Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00331)

Oct 27 2003


Dear Friends:

Here is a reminiscence of the sinking of Atlantis:



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WHERE THE RISHIS WERE



The Rishis were the sacred Bards, the Saints, the
great Adepts
Known to the Hindus, who gave great spiritual
impulses in the
Past and are said to sometimes reincarnate, and who
at one time
lived on the earth among men.


"The world is made of seas and islands. For continents are only great
lands water-encircled. Men must ever live upon sea or land, then,
unless they abide in air, and if they live in the air, they are not men
as we know them."

Thus I thought as the great ship steamed slowly into the port of a small
island, and before the anchor fell the whole scene seemed to change and
the dazzling light of the past blotted out the dark pictures of modern
civilization. Instead of an English ship I was standing on an ancient
vehicle propelled by force unknown today, until the loud noises of
disembarkation roused me once again.

But landed now, I was standing on the hill overlooking the town and bay.
The strange light and the curious vehicle again obtained mastery over
sense and eye, while the whole majesty of forgotten years rolled in from
the Ocean. Vainly did modern education struggle and soar: I let the
curtain drop upon the miserable present.

Now softly sings the water as it rolls against the shore, with the sun
but one hour old shining upon its surface. But, far off, what is that
spot coming nearer from the West, followed by another and another until
over the horizon rise hundreds, and now some are so near that they are
plainly seen? The same strange vehicles as that I saw at first. Like
birds they fly through the air. They come slowly now, and some have
been brought still on the land. They light on the earth with a softness
that seems nearly human, with a skill that is marvelous, without any
shock or rebound. From them alight men of noble mien who address me as
friends, and one more noble than the others seems to say, "Wouldst thou
know of all this? Then come," as he turns again to his vehicle that
stands there like a bird in wait to be off.

"Yes, I will go;" and I felt that the past and the present were but one,
and knew what I should see, yet could not remember it but with a
vagueness that blotted out all the details.

We entered the swift intelligently-moving vehicle, and then it rose up
on the air's wide-spreading arms and flew again fast to the West, where
the water was still softly singing to the beams of the sun. The horizon
slowly rose and the Island behind us was hidden by the sea from our
sight. And still as onward we flew to the Occident, many more birds
made by manlike that we were in flew by us as if in haste for the
soft-singing waters lapping the shore of that peak of the sea mountain
we had left in the Orient. Flying too high at first we heard no sound
from the sea, but soon a damp vapor that blew in my face from the salt
deep showed that we were descending, and then spoke my friend.

"Look below and around and before you!"

Down there were the roar and rush of mad billows that reached toward the
sky, vast hollows that sucked in a world. Black clouds shut out the
great sun, and I saw that the crust of the earth was drawn in to her own
subterranean depths. Turning now to the master, I saw that he heard my
unuttered question. He said,

"A cycle has ended. The great bars that kept back the sea have been
broken down by their weight. From these we have come and are coming."

Then faster sailed our bird, and I saw that a great Island was
perishing. What was left of the shore still crumbled, still entered the
mouth of the sea. And there were cars of the air just the same as that
I was in, only dark and unshining, vainly trying to rise with their
captains; rising slowly, then falling, and then swallowed up. 

But here we have rushed further in where the water has not overflowed,
and now we see that few are the bright cars of air that are waiting
about while their captains are entering and spoiling the mighty cars of
the men whose clothing is red and whose bodies, so huge and amazing, are
sleeping as if from the fumes of a drug.

As these great red men are slumbering, the light-stepping captains with
sun-colored cloaks are finishing the work of destruction. And now,
swiftly though we came, the waters have rushed on behind us, the salt
breath of the all-devouring deep sweeps over us. The sun-colored
captains enter their light air-cars and rise with a sweep that soon
leaves the sleepers, now waking, behind them. The huge red-coated
giants hear the roar of the waters and feel the cold waves roll about
them. They enter their cars, but only to find all their efforts are
wasted. Soon the crumbling earth no longer supports them, and all by an
inrushing wave are engulfed, drawn into the mouth of the sea, and the
treacherous ocean with roars as of pleasure in conquest has claimed the
last race of that Island.

But one has escaped of all the red giants, and slowly but surely his car
sailed up, up, as if to elude the sun-colored men who were spoilers.

Then, loud, clear, and thrilling swelled out a note of marvelous power
from my captain, and back came a hundred of those brilliant fast cars
that were speeding off eastward. Now they pursue the heavy, vast,
slow-moving car of the giant, surround it, and seem to avoid its
attacks. Then again swells that note from my master as our car hung
still on its wings. It was a signal, obeyed in an instant.

One brilliant, small sharp-pointed car is directed full at the red
giant's vehicle. Propelled by a force that exceeds the swift bullet, it
pierces the other, itself, too, is broken and falls on the waves with
its victim. Trembling I gazed down below, but my captain said kindly,

"He is safe, for he entered another bright car at the signal. All those
red-coated men are now gone, and that last was the worse and the
greatest."

Back eastward once more through the salt spray and the mist until soon
the bright light shone again and the Island rose over the sea with the
soft-singing water murmuring back to the sun. We alighted, and then, as
I turned, the whole fleet of swift sailing cars disappeared, and out in
the sky flashed a bright streak of sun-colored light that formed into
letters which read:

"This is where the Rishis were before the chalk cliffs of Albion rose
out of the wave. They were but are not."

And loud, clear and thrilling rose that note I had heard in the car of
swift pinions. It thrilled me with sadness, for past was the glory and
naught for the future was left but a destiny.


Bryan Kinnavan
(Wm. Q. Judge)

THE PATH, January 1891.


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CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND RETURN
AND OUR EVOLUTION



LECTURE, APRIL 25, 1892, BEFORE THE CONVENTION
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Mr. Chairman, Fellow Theosophists, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The title of what I am about to say to you is CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND
RETURN AND OUR EVOLUTION. Now what is a cycle? It has nothing to do with
the word psychic, and I am sorry to have to say that, because I heard
some people this morning repeat the title as "psychic" instead of
"cyclic," seeming to think perhaps that that was the same thing, or had
some relation to it. The word cyclic is derived from the Greek word
Kuklos, or a ring. It has been turned in the English language into the
word cycle, by the process of saying Kykle, and then cycle. The
corresponding word in the Sanscrit is Kalpa, which has in fact a wider
and a deeper meaning; because cycle in English is a word which covers,
is used for, and thus somewhat confuses, many cycles. It is used for the
small cycles, and the larger cycles, the intermediate cycles and the
great ones, whereas the word Kalpa means and implies only one cycle of a
large size, and the smaller cycles within that are designated by other
words.
What is a cycle? It is a circle, a ring. But not properly a ring like a
wedding ring, which runs into itself, but more properly like a screw
thread, which takes the form of a spiral, and thus beginning at the
bottom, turns on itself, and goes up. It is something like the great
Horseshoe Curve in the Pennsylvania Railroad. There you go around the
curve at the lower end; you go down into the horseshoe, and as you turn
the grade rises, so that when you arrive at the opposite side you have
gotten no further than the beginning, but you have risen just the
distance between the two ends of the grade.
But what do we mean by a cycle in Theosophy, in our own investigations
of nature, or man, or civilization, or our own development, our own
origin, our own destiny? We mean by cycles, just what the Egyptians, the
Hindoos and the philosophers of the Middle Ages meant by it; that is,
that there is a periodical return or cycling back, circling back of
something from some place once more. That is why it is called cycle,
inasmuch as it returns upon itself, seemingly; but in the Theosophical
doctrine, and in the ancient doctrines, it is always a little higher in
the sense of perfection or progress. That is to say, as the Egyptians
held, cycles prevail everywhere, things come back again, events return,
history comes back, and so in this century we have the saying: "History
repeats itself."
But where do Theosophists say that cyclic law prevails? We say that it
prevails everywhere. It prevails in every kingdom of nature, in the
animal kingdom, the mineral world, the human world; in history, in the
sky, on the earth. We say that not only do cycles pertain, and
appertain, and obtain in and to the earth and its inhabitants, but also
in what the Hindoos call the three kingdoms of the universe, the three
worlds; that is, that below us, ourselves, and that above.
Now, if you will turn to Buckle, a great writer of the English school,
you will find him saying in one of his standard books, a great book
often quoted, that there is no doubt cyclic law prevails in regard to
nations, that they have come back apparently the same, only slightly
improved or degraded, for there is also a downward cycle included within
those that rise; but Buckle did not discover a law. He simply once more
stated what the ancients had said over and over again. And it has always
seemed to me that if Buckle and other people of that kind would pay a
little more attention to the ancients, they would save themselves a
great deal of trouble, for he obtained his law by much delving, much
painstaking labor, whereas he might have gotten the law if he had
consulted the ancients, who always taught that there were cycles, and
that there always will be cycles.
Among the ancients they had a great many large and important cycles. In
their classification they had a Saros and a Naros, which are not
understood today by us. They are known to some extent, but what exactly
they are, we do not know. The Egyptians taught that there was a great
sidereal cycle, and that is recognized today, at last; that is the cycle
of 25,000 years, the great one caused by the fact that the sun went
through the signs of the Zodiac in that length of time. Now, I do not
assume that you know nothing about astronomy, but in order to make it
clear, it will be better for me to state this over again, just as it is.
The sun goes through the signs of the Zodiac from day to day and from
year to year, but at the same time, in going through the signs of the
Zodiac, he goes back slowly, like the hands of a clock ticking off the
time. In going through that period he comes back to the same point
again, and retards himself, or goes back; that is called the precession
of the equinoxes, and it is so many seconds in such a length of time.
Those seconds in the sky turned into time show you that the sun takes
25,000 and odd years to come back to the place from which he started out
at any particular time; that is to say, if you imagine that on the first
of April, this year, the sun was in such a degree of Aries, one of the
signs of the Zodiac, he will not get back to that sign by the precession
of the equinoxes until 25,000 years have passed away.
Now, the sun is the center of our solar system and the earth revolves
around it, and as the earth revolves she turns upon her axis. The sun,
it is known now by astronomers, as it was known by the ancients (who
were ourselves in fact), revolves around a center. That is, that while
we are going around the sun, he is going around some other center, so
that we describe in the sky not a circle around the sun, but a spiral,
as we move with the sun around his enormous orbit. Now do you grasp that
idea exactly? It is a very important one, for it opens up the subject to
a very large extent. There is a star somewhere in the sky, we do not
know where--some think it is Alcyon, or some other star, some think it
may be a star in the Pleiades, and some others think it is a star
somewhere else--but they know by deduction from the known to the
unknown, as Brother Thomas told you this morning, that the sun is
attracted himself by some unknown center, and that he turns around it in
an enormous circle, and as he turns, of course he draws the earth with
him. In the course of 25,000 years in going around the signs of the
Zodiac, he must take the earth into spaces where it has never yet been,
for when he reaches this point in Aries, after 25,000 years, it is only
apparently the same point, just as when I came around the curve of the
Horseshoe, I started around the first point and went around the curve,
came back to the same point, but I was higher up; I was in another
position. And so, when the sun gets back again to the point in Aries,
where he was on the first of April this year, he will not be in the
exact position in the universe of space, but he will be somewhere else,
and in his journey of 25,000 years through billions upon billions of
miles, he draws the earth into spaces where she never was before, and
never will be as that earth again. He must draw her into cosmic spaces
where things are different, and thus cause changes in the earth itself,
for changes in cosmic matter in the atmosphere, in the space where the
sun draws the earth, must affect the earth and all its inhabitants. The
ancients investigated this subject, and declared long ago this 25,000
years cycle, but it is only just lately, so to speak, that we are
beginning to say we have discovered this. We know, as Nineteenth century
astronomers, that it is a fact, or that it must be a fact, from
deduction, but they knew it was a fact because they had observed it
themselves and recorded the observations.
The Egyptians had also the cycle of the Moon, which we know, and they
had more cycles of the moon than we have, for the moon not only has her
cycle of twenty-eight days, when she changes from full to disappearance,
and then again to youth, but she also has a period of return somewhere
over fourteen years, which must itself have its effect upon the earth.
Then they said, also, that the human soul had its cycle, it being 5,000
years. That is, the man died, or the king died, and his body was turned
into a mummy in the hope that when, after his five thousand years cycle
had elapsed and he came back once more to earth, he would find his mummy
there? No; but that no one else should have taken his mummied atoms and
made a bad use of them. Mummification is explained by us in another way.
Their knowledge of the law of cycles caused them to make the first
mummy. They held that a human soul returned; they also held that all
atoms are alive, just as we do; that they are sensitive points; that
they have intelligence belonging to the plane on which they are, and
that the man who misuses atoms of matter, such as you have in your
bodies and your brains, must stand the consequences. Consequently,
saying that to themselves, they said, "If I die, and leave those atoms,
which I have used so well, perhaps some other man will take them and use
them badly, so I will preserve them as far as possible until I return,
and then by a process destroy the combination of atoms, absorb them into
some place, or position, where they might be put to good use." That may
seem offensive to some today, but I am merely repeating the theory. I am
not saying whether I believe it or not.
The ancient Egyptians who held these theories have disappeared and left
nothing behind but the pyramids, the temples of Thebes, the Sphinxes and
all the great monuments which are slowly being discovered by us. Where
have they gone? Have they come back? Do the Copts now in Egypt represent
them? I think not, although heredity is the boasted explanation of
everything. The Copts are their descendants? They know nothing,
absolutely nothing but a simple language, and they live the life of
slaves, and yet they are the descendants of the ancient Egyptians! What
has become of them? The ancient Egyptians we think were co-laborers with
the ancient Hindoos, whose cycle remains; that is to say, whose
descendants remain, holding the knowledge, in part, of their
forefathers, and we find that the Hindoos have held always the same
theories as to cycles as the Egyptians held. They divided the ages of
the world. They say manifestation begins, and then it lasts for a period
called a Kalpa, an enormous number of years; that Kalpa is divided into
ages. The small cycle is composed of a large number of years; one will
be four thousand, another four hundred thousand, another will be a
million, and so on, making a total which we cannot grasp with the mind
but which we can write upon the paper.
Now, the idea of cycles came from the Hindoos, through the nations who
spread out from there, for it is admitted that the land of Hindustan is
the cradle of the race. The Aryan race came down into Christendom, so
that we find the Christians, the Romans, the Greeks and all people
around that time holding the same theories as to cycles; that is, that
cyclic law prevails everywhere. We find it in the ancient mystics, the
Christian mystics, the middle age mystics and the mystics of times
nearer to ours.
If you will read the works of Higgins, who wrote the Anacalypsis, you
will find there laborious compilations and investigations on the subject
of the cycles. Do they obtain? Is there such a thing as a cycle which
affects human destiny?
Coming closer to our own personal life, we can see that cycles do and
must prevail, for the sun rises in the morning and goes to the center of
the sky, descends in the west; the next day he does the same thing, and
following him, you rise. You come to the highest point of your activity,
and you go to sleep. So day follows night and night follows day. Those
are cycles, small cycles, but they go to make the greater ones. You were
born, at about seven years of age you began to get discretion to some
extent. A little longer and you reach manhood, then you begin to fall,
and at last you finish the great day of your life when body dies.
In looking at nature we also find that there are summer and winter,
spring and autumn. These are cycles, and every one of them affects the
earth, with the human beings upon it.
The esoteric doctrine that Brother Mead has been talking about, the
inner doctrine of the old theosophists and the present day theosophists,
to be found in every old literature and religious book, is that cyclic
law is the supreme law governing our evolution; that reincarnation,
which we talk so much about, is cyclic law in operation and is supreme.
For what is reincarnation but a coming back again to life, just what the
ancient Egyptians taught and which we are finding out to be probably
true, for in no other way than by this cyclic law of reincarnation can
we account for the problems of life that beset us; with this we account
for our own character, each one different from the other, and with a
force peculiar to each person.
This being the supreme law, we have to consider another one, which is
related to it and contained in the title I have adopted. That is the law
of the return of impressions. What do we mean by that? I mean, those
acts and thoughts performed by a nation--not speaking about the things
that affect nature, although it is governed by the same law--constitute
an impression. That is to say, your coming to this convention creates in
your nature an impression. Your going into the street and seeing a
street brawl creates an impression. Your having a quarrel last week and
denouncing a man, or with a woman and getting very angry, creates an
impression in you, and that impression is as much subject to cyclic law
as the moon, and the stars, and the world, and is far more important in
respect to your development--your personal development or
evolution--than all these other great things, for they affect you in the
mass, whereas these little ones affect you in detail.
This Theosophical doctrine in respect to cycles, and the evolution of
the human race, I think is known to you all, for I am assuming that you
are all theosophists.
It is to be described somewhat in this way: Imagine that before this
earth came out of the gaseous condition there existed an earth somewhere
in space, let us call it the moon, for that is the exact theory. The
moon was once a large and vital body full of beings. It lived its life,
went through its cycles, and at last having lived its life, after vast
ages had passed away, came to the moment when it had to die; that is,
the moment came when the beings on that earth had to leave it, because
its period had elapsed, and then began from that earth the exodus. You
can imagine it as a flight of birds migrating. Did you ever see birds
migrate? I have seen them migrate in a manner that perhaps not many of
you have. In Ireland, and perhaps in England, the swallows migrate in a
manner very peculiar. When I was a boy, I used to go to my uncle's place
where there was an old mass of stone ruins at the end of the garden, and
by some peculiar combination of circumstances the swallows of the whole
neighboring counties collected there. The way they gathered there was
this: When the period arrived, you could see them coming in all parts of
the sky, and they would settle down and twitter on this pile of stone
all day, and fly about. When the evening came--twilight--they raised in
a body and formed an enormous circle. It must have been over forty feet
in diameter, and that circle of swallows flew around in the sky, around
this tower, around and around for an hour or two, making a loud
twittering noise, and that attracted from other places swallows who had
probably forgotten the occasion. They kept that up for several days,
until one day the period arrived when they must go, and they went
away--some were left behind, some came a little early, and some came too
late. Other birds migrate in other ways. And so these human birds
migrated from the moon to this spot where the earth began (I don't know
where it is--a spot in space--) and settled down as living beings,
entities, not with bodies, but beings, in that mass of matter, at that
point in space, informed it with life, and at last caused this earth to
become a ball with beings upon it. And then cycles began to prevail, for
the impressions made upon these fathers when they lived in the
ancient--mind fails to think how ancient--civilization of the moon, came
back again when they got to this earth, and so we find the races of the
earth rising up and falling, rising again and falling, rising and
falling, and at last coming to what they are now, which is nothing to
what they will be, for they go ever higher and higher. That is the
theory, broadly, and in that is included the theory of the races, the
great seven races who inhabited the earth successively, the great seven
Adams who peopled the earth; and at last when this earth shall come to
its time of life, its period, all the beings on it will fly away from it
to some other spot in space to evolve new worlds as elder brothers who
have done the same thing before in other spaces in nature. We are not
doing this blindly. It has been done before by others--no one knows when
it began. It had nothing in the way of a beginning, it will have no end,
but there are always elder brothers of the race, who live on. As some
have written, we cannot turn back the cycles in their course. The fire
of patriotism cannot prevail against the higher destiny which will
plunge a nation into darkness. All we can do is to change it here and
there a little. The elder brothers are subject to law, but they have
confidence and hope, because that law merely means that they appear to
go down, in order to rise again at a greater height. So that we have
come up through the cyclic law from the lowest kingdoms of nature. That
is, we are connected in an enormous brotherhood, which includes not only
the white people of the earth and the black people of the earth, and the
yellow people, but the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the
mineral kingdom and the unseen elemental kingdom. You must not be so
selfish as to suppose that it includes only men and women. It includes
everything, every atom in this solar system. And we come up from lower
forms, and are learning how to so mould and fashion, use and abuse, or
impress the matter that comes into our charge, into our bodies, our
brains and our psychical nature, so that that matter shall be an
improvement to be used by the younger brothers who are still below us,
perhaps in the stone beneath our feet. I do not mean by that that there
is a human being in that stone. I mean that every atom in the stone is
not dead matter. There is no dead matter anywhere, but every atom in
that stone contains a life, unintelligent, formless, but potential, and
at some period in time far beyond our comprehension, all of those atoms
in that stone will have been released. The matter itself will have been
refined, and at last all in this great cycle of progress will have been
brought up the steps of the ladder, in order to let some others lower
still in a state we cannot understand come up to them.
That is the real theory. Is that superstition? If you believe the
newspapers that is superstition, for they will twist and turn everything
you say. Your enemies will say you said there was a man in that stone,
and that you have been a stone. You have not been a stone, but the great
monad, the pilgrim who came from other worlds has been in every stone,
has been in every kingdom, and now has reached the state of man, to show
whether he is able to continue being a man, or whether he will once more
fall back, like the boy at school who will not learn, into the lowest
class.
Now then, this law of impressions I have been talking about can be
illustrated in this way: If you look at one of these electric
lights--take away all the rest, leaving one only, so as to have a better
impression--you will find the light makes an image on the retina, and
when you shut your eye, this bright filament of light made by a carbon
in an incandescent lamp will be seen by you in your eye. You can try it,
and see for yourselves. If you keep your eye closed and watch intently,
you will see the image come back a certain number of counts, it will
stay a certain number of counts, it will go away in the same length of
time and come back again, always changing in some respect but always the
image of the filament, until at last the time comes when it disappears
apparently because other impressions have rubbed it out or covered it
over. That means that there is a return even in the retina of the
impression of this filament. After the first time, the color changes
each time, and so it keeps coming back at regular intervals, showing
that there is a cyclic return of impression in the retina, and as
Brother Thomas said this morning, if that applies in one place, it
applies in every place. And when we look into our moral character we
find the same thing, for as we have the tides in the ocean, explained as
they say by the moon-- which in my opinion does not explain it, but of
course, being no scientist, my view is not worth much so in man we have
tides, which are called return of these impressions; that is to say, you
do a thing once, there will be a tendency to repeat itself; you do it
twice, and it doubles its influence, a greater tendency to do that same
thing again. And so on all through our character shows this constant
return of cyclic impression. We have these impressions from every point
in space, every experience we have been through, everything that we can
possibly go through at any time, even those things which our forefathers
went through. And that is not unjust for this reason, that our
forefathers furnished the line of bodily encasement, and we cannot enter
that line of bodily encasement unless we are like unto it, and for that
reason we must have been at some point in that cycle in that same line
or family in the past, so that I must have had a hand in the past in
constructing the particular family line in which I now exist, and am
myself once more taking up the cyclic impression returning upon me.
Now this has the greatest possible bearing upon our evolution as
particular individuals, and that is the only way in which I wish to
consider the question of evolution here; not the broad question of the
evolution of the universe, but our own evolution, which means our bodily
life, as Madame Blavatsky, repeating the ancients, said to us so often,
and as we found said by so many of the same school. An opportunity will
arise for you to do something; you do not do it; you may not have it
again for one hundred years. It is the return before you of some old
thing that was good, if it is a good one, along the line of the cycles.
You neglect it, as you may, and the same opportunity will return, mind
you, but it may not return for many hundred years. It may not return
until another life, but it will return under the same law.
Now take another case. I have a friend who is trying to find out all
about theosophy, and about a psychic nature, but I have discovered that
he is not paying the slightest attention to this subject of the
inevitable return upon himself of these impressions which he creates. I
discovered he had periods of depression (and this will answer for
everybody), when he had a despondency that he could not explain. I said
to him, you have had the same despondency maybe seven weeks ago, maybe
eight weeks ago, maybe five weeks ago. He examined his diary and his
recollection, and he found that he had actual recurrences of despondency
about the same distance apart. Well, I said, that explains to me how it
is coming back. But what am I to do? Do what the old theosophists taught
us; that is, we can only have these good results by producing opposite
impressions to bad ones. So, take this occasion of despondency. What he
should have done was, that being the return of an old impression, to
have compelled himself to feel joyous, even against his will, and if he
could not have done that, then to have tried to feel the joy of others.
By doing that, he would have implanted in himself another impression,
that is of joy, so that when this thing returned once more, instead of
being of the same quality and extension, it would have been changed by
the impression of joy or elation and the two things coming together
would have counteracted each other, just as two billiard balls coming
together tend to counteract each others movements. This applies to every
person who has the blues. This does not apply to me, and I think it must
be due to the fact that in some other life I have had the blues. I have
other things, but the blues never.
I have friends and acquaintances who have these desponding spells. It is
the return of old cyclic impressions, or the cyclic return of
impressions. What are you to do? Some people say, I just sit down and
let it go; that is to say, you sit there and create it once more. You
cannot rub it out if it has been coming, but when it comes start up
something else, start up cheerfulness, be good to some one, then try to
relieve some other person who is despondent, and you will have started
another impression, which will return at the same time. It does not make
any difference if you wait a day or two to do this. The next day, or a
few days after will do, for when the old cyclic impression returns, it
will have dragged up the new one, because it is related to it by
association.
This has a bearing also on the question of the civilization in which we
are a point ourselves.
Who are we? Where are we going? Where have we come from? I told you that
the old Egyptians disappeared. If you inquire into Egyptian history, the
most interesting because the most obscure, you will find, as the writers
say, that the civilization seems to rise to the zenith at once. We do
not see when it began. The civilization was so great it must have
existed an enormous length of time to get to that height, so that we
cannot trace it from its beginning, and it disappears suddenly from the
sky; there is nothing of it left but the enormous remains which testify
to these great things, for the ancient Egyptians not only made mummies
in which they displayed the art of bandaging that we cannot better, but
they had put everything to such a degree of specialization that we must
conclude they had many centuries of civilization. There was a specialist
for one eye and a specialist for the other, a specialist for the
eyebrow, and so on. In my poor and humble opinion, we are the Egyptians.
We have come back again, after our five thousand or whatever years cycle
it is, and we have dragged back with us some one called the Semitic
race, with which we are connected by some old impression that we cannot
get rid of, and so upon us is impinged that very Semitic image. We have
drawn back with us, by the inevitable law of association in cyclic
return, some race, some personages connected with us by some acts of
ours in that great old civilization now disappeared, and we cannot get
rid of it; we must raise them up to some other plane as we raise
ourselves.
I think in America is the evidence that this old civilization is coming
back, for in the theosophical theory nothing is lost. If we were left to
records, buildings and the like, they would soon disappear and nothing
could ever be recovered; there never would be any progress. But each
individual in the civilization, wherever it may be, puts the record in
himself, and when he comes into the favorable circumstances described by
Patanjali, an old Hindoo, when he gets the apparatus, he will bring out
the old impression. The ancients say each act has a thought under it,
and each thought makes a mental impression; and when the apparatus is
provided, there will then arise that new condition, in rank, place and
endowment.
So we retain in ourselves the impression of all the things that we have
done, and when the time comes that we have cycled back, over and over
again, through the middle ages perhaps, into England, into Germany, into
France, we come at last to an environment such as is provided here, just
the thing physically and every other way to enable us to do well, and to
enable the others who are coming after us. I can almost see them; they
are coming in a little army from the countries of the old world to
endeavor to improve this one; for here ages ago there was a civilization
also, perhaps we were in it then, perhaps anterior to the ancient
Egyptians. It disappeared from here, when we do not know, and it left
this land arid for many thousands of years until it was discovered once
more by the Europeans. The ancient world, I mean Europe, has been
poisoned, the land has been soaked with the emanations, poisoned by the
emanations of the people who have lived upon it; the air above it is
consequently poisoned by the emanations from the land; but here in
America, just the place for the new race, is an arable land which has
had time over and over again to destroy the poisons that were planted
here ages and ages ago. It gives us a new land, with vibrations in the
air that stir up every particle in a man who breathes it, and thus we
find the people coming from the old world seeming to receive through
their feet the impressions of an American country. All this bears upon
our civilization and race.
We are here a new race in a new cycle, and persons who know say that a
cycle is going to end in a few years and a new one begin, and that that
ending and beginning will be accompanied by convulsions of society and
of nature. We can all almost see it coming. The events are very complete
in the sky. You remember Daniel says, "A time, half a time, and a time,"
and so on, and people in the Christian system have been trying to find
out the time when the time began, and that is just the difficulty. We do
not know when the time began. And the only person who in all these many
years has made a direct statement is Madame Blavatsky, and she said, "A
cycle is ending in a few years, you must prepare." So that it was like
the old prophets who came to the people and said, "Prepare for a new era
of things, get ready for what you have to do." That is just what this
civilization is doing. It is the highest, although the crudest,
civilization now on the earth. It is the beginning of the great
civilization that is to come, when old Europe has been destroyed: when
the civilizations of Europe are unable to do any more, then this will be
the place where the new great civilization will begin to put out a hand
once more to grasp that of the ancient East, who has sat there silently
doing nothing all these years, holding in her ancient crypts and
libraries and records the philosophy which the world wants, and it is
this philosophy and this ethics that the Theosophical Society is trying
to give you. It is a philosophy you can understand and practice.
It is well enough to say to a man, Do right, but after a while, in this
superstitious era, he will say, Why should I do right, unless I feel
like it? When you are showing these laws, that he must come back in his
cycle; that he is subject to evolution; that he is a reincarnated
pilgrim soul, then he will see the reason why, and then in order to get
him a secure basis, he accepts the philosophy, and that is what the
theosophical society and the theosophical movement are trying to do.
Brother George Mead said the other day, in speaking of a subject like
this, that the great end and aim is the great renunciation. That is,
that after progressing to great heights, which you can only do by
unselfishness, at last you say to yourself, "I may take the ease to
which I am entitled." For what prevails in one place must prevail in
another, and in the course of progress we must come at last to a time
when we can take our ease, but if you say to yourself, "I will not take
it, but as I know this world and all the people on it are bound to live
and last for many thousand years more, and if not helped perhaps might
fail, I will not take it but I will stay here and I will suffer, because
of having greater knowledge and greater sensitiveness"--this is the
great renunciation as theosophy tells us. I know we do not often talk
this way, because many of us think that the people will say to us at
once when we talk of the great renunciation, "I don't want it; it is too
much trouble." So generally we talk about the fine progress, and how you
will at last escape the necessity of reincarnation, and at last escape
the necessity of doing this or that and the other, but if you do your
duty, you must make up your mind when you reach the height, when you
know all, when you participate in the government of the world--not of a
town, but the actual government of the world and the people upon
it--instead of sleeping away your time, you will stay to help those who
are left behind, and that is the great renunciation. That is what is
told of Buddha, and of Jesus. Doubtless the whole story about Jesus,
which cannot be proved historically to my mind, is based upon the same
thing that we call renunciation. He was crucified after two or three
years work. But we say it means that this being divine resolves he will
crucify himself in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of others, so that
he can save men. Buddha did the same thing long before Jesus is said to
have been born. The story that he made the great renunciation just means
that which I have been telling you, instead of escaping from this
horrible place, as it seems to us. For this is indeed horrible, as we
look at it, surrounded by obstructions, liable to defeat at any moment,
liable to wake up in the morning after planning a great reform, and see
it dashed to the ground. Instead of escaping all that, he remained in
the world and started his doctrine, which he knew at least would be
adhered to by some. But this great doctrine of renunciation teaches that
instead of working for yourself, you will work to know everything, to do
everything in your power for those who may be left behind you, just as
Madame Blavatsky says in the Voice of the Silence, "Step out of the
sunshine into the shade, to make more room for others."
Isn't that better than a heaven which is reached at the price of the
damnation of those of your relatives who will not believe a dogma? Is
this not a great philosophy and a great religion which includes the
salvation and regeneration, the scientific upraising and perfecting of
the whole human family, and every particle in the whole universe,
instead of imagining that a few miserable beings after seventy years of
life shall enter into paradise, and then they look behind to see the
torments in hell of those who would not accept a dogma?
What are these other religions compared with that? How any man can
continue to believe such an idea as the usual one of damnation for
merely unbelief I cannot comprehend. I had rather--if I had to
choose--be an idolator of the most pronounced kind, who believed in
Indra, and be left with my common reasoning, than believe in such a
doctrine as that which permits me to suppose that my brother who does
not believe a dogma is sizzling in hell while I, by simply believing,
may enjoy myself in heaven.
Theosophists, if they will learn the doctrine and try to explain it,
will reform this world. It will percolate everywhere, infiltrate into
every stratum of society and prevent the need of legislation. It will
alter the people, whereas you go on legislating and leaving this world's
people as they are, and you will have just what happened in France.
Capitalists in that day, in the day of the revolution--that is the
royalists--oppressed the people. At last the people rose up and
philosophers of the day instituted the reign of reason, and out of the
reign of reason--mind you they had introduced there a beautiful idea of
mankind, that idea struck root in a soil that was not prepared--came the
practice of murdering other people by the wholesale until streams of
blood ran all over France. So you see if something is not done to raise
the people what the result will be. We have seen in Chicago the result
of such acts, the mutterings of such a storm if the theosophical
philosophy--call it by any other name you like--is not preached and
understood. But if these old doctrines are not taught to the race you
will have a revolution, and instead of making progress in a steady,
normal fashion, you will come up to better things through storm, trouble
and sorrow. You will come up, of course, for even out of revolutions and
blood there comes progress, but isn't it better to have progress without
that? And that is what the theosophical philosophy is intended for. That
is why the Mahatmas we were talking about, directing their servant H. P.
Blavatsky, as they have directed many before, came out at a time when
materialism was fighting religion and was about getting the upper hand,
and once more everything moved forward in its cyclic way and these old
doctrines were revivified under the guidance of the theosophical
movement. They are doctrines that explain all problems and in the
universal scheme give man a place as a potential god.
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