them aware of the fact that a moral and 
 spiritual life is not the necessity jof any human conventions 
 but a scientific necessity for the future well-being of ourselves 
 9.1oSig with the race to which we belong? * - 
 
 . ..'l'^,.J .IJhpse are.all questions to which answers are to he 
 gif 0i{ byLyou, I Ife you give the answer no more waiting, them 
 pleap^ join ns on the theosophical platforni and work each to 
 the extent of his power to translate the Sanscrit works, to try 
 to;= understand them with the aid of the hints already existiaaffi 
 in the Theosophical writings^ to issue pamphlets on vitally" 
 important and elementary ideas of our ancient staenoe s6i 
 that these p$,ttiphl€its may reach a very large number of 
 readers and set them going on the regions of thought. Thisr 
 
Some thoughts on the gita. 61 
 
 idea is quite workdWe only if we form a large body strong 
 eno^igh in terms of money and energy and union, and, if these 
 ternas be weak and if the theosopMcal centres are destined to 
 be weaklings, the idea is destined also to remain as an idea 
 alone and you will all karmically reap of the fruit of an in- 
 glorious ease, an ease indulged iiii in" spite of the crying 
 necessity of the times. • Bear in minds that yoti and I are all 
 S0« -many 'iSentres in the Yagnic body, 'tossed about on the 
 evolutionary waves. .Our statu-s -in that body is determined 
 by 'the way in which we serve the cosmic Yagnam and he 
 who "will not do his mite towards the progress of that Yagna 
 ifeda.the words of the great Teiacher Sri-Krishna, "a sinful 
 man sensually bound whose life is neither a gain, nor death 
 a 16s&;" 
 
BAGAVAT GITA CHAPTER 
 
 VL 
 
 1. Mt Deab Beothbbs 
 
 In my last lecture [ defined Yagna as an act of "worship of 
 the Deity and pointed out the disastrous consequences that 
 have flowed from the wrong conception that the Deity is a 
 personal Being with thoughts, feelings and aspirations similar 
 to our own. The history of the progress of human evil and 
 sufEering is nothing else but the history of the various stages 
 through which the personalizing process has passed, giving 
 rise in its downward march to all the nefarious products 
 known as hatred, malice, envy, quarrel and the like. These 
 are the weeds which grow on the human garden and which 
 impede the growth of the humsn race in its march towards 
 the great goal which the ancient science points out as the 
 true ultimatum. These are also the Bakshasas who with a 
 shower of flesh and blood, contaminate the sacrificial grounds 
 prepared by the Vedic Bisheas in the body of Yagria- Purusha 
 and spoil the Yagnic processes. These Bishees are the great 
 cosmic gardeners or Yagnikas as I have cJ.lled them, who 
 preside over and conduct the human evolutionary processes 
 that take place during all known cycles. As a gardener 
 clears the garden of the weeds when necessities arise, like- 
 wise do the Yagnikas appear at junctures of world periods 
 and make the necessary efforts to clear out the malicious out- 
 growths of human evolution and create the necessary condi- 
 tions under which that evolution may advance a little more 
 on the proper lines. These Yagnikas are called by various 
 names in our Puranas but the most familiar name is Bramhin 
 A Bramhin is said to be a human being who lives in the light 
 of the Absolute with an unbounded wealth of power he uses 
 in behalf of Yagna- Purusha, and who desires not in the least 
 any spiritual state of bliss that his karma may entitle him to. 
 He is in Sanscrit an Akinchanaj)adaiBhee or a noa-desirer of 
 
SOMB THOrOHTS ON THB X3tVtL 63 
 
 Bpirittial states of bliss. The slokas in which such a Bramhiu 
 is described in a Purana are so beautiful that I am tempted 
 to quote them here. 
 
 ^mt % ^^\^% ^^w ^^HtOT: I 
 
 f^TtH^^I^^: % ^ ^2^% HT^^: II 
 
 "These Prakritic changes taking place on all sides being 
 averted and crushed, the Bramhin with a firm hold on his 
 Akasic wealth becomes a Sidha and flies out in the Akasic 
 regions getting out of his body. He is beyond the reach of 
 all but all things of even subtle natures are within his reach 
 mentally. He is the alma of all bhootams and is unseen 
 when he flies in his akasic glory, by all eyes even though 
 these be the eyes of Indra. But those Bramhin s who are 
 engaged in the manasic recitation of the syllable om, theni- 
 Belves estranged from all karma though workirg for others, 
 will be able to see him." From this quotation you will see 
 that ancient adept Bramhins have, the plane of iN'ature called 
 the Akas as the plane of their being. The Bramhins known 
 as belonging to the first of the four castes established in 
 India, are all entitieslikeourselves tvirned about on the wheel 
 of Maya and they are called .Bramhins only that they have 
 ftn inner light working in them and making them receptiva 
 
64 Bout TH.OUGHTS OH THE GlT*..'' 
 
 of the great purifying influence that emanates from the 
 liberated Bramhins or Mahatmas or Nirmanakayas as you 
 may call them. - 
 
 2. Of course it needs no saying that these entities are 
 the great heroes an4 tiugs that are said to have inearnated 
 in the early stage of our present cycle and hence all people 
 in the body, bramhins included, are said tp have resorted to 
 these kshatriyas for instruction in the occult science or the 
 true Sankhya-Yogic doctrine, These great men or Tsgnil^as, 
 as I have called them, have no dogma or religious creed jand 
 have nothing to do with teachers of the latter or the followers 
 who, however purified and holy their- behaviour may be in 
 this world, are caught in a, superfine net of fallacy th^it makes 
 them unfit to receive the truth from wherever it may come. 
 Their religion is but the science of Nature from the highest 
 plane to the lowest plane. Their study is the study of the 
 laws of existence th^t operate everywhere* The behaviour 
 they want is co-operation with Nature or the progress of the 
 Yagna-Purusha on the proper lines. If you take the Eig-Veda 
 and examine the meaning without reference to the chant, you 
 will find only a description of the various cosmic principles 
 that operate in the Yagnic body in all its aspects; and the 
 Vedic hishees are the conscious aspects of the various powers 
 that work out the cosmic Yagnam. It has been said often 
 times that the Vedic Rishees are the names of the individuals 
 who first composed the mantras and taught them to men, but 
 I think this is quite a wrong view and thoroughly non-Voura- 
 nic. The Eishees are the office-bearers in the Yagnic body 
 and each office may be under execution by thousands qf 
 pntities who have made themselves or merged thernsielves into 
 the ideal current that is represented by that office, and that 
 is also one of the essential factors in t^e cQsmic Yagnam. To 
 ■ illustrate tl^e above let us t^ke oi^e yedi.c Eishea, saj ^Iw^d"? 
 waja,and yo,u aUknqw t^at he preside^; over ^fttp. of iDj^tE^a 
 jn the Vedas as dq p,lsp sp^ne of l^is numerpu^ sons. In pn^ 
 place in the Yedap; whi^e t^intf^are given ahaq^ ^I^q. jns^tur^ o| 
 
Some thoughts on the (jita . ,65 
 
 the various Rishees, there is a saying to the effect irtt I ^HT: ar 
 ^ f^Hl^ q^m cf^nrsTSrsr: or Bharadwaj ais food giver. This state- 
 ment is completely ridiculous if food be taken as the one that 
 IS served on our leaves and yet lot of our Indian friends who 
 ar*^ remarkably fond of brushing the surface, found their 
 ridicule of ancient writings and pretensions to scientific 
 learning on a literal understanding of statements like these. 
 
 Now food with the ancients, was not only the food we eat but 
 also an all-pervading cosmic substance which produces all 
 manifested forms by sedimentations in itself and subsequently 
 supports, them by its own circulations. If a statement be made 
 that blood is food, it would be foolish to think that blood is 
 the thing actually eaten by the mouth and then turning round 
 to criticize the statement as all nonsense. The nonsense in 
 this case is in the thinking brain. Food is the nutritive 
 element which supports the outer cover of manifestation and 
 blood containing that element for the support and nutrition 
 of our bodies is no doubt all food. On similar lines of thought, 
 food is the nutritive cosmic substance which gives the objects 
 of the cosmos their visible shape. It is the last principle of 
 the quaternary which I called Yagnic body. If you bear in 
 mind that every nameable thing has got three aspects corres- 
 ponding to the primordial trinity Nara, Nari and Viraj, you 
 will not have much difficulty in recognizing Bharadwaja as 
 the Dhyan Chohan connected with cosmic material substance. 
 In similar manner, the Rishees Yiswamitra, Vasishta and 
 others presiding over Vedic mantrams are the hierarchy of 
 Bramha-Rishees or Dhyan chohans fitted on into the consti- 
 tution of ideal Nature or disciples of the fourfaced manasic 
 Yogee Bramha. To understand these Rishees and their 
 functions and the sounds over which they preside is to know 
 the Yeda which is identical with being a Siddha or adept. 
 None of us canhopeto understand the Yeda and the commen- 
 taries called the Puranas in a few months but we must all be 
 content with working in the line under proper Mahatmic in- 
 fluences if available and leave the rest to Karma. 
 
 3. Now my friends it is time, we should devote- a- 
 I 
 
66 Some thcugts on the Gita. 
 
 thouglit to tlie various Yedic ceremonies as they are called, 
 that are conducted in India, especially in our parts 
 and since such ceremonies are associated with acts of cruelty 
 we are apt to denounce them all as absurd. We are not going 
 to learn those sacrificial rites from our cruel Dikshitas and 
 practice them, but we want to learn something about the 
 system of Yagna as it was set on foot by the ancient Yagni- 
 kas and the ideas imderlying them. We can in the first place 
 divide Yagna into two parts the cosmic and the individuaL 
 The cosmic Yagna is the evolutionary progress made by 
 Nature according to cosmic karma when humanity is in the 
 infant stage and unable to take care of itself. All human 
 beings may be considered as innocent infants in the lap of 
 the great mother Nature and she employs all her servants 
 working under their master cosmic life, to take care of the 
 children, each in his own sphere. The infants in their ex- 
 treme innocence cannot be expected to have individual wills 
 and BO there was but one will — the will of Nature, which 
 may, if you like, be split up into several wills of the chohanic 
 hierarchies that presided over the Natural process in its 
 various aspects. This may be called the Swabhavic part of 
 evolution which precedes the individual part of it. Just as one 
 great blood vessel emanating from the heart, splits up into 
 arteries in different directions and subsequently into number- 
 less capillaries, likewise" does the one Natural unit will, split 
 np into innumerable wills as evolution progresses and the 
 great cosmic Yagna becomes individualized acts. 
 
 4. There is one point to which I would invite your 
 particular attention. You are apt to think that the whole 
 world was, as it is now, in the infant stage of humanity and 
 that would be a great mistake, for then the impersonal mother 
 Nature, would not be able to take care of the infants as she 
 cannot do it in the case of our present infants. The fact is 
 that the world and the humanity in it advance Pari Passu 
 mutually acting upon each other. You may remember that 
 sometime ago, I called humanity as the brain of the Yagnic 
 body. If in a child the body develops along with the brain 
 
Some tbotj&htit on thk anri. €7 
 
 and self-conscious independent thought becomes introduced 
 as a factor of life only -when the child is grown as a boy, the 
 same is true on the grander scale that we are considering. 
 Please to refer to the second volume of the secret Doctrine 
 and read therein about the stage of life in which human beings 
 were void of Manas or amanaskas and also about the great 
 change that came over them in the direction of making theni 
 thinking self-conscious entities, by the action of the- class of 
 Pitris known as Agnishwattas. You all know my friends 
 that the period of a man's life is divided by the Natural law- 
 giver Manu into four parts, infancy ,period of Vedie recitation 
 and study, period of married life and worldly caroj and the 
 ascetic period or the period of renunciation. These icnur 
 periods correspond to the four periods into which the evolu- 
 tion o£ man in our globe may be divided and ^so to- the four 
 parts of every Yuga known as Krita, Dwapdra^ Treta and 
 Kali. The action of the Agni&hwatta Pitris in making of in- 
 fant human beings as conscious thinking entities, introduced 
 the stage which may be called the BramharCharyam or celi- 
 bate period of our humanity. 
 
 5. Now you may know my friends that the word Brlanliha- 
 Charyam literally means Vedic recitation and this is consider^ 
 ed as a great Yagnam by ou? ancient Yedic philosophers. It 
 is quite true that a man may recite the Vfeda a thousand times 
 like a parrot and yet net be the wiser for it, if he does not go 
 into the meaning of the verses recited and think over it froin 
 the stand point of reason. But yet the abuse heaped upon 
 such a Branihin of the old type and the contempt shewn hini 
 by ollr Engliah-read friends are oat of all proportion to the 
 fault, the fault of simple Vedic recitation unreasoned. This 
 recitation is the first of the three great debts whicih Br^mhina 
 were called upon to discharge and the second debt was that 
 due tb the Pitri-Devas and that is discharged by doing the 
 'd«tieS ^f married household life according to the la# and the 
 third duly was that of Satisfying the Devas by renttnciatibn 
 of worldly care, contemplation and the like. The first duty 
 is the duty that w© owe to Bramba-Eishees and that is dig- 
 
68 SOKB tHOUGHTS ON THB GiTA, 
 
 cHarged by Vedic recitation. Tlie object of this recitation is 
 da,rkly hinted at in such sayings as stfiw SU^RMcr ^ Etaf^ ?n^^rTT: 
 or the eternal Vedlis last in manifestation by the Yedic reci- 
 tation of the Bramhins. Vedic recitation creates and preserves 
 therefore the manifested type according to the original type 
 contained in the ideation of the Bramha-Rishees. The sub- 
 ject on hand is one of the most mysterious q^uestions that can 
 engage our attention and pertains to the scientific rationale 
 of the -worldly duties laid down by the ancient initiate law- 
 givers to their disciples and I have not the least doubt that 
 much more lies in the sacred duty they laid down for celibates 
 than you can all imagine at present. If you will Only search 
 in the Puranas and Itihasas for passages referring to how 
 the manifested pentagon of 5 elements came out of the idea- 
 tion of the Bramha-Rishees, and how this pentagon is main- 
 tained on the -manifested side, you will no doubt catch the 
 ideas of our ancient Law-givers who. laid such great stress on 
 yedic recitation. 
 
 6. As Bramha-Charyam is the stage in which a boy is 
 expected to learn not only Vedic recitation but also sastras 
 and la-ws of life from his spiritual Gruru, similarly on the 
 major scale of cosmic evolution, this is the stage in which 
 great souls incarnated on our planet to live with men. and to 
 impress upon them certain fundamental ideas, so that these 
 may mould their lives up to the end of the cycle. AVhat is 
 called the Saptarshi Sthapanam — Seven groups of initiated 
 adepts, were established on earth to watch over and guide the 
 evolution of man during the minor cycles and to stand in the 
 hour of the world's spiritual need. All the simple arts of life- 
 concern were also taught and men were taught to Hve in 
 harmony, each for-aU others. All the laws of cosmic life in 
 major details were taught, to man and necessary Vedic 
 formulae , were made, over - -to him so that he may work out 
 the minor cycles subject of course to the law which governs 
 the major. Man is a moulder of Nature in her. details and the 
 moulding weapons entrusted to the head of all humanity or 
 the Bramhins were the Vedic formulse by the use of wMch, 
 
Some THOtOHTS on thi Gita. -: 69 
 
 they were at liberty to prodtioe perturbations in the ether 
 and mould the course of events below. In short a Yagnika 
 section of men was established with superior powers and 
 proportionate responsibilities; you may all exclaim what a 
 tremendous pretension! To such I would give the advice of 
 reading the letters of the occult correspondent in the occult 
 world. In one place Mahatma K. H. says "Major and Minor 
 Tugas must run their rounds and we borne along on the 
 mighty tide can but divert some of its minor currents and use 
 their hydraulic energy for the good of mankiad." This 
 position of working up world's currents for the good of man 
 or moulding Nature as I called it, is precisely the Bralnhinical 
 status. It may be called the Mahatmic Status but in the 
 Puranas it is called the Brambinical and so I have adopted 
 the term which has fallen into great contempt for th& reason 
 that we are now so degraded, so selfish and unspiritual. In 
 this connection I quote two Puranic Slokas and recommend 
 them for jour consideration 
 
 "Yagna is all Yeda in its process and productive of happiness 
 to all in both lokas and void of all cruelty. It is the begin- 
 ning of Yoga and established in Karma and Y edic. recitation: 
 and the origin of all bhootas. He who attains unto this Yagna 
 is the kndwer of the Veda and is called aSiddhabythemen 
 of the world; and he is no doubt a great fruit in it". ;. 
 
 7. The establishment of a Yagnic section of huniahity 
 inevitably leadrme' to "the consideration of the caste systeiu 
 
70 SOMK THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. 
 
 that has been so much abused by our Hindu newspaper -writera 
 in imitation of the English Padris. The four castes into 
 which the Arjan society was split up by the ancient philoso- 
 phers who lived with and guided the Aryans were not in their 
 opinion a convention created for convenience^ but a scientific 
 necessity which had to be obeyed in order that the best results 
 may be obtained. The evolution of humanity during^ any 
 Yuga which of course means the evolution of the world the 
 two always proceeding on parallel lines each acting upon the 
 other, is a thing that can be conducted only in accordance 
 with the laws of Yagna-Purusha's being. Since the Yagnie 
 body is a quaternary worked upon by a set of four forces, 
 physical, physico-kamic, spirituo-emotional and purely spiritual, 
 humanity splits up into the four sections of Sudras, Vaisyas, 
 Kshatriyas and Bramhins. At the time of the division of men 
 into the four castes, all the human entities had not the same 
 karmic value, since one human case reflected only a dull 
 spiritual light and another quite the contrary, consequent on 
 the reasons given in the Secret Doctrine. There was no 
 sinister motive or any of the many absurd reasons given by 
 our newspaper writers, that guided the early heroes who 
 played a great part in this splitting up. They were guided 
 simply by the laws of cosmic and individual karma. The word 
 sinister is a simple blasphemy applied to men who thought 
 and taught that life is worth Mving in even the highest plane 
 of Nature, only if that life be sacrificed in behalf of the 
 weaker brethren. If you can allow in a question of the wel- 
 fare of a family, that the more advanced must gui^de the less 
 advanced and that all must do the work for which they are 
 best qualified, you Tifill have to allow the same in the bigger 
 case of the whole humanity which is in every sense of the 
 word a big family. For this reason the division of this big 
 family into four main branches in accordance with eternal law 
 became a necessitsr when humanity emerged into the Bramha- 
 Charyam stage, with power of thought — a power that was to 
 mould the destinies of the human family and the great garden 
 called gross KatuT© in which that family had to Hve and toil. 
 It masb not be forgotten that in Nature and all arrangements 
 
Some thoughts o^' the Gati. 71 
 
 tnade in obedience to Natural law, a greater status carries a 
 higher responsibility and makes of a king a true servant of 
 the people. The Yagnika section of men or more colloquially 
 the Bramhinical class as it was originally constituted, had the 
 least degree of worldly good and the largest degree of toil. 
 Constituted as that class was to guide thought and behaviour 
 and to mould Nature as it were, the men of that class had to 
 preserve a purity of body and thought that is simply awful to 
 think of and strikes me dumb. Even in the state of the 
 complete degradation of that class in our country at the 
 present hour, where can we find such bodily purity among 
 men as among our village Bramhins to thousands of whom 
 head-ache is yet unknown? 
 
 8. To return again to the process known as Yagna, it 
 may be defined as a process by which one or more human, 
 beings fixed as they are in the grand wheel of Nature, so move 
 the wheel that a certain impulse acting in a particular direct- 
 ion may set in, capable of producing certain definite pheno- 
 menal results. "When I say phenomenal result, many of you 
 nurtured in the school of Western materialistic thought may 
 proceed to create limitations to that result and may cry out 
 in your own minds "0 that is impossible. It is a great pre- 
 tence to do Yagna to produce miraculous and supernatural 
 results.'' Now I beg to inform you my friends that if yon 
 encourage' this attitude of mind, the ancient Bramhinical 
 philosophy will be of no use to you, choosing as you do a 
 pitiable imprisonment within narrow cages made up of wrong 
 conceits. The possibilities of Nature are far wider than we 
 can imagine and it is essential that we should divest ourselves 
 of our pet prejudices to understand the Yagnic processes. If 
 you have followed me thus far in my exposition, there ought 
 to be no difl&culty in such understanding. What is called 
 Supernatural is in fact a thing perfectly natural, based on 
 laws of Nature in a higher department of hers and unrecog- 
 nized by us. 
 
 9. Now from the great siaress laid on the Vedic recitation' 
 fey our Pouraiaic philosophers, you may naturally infer, that. 
 
72 Some THOtiGHTS on tee-Gita. 
 
 the chief agency by which Nature's wheel is moved iu a 
 phenomenal direction is sound. Sound is the first aspect of the; 
 manifested pentagon since it is a property of ether cane's 
 Akas and as I already said Vedic recitation is the highest 
 Yagnam containing in itself all minor Tagnams and tending 
 to preserve the manifested pentagon in the proper order. In 
 the opinion of our old philosophers sound or speech is next to 
 thought the highest karmic agent used by man. In order to 
 understand this statement properly you will have to recall to 
 your mind the idea of the subtle world which underlies and 
 supports the gross world of our sensual perception. As the 
 gross world is made up of various elements of material con- 
 struction, likewise the subtle world is made up of various 
 centres of life which are called by the names Yaksha, Gand- 
 arva Kinnara, Uraga, Sarpa &c in Sanscrit writings. They 
 are called by a generic name Deva corresponding to the 
 Theosophical name elemental. From the relation of the gross 
 to the subtle world, it may be seen that all the life processes 
 taking place on our globe have fortheir noumena the workings. 
 of the elemental devas guided as they are by the ideation of 
 the Chohanic hierachies presiding over them and giving the. 
 law to the world evolution. These devas must not be taken 
 as dissociated each- from the others but as each imparting to 
 the others what it has for their support and taking from these, 
 others what they can give. Hence in the Vedas each Deva. 
 will be extolled as supreme and the supporter of all others and 
 the world.' Fire is supreme because fire gives the vital heat 
 to all. Air is supreme because air gives the life to all and so 
 on. 
 
 1 0. Taking the human body into our consideration, it is 
 an ongatiism worked up by these Devas in imitation of the 
 entire Nature. As man,y variations of the elemental kingdom 
 so many variations there are in the body and nervous centres 
 to rule them. The differences between the sensual organs 
 and organs of action &c are all due to the predominance of 
 tke Devas who preside over them and their peculiar, character- 
 istics. The organism, of man's body in all^ its aspects cor- 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita 73 
 
 relating with, the exterior world, gives us the idea that every 
 move made by man in any direction is an afl&nity with a 
 particular class of elementals and so man may be conceived as 
 the centre of the universe radially connected with every point 
 in the circumference. He moves Nature and is moved by 
 Nature in return and this is the karma which turns a man on 
 the wheel of birth and death along a. serial line of incarnations. 
 If a man moves Nature according to the inviolable laws, 
 to secure happiness here and hereafter, he thereby contracts 
 affinities with the devas of the world of harmony and they 
 give him happiness on his return from Swargam, giving him 
 a good body and the like. But if one lives an unnatural life, 
 living for example a debauchee's life, he thereby contracts 
 affijiities with the Rakshasas or the shadows of the Devas 
 connected with sense of touch and they give him a sickly 
 or leprous body on his return from Swargam. Of the 
 various karmic agencies wielded by man in the way of 
 moulding himself and surroundings, sound or speech is the 
 most important, for, to speak is to work in ether which of 
 course rules the lower quaternary of elements air, fire, water 
 and earth. Human sound or language contains therefore 
 all the elements reqiiired to move the different classes of 
 Devas and those elements are of course the vowels and the 
 consonants. The details of the philosophy of sound in its 
 relation to the devas who preside over the subtle world, 
 belong to the domain of true Mantra Sastra which of course 
 is in the hands of the knowers. 
 
 11. Every sound therefore that emanates from man, 
 passes into the exterior world and imparts its influence to 
 the various classes of devas that exist in the etherial body of 
 Nature, according to the nature of the sound and the part of 
 the human body from which that sound is produced. Vedic 
 recitation is therefore a prime factor in the processes called 
 Yagnams. When I say Vedic recitation, you must not 
 consider it as simple matter of parrot effort but as an exercise 
 of sound consciously and with full knowlege dof its relation 
 to the bodies of man and Nature- Full knowledge must be 
 possessed of the seven modes of enunciation which are called 
 
74 Soai MOtGHTS ON THI GiTA. 
 
 ordinarily Vedic Chandas or metre. Ths seven metres ara 
 ifche seven streams in -which the etherial life of the Devas 
 splits up on its way to construct the manifested Nature. 
 These streams correlate with the seven classes of devas 
 and Pitris who exist and must be throughly understood 
 before a yagnic process can have a proper effect. That this 
 fact of seven streams of sonorous life having much to do with 
 the septenary character of natural manifestation, was 
 recognized by the ancients long long before the known 
 historicail periods, is proved by freqtient reference to it in the 
 Rig-Yeda, In a most magnificent ode to the sun, the veda 
 says at fir^t '*''T^ ar^ W^ «HHW" or one horse called seven is 
 thy bearer. -Subsequently the veda says 'HH^raiff srf^g'^f^' 
 or seven coursers ( born of the one courser ) are thy 
 Tjearers. The divine essence that pervading the entire 
 universe of millions of solar systems, is caught up by cur 
 sun and passed out in a manifested form to the utmost 
 boundaries of our solar system, so that this manifested essence 
 may be the basic soil of the growth, preservation and des- 
 truction of our worlds, that divine essence is simple JSTadam 
 of our yogic philosophy and that Nadam or 6m subsequently 
 manifests itself as seven streams. The unmanifested is 
 manifested by or borne by the subsequent ramifications. 
 These streams are the seven vowels or seven notes. These 
 seven vowels and notes must have special correlations with 
 the seven vedic metres, since ia the Vishnu Purana, 
 Parasara describes the vedic metres as the coursers of the 
 solar essence. The names of the coursers are known as 
 Gayatri, Ushnik, Thristup, Anustup, Brihati, Pankthi and, 
 Jagathithe seven flows of Vedic chant. These flow through the 
 hermitages of the seven Nature-Rishees Atri, Bhrigu, Kutsa, 
 Vasistha, Goutama, Kasyapa and Angirasa. These Nature 
 Eishees or Dhyan Chohans are located in the seven lokas 
 called Bhoo, Bhuvar, Suvar, Maha, Jana, Thapa and Satyam 
 the septenary aspects of Nature. 
 
 12. Now my friends, as I go on touching upon grand 
 questions like these, a flood of questions concerning the 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. i'S' 
 
 cliaracter of the Rishees, their hermitages , their functions, 
 loom in the rear and I am oppressed with the fact that, 
 these things are to a very great extent as unknown to me 
 the lecturer as to you the hearers. The details of the- philo- 
 sophy of the ancient yagriikas cam be grasped by one-who canj. 
 place himself m rapport wit}x the yagnie' spirit. or the' spirit 
 of sacrificing one's self to assist our weaker brethren and 
 can secure a part of the iUuiiainiiig light that; emanates 
 from them for the good of humanity. You al know that I am 
 a member of the Thesophical society and that I am a workeir 
 in that society's behalf. This duity of lecturing here- oni 
 subjects connected witb the aflcieilt Doctrine, of the^ 
 Pouranikas is a duty that I have imposed upon myself only^ 
 that I am a worker for theosophy based on the platforin 
 of universal brother-hood ajnd so feel anxious that the basic 
 ideas concerning the conistitution of man and the univ-ersa 
 should be imparted to sa many men as possible, so. that you; 
 may all grasp them and the scientific necessity that exists 
 for you to exert yourself for the good of all humanity^ so 
 that you and humanity may work towards a brighter dawn. 
 You and perhaps some of the Europeans may look upon me as 
 a fanatic in connecting the Theosophical Society and yagnanr,- 
 but that is no reason why I should not talk out what is in 
 my inmost heart. There are some- liberated human entities 
 or Mahatmas who preside over the' cosmic yagnam and aid 
 the progress of the human race towards a great goal 
 that lies in the far distant future. These Mahatmas 
 iare yagnikas on the mental plane of human nature and 
 work on with the great tide, drawing" off all mental currents 
 of Nature and using " their hydraulic energy for the 
 good of mankind." As is the law with the currents of water 
 in which we all bathe swelling and- dryin-g with: the work- 
 ing of the yearly wheel, the same is the law which guides 
 the flow of manasic energy in the manasic plane of Nature. 
 The progress of the human race,, getting dotted off into 
 periods of small yugas, these mahatmas have taken upon 
 themselves the duty of making special efforts for the mental 
 rise of humanity at juncturegr of great world periods. TW 
 
76 Bomb thoughts on thb (Jita, 
 
 present time in wliicli we all live is precisely one of such 
 junctures and it therefore became the duty of the mahatmic 
 brotherhood working as yogees of the time's circle to make 
 a special effort towards giving an elevating impulse to the 
 dark human nature that charcterizes the closing period 
 of the first 5000 years of Kahyuga so that this impulse may 
 become a factor of mental consolation, happiness and good 
 life, as this period merges into the next cycle of 5000 years. 
 All processes of cosmic gardening and reaping being conceived 
 as yagrdc processes, it became a necessity for the mahatmic 
 brotherhood to conduct a yagnam so that the murky clouds 
 of human ignorance may break and soul satisfying draughts 
 of mental waters may fall on the ground of human evolution. 
 With this object a mahatma taking upon himself the burden 
 of work, became the Yajamanaorthe conductor of the Yagna. 
 In the "Occult world" the correspondent says ''a complete 
 adept has made himself a centre from whom irradiate poten- 
 tialities that beget correlations upon correlations for aeons of 
 time to come." This is precisely tha position of a Yagnika 
 whether he works on the physical plane to adjust the world's 
 physical balance or on the mental balance. As is known to 
 every one of you Hindoos, there are various appertenanoes to 
 a Yagnic process before a phenomenel effect is produced and 
 the most important is a thing to be sacrificed. The sacrifice 
 of sheep shall be dealt with by me in a future day and its 
 absurdity and the cause of it pointed out. The Yagna in this 
 case is on the manasic plane and the thing to be sacrificed is 
 therefore something of that plane i. e. ideation. There ought to 
 be a fire in which that sacrifice has to be offered and that fire 
 is the fire of human intuition. There ought to be a ghee in 
 which that offering has to be preliminarily purified and that 
 ghee is an immense love for humanity. There ought to be a 
 sacrificial grund in which that ceremony has to be conducted 
 and that ground is called the Theosophical Society. There 
 ought to be sacrificial priests to chant the Veda, so that a 
 good pertixrbance may be created in the Akas and a spiritual 
 . shower brought down and those priests are the working 
 Theo^opKi'stSi 
 
Some THOxranTS on the gita. 77 
 
 13. Now my dear friends, you may all smile at tlie f inciful 
 representation of the Theosopliicalyagnam, but I begtoreqiiest 
 you will kindly repress your smile and tarn your mind about 
 the great process called the Theosophical effort. All the energies 
 of existence have been turned towards the material side of 
 Nature and the material comforts administering to the friable 
 frame of man's body have been multiplied to an enormous ex- 
 tent. The entire human family seems to me to roll in a night- 
 mare of sensual folly. The teeming millions of the world 
 struggle in pursuit of the world's goods held aloft before the 
 eyes by the demon of Phantasy. In the great festival held by 
 this demon, each wants to tread the others on the heels and 
 make the whole world a sacrificial sheep for offering, that the 
 demon may administer to the self. A tremendous cry is heard 
 everywhere, a cry for selfish adminitration. The world, at 
 least the part of India that I have seen, is in a state of mental 
 dullness, resembling the bodily stupor- that follows a marriage 
 feast. Very feeble is the spiritual light of intuition that works 
 in the children of this land of ancient glory. Down with the 
 ancients, cries our modern egotist. Down with Manu, cries our 
 social agitator. The ancient barbarous age cries our school- 
 boy. Everything is false says our Vedantist. All is one amus- 
 ing myth cries our puranist. Hold your nose & block up the 
 breath to attain mukti, says our street Yogee. Sit dumb and idle 
 and merge yourself in blankne^s says our sanyasi. Similar 
 cries proceed from everywhere. There is a whirlpool of the 
 dark selfish poison of the human constitution. The eternal 
 true existence upon which our changing existence is based is 
 hung as it were on a slender gossamer thread and humanity 
 wellnigh struggles to break this thread and be free as the 
 beasts of the forest. Under such adverse circumstances sprang 
 up the Theosophical effort intended to divert man's attention 
 or at least a part of it from the land of the shadow to the land 
 of true light. By the innate will power of the Mahatmawho is at 
 the bottom of the movement, the effort has survived all the 
 .plansmadeforohokingit initsearher stages. The Theosophical 
 society remains as a living power which can be usedbyall who 
 want to know the truth about themselves and the world in 
 
78 Some tbotchts on theGita. 
 
 Tvhich they live. The society which has for its object the 
 dissemination of some of the truths of the ancient Vedic 
 science, is fulfilling its mission in Europe and America. 
 Thousands have been roused from their mental stupor in those 
 lands and fresh efforts are being made by the people who are 
 awake, to rouse still others who are asleep. If we turn from 
 those countries to the state of India as regards the theosophi- 
 cal effort, how do we find it. We see complete repose where 
 we ought to see complete activity. The theosophical doctrine 
 another name for our Vedic doctrine, is considered as a new 
 fangled web of thought. It is all Budhism says the orthodox 
 fanatic. The word Amitabha is Budhistic cries our dead 
 letter Vedantist. Yet if we go through the writings of H.P.B. 
 carefully, how little of Budhism do we find in theosophy 
 as offered by her which of course is not a creed of the society 
 founded on a common platform from which any of you can 
 work towards the restoration of the ancient wisdom science 
 as you conceive it to be. H. P. B. talked the same thing as 
 our ancient Bramhinical philosophers in a different language 
 and from a different platform. Student as I am of the philoso- 
 phy of the Puranas and Itihasas and also the writings of H. 
 P. B. I have been wondering at the absolute identity of the 
 two in thought. 
 
 14. I ask you my friends and fellow countrymen, in the 
 name of justice, how long more you are going to continue 
 your repose after the break of the theosophical dawn. It is 
 a law that the more knowing must sacrifice themselves for 
 the less knowing and it is an imperative duty resting on you 
 to get up, join the Theosophical ranks and work on towards 
 the restoration of the purity of the ancient science in the land 
 of its birth. In proportion as you work, you are assisted by the 
 Mahatmas, for the motto with them is help those who really 
 want help. When I called the Theosophical society a 
 living society, I had this in my mind. He who joins the society 
 to work, comes under the protection of the Mahatmic influence 
 and how long are the children of India to keep aloof from, 
 such a purifying current. It is left for you to say. 
 
VIL 
 
 1. My Bear Beoters 
 
 Last time we met here, I tried to give you an idea of lio-vv 
 sound was taken by the ancients as one of the operative agents 
 of Nature and of how Vedic recitation is the prime factor for 
 producing phenomenal effects in Yagnio processes. Please 
 here impress yourself fully with the idea that ail phenomenal 
 effect is produced by a magician, not by any wonderful will 
 power exercised without regard to Nature's laws, to suit the 
 magician's sweet will but by a silent subordination to and co- 
 operation with Nature's way of action. In this land of ours 
 where magic pure & simple was originally taught to men by the 
 ancient initiates and also a series of siibsequent efforts seem 
 to have been made by thenii to rectify the erroneous ideas 
 that formed themselves into the mind of the people ever dis- 
 posed to run in a straight line, as that mind ran in the direct- 
 ion of growing personality and apparent dissociation fromNa^ 
 ture, in this land I say there are a large number of sayings 
 apparently contradictory, that owe their origin to the efforts 
 intended for settig aright false conception on individualized 
 solitary aspects of the grand truth. The apparently contra — 
 dictory sayings have given rise to lot of sectarian feuds and 
 hatreds and to lot of religious creeds, each creed laying a vio- 
 lent stress on one aspect of the truth and reducing it to a 
 very gross material form. It therefore happens that there is 
 a partial truth in every creed and he who wants to approach the 
 whole truth must as a necessity free himself from all sectarian 
 prejudices and construct a most delicate system of thought a 
 system in which places ought to be provided for all minor 
 truths underlying sectarian forms of faith. He who is very 
 fond of crying out "it is all one bundle of nonsense and 
 superstition" is therefore in a very wrong attitude of mind 
 lying in a direct line with the very thing cried down by him. 
 It is an old truth that he who has no charity for the weakness 
 of a^brother but an ample fund of denunciatory language to 
 
§0 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 cry it down, is unconsciously creating currents that take him 
 to the very fault cried down. Many are the cases in which I 
 have observed the working of this mysterious karmic law, 
 cases in which professors of morality fond of uncharitable 
 denunciation, have silently approached the gulf of immorahty 
 and plunged into it finally. I therefore request you my brothers 
 not to f all into currents Hke these, currents of nonsense poured 
 down from a self-created seat of professorial comniscience. As 
 one substance in Nature worked on by motive power acting 
 in different directions and moving in different curves, can 
 produce and has produced an endless variety of manifested 
 forms likewise on the plane of the mind one simple truth 
 reflected on the various sides of the cosmic thought, has 
 manifested itself in crystalized forms of thought each form 
 represented by a creed and each creed with its spiritual and 
 material aspects. 
 
 2. To illustrate the above position, let us take one saying 
 "f^mr^ snTRHll:" or the adept simply wills and the manifested 
 -effect is created. This simple saying has reference to the 
 tremendous potency that lies in the human will existing in 
 one of the spiritually regenerated sons of human Nature or in 
 the will of a complete adept. What an enormous amount of 
 misconception has this statement given rise to? on the brain 
 of the religionist, this statement has strengthened the belief 
 in a personal God sitting on a throne in the canopy of heaven 
 and administering the affairs of the cosmos according to his 
 own sweet will obeying the fluctuations of his own fancy 
 based on loves and hatreds as manifold as the loves and 
 hatreds of an ordinary man. Even on the brain of a few of 
 our theosophists, the influence of this Indian saying has 
 asserted itself in a very undesirable way. Some Indian 
 theosophists thought that a Mahatma on the Himavat can if 
 he likes, take off at his will the dross of their existence and 
 clothe them in a body of light without any very marked exer- 
 tion on their own parts and so were on the look out for the 
 Mahatma so that when seen they may prostrate themselves 
 on his feet and catch hold of them and not to leave them 
 
Some thoughts on the gita.'' §1 
 
 until a promise was exerted that the Mahatma would save 
 them. The great rush for chelaship that sprang in the in- 
 fant state of the present Theosophical Society, is in a great 
 part the result of the ignorance of the nature of the Mahat- 
 mic will and the directions in which alone that could be 
 exercised. The letters of Mahatma K. H. in the occult 
 world and the thoughts contained in them were not taken 
 notice of in that rush. That the Mahatmas are co-workers 
 with nature and servants of the immutable cosmic law is a 
 thing that ought never to slip from our minds, when we try 
 to ascend in our thought to higher planes of nature and 
 understand the nature of life in those planes. In contrast 
 with the above saying, let us take the saying that states 
 "^*fRr5rn% ^^" or every thing is done by nature. This state- 
 ment has had its own quota of evil effect on the mind of man 
 and has made lot of people think that natural evolution 
 proceeds according to the action of matter and its inherent 
 energy without the co-operation of conscious entities guiding 
 the evolution and raising the best outturn possible out of the 
 cultivation. These people cannot conceive the existence of the 
 divine beings who have sacrificed themselves for all humanity and 
 who as it were serve as the mediaof thought that emanates from 
 the to them unmanifested planes. This non-belief in the exist- 
 ence of such beings and their wisdom and their function, makes 
 them non- receptive of the great influence that emanates from 
 them for the good of all mankind. Please in this connection 
 consider carefully the words of H. P. B. — " He standeth 
 now like a white pillar to the west upon whose face the 
 rising sun of thought eternal poureth forth its most glorious 
 waves". Of the two evils I have mentioned, the first one of 
 creed-making and fetish-worshipping is the characteristic of 
 our country or the east, and the second evil of believing in 
 nothing except visible matter with its properties is the 
 characteristic of England or the west. If a Mahatma recog- 
 nized as such begins to live in our country openly, we will 
 at once worship him, consecrate enormous quantities of dif- 
 ferent foods to him and make for him silver & gold palanquins 
 
 K 
 
82 Some thotohtS on the Gita. 
 
 to go in and also arrange for a music display in Ms front. If 
 lie changes residence to England, many an Englishman -will 
 ;perhaps clap Lis shoulder and say in gross glee "well my dear 
 feUo-w, people say that you are a great magician and I bet 
 my life, i£ you succeed in capping me by your jugglery". 
 Both evils are equally pernicious and are great impediments 
 to the good work that an adept can do and get done by open 
 liying ia India or England. The proper attitude of mind 
 from which we ought to begin our study of the philosophy of 
 the ancient yagnikas is one which combines the good traits of 
 both the Indian and English characters. There ought to be the 
 independence of the Englishman and the humility of the Hindu. 
 The independence ought not to be turned into pertinacity and 
 the humility into servility. To return now to any magical 
 feat produced by vedic recitation, it may be defined as a 
 phenomenal effect produced by Akasic perturbations set on foot 
 by the reciter. You may all remember that I once said that 
 the entire solar system in its etherial aspect was identified by 
 the ancient philosophers with the great song known as the 
 Veda and phenomenal effect begins from there. In this connect- 
 ion, I may remind you of the common Puranic saying in India 
 that Bramha has for his guidance, the veda which of course 
 is eternal only changing its plane of action according to cyclic 
 necessities. If on account of changes characteristug the 
 end of a cycle, the veda is thrown into confusion, it is again 
 re-established on earth by the Bramhins who hold office in 
 the yagnic constitution with Bramha as their great leader. 
 From this you see that to recite the veda in yagnic ceremonies 
 is simply to follow and intensify the action of some part of 
 the grand mechanism of Nature in the etherial aspect. 
 Taking as an illustration the phenomenon of rain, it is analy- 
 sable according to this conception into a series of motions ia 
 the akasic plane, generating a magnetic change in the 
 atmosphere that surrounds us which as you know is the 
 starting point of the atmospheric phenomena observed by us. 
 This group of motions that head the phenomena of rain is a 
 part of Nature's grand speech and corresponds to a part of the 
 great song of Nature. This part con-esponding to the part o? 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 8S 
 
 the veda under recitation, you may see what function the 
 vedic recitation must perform in the processes of yagna 
 intended for moulding and moving Nature. 
 
 4. From this it is plain that a magical feat is not any 
 supernatural feat but a perfectly natural one performed on 
 Nature's higher planes and made to produce the desired, 
 phenomenal fruits. Now unless the man who wants- to 
 perform a feat of this nature happens to be a great Adept 
 with a perfected will, it will be next to impossible to produce 
 a phenomenal effect as a consequence of one's individual will 
 or recitation. The effect can however be produced by 
 substituting for one individual will, a collection of human 
 wills all acting in harmony and co-operation. If one single 
 man catching hold of the twig of a tree cannot shake it, a 
 number of men catching hold of a branch can, and herein lies 
 the wonderful effect of co-operation on the mental and 
 all other planes of existence. The effects of collective will 
 are very well proved in mesmeric experiments where lot of 
 men keeping themselves silent, all co-operating with the 
 mesmerizer shove the subject mentally into the desired state. 
 The subject yields with much more fecility to this collective 
 will than to the single individual will of the operator. For 
 this reason a yagnic process has to be conducted by a number 
 of men all acting in harmony and reciting the Yeda according 
 to a fixed programme. These men who do service in the 
 process as prescribed are called the Rithwiks or Yagnic 
 priests. They are sixteen in number, each man holding a 
 special department and bearing a distinct name. It is not 
 necessary for us to learn the names of all these priests and 
 their functions in detail but it may be interesting to inquire 
 how 16 priests are required for administering the four Vedas. 
 The number 16 is the number of the priests mentioned in the 
 Yagnic treatises called sroutams and also in all our Puranas. 
 This number is on the whole a very interesting one, since an 
 analysis of it in several ways is associated with various views. 
 The figure, one followed by six suggests the idea of the 
 universe ten with the six-spoked wheel of life. The number 
 
84) Some thoughts on the G-it 
 
 sixteen being equal to 2 x 2 x 2 x 2givestheideaoi' a differentiat- 
 ing duad breath that has passed to the fourth plane of 
 manifested cosmos and developed a sixteen fold basis of work. 
 The Yagnic body being, as I told you already, the starting 
 point of the lower quaternary, is below the higher triad and is 
 hence the fourth in the cosmic septeaary and the differentiat- 
 ing breath, duad in its nature, must be a sixteen in the Yagnic 
 body and so it is presided over by sixteen priests or cosmic 
 Vedic reciters or singers or powers that speak out or powers 
 that manifest. Some of my brother-theosophists, who have 
 read a good deal about the number seven, need not 
 be disappointed by tha number sixteen, for it contains much 
 for them. Sixteen is one followed by six and the two added 
 is seven and all the sixteen priests recite but one essence 
 sound which falling into the spokes of the wheel of life, shows 
 itself as six. The essence of sixteen is a septenary as we 
 see. The number 16 is again 3x3 + 7 or 9 + 7 and so the eter- 
 nal nine prajapatis contain in themselves a septenary or one 
 complete manifestation and these prajapatis are a primal three 
 tripled. I mention all these only to rouse in you a curiosity 
 for arithmetical speculation on a mystic basis and I would re- 
 commend you to read all that is said on numbers by H.P.B. in 
 the two books Isis Unveiled and the Seorect Doctrine. In those 
 books you will find a very great stress laid on the number seven 
 and from that you must not content yourself with any kind of 
 worship of seven, for thereby you will fail to catch the idea 
 of H.P.B. If she called seven as the number of a complete 
 manifestation, she likewise called it as the emanation of a pri- 
 mal three. Three and seven, or a primal trinity and a mani- 
 fested septenary yielding ten, we get a complete whole called 
 ten or a doubled aspect of five which H.P.B calld the quint- 
 essence of the universe- 
 s' To return then to Yagna, sixteen is specially interes- 
 ting as it is the square of the number of our Vedas. I shall 
 quote a few Puranic slokas and translate them in this connec- 
 tion 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 85 
 
 "The Yoga known as Atliarva is remembered as the head of 
 Yagna and the Rig- Veda formed the neck and the arms. The 
 heart and the sides of the belly were formed by Sama, and the 
 waist, urinary organs, the thighs and the legs and the feet 
 were formed by Yajus ai^d the group of all the Vedas is the 
 Yagna-Purusha born out of the immortal state." From this 
 quotation you may see, my friends, that the Vedas Rik, Sama 
 and Yajus are arranged in descending order, towards the earth 
 or plane of manifestation. The Atharva is in one senso the 
 highest veda being in its recitation, yoga. All visible immediate 
 phenomenal effects can be produced by vedic recitation only if 
 that recitation be on the Atharvic basis. That veda is therefore 
 a yoga by whose employment the great yogee Bramha has 
 produced the manifested essence which develops the trinity 
 called earth, water and fire. These three correspond to the 
 three vedas Yajus, Sama and Rik. Let us call these the three 
 aspects of ether, as three planes on each of which the world 
 song may be suug. The world song quadruple on the Atharvic 
 plane of Bramha produces a four-fold aspect on each of the 
 three bases on which it is sung. This gives rise to the 16 
 sacrificial priests who however split into 4 clases of 4 each. 
 The head of the Atharvic group is called Bramha. The heads 
 of the other groups working on Rik, Sama and Yajur vedic 
 basis are respectively called the hota, ntgata and Adwaryu. 
 These four principal priests Bramha, Hota, TTtgata and 
 
'85 SOMK THOUGHTS ON~THE GlTA 
 
 Adwaryu have each three subordinates to assist them in minor 
 matters and the duties of Bramha and his assistants are to 
 watch, adjust and correct. The duty of hota and his assis- 
 tants is to recite Rig vedic hymns in that peculiar manner 
 characterizable as long chanting, when such recitation comes 
 to his turn. The entire business of a yagna being fixed and 
 unchangeable, no priest can do anything at his pleasure but 
 must subordinate himself throughly to the spirit of the yagna. 
 The duty of Utgata and his assistants is to praise the Devas 
 in the Sama Yedic fashion of chanting, which must be 
 familiar to all of you Hin dus. The duty of Adwaryu and 
 his assistants is to recite Yajur Yedic hymns and to perfom 
 the homa. 
 
 6. My dear friends, it was not my intention at first to go 
 into the details of any Yagnic ceremony nor is it my intention 
 to do so now. To go into details and explain the rationale of 
 every bit, requires all the great powers of the Pouranikas and 
 it is quite impossible for me to do it. Since it is very essen- 
 tial for a student of the Sanscrit Pm-anas, to understand the 
 broad outlines of their system of thought and since lot of 
 things of a puranic character occur in the Bagavat Gita itself 
 I have dragged you at all into considerations respecting the 
 nature of Yagna, considerations which will tend to infuse into 
 your minds a far greater respect towards the ancient Bram- 
 hins than you possess now. Since I think T have said enough 
 I shall not go on dissecting the ideas of Yagna in their inmost 
 details. I shall say a few words about the process called 
 Homa and then pass on to other matters. You all know that 
 sacrificial ceremonies as at present conducted are not simple 
 Vedic recitations but are followed by offerings to a fire kind- 
 led in the sacrificial ground. An offering in fire has the effect 
 of aiding the operation of Vedic recitation on akasa. Fire 
 it is recognized now is the concrete manifestation of a vital 
 fire which pervades the whole, and both are in correlation 
 There are things which burnt in the fire have the effect of 
 producing very magical effects and so fire-offering is one of 
 
Some tsoughts on thb GfiTA. 87 
 
 the factors of Yagna wliicli of course is intended for moving 
 the machine of Nature. A motion of nature means a motion 
 in the noumenal world of the Devas or in the basic substance 
 in which the Devas have their being. Just as food thrown 
 into our belly acts as a kind of stimulant which sets the 
 whole body in motion towards assimilation and excretion, 
 likewise the electrical energy released by oiferings burnt in 
 fire, acts upon the deva body and produces changes which 
 produce phenomenal results. Fire is therefore the mouth of 
 the devas as said in the saying "arf^g^rt^: " 
 
 7. Now that I have touched upon the subject of offering 
 it may be well to inform you that no offering of sheep was at 
 all practiced in the ancient times, for it is said in very autho- 
 ritative works, that Yagna is void of all cruelty to any living 
 creature. The ancient Yagnikas were all masters of compas- 
 sion exercised towards all living beings and it is plain from 
 the way in which they talked of Yagna, that no cruelty at all 
 was ever associated by them with Yagnic ceremonies. The 
 mistake of sheep- slaughter seems to have arisen only in this 
 Kaliyuga in which Natural machinery has become enormously 
 clogged by material dross and incapable of being so easily 
 moved by recitation alone as in former time. The real offer- 
 ings of the ancient Yagnikas could also not be revealed to man 
 since he too in virtue of the Yuga develops a degree of per- 
 sonal differentiated feeling that he is ready to use the most 
 sacred of things to the vilest of purposes. The offerings 
 selected by the ancient Yagnikas and pregnant with electrical 
 energies will, if revealed to the modern man serve as the best 
 way of knocking down a neighbour's brain even in prafe ranee 
 to our dynamite. They, were hence kept in the back-ground 
 and the race of men nurtured in the field of Yagna, inevitably 
 fell into sacrifices of the things that were chosen as symbols 
 of expression and thought in the Vedic writings. Protests 
 have as an inevitable consequence emanated from the masters 
 of compaission moved by the dark karma which man generates 
 in the sweet hope that he attains unto swargam by the sacri- 
 ficial ceremonies. Bating which is a most holy act that sus- 
 tains all this world in this present state becomes unholy if a 
 
88 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 man becom.es a Roman eater who, as we are told by historians, 
 got served a very large number of dishes of singing birds only 
 that the contents may be put into the belly and disgorged at 
 once to make room for a further unholy process of eating. Like- 
 wise the process of Yagna the most holy act conceiyable by 
 our minds intended to move nature and sustain all beings, be- 
 comes unholy when the process loses its meaning and is done 
 by man in intense selfishness and sacrifice of the holy feeling 
 of compassion. Yagna the spirit of compassion, to be made 
 to rest on cruelty and selfishness! 0' what a horor that! So 
 thought that compassion incarnate Lord Budha and fought 
 against the evil karma based on dead letter interpretation of 
 ancient Vedic writings. So sprang Budhism which concerns 
 itself only with the Budhi part of the ancient Yeda and which 
 was most imgenerously styled as the dispensation of despair 
 by Mr. Sundara Ramayya of Trivandram. As man without 
 the light of Budhi is only a beast in hiiman form, likewise, 
 Yagna which as at present practiced is based only on the 
 dead letter interpretation of Yedic symbols and forms with- 
 out the Vedic Budhi, is only bestial in its nature and dark will 
 be the consequences of the cruel karma, done in spite of 
 warnings in such books like the Bagavatam that Yagna 
 is not for Kaliyuga. Even man will be tied down to the 
 sacrificial post by the selfish race of Dikshitas that we 
 see now, as per chapter on human Yagna in the Veda, if only 
 such things are allowed by the government to proceed. The 
 day when all such things are done in this land will be the 
 Rakshasa stage of the history of this karma-Bhoomi. As I 
 say these things in condemnation of the present system, I 
 have no doubt that I am routing thereby the good-goody 
 orthodox gentlemen who are now gathering into centres on the 
 orthodox pole of Indian social life, in contradistinction to the 
 pole of social reformers who are ready to lay their axe at the 
 root of all things that trace their life to the remote past of 
 Manu and Yagnavalkya. A consideration of the philosophy 
 of the ancient Yagnikas is the only guide in this land of party 
 dissentions and fortunately for us theosophy has come to 
 guide the human mind that is open to conviction. 
 
Some thoughts o\ thi Gita. 89 
 
 8. As I told you, this evil that Lord Budha fought against 
 o-wes its origin to the symbols of the Yeda literally cons- 
 trued and every Black Magician will found his course on the 
 Veda. You may ask why should the Veda deal in symbols? 
 To this I answer that cannot be helped, for the Veda is the 
 entire Nature manifest at every point of evolution. Nature is 
 septenary with a form, a life in that form, a kama to guide 
 the life, a manas that gives the law to the kama, and three 
 higher factors. The Veda which deals with the lower 
 quaternary dominated over by Budhi-Manas on the cosmic 
 plane, must therefore contain the essence of every science. 
 God geometrizes said Plato and He arithmetizes said 
 Pythagoras. This geometry and arithmetic working on the 
 cosmic planes produce what are called form and life. He 
 who understands the animals mentioned in the Vedic science 
 is an occult geometricion and he who understands the actions 
 and laws of the Devas who construct the forms is an occult 
 arithmetician and he who understands both is a true Sidha or 
 Bramhin. To take a concrete example, the existence of the 
 Pitir devas is in a geometrical form which our ancient philo- 
 sophers called sheep. This sheep materially is what we call 
 pastoral smell and mentally what we call affection. He who 
 wants to go to a certain higher loka must of course deal with 
 the sheep in his own constitution in a certain peculiar way, 
 that has reference to cosmic karma the laws of its action 
 and the loka that the man wants to attain unto. Suppose now 
 that a man who wants to attain the loka takes an actual sheep 
 instead of the sheep in his own body and goes on torturing 
 the poor animal to commit its limbs to fire, what will you 
 think of him? The same I think of our Rakshasa bramhins 
 who are not good thinkers and hence do not understand the 
 ancient science. 
 
 9. In all this process that I have been describing 
 
 as yagnam, there is the most important factor - the 
 
 yajamana who is the responsible centre of life of the 
 
 yagnio process. If the process fails, it is the fault of the 
 
 L 
 
90 Some THouGSTa^ on thb Gita. 
 
 yajamana and if it succeeds it is the merit of the same. The 
 yajamana is the person who has sacrificed himself for the 
 •good of the world and who has undertaken to mould the 
 affairs of it, in obedience to the law. If the human body be 
 taken as the sacrificial ground, the manas in him is the yaja- 
 mana. All the doings of man in all his life from birth to 
 death, form one grand yagnic process that is conducted by 
 the true human entity called the Manas. He, who is willing 
 to sacrifice his body speech and thought to the good of all 
 the .world, is a real yagnika and all the higher lokas are 
 reserved for him. The central key note of yagnika's life is 
 to do good unto all irrespective of caste and creed even as the 
 sun shines for all. It may be that he keeps aloof from any 
 bad emanations of the world but that is not because he looks 
 on the world as inferior but considers himself as the salt for 
 the world to be salted with and so keeps himself pure to 
 produce the best effects even as the mesmeric doctor looks 
 with particular care to the proper condition of his body and 
 mind from the point of view of mesmerism, so that he may 
 operate on the suffering patients and relieve their suffering. 
 The platform of universal brotherhood on which men are 
 called upon to work for the good of men, is presiaely the 
 sanie as the platform of ancient Bramhins who identified 
 themselves with nature and made themselves the innocent 
 sheep of sacrifice, for the physical mental and spiritual ele- 
 vation of the human race. My friends I request you wiU all 
 think over the ancient Bramhinical status and decide if or 
 not life is worth living on that status. 
 
VIIL 
 
 1. Mr Deab Beothers 
 
 The object of our meeting here is as you all know the 
 study of the Bagavat Gita and plainly enough as some of ybu 
 may think, I am saying things beside the point and beating 
 about the bush. It is no-w so many Sundays since you heardl 
 anything about the Gita itself, and still I am obliged to roam 
 about in bye tracks of thought pertaining to yagna and 
 priest. I beg to assure you here that all that^Iam sayittgis 
 a very necessary preparation for the real understanding of 
 the Gita; for, the Gita is not any distinct systeih of philosophy 
 taught in any of the six schools of thought but a review of 
 the positions of the six schools with their minor branehesi 
 from the central stand point of truth or the Vedic standpoint. 
 The study of the book therefore requires a knowledge of all 
 the ancient systems of thought taught in the Uptoishads, 
 Puranas, Yogasastra and others and no amount of effort that 
 we now bestow on the prehminary preparation is wasted, for 
 it is all for making the Gita cleat. No regular book on astro- 
 nomy is to be put into the hands of a student who has not' 
 cared for mathematics at all and likewise the Gita is not fol? 
 him who knows nothing of ancient thought. Yet many are 
 the attempts made by the world at large and mahy of oui* 
 theosophical centres, at understanding the Gita with ihe aid 
 sometimes of our orthodox Vedantists. These Yedantists 
 nurtured in the school of all but nihilism and puffed up with 
 the blankness of the theory that the Parabramhic nonentity 
 is the only truth and that everything else in the scale of 
 manifestation is absolute falsehood, are all spurners of the 
 Puranic lore and along with it of the influence that may be 
 shed on thes thought plane of the embodied man by those 
 lofty entities who work behind the screen thait bounds tte 
 stretch of human visioii. These are the Puranic Bi'ainhinei 
 and King-!R,ishees or the theosophical Mahafnias, wTio on 
 account of an immense love for humanity, taken as one vaai 
 
92 Some thoughts on the Gita, 
 
 family, will not cease from working in man's behalf and are 
 ever ready for him who wants them. These can work in 
 special individual behalves only when these individuals are 
 attracted by Truth wherever found and hence capable of 
 transcending the mental barriers of caste and creed mani- 
 festuig itself as affections for particular books particular forms 
 of faith and particular nationalities. He who wants to under- 
 stand the grand mechanism of Nature with all its mystic 
 sides must as a necessity put himself on the central mountain 
 top to reconnoitre the country around but if he linger in the 
 country around and will not come to the central mount and 
 ascend it, such a person must be content with partial side 
 sketches and move in the narrow grooves of sectarian thought 
 and rancour. He must remain as a prisoner within the jail 
 walls of his own creed and contentedly cry out "you are 
 wrong and I am right". Please consider my friends, what 
 any a Mahatma can do to give freedom to this contented 
 prisoner. Let me die in my own native home is the fond 
 heart's cry of our respectable old dames and we Hindoos 
 taken as a whole are not from the standpoint of our mental 
 culture above the old dames who brought us into being. As 
 soon as a man of mental repose and contentment is taken out- 
 side the jail for some distance, he is unable to breathe the 
 pure air of the outside, and a longing for the fume of the old 
 tainted atmosphere of the city jail creeps in and then the 
 poor man is sure to fly back at a bound to his original home 
 and shut himself in, with the vein of the partj' patriot beat- 
 ing out "this is my own my native land." 
 
 2. You may all now hiss me out with the passionate 
 saying of a right loyal Hindu "oif with thy impertinence O 
 untrue son of India" but I cannot help stating the truth' that 
 a very large majority of our modern Vedantists are prisoners 
 within the four walls of the one saying "Purabramham true, 
 everything illusion". These gentlemen have for their autho- 
 rity the writings of the great sage Sankaracharya who is 
 known to us all as tlie leading head of the adwaitio movement 
 
Some thoughts ox the Gita. 93 
 
 tliat was set on foot subsequent to the time of tlie equally 
 great Sage known as Goutama Budlia, the head of the doct- 
 rine of Budhi or Budhism. Both are great masters of com- 
 passion and may be conceived as the two hemispheres of the 
 burning globe of light that is placed on the central mental 
 mount to impart hght to the East and the "West. The two 
 great Masters are mystically connected if you will listen to 
 H. P. B. and to understand the natures of these two 
 beings is to understand tlie natures of the entire cosmos 
 divisible as two hemispheres, the one being the land of the 
 sun-rise of thought eternal and the other being "the Pillar to 
 the West upon whose face the rising sun of thought eternal 
 poureth forth its most glorious waves." They are represen- 
 tatives for us the poor children of the dust of the ground, of 
 the two great powers known in the Pm-anas as Siva and 
 Yishnu, the universal sower and reaper, who by their inter- 
 action are said to support the universe of progress. Now it 
 happened that the system of Natural life known as yagna and 
 set on foot by the ancient yagnikas, who by their nature are 
 connected with the Bramha Charyam stage of man taken in- 
 dividually or collectively, fell into agreat abuse as the present 
 cycle of 5000 years was tracing out the bottom portion i e 
 2500 years ago approximately. Yagna, the spirit of sacrifice 
 of an individual manor Yajamana who is willing to surrender 
 his thought word and act to the whole in full compassion for 
 the suffering man, became tainted with cruelty partaking of 
 the cruelty heard by us as standing incarnate with firm Hp, 
 steady nerves and cold eyes, in the rooms of the European 
 vivisectionists which the softer nature of the human race can 
 not help depicting as the shadowy lands of the gloom and the 
 groan presided over by king Cruelty and administered in 
 obedience to the fundamental law of those regions "Might is 
 right." The European is excusable partially since he boasts 
 of no sacrifice no drink of the Soma, no aerial chariots sent 
 to take the Jiva after death to lokas of bliss. Such was not 
 the case with the Hindoo. He w;as pretending to administer, 
 to Nature as a part could administer to the whole and was 
 
94 Some THouGdTs on the Gita. 
 
 partially in possession of tlie Veda tlVe world. Song in human 
 sound that was given to man for his lise metaphysically from 
 the standpoint of its meaning, and magically from the stand- 
 point of its proper recitation. The world song obeying cer- 
 tain laws of proportions or the Pythagorean arithmetic and 
 imparting its thrilling effect to thte domain of cosmic subs- 
 tance, has induced the latter into a crystallization process that 
 the philosopher Plato called the geometry of the cosmos. The 
 various forms that are observed from a molecule of salt crys- 
 tal to the wonderfully complex organism of the human body 
 are all the structures of the great cosmic geometrizer known 
 as Viswakarma, the deva carpenter in our Puranic writings. 
 The revealed Veda whose function is to trace out the cosmos 
 from one basic sound substance symbolized as m, necessarily 
 split itself into a primal three, a subsequent seven vowels and 
 then into seven notes and then into seven combinations of the 
 seven notes on a basic three and then into hymns. All these 
 falling into the material field of the consonants, gradually 
 produced the manifested crystallized forms which are collec- 
 tively taken as the universe. The world to a thinker is the 
 magic motion produced by the Orphean singer or the Hindu 
 Saraswati. 
 
 3. Now it must happen and does happen that the names 
 of several geometric results now observable are words that 
 occur in the Veda. In order that we may have a clear 
 conception of this matter, let us take the geometric form 
 called sheep into our consideration especially that this animal 
 finds the whole world as its enemy. The Sanscrit word for 
 this animal is the name of the first sign of the zodiac or 
 Mesha. The Pitir devas or as the Puranas explain, the devas 
 who have given us by their action the gross bodies in which 
 we live are said to live in a magnetic sphere the gross aspect 
 of which may be called the pastoral smell or aura and the 
 ideal aspect of which is what is called affection or the tie 
 which connects one body with another and gives rise to a 
 very co^aplieated group of mental ties that are the re&ult of 
 magnetic attraction. The reda therefore when coming to 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita 95 
 
 describe tlie magnetic sphere, naturally described it as the 
 domain of slieep, the domain in which the Pitir devas have 
 their being. The next step is that those devas form them- 
 selves the sheep meaning thereby the sheep of a man's 
 constitution. If you will bear in mind that man ever forms 
 the centre of evolutionary work or the thread line on 
 which the whole Nature is strung he being the brain of the 
 yagnic body or the microcosmio logos for the manifested 
 plane of his being or the basic type physically from which 
 emanate the varioiis forms of life we see around us, you will 
 then see not only sheep in a man's constitution but also a 
 horse, a boar and the like. If for a moment you conceive 
 the entire world as one vast group of life that has emanated 
 from the quadruple aspect of one existence, with a network 
 of pulsating streams, and if you also conceive the mineral, 
 vegetable, animal and human kingdoms as the quadruple 
 aspects of manifestation corresponding to the original four, 
 you will not have much difficulty in tracing every manifested 
 thing to the primordial four which is the quaternary in which 
 Bramha functions- You arrive at the animal sheep by one 
 course of life and the sheepish part of man by another course 
 and both correlate, since Bramha or human ego is the centre 
 of all evolution. For example let us take the Telugu saying 
 that he who eats the dog, is a yogee. Are we to understand 
 by the word dog, the dog of our streets or the Canine 
 element of man or the dog in man that barks on the mind 
 plane producing what we call anger? Certainly the latter. 
 Similarly there are other elements on the emotional side of 
 man that are representable by other animals and that do 
 actually support the objective animals also by the influence 
 generated on the Bhuvarlokic plane and finding expression 
 back again. Thus though a visible circulation of life between 
 man and the out side nature is not existent on this plane, 
 there are unseen circulations with man through' subtle wave*' 
 set up by him in the various aspects^ of Naturals psychic' 
 constitution. 
 
 4. The vedie sentences states that, if sti man (jonducts 
 
96 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 sacrifice with the sheep he will attain unto swargam and that 
 the whole world will be benefited and that if he conducts a 
 sacrifice with the horse he will go to Swargam for a whole 
 kalpa and that the devas and Pitris pleased by the act will 
 bless the whole human family. These statements which 
 have a reference to human life in its relation to the emotional 
 and psychological part of man's constitution and also to the 
 effect for good producible to the world at large by special 
 manners of life sacrifice and also to the karmic reaction that 
 accrues to the man who makes the sacrifice if he yields to 
 the desire of fruit, these statements began to be understood 
 by the yagnic section of humanity from the dead letter stand 
 point, The worst aspect of what is called Black Magic. 
 Sacrifice of self was turned into sacrifice of animal life in the 
 blind faith that that would lift a man to Swargam along 
 the line of the fire. When such ignorance of the operation 
 of the karmic law, took hold of man's mind, a degree of 
 selfishness unknown in former epochs became the law of life 
 of the very yagnic section constituted for the elevation and 
 purification of mankind. A Bramhan became a Rakshasa 
 and he began to look upon himself as more elevated than his 
 inferior caste brothren. The idea of universal brotherhood 
 upon which alone can thrive the yagnic spirit of self-sacrifice 
 being inconsistent with selfish enjoyment and prosperity was 
 cast to the winds. Such were the circumstances under which 
 Lord Budha appeared on the scene of the world's history 
 2500 years ago and did his utmost to blow up the fort of 
 orthodox conservatism that had descended into black magic. 
 
 5. Now Lord Badha belonged to the Aryan section of 
 the human family as much as Sankaracharya, and he was not 
 without the due respect towards the ancient yagnikas who 
 lived with men in the Bramhacharyam stage and had given 
 him the world song known as the Yeda and had taught 
 him the secrets of yagna by which man could maintain a 
 certain harmony with the noumenal world of causes or in 
 Puranic technicality the world of the Devas and the Pitris. 
 "What Lord Budha objected to was not the yagnic spirit 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 97 
 
 but the outward form of ritualism founded on tte dead letter 
 of the veda, tainted with selfishness and cruelty and as far 
 away from the spirit of brotherhood and oneness as the south 
 from the north pole. This spirit of oneness the ruling spirit of 
 the early age of man and nature, had yielded to the spirit of 
 personal differentiation with all the consequences that follow 
 from such differentiation on the mind of man. The real 
 Sankhya-yogic school or the school of the ancient wisdom 
 science or simply the vedic school to which Lord Budha and 
 all others who tread the path of holiness after him belong, 
 has for its fundamental keynote, the idea of universal one- 
 ness or brotherhood. According to this keynote each must 
 live for all, and then alone can there be harmony and happi- 
 ness on earth and heaven. Once a man strikes a note not in 
 harmony with ths key, a karmio disharmony creeps into him 
 and he must eat the fruit of it however bitter. The law of 
 oneness makes others also partakers of that bitter fruit and 
 so each man is inextricably interwoven with all others and if 
 this is realized by the world at large, the mass of mankind 
 will be enabled to escape the inexpressible disasters that 
 would flow from intensity of selfishness. We may say in 
 the mystic Puranic phraseology that Lord Budha ascended 
 the golden mount of Meru which is now hidden by the mist 
 of man's ignorance and contemplated as are said to contem- 
 plate the world's Bramha Eishees to sustain thereby all this 
 manifestation. As Lord Budha was ascending, cloud after 
 cloud melted to give him way and when he reached the vf ry 
 top, he got a view of the entire sphere of existence from the 
 outermost screen of Nirvana to the land of sorrow of the 
 toiling millions, alternately jumping for joy and v eisping 
 for gi'ief. 
 
 6. In this survey, the mighty Lord of mercy saw the 
 world's eternal ways of harmony working into disharmony to 
 gain lustre by contrast and to establish its own greatness. 
 He saw also the natu.re of the KaliYuga into which the aryan 
 fifth or the qunitessence race (please here think about the num- 
 ber five) was slowly and steadily workingby its own collective 
 
■98 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 karma in accordance with the worlds eternal law of contrast. 
 But then he argued within himself "is the nature of the Yuga 
 a reason why I should not work to alleviate man's pain? Is 
 not the field of disharmony designed by Nature as a field to 
 try the strength of men who have attained unto the harmony? 
 If unity be the law of Nature, does it not apply to the world's 
 spiritual sons and is it not their duty to get good out of evil, 
 rejecting Nirvana and ever working for the weaker? If pro- 
 gress be one of the laws, is not the disharmony of Kaliyuga 
 a necessary passage for the attainment of a higher harmony?" 
 So I think my brothers argued this Mahatmic chieftain and 
 warrior. I say chieftain because this divine man of mercy 
 feeling so deeply for his brother men, struck the higher key 
 note of mercy in all brotherhoods of occult development. 
 The essence of Aryan adeptship followed him and the great 
 movement that took place about 25 centuries ago was in- 
 augurated. 
 
 7. The direction in which that movement was made may 
 be said to be from form to substance. This may be traced 
 in every particular of variation of the Budhistic view from the 
 materialized view of the orthodox priests as they were at the 
 time. What I called the Budhistic view is identical with the 
 ancient Bramhinical view. Indeed it cannot be otherwise 
 for if Lord Budha understood the truth about Nature and her 
 laws and if the ancient Bramhins also did the same, there 
 cannot be any difference on vital questions between Lord 
 Budha's philosophy and the root philosophy of the ancient 
 Bramhins. The idea of universal brotherhood which served 
 as the foundation of the ancient yagnic system calling upon 
 each man to keep himself in the utmost purity so that that 
 purity may go towards purifying the whole was reasserted by 
 Lord Budha. The ritualism of slaughter-the degraded rem- 
 nant of an once glorious system of magical life sacrifice and 
 the chrysaloidal case in which the Veda had once imbedded 
 its secrets, was to a very great extent put down and men 
 were called upon to shew their spirit of self sacrifice in 
 brotherly motioias in thought word and act. The Bramhiug 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 99 
 
 "who obtain their name from the root Brih to expand were 
 made to learn that not by any drink of Soma juice but by 
 continued efforts for the mind expansion of the suffering 
 humanity, they could rise to higher lokas of spiritual per- 
 fection. To take up the subject of the ancient Nature science 
 of the Veda, it had at the time of Budha, dwindled into a 
 systematic religion with as many sides in it as there are 
 technical names in the Yeda. The words Indra, Eudra, 
 Vishnu, Bramha, Soorya, Soma and others used to indicate 
 the various departments and aspects of the vast existence 
 seen and unseen, had all lost their living meaning and had 
 come to be looked upon as personal demons holding sway in 
 the corners of the universe. Lord Budha removed this fal- 
 lacy by laying stress on the idea of dharma or cosmic la-w, 
 inviolable and impersonal and having many a stage and sub- 
 stage in its own working out. There are no doubt lots of 
 entities functioning in all these stages but none of them nor 
 all taken collectively can be called a personal God. The 
 ancient Yagnic philosophers had, in giving a view of the 
 cosmos, traced it from a primordial substance symbolized as 
 the Nadam or Om which manifesting itself as a trinity on the 
 ideal plane, subsequently develops the quaternary which I 
 have been all along calhng the yagnic body. In speculations 
 concerning what lies behind the basic screen, they could give 
 out nothing bat merely called it as the highest state of the 
 manifested Vishnu or Nature, containing in its absoluteness 
 all the laws under manifestation or Narayana. Now because 
 a name was given, the ritualists of Budha's time took it in a 
 concrete form and made of it a personal Being capable of 
 being appeased by offering and slaughter. Lord Budha gave 
 the death blow to this concreteness by stating that the world 
 had no place for any such being and that the ultimate state 
 was no-thing. 
 
 8. Now my friends, it was an old idea that wherever the 
 angel may turn, the devil follows him as his shadow. This 
 has been fully illustrated in the case of this word No-thing 
 for it has been caught hold of by the East and the West and 
 
100 Some thoughts on the Gita 
 
 Jbaa Been forced to stand in a -witness-box to speak to Lord 
 Budha's complete nihilism. Up to this moment the orthodox 
 Hindoos living in the domain of words have been calling the 
 followers of Lord Budha as atheists. An impartial compari- 
 son of what is called the Budhistic philosophy with the 
 ancient Bratnhinical system is sure to convince anybody that 
 the thoughts of the two are identical. What is a very sad 
 thing to note is that even very sensible gentlemen of Mr. 
 Sundara Ramayya's type are misrepresenting Lord Budha 
 and have been calling his effort to restore the life of the 
 ancient yagnic system so far as it is restorable in this dark 
 age of Kaliyuga as a dispensation of despair. The argument 
 brought forward by these gentlemen is very queer. Because 
 Lord Budha called the world a vale of misery therefore he is 
 a dispenser of despair. If so all the ancient Aryan philoso- 
 phers from the authors of the upanishads down to Sankara 
 Charya are in an equal degree dispensers of despair. It is a 
 perfectly untrue statement that the illusion view of Sankara 
 Charya was an off-shoot of Budha's despair, for that view 
 had been expressed over and over again by great philosophers 
 who lived prior to Lord Budha's time. That the world is an 
 illusion is a statement not at all addressed to men vfho have 
 got a genuine pleasure in life and hence very much attached 
 to it. But it happens that some of the people of the world 
 turned about on the wheel of birth and death, come at last to 
 a state of mental growth in which they begin to look upon 
 all this bubbling life process as the shadow of a life in the 
 noumenal world, attaining what is called Vairagyam or want 
 of attachment. The illusion view is a part of the grand 
 philosophy that is taken to the consideration of the non- 
 attached, who is on the path of Nivirti or return from 
 the phenomenal world. I do not see any reason why the or- 
 thodox gentlemen of this country should differentiate Lord 
 Budha from the group to which he belonged and associate 
 Ms name with despair and illusion to the exclusion of others 
 who preceded and followed him. 
 
 9. The movement of Lord Budha must have produced 
 
Some thotchts on the Gita. 101 
 
 an enormous confusion in tliis land as you may all imagine 
 and the great pliilosopher -who took upon himself the task of 
 restoring order is Sankara Charya. He preserved the essence 
 of what Lord Budha had said and spoke as was suitable to 
 the people of the time. For example he substituted the 
 Vedantio Parabramham for the Budhistic No-thing. When 
 questioned however what Parabramham was, his answer is 
 that it is describable only in negatives and nothing Hke what 
 man can think of. You please note how one and the same 
 thing said in twe different ways produce different effects on 
 the minds of the unthinking people who will not go below 
 word w^eaving. As to yagna, it is notorious that Sankara- 
 Charya was not in any sense for it, since it had descended to 
 a. bestial level. He therefore, divided all dharma pertaining 
 to man's sphere into the two aspects of Pravritti and Mvirti 
 or the dharma of one who is attached to the world and want 
 to enjoy the fruit of it and its spiritual counter part Swarga 
 and the dharma of the other who knows the truth about 
 Nature and who has attained imto non-attachment to the 
 things of the world and hence hankers after a release from the 
 burden of conditioned life. The first class of course consists 
 of the world's ignorant and the second class of the world's elect. 
 For the second class Sankara Charya recommended Sanniyasa 
 or renunciation of the Vedic karma and for the first class he re- 
 commended a trial at the breaking up of ahancara or selfishness 
 by doing things for the Lord and not for self. This alone was 
 a great factor for discouraging bestial yagna and those who 
 were its advocates basing their arguments on Veda Vada or 
 the exoteric interpretation of the Veda. Sri Sankara Charya 
 didmore.In his commentaries he took care to take off all stress 
 on any yagnic process that may be under reference in the original 
 and sometimes construed the word Yagna as indicating 
 Parameswara which of course was sure to be construed by the 
 people at large as indicative of the logos attainable by renun- 
 ciation alone. The object of our great reformer was not to 
 teach any esoteric science but to restore order in a country 
 which could not bear up the boldness to catch the truth that 
 Lord Budha taught and consequently fell into confusion. He 
 therefore did not take up things ia any puranio fashion to trace 
 
102 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 the operation of the cosmic law which has brought about this 
 wonderful variation in manifestation from the one nonmani- 
 f estation. That the world Is an illusion and Parabramham is 
 alone real is a good cover under which shelter could be taken 
 under circumstances which require a revelation of esoteric 
 truth for clearing up; I am told by students of Sankracharya's 
 writings that in one place where Vyasa had tried to reconcile 
 the various contradictory sayings about evolution in the Tlpa- 
 nishads, the Acharya lets drop a most wonderful remark to 
 repress all curiosity. It is to this effect — The entire world is 
 a dream and an illusion. The characteristic of an illusion is 
 that it changes. A city in the sky created by clouding substances 
 in the eye is an illusion and changes as often as the substances 
 fall into new arrangements. Once a man sees chariot-like fi- 
 gures and the next time he sees figures quite unlike chariots. 
 The philosophy of the TJpanishads wanting to teach that 
 Parabramham is alone real and that all world functioning is 
 an illusion has given different orders of evolution in different 
 places and that, to shew that the dream cannot stick up to 
 one law on account of its own illusory nature. 
 
 10. Note here my friends, how the great philosopher has 
 evaded the business of giving out esoteric truths which alone 
 serves as a unifying power at reconciling the apparent contra- 
 dictions in ancient writings. The Teacher wanted only to 
 impress uqon the minds of the students that the universe is 
 one in its essence and apparently many in its manifestation. 
 That has had its own share of evil effect on the minds of the 
 students at least as they are found now. The vast majority 
 of Vedantic students learn by their study only the quibble 
 "Para bramham truth everything illusion" 1 shall not now go 
 into a declamatory flourish of language against our poor 
 Vedantists but I shall say a few things for your benefit and 
 guidance in the study of the Bagavat Gita from the stand- 
 point of the ancient yagnikas. To these philosophers. Nature 
 is not an illusion but the eternal ground of evolution, of an 
 infinite one existence which permeating every point in the 
 infinity of space or taking the place of the heart in all, tries 
 to obtain a more and more vivid consciousness by its own ideal 
 
Some thoughts on the qita. 103 
 
 life processes. This heart of the universe, existing every- 
 where in it, is called by them the eternal yagnapurusha or the 
 purusha who underlies all cosmic manifestations. All human 
 egos or all finite centres of consciousness that located in em- 
 bodiments of matter, give rise to egoism or ahancara are rays 
 of the hfeart Purusha, turned about on the wheel of evolution 
 to add to the vividness of the universal consciousness 
 and so in every limited world cycle, human beings 
 travel from a negative pole of the field of consciousness to a 
 comparatively positive pole, as is illustrated in comparing the 
 fructified consciousness of an old man to the bare field of 
 consciousness that was in him when he was a babe- Of course 
 youth and old age are frivolous terms when applied to such 
 an eternal factor as the heart consciousness of the entire uni- 
 verse, giving rise according to the ancient pouranic metaphy- 
 sics to all known cycles of time in the worlds of manifestation 
 by its OWQ pulf^ations of thought. This Lord of time as the 
 Pxu7usha is called is the origin and end of all lokas. The 
 position may be illustrated in the following manner to you 
 all. You know it is one of the scientific speculations of our 
 physicists that all the planets of the solar system moving in 
 fixed orbs of space at present, must eventually return to the 
 true centre of the system or the sun from which all these bodies 
 are supposed to have emanated, on account of the retarding 
 action of the etherial substance in which these all float. If 
 now you conceive all these planets moving in different orbits 
 as forming a. kind of spiral, the whole life process of the solar 
 system must resolve itself into a history of the development 
 of the spiral curves from the central essencB the sun and their 
 return back again into it. Please now substitute for our 
 visible physical sun the central spiritual sun of consciousness 
 that exists everywhere and this is the heart of Nature — the 
 source and end of all life function. This is the Parabramham 
 of the Pouranikas and of Baghavan Sankaracharya, and is 
 now unattainable by man with any smell of his own indivi- 
 duality as said in " mt ^l% \^^ ariTM iPT^lT ^." Now that you 
 may not misconceive the position, I beg to tell you that the 
 spiritual sun pervading all space cannot be located in any 
 
104 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 part of tlie space cognized by our flest structure. The action 
 of evolution is an expression from inside to outside and back 
 again, inside and outside, being applied to every point in 
 space. THe thing being very difficult to be assimilated by 
 you without deep thought, I recommend the latter course to 
 you. 
 
 11. I said just now all human egos in their truth are 
 rays in the spiritual sun and you may ask naturally if when 
 all these egos return to the sun, they are welded into one. 
 Some philosophers say one and others say many and there 
 have been lot of writing on the different ideas but the true 
 Sankhya-Yogic school which is represented by the ancient 
 Raja-Rishees and Bramhans and by Lord Budha in recent 
 times, says, it is both one and many. It is many living in 
 the unifying spirit of oneness or in a complete harmony that 
 by its own magic spell, keeps aloof the idea of many, it is 
 again one which to estabhsh its own existence, manifests it- 
 self in and serves as the basic key-note of many. The Theo- 
 Bophical doctrine is the quintessence of both Sankhya and 
 Yoga and- we find Sri-Krishna saying "He who sees the 
 Sankhya and yogic doctrines as one is the real seer." To 
 make this idea clearer, I shall explain one idea given in the 
 great work of the true theosophist to be recognized as such 
 by India, i e namely H. P. B. We have all come across such 
 expressions as the spirit of the army, the hfe of the army &c. 
 Please analyse the idea — the army has no existence apart 
 from the units that compose the army. Yet in action, these 
 units are actuated by one feehng, thought, motion and aim so 
 much so that all the units may be collectively viewed as 
 one unit having the generic name army. The spirit of the 
 army is hence one and yet many, actuating many individual 
 units. Please now stretch your power of imagination to the 
 highest plane of life of the one in many and the many in one 
 and then you may get a glimpse of the absolute one life 
 of "the most rarefied individuality merged in the infinite 
 totality." 
 
Some THouanTS on the Gita. , 105 
 
 12. The grandeur of this absolute existence in the uni- 
 versal heart is a thing not at all clearly conceivable by us 
 even in our best impassioned moods of Valmikic poetic glow 
 and is perhaps only a matter of scent to those great entities 
 who living once as men, have raised themselves in the scale of 
 Nature by their pure life of oneness or practice of the idea of 
 universal brotherhood, combined with a desire to know the 
 truth wherever found even at a sacrifice of Nirvana. These are 
 the Mahatmas of our theosophical writings who collectively 
 form the tree of the fruit of wisdom — the tree that may be 
 said to grow on the very border of the land of complete har- 
 mony trying to manifest itself through a septenary gamut 
 to more and more intensified disharmony. "When I say that 
 the Mahatmas have sacrificed Nirvana to nurture the tree 
 of wisdom, you must of course look upon them as men who 
 have sacrificed themselves for the ignorant humanity and 
 plunged into its karmic wheel to guide progress on the pro- 
 per hues. For this reason I have been calling them Yagnikas 
 and they collectively represent the heart of the manifested 
 Nature on the septenary scale, for us inhabitants of the 
 seventh plane of Nature framed on what may be called the 
 atomic basis. 
 
 13. These Mahatmas are students of Nature in all 
 her aspects and the knowledge which they have acquired on 
 the ways of Nature and her laws enable them to determine 
 with great precision the elements of her future progress. It 
 therefore follows that cosmic expansion and development 
 follow a law — a law which may be called immutable. There 
 is nothing of the Mayavic character of want of law that has 
 taken hold of the Vedantic students of our country, students 
 who seem to me but to touch the surface of the thought of 
 our great philosopher Sankaracharya. This philosopher 
 who undoubtedly belongs to the ancient school of wisdom 
 has been saying things with certain definite ideas in them, 
 which things havebeen all along misconstrued by his students 
 from the standpoint of their own preconceived notions. The 
 teachings of our Acharya are the teachings of Gautama 
 Budha modified to" suit the temperament of the nation 
 
 N 
 
i06 Some thoughts On thb Gita. 
 
 and this teiiiperament running in the direction of personal 
 Kama, has prevented the Hindoos from catching the idea. 
 I hate read hut a small portion of the writings of Sankara 
 Charya but that is enough to convince me that the great 
 master of thought who succeeded Gautama Budha in his work 
 but on the conservative line often spoke of things with a 
 sereno smile On his lips, things which were identical with 
 what all ancient philosophers have taught but which at the 
 same time had an appearance of toleration towards the 
 world's ignorant prejudice. One such instance may be cited 
 here. 
 
 14 The ancient philosophers had talked of two dharmas 
 or modes of behaviour called Pravriti and Mvirti. The law 
 of Pravirti is that which pertains to cosmic evolution and the 
 bearing which human behaviour has on such evolution. The 
 law which pertains to the process of cosmic involution and 
 the progress which a human being can make in the same line 
 from the phenomenal stage is called the dharma of Nivirti. 
 The yagna which a man performs in the Hue of Pravirti or 
 cosmic expansion and moulding has its equivalent in the 
 idepi planes of Nature and this equivalent was called by the 
 ancients the Adhyatmic yagna. These two yagnas are as 
 closely related to each other as body and mind and no 
 distinct line of demarcation could be drawn between them. 
 If you consider the Karmic law that no man can rise in the 
 scale of Fatnre without leaving an impression for good on 
 the field of humanity corresponding to the physical law that 
 no bullet can rise in the air without a proportionate thrust 
 on the musket of discharge, you will understand that the 
 progress of a student towards the truth in Nature must at 
 every effort in its history leave a mark behind or be attended 
 with effects generated for the good of mankind. The ancient 
 Puranics had in consideration of this law said 
 
SOMB TEOtJQHTS ON TH| GjTA 1^7 
 
 — '"tliQ lokas of those who never return are established in the 
 Yoga of Karma. A man is tied by Karmic chain only if he 
 accepts the fruit of Karma but if he rejects the fruit in nou' 
 desire, he works towards release." From this it follows that 
 the dharmas of Prayirti and Nivirti are closely inter-blended 
 and that no man can make any progress spiritually, if he 
 does not constantly work towards the physical, mental and 
 spiritual improvement of man, in a spirit of brotherly love tp 
 all or in the spirit of universal brotherhood which is the one 
 ladder by which alone man can ascend higher. All this is 
 ancient Yagnic teaching. This same thing was reasserted by 
 Lord Budha 2500 years ago when the germs of aU the evils 
 of personal differentiation that obtain now existed. Th© 
 wrong idea that no Karma was to be done by a persoji who 
 wants release from conditioned existence had obtained place 
 in the minds of large numbers of people. There were others 
 in the degraded Yagnic section known as Brahmans, who con- 
 tended that their sacrificial rites of sheep-slaughter and Soma- 
 drinking were essential for the spiritual perfection. Lord 
 Budha gave the proper needed blow to both classes of men 
 by his assertion that perfection was to be obtained neither 
 by laziness nor Soma-drink. He had struck the great key 
 note — "Work work work each for others thus practicing the 
 idea of fraternal love and the law of karma that guides the 
 progress of Nature, will surely in its adjustment give a lift 
 to all humanity and a special lift to a special worker. This 
 surrender of selfishness which proved unwelcome to the child- 
 ren of the land of Karma-Bhumi and conservatism, was 
 taken up by Bagavan Sankaracharya. The poHcy which 
 this teacher adopted was a difEerentiation of karma and gnya- 
 nam. In every commentary that Sankara has given, the 
 first thing that he takes up is "is Karma to be joined on to 
 gnyana or is it to be dissociated from it?" The Teacher 
 knew that the word karma would be taken by the public at 
 large as Vedic karma of literal sacrifice and took great ad- 
 vantage of it. The answer to the above question as given by 
 Sri- Sankara is there ought to be no union of karma and 
 gnyanam. Karma as Sri Sankara said is for the fool who strives 
 after the fruits of the illusory plane but wisdom- joined on to 
 
108 Some thoughts o>t the Gita. 
 
 reminciation or Sanyasam is the path of the wise who want 
 to rise above illusion. These wise people leaving off all karma, 
 work for loka Sangraham or the improvement of man or 
 in Sankara's language do karma for Bramham. The 
 world being manifested Bramham, Sankara's words require 
 no explanation. Thus Sankara strove to induce the idea of 
 unselfish karma based on brotherhood as indeed his compeer 
 Lord Budha sought after. Pravirti and Nivirti thus turn out 
 as simple aspects of life, though our Yedantists draw a line 
 of separation between the two. The platform of brotherhood 
 is the only platform advocated by all Teachers for the man 
 who wants to attain unto the harmony that lies in a comer of 
 Natural manifestation and I only beg to request you will all 
 kindly think over it and see if it is not the noblest ideal for us 
 to strive after. 
 
IX. 
 
 1. My Dear Brothebs 
 
 Last Sunday I pointed out that no distinct line of division 
 was drawn by the ancient yagnik philosophers between the 
 two dharmas known as Pravirti and Nivirti, as is done by our 
 present day pundits and the reason of this must be plain to 
 you on a moment's consideration. There was in their case no 
 dissociation of themselves from the whole. Each individuality 
 is joined on to the whole in a most inextricable way and can 
 attain the one only if it is melted by action continued through 
 endless kalpas to establish the law of universal harmony — the 
 harmony of oneness that connects the whole. In Theosophical 
 language it is the law of compassion, the law that compels 
 every true yogee to ever preserve his individual conscious- 
 ness and work on for common good. In Puranic language, it 
 is to be the yajamana of cosmic yagna or to work in the field 
 of cosmic sowing and reaping. ■ He is the trae iu lower 
 of Lord Yishnu, the spirit of infinity or the infinite circle, who 
 remaining behind the universal veil called the avyaktam or 
 undifferentiated basic substance, neverthless sustains all this 
 by yagna. In this connection you may all commit to memory 
 the following celebrated Puranic couplet 
 
 "Narayana is superior to avyaktam and the universal sphere 
 is born of the latter. All these lokas are within the sphere 
 including the earth with l\er seven islands." This Narayana 
 is as you know the unmanifested logos who is the supreme 
 abode of Yishnu and is now unattainable with any trace of 
 
110 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 individuality for^ the Sruti says amnamTOra? or unattained 
 witli Manas. Those of you who have read the Theosophical 
 writings will recollect that Manas is the individuality or the 
 spiritual ego on the side of the higher triad and the persona- 
 lity or the kamic ego on the side of the lower quaternary. 
 Manas is the pivot of the human structure or the centre on 
 which the spiritual and material parts of man are made to 
 turn. The Sruti therefore distinctly means that the supreme 
 abode of Vishnu is unattainable now with any trace of the 
 individuality. If however an attempt be made towards the 
 attainment of the unattainable, the entity loses itseK in the 
 Nirvanic bliss, a bliss that crushes the three elements of the 
 knower, knowledge and the known into one homogenuity of 
 spiritual oneness. This is the swargam of the individuality and 
 is decidedly not the goal of the ancient yogees. The spiritual 
 state of self-conscious experience that is known as the supreme 
 abode of Vishnu is strictly the genuine Moksha &e Nirvana 
 but because the swargic state of the individuality came to be 
 called in course of time by the word Nirvana by the adherents 
 of the Sankhya school recognizing nothing beyond avyaktam, 
 the adherents of the older school have been using the word 
 paranirvana to indicate their goal that lies hidden in Purafiie 
 expression, within the top-most point of the central- peak of 
 the golden mount of Meru. That point is no doubt beyonxi 
 reach at present by the self-COTiscio as individuality, but the 
 lines on which the cosmos is .striving higlaor through pro- 
 gressive evolutionary work indiqate that one day the wheel 
 of work will attain unto that pinnacle and begin to revolve 
 round it. Different must be the fates of people who have 
 clung to the centre and wandered from jt. For considerations 
 like these which I leave for your careful thou^ yith the aid 
 of the theosophical writings, thea&cient^rpgees^re sitting on 
 the top of the golden mount engaged in ^gna and thapas. 
 Their yagnic work makes us all profit;?by it and their thapas 
 or meditation keeps the karmic wheel of the world in 1^ line 
 of the far distant goal that is the absolute glory, though noV 
 but a very minute star on account of the ineafeulable height. 
 
 2. My friends, jqu all kaow" tiiat in that kvaJuable book 
 
SOMB THOTJOATS ON THU GiTA. Ill 
 
 of H. P. B. called "key to Theosophy" she has said that the 
 Moksha of the Hindoos attainable now is not eternal but 
 finite. This has not sounded well to the Hindoos with their 
 traditions of attaining to Moksha day after to-morrow and 
 many a time I have had to exonerate H.P.B. from the doubly 
 false change of Budhistic Nihilism brought against her by 
 Vedantic surface sweepers. In spite of reiterated assertions 
 that what she said was neither Vedantism nor Budhism 
 neither Christianity nor Mahamodanism, the Hindoo readers 
 of H. P. B's writings unconsciously take her to the seat of 
 judgment of the Vedantist and weigh all her words and 
 thoughts in the Vedantic balance of Moksha and karya bramha 
 loka hung on to the beam of avyaktam in the only truth of 
 Parabramhic nonentity. The result is that the students find 
 H. P. B. saying things unwarrantedly and charge her with 
 nonsensical things supposed to flourish in the brain of the 
 Budhistixj Nihilist. It is therefore well to bear in mind that 
 H. P. B. professed to say things not from the standpoint of 
 Yedantism but from the standpoint of the ancient wisdom 
 science which had a voice in our country in good olden times 
 when the Pouranic philosophers lived in our midst and taught 
 the science of Nature and the root of all religions to their fit 
 students and taught also the mysteries of the Eternal Veda. 
 We rimst therefore go to the Pouranic writings of India if at 
 all we want to know that H. P. B. spoke but things of the 
 past. These writings must be read between the lines in a 
 thoroughly spiritualizing mood and I beg to assure you that 
 such efforts wiU profit you on a plane that connects all suc- 
 cessive incarnations of a human entity and hence undying. 
 To those of you who are willing to examine the relation of 
 Nirvana and Para-Nirvana, so far as it is dimly examinable. 
 I would recommend a study of that part of Harivamsa in 
 which Lord Krishna one with Narayana is represented as 
 executing a journey on his bird Garuda, to the top of the 
 Kailas mountain in which Maheswara holds his sway. There 
 the two lords Ko-ishna and Maheswara become the Jtwo halves 
 of one unity, the former the endless circle of the All and the 
 latter the centre of that circle which is however everywhere 
 in it. There the Lord Maheswara addressing the Bishees as* 
 
112 ■ Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 sembled is made to say " Eishees, bear in mind tKe true 
 Sankhya-Yogic poicy that I am going to tell you and it is that 
 alone wliicli "will take you to Lord Krishna who is essentially 
 the All. No doubt I am deserving of your worship always 
 but I must be worshipped as ever living in Narayana. I 
 have now given you the secret and if you steadily follow it, 
 Narayana will get pleased in time and will give you all Mukti, 
 true Mukti being of him and in him." Now Narayana the 
 infinite all is the boundless circle and Maheswara that ever is 
 in Narayana is the centre of the circle or the individuality of 
 the human being. The Sankhya Yogic doctrine therefore 
 teaches that the individuality must not be lost and must never 
 be dissociated from the All or the Paramatma. Now you will 
 see how this hold on individuality is inconsistent with the 
 Vedantic idea of merging up knower, knowledge & known. 
 
 3. To return now to Pravirti and Nivirti as taught in 
 Bagavat-Gita, they are the two aspects of the mode of Ufe of 
 one and the same individual. It was an ignorance of this 
 truth that made Arjuna shrink on the field of battle and had 
 led him to form the resolution of abandoning the field and 
 living the life of the ascetic beggar in preference to a glorious 
 victory acquired through torrents of blood. Arjuna had for- 
 gotten that no asceticim and beggary could match the glory 
 of doing one's duty unselfishly "irrespectively of all prudential 
 worldly consideration." Sri Krishna therefore as seen in the 
 second chapter placed before Arjuna all considerations regard- 
 ing the nature of the true human entity, its incarnating process- 
 es, and the law of Karma that conduces to the best result out of 
 life. Sri- Krishna had called upon Arjuna to do his dnty irres- 
 pectively of the considerations of its fruit and had at the same 
 time advised him to take refuge in Budhi-Yoga as all knowers 
 do. The Teacher had said something from the Sankhya posi- 
 tion and a different thing apparently from the Yogic position 
 and Arjuna was not quite able to grasp how the two different 
 things one tending to drag the mind to the affairs of the 
 world and the other tending to abstract it therefrom could 
 be practiced by one and the same man. Arjuna felt certain 
 that the Teacher was for fighting but could not understand 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita f ' 113 
 
 why lie laid such a great stress on Budhi-Yoga which in the 
 opinion of Krishna was the path of the knowers. Arjuna 
 was confused and could not understand why his Teacher 
 would have him plunge into all the horrors of war in pref er- 
 ance to the Budhi-Yoga of his own praising, a Yoga that 
 could best be carried out by the asceticism for which he him- 
 self was inclined. 
 
 4. Under such circumstances, Sri-Krishna was asked by 
 Arjuna the reason of his contradiction and the teacher there- 
 upon felt it necessary to give detailed explanations concern- 
 ing the truth in the universe and the relation of the truth to 
 human life. He says that in the very first beginnings of 
 cosmic evolution, two great ways were revealed by him the 
 eternal true One in the universe, those ways being Sankhya 
 and Yoga. These two corresponding to thought and actioii 
 are in the opinion of the ancient philosophers inseparable, 
 thought being the spiritual aspect of action and action being 
 the physical aspect of thought. Spiritual and physical need 
 not be as they are to us but may be of the character of the 
 plane which is reached by a progressing entity. From what 
 1 have said it follows that there is no true yoga without a 
 ruling Sankhya counterpart and no true Sankhya without its 
 own life and expression known as action. The two are only 
 aspects of one thing just as Kapila and Narayana yogee are 
 only aspects of the one yogee in the lotus — Lord Bramha. 
 But if there is one thing in this world that has been com- 
 pletely forgotten and ignored in practice, it is this truth 
 about the inseparability of Sankhya and Yoga. In India, the 
 case is much worse than in Europe and the two never go 
 together in cases of people who want to go to higher states. 
 We consequently see a large number of people whom I may 
 call workers towards blankness, people who will sit still for 
 fifty years and yet not speak a word or move a finger in be- 
 half of their fellowmen. These I may call the rubbish on the 
 Sankhya side. There is a similar quantity of rubbish on the 
 yogic side made up of men who go on collecting and eating 
 plants, burning, themselves in fire to cook their bodies and 
 
114 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 make it invulnerable, muttering mantrams to charge them- 
 selves with dark lightnings and doing other things of the kind, 
 without knowing and caring about the truth in Nature and 
 themselves. Every true theosophical efEort that has been 
 made in the world, has been made to make people understand 
 their own natures, to explain the laws of karmic action and 
 the inseparability of Sankhyam & Togam by those who strive 
 higher. Sri Krishna the head of the theosophical effort that 
 ushered this Yugaof Kali into existence, had therefore to fight 
 against the evils of false and one sided philosophies and 
 therefore explains Yogam and Sankbyam separately and 
 subsequently combines them both with the statement that the 
 real seer is he who sees the two as but dual aspects of the one. 
 
 6. In consideration of the above facts, Sri Krishna says 
 that none can rise above the karmic wheel of Nature by 
 renunciation alone and what is called renunciation by the 
 men of the world is after all a myth. To act being the law 
 of life, it is impossible for any living entity to transcend the 
 law of his own being and he must act wherever he may live, 
 the lokas of light on high or the loka of terrestrial existence. 
 In the opinion of the true karma Yogees non-action is 
 synonymous with non-existence or complete annihilation and 
 the licentious liberty of working one's self out of existence 
 is not in Nature. A man therefore can but obey the law and 
 act and renunciation means but transference of the acting 
 energy from a lower plane to a higher one. If not active in 
 body, a man must be active mentally and the mental activity 
 forges for him chains sufficient to keep him for a lot of 
 incarnations. A sanyasi who renounces his home and seeks a 
 shelter in a forest seclusion only to think of the sweet 
 comforts left behind is even worse than the grihasta who 
 sticks to his home and does his duty to the family and the 
 world around. The mental ties are the same in both but the 
 sanyasi of home contemplation is guilty of having left the 
 wife husbandless and the children fatherless. This guilt 
 will not be left unwritten in the tablet of Nature and must in 
 time as incarnating processes roll on, bring the sanyasi to a 
 
Some thoughts on thb Gita. 113 
 
 ■worse plight than the quiet-going family mnn. If only the 
 family man will do his duties mentally keeping himself pure 
 and unselfish, desireless and indifferent to the enjoyment of 
 evanescent world boobies, he is a far greater man than the 
 Sanyasi and is from the stand-point of his morality a fit 
 student to even the world's greatest Masters. To him the 
 old Sanskrit saying r^fTUT^T ?f rT^sRij; "To the desireless man 
 bis own family home' is a hermitage" may be applied. 
 
 6. From tbe above you must not think, my friends, that 
 Sri-Krishna or anybody is against the sanyasam prescribed by 
 the great Law-giver Manu and then with the false idea, go on 
 denouncing the system or the individuals who represent that 
 system. While I am conscious of the fact that the major 
 portion of the representatives are not behaving admirably, 
 you and I must grant that there are exceptional instances of 
 the Sanyasa Dbarma carried out in practice. We must not de- 
 nounce the system set on foot by the ancient adept law- 
 givers in imitation of the great cosmic law that works from 
 the concrete to give strength to the abstract. As the 
 Bramhacharyam stage is the period which is best suited for 
 a man to be trained in thought word and act, Hke-wise, the 
 fourth and last quarter of the life is the one best fitted 
 for a man to renounce the cares of life with all its affections 
 and contemplate on the eternal realities. The ancient law- 
 givers prescribed Sanyasam for those who could take upon 
 themselves that sacred Dharmam to be practiced and I do, 
 not think it will be in the least just or in another mode of 
 expression theosophical to denounce especially the ancient 
 arrangements which if only practiced properly, will yield the 
 best results. The modern practice of spending all the time 
 up to the last moment of a man's existence, in "quips and 
 cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles"' 
 is decidedly much more injurious than the old system. The- 
 Teaoher of the BagavatvGita is an enemy of the Sanyasi of 
 the forest ever with a longing look and sigh towards the past, 
 but not of the gennine Sanyasi who thinks and teaches others., 
 to think. 
 
 7. To return to the Gita it may be asked if action be the 
 
11-6 Some thoughts on the Gita, 
 
 law of life and if action has a ka-rmio effect towards fixing a 
 man in the phenomenal network, how then can man escape 
 from bondage? To this the teacher says not aU action is 
 bondage. No Karma done unselfishly to promote Yagna, can 
 be a source of bondage. The couplet in which the Teacher 
 says this, is worth committing to memory. He says 
 
 ^ ^ #%q ^^^: ^^l"^ II 
 
 The world is fettered by karma other than to serve Yagna 
 and so do karma 0' Arjuna unselfishly (to serve that Yagna) 
 I think I have said enough on the subject of Yagna and need 
 not say more here. Yagna is cosmic evolution progressing 
 according to the law and every act done to promote that 
 yagna must be an act done to benefit the world at large and 
 keep it in a state of harmony. Even here a double aspect is 
 quite possible. The ancient philosophers divided yagna into 
 Nishkama and Sakama, or nou-kamic and kamic. The non- 
 kamic yagna is the process by which alone a man can attain 
 purity and work towards release. It is the expression which 
 the eternal thought pouring into him and illumining his being, 
 assumes, in its trial to establish itself in him. But if the 
 yajamana or the human ego that conducts the yagnam is 
 tainted by the remotest smell of Kama to have the fruit, the 
 yagna becomes kamic and the ego reaps as a consequence the 
 fruit of that yagna and goes after death to lokas of bliss 
 established in the yagnic body. After a proportionate enjoy- 
 ment, the ego returns again to the physical world for further 
 action and trial and this process is continued until the ego 
 attains a state of being so magnificently described in the 
 closing portions of the Seven Portals of H. P. B. The attain- 
 ment of that state of being is the goal that is pointed to by 
 Sri Krishna the Genius of that plane symbolized. All these 
 lokas of bliss that lie on the Negative pole of Nature from 
 Nirvana downwards, are collectively called by the word De- 
 vachan in Theosophioal writings. In this connection I beg 
 to recommend to your careful study the letters of Mahatma 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 117 
 
 K. H. quoted in Mr. Sinnetts' Esoteric Budhism and descri- 
 bing Devachan or Swarga. The various sections and siib- 
 sections of the Swargic subjective domain, are precisely the 
 lokas attainable by Sakamayagna. But though Sakama Yagnam 
 establisbed in karmic and kamic merit called Punyam is 
 very holy, it is nevertheless ahinderance to the entity working 
 up towards a plane absolutely non-kamic and hence it is said 
 that both Punyam and Papam or merit and demerit are hin- 
 derances. This has been taken by some people as a cover for 
 inaction but the fundamental keynote of true theosophic 
 teaching is the key-note of the Gita and that is act, act, act. 
 Act how? To render service to cosmic yagna, mentally in- 
 different to the blissful fruit of it. 
 
 8. It may be asked by some of my theosophical brothers, 
 how it is that the theosophical writings assign a place in 
 Swargam to almost every re-incarnating entity knowing 
 nothing of yagna and its processes. The reply is plain. There 
 is seldom a human entity that does not promote cosmic 
 yagnam by some acts at least in his life. It is not necessary 
 that one should be a Hindu and should have heard the words 
 yagnam and Swargam mentioned in ihe Hindu Veda, as a 
 qualification for swargam. This accentuation on words is the 
 worst enemy of right thought and should be got rid of by us 
 Hindus and especially by those of us who are theosophists. 
 Every man that is moved by pity at the sight of the poor in 
 our famine-stricken districts or in the streets of London and 
 New York and shows that pity in gentle alms distributing 
 work or in sweet soothing words, is thereby doing a yagnam: 
 in behalf of the Pitir devaa^ who have constructed the bodies 
 of the poor and the rich, the Hindu and the European. If you 
 will thinkj you win see that such a man is performing a yagnam. 
 Human bodily structure is the sacrificial ground. Food 
 is the holy offering, appetite is the fire in that ground, the 
 fingers are the priests and the soothing words are the Vedia 
 recitation. Compassion is the yagna-purusha, his own riches 
 form the sheeps of slaughter and human stability is the 
 sacrificial post to which that sheep is tied. Can any of us say 
 that such yagnam is not conducted outside of this karma- 
 
118 Some thoughts on the Gha. 
 
 bhoomi and if the reply is that such yagnam is conducted, 
 then it follows that the yagnic part of a man's karma takes 
 him to swargam -while the non-yagnic and selfish part of it 
 is disintegrated into the kamio elementals — the sides of the 
 blood- washing stream called Yaitarani flowing through the 
 domain of Kamaloka. The Hindu symbolizers say that when 
 after death, a human entity comes to a fix, on the banks of 
 this dreadful stream, the only power that comes to his help 
 and bears him right across is his own dharma and that takes 
 the form of the pure cow to bear him across. 
 
 9. To return then to the Gita, Sri Krishna says that 
 yagna was created along with the world's inhabitants as a 
 means by which the devas of the noumenal Nature and the 
 inhabitants of the physical Nature could keep themselves in 
 mutual action and reaction and support each other. It is the 
 cow of plenty that was brought into manifestation by the 
 creative Prajapati in order that man may milk the cow and 
 live by the milk. But if it be true that the milk-yielding' 
 cow must be fed and taken care of by the family, it is equal- 
 ly true that the Nature cow of plenty must be fed by the 
 world family or the human family. It is this metaphysical 
 idea that is conveyed by the statement that the Devas sup- 
 port men by granting all earthly fruits and that men please 
 the Devas by Tagna. There is not perhaps one single idea 
 of the ancient philosophy that carries such a tremendous 
 importance with it as this one, that Devas and men support 
 each other. If you have carefully considered my former 
 statement that men collectively form the brain of the yaonic 
 body you must have no difficulty ill understanding the present 
 statement. The thoughts, words and acts of the humanity 
 taken as a whole produce in toto the energy that works the 
 Karmic wheel of nature. If there be harmony among men 
 and if hence they act as members of one universal brother- 
 hood, each administering to the others, the physical nature 
 ruled over by such an exquisitely constituted brain must settle 
 down into a peace and order that is unknown at present ex- 
 cept in the Utopian imagination of some of our philosophers. 
 But, if each, man works for himself sayiijg "I care riot for 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 219 
 
 others" the human family gets split up into disintegrated 
 units actuated by all the forces like hatred and malice of the 
 ■domain of disharmony. We arrive at a state of things simi- 
 lar to that which holds in our time. The thought word and 
 act of man correlating with the several aspects of the 
 noumenal world introduce by their own disharmony a corres- 
 ponding nature of action therein. The old grand-mother 
 Nature who gets confused in her brain, becomes idiotic and 
 frenzied in , her movements. She often times starves her 
 children by droughts, kills them by plagues, kicks them with 
 earthquakes and does other freaks of the kind. The wise acre 
 philosophers of the earth unconscious of the fact that the 
 malady of their mother is nothing but her unhappiness in- 
 duced on her by the foolishness of her children, diagnose the 
 disease in all manner of ways. Administrations to supposed 
 personal gods with flesh and blood, cocoanut and plantain, 
 fill the land. As a remedial measure for all such evils, the 
 great teacher Sree Krishna calls upon men each to live a yag- 
 nic life, to love and work for others and thus preserve a har- 
 mony established in the land of the Devas. As nature feeds 
 an individual man, hkewise should be behave towards nature 
 ever looking to her law, ever cooperating in her work of pro- 
 gress from the innocence of humanity's infancy to the wis- 
 dom of her ripe old age. But those who wont thus co-operate 
 with natm-e at a sacrifice of their own selfishness are nature's 
 cheats in the phraseology of Sree Krishna. They are as said 
 by Him, no good in life and no loss in death. 
 
 10. My dear friends, what I have been saying about 
 Nature aud her frenzy, may appear to you as an outpour of 
 imagination but you must remember that this is the view of 
 the great ancient yagnikas who in their divine compassion for 
 the suffering ignorant human race, have revealed to them the 
 eternal ways of Nature's action and also male for man a sys- 
 tem of life that keeps perfectly with those ways and adminis- 
 ters to them. As man may be viewed as a compound of the 
 physical, pranic, kamic and manasic elements of the lower 
 quaternary structure dominated over by the real human en- 
 tity the angel incarnate, bo the whole Nature is also divisible 
 
120 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 into the four dominated over by the one harmony that guides 
 and gives the law to all those human angels. If you remem- 
 ber that the human quaternary correlates in thousands of ways 
 "with the cosmic quaternary, you can easily understand^that 
 the entire Nature under manifestation is a most complicated 
 net-work, joined on to and completely influenced by a world 
 of harmony — a world that belongs to the plane of the real 
 human entities. It follows that the character of afEairs below 
 in the net- work depends entirely upon how the lower Manas- 
 the shadow of the angel above — a shadow formed for evolu- 
 tionary purposes, behaves in and guides the net-work. If it 
 perceives the harmony of its master and learns that the mas- 
 ter is approachable only by ihe harmony of hfe known as the 
 practice of the idea of brotherhood and oneness or impersonal 
 life, the world must present a different spectacle to what it is 
 now, a ground of confusion with the passionate cries of kiU 
 and conquer, rob and enjoy. You please think deeply and 
 anxiously over the philosophy of the Bagvat Gita in relation 
 to the state of the world at large at the present moment and 
 see if there is any genuine relief possible to man except for 
 each of us to practice brotherly love, to work in co-operation, 
 to catch the inspiration that flows like a living sap in the 
 trunk branches twigs and leaves of the Theosophical tree 
 planted by the Masters and last of all to work in earnest to- 
 wards imparting aknowledgeof the Eternal verities in Nature 
 to the struggling masses, so that these masses worked on by 
 that knowledge into a discrimination between truth and false- 
 hood, the permanent and the evanescent may settle down in- 
 to peace and through that peace create rivers of honey and 
 milk. 
 
X. 
 
 1> My Dear Brothees 
 
 - I have informed you on a previous Sunday the fundamen- 
 tal importance, for a man to attain unto the truth, of knows; 
 ing what he is in relation to the world in which he lives. In; 
 shcfft a man must understand the nature of the wheel in which. 
 he is turned, ca/Ued in Sanskrit the wheel of Samsara. Thigt 
 latter word derived from the root Sru to move, indicates a^ 
 motion wheel or the great wheel of changing life in which the 
 human entities have been called upon to work and which must 
 never be abandoned out of compassion for man and in obedir' 
 ence to the law of oneness which connects the many, in then 
 opinion of all true yogees and Sri Krishna.. The Teachei?/ 
 gives the nature of the samsaric wheel in a certain peculia,r 
 way which deserves to be thought over by you all. He says 
 "all bhootas spring up from food and food from Parjanya or 
 rain. Rain comes out of yagna and yagna out of Karma,- 
 Karma is out of the Veda and Veda is of the Eternal." Here? 
 you see a Septenary gamut is given with the bhoota or manir: 
 fested form at one end and the eternal substance unmanifes-!- 
 ted to us at the other end. If we divide this seven accordinar 
 to the theosophical plan of a lower four dominated over by a 
 higher triads we get form, food, rain and yagna as the lower? 
 four and karma, Veda and eternal substance as the higher^ 
 triad. The eternal substance that pervades all space, worked 
 on by the world song and giving rise to all the laws of karma 
 that govern the development of the world, develops a lowe* 
 four and this four is started by yagna — the spirit of evolution 
 that connects the higher and lower or in Puranio fashion, the 
 spirit that seeks to add to the harmony of the unmanifested 
 by giving it a field of disharmony to. work upon and estaBlish 
 its own greatness. This spirit of yagna in its way to produce 
 the manifested form gives rise to Paa^janya or rain. The word 
 Parjanya is applied to rain and often times to a spirit whose 
 ■function is to produce rain. It may be called the spirit of 
 
122 SOMB THOUOflTS ON THE GiTA. 
 
 exudation, for, in many places in the npanishads rain is des- 
 cribed as the exudation or sweat of the Yagna-Purusha. 
 
 2. This is the most objective aspect of the Samsaric 
 •wheel and I shall not go on trying to explain it since stich 
 explanation will be a grinding of the already ground flour and 
 unnecessary if you consider over it in the light of all I have 
 said already. 'Lord Krishna says that it is imperative, if a 
 man is not to make of himself a lost sinner, for him to follow 
 the working of this samsaric wheel in which so many millions 
 of entities are being turned. This is the yogic position of the 
 man who wants to strive higher and know the truth and live 
 for it. The Sankhya aspect of such a man is given by the 
 Teacher as one of perfect indiilerence so far as any worldly 
 enjoyment is concerned and consequently independence as 
 regards his own true interests which may be said to lie on the 
 atmic plane and hence incapable of being served by worldly 
 things. In combination of this Sankhya mental status and 
 yogic action, Sri Krishna says "work on O' Arjuna, ever 
 doing your duty to the world and at the same time estranged 
 from all desire and it is only such an unselfish worker that 
 attains unto the supreme goal." Now my friends let us call 
 such a man who works unselfishly for the world and mentally 
 works himself up towards wisdom, a Nishkama Karma-yogee 
 or true yogee, so that whenever the name is mentioned, itmay 
 be associated with Sankhya, yoga, yagna and the like. In the 
 opinion of Sri Krishna the path of the true yogee is the path 
 trodden by all the great souls of the past. The great Eaja- 
 rshi Janaka the teacher and initiator of even ancient Bram- 
 hins trod the same path, the path that is traced on the field 
 of human evolution towards the Truth and why not Arjuna 
 and other strugglera tread the path of the world's ancients? 
 
 3. There is one other reason why Arjuna and other 
 intelligent men of his class should work in the human field 
 along the path traced out by ancient wisdom and that reason 
 may be called the power of example and the influence which 
 an intelligent man carries with him whether consciously or 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 123 
 
 uiiconsciously. If human existence is a network and if no 
 man can move in the network without making lot of others 
 feel the motion and its consequences, then it follows that a 
 man wh.o has raised himself above his neighbours by his own 
 good qualities and intelligence, has a special responsibility 
 on account of his special position. Every move of his ia 
 the net carries with it a far reaching consequence on the 
 people under his influence and it is therefore a matter of duty 
 for the man to know the law, the why and wherefore of human 
 evolution, and so mould his behaviour that it may producer 
 the best results. The behaviour of such a man is an example 
 to others and of course great must be the karmic penalty of 
 people who occupying the proud position, of exemplars and 
 teachers, neverthless retain the poison of selfishness in tbem 
 and will not guide their followers and students in the right 
 groove of thought and action. Sri Krishna states that no 
 height of spiritual perfection aind wisdom that can be attained 
 by a man can in the least degree secure for him, if he treads 
 the path of the world's ancients, release from karmic res- 
 ponsibility increasing in proportion to a man's, spiritual per- 
 fection. He points out to himself the world's highest Angel 
 and says "There is nothing in the three worlds Arjiina 
 that I have not already attained and that I have yet to strive 
 after but yet I remain in the path of Karma. If for a moment, 
 I the world's greatest Guru take to the path of inaction,- then 
 all men will take the example and work it and as a result, tho 
 world's affairs will fall iato confusion andTgnorant hybrid 
 pedants will be born to destroy the morality of all men. I 
 therefore work incessantly and why not you do similarly 
 Arjuna." 
 
 4. fn connection with this advice to do work incessantly 
 in behalf of man's welfare physical, mental or spiritual as the 
 case may be, the Teacher gives one piece of advice that de- 
 serves to be thoroughly thought over by all Hindoos and theo- 
 sopHists and that advice is "You do not introduce confugioa 
 in the world's way of thought but do stick up to the way aa^, 
 &6t as that action may lead to a happier result. Th^e fool and. 
 
124 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 thie wise differ not in the mode of action so miicli as in the 
 iaeiita], counterpart of the action, the fool actuated by desire 
 fed the wise quite free from it." I think this is a most ex- 
 cellent advice for us to follow in every department of pur 
 %prk for man, if only, we steadily bear in mind the good re- 
 sult aimed at and intelligently introduce the necessary minu- 
 ifeiae of training work in tlie great streams of human thought 
 and ?iction. Excepting the cases of men who have served as 
 reservoirs for higher influences and who have consequently 
 Tburst the launds and deluged the surrounding lands at junc- 
 tures of world cycles, I think it is a matter of doubt if ever 
 radicals produced any good results for the happiness 
 of mankind. Applying this idea to the case of the 
 Thepsophical society and its workers in India, the best 
 course to be followed is to understand India as it is at present 
 as regards its religious traditions and practices and then so 
 move the Indian thought in its relation to these traditions and 
 practices from the standpoint of the theosophical Hght, that 
 that motion may aidtowards abetter dawn when the next 5000 
 years' cycle begins. In the first place it will be well to under- 
 stand that the object of the Theosophical society is not the 
 satisfaction of any individual aspirations but a steady work 
 towards the amelioration of humanity in the department of 
 humanity's, spiritual interests. I need scarce touch upon the 
 karmic law that each man rises in the scale in proportion to 
 his earnest efforts in the right direction and so no man needs 
 to be very solicitous in his own behalf, since that is sure to 
 be looked to by karma and Those who have identified them- 
 selves with its operation. Each member of the Theosophical 
 society ought to care most only for the question of how he 
 may work so that he may produce the best result on the pub- 
 lic inind and make it alive to the reality of ancient Brainha- 
 Vidya and the scientific necessity of a moral course of be- 
 haviour for the future well being of the human race. The 
 most important thing is to live the Theosophical life or as we 
 may call it the yagnic life, for, without that everything els0 is 
 useless. To talk supreme wisdom and to behave in the mean- 
 •est -v^ay is a policy that ought to be carefully aVoidedT)^^ 
 
Some thoughts on thS Gita. i25 
 
 ThebSophistS though that policy is the favourite one of pur- 
 suit to most of our Indian agitaters. Combined with this life 
 there ought to be toleration towards the ways of the world 
 especially iii a country like India having a special connection 
 with the Mahatmic brotherhoods on account of its being the 
 Karma bhoomi of this yuga. It is a note-worthy thing ihsLt 
 during a long course of life, word and act H. P. B. has not 
 dropped one solitary remark in condemnation of the acharams 
 or modes of behaviour sei; on foot by the ancient Bramhans. 
 On, the other, hand a numerous array of passages, defending 
 them and extolling the great men who set them on foot nnay 
 be selected from her writings. . _ , 
 
 5, ' Under the above circumstances suppose a TheosOphist 
 puffed up with lot of words Selected from tho Secret Doctrine 
 and Isis unveiled, goes on with a preaching on Fohat and 
 Karma and takes! every available opportunity of abusing the 
 Bramhans who stick up though blindly to the ancient mOdel 
 of life. Suppose our declaimer to cry down the sacred duty 
 of Sandhya Vandana or the duty of morning bath, prayer and 
 mantric recitation, so much insisted upon iby our ancient Law 
 givers and what do you think will bo the result? The result 
 can be nrothihg else than lot of harm to the declaimer and the 
 Theosophical society so ill served by him. But instead of this 
 ignorant; declamation- suppose a real energized Theosophist 
 well riead- in theosophical writings, to take upon himself the 
 duty of theosophical work. He would instead of this decla- 
 mation explain to the world the unsuspected magic properties 
 of cold water bath in the morning combined with a concentra- 
 tion of mind on the true light in the world in contrast with 
 the darkness &c &e. This process will infuse a spirit of life 
 into things pursued on blind faith and also induce lot of others 
 who spend the refreshing hours of the morning in feverish 
 dreamy imaginations, to get up and be brisk and do the things 
 which he deems fit to be done at the time. Such useful work 
 done by lot of men in ,ihe fourfold departments of spiritual, 
 inentali socialand physical problems of lif e^ will after a reason- 
 able period X)f work -make' a large iiumber of men apprecia^ 
 
126 SOMB THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA 
 
 bly better and thus the karmic status of humanity will be 
 improved. The Theosophical society will then have done its 
 function and the victors in her cause may then look to a 
 wreath of laurels and not until then. On these lines of policy 
 Sri Krishna calls upon Arjuna to swim with the world^s cur- 
 rent and dissolve in that current as much of perfume as he 
 could create by the unselfish tone of his own life. 
 
 6. After thus placing before Arjuna the immeasurable 
 importance of living an unselfish life in the ways of men, the 
 Teacher gives the secret of Yagnic life, a secret without the 
 understanding and practice of which no progress towards tlie 
 Truth is possible and escape from the karmic fruit of pleasure 
 and pain. I do not know if that secret life is realizable at the 
 present moment by any large number of men turned as they 
 are in the great whirlpool of fleshly sensation and hfe, some 
 pitiably screaming forth under the influence of the horrid 
 nightmare and others dancing in joy to the Bachanaalian scmg 
 thit tries to ravish the human ear and hold man under its 
 spell. To live in the body and yet out of it is a saying that 
 has to be thoroughly understood before a man can understand 
 the sublime philosophy of the Bagavat Gita and the "Voice of 
 Silence" audit is the same thing that is referred to by Sri Krishna 
 in the saying "it is the fool alone inebriated by Ahancara that 
 thinks he is the doer of karma brought about by Prakritic 
 giiiias." To catch an idea of the position, the real human ego 
 or jiva must be looked upon as something quite distinct from 
 the body in which that ego is called upon to live or as a bird 
 of infinity living in bodies capable of conditioning time by 
 their own natures. We all of us can remember epochs in our 
 lives when we were forced to look down upon our bodies as 
 evanescent bubbles of motion, such as when we attend dleath- 
 beds and other natural processes, impressing the human mind 
 with the real transient nature of all things down below. On 
 such occasions the mind aspires to its own true nature, the 
 sensational lower centres being ashamed to sing their usual 
 notes in the very presence of powers that give the liei to them. 
 It may even happen that one looks upon hioiself as an angel 
 of light tied down to a shadow or a Promotheua preyed upon 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 127 
 
 by vultures or as a "beam of light immaculate within and a 
 foriti of elay upon the lower surface." When, in this state of 
 complete estrangement of the human entity from objects of 
 the senses, a man does any earthly business, he feels that 
 he does that business as a matter of duty and law of life 
 and not because he likes to do it for the sake of per- 
 sonal pleasure. If for example a man eats under the 
 above mental conditions, the manasic entity in him begins to 
 look doMm upon the eating process as an act of the bodily 
 beast devouring things as do boa constructors of the wilderness. 
 The beast can not only eat but laugh and talk and sing and 
 hear and all the while the human ego feels the position of 
 Master holding the strings of life and making the beast dance 
 and enjoy as do some of our Indian beggars with the active 
 monkeys dressed for the purpose. 
 
 7. This complete estrangement of the Master from the 
 beast he is called upon by the eternal karmic law to associate 
 with, is one of the essentials of yagnic life made to work back 
 towards the True fountain of life. It is the essence of yagnic 
 life. Another most important thing is a perennial flow of 
 cheerfulness in doing even unpleasant duties for the good of 
 mankind. There ought to be nothing of that gloom that over- 
 shadows the witness of a funeral and that estranges by its 
 own power the Manasic ego from the body. The yagnika and 
 true, theosophist ought to "be of good cheer and bear in mind 
 the golden rule." He ought to bear in mind that He is an 
 invulnerable fort that cannot be affected by all the world's 
 enemies combined as said in the second Chapter of the Baga- 
 vat Gita. Changes can affect the lands of the shadowy and 
 changing but have no power over things that belong by their 
 own nature to the domain of changeless truth. Fortified by 
 this discrimination between truth and falsehood and by the 
 steady flow of cheer that each has to realize for himself and 
 not debase by an attempt at description, the yagnika and 
 theosophist can do the earthly duties as all our brethren do 
 and yet remain in the iand of the Eternal. He can eat as all 
 eat but the eating -^s no power to forge a chain for hiiii. He 
 
128 Some thoughts on the Gita> ■^" 
 
 eats only that the body may be preserved, for, the body in th^ 
 case of the generality of men is the fundamental Eoirce of 
 Dharma as said in the statement m'K W^ ^ ^^ISW.- 
 Excepting the cases of the world's Masters, the body is the 
 only machine through which one can work actively for opfehers; 
 and so it ought to be most carefully kept clean as is dictated 
 for the yagnikas or Bramhins, in our Smritis or cpdes of, 
 legislation. The Body is therefore the Dharma kshetjam pi, 
 our Poaranikas and is the Dharma kshetram referred to in 
 the very first sloka of the Bagavat. Gita.' On a larger. ;scp,le, 
 the earth on which we live called Bharata Yarsha is the 
 Dharma kshetram for aU._ humanity and it is heje:that ihe 
 great battle of Maha Bharata is to be fought. In the light cSf 
 what I have said, you please think over the form in which 
 Bramhins are supposed to move when eatingj The Bramhan 
 or what is meant by it a yagnika, whatever a modern Bram- 
 hin may mean, is supposed to eat not because he wants to 
 enjoy the pleasure of it but he looks upon eating as a part of 
 th^ great yagna of life which he is called upon to perfdrna. 
 Eating is therefore a yagnic ceremony with him though the 
 statement may rouse a laugh in those who look upon the' drn? 
 ner table and refreshment room as the main source object and 
 end of existence. It is a process by which a minor machine 
 of man's body is enabled to keep itself as a part of the objec- 
 tive nature and contribute as far as it lies in its power, to- 
 wards the stability and well being of the whole. Eating is 
 therefore a Pranahuti or an offering to the fire of objective 
 life which sustains the five pranas or vital airs in imitation of 
 the abstract five airs that serve to construct what is called 
 the dodecahedron of the universe. . ^ * 
 
 8, To return now to the Gita^ Sri Krishna callg iippn hia 
 student iiot merely tq live in the bpdy ai^d yj^t abov^ it but 
 also to identify his self, with Himself the Absolute Self und 
 Purusha of the universe, having the eternal light orim^ffer-? 
 gntiated cosmic substainqe , as _th9i body an^ cosmic, hiws ol 
 evolution as the laws of lifqor atssolute thought. I ha^e thready 
 inforined you that every human ego J^ a J^ay o^f the^iftmani; 
 
Some thoughts on tee (jita. 
 
 feated Logos or Sri Krishna in its inmost triitli. As tte heart 
 is the centre of all life in the human body being -the centre 
 of all circulatory energy, likewise Sri Krishna or the absolute 
 Purusha the spirit of the one in the universe or, the spirit of 
 the universal heart seeks to manifest himself through the 
 many (one and many incapable of existence separately) a,nd 
 in the process of circulation thus set on foot by the spirit 
 of the many, each human centre is a crystalized ray of the 
 absolute One that has worked through processes of evolution 
 into what is known as a human being. The spirit qi the 
 One is the absolute Yagna— Pursha and is the yajamana of 
 universal yagna and similarly each human ray is the yaja- 
 manaof the yagna that is condiictable by itself and that fornis 
 part of the universal yagna. Each man therefore that is 
 anxious to live a yagnic life must therefore in every motion 
 of his sphere bear the consciousness that the centre of that 
 sphere is a ray of and one with the centre of the universal 
 sphere. Each human being is therefore a messenger of the 
 Eternal true Purusha and since every motion of man must be 
 a motion of the messenger and service done unto the master, 
 Sri Krishna is particular to lay a stress'on this mental atti- 
 tude of humility and you may know the ancient statement 
 that the Truth is reserved for the humble in heart. This is 
 the most important aspect of Bramharpana karma or karma 
 done to Bramha. This is the thread by which alone a man is 
 able to raise himself to the true existence of the world's eter- 
 nal yagnikas, human entities who though free from all tamt 
 of desire neverthless conduct yagna to lead men along the law 
 to the pinnacle of the golden mount. 
 
 9. There is one other point that Lord Krishna touches 
 upon and that point is well worthy of consideration by all of 
 us. Fiading that Arjuna had considered the profession of 
 the ascetic Bramhin beggar as preferable to the profession of 
 a Kshatriya involved as it is with the shedding of blood on 
 the field of battle, the Teacher says "one's own profession is 
 the best for him though it may appear as void of good when 
 compared with another. It is preferable to die in the dis- 
 
130 Sgme thoughts on the GtIta.- 
 
 cTiarge of that own profession and the embiiace of a new on& 
 is fraught with dangers." In the light of the truth that it is. 
 not the act but the mode of act that binds a man tarmieally 
 and produces the world's pains and pleasures, the pfesen-fe 
 statement is easily understandable. The Kshatriya is as int' 
 portant for the-worJd's wellbeing as a Bramhin and these two 
 cannot stand alone without the Vysya and the Sudra. The 
 entire world of various nationalities each with its own charac- 
 teristic subdivisions recognized and ujarecognized, may be 
 considered as the crystallization of the world song of the 
 Veda — the speech of the Absolute. Each nationality has its 
 own peculiar function to perform and each section in that 
 nationality has got its own function too. To return to our 
 own country India, each caste is absolutely indispensable for 
 the wellbeing of the whole and all the four castes a,re in the 
 same relation to the centre of the square — the Mahatmic tree 
 of wisdom in one sense, the Yajamana or the true human ego 
 in another sense — ^the true ego belonging to the domain of the 
 Mahatmas in strict truth. Considering the four castes as four 
 plots of gBTOund in the garcjen interdependent and contribut- 
 ing to the strength of the whole, it follows that the harmony 
 and strength of the whole is produced not by each caste man 
 looking to his fellow in a neighbouring plot and saying "O! 
 You are better than I" but by each man throwing all the 
 energy he has into his legitimate work in perfect contentment 
 and if possible iu the light of the higher teaching which says- 
 "the duties of caste belong to the sphere of the shadow and 
 he who does his duty in hfe in perfect obedience to the law 
 of karma, is in a line which rises higher than the caste." A 
 Sudra who does his duty according to the law and in the 
 light of the higher teaching is equally welcome to the Master 
 as a Bramhin who does his function. Likewise a Sudra who 
 teaches a false science like "drink a seer of arrack and put a 
 grain of opium in the mouth and work your brain upwards 
 and then you wiU see man ! a ray of Lord Siva" and the 
 Bramhin who behaves in the thought "I am a bramhin and 
 that man is a stupid Sudra" are both of them banes to society 
 and its happiness. AH disharmony in the caste arrangement 
 
Some THOUGHTS on the Gita. 131 
 
 and coiiseqneht unhappiness are the consequences of an iuten- 
 sitj of life introducedin the lower half of man simultaneously 
 with a weakness of pulse in the higher half. No social pro- 
 blems can be satisfactorily solved unless the solution begins 
 from the land of harmony and makes a higher light work in 
 man and guide all his aspirations. A solution that ignores 
 all higher light and aims at simple adjustments of terrestrial; 
 things cannot last long and is sure to manifest its weakness 
 during its application. 
 
 10. As castes are within the pale of the old Hindu reli- 
 gions science, likewise are religions within the entire world- 
 thought. On considerations analagous to what I have given 
 above, it will ,be plain that the day of man's, contentment and 
 peace is the day when each religious body will work out the 
 ethics of his religion in practice and seek for the higher light 
 among the custodians of the true science of life and the com- 
 mon foundation of all religions — the ancient Bramha Vidya or 
 the modern, theosophy., A Christian who works in such a 
 land as this and seeks to replace Krishna by Christ is doing 
 much more harm than good and you please, my friends, think 
 over and appreciate the wisdom of the ancient Bramhans who 
 said "let there be , no conversion to Hinduism." Let us note 
 with some satisfaction that no propagation of Hindu religion 
 in foreign countries has as yet induced national wars and hat- 
 reds with bloodshed. In consideration of the fact that tqI\->, 
 gions are after all only forms of thought with forms, of" be- 
 haviour made to guide .men and that the true science qf 
 Nature is superior to all such forms and the common trunk 
 that bears up all religious branches, Sri- Krishna: says — "Your 
 own Dharma even apparently void of good is better than 
 another's is for you." He who changes from one form of 
 Dharma for another mistakes form for substance and such 
 mistakes may eventually rednce him to a bad plight as ai"^ ■ 
 notoriously some of our Indian religious fanatics. 
 
 11. On hearing the words of Sri- Krishna, words whibh 
 laid an intense stress on gurrender of personal differentiatioa 
 
132 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 kama and thouglit, Arjuna apparently struck deep with the 
 wisdom of the speech and feeling intuitively the nobility and 
 grandeur of the man who makes the surrender, grows anxious 
 to hear his Teacher explain how at all such difierentiations 
 with all the fort-holds for sin came into existence, to guide 
 man's destinies. The Teacher traces it to Kama, the treache- 
 rous principle by which the whole earth is pervaded as fire 
 by smoke and glass by mist. It is the great child of Bajo- 
 guna in Prakriti — and the world's great glutton, who is un- 
 appeasible and grows voracious in proportion as he is appeased. 
 It is the great enemy of man in his progress towards the 
 Truth and has the power of clouding his spiritual perception. 
 As is usual with every manifestation, this kama has got a 
 seven-aspected constitution made up of the five senses, the 
 manas and Budhi. Kama misguides Budhi and produces an 
 innate conviction the very reverse of the conviction of all 
 spiritually regenerated men, that each man is a separate unit 
 and has got his own course to follow irrespectively of the 
 courses followed by other men. This is called ahancara the 
 sixth element enumerated in Sanscrit writings, called also 
 Bhootadi or origin of Bhootas in Vishnu Purana 2nd Adhyaya. 
 After producing thus an illusive separation of one entity from 
 another as regards their common interests, kama acts on the 
 plane of the mind and produces all sorts of desires and tastes 
 varying slightly or more with each individual man. "With the 
 great Master mind as its slave, kama then operates on the 
 senses as is the experience of all humanity. The Budhi- 
 Manasic kama is the feeder of the Swarga loka, the Kama- 
 Manasic kama' is the feeder of the Bhuvarloka and the Kama 
 associated with the senses is the vehicle of life with the vast 
 majority of people. Now Bhooloka, Bhuvar-loka and swarga- 
 loka being the three aspects of the conditioned existence 
 known as Samsara, it is apparent that man should trace kama 
 to its very root and take off his sting. The Teacher there- 
 fore says "know 01 Arjuna the nature of that which lies 
 beyond Budhi and knowing that impersonal secret conquer 
 with all your might the mighty foe of Kama." 
 
XL 
 
 Dear brothers. 
 
 From what you heard last Sunday, you iniist hate tn- 
 derstood at least dimly, what sort of life is recommended to 
 a man who wants to scale the heights of spiritual perfection 
 and to find out the Truth and to live in it as Sri Krishna is, 
 ever working for man and guiding the wheel of human desti- 
 nies and at the same time quite free from the power for plea- 
 sure and pain that Karma exercises over the ordinary human 
 being. You know I have been calling it Yagnic life for the 
 reason that it is a life of sacrifice of the one to the many com- 
 bined with a sacrifice of tho personal to the individual — the 
 latter ever being raised and kept at oneness with the univer- 
 sal one or the logos or Eswara. The first sacrifice of the one 
 to the many compels the student to ever work for man and 
 his redemption from sorrow. The second one of the person* 
 al to the individual, compels him to renounce his delight in 
 worldly things and to stick up to them only that he may do 
 his duties for others. The third one of the individual to 
 the logos is a dhyanic attempt at rising to the one Truth, 
 which attempt culminates in its fruition, in an inseparability 
 of the one ego from the many egos left behind in the dark 
 and also from the spiritual Sun of truth, darting its glory 
 right into his face through the veil of Avyakta. In the beau- 
 tiful phraseology of the Bible, the human ego in this state 
 is the lamp not covered over by a bushel. This lamp emits 
 not the rays of the flesh but rays of mental light to illumin- 
 ate all humanity and is therefore the channel of Alaya as said 
 in the 'seven Portals.' The rays of mental light assist all 
 humanity in humanity's mental growth and expansion and 
 the lamp is therefore one of the eternal world Bramhins. It 
 gives light unto the world but takes nothing that the world 
 can give and it is a Yiragee. It renounces not the things of 
 the world alone but even Nirvanic bliss, the essence of Amb- 
 rosia said to be enjoyed by the Devas anditis therefore a per- 
 
lo-l. So:\rE THOUGHTS ox THE GiTA. 
 
 feet Sanyasee. It is crystalized gnyana essence and it is a 
 Bodhisatwa. In short it is the ultimatum of human evolution 
 syrabohzable by the equation 2 = 1+], for the two is only one 
 made to appear as two, all ones in the universe being con- 
 nected by the spirit of co-ordination or the impartial spirit 
 called the ultimate Purusha or the unmanifested thought. ] t 
 is the state of the one and yet many a state in Avhich Sri. 
 Krishna lives in all and all live in him. If T am not thoroughly 
 mistaken, it is the state intended to be conveyed by the word 
 Nirmanakaya in the Theosophical works. Wow the three 
 sacrifices that I have mentioned are but three aspects of 
 Yagna and collectively form the true Yoga by which alone a 
 man can rise. It is a trite remark in India that magical 
 plants grow in our A^ery streets unrecognized as such and to 
 me it appears that this remark is equally applicable to Yoga. 
 The occultly inclined portion of the world seems to me to be 
 mad after Yoga. The Hindu nurtured in the old school and 
 laboring under a mistaken idea that physical service done to 
 a Master will raise him to the pinnacle of the golden mount 
 is sighing out "0! for a Master whom I can serve and who 
 will throw an auspicious glance ou my poor self". He thinks 
 that Yoga is but a trick which the Master vsrill not reveal to 
 those who have not done physical service to Him. The 
 American and the European are equally under this wrong 
 infatuation when they cry out "Bring me more translation on 
 Yogic life by authors on Yoga". They do not seem to sus- 
 pect even the blazing gold edifice that lies in works already 
 translated and available in American and European book- 
 shops. 'All Raja Yogic truths required to be known by a true 
 theosophist who wants to know and live, are already there in 
 the two works Mann Smriti and Bagavat Gita not to mention 
 the writings of H. P. B. 
 
 2. Sri Krishna therefore calls the process of Yagnic life 
 that he has been giving out to Arjuna as Yoga (1st Sloka 4th 
 Chr.) In fact, Yoga and Yagna are very closely allied and 
 even inseparable, though at the present day people seem to 
 disconnect the two. Yoga derived from the root Yuj to join 
 means an act of joining. Now as the heart is the great centre 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. i3& 
 
 H.M.a 
 
 in man, likewise tlie Yogee^ of tbe iieart teeps his central 
 position in the universe and hence his individuality. The in- 
 dividuality or the Higher Manas being the pivot of the 
 human constitution or the centre on which two hemi&phereS 
 of higher and* lo-wer e:sistence turn as I have already saidj,. 
 the Yogee of the heart has a heavenly dome above and earthly 
 abyss below and his yoga becomes two-fcjld as a conseqwence.. 
 He joins himself on to the thing above in dhyana and the 
 thing below in action. The word yagna derived from the 
 root Yaj=to serve also means a two fold service, service don© 
 to the thing above through service done unto its expression 
 the thing below. That is Bramparpana karma so ill under- 
 stood now because Bramham is personalized but very well 
 said in the ordinary saying "he who giveth to the poor 
 lendeth to the Lord." You cannot, my dear friends, think 
 either too often or too much on this. noble idea of Brampar- 
 pana Karma; for if this land is to be elevated at all, in any 
 sense of the word, it can be only if the intelligent sons of our 
 country catch up the aroma of this central essence of thought 
 and life and perfume the country in undying waves of action. 
 No amount of agitation politically, socially and intellectually 
 can be of the least good in case these agitations are not set 
 on foot from the heart of morality called Bramharpana life 
 and if this heart be too weak or totally wanting, as I am 
 sorry to state is now the case, all changes must be premature 
 births of a-cardiac monstrous children destined but to increase 
 the world's already suflB.cient unhappiness. This karma based 
 on the three sided sacrifice I have referred to above, is the 
 key-note of the Bagavat Gita and hence the Gita has recom- 
 mended itself to every thinking mind and extorted praise 
 even from owe christian Padris — a praise quite apparent from 
 the statement though absurd, that the Gita is an off- shoot of 
 the Bible. It is because the note of unselfish service to God 
 and man permeates the teaching of the Gita through and 
 through, some people have begun to say that the Gita is to be 
 the future Bible of the world. However that may be, the 
 philosophy of the Gita is the only thing that can knit together 
 the xmloving and quarrelling members of the human family 
 and make them all live in peace and fraternal love. 
 
136 Some thoughts on the Cita. 
 
 3 k To return to the subject on hand, Sri Efishna Says that 
 the yoga that he taught to Arjuna Wad the world^s most 
 ancient heritage. It originated from Krishna himself the 
 Lord of yoga as Pouranikas call him and came down in succe* 
 ssion to the Rajarshees "who ruled the earth thousands of 
 ages ago and disappeared along with them the custodians in 
 the mighty course of time. Lord Krishna refers to the most 
 ancient origin of the doctrine of yoga, merely to recommend 
 it with a special force to the attention of Arjuna, for accord- 
 ing to Sri Krishna and all other Indian teachers and traditions, 
 what is ancient is likely to be much more valuable than what 
 is modern. This respect for ancient wisdom will be fully 
 understood by you in proportion as you think on the view of 
 world — evolution that has been put forth by the ancients. 
 Y<'"hile the modern dates all civilization, all thought and all 
 philosophy from a comparatively recent period, the Pouranic 
 philosophers will take it back to a remote ancientness that 
 surpasses all our dreams and that is connected with the time 
 in which we live by a series of curves all merging into and 
 forming one grand stream of time. The philosophy of 
 truth may be compared to a sun which is caught up 
 and reflected at every point of the stream but the 
 clearness with which the true light ig caught up and 
 reflected varies with the character of the waters that form 
 the reflecting surface. But as a stream set on foot by the 
 crystal waters on a mountain side gathers more and more 
 dirt and mud as it flows on and becomes most dirty and most 
 agitated at its month into the ocean, like- wise does the stream 
 of human life physical and mental, flow on from a crystalUne 
 purity in the early beginning of a Yuga to akamically agitated 
 and spiritually clouded state during its last stage — the yuga of 
 kali in which we live — the yuga which produces the worst 
 types of man and consequently tries the strength of its 
 spiritual workers and gives them a strength in the spiritual 
 side capable of lifting them to higher planes of life, as said in 
 the sentence 
 
 ^^t^ v#sq^ riKf^UT MiHUU; ( 
 
Some xnoucUTa on tue Gita. 137 
 
 "It is the yuga of Kali that produces men of devotion to the 
 service of Lord Naray ana". This sentence has been caught 
 hold of by men in the wrong ways of the world to justify 
 their own peculiaritif s but as I have pointed out the sentence 
 iias reference to the law of relation of opposites. That 
 part of our yuga in which the early purity and innocence best 
 asserted itself is the Bramhacharyam stage in which powers 
 of the heaven lived on earth Avith the human infants and did 
 their paternal duties of teaching the infants and giving them 
 an initial evolutionary impulse in the right direction. It ia 
 this period I think that is under reference by Lord Krishna 
 and Ikshwaku is the head of the line of Rajarshees in the 
 Solar line enumerated in the Sanskrit writings. Now 
 Ikshwaku and other king-initiates who came after him have 
 for their great Guru, Manu, who is the progeny of 
 Vivaswan or the sun. 
 
 4. This statement that Mann is born of the sun is one 
 that has had its own share of ridicule from the thoughtless 
 Hindoosand so it is well to inform you that by the word sun 
 the ancient philosophers meant not a globe of burning matter 
 but what is indicated by the expression solar angel in Tlieo- 
 sophical writings. The sun was said by them to be ^Jj^if^RT 
 or self luminous and by H. P. B. as a lens by which the un- 
 manifested light that pervades millions of solar systems, is 
 caught up and passed out in a manifested form to serve as 
 the vehicle of development to our solar system. The solar 
 essence that we may cognize and call light is the seventh 
 aspect of the manifested light and the highest aspect of what 
 we may conceive the physical to be. Solar angels are therefore 
 entities of a high spiritual order — with a refined conscious- 
 ness that corresponds to the material substance in which they 
 are clothed. In order to connect this with what I have said 
 already, you may consider the solar angels as collectively for- 
 ming the Lord Bramha of the lotus isle. The angels are 
 called by various names as planetary spirits, Asuras &c but 
 in order to get a proper idea of their nature, you inay consider 
 them as standing in the same relation to the spiritually rege- 
 nerated and released world Brainhins or the Nirmauakayaa 
 
138 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 as these stand to the ordinary humanity. The angels were 
 such Bramhins in previous Mahamanwantarms, who spent 
 those enormous periods in suffering and toil for the sake of 
 rearing wisdom in the world and hence they emerged as angels 
 from the infinite womb of Aditi under their karmic impulsj 
 after a period of Mahapralaya, These angels being the first 
 breaths out of the unmanifested logos or Sri Krishna are said 
 to draw the Yogic life from him at the dawn of creation and 
 naturally enough Sri Krishna says he taught them. Now my 
 friends Sri Krishna as every thing else can symbolize four 
 different things standing in a line and coiTesponding to the 
 four matras of the sacred Om. He is the unmanifested logos 
 the universal heart. He is again solar angels spiritually or 
 Nirmanakaya existence psychically or the human higher 
 Manas physically and it is left for you to make the proper 
 identifications as you progress through the Gita. The solar 
 angels are the inspirers of Nirmanakayas and Rajarshees and 
 so the Gita says that that the sun taught Manu and the 
 Rajarshees. Again the word Manu indicates either the entire 
 thinking humanity or the central figure of the adept existence 
 on the psychic plane that gives the law to the human exis- 
 tence down below on the plane of man during a specific cycle 
 of 1 Yuga or 71 Yugas that constitutes a minor manwantarm 
 referred to by our Pouranikas. 
 
 5. To come to the consideration of the Gita, the whole 
 poem will yield a consistent meaning if we identify Arjuna 
 and Krishna with the principles known as Lower Manas and 
 Higher Manas in Theosophical writings. These two are as- 
 pects of one and the same thing and so Sri Krishna is going 
 to say in the 10th chapter that He is Arjuna among the 
 Pandavas. The reason assigned by Sri Krishna for his in- 
 culcating the yogic doctrine to Arjuna is that Arjuna is his 
 Bhakta or one devoted to his service. The Lower Manas 
 principle being the one that the vast majority of men are 
 identified with, it follows that the yogic doctrine becomes a 
 reality and its realization a possibility only to a man who is 
 constantly devoted to the service of his Master or whose mind 
 constantly loans towards its own parent, the higher Manas. 
 
Somt: thoitghts on the Gita. 139 
 
 If there be no such leaning at all, then all the yo^ic, Pnranic 
 Vedic and other theosophical writings, must turn out per- 
 fectly useless to such a man. The yogic doctrine as the great 
 Lord says is ^^^q; or occult and 3'rlfT'5[ or superior, that is, per- 
 tains to a man's superior nature that is occult to one who pre- 
 fers a life in the lower manifested. Qn the same reason the 
 want of memory of previous incarnations of a human being 
 can be accounted. This is certainly one of the many difficul- 
 ties which many of you in the early stage of theosophic 
 thought must have felt. But the difficulty will vanish if you 
 think carefully over the character of Manas in its dual aspect 
 of the lower or earthly and higher or heaven born. The 
 lower Manas is only a ray of the Higher Manas let in, into 
 the fleshly tabernacle for illuminating its being and giving it 
 thought, desire, memory and the like and so the memory that 
 we have is only a physical tablet, is born with the body, lives 
 with it and dies with it. But if the ray that gives us thought, 
 desire, memory and the like, be made to seek its own source, 
 then in proportion as it approaches, it will get a knowledge 
 of the past incarnations which are like so many branches put 
 forth from the trunk of one tree i. e. the higher Manas. The 
 Higher Manas is the thread on which the pearls of incarna- 
 tions are strung and unless that thread is reached a memory 
 of all the pearls strung is unattainable. But in order that 
 that thread may be reached, the functions of the lower Manas 
 mu5t be made to tend upwards or to take on the character of 
 the higher Manas. Thought must be abstract and impersonal 
 or be like the thought of a bird of infinite time elevated in 
 position, majestic in motion and piercing in its glance and 
 looking down on all that is of the earth. So with other func- 
 tions and if all the conditions are fulfilled, a man will be able 
 to catch a glimpse of the prenatal life. But until then it will be 
 unreasonable to complain of the inability of the physical me- 
 mory to soar upwards as it will be unreasonable to expect a 
 serpent to soar like an eagle. Si'i-Krishna therefore says 
 that he (seated on Garuda the bird of time as the Pouranikas 
 say) is able to remember all his previous incarnations as many 
 as Arjuna's but that Arjuna (clothed in coils of darkness) is 
 not so able. 
 
140 Some thouohts on the Gita. 
 
 6. This gives rise to the interesting question if Sri- Kris- 
 hna an entity who is eternal and released from bondage, illu- 
 minated and free from the clouds of ignorance, is subject to 
 the law of birth and death. To this the Teacher says that his 
 birth in the world and death in it are conducted as a kind of 
 mayavic illusion on the plane of man's existence and are not 
 experiences to him as they are experiences to men. He is no 
 doubt an eternal entity and the Lord of all Bhootas but still, 
 be says, he catches hold of the screen of Prakriti that sepa- 
 rates all men from Him and is born in the world by the power 
 of his own Maya to which all men are subject. The word 
 Maya is one which has to be properly understood by you in 
 order that you may catch the spirit of the ancient philosophy. 
 The derivationth.it is given for the word is m -{- ?il cr Ma +Ya 
 or not that. Maya is therefore a power that makes a thing 
 appear as wnat it is not or a power of illusion that arises out 
 of limitation in the ancient concept of a true imity periodi- 
 cally appearing as multiplicity by the power of Maya that co- 
 exists with that unity. As I have already said unity could 
 not be metaphysically supposed to be separated from the 
 many the two being necessary for each other's support and 
 existence and was not so supposed by our ancients. This 
 world of manifold nature being the many, it is not supposed 
 to be absolutely destroyed at any time but is supposed only 
 to change its plane of manifestation from a lower plane to a 
 higher plane, such a change being but a destruction to that 
 lower from its oayu stand-point. The highest plane that is a 
 possibility of thought to the highest thinkers of our solar 
 system is called Avyakta or unmanifested and that is the screen 
 of our solar system. When therefore the whole world is said 
 to be destroyed at the end of a grand pralaya, we can only 
 understand thereby that the world has changed its plane of 
 manifestation to that highest Avyaktam and taken its place 
 there according to the laws that govern that plane. This 
 Avyaktam being necessarily the objective aspect of existences 
 l.)eyond, is supposed by the Pouranic philosophers to be the 
 body of thought beyond and to contain in itself the potentia- 
 lity of the manifested world below. I say potentiality be- 
 -:anse it is the highest point of the dhyanic vision of our thin-« 
 
Some TjiouGnTS on the Gita. 141 
 
 kers and can therefore l)e cognized by them as'a bare field of 
 conscious light or the highest light nndifferentiated, just as 
 the ch;sters of stai'S in the milky way may appear to our 
 vision as an unbroken field of light. 
 
 7. This Avyaktam is also called Moolaprakriti or root 
 Prakriti and is the starting point of all evolution. It contains 
 potentially to us the manifested many and is identifiable with 
 the Maya Sakti co-existing with the thought power beyond. 
 Such an identification has been made by our Philosophers, 
 such as Bagavan Sankaracharya. In his commentary on the 
 Bagavat-Gita, he says that Sri-Krishna cannot be said to be 
 born as all men are said to be bovn but only appears born 
 by the power of his own life, exercised on the Vaishnavi 
 Maya or the substance on which the thought entity called 
 Krishna iceeps a hold. In this connection one other thought 
 may be adduced. It is a fact of our experience that we 
 roused from sleep by the fresh aura of the morning Genius, 
 keep in our waking state duringthe daytime and sleep during 
 the night. AVe wake again and recollect all the events of the 
 preceding day and go to work as we are guided by circum- 
 stances and aspirations. We are all therefore creatures moved 
 on what may be called the daily wheel or Ahoratra CJiakra. 
 We move as a peudulam moves from one end of its sweep to 
 the other and back again, from the negative pole of the field 
 of consciousness to the positive pole and these are called sleep 
 and waking condition by us. Now this analogy may be ex- 
 tended fui'ther. We may reasonably conclude tha!; there is 
 not one entity on this side of the cosmic screen that is not 
 moved on the daily wheel appropriate to tlie plane of life of 
 that entity. The day of an entity on a higher plane may be 
 a whole cycle and lot of Subcycles to entities on a lower plane 
 but still there should be no objection to calling it a day 
 since a day means only a change of a conscious entity from a 
 jagrat consciousness to unconsciousness and passage back, in 
 accordance with the law of passivity and activity that holds on 
 that plane 
 
 8. I haye Qnce before said that Lord Bramha referred to 
 
142 Some thoughts on the Gita. 
 
 by our Pouranikas, as sitting on the top of the golden mount 
 and holding his council with all the Brahma- Rishees is meant 
 by our philosophers to indicate that Cosmic principle which 
 corresponds to the principle of the Lower Manas in Theoso- 
 phical writings. It is the spirit of cosmic ideation that deve- 
 lops the cosmic quaternary. This spirit of ideation is subject 
 to a period of passivity and activity that is measured in our 
 terms as a period of two thousand Yugas as you all know. 
 If you consider this quaternary as purified and etherealized to 
 a certain extent contemplated by our puranikas, the Yogee 
 Bramha is the same as the Yogee of the Lotus Isle — made up 
 of solar angels and the Dhyanees of the Theosophioal 
 writings. These Dhyanees live on the outermost boun- 
 dary of our Solar system and stand in the same relation 
 to the world-Brahmins I have been talking of, as father 
 to son and so these Brahmans are said to be the sons 
 of the Dhyanees. The Sruti says mystically " Self is 
 the son in expression " and so our ancient philosophers con» 
 sidered father and son as mystically connected and as one- 
 These angels, theMahatmas they inform and the human beings 
 that are informed by the Mahatmic higher Manasic rays all 
 stand in a line on the Vyswanara or Jagrat side of conscious- 
 ness and Lord Bramha of the lotus the unifying spirit of the 
 angels is very aptly* called the Grand-father by our Puranio 
 thinkers. The fourth or transandental aspect is Lord Naray- 
 ana the unmanifested logos and none knows yet the period 
 of the daily wheel in which the Deva-Devaswara works. lu 
 the Bagavat-Gita Sri Ki-ishna speaks from the quadruple Vys- 
 wanara standpoint and it is for you to identify when required 
 that aspect of the four which is referred to. To those of you 
 who are students of psychology, I may say that the four as- 
 pects may be called in a certain way — as the Lord of time. 
 Lord of dhyanic thought, Lord of ideation and Lord of form- 
 
 9. To return to the consideration of Yuga, we can consi- 
 ■ deronly the periods of the daily wheel in which the lords of 
 ideation and form work, for, to carry our speculations still high- 
 er is to be in the dark, groping for secrets which the Veda 
 reserves only for Puranio people. To connect limited time 
 
SoMETBOUGHTS ON TEE GlTAi 143 
 
 with the Lord of time is absurd and to connect it with dhya- 
 nic lords is admitted by our Purauikas as after all a specula- 
 tion since some say their day is a Mahamanwantara of hund- 
 red years of Bramha, each year of 360 days and each day of 
 2000 Yugas and each Yuga of 4320000 mortal years and others 
 say that the period is too short. A day of Bramha is quite 
 sufficient for our purpose and it is an interesting question how 
 our Puranics arrive at 4320000000 years for one such day. I 
 am sorry to inform you that the philosophy of cycles based on 
 the philosophy of numerals is a dead secret to a large portion 
 of the body of Theosophists and it is plain therefore that yon 
 cannot expect much from me to elucidate the question of cyc- 
 lic pulses of time- I shall, however, say something on the 
 subject, something I have caught up from our Puranas illumi- 
 nated by the torch that H. P. B. has lit for mankind. I have to 
 say something about the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 
 & 10 before an attempt at explanation can be made and what 
 I may say is likely to be a toast of metaphysics, but I beg to 
 assure you that such hard metaphysical food is very nutritive 
 when digested. Asa preparatory measure I recommend the fol- 
 lowing sloka in the Second Canto of Vishnu Pourana to your 
 consideration. 
 
 The entire wheel of time is established on the one wheel 
 of the Sun's chariot undying in its nature, made of the subs- 
 tance of the year with three as centre, five as the spokes and 
 six as the rim. 
 
XII. 
 
 1. Dear ekothers. 
 
 Ill studying the philosopliy of numeralti, there Is nothing 
 so important as to psrmaate ourselves with the spirit of the 
 number one wliicli is the soul of the entire numerical system- 
 It is a thing veiy difficult to be grasped by the mind and felt 
 by the heart as the spirit of the number one though the 
 vrorld one is fi'cquently and glibily said in Vedantic contro- 
 versies. As the Vedautists say that the Lord of all bhootas is 
 in the heart of every bhoota or is the innermost essence in the 
 universe upon which all manifestations are strung, likewise 
 is one the innermost essence upon which all numbers and 
 numerical expressions are based. When it is said innermost, 
 one is apt to make that word a concrete symbol based on 
 space conceptions born of the flesh and that would be as 
 great an error as to think that the atom is not in the outer 
 cover of a material body but is some where else in the recesses 
 and secret chambers of that body. The atom is the life uf a 
 body that we may cognize and is diffused throughout in it. 
 The ancients said that it is only one that is all this manifested 
 universe in every aspect and likewise we see in the numerical 
 world the number one permeating all other numbers and 
 lording over them. I say lording over because all other 
 numbers ai'e only aspects of the one existing only as servants 
 existing for the lord to exhibit his grandeur. The world 
 exists only as a necessary adjunct for the wisdom of the soul 
 for if a thing exists not or is unmanifested, it no longer is. 
 It may be said to be dead but the wisdom of the one Atma is 
 a livinsr wisdom and as such we find the numerals existent iu 
 and as the world. The one that we are to conceive is not a 
 concrete one but the spirit of it which may be called oneness. 
 As such it ever contains all the numerals in itself. It is an 
 all-pervading essence and as such contains in itself the 
 potentiality of a thousand heads, eyes, and feet which poten- 
 tiality is every where diffused through the boundless existence 
 of the great spirit of oneness. If this idea is borne in mind 
 steadily, then we will be saved from a thousand confusions 
 
SoilB THOUGHTS ON THE GlTA. 145 
 
 ari.sing from the statements of Pouranic pliilosopliors apply- 
 ing the word Para-Bramliam or supreme Brahm oi- supra- 
 potentiality to things that they wanted to get symbolized as 
 10, 100, 1000, /OOOO, 100000 &c. All numbers are only 
 modes of eidstence of the all pervading one and exist on all 
 planes. They are all devas and are eternal and made to 
 differ from each other only by two great powers that form 
 the two great giants known as Jaya, Vijaya, the gate-keepers 
 of the eternal secret of the one and who are chiefly instru- 
 mental for all creniions and destructions. The two spirits are 
 known as the spirits of addition and subtraction, or attract- 
 ion and repulsion, and like names. Now supposing that a 
 certain plane is symbor.zable as ten when the planes of exis- 
 tence are connected by numbers, then it follows that the No. 
 ten, viewed as such, from one standpoint becomes the central 
 figure of life on a different plane and is therefore viewable as 
 one or the supreme Bra-hra. In one plane Lord Kasyapa may 
 become the central figure and give birth to all and Vishnu 
 amotisr them mid it will not be inconsistent with a statement 
 in another place that Kasyapa is the son of Bramha or grand- 
 son of Vishnu. 
 
 2. After you have thus thought over the No. one, the 
 Puranic Narayana or the Allself , you may take the idea that 
 underlies the pythagorean equation i + 2+3 + 4=]0. Here 
 one of you may ask that the decimal scale is not the only 
 scale and that conclusions arrived at by the decimal scale may 
 tumble down when any other scale is adopted. To this I have 
 to answer tliat the decimal scale is the one that has been 
 adopted by Nature and has hence been universally adopted by 
 humanity working under the influence of the world- Masters. 
 Besides this, the philosophy of arithmetic may be studied with 
 other scales also bat no results arrived at by the decimal nota- 
 tion will be falsified but will only assume different expressions 
 if the scale be changed. Numbers being only symbols, 
 nothing of the ideal world of man can be lost or changed by 
 different views taken or different scales adopted. The sym- 
 bol 5 X o = 25 according to the decimal notation, is the same as 
 the symbol 10 x ]0 = JOO accordi:ig to a different notation and 
 
IJ'Q Some thoughts on the Gita, 
 
 therefore tlie universal trutlis remain unchanged. Therefore 
 l^t. "^ consider the equation 1 + 2+3 + 4=10, caring not for 
 ''.'.-- .j/mbols but the inmost essences for which the symbols 
 sLct-nd. In this equation 10 stands for the universe and ib is 
 written with the circio of tlis zero with the one drawn within 
 it. This circle symbolizes the iufinite circle of manifestation 
 never ending but still beginning and stands for the No-thing 
 of Budhistic philosophy and Parabramham of the Vedantins. 
 The zero with the one in it, is the Parabramham with the 
 eternal one or the ununderstandable All-self in it. This state 
 is the ultimate pralaya which is to occur in the far distant 
 future, after numberless kalpas, to give paranirvanic rest. 
 Uctil then the object of worship of the great world-bramhins 
 is t be spirit that is known as the Maheswara in Sanscrit wri- 
 tings, the spirit that presides over the number two which two 
 rpiii-s the world into two, the subject and object — the indivi- 
 dual ego and the external world. It is this that makes all 
 mahatmas to preserve their individuality and to work for the 
 world. The Eternal one being the central spiritual svn 
 may now be conceived as having shot out a group of rays in- 
 to the cosmic pradhana and each ray is a Jiva sent to fulfill 
 certain duties and ordered to bring home the profits gained, 
 to the eternal store of wisdom. Duality a necessary auxili- 
 ary to the unity is thus one with unity and Pouranic philoso- 
 phers have laid a special stress on the fact that Mahc-rjwara and 
 Narayana are only aspects of one Truth, the former looking 
 down and the latter looking up. The former is hence a shadow 
 formed for evolutionary work. 
 
 3. This number two, is one which diserves your most 
 careful consideration. It is both harmony and disharmony 
 standing in contrast and so the Sruti says referring to Mahes- 
 wara '^\W^} f^^I'TT , or as two aspected on the sides of 
 beauty and horror. The Pouranikas consequently describe 
 l^Ialieswara and his hosts in a most peculiar way. On one 
 side, there are great Rishees who have worked their way to 
 Nirvana and others on the other side oE most horrid shapes 
 and actions. Human imps, elementals, elementaries, rogues, 
 thieves and other men who have worked their way to spiri- 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 147 
 
 taal lieiglits on the basis of duality are all there. There are 
 other disturbing powers here, for, some are holding bells and 
 making sudden peals of sound. Others are yelling like wol- 
 ves and still others barking like dogs. In the middle of this 
 horrid host stands the mighty lord of the two, hinged on to 
 the one as a necessity of metaphysical existence and yet pre- 
 siding over hosts of the land of disharmony. He is the 
 starting point of duality and therefore presides over 
 cosmic Maya as said in ^m^^fi^ iff^T'I RT^TTT^^T'g 
 Though two is thus the number of Maya, it is however the 
 highest unifying plane reachable at the present day. The 
 reason is plain ; for if you express any number on the 
 scale of the No. two, it takes the firm 1111 and 
 there is nothing but unity. All different numbers exist 
 therefore on the plane of the Lord of duality in chose juxta- 
 position to the spirit of the one. Since Maya is the power 
 that manifests one under many forms and produces all sorts 
 of kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria, Maheswara is the gene- 
 rative power in the universe and hence rides on a bull. 
 Tor the above reasons, two is considered as a very unlucky 
 number, producing all sorts of mishaps on account of its own 
 dual nature and hence wanting in steadiness. In the book of 
 phrase and fable,' the unfortunate character of the number 
 is shewn in practical application to English History. If the 
 influence of numbers in the affairs of men be not granted, lot 
 of strange coincideness will have to be wiittea down in the 
 book of riddles of the modern thinker. As a natural conse- 
 quence, it is thought that every even number having two as 
 a factor, is supposed to have an element of ill-luck in it, 
 though that element be not perciptible. If entire existence 
 ba viewed as double aspected, the No. 1 is tbe soul and spirit, 
 and No. 2 is the life and body. Geometrically, No. one is 
 the point and number two is the straight line. Since a- 
 straight line is the first conceivable thing for geometincal 
 construction it is established that No. 2 is the basis of all 
 manifestation, 
 
 4. If you have thus thoroughly entered into the spirit of 
 the numbers one and two you will understand that No. 2 isth© 
 
148 Some thouchts on the Gtta, 
 
 highest plane that is reachable by man. It is the height of 
 the Dhyanic eiTort of man and if that be obtained man attains 
 unto the harmony that underlies all this seeming disharmony. 
 Lord Maheswara "whispers in the heart of true Dhyanic thin- 
 ker "0 man, you are now the genius of what mortals call 
 motion and therefore you see that your self runs in all and 
 that all breathe into you. This is the highest state attainable 
 and so stop here and contemplate on the Lord Narayana. You 
 will then know that you and I are identical or that you = I. 
 Until then you must be content with your status in the great 
 sensorium in which each cell is connected with all other cells 
 by electric wires," Now my dear friends you may all proceed 
 to the consideration of the number three which is one of the 
 most important in the numerical list, I sa,y it is most impor- 
 tant because it is only a proper comprehension of the number 
 that will guide a human entity safely through thousands of 
 dangers besetting him on every side and at every step. Three 
 is the number that divides the entire existence into the ele- 
 ments of knower, knowledge and the known or the subject, ^ 
 power of perception that inheres in that subject and the life 
 changes or life pulsations of (hat power that manifest them- 
 selves to the centre of that power of perception as the object- 
 tive universe. You may now revert to the number two and 
 consider that number as meaning the one and the All, The 
 one is the centre manifested in the boundless circle ot the All. 
 Maheswara is therefore the individuality manifested in the 
 universal circle during periods cc manifestation. When the 
 ultimate pralaya takes place, the Maheswaric centre has done 
 its function and returned unto its parent the All-s?lf the soul 
 of the No-thing or the Eternal zero estabhshed in absolute 
 silence the best aaswer to questioners on Parabramham. Thi^ 
 eternal number two combined with the three gives us tho 
 true human soul as it ought to be. As human existence is the 
 subject and object and perception likewise on the plane of the 
 All there ought to be supposed to exist the Maorocosmic sub- 
 ject, object and perception. 
 
 5, Now consider deeply what the old Vcdio philosophers 
 said of Bramham, They said it is the Truth or g?w; wis- 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 1-19 
 
 dom 01' perception or fHJT and the endless circle known 
 as 3T^-(T . The first is the logos, the second is the light of 
 the logos in the words of Mr. Subba Eow and the last is the 
 objective universe. Now human evolution is strictly evolu- 
 tion in his own line or evolution as a human being and there- 
 fore in proportion as a man rises, he ought to keep a hold on 
 his own ray — his individuality or Christos or Krishna and 
 make that individual rise still higher. The symbol is Lord 
 Krishna seated on the soaring bird Garuda or a heart or the 
 rose in the cross known as the swastica in theosophical writ- 
 ings. ]f this symbol be kept steadily before the mental eye, 
 man will be a man and eventually turn out as a God. The 
 importance of number three seems to have been well recogni- 
 zed by the metaphysical thinkers of the West but so far as I 
 know, due attention seems not to have been paid to the num- 
 ber two in its aspect of the one and the All. A very high 
 idealist of Europe, writes a whole book in most lucid terms 
 and analyses the entire world as a group of conscious states 
 converging towards a centre called the ego. So far it is very 
 beautiful. But what is this ego or the spider with his net 
 ever bent on appropriation? This is a question which can be 
 answered satisfactorily only on the old lines of thought i. e. 
 only by supposing that ray as an egoistic wisdom ray destined 
 to work in the Malieswaric regions of duality, keeping ever in 
 the line of the Absolute unity or the cestral sun of wisdom. 
 If, as was supposed by some, he alone is and everything else 
 is only manners of his conscious being, then it follows that he 
 is the Lord and that everything else is his own creation. But 
 that vassalage is not seen in the universe. The sun rises and 
 the worlds turn, whether a man wills it or no and it is certain 
 that there is some thing else besides the human ego though 
 that something must breathe into that ego only by disturbing 
 the essence of that ego or wisdom or consciousness. There- 
 fore an idealistic philosopher must take the assurance in his 
 thought that there are other units like him and the universe 
 is a number of cells, following laws of a collective,^ being. 
 
 6. If one therefore can say as a result of deep metaphy- 
 
150 Some thoughts on the Gita, 
 
 sical tliought. "I am, you are, and all these kings are" as Sri 
 Krislina says in the Gita, then the question comes, "Is the 
 ego an eyanasoent mayavic illusion and if otherwise where 
 and how was it prior to my birth and how will it be after my 
 deatli." This is one of the most important questions which 
 alone will lead a man to the certainty of his continued exis- 
 tence and the theory of re-incarnation without which the 
 metaphysical thought of the west will be a complete cripple 
 and useless as a factor of life and as an incentive to good 
 philanthropic work. Here the philosophy of the number 
 three in its relation to the number one will be a great help. 
 Man is split up by thinkers as a knower, knowledge and 
 known in the west and there the westerns stop. The east- 
 erns go a little further and hinge on every phenomenon to its 
 due place in the whole. Please consider human existence 
 during the limited cycle of one life as a circle. That is the 
 horizon of the conscious field to an idealist. The centre of 
 the circle is the human ego and the line thrown out from that 
 centre is the knowledge ray which by its own radial sweep, 
 produces the circle of existence. Since a proper compre- 
 hension of the two has convinced us that there is a world be- 
 sides ourselves and since it is certain as a fact of our con- 
 sciousness that we are living in the world let us represent it 
 geometrically. Take a tremendous big circle and identify it 
 for the present with the universal circle and mark its centre. 
 Now conceive a human circle of small limited proportions 
 with its own centre move on the circumference of the bigger 
 circle and draw out a series of epicyclic curves. Now sup- 
 pose that each such epicyclic curve is the period of one 
 human life. Now you see that at every moment the centre 
 of the small circle is in the radius of the point of contact pro- 
 duced. The real human ego is the centre of the bio-o-er circle 
 and the centre of the smaller circle is the human physicallv 
 natured ego, formed to guide an evanesant bubble. The phy- 
 sical ego is a feeler thrown out from the real ego and is a 
 vassal there of. It is in a line with the real or bigger centre 
 and every effort made by a man to idealise his experiences 
 and turn inward in the eastern phrase is an effort to reach 
 out consciously towards the bigger centre. The ideas of ira- 
 
SOMB THOUGHTS ON THE GlTA. 1.51 
 
 finite space and infinite, time the two basic ideas tte definite 
 markings off of M^liich constitute limited life-cycles, are of the 
 region of tlie real ego. Now yon see my friends that the rela- 
 tion of the nnmber three to the one or the triune human exis- 
 tence viewed as the epicyclic sweeps drawn 'on one basic 
 grand cycle with its own centre — the reincarnating entity, is 
 a solution for many of the difficulties that beset the thinker 
 on every side, if he loses the hne with the real ego on the nou- 
 inenal heaven. 
 
 7. To return to the consideration of the nnmber three, it 
 acquires a tremendous importance since -three points not in a 
 line produce a triangle and constitute a plane. Metaphysi- 
 cally transposed the statement >means that an ego, with power 
 of perception and object perceived constitnte a definite exis- 
 tence. The ego, knowledge and known may not be as they 
 are to us ordinary entities of ignorance but may be far loftier 
 than the same three in us may be conceived to be loftier than 
 in lower animals. To describe in how many ways these three 
 can exist is a task which transcends my power and 1 cannot 
 therefore undertake that business upon me. The theosophical 
 writings say seven and so let us take seven as the number of 
 ways in which these three -can adjusu themselves and form 
 planes for human entities to live in, e.ith!er normally or criti- 
 cally as a passage to higher lokas. I say normally or criti- 
 cally for considerations relating to a triangle the simplsst of 
 geometrical figures with three angles and three sides. If A 
 B C be a triangle, AB, AC and BC may any of them be con- 
 sidered as the base upon which the triangle stands but the 
 angles A, B, C, are to be considered only as critical stages in 
 which the existence on and of one side passes on to the other 
 side. The centre of the triangle is the synthetic point and 
 belongs to the higher world, for, a point — the geometrical 
 name for the arithemetical one, — is the soul of forms and 
 numbers made to represent different planes and will make of 
 the one, a definite figure on the higher plane- The definite 
 figure on a higher plane made to appear as one to the lower 
 plane, gives a dual character to the central point and you will 
 
152 SolIE THOU(iiITS 0\ THE GiTA. 
 
 see the meaning of our ancient pliilosopTiers wlio said ttat 
 Oin has o^ matms. 
 
 8. The number three is one the importance of which 
 cannot be over-estimated. If the infinity of numbers be re- 
 presented by a unity followed by lot of zeros, and if that in- 
 finity be divided by three you will see the quotient a number 
 of endless threes. The infinite unity of absolutely metaphy- 
 sical existence comes therefore to manifest itself on the plane 
 of genius three as three groups of threes — one groujj for the 
 absolute, the next for the highest dhyanic elements and the 
 next for the manifested devas. I say devas for the reason 
 that No. 3 taken as a plane in the line from one to ten can 
 represent to us only a deva existence. You see therefore 
 that the number 33 followed by a group of zeros is the 
 number to represent the strength of the deva-world and the 
 Pouranic philosophers have numbered the devas as thirty 
 three croses. Again if you add all the numbers from 4 to 10, 
 the numbers below the plane three up to the last plane 10, 
 you get 49 as the sum. This is the square of the number 
 seven — the number of the classes of the Pitir devas. There 
 are seven classes of Pitir devas and seven subdivisions in 
 each class. The forty nine classes of Pitir devas construct 
 the manifested universe. If you allow a number one to a 
 state in which the devas develop their lower halves the 
 pitirs, we get an exact fifty — the number of straight lines and 
 angles that make up the dodecahedron of the universe. IE 
 you double the number 49 for devas and Pitris, you get 98 and 
 if to 98 you add nimiber 3 the number associated with kasya- 
 pa you get 101 — or the first number in the series from (10' to 
 10^) Here please remember the Sanscrit saying about Kas- 
 yapa— the father of devas by Aditi and Rakshasas by Diti 
 which says m^^^ n^OTilcT'm^: ^miJ^ The prajapati who 
 is the third by the peculiarity of his ovm nature. 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 153. 
 
 you may also note that Vamana, tte tliird great avatar of 
 Vishnu after the delivery of Bramha through the Varahio 
 mouth is the son of Kasyapa. H. P. B. remarked once in a 
 foot-note to an early Theosophist that the nature of the ever 
 living emperor Bali who now lives in Patalic regions, will be 
 fully understood only when the nature of the Avatar who 
 measured the three worlds by three steps is understood. A 
 proper view of the world evolution as given in the Secret 
 Doctrine-the English name for the old Puranic doctrine, from 
 the standpoint of the Genius three will' very much aid the 
 comprehension. 
 
 9. "We shall now pass on to the consideration of the 
 number four, a number that is equally important with the 
 number three and without a proper comprehension of which 
 an attainment of perfection is impossible; for No. 4 may be 
 taken for a square which is a perfect figure, for, that alone has 
 its four sides equal and its four angles right angles. A 
 str&ight line standing at right angles to another straight line 
 or k plane, gives us the idea of an equilibrized arrangement 
 of Ihe world of consciousness in relation to an ego, while a 
 straight line which is inclined to a plane, has a close afi&nity 
 with the part towards which it leans, a part in which a shadow 
 falls when the spiritual sun at the zenith one illumines the 
 basic plane. We human beings being very much inclined to> 
 the mental plane, are very closely connected with th^ shadow 
 towards which our eyes are facing. At the oni-s'ityou must 
 remember that the Avorld is one undei-'-mkny aspects and 
 consequently viewable in many ways.' The fact of the syll- 
 able Om being said to contain three manifested matras by all 
 ancient philosophers, combinedr with the fact that three points 
 taken in space have manifested a triangle in a complete way 
 is enough to convince you, that passage from the metaphysi- 
 cal three to the metaphysical foiir is not such an easy thing 
 as passage from oae step of a ladder to a higher one. The- 
 passage from three to four must have a momentous change 
 and meaning and in fact it is so- The Genius three has com- 
 pleted a cycle within the region of the ten and is beginning a 
 new cycle with the number four. Som^-jphilosophers have- 
 yiewed the manifested uniyerse as triune^ others as seyoa 
 
154- Some thoughts on the Gita, 
 
 otters still as ten and others as fire. These different views 
 are all based on the metaphysics of arithmetic and to under- 
 stand one view properly is to understand all. If all views are 
 not considered as forming one grand truth and if one view be 
 repeated parrot-like then we are not at right angles to the 
 plane of truth and cast a shadow under the steady motion- 
 less sun of truth shining at the highest point of the 
 heavens. 
 
 10. In order to grasp the situation, please consider the 
 cosmos as completed when we have completed three and then 
 you will have to divide the entire existence as the Absolute, 
 the ideation and the embodiment. The one is the Absolute 
 the two is the ideation or the Absolute life under the aspect of 
 motion and the three is the same under embodiment or crys- 
 tallization. There would be no objection to this triangulation 
 or trignometrical survey of the universe, provided you consent 
 to a splitting up of each big triangle into minor triangles 
 and. so on. Then you will take four as corresponding to the 
 four angles of a triangular cone of 4 triangles and say, the 
 spirits of the one and two and three have been caught up in 
 the basic foursided cone made up of one natured points two 
 nabured straight lines and three natured triangles. Such a 
 simplification will put us to lot of confusion and be bordering 
 on the obstinacy of modern ordinary vedantic students who 
 confine the universe within the zero Parabrahm and call 
 everything false. Now when we conceive a cone of 4 trian- 
 gles other numbers are staring us in the face and tell us we 
 have stopped short. There are six straight lines, and twelve 
 plane angles and though 6 = 2x3 and twelve =3x4, neverthe 
 less, we have not provision for numbers, divisible into factors 
 though they may be, that enter into the constitution of the 
 simplest geometrical solid figure of our conception. For this 
 reason the triangulation of the cosmos is not very plain and 
 satisfactory to us, though metaphysically every surface of the 
 universal sphere is divisible into triangles. For this reason 
 some philosophers and among them the Pouranics have view- 
 ed the cosmos under a septenary aspect — a septenary not 
 made up of a seven sided figure but two triangles intertwined 
 -trith a central point in it wliicli is connected Avith a hexagon 
 
• Some THOUGHTS onthb Gita. 155 
 
 in the universal sphere with a point in the centre. Let us 
 consider then the number four from a septenary stand point. 
 
 11. Now what septenary are we to take? A septenary 
 of seven lokas, seven classes of Pitris, seven elements will 
 not be so plain as a geometrical septenary and so I propose 
 to take the five solids a triangle and a point as a septenary 
 and we shall go on descending from a point to the dodecahe- 
 dron. Here please bear in mind what H. P. B- said of the 
 10 sephiroth— seven manifesting and the three higher serving 
 as the crown. According with this idea of H. P. B., I have 
 been trying to give a poor description of the three highest 
 planes of the three Genii of the cosmos, one connecting every 
 ray with every other ray by threads of Vyswanara or jagrafc 
 consciousness bounded by a triangle of object, knowledge and 
 subject, tbe other Genius connecting all by tbi'eads of fi.xed 
 ideation and the third wrapping up everything in one Nir- 
 vanic potentiality of points. Since I have postulated seven 
 planes now, it is plain that I am looking to ten as the proper 
 number, for the reason that H. P. B. has taken that number 
 The entire universe being divisible into ]Srara= thought, Nari 
 =life or breath and viraj=fcrm, it is plain that the three 
 planes that I have referred to or the Nos. 1, 2, 3, are the 
 highest existences. If is more of Macrocosmic than indivi- 
 dual world and so now, we shall take the point again on the 
 plane of Satyaloka or the loka of Lord Bramha the cosmic 
 and individual dreamer. 
 
 12. Here it is important to define the nature of a middle 
 principle that connects a dual. Being a middle it partakes 
 of the character of either side and can have no existence apart 
 from the two. Taking the three divisions past, present and 
 future, the middle is only a mathematical existence connect- 
 ing the past and the future and even on the illusive ideal 
 basis on which it stands, it has after all a critical existence.' 
 This idea applied to three loka& bhoo-bhuvar and suvar the 
 three parts of the sweep of a re-incarnating entity, will throw: 
 some light on the nature of the bhuvar loka and its. relation" 
 to the devachanic entity and the same when it comes to eartH 
 and ig embodied. Now taking the univeree as 10, we cannot 
 
156 Some thoughts on thb GiTi. 
 
 assign a number to a formless form since it is inconceivable. 
 It therefore splits into a lower balf of form and a higher haK 
 of no form and so we find that five numbers out of ten, have 
 forms namely the 5 regular solids of geometry. Therefore two 
 out of the seven planes under consideration have nothing to 
 do with form and belong to what may be called dhyana. They 
 are two out of the seven stages through which a progressing 
 human entity must pass before he can take his place in the 
 vyswanara side of the upper triangle. Likewise in cosmic 
 evolution they may be called the nebulous stages where a 
 steady form is impossible and where mountains were winged 
 as per statements of the Pouranikas prior to the death of 
 Hirany-aksha — the soul of the then world. 
 
 13. The seventh plane from the bottom or the 4th plane 
 from the top is known to you all as the plane of Lord Bram- 
 ha thp spirit of cosmic ideation. You all know that he is re- 
 presented with four faces and that is precisely the No. of his 
 plane of action. These four faces correspond to the four 
 - directions in one sense, the four remaining as factors of an 
 ideal world that heads the complete septenary. Bramha him- 
 self is every where not specially bound as a necessity of his 
 dreaming function. This Bramha is the first Jiva referred to 
 by our Vedantic books and is said to be the son of the eter- 
 nal by our Pouranic writers. He is hence called H=TTfr^. 
 He is the son of the Father or the Father himself in expres- 
 sion. The domain of the Father is infinite and he is called 
 the Ananta or endless but the son is the lord of a finite 
 sphere known as one solar system. The visible sun is only 
 the manifested heart Tejas of this son and is physically the 
 centre of all circulatory energy in our system. The number 
 four is of a peculiar interest to us Hindoos because it is the 
 number of our Vedas and these are the lour aspects of the 
 Bramhic plane, symbolizable as the North, East, South and 
 the West, corresponding to the four classes of devas known 
 as Viswa devas, Vasus, Rudras and Audityas. Now consider- 
 ing the entire manifestation as four, we get one as the Abso- 
 lute two as thought, three as life and four as the embodiment 
 and these correspond to the four principles of the quaternary 
 accetuations on which produce the four castes of men, the 
 
Some thoughts qt^ the Gita. 
 
 157 
 
 Bramhins, Kshatriyas Vaisyas and Sudras. It ia also acce- 
 tuations on the four principles of the cosmic plane, ^Voiked 
 on in the vortex of time that produce the four ages of Krita, 
 Treta, Dwapara and Kali or the ages of gold, silver, bronze 
 and iron. These four pwiods are as you know in the ratio 
 of the numbers 4, 3, 2 and 1, but the materiality is in the 
 ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4. Harmony of existence is therefore in the 
 ratio of 4, 3, 2, 1, and the average lives of men are as 400, 
 300, 200 and 100 years, (vide 1st Chapter Manu). 
 
 14. To revert again to the number foiir, it acquires a 
 great importance by its being the number one ad dad on to 
 the number three- Three is the number of manifested matras 
 in Om and a traverse therefore in three steps begun from one 
 point in the land of silent truth, brings us again to the same 
 land. The truth, has shot out its ray through two domains of 
 spiritual and psychic life into a fourth domain of objective 
 life or the Pather has begotten a son. For this same reason 
 Nos. 7 and 10 are very important and all the numbers from 
 one to ten may be written thus 
 
 In Puranic phraseology, the domain of the number oae tie- 
 wed as the starting point of all objective ma^ifestatioa,^ is t^ 
 mount Kailas and herein exists the Manasa tank into which 
 are poured all the energises of Absolute thouglit. It is the 
 exudation of the creepers on motint Kailas that has construct- 
 
158 Some thoughts ok the Gita» 
 
 ed the manifested universe and it is to the north of this 
 mount that the land of rest or the land of mukti lies as is 
 said by Bheeshmain Mahabharata. It is this same exudation 
 that has manifested itself as the Akas in the region of the 
 No. 4 and it is Akas that forms the body of Lord Bramha. 
 An objective aspect of an objectivising essence has been 
 exhibited for the reason that 4=2x2. I shall not dwell 
 more on this number and I request you will all kindly see 
 how tlie two very important numbers three and four are 
 treated in the theosophical writings English and Sanscrit. 
 
 15. To take up the No. 5, 1 need scarcely tell you that it 
 is .an extremely important number called by H. P. B. th& 
 quintessence of numbers. This number is the lord of the 
 middle line of every series of ten. It starts an existence from 
 zero and ends it in zero. It is therefore the energy of Para- 
 bramham — the untraceable stream. It is as an adjunct of 
 motion of the mighty stream that four numbers on the right 
 and four on the left exist. Those of you who have read the 
 article "Signs of the zodiac" by Mr. T. Pubba Rao, may recollect 
 his interpretation of the word Makara. He took it as a 
 pentagon and this pentagon or fivefold source of manifesta- 
 tion is the vehicle of the stream, hence called Makaravahana 
 in Sanscrit. Now that Parabramham is neither Sat nor Asat, 
 neither object nor subject neither Purusha nor Prakriti, this 
 pentagonal stream that emanates therefTOm. impresses its 
 character every where below in manifestation, so that philoso- 
 phers who view the univel-se under seven aspects have to ad- 
 mit that the higher triad is in a special sense one in three. 
 Moreover every septenary that is nameable is the develop- 
 ment of a primal trinity and so the two put togetuer make up 
 tea, or a doubled aspect of five. Again in an interlaced double 
 triangle with the centre marked in it, we see the No. 5 
 asserting itself fully as given in the sketch 
 
S OME THOUGHTS ON THE GiTA. 159 
 
 There is therefore not a great difference between the ancient 
 doctrine of the primal three and subsequent seven and the 
 Vedantic doctrine of the five Kosas known as Annamaya, 
 Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vignyanamaya, and Anandamaya. 
 I need scarcely point out to you the importance of the num- 
 ber five in the Sanskrit writings. The five organs of action, 
 the five senses, the five bhootas, the five tanmatras, the five 
 Kosas, the five pranas, the five fires, the five yagnas, are a 
 few of the many instances that can be given. Fundamentally 
 the figure of a human being looks like a five pointed star, 
 and you need not be surprised at the number of fives, since 
 there must be a visible five to every septenary in nature. 
 
 16. The fact of a man's looking like a five pointed star, 
 seems to me to have a deep meaning. The figure is the 
 
 symbol of a human entity or a thinker in the human heart, 
 The moment the human entity loses its own peculiarcharac- 
 teristie implied by the word Thinker, it no more is a human 
 being, though it may be a far higher angel. The fact that 
 we are now in plane five out of ten commencing from the 
 top and above the lower five planes of form, implies that this 
 
160 Some thotjghts on the Gita. 
 
 is the plane reactable by a human entity as such- Even 
 here the thinker has all his energy of thought directed up- 
 wards or is in Samadhi. He therefore has no form and is not 
 in direct touch with the worlds of form. If the tb'nker mer- 
 ges himself in the existence of the plane four, he is no more 
 a thinker but thought itself. This plane five may be viewed 
 as a kind of ISTara-Narayana hermitage in which, the Lord of 
 all lokas gives a p&rsonal view to the dhyanic thinker. As 
 regards the nature of existence it may be symbolized thus. 
 
 The circle stands for the infinite circle or the truth under the 
 vesture of universal space and the centre of the circle is one 
 with it in dhyanic thought. The triangle stands for the subs- 
 tance in which the entity is clothed or the limiting power 
 that makes the thinker as such individually. The plane being 
 the plane five or the second in the septenary from 4 to 10, 
 the entity is limited by the existence of one Solar sy stem. It 
 is below the plane of Lord Bramha the son of the Eternal. 
 It is the plane of the Bramha-Rishees op the Manasic entities 
 who have for their Lord, the Soma, of the golden essence that 
 pervades the eternal spheres. They are Budhic entities 
 completely freed from Kamic smsll. Please in this connect- 
 ion bear in mind the famiUar statement ^p:i^[3Tf;Tr ^ cTIfm: 
 or that Bramhins are the servants of Lord Soma. 
 
 17. The Atma Budhi Manasic three-spoked wheel, gives 
 one more turn and brings about an intensity of action on the 
 Manas confined within the one solar system and brmgs us to the 
 No. 6 or plane six or the plane of the Raja-Rishees. You all 
 know my friends that the two terms Raja- Rishee and Bramha- 
 Rishee frequently occur in the Sanscrit works and I think the 
 terms have reference to the nature of life of these two. In 
 
Some thoughts on the Gita. 161 
 
 tHe old constitution of society, a raja or king was the direct 
 engine of action on the people and he was as it were 
 at the source of psychic life of the people while the Bramhin 
 remained as the spiritual lord. The king was therefore in 
 direct subordination to these Bramhins and he had no po^v^er 
 to transcend the will of these. Carrying this idea to the 
 distinction between a Bramba-Rishee and Eaja Rishee, we get 
 the former as an inhabitant of a too thoroughly spiritualloka 
 a loka that can have no contact with the plane of the Earth. 
 But a Raja- Rishee who remains within the domain of embodi- 
 ment is in a different position. He has a yiew of the affairs 
 below and can put on an earthly garb if required. If the 
 action of the Manas be turned upwards, he has all the advan- 
 tages of the Bramha-Rishee. This loka corresponds to the 
 Jano-loka or the 5 th loka from below among the seven lokas, 
 generally enumerated by us. Referring to Vishnu Purana ii 
 Adhyaya, we get that loka as the loka of the manasic sons of 
 Bramha viz Sanaka, Sanatkumara and others. This was called 
 the Kumara state by H. P. B, and it is this state that I have 
 called the plane of the Raja-Rishees. Now the simplest of 
 the geometrical solids is the cone of four equilateral triangles 
 
 and you see the great resemblance of this figure to the triangle 
 with the centre in it used to indicate plane five. You see 
 that this cone is obtained from the triangle by dragging up 
 
162 Some thoughts on the Gita, 
 
 the centre to a certain distance and joining the point reached 
 with the angles of the basic triangle. Now as the jiva of every 
 bhoota must be in the heart of that bhoota, the jiva of 
 this cone is in the heart of it or the centre of gravity of it. 
 Kow the jiva has a point at the head and another conceivable 
 at the base, the centre of the basic triangle. By working on 
 the basic point, the affairs of men below can be guided and by 
 working towards the crown, the entity can establish itself in 
 heaven and diink the soma juice along with its Bramhinie 
 brothers. This plane being the plane of the number six, we 
 see that the figure is made of six straight lines, three reach- 
 ing up to the crown and the other three lying about the basic 
 point markable at will. There are other considerations relat- 
 ing to this figure which I leave to your own consideration. 
 The consideration of other geometrical solids is also a task 
 which I think can be post-poned to a different occasion.