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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

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ILLUMINATED BRAHMINISM, 
 
 The True Theosophy, 
 
 An Explanation of the Original Doctrines 
 of Ranga Hilyod, 
 
 OFTEN CALLED THE GREAT BRAHMA. 
 
 1 ^' 
 
 
 Transmitted by the Law of Occult Science, 
 
 KANSAS CITY, MO.: 
 Spiritual Scientific Publishing Co. 
 
 1889. 
 
3^^ 
 
 J5? 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred «nd 
 eighty-nine, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, by the Spirit- 
 ual Scientific Publishing Company. Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 ^ 
 
 PKESS OF 
 
 The Geo. w. Crane Publishing Comiany, 
 kansas city. mo. 
 
EDITOE^S PEEFACE. 
 
 This work was written for circulation in India, 
 chiefly for the Brahmin caste. It purports to be 
 from the sphere of one of the very ancient sages 
 of India, who was one of the authors of the sacred 
 Vedas. In it he effectually disposes of the ques- 
 tion of the reincarnation of the spirit in some of its 
 aspects, as well as gives us a rational explanation 
 how such a doctrine happened to obtain so strong 
 a foothold in the otherwise magnificent system of 
 philosophy of that country. 
 
DEDIOATIOlSr. 
 
 To the Brahmo Somaj of India, and to all thinkers 
 who wish to see the glories of the ancient wisdom of 
 India restored upon earth in their pristine splendor 
 of intellectual power, this work is dedicated by its 
 spiritual author. 
 
CO]^TEI^TS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF EEINCAE- 
 NATION. 
 
 The original doctrine of one God.— Spirits come from this Being. 
 — He never taught that spirit return to Om destroyed the indi- 
 viduality. — The companionship of spirits determined by the 
 grade of their development. — When the planet once is able to 
 produce a Buddha it ever after is able to produce others. — 
 India's decline through substitution of the perverted for the 
 original ideas. — The equality of the sexes in Brahminism. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE GODS. 
 
 The original idea. — The visible gods. — The spirits of men. — The- 
 mistake of supposing the spirits of undeveloped mortals to be 
 the wisdom gods. — The deceptive voices that speak from the 
 shrines in the name of the great Brahma. — The Christian god 
 only a Buddha. — The savage character of the early European 
 peoples. — Egyptian materiality. — The eternal evolution of 
 spirit. — Om alone to be worthy of worship. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE SACKED CASTE IN ANCIENT DAYS. 
 
 The Brahmin caste the repositories of intellectual and spiritual wis- 
 dom. — External rites no safeguard against declension in spir- 
 itual wisdom. — Asceticism a failure in producing spiritual 
 enlightenment. — The Buddhahood always a part of the Brah- 
 min doctrine. — The sacred caste have lost the spiritual knowl- 
 edge. — The symbols, mere expressions for the instruction of the 
 unlearned. — The Brahmo Somaj. — Spiritual knowledge followa 
 the law of evolution. 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE DIVINE WORD. 
 
 Dm the Logos of the Greeks. — Brahm, the god of earth, as a 
 creator of planets. — Vishnu the preserving power of life ou 
 the planet. — Siva, the power of death. — The Christian travesty 
 on the Hindoo Triad, — The Greek philosophers familiar with 
 the meaning of the word. — The Christian world in the dark 
 as to its meaning. — The barbaric character of its people. — The 
 bloody theology abhorrent to the Hindoo. — The Om was never 
 embodied in any one Avatar. — The incompetency of the Chris- 
 tian clergy to teach India. — The spiritual birth of the nations 
 of the West not yet fully accomplished. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE BUDDHA TO ALL, NATIONS. 
 
 The Buddha state a condition of spiritual evolution. — The prep- 
 aration of the mother's mentality. — Buddhas are not incar- 
 nations of developed spirits, but more perfect evolutions of 
 mental life. — They are in sympathy with the better developed 
 minds in spirit life. — When they pass to spirit life they should 
 not be worshiped. — Gautama, the last of the great Buddhas. — 
 He should have taught the doctrine in its purity. — The reason 
 why the Buddha light does not come to the present priesthood 
 of earth. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE MISSIONARIES. 
 
 The spiritual light of Europe imperfect. — The conceit of the Chris- 
 tian world. — The East the true source of the religious systems 
 of earth. — The invisible foe of the missionary. — Egypt not high 
 in the grade of spirituality.— Greece and Rome.— The brutal- 
 ity of Romish thought. — The ignorance of Protestant teachers. 
 — They brought back the transmitted light of the age of Gau- 
 tama.— The missions are part of a great spiritual movement. — 
 The release of the spirit hosts from their bondage to the ideas 
 of earth. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE INFLUX OF ORIENTAL IDEAS AMONG THE WESTERN 
 NATIONS. 
 
 The rise of the spiritual movement in Europe and America.— The 
 opposition of the Christian priesthood.— Their ignorance and 
 degradation.— Theii- inordinate pride and vanity. —The break- 
 
CONTENTS. VH, 
 
 ing of the chains of fear. — The treachery of the priestly class. 
 
 — The irruption of tlie ignorant spirits of the European 
 heavens. — The impregnability of Christian superstition. — The 
 source of a spiritual influx of a true order. — Its effect upon 
 America. 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 THE TEUE HISTOKY OF THE CHEISTIAN'S GOD. 
 
 The Avatars of India. — The Messianic prophecies. — Joshua, the 
 original of the Christian Jesus. — His death at the hands of the 
 priesthood. — His return as a spirit. — The introduction of Bud- 
 dhism. — The combination of the two teachers. — The Christian 
 priesthood in spirit life. — India holds the key to the problem., 
 
 — The true light. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 The religious reform of the Unitarian separation from the orthodox 
 interpretation of the godhead. — Thetheosophy of SakyaMuni. 
 — The mixture of the Egyptian ideality with it. ^ The closing 
 of the doors of spiritual influx by the Christian fathers. — The 
 attitude of tlie church toward spiritual science. — The Buddha- 
 hood and' Theosophy. — The fallacious thought of the Christian 
 world regarding it. — True Tlieosophy teaches the ultimate re- 
 demption of all spirits througli evolution. — Pantheism. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SYMBOLISM OF AXCIENT WOESHIP. 
 
 The ignorance of the missionaries. — The ball and cross the same 
 symbol as the phallus. — The images of the lesser gods. — The 
 true signification of all symbols. — The Jewish scriptures a copy 
 of the Zoroastrian doctrines and laws of Menu of India. — The 
 saints in Christian churches. — The treatment accorded to all 
 who have spiritvial gifts by the Christian system. — Its eftect in 
 the Christian heavens. — The deception of the priesthood and 
 ministry in the Christian wprld. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE EKEOE OF THE DOCTEINE OF EEINCA.ENATION AS TAUGHT 
 BY THE THEOSOPHISTS OF EAETH. 
 
 Planetary life the inceptive life of the spiritual entity. — Prema■^ 
 ture removal to be deprecated. — Elementals and elementaries 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 only spirits prematurely detached from the body. — Their mag- 
 netic relations with powers in the form. — A good Karma not 
 not to be gained by reincarnation. — The better the conditions 
 the better the spiritual unfoldment. — -The necessity of magnetic 
 attachment to earth to perfect the fomi powers. — The necessity 
 of planets to give a perfect expression to spiritual entities. — 
 The influx of modern Hindoo thought fraught with danger. — 
 The fallacy of all forms of creedalism. — Fanaticism and cre- 
 dulity the chief characteristics of the movement. — Xeither 
 Hindoo nor Christian theology of the present age reliable. 
 
 CHAPTEK XII. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE SPIRITUAL ENTITY. 
 
 India the first nation to develop a true scheme of metaphysics. — 
 The present fictitious drapery of the subject. — The segregation 
 of the Infinite Spirit. — Nature produces through planetary re- 
 lations the essences of the elements in form. — The elemental 
 theory not strictly true. — Man follows the law of evolution the 
 same as the reptilian and mammalian types. — The sacred char- 
 acter of all life. — Planetary conditions as essential to the evo- 
 lution of conscious entity in spirit as to produce the crystalliue 
 or cell relations of the elements. — The office of India in spirit- 
 ualizing the philosophy of Greece and Egypt. 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 THE FRATERNIZATION OF THE ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL 
 NATIONS. 
 
 England's conquest of India. — The light of spiritual wisdom that 
 India acquired in the ancient days. — The influx of the present 
 theosophy. — Its defects. — The true birth of the spirit in the 
 sphere of intellectual and moral purity. — Its possibility of at- 
 tainment while in the mortal environment. — Keligious systems 
 perish when they fail to relieve human needs of the soul. — In- 
 tellectual spirituality to come from India. — The relations be- 
 tween America and India in the future. — America the child of 
 India in spirit. — All nations to. partake of the gifts of the spir- 
 itual life. — Sketch of the life of the great teacher called Brahma. 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 The Coming of Brahma. 
 
IInTEODUOTOEY. 
 
 In writing of tlie mysteries of the ancient faith, I 
 ask the reader to remember that it has been many cen- 
 turies since I was upon earth in mortal form, and that 
 in spirit even I have been aware that the declension of 
 knowledge has been proportionate to the perversion of 
 the ideas which I once taught to the multitudes of India, 
 rather than to any special class ; but as the spiritual father 
 of many peoples, I have spoken to all races, so to the 
 Brahmin priesthood of Benares would I speak with spe- 
 cial emphasis, warning them that they must broaden their 
 conceptions of the scope of creative power, and recog- 
 nize the universal principles that enable all souls to be 
 through creative processes. 
 
 India has power of intellect in excess of all the men- 
 tality of earth. She has preserved the form of Divine 
 knowledge, although she has perverted its application, 
 and from the sacred circle which is now open, according 
 to the prophecy of the Vedas, the great Brahma,* speaks 
 
 * The great Brahma, who figures so extensively in Indian theol - 
 ogy, was a teacher whose early history is involved in much obscu - 
 rity, he should not be confounded with the god Brahma, (who is 
 the central figure of the Hindoo triad,) but was a great teacher of 
 the primitive faith of Zarathustra, the ancient Persian sage. From 
 the system of Oriental metaphor, the application of Brahma to their 
 great teachers seems to imply that the minds that were wiser than 
 
X INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 to all the nations of the earth, instructing them in a 
 knowledge of the ancient doctrines, as well as opening 
 new truths to their comprehension. 
 
 Buddha has spoken to the Sudras, but Brahma sends 
 his words of warning to the highest caste of India, that 
 they may know that the great cycle* is again complete, 
 and the ancient teachers of Persia and Hindoostan are 
 again upon earth speaking to the souls of all the words 
 of wisdom and eternal life. 
 
 the multitude were regarded as specially favored of Brahm, and 
 thus obtained the appellation of Brahmas. The great Brahma prob- 
 ably preceded, or possibly was the original, from whom the Hebrews 
 took their ancestral Abram, for the name has the identical root 
 word in both cases. — B. 
 
 *The return of the period when the spiritual world is to be 
 opened anew to earth, that the ancient (h.-ctrines may be declared 
 directly, — B. 
 
CHAPTEK I. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
 RE-INCARNATION. 
 
 From the realm of creative energy in spirit, there 
 comes to the world of physical expression a power of 
 thought which fails to find full significance in the pov- 
 erty of human language. It is limited in its range of 
 appreciation by the undeveloped mind of earth, and 
 unless specially guarded by repeated explanations, be- 
 comes subject to a construction that is often diametric- 
 ally opposite to its original meaning. 
 
 Among the many primitive ideas that belonged to 
 the early religious status of India, was the doctrine of 
 the incarnation of spirit, and among the lamentable re- 
 sults of misunderstanding it is the midnight darkness 
 of soul that envelops that unfortunate people who, by 
 the perverted language of what was once a great truth, 
 and is now, are victims of a malign superstition. 
 
 If there is any one blamable for this perversion, it is 
 that priesthood that in my name has taught a doctrine, 
 which as I taught it was indeed true, but which under 
 its perverted form has become a source of the most 
 pestilent spiritual mischief. 
 
 I taught that One Glod alone was Supreme, and the 
 true object of adoration and praise. I taught that 
 from this Being proceeded all that had life and exist- 
 ence in the world of spirit or mortal being. I taught 
 that to this Being all who passed from physical life 
 would return, but I never taught that returning to the 
 2 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY, 
 
 presence spiritual of the great Om* would result in the 
 annihilation of the individual or his inability to return 
 to earth as a spirit. 
 
 I did teach that all spirits could return to earth to 
 manifest, and influence mortals, and I also taught that 
 such a return would be determined by the mental bias 
 of the individual. If of a low order, his affiliations 
 spiritual would be to the companionship of beasts and 
 reptiles, for I knew that all life of whatever order had 
 its spiritual counterpart in the invisible world. 
 
 When I say I knew, it was because in my experiences 
 in the study of spiritual truths I was observant of all 
 the spheres of spiritual unfoldment, and I saw that not 
 only did man have an immortal nature, but that the 
 lower orders of life had their immortality likewise. So 
 I forbade the destruction of life, although for many 
 generations it was not obeyed by my professed disci- 
 ples. 
 
 When I taught of the nature of eternal life and the 
 methods whereby spiritual happiness was to be secured, 
 I found the same obstacles to a perfect comprehension 
 of the ideas that all reformers find in all ages of the 
 world. There were those who could not understand 
 how a spirit could come to earth without being re-em- 
 bodied in physical life, and there were many who could 
 not imagine that any life could be which was beyond 
 the cognizance of the physical senses. 
 
 *The Sanscrit Om should be translated by the equivaleut All, 
 or the complete powers of existence. It has been made the sub- 
 ject of much controversy, but the subtle Hindoo mind grasjHMl the 
 signification of the all pervading source of being with marvelous 
 a<jcuracy. Brahm is not Om, but the creator of the worlds, while 
 Om is the ruling power of the universe itself, and greater than 
 Brahm or the lesser gods.— B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 The mental development of the masses then was as 
 imperfect as it is now, but there was not then, as now, 
 among the mental teachers of the people, an abnormal 
 development of the imagination, which has since then 
 led to an absurd interpretation of the doctrine of me- 
 tempsychosis. 
 
 To have cited my ideas of the spiritual nature as a 
 basis for the degradation of the soul of man to the 
 brutal realm, would have drawn from me a sharp re- 
 buke, for I taught that the pathway of the race was 
 upward not downward, and that the world of spirit 
 held in itself the power to emancipate all souls from 
 the thralldom of spiritual slavery. 
 
 To suppose, therefore, that in the statements which 
 I left on record as to the nature of the soul there is or ever 
 was any basis for the present theory of transmigration, is 
 to pervert a great truth until it has become a most griev- 
 ous error. There is one view of the subject of reincarna- 
 tion that I privately taught, and have often endeavored 
 to impress upon the intelligent Brahmins for many gen- 
 erations, which is this: Whenever any great soul arises 
 upon earth, manifesting the attributes of wisdom and 
 love, such a soul does not lose its power of expression 
 upon earth, for there will ever be correlative spirits born 
 there, through which the higher developed mind in 
 spirit can give expression to its own existence. I 
 might even go farther than this; for whenever the earth 
 itself is able to evolve the intellectual or moral power 
 of a Gautama* or Plato, it will ever after be -able to pro- 
 duce equally fine specimens of soul evolution, if not 
 their superiors: and in that sense there will ever be re- 
 
 *The great Hindoo philosopher called Buddha, the same often 
 called Sakva Muni. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOrHY. 
 
 incarnations of the essential spirit of a G-autama or 
 Plato, although as individuals they can only return 
 through the power of the spiritual transfer of thought, 
 which enables them to register upon the mentality of 
 mortals the wisdom that pertains to the world of devel- 
 oped mind.* 
 
 There has been a sad decline of spiritual power of a 
 high character in India by the mistaken ideality of the 
 nature of the soul. All souls are the offspring of plan- 
 etary conditions, and originate in the concentration of 
 forces which enter into planetary construction in in- 
 dividualization. They are evolutions of the planet, and 
 take their inception there. They are not elementary 
 or elementals in form awaiting incarnation previous to 
 conception and birth in physical life. The planet is the 
 gestating stage of all souls as well as bodies, and the 
 ideas that are now taught as Hindoo theories of the 
 origin of spirits belong to the lower rather than higher 
 schools of Hindoo thought.! 
 
 Understanding this, therefore, the moral status of 
 India may be uplifted by the idea that reincarnation and 
 metempsychosis are not to be hereafter taught as truths 
 in the old sense, but rather by their true explanation 
 
 * This statement sheds a world of light upon the original doc- 
 trines of transmigration and reincarnation of the spirit. It is sin- 
 gular that such a view of it should have been lost or obscured, but 
 the probability is tliat in the lapse of ages Hindoo theologians, like 
 their Christian imitators, sought to improve upon the original 
 doctrines. They have made a strange medley of what was a sim- 
 ple fact in the evolution of the spiritual nature, and we have in 
 the return of this spirit the corrective of this gigantic superstition 
 that holds India in the mazes of error. — B. 
 
 f Here is a staggering blow to the theory taught by man> Thc- 
 osophists as to the nature of spirit, and a i)ositive contradiction to 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 the world can again take from India the knowledge of 
 a spiritual philosophy that shall serve to elevate the 
 nations of the earth above the plane of physical sense, 
 and, at the same time, raise its intellectual status to a 
 realization of the principle that once made India the 
 mental light of the earth. 
 
 There is one effect of the doctrine of reincarnation of 
 the souls of the dead that is felt with direful power in 
 the spiritual world of India. Myriads who have left 
 the physical life hover over the mortals of that country 
 seeking for opportunities to become re-embodied, in order 
 that they may realize the promised relief from their 
 imperfect development in the former earth life. They 
 are earth-bound to a degree that infects the mental at- 
 mosphere of its people with almost hopeless despair, 
 for however intense may be their desire, they are never 
 able to obtain the fancied reincarnation. 
 
 They indeed seek the presence of opportunities in- 
 numerable through mental impress of the sexes, but 
 beyond inciting an abnormal sexual impulse they effect 
 nothing toward producing the result desired, and in 
 place of a new life in the physical world they only suc- 
 ceed in debasing their spiritual natures by recurrence 
 to the sensations and thoughts of earth. India has 
 suffered intensely in spiritual declension because of 
 this, and many of its people have really become seri- 
 
 that school of Spiritualists who are ever prating of elenientals and 
 reincarnation. With the higher thought from the spirit sages of 
 India as a corrective, it is to be hoped that the misuse of these 
 terms will pass away under the light of a truer interpretation of 
 the Hindoo thought. Spirits or mortals who teach the existence 
 of souls apart from planetary evolution need more instruction ere 
 they become teachers. — B. 
 
6 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 ously retarded in their progress toward an intellectual 
 spirituality. * 
 
 In place of the profound thought that once character- 
 ized the Brahmin priesthood in the days when Pytha- 
 goras,^ of Grreece, and the other sages of the West 
 journeyed to India to learn of the science of the soul, 
 the sacred race has degenerated in its spiritual wisdom 
 to the level of earthly cunning and intellectual sub- 
 tlety, but in so doing has closed the eyes of the spirit 
 to that higher light which should ever be the distin- 
 guishing power of the true follower of Brahm. 
 
 It is not in anger nor in disdain that I allude to the 
 present status of the Hindoo mind which reflects so 
 strongly the effects of perverted teaching of the primi- 
 tive faith. The spirit of India has been broken by sub- 
 servience to the Brahmin caste, but the priesthood has 
 not been able in spite of its prerogatives to preserve 
 its spiritual freedom. It has lost the vitality of the 
 spirit of the thought which made Brahminism the con- 
 trolling power of India, and, through its mental bril- 
 liancy, the governing force of the nations of the ancient 
 world. 
 
 The distinct province of the primitive faith was to 
 illuminate the mind of man with all knowledge. Its 
 
 *This explains why the spiritual life of luclia has so deteri- 
 orated through a false interpretation of the ideas of her great 
 teachers. The spiritual life being an evolution, and its recipients, 
 failing to obtain true ideas relating to it while upon the earth, 
 crowd back to obtain the promised relief, which nature denying, 
 plunges them into chaos and despair. By thought impress upon 
 their mortal companions, they transfer this mental state to them 
 also, so that the whole nation beconu's subject to helpless hoj)eless- 
 ness. — B. 
 
 * Pythagoras, an ancient Greek phil()soi)l;er who went to India 
 to complete his studies in spiritual science. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 cosmogony was based upon the evolirfcionary powers of 
 nature. The egg which floated in the vast waters aver 
 which Brahm brooded, and from which was born the 
 earth, was only a metaphor of speech which the sages 
 of the modern age recognize as the source of all created 
 form, and from which all visible life proceeds.* 
 
 All the transmutations and changes which material 
 life exhibits were observed by the teachers of the an- 
 cient faith, and spiritual life, in the time of my earth 
 life, was not disassociated with that life that is the 
 basis of soul evolution from the material relations of 
 being. There was as much recognition of the femi- 
 nine nature in creative power as of the masculine, and 
 Brahma, the world builder, had his soul mate in Yutiv 
 or Saravasti, the mother of his different children. 
 
 Brahma might construct a world by manipulation of 
 the chemical and mechanical forces, but he could not 
 people it alone, and woman, in Hindoo mythology, 
 stands equal with Brahma, if she does not grade higher, 
 in the work of creating beings having an eternal nature. 
 
 For the world may dissolve and pass away forever, 
 but the soul life that has come from its life is to endure 
 in sentient existence through the countless cycles of 
 
 *This interpretation of the old cosmogony, as to all life com- 
 ing from the egg, is another proof that the Oriental world had 
 veiled in metaphor some of the great scientific discoveries of the 
 ancient sages. It is a straightforward admittance that evolution is 
 the method of planetary processes, and the wonder is that some of 
 our modern scholars of Indian literature cannot give the credit to 
 these master minds of the ancient world for their great insight 
 into the works of nature. Probably the supreme egotism of the 
 Western mind, and its ignorance of Oriental methods of convey hi g 
 knowledge, are sufficient for the light esteem in which their ideas 
 are held. — B. 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 being. Therefore, let the priesthood of Benares, as 
 well as all through the borders of India, change the 
 current of thought relative to the subject of the rein- 
 carnation of the sj^irit. It will not return again to re- 
 enter the sphere of embodied life, although it may cling 
 to earth with the tenacity of a perverted imagination 
 for centuries. It cannot progress toward the grade of 
 an intelligent understanding of creative power as long 
 as it seeks to re-enter the sphere of earth embodiment, 
 and its purification can only be attained by rising above 
 the conceptions of perverted thought or the atmos- 
 phere of sensuality or deception. 
 
 Like as the father pities the wanderings of his way- 
 ward children, do the risen hosts of India regard the 
 spiritual declensions of the sacred order who have 
 mistaken the perverted ideas of man for the revelations 
 of the gods. 
 
 Proud and haughty in their fancied security, have the 
 leaders of the Brahminical faith sought to monopolize 
 the spiritual light of India for the sacred caste; but 
 aside from the cultivation of the mental power that be- 
 longs to the plane of earth, they are unable to obtain 
 the greater evidence that belongs to the pro\ince of 
 spiritual unfoldment. 
 
 From the heights of mental insio-ht in the world of 
 spirit, we see all that transpires in the temples and 
 sacred circles, and if the gods have withdrawn from 
 the shrines, and the oracles are filled with the voices of 
 craft and deception, it is because in the plenitude of 
 power the Brahmin priesthood has failed to preserve 
 intact the spirit of the Vedantic writings. 
 
 O, priesthood of Benares, return to the faith of the 
 fathers. How often I taught the ancient disciples the 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY, 
 
 sacred character of all life, and that the Eternal Om 
 was not to be mocked with frivolous pretensions. I 
 warned them that unless sincerity and truth was a 
 basis of their faith they would fail to attain the heights 
 of eternal peace or absorption in the Supreme Brahm. 
 
 My w^ords have proven true, and in the declension 
 from that spiritual exaltation which once marked the 
 Brahmin as the son of divine wisdom, is seen the super- 
 stitious cunning that gives the Brahmin name contempt 
 in the minds of the intelligent of other nations. 
 
 You pride yourselves upon the caste restrictions that 
 have preserved your blood pure throughout all genera- 
 tions. You look with scorn upon the lower castes as 
 unable to attain the heights of spiritual wisdom which 
 you claim as a birthright, but you fail to grasp the true 
 significance of all spiritual growth, for it comes to the 
 soul in its weakness of the flesh as readily as to the 
 spirit strong in the mental acquirements of countless 
 generations. 
 
 Did not the god of your fathers speak, saying, '-I 
 am the father of all flesh?" Whence then do ye aver 
 that you have a special claim upon the consideration of 
 eternal wisdom, or that to you are given special privi- 
 leges above the other sons of Brahm, who equally with 
 you are recipients of his bounty? 
 
 Not thus did I teach in the ancient days, and not 
 thus do I teach now, but in wisdom and purity of life 
 is to be found your redemption from the power of 
 earthly imperfections. 
 
 Sons of Brahma, you are not wise in this. In look- 
 ing for the return of the ancient wisdom, seek the inner 
 light of the spirit. Dense darkness broods over the 
 nation from the mountains to the dark waters, but In- 
 
10 THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 clia that once lighted the Western world by the torch of 
 a transcendent spiritual illumination has yet a mission 
 of power and grandeur that shall be felt upon the earth 
 forevermore. 
 
 She is not dead, but sleeping, and her priesthood are 
 not beyond the power of a spiritual awakening that 
 shall place her in the front of human progress far above 
 the plane occupied by the priests of the Western world; 
 for they have the blood of centuries of intellectual cul- 
 ture in their veins, and when they rise above the su- 
 perstitions engendered by a false interpretation of the 
 ancient doctrines, they will then be ready to act upon 
 a plane of spirituality that the disciples of the Chris- 
 tian world dare not approach. 
 
 O, India, the pearl of the nations! thy glory may be 
 obscured for a season, but as thou based thy civiliza- 
 tion upon the eternity of the spirit thy nationality 
 cannot perish, for thy glory is immortality. Earthly 
 palaces and temples fall and decay, but in the invisible 
 guardianship of thy spiritual children thou hast the 
 guerdon of perpetual growth and stability. Egyptian, 
 Grecian and Roman splendor have vanished in the night 
 of eternal oblivion, but the land where Pythagoras and 
 Apollonius * learned the secrets of the soul blooms forth 
 afresh as each succeeding generation seeks as they sought 
 the knowledge immortal at the shrines of a people who 
 never have lost beyond recall the power to penetrate 
 the secrets of the eternal world. 
 
 It is India that rules the mind world of Europe and 
 America. It is India that gave them all that is valua- 
 
 * A great spiritual teacher born atTyaiia in Ca]ii)ado(Ma about the 
 beginning of the Christian era. See Encyclopedia Brittannica for 
 full account of his life. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. H 
 
 ble in their systems of mental and spiritual culture, al- 
 though they know it not, and with childish greed and 
 impatience demand a recognition from the Oriental 
 world as though they were the original discoverers of 
 spiritual and material knowledge. 
 
 Little do they realize, in their crude material devel- 
 opment, that when their ancestors were emerging from 
 the wilds of primitive savagery, the sages of India had 
 discovered the secrets of eternal existence, and formu- 
 lated a system whereby knowledge of spiritual powers 
 could be preserved for a heritage to the nations.* 
 
 Regard not, O children of the Sun, the pretensions 
 of these children of darkness to the possession of a mo- 
 nopoly of spiritual knowledge. They boast of one in- 
 carnation of Vishnu f as their god, but you know that 
 India has had its numerous incarnations of that mani- 
 festation of Divine wisdom; and you also know that 
 India never treated her avatars with the cruelty with 
 which they treated the only one they claim to have ever 
 had, and which they now aver was a part of the Divine 
 purpose in sending him into the world to atone for the 
 sins of a savage people. 
 
 *Here the source of that wonderful philosophy which originated 
 ill the Oriental nations is clearly set forth, and some inkling of the 
 marvelous mentality of its authors is discernible in these sen- 
 tences. While the philosophers of the West were bound in a ma- 
 terial life-thought, and stumbled at the threshold of the gateway 
 of spiritual knowledge, the sages of India had penetrated the inner 
 spheres of spiritual existence, and were quite familiar with the 
 sources of mind power. They lacked the language to express the 
 thought in scientific terms, but they had the ideas in essence, and 
 a true interpretation of their symbols shows how nearly mental 
 growth follows the same channel in all ages. — B. 
 
 f The second person of the Hindoo triad, or the savior of life. 
 
12 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Cruel as they claim the gods of India to have been, 
 none of them equal in savage ferocity the God of the 
 Christian world, according to Christian theology, for 
 their God sent His only begotten son, in order that, 
 through death. His savage wrath might be satiated by 
 the blood of the innocent.* 
 
 Remember, O sons of Brahm, that their missionaries 
 are the children of savages, who destroyed their own 
 Savior, and that the mind of the savage is not entirely 
 obliterated in them, although their Savior had no sym- 
 pathy or affiliation with the doctrines they seek to im- 
 pose upon India as the work of the Supreme Creator. 
 
 These children of the Western nations know little of 
 spiritual existence. They belong to another age of the 
 world than the spiritual, and all they can bring is the 
 borrowed light that once left India's shores, and after 
 traversing the globe has again returned in diminished 
 splendor and colored by the mental surroundings 
 through which it is transmitted. 
 
 They have material wisdom and that degree of spirit- 
 ual unfoldment that pertains to the first stage of ^merg- 
 ing from the plane of savagery or barbarism, but they 
 are blind to the higher light of the spirit, and their 
 
 * Much has been written by the missionaries of the cruel rites 
 of Hindoo worship, but this analysis of Christian theology by the 
 acute mind of a Hindoo spirit must pass for a masterpiece of sub- 
 tlety in the line of repartee. To preach to such a people of the 
 goodness and benevolence of the Deity who has planned sucli a 
 sacrifice, and to call their gods cruel, is the height of folly, and 
 the assertion of the spirit that the theology is the conception of a 
 savage people is consistent as well as true. What a pity the peo- 
 ple who represent the Christian virtues should feel it necessary to 
 teach such infernal ideas as a part of a Divine system to redeem 
 the race. — B. 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 13 
 
 doctrines of the resurrection of the body show how 
 little they comprehend of the great truth of the nature 
 and powers of the spirit in the world eternal. 
 
 They have, however, escaped the eri^ors of the doc- 
 trine of transmigration of the spirit, but their millions 
 who cling to earth seeking to re-enter their crumbling- 
 bodies are a striking spectacle to those who know of 
 the sad effects upon the spirit that is subject to either 
 idea. Therefore, I come again, as I prophesied I would 
 come, to say to India to rise anew from the night of 
 gloom and sorrow, and let the Ijght of Brahm shine 
 forth to illuminate every soul that enters the pathway 
 of life on the earth. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE GODS. 
 
 In the philosophy of the ancient faith there was 
 taught this doctrine, viz. , that the wisdom of the gods 
 was derived from a knowledge of the virtues of the Su- 
 preme Brahm. To the latter was ascribed the power of 
 creative energy, by virtue of which all life had its ori- 
 gin in the will of the creator. The transfer of this 
 thought to the philosophy of the West was attended 
 with some disadvantages to the primitive faith, for the 
 inhabitants of both Persia and Greece were crude and 
 savage in their mental development, and to them the 
 wisdom of the gods became a mass of fictitious theories, 
 through which ran a thread of the primitive principles, 
 around which the theories were clustered. 
 
 The only gods of the ancient world who ever mani- 
 fested their presence to mortals in visible form were 
 the spiritual guardians of the tribes and nations that 
 then inhabited the earth, and the wisdom of the gods 
 of this order was often crude and unreliable. The wiser 
 minds in spirit sought to impress the knowledge of 
 principles upon the ignorant, undeveloped minds of 
 mortals, but the latter, in their ignorance of the nature 
 of life in the invisible Avorld, sought wisdom through 
 those manifestations of spirit that appealed to the phys- 
 ical senses; and as they once worshiped the invisible 
 principle veiled in the symbolical image, so they trans- 
 ferred their worship of the invisible to the visible im- 
 age that came again from the realms of spirit, as if it 
 
 (14) 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 15 
 
 had in itself the power of creating and controlling the 
 destinies of the world. '^ 
 
 When India transferred her worship from the Su- 
 preme Om to the Supreme Brahm she sank in the grade 
 of spirituality one degree, but when she threw open 
 the gates of the world invisible, by invoking the aid of 
 her spirit children as gods, she declined rapidly in the 
 scale of spiritual power; for the latter, although be- 
 yond the sphere of physical sense, were far from per- 
 fect in knowledge, and the wisdom of the gods became 
 foolishness to the people. That sublime conception 
 of the power and nature of the spiritual exaltation of 
 the gods became dwarfed to the superstitious reverence 
 for the unknown, which at this day marks the religious 
 bias of both Christian and so-called Heathen nations. 
 
 In this declension there is no difference in spiritual 
 effects, for the people of all nations rise or fall in the 
 grades of spirituality, not by any superiority of the 
 gods they worship, but because they fail to stand erect 
 in the consciousness that all men are the children of the 
 Supreme Om, and that all are capable of attaining that 
 measure of supreme wisdom which belongs to the chil- 
 dren of light. 
 
 I am well aware of the errors that have obscured the 
 
 * This statement of the origin of the worship of spirits and angels 
 as gods throws a powerful light upon the source of India' s decline 
 iu spiritual power, for to worship a spirit as a god could hardly 
 fail to degrade the worshiper. The worship of an embodied spirit 
 as a god, which some of the Roman emperors demanded in their 
 life time, marked a period of declension and loss of that national 
 spirit which was essential to the well being of the state. The 
 claim of reverence as a god provoked contempt rather than loyal 
 allegiance, and the claims were never allowed by the wiser em- 
 perors. — B. 
 
16 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 ancient Brahmin faith, and that the priesthood have 
 failed to discriminate between the external symbols 
 and the spiritual signification of the images. I am also 
 well aware that the Brahmin of Benares looks in vain 
 for the wisdom from the world of spirit which once 
 made the voice of the sacred circle respond literally to 
 the edicts of Divine authority, but I wish them to know 
 that when the voice of wisdom speaks from the spiritual 
 circle it is the voice of Brahm only when it expresses 
 the principles of omnipotent knowledge and power, and 
 it should also agree with the ideas of love and benevo- 
 lence that belong to universal fatherhood and mother- 
 hood. When it speaks not in accord with that it is not 
 the voice of Om or Brahm, but ot Siva,* or rather the 
 voice of the deceptive minds in spirit that prefer to rule 
 the mind of mortals through fear, instead of that pure 
 light that once established the doctrine of universal 
 fraternity, f 
 
 No spirit speaking from the shrines in the name of 
 Brahm, who fails to respond to the truths of the Vedas 
 as they were originally given, should be tolerated as of 
 the Brahmin order, but he is rather a spirit of dark- 
 ness than a child of light, even if he comes in the robes 
 
 *The third person of the Hindoo trinity, or the death principle 
 personified. 
 
 f It seems from this statement that India has had its false oracles, 
 who have not been afraid to speak from the circle, in the name of 
 the great Bralima, doctrines that he would not approve or tolerate. 
 In fact, it is more than probable that spirits of the lower orders 
 have appeared in their circles, attracted by the deceptive craft of 
 the priesthood, and proclaimed that they were the messengers of 
 Brahma, or himself come back in personal fonn. It is not unlikely 
 that the priesthood were deceived by these spirits to institute the 
 present degraded forms of worship. — B. 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 17 
 
 of purity and speaks from the sacred circle as the mes- 
 senger of Divine Wisdom. If he counsels pride of caste 
 or contemns the souls of any, he belongs not to the 
 sphere of Divine Wisdom, nor should his words be heeded 
 as though they reflected the mind of Brahm. They are 
 of Siva, and Brahma or Vishnu have nothing in accord 
 with them. 
 
 If we turn to invoke the aid of the spiritual guardi- 
 ans of the Western nations, we find that they also re- 
 flect the same mental inferiority that pertains to the 
 sphere of undeveloped spirit, for the God of the Chris- 
 tian world is only a modified image of the avatars of 
 India. * 
 
 The Christian beseeches the spirit of his incarnate 
 god as the races of India call upon their spirit deities 
 that abound at so many shrines, but the Christian 
 world has reduced the number to one idealized charac- 
 ter, who embodies all the virtues of the Supreme Om 
 as well as the full developed mental powers in the form 
 of man. Therefore, the Christian god becomes, in the 
 mythology of India, a Buddha, and corresponds nearest 
 in the grade of spiritual development to the idealized 
 divinity of G-autama, from whom, in reality, the early^ 
 
 *In Indian mythology, the return to earth of a god to be incar- 
 nated. By some curious ti-ansfer of the idea to the West, the 
 present Christian deity is a modified form of this Hindoo doctrine. 
 This spirit discusses it with a lucidity of expression that is quite 
 a relief to the sanctimonious ignorance with which Christian theo- 
 logians approach the subject. It must be rather humiliating to 
 the pride of the average D. D. to be told his God is but a revamped 
 edition of a Hindoo avatar, but it nevertheless seems to have a 
 substantial foundation in fact, as India has more than a score of 
 the avatars to the Christian's one. — B. 
 3 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Christian disciples took most of their ideas of the na- 
 ture of the spiritual life. 
 
 But the Christian deity was impotent to repress the 
 savage ferocity of the European peoples, and the his- 
 tory of Christian nations has been a record of bloody 
 strife and superstitious rendering of spiritual ideas that 
 has made the Christian world a terror to the inhabi- 
 tants of more peaceful civilizations, and war and con- 
 quest have been their characteristics ever since their 
 first emperor placed the sign of the cross upon his 
 standards as the omen of victory. 
 
 The wisdom of the gods of the Western world has 
 never graded higher than the mental development of 
 their worshipers, and whether they bow at the shrines 
 of the bloody minded Jehovah or the more peaceable 
 Jesus or Joshua, they have ever reflected the inner spirit- 
 ual darkness or light with which their mentality has 
 been colored. To this day they sit in the gloom of 
 mediaeval obscurity in which their spiritual theories 
 first received their gestation and birth. 
 
 Ignorant as children of the nature of life, the nations 
 of the Western world mistake the twilight gloom of a 
 spiritual unfoldment to come for the radiant luster of 
 the full truth of the spirit, and proclaim to the world 
 that to them alone is given the monopoly of spiritual 
 wisdom and the fullness of Divine revelation, although 
 all the written words of their oracles, that they have 
 preserved in mutilated form, came from India originally. * 
 
 * M. Ernest Renan has ably traced out the connection of ideas 
 by which the Jewish and Christian scripture are connected with 
 the writings of India. Nor are his surmises or conchisions with- 
 out foundation. This people were spiritualized in thought long 
 before the Western nations were developed enough to have a liter- 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 19 
 
 As one proof of this, let me cite the reader to the care 
 with which ancient Egypt preserved her dead, that 
 they might again inhabit the earth in physical form, 
 and contrast it with the ideality with which India sur- 
 rounded the subject of the spiritual life, when the dead 
 were burned that the spirit might forever be released 
 from connection in thought with the materiality of 
 earth. The Christian world still clings to Egyptian 
 materiality in its construction of the dogma of the res- 
 urrection of the body, while heathen India knows that 
 when the spirit has once been released from the phys- 
 ical form it can never return to reanimate or have fur- 
 ther connection with it. 
 
 The gods of the Christian world are ideals in mate- 
 rial form. The worship of them is only another form of 
 idolatry which has descended to it through a natural 
 evolution of the polytheism of the ancient nations of 
 G-reece and Egypt. In their divinely begotten Son of 
 G-od they preserve the traditions of Egyptian and G-re- 
 cian mythology, as well as the avatarship of India. In 
 reality the birth and nativity of all men are alike, but 
 the spiritual wisdom that can be originated or reflected 
 by some has its source in a developed spirituality of 
 mind which has been considered evidence of a superior 
 origin. It is nothing more than a superior development, 
 and, while it may reflect the wisdom of the gods, it has 
 no claim to a Divine paternity, nor should it be so re- 
 garded by the less enlightened. When it is made the 
 subject of deific worship it becomes a serious detriment 
 
 ature or even a history. The coming of the Abramic ideas to the 
 West, and their clear connection with the Brahminic theories of the 
 East, show that the Israelitish race is kin to some Indian ancestry, 
 and their religion a variety of the Brahminic doctrines. — B. 
 
20 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 to both worshiper and spirit, and is the cause of a per- 
 verted growth in spiritual knowledge, both on earth 
 and in the world eternal. 
 
 The voice of the spiritual source of all light and 
 knowledge is not heard directly by any embodied spirit 
 in existence. It remains behind the impenetrable veil 
 of eloquent silence, and speaks to the soul of man. 
 through its own powers, by an eternal evolution. He 
 growls and expands under its mysterious impulses until 
 he can measure the lesser grades of creative expression, 
 as witnessed in the evolution of suns and planetary 
 systems; but beyond all these lies the Supreme Om, 
 that never has been apprehended by the wisest minds 
 existent in the world of souls. 
 
 Man can approach the grade of sentient wisdom of 
 the Supreme Brahm, and be absorbed by or equal with 
 that power expressed by the word, but the Om is 
 greater than Brahm, and alone is worthy the adoration 
 and praise of all sentient creation.* Brahma, Vishnu 
 and Siva are the gods of earth, and embody the wisdom 
 of earthly attainment. Brahm, Agni and Ifidra are 
 each great in their domain; but above all these gods is 
 the Supreme Wisdom, to whom the knowledge of the 
 lesser gods is as childish speculation. Therefore, let 
 the disciples of Brahm lift their souls toward the Su- 
 preme Om if they would receive the highest wisdom, 
 for then they are in that pathway that leads the soul 
 above the plane of earthly ambition or pursuits. 
 
 * This distinction between the meaning of the words Brahm and 
 Om is so important that it should not be overlooked. Brahm. the 
 creative power that constructs worlds, is so much less in majesty than 
 Om that he cannot be said to exceed the ability of man, in essence. 
 Brahm is the world builder, but Om is the soul of the universe, 
 from whom Brahm obtains his wisdom, but whom he may never 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 21 
 
 It is in vain. O children of the Sun. that von seek 
 the divine wisdom at the shrines of the lesser gods. 
 Like the Christian world, your gods are silent when 
 you approach the Divinity in embodied form. In vain 
 the Christian beseeches his god to appear to fulfill 
 his promises, and you. likewise, will never see the great 
 teachers of India reappear again in embodied form to 
 receive the worship of the multitude, as you have so 
 vainly imagined. 
 
 We hear your cries and understand your desires, but 
 we also know that you will never ascend in the grade 
 of spiritual development by calling us back to the 
 sphere of physical embodiment. You must come up- 
 ward, rather than ask us to descend from the Xirvanian* 
 heavens to assist you in the attainment of spiritual 
 knowledge. We will answer you by thoughts that lift 
 the soul above the plane of earth, but we are not gods 
 to be worshiped, nor are we ambitious to be so regarded. 
 Detach your minds from us as gods, and we become your 
 powerful allies in spirit. Hold us to earth as gods, and 
 we evade you and answer not. for we have done with 
 earth and its childish allurements forever. 
 
 O. children of Brahm. rise to become children of 
 Om. and the sacred fires will blaze forth afresh upon 
 your altars. The divine messengers will reappear 
 a2:ain in the sacred circle, and the voices of vour o^reat 
 teachers will be heard from the inner shrines, oivinor 
 anew the greater and grander truths concerning 
 the souls eternal destiny. 
 
 hope to equal. Christian theology expresses the essential ideas of 
 creator. j)reserver and diviae companionship in its trinity, but 
 fails to comprehend the methods of either. 
 
 *Tiie highest realm of spiritual existence in the future life. 
 The a'xKie of the great philosophers and purified spirits of earth. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE SACKED CASTE IN THE AN- 
 CIENT DAYS. 
 
 When I think of the glories of the ancient doctrines 
 of India and the height of her attainments in the men- 
 tal world, I am loth to witness the declension of that 
 wisdom that once made her the envy of the surround- 
 ing nations of the earth. 
 
 To be a Brahmin was to be devoted to the considera- 
 tion and attainment of the highest spiritual wisdom. 
 The garments of white, in which the form was ever to 
 be clothed, were, symbolical of that illuminating purity 
 of character that belonged to the sphere of perfect 
 mental and moral unfoldment. There was a difference 
 in degree of wisdom between the Brahmin and the 
 lower castes, but there was not that disregard of the 
 importance or esteem in which all souls should be held 
 who possess the nature of immortal beings, that has 
 since marked the decline of the primitive ideality of the 
 ancient faith. 
 
 The declension began with the substitution of exter- 
 nal rites and ceremonies for the cultivation of the finer 
 qualities of the spiritual nature. It is hard for the 
 dwarfed mentality of a perverted imagination to realize 
 this, but no soul can attain to spiritual wisdom that 
 neglects the foundation principle of humility of spirit. 
 
 Therefore, the mind of any class or caste that fails 
 to realize this remains upon a lower plane of spiritual 
 unfoldment than the soul that thankfully rejoices in 
 
 (22) 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 23 
 
 the coming of light to any mind, even if of the lower 
 castes, for the light of spiritual life follows a law of its 
 own when it touches the nature of any soul upon earth. 
 It does not deflect from a straightforward course of 
 procedure, but by the law of spiritual and mental evo- 
 lution, it illuminates the soul of the recipient with that 
 divine enlightenment that has been a source of mystery 
 to the less developed spirit. 
 
 Here was the beginning of that substitution of ascetic 
 mortification of the flesh that the spirit might obtain a 
 forced growth of spiritual perception, but it proved 
 abortive in the majority of cases, for the spirit must 
 have its natural evolution as well as the body, and 
 forced growth in either ends in distorted instead of sym- 
 metrical results.^ 
 
 The mentality of the sacred caste deteriorated under 
 the severe code of physical discipline, and the wisdom 
 of the wise became foolishness through the vain efforts 
 to approach the spiritual world by the systematic sup- 
 pression of the natural methods of evolutionary un- 
 foldment. The Brahmin caste did, indeed, become 
 famous for its external rit^s of sanctity, but it was 
 too often external only, for the natural functions of the 
 body, being repressed in their legitimate channels of 
 
 *Thi.s is a significant rebuke to the ignorance and fanaticism 
 preached in Christian nations as gospel truth. To prate of the 
 danger of delay, or to teach that the eternal destiny of the spirit is 
 dependent upon a mystical theory of theological imbecility, is the 
 weakness of the least intelligent advocates of the Christian system, 
 but here a spirit who has lived in both worlds declares it to be a 
 necessity of evolution that the spirit should have time to perfect 
 its powers ere it can reflect the ultimate design of its existence. 
 With an eternity to work out its redemption, the soul can hardly 
 miss its final evolution from the power of adverse conditions. — B. 
 
'24: THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 action, turned themselves into the pathway of perverted, 
 although secret, gratification, and the moral nature suf- 
 fered deeply in its most private and sacred relations. 
 
 The consequences ot this perversion of the mental and 
 physical laws of being were soon manifest in the declin- 
 ing mental and spiritual power of the priesthood, for 
 in place of the exalted concepts of the ideas that had 
 been transmitted through the medium of written lan- 
 guage came a distorted and mythical interpretation of 
 the symbols that once served to illustrate the pure 
 ideality of an unperverted imagination. 
 
 The sacred caste declined in spirituality, and substi- 
 tuted for that purity of soul which belongs to an unde- 
 filed nature the sanctimonous hypocrisy which served 
 to veil the inner corruption from the physical sight 
 and by alliance with arbitrary force held its power over 
 the other castes, although it could not conipete with 
 that more subtle power of spirit which was able to pene- 
 trate the more teachable intellect of the Sudras, and 
 which lit up their souls with the transcendent glory 
 that ever after made the Buddhists the modifying; if 
 not really controlling, power of Indian spirituality. 
 
 It is claimed by the Christian world that Buddha's 
 light has been extinguished in Hindoostan. and that 
 the country is submerged in the grossest forms of idol 
 worship; but I would say that the coming of the 
 Buddhas was always a part of the Brahmin doctrines, 
 and the only error tl^at the priesthood of this age holds 
 concerning it is, that the Buddhas must come from the 
 Sacred Order; for. although they might come from it as 
 well as elsewhere, they are not confined to- any class, 
 nor have they ever been. It was not so taught by the 
 ancient writers, and the assumption of it as a condition 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 25 
 
 of reliable authority in attaining the Buddhahood is on 
 a par with the Christian dogma, that those only who 
 believe in their avatar have any chance of final happi- 
 ness in the life eternal. 
 
 Neither Brahmin nor Christian has supreme juris- 
 diction in the world of soul life, and their attempts 
 to monopolize the principles of eternal existence in be- 
 half of their castes or creeds is destined to ignomin- 
 ious failure. The Supreme Om has so arranged the 
 course of spiritual evolution that even Brahm cannot 
 prevent the attainment of human happiness by all man- 
 kind, should he so desire; but Brahm is not exclusive 
 in his dominion of the world, nor did he ever teach 
 that he held one race in abhorrence or another in 
 esteem. Rather did he teach all that by observance of 
 the law of life all should attain to wisdom and goodness, 
 although he spoke warning words to those who should 
 live in violation of the decrees of purity and benevolence. 
 
 The ancient teachers of the Brahmin faith understood 
 this and obeyed the precepts, but their degenerate de- 
 scendants, by a perverted interpretation of the symbols, 
 lost the sacred knowledge, and in vain have substituted 
 for it the wisdom of man in the low^er state of mental 
 growth, instead of that exalted spiritual condition by 
 which spiritual discernment of ideas becomes a possi- 
 bility. 
 
 Through this declension the modern priesthood has 
 failed to read the symbols aright, and the wisdom of 
 the ancient doctrines has become obscured by absurd 
 talss of metempsychosis, which excite the derision of 
 the unlearned as well as the contempt of the disciples 
 of evolutionary thought. The sons of Brahma know 
 that imagery and symbols are for the unlearned in the 
 
26 TPIE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 inner life, not to be regarded as objects of adoration 
 and praise by the minds of the wise and intelligent. 
 
 Nor should the doctrines that were veiled under the 
 figurative expressions of transmigration be literally 
 rendered as expressive of spiritual existence, but as the 
 metaphorical language in which the Oriental mind loves 
 to convey the great truths that pertain to the life of 
 the soul. I should indeed be worthy of the scorn and 
 derision with which the Christian world regards the in- 
 telligence that conceived the absurd cycle of endless 
 rounds of incarnation until absorption in Brahm anni- 
 hilates the individuality, had I ever really taught such 
 a doctrine; but like the fate that befalls all the great re- 
 forms in the ideal world of mind, the pure doctrine of 
 the spiritual nature has had a distorted and perverted 
 translation from its primitive significance, and the wiser 
 minds in India are now transmitting a purer interpre- 
 tation of its original meaning. 
 
 The Brahmo Somaj is nearer the original thought of 
 the great founder of the Brahmin faith than any other 
 sect in India, but it needs to add to the mental con- 
 cepts of the spiritual world a recognition of its great 
 influence upon the mentality of earth through the trans- 
 mission of thought by direct transfer, and that the 
 grade of the thought is an index of the degree of men- 
 tal unfoldment of the spirit of the thinker. 
 
 It is right in rejecting the principle of avatar- 
 ship and abolition of caste as essential to a knowledge 
 of the truth, but it should also enlist the sympathies 
 and co-operation of the enlightened of all races by an- 
 nouncing to the world its true position on the ques- 
 tions of spiritual enlightenment, and the availibility of 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 ancient as well as modern -means to establish a frater- 
 nization of spiritual thought throughout the earth. 
 
 The Christian world clings to the avatar idea because 
 the Christian theologian is upon the plane of spiritual 
 childhood, but the mature mentality of the Brahmo 
 Somaj rejects the childish conceptions of the orthodox 
 Brahmin or Christian as literal truth, and relegates 
 the ideas of both to the undeveloped period of the race, 
 when the influx of spiritual light was considered to be 
 the evidence of supernatural wisdom or favor. 
 
 The wisdom of the ancient teachers of India always 
 rejected the idea of avatarship as ordinarily understood. 
 None of them, while in the mortal state, claimed to be 
 incarnations of Vishnu, or the Divine Wisdom. Their 
 apotheosis came after their transfer to the spiritual 
 world, and generally after several generations had 
 passed away from earth. Then arose their worship by 
 the priesthood, who sank in spiritual declension in just 
 the proportion that they falsified the original doctrines, 
 and thus the great ideas of the enlightened teachers 
 lost their power through the false construction placed 
 upon them by the spiritually undeveloped.^ 
 
 For in all nations this principle holds good, that 
 
 * India has followed the same pathway that Christian nations 
 are now traversing. The apotheosis of Jesus or Joshua took place 
 several centuries after his transition from earth, and the pagan 
 nations of the Roman empire furnished the bulk of his disciples. 
 The whole bodj- of his followers became subservient to a priest- 
 hood that taught anything they chose as gospel, and for many cen- 
 turies the European world went into the densest spiritual darkness. 
 Even yet the light in the Christian world is of the sun shining in 
 a fog rather than with uninterrupted rays, and its teachers deal 
 with spiritual ideas outside of their creeds as though they were 
 dangerous. — B. 
 
28 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 spiritual knowledge follows the same law of evolu- 
 tionary growth that pertains to physical form in the 
 mortal life. There has to be its periods of conception, 
 gestation and birth, and until the soul of man has passed 
 these periods it can have no knowledge of spirituality 
 of a high or even low degree. In many natures, there 
 is no development of spiritual life above the plane of 
 feeling during earthly life. Hearing and sight are 
 dormant, and the spiritual senses are confined to one 
 channel of perception only. They can feel the great 
 waves of pulsating power that reach them from the 
 world eternal, but they cannot correct a false impres- 
 sion that may be produced by this sensation, and from 
 this fact alone the world's great superstitions proceed 
 in countless variety of forms. 
 
 Spiritual knowledge that comes by feeling is about 
 as high in the grade as the mentality emerging from 
 the savage plane can perceive, and the interpretation 
 of its influence will be expressed in a savage manner. 
 The people of Christian nations are marked examples 
 of this form of spiritual development, for they still 
 worship a savage god, whom they suppose to be the 
 parent of a merciful and benevolent son, who died to 
 propitiate the father's savage and revengeful disposi- 
 tion toward the human race. The people of the Chris- 
 tian world are spiritual savages, save where the mild 
 and beneficent ideas of the great Indian teacher, Gau- 
 tama, the Buddha, have been accepted and practiced; 
 but the lingering superstitions of the savage mind still 
 haunt their imagination, and they regard every mani- 
 festation from the world of spirit in this age to be of 
 Satanic origin if it appeals to other senses than that of 
 feeling. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 29 
 
 The ignorance of the Christian clergy concerning 
 spiritual matters is more dense than that of India, but 
 the conceit of their half-developed minds is a striking 
 comment upon the efficacy of their system to save them- 
 selves from the imaginary wrath of an imaginary god. ^ 
 As they were never in any danger of soul or body, ex- 
 cept what they themselves have devised as existing in 
 mind, it is not strange that a change of mental con- 
 ception of their god should be hailed by them as evi- 
 dence of having obtained favor with him, and it is often 
 paraded before the world as a manifest token of spirit- 
 ual acceptance by him. 
 
 This highest wisdom of the Christian was as familiar 
 to the ancient sages of India as the presence of the spir- 
 itual world in the sacred circle of the temples. But the 
 Christian world has no recognition of the latter evi- 
 dence, and sinks in the scale of perfected spiritual power, 
 although it has some in its ranks who dimly sense the 
 existence of a more exalted condition of attainment 
 than their present status. They not only feel the 
 presence and power of the spiritual world, but the 
 sense of hearing is developed to a remarkable degree, 
 and the voice of the unseen thinker- reaches their inner 
 power of soul, adding to the sense of feeling the fac- 
 ulty of hearing, and thus the spirit has a new source 
 
 *Here tlie spiritual teacher of the Orient expresses an idea that 
 is quite in consonance with the developed thought of Europe or 
 America. The enlightened mentality of the race instinctively re- 
 jects the crude theological definitions of the mediaeval ages, and 
 refuses to be bound by them, although they are still taught in the 
 seminaries and schools of theological training. Why the West 
 should still feel bound by the creeds of savage Europe or barbaric 
 Asia is a mystery, except for the lack of a more perfect develop- 
 ment in knowledge of spiritual laws. — B. 
 
30 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 of mental and spiritual enlightenment. If to this 
 should come the evolution of spiritual sight and the 
 vision be perfect, then the possessor of these powers 
 becomes a Buddha, or spiritual sage, able to look into 
 the invisible world and to perceive the secret causes 
 and workings of the great forces that underlie all man- 
 ifestation of being. 
 
 To become a Buddha was the aim of the ancient re- 
 ligious discipline of the Brahmin school, but the attain- 
 ment of the Buddha state by the practice of ascetic 
 rites, or the undue repression of the physical senses, 
 was never as successful as the primitive disciples of 
 that school of thought hoped it would be. Sometimes, 
 indeed, the severe discipline of the body opened the 
 spiritual vision prematurely, and permitted the neo- 
 phyte in spiritual wisdom to perceive some of the lower 
 spheres of spiritual life, which were mistaken for evi- 
 dences of spiritual wisdom; but the greater knowledge 
 of spiritual truths never came to the seekers for it in 
 this direction, for spiritual wisdom, like its earthly 
 prototype, comes by mental growth, and not by violent 
 stimulus or repression of any department of individual 
 experiences.* 
 
 The Brahmins of later ages and the priesthood of the 
 
 ■"* Here agani is au idea worthy of consideration by the students 
 of theosophical and esoteric thought. To force the soul from its 
 balance by forced stimulation, or to repress its powers in a proper 
 exercise of them in any natural manner, has ever proven detri- 
 mental rather than beneficial to the practitioner of the ascetic 
 rites, A true growth is always symmetrical and a false stimulus 
 can only produce distortion. The fakirs and other superstitious 
 devotees of "India at this age are the best evidence possible of the 
 wide divergence from the primitive simplicity of the ancient 
 teachers. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 31 
 
 Christian world, who seek spiritual enlightenment of a 
 high order through the cultivation of asceticism, miss 
 the aim of their ambition, and enter the spiritual world 
 shorn of their power to appreciate its higher grades of 
 thought, and are obliged to remain upon the plane of 
 earth until they learn the great lessons of spiritual un- 
 foldment through obedience to the spirit of natural 
 laws. 
 
 This lesson is the most difficult for either the Brahmin 
 or Christian priesthood to learn, for each imagines 
 itself to be specially chosen by the Supreme Creator 
 for an example of the Divine Wisdom upon the earth, 
 and neither of them really have any claim by virtue of 
 their order to any consideration by the Supreme Creator 
 above the other castes or classes of men. 
 
 I emphatically taught that Brahm was no respecter 
 of persons and that Om was the father of all that in- 
 habited the worlds, but I never authorized by word or 
 deed the idea that the followers of Brahm were to have 
 any higher privileges than Om bestowed upon all that 
 obeyed the sacred laws. I did teach that the sons of 
 Brahm should have the wisdom that belonged to the 
 sacred order, which was to ever hold the truth in pu- 
 rity and bestow it upon the children of men. I declared 
 that the light should never be quenched in India, and if 
 it declined in power I would come again to re-establish 
 its pristine glory, and through Capilya and Gautama I 
 fulfilled the prophecy; but the priesthood failed to un- 
 derstand them, as they fail to comprehend now that all 
 light of a spiritual character comes not from the indi- 
 vidual who bears it to men, but through the mentality 
 which, as an illuminated reflector, radiates the spiritual 
 glory to the darkened minds of earth. 
 
32 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Therefore, I come again in this age, speaking the 
 words of warning and truth to the highest caste in In- 
 dia, to no longer look for the reappearance of the an- 
 cient teachers in bodily form through reincarnation of 
 the spirit, but to heed the words of spiritual truth that 
 come from all sources that reflect the ancient wisdom; 
 for the time has come when a knowledge of spiritual 
 truths is to be again bestowed upon earth without ref- 
 erence or regard to the ignorance or variety of the re- 
 ligious orders there that may vainly imagine they have 
 a monopoly of spiritual revelation. 
 
 The Christian world rejects the doctrines of spiritu- 
 ality that do not conform to the ideas of its fictitious 
 god and remains in spiritual darkness, but its condition 
 is not so bad as the disciples of Brahm who have ever 
 been taught that the doors of the spiritual world have 
 never been closed, yet who find that they have often 
 knocked in vain at its portals. 
 
 You have been answered, O children of Brahm, ac- 
 cording to the answer you have given to the children 
 of earth; for in your pride of ancestry and regard for 
 the external observance of .the doctrines, you have be- 
 come exclusive in your thoughts; and despising others 
 whose souls were as precious in the sight of Brahm as 
 your own, you have been excluded from the evidence of 
 that higher spiritual power that governs the universe. 
 
 In darkness you have seen the sun of India sink 
 beyond the dark waters to reappear and illuminate the 
 people of the Western nations with the brilliancy of a 
 new Divine Revelation. For to these nations the light 
 of ancient India has again arisen, and their people are 
 rejoicing in the splendor of a new spiritual philosophy 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 33 
 
 that transcends anything ever taught in their sacred 
 books. 
 
 They appreciate its value, for to many of them it has 
 come with the power of divine life, and is lifting their 
 souls far above the plane of sordid materiality with 
 which Christian dogma had depicted the eternal world. 
 Their priesthood, indeed, refuse to receive the beneficial 
 results of this great illumination; but the people of 
 Europe and America, for the first time since the formu- 
 lation of their religious system, are becoming enlight- 
 ened as to the nature of the soul and the laws governing 
 its eternal destiny. They will become the children of 
 Om, as well as of Brahm, for to their material devel- 
 opment they are to add the next great step in their 
 evolution, viz. , the knowledge and power of the eternal 
 world as an ally to their earthly existence. To them 
 the sacred circle has become almost a discarded phase 
 of spiritual evidence, and they seek the higher knowl- 
 edge of the spirit that reflects the wisdom of ages of 
 experience in the life immortal. 
 
 O, India, that has taught the nations the wisdom of 
 the Divine Word, arise again from thy lethargy, and let 
 the sons of Brahm lead the way to the mental illumina- 
 tion of all thy children. Dwell no longer in the dark- 
 ness of the past ages, and let the altars of Siva be 
 abandoned forever. He is not the angel of death, but 
 the harbinger of life eternal. There is not a possibility 
 of anyrsoul becoming eternally lost, for the great Om 
 has provided for the redemption and preservation of all 
 the children of earth. 
 
 Teach no longer that the soul cannot escape a cease- 
 less round of transmigrations ere it can be absorbed in 
 4 
 
34 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Brahm, for it needs no other incarnation than its first 
 to become capable of existence in spirit, and when it 
 Jias perfected itself in knowledge to the degree of the 
 intelligence of the great world builder, it can with 
 Brahm create and govern a world and yet maintain its 
 separate individual existence forever. 
 
 Let the followers of Vishnu and Siva cease to call 
 upon either for spiritual aid, for to neither has there any 
 power been given, and they are only expressions of 
 principles that imperfect mentality has deified as per- 
 ;sons. Even Brahm, the creator of worlds, can only an- 
 swer prayer in accord with the will of Om, to whom he 
 is subject, and prayer addressed to him may be in vain. 
 But, if you must have the embodied form of language to 
 convey thought to the less developed mind, pray to 
 none less in power than Brahm, who will answer you 
 by inspiring you with the wisdom of the ancient teach- 
 ers, and to their knowledge add that which they have 
 learned since their transition to the world eternal. 
 
 We will come as his messengers, and in earthly lan- 
 guage record the ideas that pertain to the world spirit- 
 ual, "making plain that which hitherto has been a 
 mystery, and bringing to earth again the wisdom of the 
 ancient sages of India. 
 
CHAPTEK lY. 
 
 THE WISDOM OF THE DIVINE WOED. 
 
 In the sacred Scriptures of the Christian nations is 
 a paragraph that has been a myster^y to their most 
 learned teachers, for in its translation to the Western 
 language the significance of it was purposely veiled by 
 the ancient sages of G-reece. 
 
 That word which was taught to the G-reek sages of 
 the Alexandrian school was the sacred title Om, by 
 which the governing power of the universe was desig- 
 nated in the ancient Sanscrit. In the definition of the 
 lower intelligences that were ascribed to the spiritual 
 rulers of the world, Brahm meant the god of earth as 
 a creator of the planets, while Vishnu represented the 
 preserving power that held planetary forms in exist- 
 ence for a season. Siva, to whom all physical life was 
 subject, was the destroyer, and as his power was equal 
 with that of both Brahm and Vishnu, he became a 
 part of the Hindoo triad, which still is worshiped in the 
 symbols (three in one), to the disapprobation of the 
 Christian world, that has copied it in all essential 
 points, save that it has removed Siva to the position of 
 an antagonist to both Brahm and Vishnu, and substi- 
 tuted the word Holy Spirit in his place. Siva has become 
 in Christian mythology, Satan or adversary, and is re- 
 garded as supreme over the earth through having the 
 power of death, and the early Christian fathers labored 
 hard, in their ignorance of the true interpretation of 
 
 (35) 
 
36 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 the term, to represent the final destruction of Siva or 
 Satan by the power of their Christ. * 
 
 Hence Christian theologians have ever been at war 
 with any interpretation of Indian thought that would 
 have shed light upon the origin of their theories, for 
 long before the nations surrounding the Mediterranean 
 sea were enlightened above the plane of savages, the 
 sages of Persia and India had solved the problems of 
 spiritual existence in the next sphere above the plane 
 of earth. 
 
 The G-reek philosophers, to whom the Sacred Word 
 was explained, understood it quite perfectly, but the 
 lower orders of the religious teachers could not com- 
 prehend the existence of an impersonal power that 
 transcended the authority of any embodied form, and 
 so they mutilated the philosophic teachings of the an- 
 cient doctrines, and inserted the idea that the Word 
 was made flesh and dwelt among men. This was copy- 
 ing the Hindoo doctrine of the avatars,, but they car- 
 ried it further than any Indian teacher ever thought of 
 
 * This interpretation of the Hindoo triad solves the problem of 
 the symbols, in perfect accord with the facts at issue as to the ori- 
 gin of the Christian trinity. In the dense ignorance of the early 
 Christian priesthood the symbol of death was taken from the 
 triune powers and placed in antagonism to them, while the mother- 
 hood of divinity was placed in its stead. The Catholic church at- 
 tribute the immaculate conception to Mary, the same as to Jesus, and 
 by right the trinity should be Father, Son and Holy Mother. As 
 Christ stands for Vishnu in the Hindoo cult, so Satan is the 
 equivalent of Siva the destroyer. By some curious juxtaposition 
 Om the Supreme was substituted for Mary, so that modern Prot- 
 estant Christendom is worshiping at the shrine of a masculine 
 trinity, while the devout Catholic still clings to Mary as the mother 
 of his God, and supreme in her superiority over all other mothers 
 of the race. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 37 
 
 doing, for they ascribed to their incarnation the quali- 
 ties of Om, and have taught ever since that in their 
 Jesus the world beheld the visible author of the uni- 
 verse itself. 
 
 They unhesitatingly ascribed to this avatar all the 
 qualities that India and Chaldea ascribed to Brahm, 
 adding also the office of Vishnu, and in the combi- 
 nation the Christian world supposes tliat it has in the 
 Christ, the Om or All in all, which is the true transla- 
 tion of the Word. ^ 
 
 To the thoughtful student of Oriental metaphysical 
 thought it seems strange that the Christian world 
 should be so blind to the true origin of its god ideas, 
 but the average European is not far enough advanced 
 in the knowledge of spirit or how it is acquired to 
 give credit to other nations for wisdom excelling his 
 own attainments. Therefore, Europeans borrow from 
 the older writings all that they have of spiritual wisdom, 
 but not having a spiritual development they understand 
 little of the meaning of their sacred writings, and at- 
 tribute to the characters in them the qualities of soul 
 that belong to their own half developed spiritual men- 
 tality, t 
 
 * Probably few words have ever puzzled the ignorant translators 
 of the Sanscrit so much as this word Om, yet in the words used to 
 designate Divinity we have Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent 
 and Omnific, all of which the shorter Sanscrit word fully conveys 
 to the mind of the devout worshiper as the highest conception of 
 Divinity^ the impersonal Om. 
 
 t This characteristic is still seen in the theological mentality of 
 the Christian nations at this age. While they tenaciously cling to 
 what little spiritual knowledge they have acquired in the past, 
 they strenously oppose the idea of a spiritual evolution that causes 
 the mind to regard their creedal definitions of spirituality as im- 
 
38 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 The Christian peoples in the age of the Caesars could 
 not have had a high degree of spirituality, for they 
 were a horde of barbarians whose highest conception of 
 power was brute force, and whose chief occupation was 
 war. Their descendants to this day cannot understand 
 why the people of the Oriental world have such a re- 
 gard for spiritual ideas, and despise them for their def- 
 erence to them, but the people of the East had their 
 evolution from the savage plane centuries before the 
 Western nations, and attained to some degree of knowl- 
 edge concerning the spiritual life and its laws long ago, 
 which has never been lost by them, although subjected 
 to many extra additions by ignorance or craft. 
 
 The people of the West had their spiritual evolution 
 in the sphere of animality and crime. They were never 
 at peace long enough to have a generation born free of 
 the taint of blood and strife, and their religious tenets 
 all reflect the mental bias of a people that have never 
 conceived of the greater power of peace and benevo- 
 lence toward the children of men by the Divine Cre- 
 ator. 
 
 They attributed to Him the same bloody disposition 
 they bred in themselves and cried unto Him to assist 
 them when they marched out to battle against their 
 fellow men, when the earth ran red with the blood of 
 the slain who worshiped at the shrine of the same 
 embodied deity whom they felicitously describe as the 
 Prince of Peace. 
 
 perfect, and remain in the atmosphere of the thought bred in the 
 obscurity of the mediseval ages. Occasionallj' the creedal environ- 
 ment is broken by the expanding intellectual power of the im- 
 prisoned soul, but at much pain and cost to the emancipated 
 mind. — B. 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 39 
 
 Thus has the world been mocked by the declension 
 from the ancient doctrines which said ' 'Thou shalt not 
 kill;" and, as if to apologize for their violation of its 
 most evident sanctity, the Christian world has em- 
 bodied in their sacred writings that the Supreme Om 
 delivered up to a sacrificial death the only true incar- 
 nation of the Divine Essence that ever came upon 
 earth. This abhorrent doctrine is still taught in their 
 temple and ghastly symbols stand before their altars 
 that the children of future generations may be re- 
 minded at what a cost the human race could hope to 
 obtain eternal happiness, and what a sacrifice was nec- 
 essary for the redemption of the world. * 
 
 There is, indeed, a practical repudiation of this idea 
 by a small portion of the Christian world, but they in 
 turn are repudiated by it as not Christian but Budd- 
 hists in belief, and the highest wisdom of the Christian 
 world in its delineation of the Divine Word ascribes to 
 Him the nature of Siva or destroyer. To those who 
 fail to accept the doctrines woven about their trinity, 
 they have reserved the punishment and torture in the 
 
 * The barbaric theology of Paul and Calvin is the surviving rec- 
 ord of the ideas in which creedal Christianity had its primitive 
 evblution. Like the fossil footprints in the rocks, it witnesses to 
 the existence of that savagery that made Roman civilization a 
 power in the realm of brutal forces, but which never lifted the 
 mind above the plane of savage ideas concerning the nature of 
 Divinity. Even now there are sermons preached and creeds read 
 to familiarize the mind with the sacred mystery of the atonement 
 that savage theology attributed to the Divine Nature. Nothing is 
 more repulsive to the Hindoo mind than the idea of a bloody sacri- 
 fice to propitiate a god, and the holding of this doctrine by the 
 missionaries is the secret of the rejection of their other ideas by the 
 educated Hindoos. — B. 
 
40 THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 world eternal, which savages in mortal life inflict upon 
 the persons of their enemies taken in war. 
 
 These children of a savage race are invading India 
 with a modification of these cruel doctrines, and are 
 deriding the gods of the Hindoo faith as absurd crea- 
 tions of the fancy, but what are they bringing in place 
 of those which they ignore or despise ? 
 
 Their wisest minds are uncertain of any proof of the 
 existence of a spiritual world, for they declare that 
 since their god departed from earth the world of spirit 
 has been closed against the return of any from its dis- 
 tant shores. Their creeds are iron bound in this re- 
 spect, and they look in vain for his coming, for nearly 
 two thousand years have departed and there is no sign 
 of his existence given from the world of spirits that his 
 followers may know of a surety that he still lives — a 
 god to answer the cries of his worshipers. 
 
 The supreme power with which his believers invest 
 him is not exercised in their behalf, and they, like the 
 heathen world, live and die, in hope of a blessed life 
 or in despair of any life whatever. It is their highest 
 wisdom, and while they are self-complacently asserting 
 the certainty of their acceptance by the Almighty 
 Power they cling to mortal life with as much tenacity 
 as the most illiterate savage; or, it may be said, with 
 more fear of departure, for the savage has no fear of 
 his god, nor does he have any idea that the eternal 
 world is a doubtful abode for the inhabitants of earth. 
 
 The wisdom of the Divine Word in Christian nations 
 is a sad departure from its primitive interpretation in 
 the days of the ancient philosoj^hy. Then Om meant 
 the eternal and everlasting power that governed the 
 heavens and the earth, and by whom or from whom pro- 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 41 
 
 ceeded everything that was made. He was in the be- 
 ginning before the gods, and He was with the gods as 
 well as the controlling power of the gods, and without 
 Him was nothing made that was made. 
 
 So far the Christian faith accords with the Hindoo 
 philosopy, but when they added ' 'And the Word was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us," they fabricated the 
 wildest form of fictitious interpretation of the ancient 
 doctrines. 
 
 The Hindoo avatarship had a very opposite meaning 
 from this Western paraphrasing of the doctrine of the 
 incarnation of a god, for in the Hindoo faith a god as 
 a spirit might take the form of a man and be born upon 
 earth, but no Hindoo ever taught that the Supreme 
 Om descended to that state. Brahm might be em- 
 bodied in Brahma; Vishnu might come to earth as 
 Chrishna or G-autama, and Siva might show himself 
 upon earth in the form of Mahmood or Tamerlane with 
 a ghastly train of the slain in his wake of victory; but 
 the Supreme Om remained in the Hindoo mind beyond 
 the sphere of earth or its surroundings, and it is only 
 in the barbarous conceits of the savage tribes of Chris- 
 tian Europe that the Ruler of the Universe was ever 
 visible in mortal form. 
 
 That such a people should be conceited enough to 
 claim the final destiny of the human race to be at the 
 disposal of their god is not surprising, for they have 
 attempted to conquer and dispose of the whole earth as 
 their personal possessions, and such minds are ever 
 ambitious to be rulers in the world eternal if they 
 can obtain the requisite authority over the mentally 
 undeveloped. 
 
 However, in reality the Supreme Om has wisely 
 
42 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 made this impossible, and the ambitious prelates and 
 tyrants of the European nations have a very low posi- 
 tion in the life everlasting until they emerge from the 
 influence of their barbarous ideas concerning the des- 
 tiny of other nations. Few among them even under- 
 stand that the Divine Wisdom is attained by a spirit- 
 ual evolution of the mental powers, and it is a sad fact 
 that in the spiritual world the most dense ignorance of 
 the laws of progress prevails among the inhabitants 
 that have received their ideas from the teachings of 
 Christian theologians. 
 
 These latter guides of the uneducated masses are 
 themselves unfortunate in their misconception of the 
 meaning of the Word, and while endeavoring to ex- 
 pound it to their hearers, are themselves sadly in need 
 of some one to instruct them as to its original signifi- 
 cance. No class on earth are so incompetent as these 
 teachers of spiritual matters, for they have lost, or 
 rather never have had, the primitive meaning of the 
 terms expressed to them, and most of them are under 
 the bondage of the superstition that the original 
 writers of their Scriptures were men to whom came a 
 direct revelation of the Supreme Om, so little do they 
 know of the subject of spiritual life or its effect upon 
 the life of earth.* 
 
 * This arraignment of the teachers of Christian theology, coming 
 from a Hindoo, must be fairly treated by the thoughtful mind. 
 With subtle analysis of motive as well as almost supernatural 
 acuteuess of perce])tion, he exposes the position of the mental 
 world of Christendom as it appears to the more highly intellectual 
 development of the East. Nor should the Christian complain of 
 its severity, for in teaching the atonement and refusing to look 
 into the claims of spiritual phenomona, the world of Christendom 
 must be regarded in spirit as both cruel and ignorant by the less 
 bigoted mind of the Oriental thinkers. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 43 
 
 I have measured quite accurately the mental power 
 of the wise minds of the Western nations, O children of 
 Brahm, and to you, even in your declension, they are 
 as infants. Even in the world of spirits their great 
 teachers come to learn of the Brahmas and Buddahs 
 of our nation concerning the sources of planetary crea- 
 tion, for they as yet are not high enough in the grade 
 to know how to make a world, and they seek our spheres 
 that they may learn of the Brahmas how worlds are 
 made, that they may impress their brethren yet in the 
 flesh with the secrets of material creation. 
 
 For their wisdom is only material and their highest 
 knowledge pertains to earthly matters. They know 
 nothing of spirit or its power over the world of matter, 
 and their ignorance is so dense that some of them aver 
 that worlds and their inhabitants are built by the ' 'for- 
 tuitous combination of atoms," which they ascribe to 
 some unknown and unknowable power from which all 
 proceeds that ever exists. 
 
 These children of the West are wise indeed in what 
 they can see and measure by the physical senses, but 
 when they enter the sphere of the vast, and to them, 
 unknown realm of causation, they halt with uncertain 
 feet upon the threshold, as if all of existence was to be 
 measured and comprehended in the realm of physical 
 being. Spirit that permeates the worlds universal is 
 to them unknowable because in their evolution from 
 the savage plane they have not come to the period of 
 spiritual birth, and they cannot see causation without 
 they attain this power in the physical or the spiritual 
 world. Most of them never attain it in the mortal 
 state and their wisest minds come to the life eternal 
 
44: THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 as babes in spiritual truths, which they have to learn 
 ere they can ever attain to the wisdom that pertains to 
 creative knowledge. * 
 
 Therefore, the children of light need not look to these 
 barbarian conquerers of the physical world for the an- 
 cient wisdom, and when they come bearing the ancient 
 writings which once went to them from India and 
 Persia, let them be respectfully treated by the sacred 
 caste, but let them understand that in things spiritual 
 they are yet children whose wisdom is that of babes, 
 prattling about that of which they have heard, but of 
 which they are of too immature mentality to understand. 
 
 The wisdom of the Divine Word is too deep for these 
 Western missionaries to perceive with their present 
 low grade of mentality. They may come with pure and 
 self-sacrificing motives, but they know little or noth- 
 ing of the nature of the Supreme Om, if they think 
 their childish conceptions of Him are creditable to His 
 character. He governs the universe as well as the 
 earth, and Brahm and all the lesser gods are subject 
 to His will, but He has given to none the disposal of the 
 immortal natures that belong to any of His worlds. 
 They are His, and to Him alone are they amenable. 
 Brahmin and Sudra, Pagan and Christian, civilized or 
 savage, all that live or ever shall live, are His children, 
 
 *This allusion to the status of material scientists is too true to 
 be questioned. While they have the power to go into the- material 
 realm and deal, with mechanical powers and even approach the 
 chemical plane upon its material environment, they seem unable 
 to advance to the conception of the idea of mental forces acting 
 behind all the chemical and mechanical relations to produce the 
 phenomena of the universal cosmos. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 45 
 
 and to them He bestows the knowledge of the Divine 
 Word when they arrive at that stage of growth whereby 
 they comprehend the meaning of immortal and eternal 
 existence in their own conscious spiritual life. 
 
CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE BUDDHA TO ALL NATIONS. 
 
 In the ancient Vedantic writings there was origin- 
 ally a paragraph that has been the subject of much dis- 
 cussion among the Brahmin priesthood, viz. : The 
 coming to earth of the spiritually enlightened. To 
 the spiritually blind this Scriptural idea has always 
 been a mystery, for to the blind there is no sensation 
 of light or color whereby they can compare or ascer- 
 tain a truth that depends upon sight, and in the prov- 
 ince of the spiritual senses this law holds equally good 
 as in the sphere of physical perception. 
 
 To explain this requires a familiarity with certain 
 principles that pertain to what the material scientists 
 of the Western nations call the law of evolution. In 
 brief, this power of the soul of man to perceive knowl- 
 edge above the plane of the physical senses depends 
 upon a growth of mental faculties that are extremely 
 sensitive to the finer range of power, as the eye is more 
 sensitive than the ear or sense of touch to the lower 
 physical realm. 
 
 When one has the development upon the spiritual 
 plane so that the corresponding senses which convey 
 ideas in the physical world are capable of exercise, such 
 a person is a Buddha or enlightened one, and if the de- 
 velopment is very high in the powers of _ sensitiveness 
 the Buddha becomes able to perceive and to teach ideas 
 relative to the invisible world which are entirely be- 
 
 (46) 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 4,'J 
 
 yond the province of the earthly senses to perceive or 
 understand. 
 
 Because of this the tendency of the earthly disciples 
 has been to apotheosize the Buddahs and to regard them 
 Bs beings of a superior order, but the trlith is that all 
 Buddhas are only individuals of an abnormal spiritual 
 unfoldment in the physical life; and, while they may re- 
 flect the wisdom of the life eternal, they are not gods to 
 be worshiped or of a different nature from the rest of 
 humanity. 
 
 The Buddhas of India have always been noted for 
 their strong spiritual ideality, and their lives have been 
 the subject of poetry and song to such an extent that 
 their true mission to the world has been misunderstood 
 and often entirely misconstrued. When a Buddha is to 
 be born the ante-natal conditions have to be markedly 
 positive in the development of the embryotic spirit that 
 is to reflect the wisdom of the life eternal. 
 
 The parents are subjects of much interest to the in- 
 visible guardians of the coming life, and the mother is 
 ■of special regard, for upon the mental bias of her 
 thoughts at that period depends the greater problem 
 •of what the mind of the child shall be. 
 
 Consequently it is not entirely a myth that the great 
 spiritual teachers of the world have had their future 
 earthly mission foretold by angelic visitations to the 
 mothers of the Buddhas, for nothing would or could 
 have a greater impress upon the unfolding mind than 
 the thought of the mother that the child was to be the 
 charge of the inhabitants of the world invisible and re- 
 veal its mysteries to the children of earth. 
 
 When it is recorded in the traditions of the nation 
 that the Buddhas are conceived by rays of light from 
 
48 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 the heavens, it is only a poetic expression of the men- 
 tal bias of the recipient of heavenly wisdom, for the 
 mind of a Buddha is shaped and moulded by influences 
 from the world of spirits, and the mission of the Bud- 
 dhas is to teach the truth concerning the spiritual world 
 in the language of the people to whom they come as 
 inspired messengers of truth. 
 
 They are not incarnations of developed spirits, who 
 have once lived upon the earth as men, nor are they 
 spirits from other planets undergoing a new experi- 
 ence in the sphere of earth, but they are able to reflect 
 the wisdom of such spirits, for their mental powers are 
 more susceptible to the influence of the higher life than 
 that of earth, and they easily converse with spiritual 
 intelligences of a very high degree of spiritual unfold- 
 ment. 
 
 This gives them the credit and appearance of being 
 supernaturally endowed with wisdom, and has been the * 
 basis of a mischievous error in the theology of India, 
 for the appearance of a Buddha, according to the per- 
 verted construction of the ancient doctrines, is tlie sig- 
 nal for the apotheosizing of another person as a god. 
 thus adding another to the long list of decarnated spir- 
 its who are worshiped as having more power in the 
 eternal world than their position there entitles them to 
 possess. 
 
 For in the life of spirit the Buddhas, however great 
 they may have been upon earth, are only parts of a 
 system that has for its object the general diffusion of 
 spiritual light to the world of mortals. When their 
 work is done upon earth they pass to their proper 
 place in the life eternal, and the cries of their deluded 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 49 
 
 but sincere followers for personal favors cannot be 
 answered except upon general principles. 
 
 The Buddhas of the world are the torch bearers of 
 the world of spirit, and while they enlighten the earth 
 with the knowledge of spiritual life and its laws, they 
 do not make that life, nor can they control the destiny 
 of the souls who enter it from any nation or sphere of 
 earth. Therefore, to regard them as saviors in any 
 such sense as the Christian world teaches is to place 
 them in a false position in the spiritual world and re- 
 tards the minds upon earth from receiving that light of 
 the spirit, which would make the work of the Buddhas 
 of immense value to mortals. 
 
 India has had her generations who have rejoiced in 
 the light of spiritual revelation from the Buddhas, but 
 she has forgotten that the Buddhistic light was to 
 shine upon all souls throughout the earth, according to 
 the ancient doctrines, and when her priests suppressed 
 this cardinal truth they went into that twilight dark- 
 ness of mind whereby the pure light of the ancient 
 Vedas was nearly obscured. 
 
 In place of the brilliant illumination of the mind from 
 the light of the highest heavens, the mental powers 
 grew feeble, and instead of a recognition of the true 
 principle whereby the real truth is to be ascertained, a 
 false system of ascetic mortification of the flesh was 
 adopted, and spiritual darkness, instead of radiant 
 power, invested the Brahmin priesthood until G-autama 
 appeared, the last of the greater Buddhas that has ever 
 arisen in India since the age of Capilya. 
 
 G-autama taught the greater truths of the ancient 
 faiths, but he did not assail the errors as a soul of more 
 5 
 
50 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 positive intellect would have done. He should have re- 
 vealed the ancient faith in greater power, and would 
 have done so had he taught the original interpretation 
 of the doctrines of reincarnation and transmigration of 
 the spirit from sphere to sphere after it had left the 
 sphere of earth. From the failure to do this, and be- 
 -cause India lies helpless at the feet of Caste, the spir- 
 itual power of her people has fallen so low that the 
 .shrines of millions of earth bound spirits are receiving 
 the homage due the great Om, and from those shrines 
 not even the ancient wisdom is reflected from the world 
 of spirits, but a crude mass of superstitious decrees 
 that are conceived in ignorance and gestated and born 
 in craft. 
 
 Well does this condition exemplify the ancient proph- 
 ecy, that when the Buddhas cease to come the people 
 shall sink in spiritual knowledge, and also does it prove 
 true that each age, and even generation, should have 
 its Buddha if the world would not lose its regard for 
 the life eternal. 
 
 For the Buddhahood is not attained by the mere be- 
 lief in its existence. India has had its principles taught 
 for centuries, but its light comes not as in the days of 
 Sakya, nor do the priesthood of Benares or the rest 
 of the nation dwell in that spiritual freedom that be- 
 longs to the spiritually illuminated. They, like the 
 Christian priests of the West, are in only a reflected 
 light from the written Word, but the transcendent 
 glory of a spiritual revelation of the eternal life is not 
 shining upon them, as it should and would, were they 
 free from the superstition of caste and dogma. 
 
 There would be no cloud of ignorance and doubt to 
 hang above the sacred altars were the ministrants at 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 51 
 
 the altars as pure in their inner lives as their external 
 garments symbolize, for the power of the spirit comes 
 to those only who are pure in spirit, and the Buddha- 
 hood is given to such freely. 
 
 Therefore, it comes to those of any nation or people 
 who seek its influence, but it comes not in the pride of 
 caste or glory of earthly grandeur. 
 
 Gautama obtained it by self-renunciation, and all 
 souls who would have its pure light must live in its 
 presence as though they stood in the sphere of Brahm, 
 to whom the darkness and the light are the same. The 
 sons of Brahm who seek the Buddhahood should not 
 seek it in the spirit of pride or self-will. It is a sacred 
 gift of the spiritual world, and in that world the spirit 
 of the suppliant is the index of the power that is to be 
 given. 
 
 The Buddhas who teach are specially gifted by birth 
 and spiritual instruction from the womb, but the Budd- 
 has who are taught do not always receive this expe- 
 rience, although they can obtain all its real benefits in 
 their own lives, and become fitted thereby to obtain a 
 blessed entrance into the Nirvanian heavens. 
 
CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE MISSIONARIES FROM THE 
 WESTERN NATIONS. 
 
 It has ever been taught in some of the Vedantic 
 traditions that the time would come when the Buddha 
 light should come to the world again — not from India, 
 but from the Western world that sat in darkness and 
 the valley of the shadow of death. 
 
 Compared with the spiritual light that anciently- 
 shone over India's plains, that of Europe is of the 
 crudest character, for her greatest minds were never 
 able to perceive the universality of spirit, and they are 
 yet in the spiritual darkness that belongs to the first 
 stages of a spiritual unfoldment. 
 
 Still the teachers of those nations have been able to 
 sense the pulsations of the great spiritual force that 
 governs the universe, and in their crude conceptions of 
 its power have supposed that they have perceived all 
 of its principles, and have adopted in essence the con- 
 clusions of the ancient Indian faith, viz. : that the su- 
 preme Brahm has had one incarnation. 
 
 How the Supreme could become a mortal they have 
 never tried to explain, but some of their priests have 
 written in their sacred books that it was so, and upon 
 that basis the present religious worship of the Western 
 nations is established. In reality, this theory of" the 
 incarnation of the Supreme is but a transfer of the 
 Indian avatarship, or the coming to earth of Vishnu as 
 a spiritual force, but such is the ignorance of the 
 
 (52) 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 53 
 
 Christian world regarding the religious ideas of other 
 nations that it imagines itself to be the chosen channel 
 of all the spiritual light that has ever come to earth. 
 It was in consequence of this ignorance that the people 
 of the West pushed out their missions to the so-called 
 heathen nations, and had their wisdom been in any 
 degree equal to their zeal, they might have done a great 
 work of good to the nations of the East, but the Chris- 
 tian world made the mistake of copying the errors as 
 well as the truths of the systems from which their faith 
 was taken, and in so doing became shorn of that power 
 for good which their efforts deserved. 
 
 They found that the East, from which they bor- 
 rowed all the spiritual light they ever have had, under- 
 stood better than themselves the origin of the doc- 
 trines and they have only succeeded to a limited de- 
 gree in attracting attention to their work. 
 
 The Christian missionary has ever had an invisible 
 but powerful foe to contend with in his work in India. 
 The mighty hosts of India that have been and are still 
 linked with the mental atmosphere of earth, through a 
 misunderstanding of the doctrine of reincarnation, 
 have ever been exerting a silent, but positive, influ- 
 ence upon the minds of the natives against the recep- 
 tion of the Christian theories of spirit, and they have 
 wisely done this, for the Christian theories are in the 
 main erroneous in nearly all essential points regarding 
 the nature of the soul and its destiny. To change the 
 superstitions of Hindooism for the equally supersti- 
 tious theories of Christianity would do no good, and 
 until the superstitions of both are discarded India can- 
 not rise very high in the scale of spiritual unfoldment. 
 
 The Christian missionary has his work to do in In- 
 
54 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 dia, but it is not to convert the people of that country 
 to his theories of religion. He is sent there and sus- 
 tained by a certain grade of spiritual power, but it is 
 rather that the observer of spiritual powers may per- 
 ceive that behind all the religious systems of earth is a 
 universal principle that works out through all nations 
 the same essential results, and that each nation reflects 
 to some degree the wisdom and beneficence of the Al- 
 mighty purpose in human existence. For the nations 
 of the West are but the children of the East in spiritual 
 knowledge and their religious ideas are the fruit of the 
 wisdom of the Eastern world transferred to new condi- 
 tions that it may have a new expression in the process 
 of a new mental evolution of the race. 
 
 The Western nations were never spiritual in their 
 primal life. Egypt, the mother of their civilization, 
 was crude and material in her conceptions of immortal 
 existence. Greece and Rome were never able to go 
 very high in the grade of a spiritual unfoldment, al- 
 though Greece, through her philosophy, imparted some 
 of the wisdom she received from the Oriental world. 
 Rome was material and cruel, but while her mission 
 was to subdue the barbarian hordes of Europe, she 
 never rose above the grade of material force in her 
 concepts of a spiritual life. When her temporal power 
 was withdrawn from the surrounding nations she 
 sought supremacy by cultivating the superstitious nat- 
 ure of the people, and through that channel sought to 
 maintain her jurisdiction over the nations of the West. 
 But her spiritual power was supported by the ignorant 
 and crafty in the spiritual world and her rule upon 
 earth was bloody and deceitful. 
 
 The highest light she ever could attain was by the 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 55 
 
 lurid flames of persecution, and her mental vision peo- 
 pled the world eternal with the hosts of the devils 
 damned, over whom the Siva of the Indian trinity 
 reigned supreme. There was no light in her creed, 
 and she has never been able to perceive the senseless 
 folly of supposing that the Supreme Om would ever 
 intrust to such incompetent hands the work of enlight- 
 ening a w^orld as to the nature of its origin or a knowl- 
 edge of its destiny. 
 
 Rome, the parent of modern Christianity, is the 
 harlot of the spiritual world. She debases and degrades 
 all that pertains to the subject, and from her seat upon 
 the seven hills pollutes the fountains of spiritual truth 
 with deliberate design. 
 
 From the time when her ancient priests perverted 
 the great truths that came from India, through the 
 missions of the disciples of Gautama, Rome has been 
 the deliberate thief of ideas and the dispenser of fabri- 
 cations concerning the spiritual world. She is the 
 source from which the Western world take their em- 
 bodied thought, and she is the only earthly channel 
 through which any knowledge was allowed to reach the 
 Western nations for a thousand years. 
 
 All the writings that belonged to the sacred classics 
 were under her manipulation, and the Western nations 
 were fed upon spiritual falsehood as truth, until they 
 knew not whether the foundation of their faith was laid 
 in truth or upon a substructure of fabrication. Her 
 priests were cunning and subtle, but their work 
 was false, and were it not for the eternal nature of 
 truth, and the ability of the lovers of truth in the world 
 of spirits to reach earth through the Buddhahood, the 
 
56 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Western world would remain in spiritual darkness for 
 ^countless generations. 
 
 Even as it is, the work of enlightenment will be 
 iiedious, for the minds of the West have been so long fed 
 upon spiritual error and falsehood that the truth is dis- 
 tasteful to most of them, and they reject it when pre- 
 sented. 
 
 It is not because they prefer darkness to light, but 
 because in their mental growth they have been de- 
 barred from a perception of spiritual knowledge, and 
 in their ignorance they blindly follow the leadership of 
 their blind guides to that extent that neither of them 
 reach the pathway that leads to spiritual wisdom. Such 
 is the spiritual leadership of the Romish form of the 
 Christian theory of a spiritual life; and now we turn to 
 the Protestant form of the faith to see what that pre- 
 sents for India to accept. 
 
 Protestant Christians have the foundation of their 
 faith in the same traditions of the avatarship as their 
 Romish progenitors. On that question they are equally 
 agreed and equally in error. They broaden the field of 
 Christian effort, but have no provision for those that 
 are unfortunate enough to doubt the truth of their 
 dogmas. They, too, limit the goodness and power of 
 the Supreme Om to provide for the myriads whose 
 spiritual existence is as much a necessity as their own, 
 and ascribe to the governor of the universe the malig- 
 nity of a fiend toward those who reject the doctrines 
 that are recorded in the books; consequently, the Prot- 
 estant world of Christianity is, and must be, bound by 
 the limits their theologians have devised, and cannot 
 rise to that conception of the universal power that pro- 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 57 
 
 vides for all created life. It is narrow and will re- 
 main so until the intellectual power of its believers is 
 developed to that degree that enables them to perceive 
 the Supreme Om has made provision for all the children 
 of men in his majestic benevolence and almighty power. 
 
 The missionaries of the Western world have not as 
 yet arisen to this recognition of the Creator of the 
 Universe. What, then, have they to offer to India that 
 India has not already obtained in the province of spirit- 
 ual thought. The answer is this: India had ignored 
 the principles of the ancient faith, and her people were 
 going down into spiritual darkness. The barbarian 
 minds of the West had taken a modified degree of the 
 light which India had transmitted to the West, and by 
 its return the people, who were losing their knowledge 
 and faith in the power of spiritual enlightenment, were 
 thus reminded that all nations had an inheritance in 
 the life eternal. The Western missionaries brought 
 back the light that Gautama had transmitted to them, 
 and the Vedantic prophecy, that light should come from 
 the West, had its first fulfillment in the coming of the 
 missionaries who supposed they were bringing to the 
 East a knowledge of life and immortality. 
 
 The missionary knew nothing of the real power that 
 inspired him to this work, but with blind zeal he set 
 out upon his mission and in honest ignorance thought 
 he was led by the Spirit of his God to preach the truth 
 to a people who were dwelling in dense spiritual dark- 
 ness. 
 
 He was often met with great opposition, but not 
 from any other motive than disregard for his ignor- 
 ance of Indian thought. He has made no serious in- 
 roads as yet upon Hindoo superstitions, and will not, 
 
58 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 for they are to be dispelled by the influx of light from 
 the Hindoo heavens rather than the Christian, as the 
 latter is of too doubtful a character to bestow much il- 
 lumination upon the inhabitants of their own lands, 
 whereas to the Hindoo world in spirit is delegated the 
 task of enlightening the world of both spirits and mor- 
 tal with the knowledge of spiritual life in all its gra- 
 dations. 
 
 For the Christian world is not spiritual, but material, 
 and its ideas of the life eternal are nearly all erron- 
 eous. It thinks itself the favored recipient of spiritual 
 revelation, yet had it not appropriated the spiritual 
 doctrines of the Oriental world, it would have been en- 
 tirely destitute of any revelation whatever. The peo- 
 ple of the Western nations were never high enough in 
 the scale of mental unfoldment to have a clear idea of 
 the source of spiritual revelation, and, save a limited 
 number, have no perception of the real truth concern- 
 ing their own doctrines. They cannot discern spiritual 
 ideas for they have no spiritual insight; and, although 
 they can feel the influx of spiritual power, they know 
 not its source and blindly follow it in a superstitious 
 manner or reject it altogether. Therefore, India has 
 nothing to hope for from them and their missionaries, 
 for with the good they bring they also fail to under- 
 stand that they are spiritually blind and the Supreme 
 Om has not favored them more than others with a true 
 revelation. 
 
 In fact, the Western nations are just coming to a 
 knowledge of the existence of a spiritual birth, which 
 was taught in India ages ago. It comes to them with 
 the vivid reality of a revelation, but the priesthood of the 
 West is so ignorant of its source that they have banded 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 59 
 
 themselves to oppose it, and, if possible, prevent the 
 people from being influenced by it. They cannot con- 
 trol this power, therefore they oppose it; but it will 
 spread in spite of their antagonism, and in time will 
 serve to illumine its people with a knowledge of spiritu- 
 ality free from the superstitious ideas that now are a 
 portion of its dogmas. 
 
 The missions of the Western world to India are a part 
 of a great spiritual movement to familiarize the people 
 of earth with each others ignorance of the principles of 
 eternal life. No religion that holds sway on earth has 
 any intrinsic merit of its own, and all of them are re- 
 flections of" the more or less crude mentality of the 
 different races or tribes. Most of the formulated sys- 
 tems are the work of ignorance and craft, and while 
 they serve their purpose as a power to keep the minds 
 of people from utterly forgetting the ideas of spiritual 
 life, they have little influence in determining the status 
 of the soul in that life. 
 
 The most ascetic Brahmin may imagine himself to be 
 of more importance than his Buddhist or Christian 
 neighbor, but when he touches the shores of the eternal 
 world he will find his asceticism or caste is a barrier or 
 obstacle to that spirit of fraternization which belongs 
 to the higher spiritual development, and many of them 
 will be compelled to wander among the spirits of the 
 earth bound, where caste is recognized as a controlling 
 power. 
 
 The Christian priest who teaches that only those who 
 accept his god can be saved will have for his compan- 
 ions those who teach a smmilar creed, but the vast host 
 of intelligent and philosophic souls who have lived 
 above the power of creed will let the Christian heavens 
 
60 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 fight out their battles of thought without participating 
 in the bloodless strife. Those who prefer to cling to 
 the blood stained altars of Kali* will. enter the kingdom 
 of savage spirits who have not yet outgrown the prim- 
 itive worship of ancestral ignorance, and those who 
 have mistaken the symbols of the phallus for objects of 
 worship will have the spirits of bulls and swine for 
 companions in the world eternal, until they learn that 
 the life of the soul is not to be wasted in brutal sen- 
 suality. 
 
 India went into spiritual darkness when she took 
 the images for objects of divine worship, and the mis- 
 sionaries are doing a good work when they point to 
 the results of idolatrous worship, for if the imagery is 
 not explained to the mind it becomes an obstacle to the 
 perfect understanding of the idea represented by it. 
 
 The linga and the phallus were originally the sym- 
 bols of the source of visible life, but they were not de- 
 signed to be objects of worship or to excite the lustful 
 passions. The triple deities were designed to repre- 
 sent the equality of all the powers of nature, viz. : Crea- 
 tion, preservation and destruction, or birth, life and 
 death; but they were not images of embodied deities in 
 the original symbols, although in after ages they were 
 worshiped as such. 
 
 The lesser deities that were taught as having juris- 
 diction over mortals were but the disembodied spirits 
 of the savage and barbarous tribes who sought through 
 
 *Kali is one of the ancient goddesses of India, who is still wor- 
 shiped with blood sacrifices. She belongs to the most ancient cult, 
 and is represented as a black female. Probably she is a survivor 
 of the transition of the worship, from otfering human sacrifices to 
 the substitution of animals in their place. 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 61 
 
 the power of spirit return to preserve their power upon 
 earth by worship, but they had no real power in the 
 world of spirits to become gods or to control the affairs 
 of men. 
 
 Often have the wise men of India warned its people 
 that their deities were powerless to help them, and 
 that not Brahm, but Om, was to be the object of their 
 homage; but the warning was not heeded, and India 
 has sunk in power, both of body and mind, as she pros- 
 trates herself before the spiritual gods of the lesser 
 grades. 
 
 The Western nations that overthrew the worship of 
 their old gods of the lesser rank and embodied their 
 worship in one form were wiser in this than if they had 
 clung to the worship of the lesser spirits, for they re- 
 leased the latter from their hold upon the earth and at 
 the same time broke the chains which bind souls to 
 earth who wish to be worshiped there as heroes or 
 gods.* Therefore, although the missionaries have in- 
 vaded India with their crude god, or another form of 
 the Buddhist worship, they have brought with them a 
 powerful body of spirits who have entered the shrines 
 of the ancient temples and are releasing the earth 
 bound spirits there from their hold upon the altars and 
 teaching them that the pathway to a state of spiritual 
 blessedness is not in seeking worship, but in escaping 
 from it. 
 
 *This is a most singular statement of the effect of concentrating 
 the minds of people upon any one as a god. If it be true no greater 
 misfortune can befall a spirit than to have fame or attention from 
 the minds of people on earth. What a hopeless sense of help- 
 lessness a mind must have that is the center of the thought of 
 millions, yet unable to transcend the laws of individual soul de- 
 velopment, no matter how intense the agony of the suppliant. — B. 
 
62 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 The missionaries will not convert mortals so much as 
 release spirits, and while from the world of spirits we 
 would reach the priesthood with the truth about the 
 Christian dogmas, at the same time we would say that 
 it is not wise to continue to worship the spirits as gods 
 nor to call upon them to aid in a work that properly 
 belongs to the soul to do for itself. 
 
 Further than this there is no more sacred revelation 
 from the world of spirit to be made to either Brahmin 
 or Christian. There will be plenty of spiritual revela- 
 tions, but not for the purpose of confirming the super- 
 stitions that have arisen since the days of the ancient 
 teachers. You may expect that the gods that speak 
 now will explain the past and instruct for the future, 
 but the day for the claim of revelation from the Su- 
 preme Om is past, save as he reveals through the 
 process of natural law. 
 
 Thus, O sons of Brahm, should you answer the teach- 
 ers of the Western world: "We know your gods for 
 we gave them to you. We know how the voice of the 
 Supreme speaks, for we heard his words and gave them 
 to you. We know who your angels and spirits are for 
 we had them long ere you knew of them, and while 
 they may be gods to you they are no longer to be 
 called gods by us. You have come to us as bearers of 
 good tidings, for which we give you thanks; but we 
 sent the ideas to you first, and if the message does you 
 good we know that it is the same for you as for all 
 nations. 
 
 "But we also know that you received it from us, 
 and if Om has spoken to us as well as you, boast not 
 as if you had more than we. Learn what India has to 
 teach in all her symbols ere you judge her harshly, and 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 63 
 
 look well that she who long ago taught of the soul can- 
 not teach you much of the spiritual life of which as yet 
 you know nothing. " 
 
 Thus answer the teachers of the West in wisdom, O 
 sons of Brahm. 
 
CHAFTEK YII. 
 
 THE INFLUX OF ORIENTAL IDEAS AMONG THE WEST- 
 ERN NATIONS. 
 
 Scarcely had the missions of the West been estab- 
 lished throughout the East than there came to the peo- 
 ple of Europe and America a strange manifestation of 
 power from the world of spirit. It was heralded by no 
 prophetic order, and it utterly refused to obey or affili- 
 ate with the religious ideas that had become so firmly 
 fastened upon the mind of the Christian nations that 
 they were esteemed to be the only religious ideas based 
 upon truth. 
 
 The Christian world at first received the phenomena 
 with incredulity and wonder, but as time elapsed began 
 to regard it with undisguised hostility and open antag- 
 onism. The reason of this treatment of a great phe- 
 nomenal fact was that the intelligence that came from 
 the spiritual world refused to indorse the theories of 
 the Christian priesthood as spiritual truth, and the 
 latter soon placed themselves in battle array against 
 any attempt to further enlighten the world through 
 such a source. 
 
 In taking this course, the Christian priesthood only 
 followed the process whereby the priests of all. religions 
 seek to preserve their power; for the priests of the 
 religious systems are the spiritual tyrants of the world, 
 or if pure motives govern them, the natural born in_ 
 structors of things pertaining to the spiritual nature. 
 
 In the Western nations the spiritual evolution of its 
 (64) 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 65 
 
 tribes was much retarded by the primitive savagery 
 and bloody barbarism of the people. Europe especially 
 was far behind the Oriental world in its spiritual growth, 
 and its people were incapable of comprehension of 
 spiritual truth for many centuries previous to the 
 Christian era, and were in gross darkaess for subse- 
 quent generations. Its priesthood was ignorant and 
 degraded; it was incapable of comprehending or teach- 
 ing the subtle principles of the spiritual life, and a 
 crude jargon of ideas regarding the life of this world 
 and the other filled the minds of both priest and people. 
 The writings that their chief teachers had stolen or 
 copied from the Oriental world were pronounced to be 
 of Divine origin, and millions of spirits went from earth 
 to the spirit world firmly believing that they alone had 
 an inheritance in the life eternal, from which all other 
 people were to be excluded. 
 
 The practical effect of this dogma upon the mortals 
 of the Christian nations was to impress them with in- 
 ordinate pride and vanity, and they taught and firmly 
 believed that to them only had copcie any revelation of 
 the true nature of life and all other nations were sub- 
 jects of the vindictive wrath of the Almighty. 
 
 Such being the status of Christian dogma, there 
 arose a purpose of better instruction concerning the 
 life of the spirit among the sages of the so-called heathen 
 world, and they first instructed some of the more intel- 
 ligent European and American spirits in the principles 
 that govern spiritual and material relations, whereby 
 the latter were able to introduce to the people of their 
 countries the spiritual phenomena that had been for 
 ages a familiar subject of Oriental observation. The 
 6 
 
QQ THE TRUE THEOSOPHT. 
 
 people of the West thought it at first a system of spir- 
 itual revelation that could be utilized for material advan- 
 tages, and have valued it or discarded it proportionate to 
 its availability in the accumulation of material wealth. 
 
 With the short-sightedness of their ignorant disre- 
 gard of principle, many of their leaders of thought 
 have been secret believers in the new ideas and at the 
 .same time open opponents of their propagation, on the 
 ground that the people were not ready for the truth 
 and had better be left to work on in the old error until 
 they had ascertained the truth by personal experience. 
 
 These Christian prelates who so violently oppose the 
 possible admission of the spiritual world to a recogni- 
 tion as a sentient reality forget that their whole sys- 
 tem had its foundation in similar phenomena, and in 
 their blind zeal to exclude the light from the world are 
 deliberately closing the avenues of the mind from re- 
 ceiving the only knowledge of a spiritual kind that is 
 worth obtaining, and thereby hold the mental powers 
 upon the old plane of fabulous tradition or crafty fab- 
 rication. 
 
 Such is the true status of the Christian theologians of 
 this age. They have filled the world of mortals with 
 the most absurd tales about the Divine Nature and its 
 attributes, for they have no perception of the source of 
 their dogmas. They have filled the heavens of Europe 
 with myriads of earth bound souls who cannot rise 
 above the idea that they are the only saved people in 
 existence, yet whose mentality is so low that they can- 
 not understand the first idea of spiritual progress, or 
 by what steps they can free themselves from the pas- 
 sions and influence of earth. 
 
 In the influx from the Oriental world the first meas- 
 
THE TRUE THE080PHY. 07 
 
 ures necessary were to emancipate the Western mind 
 from the slavish fear or regard for the priestly orders. 
 Consequently the mind of the thinkers became of a 
 skeptical turn, and the first result of their liberty was 
 iconoclastic zeal in destroying the barriers to mental 
 progress that craft and superstition had erected. 
 Many of the most talented minds of the West were 
 termed infidel by their Christian neighbors, not be- 
 cause they were false to any principle, but because 
 they were too intelligent to be imposed upon by the 
 fabrications of the Christian priesthood. 
 
 The latter raged and cursed in vain, for they no 
 longer had the support of the physical power through 
 the civil law to enforce their bloody edicts against the 
 growth of mind, which has always been deemed heret- 
 ical, and the infidel, or rather the intelligent mind of 
 the West has made far more progress in mental and 
 spiritual evolution than their superstitious traducers. 
 
 Now, it is a principle in the relations of spiritual and 
 mortal life that the mentality in either world follows in 
 parallel lines, and that the progress of one mind from 
 one plane to another affects all souls upon either plane, 
 so that when a person gets a new idea his expression 
 of it either in language or thought sets a current of 
 mental force in motion that extends to every soul or 
 spirit within the radius of its sphere of influence. 
 Hence, when the Oriental world in spirit began to send 
 its thoughts upon the Western nations, the souls in 
 sympathy with the ideality taught, caught up the 
 thoughts and sent them reverberating through both the 
 spiritual and mortal worlds. 
 
 The Christian world in both spiritual and mortal con- 
 ditions felt the shock most, for it had such an inferior 
 
68 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 growth of spiritual perception that it supposed itself 
 to be the most intelligent in spiritual knowledge of all, 
 not even knowing its own ignorance. Hence, in its 
 ignorance it opposed the influx of light, both in spirit 
 and mortal life, and while its inhabitants of the spirit 
 world are using the natural laws governing the two con- 
 ditions, they carefully conceal from their mortal com- 
 patriots their true nature, and the latter, feeling their 
 influence, suppose it to be the direct influx of the Holy 
 Spirit, or the third person of their Trinity. 
 
 Those who have ever attended the places of Christian 
 worship, where the devotees work themselves up to a 
 great pitch of excitement* in calling upon their god, 
 will notice the similarity of their emotions to those of 
 the dervishees, who, in their ecstacy of excitement, 
 suppose themselves to be in the direct embrace of their 
 god; and, in fact, the same cause lies at the foundation 
 of the phenomena in each, viz. : ignorance of the laws 
 of spiritual influx that opens the mind to sensations 
 above the plane of the physical sense merely. 
 
 The opening of the doors of the world of spirit to the 
 people of the Western nations was the signal of an 
 irruption of the vast hord of ignorant and crude spirit- 
 ual beings that had been sent from these nations into 
 
 *This explanation of the revival influence that attends the 
 labors of many Christian teachers accords perfectly with the Ori- 
 ental doctrine of thought transference upon the different planes 
 of spirit. The mentality of the soul upon any plane always re- 
 sponds to any influence that belongs to that plane, and as the 
 Christian planes of thought vary, the various sects naturally corre- 
 spond with the different grades. Philosophic minds do not regard 
 the exhibition of mental excitement as of any great importance 
 or evidence of any operation of the supernatural order, as do the 
 ignorant. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 69 
 
 the spirit world before they had had time to outgrow 
 the errors of their earthly lives, and the advent of their 
 return to earth was soon seen in the gross ignorance 
 and contradictory statements made by them relative to 
 the life in the world of spirits. 
 
 Especially was this observed among the believers in 
 the deity of their incarnated god, for the inhabitants of 
 the Christian world of Europe were in such a chaotic realm 
 of intellectual thought that they failed lamentably in 
 realization of their hopes of a future life. Their Savior 
 was not, as they had been taught, the ruler of the world 
 eternal, and aside from a band of ambitious prelates, 
 who had arranged spectacular representations of their 
 god, there was nothing existent in the world of spirits 
 that corresponded with their religious ideas of earth. 
 
 They sought in vain for that embodied representative 
 of the Almighty, which they had so boastingly paraded 
 before the people of other nations as their god, and the 
 only god ever incarnate, but they found that person- 
 ality of gods has no recognition ' in spiritual life, and 
 that individual development only was the criterion of 
 spiritual judgment. 
 
 The spirit inhabitants of the nations of the West 
 were intellectually paralyzed by this discovery, and 
 struggled for centuries to realize its meaning, often re- 
 verting to the mental atmosphere of earth, and there 
 fortifying themselves anew by contact with their ignor- 
 ant earthly brethren, who in turn, feeling the influx of a 
 spiritual power they could not understand, supposed 
 that they had a spiritual recognition from their god, and 
 that in this manner he was fulfilling the promises re- 
 corded in their sacred books. Thus, from generation 
 to generation, the people of the Christian world have 
 
70 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 deluded themselves with the fallacious hope that they 
 alone have a knowledge of spiritual life and general 
 jurisdiction over the eternal world. 
 
 It will be observed by critical students of the Chris- 
 tian religion that it is based upon a claim of delegated 
 authority from the Supreme Om, and that their incar- 
 nate god transferred this authority to visible represen- 
 tatives, who have power to control the nations of the 
 earth and dictate what shall be taught as truth, and 
 what shall be prohibited. * 
 
 This claim of supreme authority has been exercised 
 to neutralize, as far as possible, the revelations of truth 
 from the spiritual world that transcend or explain the 
 dogmas of the Christian religion, and intercourse with 
 the world of spirits has been forbidden by the Chris- 
 tian priesthood of all denominations, not because such 
 intercourse is impossible, but because it reveals the 
 false foundations upon which all religions rest, viz. : 
 ignorance of the true relations between the two condi- 
 tions of life. 
 
 In a substitution of truth for the errors of religions 
 there can be no priesthood having any authority to 
 dictate what is or is not*to be taught as spiritual truth ; 
 for, as the spiritual life is an evolution from the physi- 
 cal life, its progressive unfoldment will give different 
 revelations from age to age, so that the priesthood of 
 
 *This peculiarity of the Christian system is not entirely confined 
 to it, as there are similar sentiments held by some other great relig- 
 ions. It probably can be traced to the mentality awakened to 
 the realization of the existence of a spiritual world, but not fully 
 cognizant of the principles d(miinant there. Especially is this the 
 case where the worship of some great teacher of spiritual ideas as 
 a god prevails. Even the followers of Brahma and Buddha in this 
 age are tinctured with it. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 71 
 
 one generation, or their ideas, cannot be authority for 
 those of succeeding ages.* Those priests or those ideas 
 that belong to a forgotton past will be outgrown if the 
 people of earth do not seek to perpetuate them by a 
 rigid repression of the growing intellectual life of 
 childhood, and it is here that the priesthoods of earth 
 have exerted their power to the detriment of the race. 
 They have held the mind of the people upon the plane 
 of a childish regard for themselves as the chosen repre- 
 sentatives of the Almighty Power, and in doing so have 
 prevented that growth of intellectual vigor that belongs 
 to spirituality of a high order, and the minds of both 
 priest and people have been retarded in their spiritual 
 development. India and Europe both show this to a 
 marked degree, for each has in its spiritual literature 
 numberless superstitions that degrade and dwarf the 
 intellect as well as betoken a mind of childish ignor- 
 ance. 
 
 When the Oriental world of spirit first sent its power 
 into the Christian heavens, the darkness was so dense 
 there that anything like an intelligent communication 
 between the two spiritual spheres was entirely un- 
 known, for the Christian world in spirit was powerless 
 to do more than send an influence, which its correlative 
 on earth supposed emanated from the Supreme Spirit. 
 It was in vain that their philosophers tried to reach 
 the world of mortals, for Christian superstition sup- 
 posed that all intercourse of an intelligible character 
 
 *One is often struck with the sublime egotism that seems to be 
 a part and parcel of the priestly character in all nations. Standing 
 as they do, the visible representatives of the Supreme Power, the 
 very thought of their office seems to impregnate the mentality of 
 the individual, and he can hardly help developing the traits of his 
 God idea. 
 
72 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 was Satanic, and even to this day their chief teachers 
 ;so regard it. It was only when the advanced philo- 
 ■sophic minds in spirit had learned how to use the powers 
 ■of nature aright that intellectual spirituality dawned 
 upon the Western nations, and a little light was sent 
 upon that self-conceited and spiritually blinded people. * 
 
 Like other nations, some were either dazzled by its 
 illuminating power or blinded by its effulgence, and 
 straightway tried to establish a priestly hierarchy 
 over its recipients, but so far in vain. 
 
 This source of spiritual power owes nothing to earth 
 and cares nothing for its childish expedients to control 
 or formulate it into a series of doctrines. Mortals may 
 seek to perpetuate a knowledge of spiritual truth through 
 the old channels, but the world of spirit can open new 
 avenues at will, and its present work is to dispel the 
 darkness in which ancient superstitions are bred — not 
 to originate a new series to curse the children of earth. 
 Therefore, the ardent apostles of the new revelation 
 need not think that it will be retarded by opposition 
 or seriously benefited by their indorsement. It stands 
 upon a different basis than the old religious systems, 
 and while it explains them, has nothing in common with 
 them as far as instituting creedal fetters for the soul. 
 
 The Christian world has arrayed itself in open hos- 
 tility, through its priesthood, to the influx of light from 
 
 * The theories put forth by some of the writers upon the nature 
 of the soul show this same trait, even to this day; for the moment 
 the question arises as to the inception of soul life, the only answer 
 is a repetition of the Oriental idea, that the spirit comes from God 
 and returns to God in the ages of existence after death. That it 
 holds a self-conscious eternity of progressive life unfoldment has 
 been ignored by many teachers of both Oriental and Christian 
 schools of thought. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 73 
 
 the spiritual world, and must take the consequences of 
 such a foolish antagonism. Its priesthood are of all 
 men the most to be pitied rather than censured, for 
 they are so dcDsely ignorant of spiritual thought out- 
 side of their spurious creeds as not to be held account- 
 able for their childish ideas about the nature of the 
 soul or the destiny of the spirit.* 
 
 I have alluded to their ignorance of the basic ideas 
 of their own religion, and the tenacity with which they 
 cling to the fabulous origin of their G-od-man. They 
 little realize that not a distinguishing feature of their 
 system is original, but even their gods are the recon- 
 structed myths of India and Egypt. Their Trinity is 
 a travesty upon the Hindoo Triad with Om in place of 
 Siva, whom (Siva) they regard as the adversary" of life 
 and wisdom. Their scriptures are the stolen writings 
 of the sages of the Oriental world, and their sacred 
 oracles the treasured wisdom of those persons who were 
 spiritually developed enough to have more or less in- 
 tercourse with the lower spheres of the spiritual world. 
 Of these they have made their gods, and without these 
 they would be still worshiping at the shrines of Thor 
 and Odin, or in the bloody rites of the Druids and the 
 cruel deities of the nations bordering the Mediterranean. 
 
 For these nations of the West were savage devotees 
 of Moloch and Baal long after the altars of India were 
 
 '^The Christian priesthood are not alone to be censured for their 
 ignorance of the spiritual nature. Even some of the theosophical 
 schools of India are teaching the annihilation of the spiritual 
 entity as a possibility, where by successive rebirths the soul cannot 
 attain a good Karma. Those who imagine that conscious life can 
 be annihilated, once- having had its inception through planetary 
 relations, little know of the eternal relation of the universal 
 powers of life. 
 
74 • THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 purged of human sacrifice, and the remains of that 
 bloody worship are seen in the sacrificial oblation 
 which the Christian world believes was the culmina- 
 tion of Deific wrath and vengeance. To the intelligent 
 observer such ideas have their true origin in the 
 crude superstitions of savages, but these Western na- 
 tions still teach it as the final resource of Deific wisdom 
 to redeem a world, and it is no wonder that from the 
 life eternal the first information that ever came in this 
 modern age refuted such a monstrous libel upon the 
 Divine Beneficence. 
 
 The believers in such ideas are necessarily tinctured 
 with savagery, and their greatest glory is to rule or 
 destroy. Hence the Christian world of mortals is- 
 devoted to war and conquest, nor do they value justice 
 and truth except as they can dispense both; for their 
 god, Jehovah, is, like themselves, arbitrary and bloody, 
 remorseless and cruel to those who refuse to obey his 
 behests. The introduction of ideas from the world of 
 spirits denounced these crimes. as worthy of judgment, 
 and declared them to be no less than murder and false- 
 hood. The conquest of the weak by the powerful was 
 stigmatized as robbery, and the brutal treatment of 
 the defenseless by the conqueror the evidence of a 
 savage and barbarous disposition that stamped its pos- 
 sessor with the stigma of disgrace. 
 
 India has had her full share of the practical results 
 of European Christianity, and when her people seek a 
 new faith it will not be one that needs the moral sup- 
 port of sword and cannon to commend it to her people. 
 
 There is a land where the people of a professed 
 Christian name have had an evolution that is more in 
 harmony with spiritual ideas as they actually exist in 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 75 
 
 the life of spirit. That land has no outward symbol 
 of priest or king, and its people stand on an equality 
 before the laws. To this people came the spiritual reve- 
 lations of this age, and there are such exhibitions of 
 spiritual power in all its phases as have not been re- 
 corded since the time when the Vedantic writings were 
 given. 
 
 This people are the Buddhists of the Christian name, 
 but they draw their best religious ideas from all lands 
 and all peoples. Over that land has descended the 
 spiritual aura like a silvery cloud of light, and the 
 ancient glory of India is enveloping its nobler minds 
 with celestial radiance. She is the friend of the op- 
 pressed of all nations, and to her let India appeal when 
 the time comes for the return of the celestial messen- 
 ger that shall bring again her ancient glory, according 
 to the Vedantic prophecies. 
 
CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIANS' GOD. 
 
 To the students of the Indian Scriptures there has 
 always been a different interpretation of the symbols 
 than that given by the scholarship of the West, and 
 because of the ignorance of the latter the true history 
 or even appreciation of Indian thought is an inscrutable 
 mystery to the European mind. India long ago per- 
 ceived the essential unity of life, and all her great 
 teachers based their doctrines upon its sacred invio- 
 lability. It was taught in India before the Grecian 
 sages came to learn of the soul, that the spiritual nature 
 was eternal, and that change of condition did not anni- 
 hilate the life principle. Upon this foundation Indian 
 philosophy rested, and all the various sects that have 
 arisen have never disputed its essential truth. The 
 Brahmins, by virtue of their superior wisdom, were the 
 first to formulate a theological system of social privilege 
 and became the exponents of the religious ideas that 
 they desired the people to receive, but the Brahmin 
 caste, as a class, never was able to attain that profound 
 spiritual knowledge that can only be obtained by those 
 who have attained the Buddha state, and their exposi- 
 tions of spirituality fell far below the higher grades of 
 Divine enlightenment. 
 
 The followers of Brahm became the observants of 
 form, rather than possessors of spiritual power through 
 a worthy motive, but lost rather than gained spirituality; 
 for to be spiritual, requires not only the subordination 
 
 (76) 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 77 
 
 of the flesh to the spirit but the evolution of the spirit 
 itself, which may or may not take place parallel with 
 the period of physical life. 
 
 When the principles of the Brahmins were carried to 
 the West by the ancestor of the Israelites the system of 
 caste was transferred also, and upon the shores of the 
 Western sea a nation was formed that held some of the 
 doctrines of the East in its religious system, but they 
 had been more or less corrupted by the admixture of 
 the religions of the surrounding nations. 
 
 Notably among these doctines was a perverted inter- 
 pretation of the avatarship of India, which the learned 
 priests of that country had changed into an earthly 
 monarch who should "rule the nations with a rod of 
 iron and dash them in pieces as a potter's vessel," 
 while the favored disciples of the true religion would 
 be the rulers of the other nations of the earth. 
 
 All these Messianic prophecies had long before been 
 recorded in essence by the spiritual teachers of India, 
 and they originally meant, that when the earth needed 
 a spiritual teacher who should be able to teach the truth, 
 such a teacher should come who would be able to dis- 
 cern and proclaim the ideas that governed the spiritual 
 world ; for as the eternal life was a sequence of the 
 earthly, so its power could be made to appear upon 
 earth to instruct the people there as to their destin}^ 
 
 But these ideas came to people familiar with material 
 power who never had a spiritual evolution, and who de- 
 pended upon tradition for their authority. Thus the 
 people of that nation were ever looking for the leader- 
 ship of a material character, and oblivious of the spiritual 
 meaning underlying their sacred books and symbolism. 
 
 This people, however, had some of the most ancient 
 
78 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 writings of the Oriental world, and they treasured 
 them with much reverence, although they did not com- 
 prehend their spiritual meaning, but there were some 
 minds that were never quite satisfied with the interpre- 
 tation of the symbolism or the traditional rendering 
 of the writings themselves. 
 
 Among these was a man named Joschu, or Joshua, 
 who was quite a teacher of the mystic symbolism upon 
 a new basis, and he, being familiar with the true life of 
 the spirit, declared that the priests and scribes of the 
 law were ignorantly giving the people a false interpre- 
 tation. So strenuous was he as to their inability to 
 interpret the writings, that he aroused their wrath, 
 which finally culminated in his death at their hands. 
 
 This was not the only one who had met violence at 
 the hands of the priesthood, for so ignorant were the 
 hereditary rulers of the nation of the law of the spirit, 
 that they supposed it to be impossible for any rev- 
 elation to be made that did not come through their 
 order, and the appearance of a teacher of spiritual 
 truths outside of their ranks was the signal for accusa_ 
 tion of blasphemy against their god. 
 
 Joshua, having been duly charged with this offense, 
 was summarily executed by being stoned to death, but 
 his words had made some impression upon some illiter- 
 ate and obscure disciples, to whom he afterward ap- 
 peared from the world of spirits to confirm them in 
 his faith, and for at least three generations he was able 
 to make his presence felt at some of their assemblies. 
 
 To these ignorant followers the return of a spirit in 
 a visible form, or by other means, was hailed as an 
 evidence of Divine power, and in their traditions they 
 ascribed to him the honor of having triumphed over 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 79 
 
 death and achieved a victory that demonstrated him to 
 be the traditional Messiah. 
 
 In reality Joshua had only done what the sages of 
 India had long before declared to be a commonplace 
 manifestation of the spiritual world, but to the barbar- 
 ous savages of the West it seemed to be much greater, 
 and it was not long ere they began to worship him as a 
 god, and to formulate a system of religion with some 
 of his sayings for doctrines. 
 
 There was another element that had much to do with 
 shaping the religious thought of the barbarian West 
 about the same time that Joshua was disputing with the 
 Jewish hierarchy, viz. : the introduction of Buddhism, 
 through the followers of Sakya Muni, who had gone 
 from India to the West, as well as to the nations nearer 
 home. 
 
 These missionaries of the gospel of peace were 
 warmly welcomed by the sages of the schools of learn- 
 ing in Greece and Egypt, and numbered many disciples 
 among the learned and wise of those nations. In fact, 
 so powerful did they become that the worship of the 
 native deities of those countries began to decline, so 
 that the priesthood, fearing a total overthrow of their 
 power, set about devising measures to change the current 
 in their own favor, and, as a consequence, the admixture 
 of theory and truth that belonged to the systems of the 
 followers of Joshua and also of Sakya was adopted and 
 became the central religion of that people. 
 
 The Western priesthood did not like to attribute their 
 worship to a teacher so far away as India, but they 
 took Joshua and changed his name to correspond witi 
 a G-reek and Latin term signifying ' ' The One Eterna, 
 Being," and thus labeled, the Christian world has been 
 
so THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 worshiping, for centuries, a fictitious god manufactured 
 from the legends and myths of all the religions of pre- 
 cedent generations, supplemented by a combination of 
 the ideas of two religious teachers, who both were di- 
 rectly indebted to the spirit world for what truth they 
 knew about the world eternal. 
 
 It is not strange that the Christian world rejects the 
 truth of spiritual revelation in this age when it flashes 
 so much light upon the obscurity of its origin. It was 
 the policy of the early Christian fathers to evade the 
 truth or conceal it under a cloud of specious pretenses, 
 for many knew their faith was but a fabrication from 
 the outset. Nor have they ever been willing to acknowl- 
 edge their duplicity in the world of spirit, for so gigantic 
 have been the results of their fraud upon the world, 
 they stand aghast at the probable consequences to the 
 race should their dishonesty and disgrace be known 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Hence, they seek in all manner known to deceivers 
 to prevent a knowledge of the truth reaching the earth 
 from the spiritual world, and, by a wholesale denuncia- 
 tion of spiritual manifestations, seek to prevent the world 
 of mortals from ascertaining the foundation of the 
 dogmas formerly taught as spiritual truth by them upon 
 earth. 
 
 In this contest the spirit world of India has a deep 
 interest, for from her came the first revelation that 
 broke the power of the Christian hierarchy in the world 
 of spirit as well as mortal life. It will continue until 
 the people of earth know the truth about their gods, 
 and whether they belong to the mystic realm of imagina- 
 tion or the more palpable sphere of deliberate fabrica- 
 tion. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 81 
 
 The Christian world has the latter for the source of 
 its faith, while the Oriental nations have drawn largely 
 upon the former; but when the truth abolit each is seen 
 in its true light, it will be evident why the people of 
 India have not substituted Christian superstition for 
 Hindoo philosophy, and why the latter is making such 
 headway in the lands where the former has long held 
 sway. 
 
 It may seem as if there should be some deference 
 paid to the men who are trying to propagate the 
 Christian ideas in India, but the ideas themselves are 
 not essentially new or worthy of special attention by 
 its people. 
 
 Ere I close this chapter upon the nature of the 
 Christian deity, I ought to refer to one characteristic 
 of those followers of him that is specially worthy of 
 notice, although it is not specially confined to those of 
 his faith alone, viz. : The great credulity of the masses of 
 those countries in accepting the divinity of their man-god. 
 
 Their priesthood are equally ignorant of the impossi- 
 bility of their god being born out of the usual course 
 of nature, but such is their superstitious credulity that 
 they teach the avatarship in this particular form with 
 an earnestness unknown in India save among the most 
 superstitious devotees of the gods. The Christian 
 world stakes its hopes of eternal salvation upon this 
 priestly fabrication, and teaches it with a zeal that 
 surpasses the comprehension of earthly wisdom. 
 
 In reality their god was born the same as other mor- 
 tals, and lived and died in the same manner as all mor- 
 tals would under the same circumstances; but the tales 
 that came from the East, that were but mistaken trans- 
 lations of Oriental metaphor, were accepted by these 
 7 
 
82 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 ignorant people as literal truths. Hence their god has 
 all the distinguishing traits of Sakya Muni, coupled 
 with much of the philosophic wisdom of Egypt and 
 Greece in the palmy days of the latter nation, so that 
 the Christian world is but an evolution of the Oriental 
 in its religious worship, yet not even able to compre- 
 hend the subtle thought that the East sought to em- 
 body in its mystical language. For spiritual life and 
 .spiritual thought must have their own time for a per- 
 fect evolution, and the religion of the West has never 
 had the power to rise above the savage superstitions 
 that clouded the Oriental thought when translated into 
 its barbarous language. 
 
 In fact, so low were they in the scale of an intel- 
 lectual spirituality that they conceived the idea from 
 some savage or ignorant mind that the Supreme Om 
 sent his only begotten son into the earthly life that he 
 (the Son) might be killed, so that justice should be 
 satisfied and their god vindicated from the charge of 
 cruelty in the wholesale destruction of the human race. 
 
 This is the basis of the theology of the Christian 
 world, and it is only where the wisdom of the Buddha 
 refutes it that the Christian faith has any claim to be 
 considered a religion of heavenly origin, yet the Bud- 
 dhahood is attained but by few among that people. 
 
 Therefore, O sons of India, I come to say to you that 
 the Christian's god is of the same nature as your own 
 avatars, whom you have worshiped in vain for ages. 
 They are not worthy of your adoration, nor should you 
 seek unto them as if they held the keys of life eternal 
 for you, or any soul. The avatars are not the em- 
 bodied gods of other ages, but the more perfectly born 
 and spiritually enlightened of your own life, and when 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 83 
 
 India ceases to expect her gods to deliver her, she will 
 rise in the power of a new life to break the chains of 
 every grade of oppression. 
 
 She has the gods in her own mortal children that can 
 be the means of her deliverance, and when her children 
 learn that the true gods of a people are from the people, 
 they will no longer bow at the shrines of departed 
 spirits, but lift the soul to the heights of divine contem- 
 plation, and receive the celestial light that comes to the 
 soul at peace with itself and the Supreme. 
 
 Even the Christain world can have this light, and it 
 is breaking through the dense clouds of ignorance and 
 superstition that long have enveloped its people, and 
 they are learning something of the true nature of the 
 soul and its immortal destiny. 
 
 Despise not the light that comes to India from the 
 Western world when' it comes freed from the taint of 
 the superstition of creedalism. It is the Buddhahood 
 coming to them according to the Vedantic prophecies, 
 and the West is to rejoice in its blessings as well as the 
 hosts of India. 
 
 They know not its source, nor are they yet able to 
 receive it in all its splendor, for their spiritual birth is 
 not yet, although they imagine the quickening process 
 that reaches so many is the birth unto Nirvana. In 
 their spiritual darkness they connect it with the 
 Buddhahood and imagine themselves enlightened, but 
 they see not, nor can they hardly discern the voice of 
 the spirit, so imperfect has been their spiritual evolu- 
 tion in the mental darkness of the past ages. 
 
 Therefore, for a while, they must remain in the men- 
 tal environment in which they are being spiritually 
 gestated, but the time of their birth will come, and then 
 
84 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 they will wonder at the mistakes they have made in 
 their childish efforts to teach the nations of the East 
 the nature of the spiritual life. Like children they 
 are to be treated by the sons of Brahm, and as children 
 outgrow the thoughts and ideas of childhood, so will 
 the people of the West learn to regard their present 
 crude and ignorant theories of the Divine nature, and 
 discard them for the wisdom and benevolence which 
 the sages of India taught the philosophers of the 
 West centuries before the Christians' God was born, 
 and which in reality made the better part of the 
 Christian religion a possibility among the savage and 
 bloody nations in which it has existed since its formu- 
 lation from the systems of previous generations. 
 
CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Within the memory of the past generation there has 
 been a great evolution of spiritual thought among the 
 Western nations which has had its influence in paving 
 the way for the reception of a higher type of religious 
 ideas than belonged to their ancient theology. 
 
 This epoch in their religious history began with the 
 introduction of more liberal ideas of the nature of their 
 Trinity, and was first formulated in the denial of the 
 divinity of their embodied god and the substitution of 
 him as the greatest religious teacher of his age and 
 generation. ^ 
 
 This explanation of the Christian godhead was an 
 improvement upon the extremely superstitious teach- 
 ings of the ancient fathers of their faith, but it fell 
 short of a complete analysis of the subject, for the 
 true story of his life was not known, and the composi- 
 tion of the ideas upon which the mythical Savior of 
 the Christian world was fabricated was a mystery. 
 
 The early Christian fathers or their immediate descend- 
 ants were responsible for this, for in the fabrication 
 
 *The great spiritual wave of liberal ideas which swept over 
 America, and culminated in the separation of the liberal from the 
 orthodox interpreters of the scriptures, was ever a source of per- 
 plexity to the Christian sects whe still clung to the barbaric the- 
 ology of Calvin or Luther. A similar influx is still pushing its way 
 Westward and sweeping away the idea of the sanctity of supersti- 
 tious interpretations of any doctrine, and gradually unfolding the 
 greater beauties of a natural evolution of all powers. — B. 
 
 (85) 
 
86 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 of the tales regarding their deity they copied freely 
 from the legends current in the Oriental world con- 
 cerning the old gods, and save in the substitution of 
 the mild and peaceful doctrines of Sakya Muni for the 
 licentious intrigues of the Egyptian and Roman deities, 
 the Christian system did not vary essentially from the 
 religions it superseded. 
 
 But in the propagation of the beneficent ideas of 
 Sakya Muni the Western world obtained its first in- 
 timation of the true Theosophy or wisdom of the Divine 
 Nature. Sakya Muni had instructed his disciples that 
 peace, not war, was the true policy to insure earthly 
 and spiritual blessedness, and the nations of the West 
 were so given to war that the preaching of a gospel of 
 peace as a message from the gods was so opposed to the 
 savage nature and moral and political measures of that 
 people that it was long ere it was welcomed as a true 
 system, except by the very learned or the extremely 
 poor and ignorant, who were tired of the oppression 
 that war engendered. 
 
 Hence, when the disciples of Sakya Muni came from 
 the East, bearing the higher light of the spirit world, 
 they found some opposition as well as welcome, but 
 they had the satisfaction of seeing their ideas adopted 
 to some extent and placed among the sacred writings 
 of the West, although they were modified somewhat to 
 suit the temper of the age and generation to whom 
 they came.* 
 
 *The writings of the ancient fathers of the church abound hi 
 much that seems fanatical and absurd to us of this age, but they 
 have had a great influence, modifying tlie savage disposition of the 
 nations to whom they were given. While they reflect the thoughts 
 of a priesthood tinged with superstition and ignorance, they probar 
 bly were an improvement upon tlie licentious intrigues that pre- 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 87 
 
 Those writings in after ages became the basis of 
 the Christian theosophy, which differed from the Indian 
 in this, that it admitted of no hope of change after the 
 physical death, whereas the ideas of Sakya held that by 
 the attainment of Nirvana the soul would not need to 
 ever return to the sphere of earth to have another 
 embodiment. The Christian system changed this some- 
 what, to correspond with the Egyptian theory of a 
 physical resurrection and spiritual re-embodiment, 
 after which there would be a new heaven and a new 
 earth, to be inhabited by thos.e who should be found 
 worthy to obtain entrance therein. 
 
 Sakya Muni knew well of the existence of the 
 spiritual world, and his life work was to familiarize his 
 disciples with the idea of a blessed life in the Nirvanian 
 heavens after death; but the crude and ignorant West 
 could not rise to a conception of a refined spirituality, 
 and changed his Nirvana to a material city built of 
 stones and paved with gold, into which was to be 
 admitted the favored disciples of the new faith, while 
 the myriad hosts who had preceded them were either 
 to remain in outer darkness or be provided for in some 
 way unknown to the souls of earth.* 
 
 vailed in the pagan temples, and in a modified degree changed the 
 bloody sacrifices of beasts and fowls for the more humane precepts 
 of the schools of philosophic thought. — B. 
 
 *Here is a perfectly rational explanation of the effect of the 
 Oriental philosophy upon the barbaric mentality of the West, and 
 why the translation of the ideas from the Orient to the West had 
 to have a mutilation to be received, Roman civilization was brutal 
 and bloody in its materiality. The influx of ideas of a spiritual 
 character was met by this material environment of the savagery of 
 the West. It had to take a material expression — hence the Christian 
 paradise, with its city of stone and its streets of gold, the height of 
 barbaric conception of power and beauty. — B. 
 
SS THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 The Christian world speedily closed the doors of 
 further information upon the subject by forbidding in- 
 tercourse with the spiritual spheres as both dangerous 
 and impossible, and sank into a night of spiritual gloom 
 that has not yet been dispelled with all their boasted 
 light of revelation from the source of Eternal Wisdom. 
 
 In doing this, they laid the foundations for that 
 spiritual subservience to a priesthood that has ever 
 striven to keep them ignorant of the truth and subordi- 
 nate to the deductions of a type of mentality that knows 
 nothing of developed spiritual powers; and that has 
 never been able to rise above traditional interpretations 
 of the ideas which were living truths to their original 
 exponents. 
 
 The Western world has struggled for centuries to 
 attain spiritual knowledge and power by ignoring the 
 only natural method whereby such knowledge and power 
 can be attained. Its priesthood, ignorant, and con- 
 scious of their lack of power, are cowardly opponents 
 of the only class that has ventured to explore the 
 forbidden realm, and who find that Christian dogma 
 concerning it is almost totally false. 
 
 Hence, in the Christian world, spiritual science is 
 viewed askance, and Christian ignorance is taught as 
 divine wisdom. Many of Christian people are either 
 superstitious devotees of an unknown God or skeptical 
 disbelievers of the whole subject. They erect their 
 temples and maintain a host of teachers, but the taught 
 are left in spiritual darkness as to any proof of a spirit- 
 ual life, and if they obtain it they do so by seeking light 
 outside the channels which their religious teachers 
 have instituted for the spiritual enlightenment of the 
 race. 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 89 
 
 This being the situation of the Christian world, it 
 became a necessity that there should be a revelation of 
 a different character from the spiritual world, or the 
 faint remnants of spirituality might be obscured in the 
 dense darkness that envelops that people who fail to 
 grasp the full signification of the subject. India had 
 her spiritual evolution centuries before the Western 
 nations knew of a spiritual idea above the plane of 
 savages or barbarians. Her highest spiritual doctrines 
 culminated in the ideas taught by such enlightened 
 minds as Capilya and Sakya Muni. The spiritual life 
 of the nation rose to the apprehension of a Divine Power 
 that was impersonal and universal in its beneficence. 
 
 This interpretation of the Supreme was far in advance 
 of the savage or barbarous theology of the sacrificial 
 type, and burst upon the mortal comprehension with the 
 vividness of a divine revelation. It was hardly worthy 
 of this consideration, but to the minds benighted by 
 ignorance or degraded by crime it was the signal of a 
 new interpretation of Divinity itself. 
 
 This wisdom was called the Divine life in the Indian 
 phraseology, or the Buddhahood. In the West, it was 
 termed Theosophia or the wisdom of the gods. Only 
 those anointed with it could claim spiritual illumination, 
 and those who could attain it were to be forever exempt 
 from the further connection with the mental atmos- 
 phere of earthly thoughts or earthly influence. To the 
 seeker after spiritual attainments, it was represented 
 as the goal of human effort, and to this day it is taught 
 in more or less crude forms throughout the Christian 
 and Heathen worlds.* 
 
 * There are scores of people to whom this spiritual enlightenment 
 comes who never express outwardly the great changes it makes in 
 
90 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Where priestly dogma has not deliberately substi- 
 tituted for it the ceremonial form or the more vivid 
 symbolism, it touches all minds upon the same plane of 
 development with similiarity of thought or likeness of 
 spiritual experience. Neither Christian nor Heathen 
 has a monopoly of it, however, and. the wisdom of the 
 divine order cheers all hearts to whom it comes with 
 the blessedness of a conscious approval by the Supreme 
 Author of all life. The Christian world imagines it 
 has a moiiopoly of this conscious spirituality, but its 
 power in reality is so low and undeveloped that it may 
 be said of it, that except among the higher castes or 
 classes the existence of the spiritual nature is unknown. 
 They were slow to adopt the idea of a conscious spiri- 
 tual presence, and have hardly yet been able to recog- 
 nize the universality of spirit, or its development among 
 all nations upon parallel lines.* 
 
 Hence their spiritual wisdom is hardly worthy of the 
 name Theosophia and their definitions of the Divine 
 nature partake too much of the crudest speculation as 
 
 their mental atmosphere, but whose faces show the presence'of an 
 inner light that illuminates the pathway they tread, however rugged 
 it may be. They are not depeudeut upon human definitions of its 
 nature, nor are they disturbed by the denial of those less enlight- 
 ened as to its existence. Such souls have entered the path, and 
 will reach Nirvana ere they pass beyond the bounds of mortal life. 
 * The belief among Christian theologians as to the darkness of 
 Heathen peoples has been a great stimulus to missionary ettort to 
 enlighten them, but the fact that spiritual light touches all people 
 who have a certain degree of mental unfoldment is not generally 
 known by them. As they had their spiritual unfoldment under 
 the Christian definition of the term, they supposed that it was only 
 under that system spiritual light came to earth, and so have ex- 
 pended much unnecessary zeal in behalf of the Heathen world. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 91 
 
 to origin or purpose in the work of cosmic creation. 
 To them only, the Supreme Creator has made provision 
 for the welfare of the few, while the great masses perish 
 or are hopelessly condemned to eternal suffering. Their 
 G-od has left no alternative to be considered, and the 
 culmination of Christian theology is the deduction that 
 the Divine wisdom utterly Jailed in its efforts to re- 
 deem or perfect its work in the creation of immortal 
 beings. 
 
 This is far from the teachings of the true Theosophia 
 (Theosophy). That declares that the Divine mind is 
 both omnipotent and omniscient. It also affirms that 
 its beneficence is equal to all the demands upon it for 
 every type or form of being that exists. It says there 
 can be no ultimate failure in the designs of planetary 
 or any other life, and while it is not arbitrary, it affirms 
 that all this is to be wrought by the power of the Al- 
 mighty in and through the processes of spiritual law. 
 
 It penetrates the spheres of spirit, and perceives how 
 the same essential principles prevail there as in the first 
 sphere of evolutionary form, and declares that life be- 
 ing universal, progress must be eternal. It touches the 
 secret springs of spiritual action, and traces the evolu- 
 tion of spirituality from its incipient stages until it ends 
 in a perfect comprehension of the spiritual nature. 
 
 This is the declaration of Theosophy, the fruit of 
 Indian metaphysical discovery, viz. : That all life is of 
 G-od, and all life is in G-od ( in the idiom best expressed 
 in the tongues of the Western world), and that no life 
 can perish without G-od himself be destroyed. 
 
 The theologians of the West are unable to grasp this 
 thought in its entirety and call it Pantheism, but in 
 their ignorance of spirituality as it is they have never 
 
92 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 fathomed in any degree the tremendous significence of 
 their own basis of spiritual thought as personified in 
 their Trinity. Their Holy Spirit is the nearest trans- 
 lation they could give to the Sanscrit Om, but with the 
 perversity of ignorance they have placed it last in the 
 order although it should have been first, and the con- 
 trolling power of their Father, Son and Devil. 
 
 In their reversal they lost the true significance of each 
 in the symbols from which they copied them, and have 
 never known the meaning of the terms embodied in 
 their barbarian theories of deity. They lost the Divine 
 wisdom and have never regained, it, for they were too 
 proud to acknowledge their ignorance and too ignorant 
 to seek for knowlege in the only land and nation that 
 held the true key to the ancient symbolism. Hence 
 they adopted a spurious god, a defective creed and a 
 ridiculous system of theology, to cope with the over- 
 whelming power of the true Theosophy. 
 
CHAPTEK X. 
 
 THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ANCIENT WORSHIP. 
 
 When the missionaries of the Western nations came 
 to India they were horrified at the respect paid to the 
 images in the temples by which the ancient teachers 
 sought to convey to the lower castes ideas of the prin- 
 ciples that exist in spirit and mortal life. These ima- 
 ges they pronounced idols worthy of destruction, for to 
 them they conveyed a meaning entirly different from 
 that intended by the ancient teachers. The source of 
 life could only be symbolized by the organs of genera- 
 tion, which the Christian world has taught as obscene 
 by nature, and the linga and yoni are to their minds the 
 symbols of lust and depravity. This was not so in- 
 tended by the teachers of the ancient faith, and it is 
 curiously significant that the ball and cross with which 
 the priests of Christian temples adorn their houses of 
 worship are but modifications of the ancient symbolism 
 whereby India sought to express the source of life to 
 mortal comprehension. The Christian world put the 
 linga and yoni at the top of their temples to this day, 
 without knowing that in so doing they have only veiled 
 the phallus which they denounce as tending to the 
 deification of lust and debauchery.* 
 
 *Tliis Oriental way for accounting for the Christian symbolism 
 has been disputed by mauy devotees of the entire originality of 
 Christian system. But the shrewd critics of the East have long 
 been acquainted with the device of conveying ideas by symbols, and 
 under any disguise they seem to see the similarity of design to 
 
 (93) 
 
94 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Of the other symbols that stand in the temples 
 which represent the various gods of India, I can only- 
 say that they all exemplify the specific ideas which 
 belong to some special system that the tolerant spirit 
 of Hindooism has allowed to spread, or from the wor- 
 ship of decarnated spirits who love to be worshiped on 
 earth by the ignorant and superstitious people there. 
 Accordingly, they have impressed their thoughts upon 
 the sensitive minds of the ignorant, and through the 
 power of impression have weighed down the minds of 
 many millions with fear and reverence of spiritual ven- 
 geance should their vengeance be neglected; but like 
 their conterparts in the Western nations, they have no 
 real power over those who fear them not. The goddess 
 Doorgha or the goddess Kali* are as powerless in 
 reality to help or harm the soul of the intelligent as 
 the devil of the Christian world, which exists only in 
 the imagination with which superstition has peopled 
 the spiritual life. 
 
 The charge is boldly made, that India has lost its 
 spiritual light t hrough subservience^to the deities whose 
 symbols express all the phases of human passion and 
 animality. This is only true in a limited degree, for 
 India went down in the grade of spiritual enlightenment 
 when she mistook the symbolism for the ideas it was 
 intended to convey, and her degradation came when she 
 
 their own system. From the fact that Christianity is a compouud 
 of various other systems, the symboUsm reflects a varied constitu- 
 ency and the Hindoo may not be far wrong in his deductions. — B. 
 *Doorgha and KaU were two ancient deified personifications of 
 the feminine powers in nature. Their worship reflects the mental 
 savagery that came from the primitive races of ancient India. 
 They do not belong to the Aryan races, although tolerated by the 
 Brahmin priesthood, along with the other gods. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 95 
 
 forsook that high mental interpretation of the symbols 
 for the superstitious reverence of the images as the 
 resident forms of the spiritual power. "^ 
 
 Many of the Christian temples have the images of 
 the reputed founder of their faith, and their worshipers 
 bow in adoration before them, but they resent the imputa- 
 tion that they worship the image, and in reality they 
 only use it to call more vividly to the mind the personal 
 G-od which they adore; so that, if a charge of idolatry 
 is preferred by these Western barbarians against the 
 worship of the Oriental nations, it is of a similar 
 character to the symbolism by which they express their 
 divinities to the eye of the ignorant devotees. 
 
 These people of the West are grossly ignorant of the 
 nature or use of symbols. Many of them have an hered- 
 itary opposition to their use, and suppose that they 
 were forbidden by their G-od in the ancient code, which 
 they still reverence. But they do not know that the 
 code of laws which they ascribe to Moses was copied 
 from the ancient laws of Zoroaster, and Menu of India, 
 and was afterwards made the basis of the monotheistic 
 worship of the West. Their later priesthood took 
 these writings as a basis of doctrine, and incorporated 
 them with the symbolism that prevailed among the 
 Greeks, and from them compiled the code of ancient 
 
 * This superstitious regard for the emblems is not confined to 
 Heathen peoples. In the Catholic communion, the elevation of the 
 host, and the fancied translation of the bread and wine into the 
 veritable body and blood of a God, is as gross a superstition as ever 
 was held among the most idolatrous heathen nation in existence. 
 But the Christian priesthood of that order are as literal interpre- 
 ters of the dogma as the most devout Hindoo that ever bowed at 
 the shrine of Kali or dipped himr,elf in Ganges' sacred waters to 
 insure eternal blessedness. — B. 
 
96 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 and modern dogmas that is now regarded as a sacred 
 revelation, but they have not changed the symbols in 
 essential particulars. Even their embodied form of a 
 God exhibits the features of SakyaMuni, and their bloody 
 crosses reflect the savagery of their primitive worship 
 of blood and human sacrifice. 
 
 Their saints are the lesser deities, which correspond 
 to the spirits worshiped in India as subordinate gods, 
 and they have divided the heavens of the West by lines 
 that correspond with the jurisdiction of the creeds and 
 sects, which reflect the varied thoughts of their ignorant 
 teachers. 
 
 For these apostles of the Christian faith themselves 
 are not aware of the true nature of spiritual powers, 
 yet they imagine themselves competent to enlighten the 
 world by the artificial torches which they construct out 
 of the material given from the Oriental nations. Where 
 they have retained their faith in the Supreme Om they 
 have made some progress, but where they have modified 
 or mixed it with the imagery of the symbols, they have 
 retrograded or been seriously retarded in their develop- 
 ment of the spiritual nature. 
 
 Yet with all their pretensions to knowledge of spir- 
 itual life from their so-called divine revelations, the 
 existence of a spiritual life is taught by them to be 
 incapable of proof, and their entrance upon it after 
 death to be entirely problematical. * 
 
 *The reluctance with which the Christian church receives testi- 
 mony of a character to settle the vexed question of the immortal 
 nature of the soul is observed in its treatment of all who have 
 become recipients of spiritual gifts. The possession of clairvoyance 
 or the claim to the knowledge of spiritual powers is evidence 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 97 
 
 Such instructors are incapable of interpreting the 
 symbolism of India, and their ideas relative to it are on 
 a par with their ignorance of the symbolism of their 
 own faith. 
 
 There is one curious result of this ignorance witnessed 
 in the spiritual world which accounts for much that 
 perplexes the students of spiritual phenomena in the 
 material life. The Christian priesthood, ( chiefly of the 
 Catholic faith, as well as some Prostestant sects,) after 
 their transition to the life of spirit cling to the errors 
 of their earthly ideas, and strive to realize their hopes 
 of an exclusive heaven. They find themselves unable 
 to control any minds save those equally ignorant or of 
 an inferior intelligence, and as they cannot control the 
 wise in spirit life they strive to close the doors of any 
 intelligence regarding the life of spirit from reaching 
 the mind of mortals. By so doing, they can populate 
 their sphere of the spirit world with a class of spirits 
 that still reoi;ards them as oracles of wisdom, and for a 
 season hold them in allegiance. 
 
 But their devotees soon tire of' this repressive and 
 restricted sphere of life, and, when intelligent enough 
 to break away, soon leave them for a more intelligent 
 and less deceptive society. For deception is the only 
 power the priesthood of any people can exercise to retain 
 their allegiance. The very office as exercised upon 
 earth is an imposition upon the intelligence of man, 
 and when the mind outgrows it, the god recedes and 
 the priest departs. 
 
 enough to exclude the claimant from Christian fellowship and 
 insure his condemnation from the authorized representatives of its 
 creedal system. — B. 
 
 8 
 
98 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 It would have left India long ago had the people 
 risen in their intellectual power and had their spiritual 
 gods been of a high order; but they are not. and despite 
 the efforts of the older teachers to break the power of 
 superstition, the despotism of the hierarchy in spirit is 
 still felt upon earth, holding the people in mental bond- 
 age and preventing the spread of a knowledge of truth 
 and wisdom of a higher spiritual order. 
 
CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 THE ERROR OF THE DOCTRINE OF REIXCARXATION 
 AS TAUGHT BY THE THEOSOPHISTS OF EARTH. 
 
 I have alluded ill another place to what were the 
 original ideas which became the basis of the present 
 doctrine of the reincarnation of the spirit as now 
 taught upon earth, and think it well to write further 
 about it, as the mischief wrought by it in India has 
 been almost beyond compute. 
 
 I have said that it only meant, in the most ancient ages, 
 the principles by which the forming spiritual powers 
 of earth should be perpetually reproduced in all ages, 
 after the planet had once become able to evolve them, 
 and I think it wise to state again in positive terms the 
 reasons why the idea of re-embodiment of the indi- 
 vidual in earthly relations must be beyond the province 
 of natural law. 
 
 Notwithstanding one of the ablest writers* upon the 
 Oriental system of Buddhism has sought to connect it 
 with the principles of evolution, an understanding of 
 the office of planetary life will soon expose the sophis- 
 tical ideas that are inwoven with the truth, and leave 
 the mind free to proceed upon its evolutionary path- 
 way without the fear of having to retrace its steps to 
 tread the earthly pilgrimage again. 
 
 The simple truth about planetary life in its first 
 stages is, that the entity which survives death is really 
 a product of the planetary relations of the elements 
 
 *A. P. Siunett. 
 
 •(99) 
 
100 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 and gets its inception there. If it be forcibly detached, 
 it can be magnetically attached to kindred spiritual 
 entities in the form, and obtain life experience through 
 that relation, but it has no power to go back to the 
 primitive status or to become re-embodied at the ex- 
 pense of the embryotic life, and nature most emphati- 
 cally refuses to permit it. 
 
 The great trouble with our modern Indian teachers is, 
 that they fail to conceive of the eternity of matter* as 
 well as spirit, and also fail to connect the two as correla- 
 tives in the universal cosmos. By so doing, they miss 
 the knowledge of the inception of the spirit, and vaguely 
 suppose it gets its original impetus from the universal 
 impersonal spirit which seeks to express itself through 
 matter to obtain knowledge that it could not gain else- 
 where. 
 
 These metaphysical teachers of reincarnation of the 
 individual spirit have had to meet many objections 
 and much speculative questioning, but their chief re- 
 liance has been and still is that Karma is the cause of 
 reincarnation, and when a good Karma is obtained they 
 will not need to repeat the experiences of earth further. 
 
 Now it is well to go a little further into the consid- 
 eration of the idea of Karma, and see if it presents any 
 good basis for the theory of rebirth into conditions 
 
 * Perhaps it would be well to state, that the a priori method of 
 reasoning common iu the Oriental world is the cause of their at- 
 tributing everything in nature to the direct control of a spirit. 
 Matter in the fourth dimensional capacity has a correlative exprt s- 
 sion but not a clear definition iu the language, and the confusion 
 of thought engendered is quite noticeable when one tries to follow 
 the ideas of the Indian philosophy in its present form. Some 
 theosophists claim much more than they can prove at present, but 
 the mark of the priest is on them in some form. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. IQl 
 
 that necessarily must be extremely likely to produce 
 a bad Karma. * If the experience of earthly life has not 
 been able in its first influence upon the embryotic spirit to 
 give it a good Karma, will the continuation of rebirths 
 into the same or similar conditions be likely to improve 
 the spirit as surely as to detach its thoughts and de- 
 sires from that state as much as possible? 
 
 Now the law of spiritual unfoldment is this, that the 
 better the conditions the wiser and purer the life; and 
 while it may be necessary for the spiritual entity to lay 
 its foundation in planetary life, the sooner it can escape 
 from bad conditions there the more likely it will be to 
 have a beautiful development. It may have to stay in 
 the mortal environment for a season to perfect the form 
 powers, but when that is once accomplished no neces- 
 sity exists for further imprisonment upon earth, for all 
 that earth can teach is what pertains to the physical 
 senses rather than to the spiritual life, and to condemn 
 a spirit to return to it after once having had its nature 
 developed in that direction would be to degrade rather 
 than exalt the soul, nor could anything be gained by it. f 
 
 * The vagaries that follow the adoption of this idea as truth are 
 strikingly seen in the idea that the final redemption from a bad 
 Karma is to be obtained by a transition from earth in infancy. Of 
 course this is only another of the fallacious ideas that error breeds 
 when it obtains the ascendancy in the miud, for while nature enters 
 a most marked protest against early death, Karma demands it. 
 India has suffered terribly by the perversion of this as well as other 
 false ideas, and infanticide has had to be suppressed by the strong 
 hand of the civil government. — B. 
 
 f Spirits of the scientific order never indorse the advisability of 
 early death, and aver that until the embryotic spirit has obtained 
 the necessary development of earth life, it must remain in the 
 magnetic environment of earth. This gives it all the experience 
 needed, and effectually disposes of the theories of a spiritual rebirth 
 
102 THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 Nature has provided the most ample means for the 
 spiritual influx of thoughts to earth, and any spirit can 
 avail itself of them, but to cling to the ideas of sense 
 which pertain to earthly life is to invite the animal 
 rather than the spiritual to obtain ascendency. 
 
 The original Karma idea was, that the soul would 
 have to expiate in its experiences the effect of all condi- 
 tions through which it would have to pass from the 
 realm of unconscious being to the perfect development 
 of all its powers. It was perceived by the wiser teachers 
 of India that the spiritual influx from the lower spheres 
 of spirit betokened a bad Karma, and that it was not 
 possible for the spirituality of a low order to perfect 
 itself except through a series of mental experiences or 
 evolutions from one plane of thought to another of 
 higher degree, and in the metaphorical expressions of 
 the language the idea of a rebirth was used to designate 
 this process. At first it was taught to the primitive 
 disciples as a spiritual experience and was never under- 
 stood in any other sense until a debased priesthood 
 arose and gave the literal interpretation which has 
 been taught in India for many generations.^ 
 
 By the law of spiritual evolution, the spirit once hav- 
 ing had its formative stages in earthly or planetary 
 
 into antenatal life. It is nature asserting her rights, which no 
 power less than hers can deprive one of, but she can do it without 
 disturbing the general equilibrium of either world. — B. 
 
 *The hand of the priest is ever potent to improte the teachings 
 of the philosopher. Here a perfectly natural process of soul un- 
 foldment upon a spiritual plane is perverted and dragged into the 
 mire of sensual life to sustain the prerogatives of a priesthood. It 
 is a wonder that the crafty swindlers did not otfer a free passage 
 into Brahm by the payment of a fee, but that was reserved to the 
 priesthood of the Christian world. — B. 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 103 
 
 life has no more necessity for returning to that condi- 
 tiorr than the developed bird has to reenter the shell of 
 the embryotic period, for the earth experiences at best 
 are but formative, and, as far as being of any great value 
 except in the necessities of the embryotic stages of life, 
 may be said to be detrimental rather than to be desired. 
 
 Planets are a necessity in the supreme economy to 
 organize the elements into conscious entities known as 
 spirits, but beyond that function they have no essential 
 purpose of a spiritual character. They have ever been 
 the nurseries of the embryotic forms of spirits, and fill 
 a great office in this respect, but they are far from be- 
 ing a necessary factor in the higher gradations of spir- 
 itual power; and when it has been necessary to raise the 
 grade of the spiritual environment of their peoples, it 
 has had to be done by influx that excites the ho^Des of 
 the soul to escape from the trammels of form life, rather 
 than by teaching that a necessity exists to return and 
 repeatedly pass through its experiences. 
 
 There is an influx of thought upon this subject pour- 
 ing in upon the planet earth to-day, that has its origin 
 in the mental bias of Hindoo thought of the present 
 age. and that bodes much trouble if it be not checked. 
 India has steadily sunk in the grade of her spiritual pow- 
 ers because of it, for in place of the pure doctrines of 
 the ancient Yedantic system the priestly perversion is 
 taking its place as the original ideality. In Europe 
 and America, the teachers of the wisdom divine are con- 
 founding the moral sentiments that are the basis of 
 spiritual unfoldment with the superstitions engendered 
 by the priesthood, and ere the people of those coun- 
 tries are aware they will be invaded by the hosts of the 
 lower Asian heavens, who still are seeking re-embodi- 
 
lOi THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 ment, and a carnival of licentiousness may be inaugu- 
 rated that will sink those countries as low in the scale 
 as India has ever been. 
 
 For the spiritual thought of a people is the standard 
 of its grade in knowledge, and to a soul imbued with 
 the idea of reincarnation to escape the consequences of 
 a bad Karma all avenues are legitimate, and a parentage 
 of adultery is as welcome as the doorway of wedlock.^ 
 
 It is for this reason I would send the warnino- note 
 to the world of the West, that while they admit the 
 ideas of India as far as they open the gates of knowledge 
 of the spiritual world, to discriminate between the pure 
 doctrines of the Vedas and the fanciful theories of the 
 ignorant and crafty pretenders who close the doors in 
 all lands to the influx of intelligent spiritual ideas. 
 
 The Western world has had a deluo-e of Oriental 
 creedalism to counterbalance its own crude conceptions 
 of the Divine nature, but neither formula has proven 
 sufficient to protect its believers from flagrant imposi- 
 tion in the name of their gods. The Oriental influx is 
 seized upon by the souls in darkness or despair, and 
 labeled by various names as well as taught by numerous 
 schools, each of whom only appreciates a portion of the 
 truth. 
 
 Some of them deny the individual existence of any 
 
 *The Theosophical schools with their secret initiation ceremo- 
 nies and mjsterious miitteriugs of Karraic wrath may not be aware 
 that the Western nations have a spiritual guardianship that sees 
 tlirough their flimsy pretexts; but a power exists that can tell all 
 the secrets which they so carefully veil, and which they hesitate 
 not to villify if it suits their purposes. To flood the West with 
 the reincarnation theories is to invite an irruption of the vilest 
 grades in spirit life, and no wonder that the higher spheres of 
 spirit are averse to it. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 105 
 
 thing but the impersonal Supreme, and imagine they 
 will be absorbed in the Divine ocean of spirit upon their 
 transition to the world of soul life, losing consciousness 
 and individuality. Others are sure that the spiritual 
 world can have no direct influx into the sphere of con- 
 scious life upon earth, and teach that such an idea is 
 delusion or dangerous. Others, again, are so anxious 
 to become united to the godhead that they forget the 
 great law of spiritual unfoldment, and seek to hurry 
 matters, generally ending in disappointment, or shame 
 and disgrace. 
 
 Fanaticism is slowly rearing its hideous face in the 
 spiritual movement, and the most absurd dogmas re- 
 garding the power of the spirit to control the material 
 forces are freely advocated, not because the disciples 
 are not honest, but because they know not the nature of 
 the laws governing either. The most irrational ideas 
 of the control of spiritual powers by the will of ignorant 
 embodied souls are advanced, and the experiments made 
 by the most intelligent minds in spirit to demonstrate 
 principles are supposed to be in the regiilar order of 
 evidence to support the theories of extravagant vis- 
 ionaries. 
 
 Perhaps no more difficult lesson has ever been learned 
 upon earth, than the hopelessness of its ignorance of 
 what really pertains to its spiritual nature and the 
 true position it holds in the universal life.* 
 
 * The amount of intelligeut ignoraDce current upon earth is one 
 of the problems that eternity alone can solve. There are societies 
 and systems innumerable for the study of the occult forces, but 
 hardly any two of them can agree touching the nature of the spirit 
 or the true methods of its enfoldment. Even the wisest minds 
 fail here to discriminate between the natural laws and the artificial 
 theories that pertairn to it. — B. 
 
106 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 It would, indeed, be a sorrowful fate for humanity if 
 it was bound by the decrees of the spiritual magnates 
 of earth. It would have a hopeless destiny were it 
 compelled to follow the pathway that Hindoo or Chris- 
 tian theology had marked out for it in the Divine 
 economy. But fortunately it is not bound to obey 
 either any further than they follow the natural law of 
 spiritual evolution. 
 
 That law does not call for the return to the environ- 
 ment of earth after its escape from the atmosphere of 
 earthly thoughts, nor does it ever need to express itself 
 again in the realm of earthly embodiment. Its path- 
 way to Nirvana is away from earth, and happy the 
 soul who is freed from the idea of ever having to tread 
 the path through mortal life again. ^ 
 
 Gautama taught truly in this, and could India 
 emancipate herself from the tyranny of the idea of re- 
 incarnation, she would rise in the scale of spiritual en- 
 lightenment far higher than she rose in the age of the 
 Vedas or when Capilya or Gautama led her hosts 
 toward the heavenly paradise. She must do this or 
 she must remain the prey to vile superstitions, and her 
 moral nature be degraded by the mental influx of 
 myriad hosts who strive in vain to realize the truth of 
 the dogma. 
 
 The Western nations have been the prey of a sense- 
 less belief in a return to the physical body, but not 
 
 * Compare the moral power of this thought with the idea that 
 life is a ceaseless round of incarnatious upon the various planets, 
 and weigh well the difference. One exalts the spiritual conscious- 
 ness to the highest heavens, while the other condemns the victim 
 to perpetual despair. For the thought of return in spirit cannot 
 be forgotten, and it is only when the soul experiences the emanci- 
 pation from it that it can soar onward into the realms of Nirvana. — B. 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 107 
 
 through the process taught so many years in India, 
 and although the numerous hosts of her ignorant 
 children hover over the earth awaiting; the resurrec- 
 tion morn, yet they can do but little harm compared 
 with the souls whose thought is felt upon the earth as 
 they strive to impress the mortals there to furnish 
 avenues for the spirit to enter earth again to expiate a 
 bad Karma. The societies forming in the West for the 
 study of Hindoo thought should be aware that the pro- 
 jection of thought upon earth by a concentrated effort 
 of the will must have its effect there, and if that 
 thought be upon a plane of error, it may be long ere its 
 effect will be removed. Therefore I speak thus posi- 
 tively about the subject of the reincarnation of the 
 spirit. 
 
 A Hindoo of the ages so long ago that my name is 
 forgotten, but one who has been worshiped as an in- 
 carnation of Brahm. I claim the right to speak to 
 India and to the world, warning them not to trust in 
 the w^isdom of man, whose interpretation of the laws of 
 spirit must be vain, until he has arrived to that degree 
 of knowledge whereby he knows the nature and office 
 of spirit and form in the spheres of universal being. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE SPIRITUAL ENTITY. 
 
 The world of mortal life has ever been the subject of 
 speculative inquiry by the thinkers of all ages, and from 
 the earliest periods of conscious mentality the origin 
 of the spirit has occupied the attention of the most 
 learned in earthly knovi^ledge. 
 
 India was the first nation to develop a school of 
 metaphysical study, • and she was the most profound 
 student of the varied powers that enter into the struc- 
 ture of sentient life. She saw that life belono^ed«to a 
 regular order of physical relations, and she also saw 
 that connected with it was a realm of life beyond the 
 physical which had much to do with determining the 
 status of thought prevalent in that relation, and upon 
 that premise she built her great doctrine of the im- 
 mortal nature of the spirit. 
 
 Clustered around this central point of fact has been 
 gathered the web and woof of fictitious drapery that 
 conceals the truth from the beholder and presents a 
 spectacle of illusive theories which have been accepted 
 by the students of the modern age as the genuine 
 Indian philosophy. According to this latter school 
 of pundits, the ancient sages formulated a system 
 whereby the worlds, visible and invisible, could ever 
 act and react upon each other with definite and tangi- 
 ble effects, that were subject to human comprehension 
 and subordinate to human manipulation. Briefly 
 stated this system is, that all individual souls owe their 
 
 (lOS) 
 
THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 109 
 
 origin to the differentiation of One Supreme Soul who 
 presides over and permeates the universe. All these 
 subordinate parts of the Supreme Spirit are themselves 
 but as individual drops in the great Ocean of Spirit 
 from which they came, and to which they return in the 
 cyclic periods of eternity, losing and regaining con- 
 sciousness as they pass through the conditions of plane- 
 tary unfoldment, but liable to extinction in the universal 
 abysm of absorption by the Supreme if the life stages 
 fail to produce a perfect Karma.* 
 
 Under this system, the spiritual entity only enters 
 planetary life to acquire experience, and passes from 
 one planet to another in the grand cyclic waves of life 
 energy, as it flows from one planetary system to another. 
 By this theory, the spirit entity has its organic func- 
 tional powers previous to its entrance upon planetary 
 life, and in that stage is termed an elemental. 
 
 Now, if this idea of the spiritual nature or origin of 
 the individual is true, it places the office of planetary 
 existence, as a nursery of conscious intelligence, entirely 
 out of the question, and calls for more light than the 
 teachers of the doctrine have yet thrown upon it; for 
 the birth and development of intelligent mentality fol- 
 lows after the gestation and birth of the form, and 
 as the intelligent spirit becomes the fruitage of de- 
 veloped planetary conditions, one naturally considers 
 
 * The reader of occult literature is ofteu puzzled to see how the 
 differentiation of the spirit is accounted for upon the theory of a 
 segregation of the Infinite spirit. The evolutionary theory, upon 
 the other hand, gives a rational hypothesis of the organization of 
 non-conscious forces into sentient relations through planetary 
 foi-mulation. Probably the true nature of the Supreme mentality 
 of the Infinite has not been accurately defined by even the wisest 
 metaphysicians in either realm yet. — B. 
 
110 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 whether it is not contemporary with, or an evolution of, 
 planetary life itself. 
 
 If it be so, then there is another reason than the 
 Oriental theory for planetary existence, for without 
 planets the great universal ocean of spirit cannot be 
 expressed in individual form or concentrated in personal 
 reflection of the primate principles of spirit. To do 
 this, there has to be the segregation of the individual 
 drops; but if the elemental theory is correct, the indi- 
 vidual soul needs no planetary existence to express 
 itself, and would have little to gain by it. 
 
 But Nature, that never labors in vain, does not up- 
 hold the elemental theory in her processes of planetary 
 life. In her alembic she distills the essences of the 
 elements, and draws forth new combinations in every 
 age and stage of planetary being. She wastes noth- 
 ino", and if the evolutions of life and form are more 
 imperfect in certain stages of the planet than in others, 
 she does not cruelly annihilate the crude and unde- 
 veloped, but provides better conditions, and from the 
 same elementary princij^les produces better forms and 
 higher grades of life, until, from age to age, the life 
 forces stored in the planet have crowned her efforts 
 with godlike creations upon the plane of mortal exist- 
 ence, meanwhile withdrawing the crude forms as the 
 more perfect absorb the energy that formerly was util- 
 ized by the primitive life entities. 
 
 For there is a strict relation between the internal 
 forces that compose the spiritual basis of life upon the 
 planet, and the form through which the life is expressed. 
 The spirit of a snake or a higher reptile cannot rise 
 much hiffher in the form of the snake than the condi- 
 tions in which it had its primitive evolution. The 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. HI 
 
 # 
 other orders of animal life follow this same law, and the 
 
 human race has no exemption, for its spiritual ideals 
 
 are high or low according to its grade of development 
 
 in the corresponding conditions of the planet at the 
 
 time its ancestral types were perfected. * 
 
 Man alone has the world of planetary life to subdue 
 to his will, but even he finds that his evolution follows 
 along the same pathway that the other kingdoms of the 
 planet have to pursue, viz. : The steps of a series of un- 
 folding powers that culminate in the evolution of an 
 intellectual spiritual being. The reptilian orders do 
 not rise to this grade in planetary conditions, nor do 
 the lower mammalian, but the higher orders reflect 
 modified intellectual powers, while all must possess 
 more or less the traits of individuality in whatever 
 phase of planetary unfoldment they pass into the realm 
 of spirit. 
 
 This is the reason why the Hindoo of the past ages 
 declared life of the animal world to be sacred, and is 
 also the source of the idea of repeated incarnations to 
 raise the spirit to the grade of the godlike qualities of 
 perfected mentality. 
 
 For the sages of India saw that in spirit the forms of 
 the decarnated life of the planet all bore the impress of 
 the more or less perfected powers of the developing life 
 
 * This may be denied by the advocates of spiritualization through 
 religious influx, and many systems of faith have been based upon 
 the possibility of effecting the civilization of the savage tribes by 
 changing their religious ideas. While there undoubtedly is a cor- 
 responding influx from the world of spirit which aids the mission- 
 ary in his labors, there is little question that the elimination of the 
 savage or barbarous traits is a work of progressive evolution, re- 
 quiring generations of culture to make any pei-manent impres- 
 sion. — B. 
 
112 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 upon the planet, and as thei'e was the natural magnetic 
 interchange of mentality between the corresponding 
 spheres in spirit and mortal life, it became easy to teach 
 the idea of association in the spheres, and also its per- 
 version to the theories of transmigration and reincar- 
 nation by the speculative philosophers and priesthood, 
 that seized upon the ideas as a leverage to control the 
 multitude through fear of the spiritual consequences if 
 they were not duly reverenced.* 
 
 If the ideas that have been taught so many centuries 
 in India as to the nature of the soul and the origin of 
 life are deflections from the great parent idea, what has 
 the world of the intellectually developed spiritual intel- 
 ligence to offer to the world of mortal consciousness 
 upon the subject? 
 
 Briefly this : The origin of conscious spirit in form be- 
 gins in the planetary stages of form development. The 
 elements there come into the correlative conditions, 
 whereby the resultant combinations upon certain planes 
 act in conscious relations. Those planetary conditions 
 are as essential to this result of the interaction of the 
 elements in form, as the lower grades of form result 
 from the lower rates of the elements in crystallization of 
 the rocks or cell life organisms. The spiritual entity 
 forms from the elements seeking a higher equilibrium 
 than the crystalline and lower organic forms; and 
 through the steady increase of the combinatory powers 
 of the same elements that make a planet, they make a 
 
 *The regard for animal life that eveu to this day has such a 
 hokl in India is but another form of the superstitous deflections 
 from the primitive faith which causes a devout Catholic Christian 
 to worship a relic of a saint, or regard a piece of wood as a sacred 
 object. It is doubtful, however, if the superstition of the Hindoo 
 is not at least as sacred as the mummery of his Christian critic. — B. 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 113 
 
 planetary form that contains within itself the pulsating 
 forces that are able through form to express the intelli- 
 gent relations which belong to the sphere of the invis- 
 ible state, yet are not primarily individualized there.* 
 
 Thus through the planet, as a great reservoir battery 
 of forces, the spiritual entity gets its inceptive life ex- 
 pression, and, laying its foundation in form, goes forward 
 ever after, holding the forces in form that previously 
 were acting mechanically or subordinate to the great 
 universal realm of unconscious material, and without 
 other control than general principles, f 
 
 The reader can see how easily the primitive idea of 
 evolution of spirit individuality from the universal 
 realm of spirit was modified to seem to give color to 
 the present system of Buddhistic and Brahmanistic 
 theories of the origin of the soul. It was as easy for 
 the unscrupulous priestly orders of India to formulate 
 their creeds and philosophies upon this basis, as it was 
 for the Christian world to crystallize the ignorant 
 
 * This statement as to the origin of the spirit entity is clear and 
 explicit enough to satisfy any one as to what is meant. If the su- 
 preme mind is impersonal the subordinate ones are not, and their 
 organization from the elements through planets seems to account 
 for the existence of the latter. It puts an effectual damper upon 
 the theory of pre-existent consciousness in form, and agrees quite 
 well with natural law as expressed in planetary life. — B. 
 
 f The necessity of planetary conditions for the evolution of spirit 
 entities may be seen in the regular law of planetary unfoldment. 
 Even the first evolution of form from the elements, as seen in the 
 crystal, bears witness to the basic principles of all entities, for the 
 most minute form of crystallization only becomes capable of form 
 by the principles of atomic balance, whereby primordial substance 
 changes from force relations to form manifestations. When the 
 balance is high enough we have the life cell in organic forms, and 
 by a still higher balance we have the spirit entity, which reflects 
 
11-t THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 speculations of an ignorant age and give them to the 
 world as revealed truth from the godhead. It became 
 equally easy to build a series of religious sects upon 
 _ different interpretations of the ideas in subsequent 
 ages, until the monstrous tissue of fact and fable known 
 as Hindooism, with its multifarious gods and shrines, 
 took the place of the pure and primitive ideas taught 
 by the great teachers of India in the days when the 
 Vedas were given, and which even yet reflect much of 
 its ancient glory. ^ 
 
 For India really obtained a knowledge of the essen- 
 tial principles that pertain to all departments of plan- 
 etary life. She could not express them in the literal 
 delineation of the Western nations, but she saw into 
 the generic principles of form and spirit, and left a 
 record of many truths that can only be rediscovered in 
 the experiences of this age. She knew both Om and 
 Brahm, and the relations that each held in universal 
 
 the diifereut gradations of the same powers that pertain to plane- 
 tary form in its first stages of unfoldment. This spirit entity be- 
 longs to tlie planet as nuich as a natural child belongs to the fonns 
 from which it received its incipient evolution, and as a spirit it 
 must perfect its form powers in planetary conditions or not have a 
 perfect development. This is why so many feeble spirits have to 
 be earthbouud until they outgrow the weaknesses of earth life, or, 
 in other words, obtain a well balanced form to express power. — B. 
 / * Mr. A. P. Sinnett, in his masterly treatise on Esoteric Bud- 
 dhism, reflects the power of the combination of craft and truth 
 wliich the priestly class of India are teaching as the doctrines of 
 Gautama. While the book probably is the most elaborate and 
 reliable on the subject given from the earthly transmission of the 
 ancient doctrines, it bears the marks of the priesthood, and its 
 concealed dogmas and hints stamp it as defective in this particu- 
 ular at least. This age has no further use for priests or their 
 interpretations of the origiual doctrines. — B. 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 115 
 
 life. She touched the shores of immortal existence, and 
 brought back to earth the essential ideas that ultimately 
 make that sphere of being a realm of undying felicity. 
 She lighted the torches of G-recian and Egyptian 
 science, which raised the savages of the West to the 
 sphere of an intellectual development in the realm of 
 material forces unsurpassed in the history of the planet. 
 She is the mother of the idea of the divine in the hu- 
 man, and to her the nations of earth will yet accord the 
 l^raise or recognition of being the first to formulate a 
 system of spiritual gradation that has never been sur- 
 passed, as well as to touch upon the lines of thought 
 that bind planet to planet and system to system in the 
 Universal Cosmos, and she was the first to give to earth 
 the intelligible reasons for the existence of worlds in the 
 economy of Creative purposes.* 
 
 G-rand as has been her past, it equals not her future; 
 for when a nation arises once to the heights of intellect- 
 ual spirituality it can never fall so low as to entirely 
 lose its position in the world of spiritual thought. Her 
 seed, so abundantly cast upon the waters of earth, is 
 
 * Those who have studied the metaphorical statements of Indian 
 cosmology have been struck with the remarkable coincidences of 
 the ideas veiled in that manner with the discoveries of modern 
 science. AYhen they speak of the golden womb from which the 
 Sun god issued, it is only a poetical method of teaching the great 
 principle of planetary gestation ill the solar stage of planetary for- 
 mation. Veiled in the darkness of creative powers, the great 
 planets of the siderial system literally had a golden womb in 
 which they came into cosmic existence, and the masterly intellects 
 of ancient India pierced the veil that shrouds creative mysteries 
 and gave them to the world in metaphor. See "Siderial Evolu- 
 tion," opposite page 1. — B. 
 
116 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 returning to her, and her life again shall arise from the 
 dust of the past, and she shall resume her position as the 
 mistress of all science in all the departments of being. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE FRATERNIZATION OF THE ORIENTAL AND OCCI- 
 DENTAL NATIONS. 
 
 The influx of Oriental philosophy into the mental en- 
 vironment of the Western nations has ever been fraught 
 with considerable effect upon the mental equilibrium of 
 all to whom it has come as a distinct power. 
 
 From the time when Pythagoras sought the shrines 
 of India to learn of the science of the soul, until the 
 scholars and sages of the present generation that are 
 following in his footsteps, India has ever held the key 
 of all thought in her grasp, and if reluctant to open the 
 treasuries of her storehouse, nevertheless has had the 
 treasures within her possession, although despised and 
 condemned by her ignorant despoilers. 
 
 England might send her fleets and armies to subdue 
 and plunder a peaceful people, but England could never 
 wrest from the sacred caste of India the greatest of its 
 possessions, viz. , the accumulated treasures of the world's 
 intellectual achievements of prehistoric ages. It was 
 only when India chose to bestow these priceless gifts 
 that the world of modern civilization . ever dreamed of 
 their existence, and India never gave them up until the 
 world of spirit had opened the gates of eternal life to 
 the vision of the people of the Western world. 
 
 There was a good reason for this, for the people of 
 the West were unfit to handle these treasures, nor are 
 
 (117) 
 
118 THE TKUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 they yet sufficiently spiritualized to receive them but 
 in a modified degree. 
 
 India as a nation founded her mental concepts of all 
 life upon the demonstrated powers of the spirit in each 
 world of its expression, and she was not one iota behind 
 the mental development attained by any nation that 
 ever lived upon the planet. She sought the fountain 
 of spiritual knowledge, and, as far as obtaining that 
 knowledge was possible in her then state of mental evo- 
 lution, she went far above the schools of modern civil- 
 ization, for she did not disassociate the powers of nature 
 as expressed in the visible world from the forces of that 
 same nature after their transition to the life eternal. 
 She dwelt in harmony with the gods of the worlds, and 
 the gods bestowed upon her the wisdom that gods only 
 can bestow, and for lack of which the people of the 
 West are groping in darkness at the shrines of priestly 
 fabrication, and from which they can never emerge 
 until, like the sages of India, they welcome the light 
 which radiates from the spheres of spirit. 
 
 Her great minds may aver that the cause of planetary 
 life is unknown and unknowable, but India knows the 
 nature of the world builders as she knows the source 
 from which the Ganges flows. To her mind Brahm is 
 not beyond the po^^er of analysis, neither is Om power- 
 less to make his presence felt to mortals. 
 
 . But Indian philosophy as it comes to the West should 
 come in its pristine purity, shorn of the fictitious drapery 
 which long ages have enabled the symbolic expression to 
 conceal the truth from the open vision. There is no 
 need M secret societies for the spread of the great ideas 
 which since the age of the Vedas have made India a 
 distinct reservoir of spiritual wisdom. Those ideas are 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. HQ 
 
 indeed the wisdom of the gods, but they need no priestly 
 ministrants in this age of the world. * 
 
 They come from the world of spirit as freely now as 
 they ever came to the great teacher in the palmy days 
 of Sakya Muni or when the Vedas themselves were 
 given by the wise instructors who spoke the words of 
 Brahm. While the pundits of the modern age, both in 
 India and in the Western world, are striving to revive 
 the higher truths of spirit, they should not forget that 
 with the mortals of earth the spirit hosts who linger 
 there, earth bound by ignorance, are to rise equally in 
 spirit by the sublime doctrines which emancipate all 
 souls from the dominion of Agni. f 
 
 It is thus that India can be instrumental in teaching 
 the nations as to the truth of a spiritual life that knows 
 no limitations of beneficence and no bounds to its 
 advancement. It is thus she is to be the connecting 
 link between the civilization of the remote past and the 
 
 *The absurd claims of some of the theosophical schools of 
 America to the possession of secret knowledge that cannot be com- 
 municated to the world is pointedly rebuked by this statement. 
 To suppose that the spiritual nature of man could be subjected to 
 the domination of a close corporation of religious teachers in this 
 age, is to rank the intelligence of the believers with the credulity 
 that has made heathen and Christian nations the victims of an 
 unscrupulous priesthood. No wonder a most vigorous protest 
 from the other world is sent to this against the subjugation of the 
 mentality of the West to any such farcical claims to the possession 
 of Divine knowledge or spiritual powers as held by the initiates of 
 the Oriental dogmas. Spiritual powers and all their accompani- 
 ments seem to be more widespread than the close communion 
 disciples of the Blavatsky school are willing to allow, and^ome of 
 them do not hesitate to indulge in wholesale falsehood as a part of 
 their system when others obtain all the secrets free of charge. — B. 
 
 fThe Hindoo god of fire or the lower spheres. — B. 
 
120 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 dawning age of a spiritual evolution that will carr}^ the 
 inhabitants of earth far above the plane of selfish con- 
 cern for the future, and free them forever from the 
 domination of mental as well as spiritual tyranny. 
 
 For the people of earth are bound in slavish chains 
 of fear when they regard the world of soul life as a dark 
 and doleful realm for any soul that ever crosses its 
 borders. It is only dark to the undeveloped and un- 
 formed soul who, misinformed by its trusted instructors, 
 comes to its presence unripe, and who is held in that 
 condition until the embryotic spiritual nature can 
 spring forth in. a new birth that carries it far above the 
 plane of earth and its surroundings. 
 
 That birth in spirit might as well be passed upon 
 earth as to wait until the soul has left the sphere of 
 mortal life. It must be had in one state or the other 
 ere the intellectual powers of the soul can have their 
 full development. When it is once effected, the soul no 
 longer feels the influx of spirit only, but it can see the 
 kingdom of the gods and becomes as one of them, know- 
 ing good and evil and their exact relations to each other. 
 
 The Western world has embodied this thought in its 
 religious systems, but, like the systems of India, the 
 thought will not follow the channel of expression merely 
 because the individual happens to seek it there. It 
 belongs to the universal realm of life, and every soul 
 that exists tends toward it, and will ultimately attain 
 it even if it misses at first the path that the great 
 teachers marked out as leading to it. The soul must 
 often make its own pathway, and when it does this, it 
 is not far from the borders that lie between the mortal 
 and the immortal life. It is a child of Brahm. and 
 Brahm is never beyond the reach of its voice when it 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 121 
 
 obeys the word of Brahm as voiced in its own con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 I have spoken severely of the egotism that belongs to 
 the different advocates of the various religious systems 
 of earth, and I have done so because as long as that 
 exists there is an impassible barrier between the fra- 
 ternization of the different races. When nations or 
 classes forget their original status in the world, and cul- 
 tivate pride of birth, or exclusive relations toward the 
 rest of mankind, they arouse the worst elements in 
 themselves or others that can be excited toward pro- 
 ducing disastrous results in the department of their 
 spiritual welfare. In place of attracting to themselves 
 the finer qualities of spiritual regard in all who feel their 
 influence, they excite a chilling antagonism that freezes 
 the life blood of the spirit, and effectually bars out all 
 desire for aid or intercourse. 
 
 When a religious system is adopted by a sect or indi- 
 vidual, based upon this theory, the rest of the world 
 becomes indifferent to its existence, and naturally con- 
 temptuous of its believers. It is valueless for the mind 
 and dies a deserved death, for it only generates hatred 
 as long as it serves to excite any interest in others. 
 Many of the old religions of earth perished because of 
 this, and most of them that are left would do well to 
 heed the lessons of the past if they would survive the 
 righteous judgment that befalls all the systems of earth. 
 Those only live long that fill a human necessity, and 
 when the need is outgrown, the system naturally fades 
 out from human consideration. 
 
 The nations of the West are imbued with the idea 
 that Christianity is the only true system that ever ex- 
 isted upon earth; the followers of Mohammed are sure 
 
122 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 that none but believers in the great prophet can ever 
 cross the bridge which leads to paradise; the dis- 
 ciples of Confucius are certain of a blessed reception 
 awaiting the inhabitants of the flowery kingdom: but 
 the sages of India know that the children of Brahm in 
 all nations will receive the reward of faithful devotion 
 to their highest knowledge when they pass to the life 
 eternal, whether they bow the knee to Jesus, Allah, 
 Joss or Brahm while in the earthly realm of being. 
 
 It is to bring about a realization of this great truth, 
 discovered so many centuries ago. that the present 
 world wide spiritual movement is instituted. Many 
 concerned in it imagine they have a better right to in- 
 terpret it than others who, feeling its power, are 
 moved to voice the sentiments underlying it, but the 
 truth is, that to no sect or nation is the work confined. 
 
 The Christian nations are being spiritualized by its 
 power as never known before, although their priest- 
 hoods oppose its methods if outside the channels they 
 have constructed for it to flow in. The fierce son of the 
 desert, who swears by Allah, is moved upon to be less 
 cruel, and to consider if, after all, the rest of the world 
 are not children of Allah, even if they know not of 
 Mohammed as his prophet. The inhabitant of the 
 celestial kingdom has never lost his reverence for the 
 doctrines of the great teacher, and is more easily taught 
 the great lesson of the universal fraternity of all races; 
 while the pundit of India looks on in silence, wondering 
 if the Vedantic prophecies are to be fulfilled in his day, 
 and the nations of the earth are to become subservient 
 to Brahm through spiritual light and knowledge. 
 
 Thus the work of illuminating the earth is going- 
 forward, and the light which once shone so brilliantly 
 
THE TEUE THEOSOPHY. 123 
 
 on the plains of India is again sending its beams to 
 the utmost'borders of the earth. It lights and warms 
 the frigid creeds of barbaric Christian Europe, and 
 fairly blazes and burns on the shores of distant Amer- 
 ica. It finds a ready welcome there, for it fills the 
 souls of that mighty people with the knowledge of 
 spiritual life which the barren creeds of Europe never 
 knew or realized. It radiates the brilliancy of an in- 
 tellectual enlightenment of spirit that rivals the age of 
 Gautama, and gives to the West the dawn of the 
 Buddhahood which never before was known to shine 
 beyond the shores of India. 
 
 G-reat as has been the glory of Indian mentality, 
 greater shall be the intellectual power of the West, 
 for to her has come the light of the world which 
 lighteth every man that comes into it. Grand as have 
 been the achievements of America in the field of civil 
 and religious emancipation, they shall be surpassed in 
 the greater conquest of the animal by the spiritual 
 and the evolution of a mentality that exceeds any at- 
 tainment ever made by the Oriental world. 
 
 For the Western world is the home of the spiritual 
 philosophy, new born and newly christened, in this age 
 of the planet. It is the planetary center where all the 
 nations fraternize, and where, casting aside the narrow 
 creeds and dogmas of the old world, the people rise to 
 some comprehension of the life in spirit, where all the 
 nations of the earth meet in peace and harmony. It 
 is the only nation that reflects the true principles that 
 o-overn the life eternal, and India, with her numerous 
 races, when freed from the domination of foreign rulers, 
 will find the great nation of the West her chosen ally 
 and friend. Each represents the highest culmination 
 
124 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 of eai'thly attainment, and both are to stand before the 
 world the great republics of the two hemispheres. 
 Each had its discipline under England's power, but 
 as America threw off the yoke when the time of her 
 birth as a republic had come, so India in time will 
 emerge from the thralldom of a foreign power, to become 
 the model republic of the Oriental world. 
 
 She is not dead, nor is she to sleep in for get fulness 
 of her birthright forever. She is the oldest of all na- 
 tions that have held their autonomy, and she belongs 
 to the great fraternity of man in spirit, for she was the 
 first to teach the race. the principles of spiritual frater- 
 nization. 
 
 America is her child in spirit, and America will be 
 the only child she will ever recognize as having the title 
 to an immortal nationality. To her come the greatest 
 of her spiritual teachers, and while the lesser lights of 
 India emit their feeble rays upon the mortal j^lane, the 
 greater souls who once taught the truth in its purity are 
 able to speak directly, and correct the errors with which 
 human ignorance or craft has obscured the doctrines. 
 
 The children of the West and the offspring of the 
 East are alike precious to the souls of the great masters 
 of India, and because of the estimation in which both are 
 held, do the sages of former ages send their thoughts 
 back again, to tell the people of all nations that India 
 greets all souls as Om cares for all worlds, and that no 
 soul can ever perish who comes into being in Brahm's 
 world or in Om's universe. 
 
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF BRAHMA. 
 
 In the ancient traditions of India, we are frequently 
 met with allusions to a certain teacher to whom was 
 applied the term of the great Brahma. This appella- 
 tion has often caused much speculation as to who was 
 meant, for its connection with the Hindoo deity, who 
 represents creative power, caused many to infer that 
 the great Brahma could only mean the creator of the 
 worlds, or the ruler of the universe. 
 
 But a better acquaintance with the metaphorical lan- 
 guage of that country reveals the fact, that in the most 
 ancient traditions any great character who strikingly 
 manifested the traits of a spiritual unfoldment was 
 termed a son of Brahm, and that there are several upon 
 whom the application of the term Brahma was bestowed. 
 
 The Vedas are said to have issued from the four 
 mouths of Brahma, which is a symbolical method of desig- 
 natino; four different authors of the sacred books. Thus 
 the mythology of ancient India grew apace, from the 
 various traditions of the schools of philosophy and re- 
 ligion that clustered around the numerous incarnations 
 of Brahm, to whom the term Brahma was indiscrimi- 
 nately applied, and Brahminism naturally embodied 
 most of the ideas in modified form in its religious sys- 
 tem. 
 
 The teacher to whom India was most indebted for her 
 spiritual enlightenment, probably soon after the inva- 
 sion of the Aryan race, is better known as the great 
 
 (125) 
 
126 THE TKUE THEOhOPHY. 
 
 Brahma, from the impress he made upon the nation 
 through his probable compilation of the Vedas. His 
 true history is lost or obscured by traditions, but frag- 
 ments of his doctrines are still preserved in some of the 
 most striking ideas of the Vedantic philosophy. 
 
 This teacher evidently was cosmopolitan in his treat- 
 ment of the different races in India, and the fine quota- 
 tion, that the Supreme Brahm is said to have uttered, 
 which is often given as the highest expression of Deific 
 benevolence, belongs to him, viz.: "Those who serve 
 other gods in sincerity, worship me."' 
 
 That unique work, Ouhspe^ has quite a full account 
 of this teacher, and although much of it is symbolical 
 in idea rather than literal in interpretation, it probably 
 gives quite as good an idea of the life work of this 
 teacher as any tradition extant. With his wife, he is 
 represented as living a life of self-denial and hardship, 
 that he might instruct the people in the ancient Zara- 
 thustrian faith, of belief in and obedience to Ormazd 
 as the only true god worthy of worship. 
 
 This teacher belonged to tlie Semitic race, and was of 
 obscure orisrin, and his true name seems to have been 
 lost in the lapse of ages, or rather obscured by the 
 title that overshadowed his personal characteristics. 
 
 In treating of ancient Hindoo historic characters, 
 especially of the religious order, one has to be extremely 
 careful in his estimates of the probable and fanciful, 
 for the people of India have cultivated the imaginative 
 faculties so excessively, that truth and fiction are blended 
 so perfectly as to seem inseparable. In doing this, 
 they seem unconsciously to have no power of discrimi- 
 nation between the false and the real, and live in a 
 mental glamour that is unknown in European conscious- 
 
THE TRUE THE080PHY. 127 
 
 ness. Hence, they have the reputation of being incor- 
 rigable liars, when in reality they are unable to discern 
 between what they mentally perceive as truth and what 
 externally exists as reality. 
 
 The great teachers of India all strove to correct this 
 defect, and especially did the teacher called the great 
 Brahma endeavor to impress upon the people the real re- 
 lations that exist in the spheres of conscious life and all 
 their consequences to the spiritual nature. European 
 scholarship is bringing to light the treasures of Asiatic 
 literature, and the proper translation of the ideas 
 embodied in it will do much toward qualifying the claims 
 of the Western nations to the possession of exclusive 
 religious revelation from the spiritual world. The great 
 Brahma left in the Vedas about as distinct a record of 
 the primitive religious ideality of India as now exists, 
 and it is fully as worthy of confidence as the revelations 
 upon which the Christian world basis its creedal sys- 
 tems. There is in the Upanishads and other ancient 
 writings the impress of as distinct a system of Mono- 
 theistic worship, as well as a comprehensive description 
 of the attributes of the Su]3reme Deity, as can be found 
 in any sacred writing in the world. 
 
 Those who think that India has not anything of value 
 to give to the world in this age should read Max Muller 
 and Edwin Arnold carefully, and compare the ideality 
 embodied in some of the sacred writings that belong to 
 India with the system of thought that pertains to the 
 Christian world. From the frequent allusions to the 
 Devas and their influence upon the world of mortals, 
 and the system of grading the gods and spirits into 
 guardians and protectors of earth, we can see how the 
 ancient Hindoo faith antedates Christian mythology, 
 
128 THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 
 
 and corresponds in all essential points to the highest 
 concepts of modern ideality in its definitions of the 
 spiritual life. 
 
 That the great Brahma must have been familiar with 
 spiritual knowledge of a high order, is evident from the 
 spirit of the Vedantic writings, which embody the purest 
 philosophy of the ancient world. It is not strange that 
 the Brahmin priesthood sought to preserve a monopoly 
 of the ideas embodied in the Vedas, and forbade the 
 transmission of them except by oral recitation from 
 century to century, although it is not improbable that 
 ere the rise of this priesthood they might have been 
 preserved in writing. 
 
 In dealing with the perverted ideas of modern Brah- 
 minism, one has to be continually upon guard against 
 the misconstruction of the ancient ideality, for the 
 subtle distinction that prevails in the Hindoo mind of 
 this age is hardly perceptible in the mentality that be- 
 longs to the early teachers who never stooped to decep- 
 tion or tolerated the spirit of craft. The great teachers 
 of ancient India were famous for their simplicity of doc- 
 trines, and never can be accused of willfully mystifying 
 the truths they sought to bestow upon their followers. 
 
 That the true history of the great Brahma must have 
 been purposely obscured by the craft of the priesthood 
 of subsequent ages is almost unquestionable, although 
 in so doing the priesthood could the better conceal their 
 deviation from the pure philosophy which he taught, 
 and by which India rose to some realization of the sub- 
 lime heights of spirituality that belonged to the system 
 of Zarathustra. 
 
 The Vedantic prophecies, read in the light of spirit- 
 ual revelations in this age, show conclusively that mod- 
 
THE TRUE THEOSOPHY. 129 
 
 ern scholarship is at fault rather than Indian philosophy, 
 and that the spiritual ideas embodied in it have a sub- 
 stantial foundation. They also show that the great 
 teachers of India have always been true to their knowl- 
 edge of spirituality, nor did they ever sink in the scale 
 of inability to learn the greater truths of the life im- 
 mortal and its connection with the consciousness of 
 earth. 
 
 While many of our European and American thinkers 
 have been active in propagating ignorance of a spirit- 
 ual world as an antidote to the perverted spiritual com- 
 prehension prevalent in Christian countries, the sages 
 of India have never been swerved from their allegiance 
 to the transmitted faith of the Vedas, and confidence in 
 the immortality of the spirit is still a cardinal principle 
 of Brahminism. 
 
 It is hardly questionable if this idea is not the 
 strongest motive power of the present age, and if it 
 will not be the point of contact where the thought of 
 the liberal and spiritual mind of the West will reach 
 the religious elements of India and quicken them into 
 a new life. Certain it is that anything less than this 
 will not be received in India by the disciples of the 
 great Brahma, and if this fails the Brahmin caste will 
 ultimately be superseded by some more liberal ex- 
 ponents of the ideas that once made India the teacher of 
 spiritual ideality among the nations of the earth. 
 10 
 
THE COMING OF BRAHMA. 
 
 Where Jumna greets the Gauges' flood, 
 The aucient sage of ludia came, 
 
 Aud altars staiued with humau blood, 
 Forever vanished through his name. 
 
 When Brahma comes, the Yedas say, 
 The race of man shall have new birth; 
 
 The gloom of night be changed to day. 
 The gods be seen upon the earth. 
 
 O, Sons of Light, that hour draws nigh! 
 
 The radiant gleams of Heavenly truth 
 Are shining from the world on high, 
 
 As in the hour of Brahma's youth. 
 
 Through North and South, in East or West, 
 The light of Spirit fills the Earth; 
 
 No more in symbols now expressed, 
 Thus Brahma has his second birth. 
 
 The Buddha shines with star-like grace, 
 ' ' It lights the hosts of Brahma' s heaven, ' 
 
 But Brahma lights the earthly race 
 With power of mind to mortals given. 
 
 O, Sons of Brahm, this world is ours! 
 
 No longer seek the gods of yore; 
 Within the soul are all the powers 
 
 That rule the worlds forevemiore. 
 
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