Theos-Talk Archives (May 2005 Message tt00440)

May 16 2005

Dear Konstantin

In The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY Mr. Judge does not question the imperfect census
of population in his days -- as in central Africa, Asia, America, and many
isolated places.

He questions the accuracy of an ASSUMPTION that world population has
increased, as earlier census for hundreds and thousands of years was
unavailable. 

I beg you to remember that our own Science and recoding of events,
statistics and phenomena is at best about 3 / 400 years old, and that is a
very small basis.

Further the question of the dying out of the Chinese "race" was not
predicted as a catastrophe but, rather, was to extend over a natural period
perhaps many hundreds and thousands of years.  

To try to be as exact as we can let me offer a few quotes to consider.


This is what Mr. Judge says (pp. 77-8) in The OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY :

-------------------------------------

1

"Another objection brought up is that under the doctrine of reincarnation it
is not possible to account for the increase of the world's population. This
assumes that we know surely that its population has increased and are
keeping informed of its fluctuations. But it is not certain that the
inhabitants of the globe have increased, and, further, vast numbers of
people are annually destroyed of whom we know nothing. 

In China year after year many thousands have been carried off by flood.
Statistics of famine have not been made. We do not know by how many
thousands the deaths in Africa exceed the births in any year. The objection
is based on imperfect tables which only have to do with western lands. It
also assumes that there are fewer Egos out of incarnation and waiting to
come in than the number of those inhabiting bodies, and this is incorrect. 

Annie Besant has put this well in her "Reincarnation" by saying that the
inhabited globe resembles a hall in a town which is filled from the much
greater population of the town outside; the number in the hall may vary, but
there is a constant source of supply from the town. It is true that so far
as concerns this globe the number of Egos belonging to it is definite; but
no one knows what that quantity is nor what is the total capacity of the
earth for sustaining them. 

The statisticians of the day are chiefly in the West, and their tables
embrace but a small section of the history of man. They cannot say how many
persons were incarnated on the earth at any prior date when the globe was
full in all parts, hence the quantity of egos willing or waiting to be
reborn is unknown to the men of today. 

The Masters of theosophical knowledge say that the total number of such egos
is vast, and for that reason the supply of those for the occupation of
bodies to be born over and above the number that die is sufficient. Then too
it must be borne in mind that each ego for itself varies the length of stay
in the post-mortem states. They do not reincarnate at the same interval, but
come out of the state after death at different rates, and whenever there
occurs a great number of deaths by war, pestilence, or famine, there is at
once a rush of souls to incarnation, either in the same place or in some
other place or race. The earth is so small a globe in the vast assemblage of
inhabitable planets there is a sufficient supply of Egos for incarnation
here. But with due respect to those who put this objection, I do not see
that it has the slightest force or any relation to the truth of the doctrine
of reincarnation. "	OCEAN , pp. 77-8 


2

"The persistence of savagery, the rise and decay of nations and
civilizations, the total extinction of nations, all demand an explanation
found nowhere but in reincarnation. 

Savagery remains because there are still Egos whose experience is so limited
that they are still savage; they will come up into higher races when ready.
Races die out because the Egos have had enough of the experience that sort
of race gives. So we find the red Indian, the Hottentot, the Easter
Islanders, and others as examples of races deserted by high Egos and as they
are dying away other souls who have had no higher life in the past enter
into the bodies of the race to go on using them for the purpose of gaining
such experience as the race body will give. 

A race could not possibly arise and then suddenly go out. We see that such
is not the case, but science has no explanation; it simply says that this is
the fact, that nations decay. But in this explanation no account is taken of
the inner man nor of the recondite subtle and occult laws that unite to make
a race. 

Theosophy shows that the energy drawn together has to expend itself
gradually, and therefore the reproduction of bodies of the character of that
race will go on, though the Egos are not compelled to inhabit bodies of that
sort any longer than while they are of the same development as the race. 

Hence a time comes when the whole mass of Egos which built up the race
leaves it for another physical environment more like themselves. The economy
of Nature will not permit the physical race to suddenly fade away, and so in
the real order of evolution other and less progressed Egos come in and use
the forms provided, keeping up the production of new bodies but less and
less in number each century. 

These lower Egos are not able to keep up to the limit of the capacity of the
congeries of energies left by the other Egos, and so while the new set gains
as much experience as is possible the race in time dies out after passing
through its decay. 

This is the explanation of what we may call descending savagery, and no
other theory will meet the facts. It has been sometimes thought by
ethnologists that the more civilized races kill off the other, but the fact
is that in consequence of the great difference between the Egos inhabiting
the old race body and the energy of that body itself, the females begin to
be sterile, and thus slowly but surely the number of deaths exceeds the
births. 

China itself is in process of decay, she being now in the almost stationary
stage just before the rush downward. Great civilizations like those of Egypt
and Babylon have gone because the souls who made them have long ago
reincarnated in the great conquering nations of Europe and the present
American continents. 

As nations and races they have been totally reincarnated and born again for
greater and higher purposes than ever. Of all the old races the Aryan Indian
alone yet remains as the preserver of the old doctrines. It will one day
rise again to its old heights of glory. "	Ocean, pp. 83-5


3

" Reincarnation being the great law of life and progress, it is interwoven
with that of the cycles and karma. These three work together, and in
practice it is almost impossible to disentangle reincarnation from cyclic
law. 

Individuals and nations in definite streams return in regularly recurring
periods to the earth, and thus bring back to the globe the arts, the
civilization, the very persons who once were on it at work. 

And as the units in nation and race are connected together by invisible
strong threads, large bodies of such units moving slowly but surely all
together reunite at different times and emerge again and again together into
new race and new civilization as the cycles roll their appointed rounds. 

Therefore the souls who made the most ancient civilizations will come back
and bring the old civilization with them in idea and essence, which being
added to what others have done for the development of the human race in its
character and knowledge will produce a new and higher state of civilization.


This newer and better development will not be due to books, to records, to
arts or mechanics, because all those are periodically destroyed so far as
physical evidence goes, but the soul ever retaining in Manas the knowledge
it once gained and always pushing to completer development the higher
principles and powers, the essence of progress remains and will as surely
come out as the sun shines. And along this road are the points when the
small and large cycles of Avatars bring out for man's benefit the great
characters who mold the race from time to time. " Ocean, p.
119


----------------------------------------

1

HPB says in the SECRET DOCTRINE , II 303


"Questions with regard to Karma and re-births are constantly offered, and a
great confusion seems to exist upon this subject. Those who are born and
bred in the Christian faith, and have been trained in the idea that a new
soul is created by God for every newly-born infant, are among the most
perplexed. 

They ask whether in such case the number of incarnating Monads on earth is
limited; to which they are answered in the affirmative. For, however
countless, in our conceptions, the number of the incarnating monads - even
if we take into account the fact that ever since the Second Race, when their
respective seven groups were furnished with bodies, several births and
deaths may be allowed for every second of time in the aeons already passed -
still, there must be a limit. 

It was stated that Karma-Nemesis, whose bond-maid is Nature, adjusted
everything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh
pouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, had ceased as soon as Humanity had
reached its full physical development. 

No fresh Monads have incarnated since the middle-point of the Atlanteans.
Hence, remembering that, save in the case of young children, and of
individuals whose lives were violently cut off by some accident, no
Spiritual Entity can re-incarnate before a period of many centuries has
elapsed, such gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is necessarily
finite and limited. Moreover, a reasonable time must be given to other
animals for their evolutionary progress. 

Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the
evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. The Law of KARMA is
inextricably interwoven with that of Re-incarnation. 

It is only the knowledge of the constant re-births of one and the same
individuality throughout the life-cycle; the assurance that the same MONADS
- among whom are many Dhyan-Chohans, or the "Gods" themselves - have to pass
through the "Circle of Necessity," rewarded or punished by such rebirth for
the suffering endured or crimes committed in the former life; that those
very Monads, which entered the empty, senseless shells, or astral figures of
the First Race emanated by the Pitris, are the same who are now amongst us -
nay, ourselves, perchance; it is only this doctrine, we say, that can
explain to us the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to
the terrible and apparent injustice of life. " S D II 302-3


In regard to the overlapping of races we find in the SECRET DOCTRINE :

2

"Since the beginning of the Atlantean Race many million years have passed,
yet we find the last of the Atlanteans, still mixed up with the Aryan
element, 11,000 years ago. This shows the enormous overlapping of one race
over the race which succeeds it, though in character and external type the
elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger
race. This is proved in all the formations of mixed human races. 

Now, Occult philosophy teaches that even now, under our very eyes, the new
Race and Races are preparing to be formed, and that it is in America that
the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced. 

Thus the Americans have become in only three centuries a "primary race," pro
tem., before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other
now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the Sixth sub-race,
and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers
of that race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub-race,
in all its new characteristics. After this, in about 25,000 years, they will
launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; until, in consequence of
cataclysms -- the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe,
and still later the whole Aryan race (and thus affect both Americas), as
also most of the lands directly connected with the confines of our continent
and isles -- the Sixth Root-Race will have appeared on the stage of our
Round. When shall this be? Who knows save the great Masters of Wisdom,
perchance, and they are as silent upon the subject as the snow-capped peaks
that tower above them. All we know is, that it will silently come into
existence; so silently, indeed, that for long millenniums shall its pioneers
-- the peculiar children who will grow into peculiar men and women -- be
regarded as anomalous lusus naturae, abnormal oddities physically and
mentally. Then, as they increase, and their numbers become with every age
greater, one day they will awake to find themselves in a majority. "
SD Vol II pp. 444-445

-------------------------------------------

You will see that these statements are not "erroneous." 

We need to enlarge our research, and make guarded statements, and as far as
possible ask to make sure that all sources and statements have been taken
into account.

Best wishes,

Dallas
 
===================================

-----Original Message-----

From: Konstantin Zaitzev
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 10:49 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: Should an "ideal" Theosophical Society study and "promote" all
these books?

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, leonmaurer@a... wrote:

>>> In theosophy_@yahoogroups.com, leonmaurer@a... wrote:

> purpose is to "spread broadcast the original teachings
> of theosophy," as laid down by Blavatsky and Judge

===============================

K:
Strictly speaking we cannot regard books by Judge as a "source"
teaching. They are rather an interpretation of HPB teaching with
all flaws which may by characteristic for other interpreters 
mentioned.

For example, in "OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY" he questions the growth of
world population which is now the obvious fact for everyone. Moreover, 
he makes a conclusion that because Chinese are 4th race people they
are dying out, while now we see quite the reverse. 

Such statements, being obviously erroneous, create bad publicity for
theosophy, 
probably even more than claimings about life on Mars, and if we regard 
them as "original teachings of theosophy" it would mean that theosophy 
in its core contains such a nonsense.