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Searchable Full Text of The Early Techings of the Masters Edited by C Jinarajadasa

 

FUNDAMENTALS 
OF THE
ESOTERIC 
PHILOSOPHY
By
G. de PURUCKER 
M.A., D.LITT.
 
Edited by
A. TREVOR BARKER

 

 

 

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Searchable Full Text of

The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky

 

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RIDER & CO. 
 
Paternoster House, Paternoster Row, 
 
London, E.G. 4 
 
 
 
Printed in Great Britain at 
 
The Mayflower Pnss t Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd, 
1932 
 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
DR. DE PURUCKER, the present Leader of The 
Theosophical Society, which has its International 
Headquarters at Point Loma, California, delivered the 
lectures contained in this volume to members of the 
Esoteric Section during the years 1924-1927. They were given 
under the direction of Katherine Tingley, then Leader of The 
Theosophical Society, in fulfilment of a long cherished plan to 
give to the world a work which would serve not only as a com 
mentary upon The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky, but at the 
same time would be the means of giving out certain esoteric 
keys, which would enable students to unlock for themselves the 
treasure of knowledge therein contained. Many are the educated 
men and women who have been forced to lay aside The Secret 
Doctrine as too abstruse and difficult, because they had no 
instruction and therefore no understanding of the fundamental 
conceptions upon which the Esoteric Philosophy is based. 
 
To those who hunger for truth and spiritual knowledge, and 
who bring an open mind to the study of this book, it is not too 
much to say that in asking they will receive, and in seeking 
they will find. 
 
The original stenographic report of these lectures was corrected 
by the Author, but he has not had the time to read the proofs, 
the reaffonsibility for which he left to the Editor. The book 
owes much to the collaboration of Dr. J. H. Fussell who, in 
addition to doing some of the preliminary work of preparing the 
MS. for publication, undertook the selection of the quotations 
which appear at the head of each chapter. It should be mentioned 
that all references to The Secret Doctrine are to the original 
Edition (1888) of that work. 
 
A certain amount of criticism was aroused among students of 
Theosophy by the announcement that Dr. de Purucker had given 
in these pages teaching which is not contained in the works of 
H. P. Blavatsky. Moreover, these critics appear to base their 
objections upon isolated quotations from Mme Blavatsky, in an 
endeavour to show that it is impossible at this time that further 
genuine teaching can be given, and ipso facto anything that is 
given must be false. But students will recognise that anything 
in the nature of dogmatism is contrary to the spirit of the Esoteric 
Philosophy, and for that reason should be avoided. Inevitable 
 
 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
child of crystallized thought, it begins its lethal work by laying 
a shadow on the mind, and ends by producing a sect. 
 
The tendency of the dogmatist is to read only those parts 
of the teaching which suit his own peculiar purpose, and 
the rest of the Teacher's writings are pushed into the back- 
ground and thus prevented from doing their beneficent vfbik. 
Shall we not see for ourselves how H. P. Blavatsky regardeft the 
problem ? In her Five Messages to the American Theosophists, 
she wrote : 
 
" Orthodoxy in Theosophy is a thing neither possible nor desirable. 
It is diversity of opinion, within certain limits, that keeps the Theo- 
sophical Society a living and a healthy body, its many other ugly 
features notwithstanding. Were it not, also, for the existence of a 
large amount of uncertainty in the minds of students of Theosophy, 
such healthy divergencies would be impossible, and the Society woul d 
degenerate into a sect, in which a narrow and stereotyped creed would 
take the place of the living and breathing spirit of Truth and an ever- 
growing Knowledge. 
 
According as people are prepared to receive it, so will new Theo- 
sophical teaching be given. But no more will be given than the 
world, on its present level of spirituality, can profit by. It depends 
on the spread of Theosophy the assimilation of what has been already 
given how much more will be revealed and how soon/ 1 
 
Again in the Introductory to The Secret Doctrine she 
wrote : 
 
" In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far 
better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and 
irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-Vidya ; 
and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of 
all religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for 
many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found. " 
 
These statements are quite enough to show that Mme Blavatsky 
never meant it to be understood that under no circumstances 
would additional teaching be given. On the contrary she clearly 
indicated that although the two volumes of The Secret Doctrine 
contained all that could be given to the world in the nineteenth 
century, the giving of further teaching would depend necessarily 
upon the readiness of people to receive it. 
 
So far from claiming that her writings contain the whole of 
Theosophy she pointed out in her Introductory to The Secret 
Doctrine that she had raised " but a small corner of the dark 
veil " and " after long millenniums of silence and secrecy " had 
given but an " outline of a few fundamental truths ", " because 
that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a 
hundred such volumes ". The Esoteric Doctrine in its totality 
has always existed in the keeping of The Adepts in The Sacred 
 
 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
science, and it is therefore a complete system of thought which 
does not evolve or change. But the whole of it never has and 
never will be given out publicly, and therefore since from time 
to time additional teaching is given, this does constitute for the 
public a further unfolding or evolution of the age-old Doctrine. 
In dther* words Theosophy the Wisdom of the Gods is eternal 
in Nature, but our understanding of it grows, and as " those who 
have ears to hear " become fit and ready to receive more teaching, 
more will be given. This fact is clearly brought out also by 
William Q. Judge : 
 
" If any persons regard H. P. B/s writings as the infallible oracles 
of Theosophy, they go directly against her own words and the works 
themselves ; they must be people who do not indulge in original 
thinking and cannot make much impression on the times. 
 
As for the Theosophical Society, the moment it makes a hard and 
fast definition of Theosophy it will mark the first hour of its decay. 
 
Inasmuch as Theosophy is the whole body of truth about man 
and nature, either known now or hereafter to be discovered, it 
has the ' power of growth, progress and advancement/ since every 
new truth makes it clearer. But among the truths will not be 
reckoned at any time the definitions, dogmas, creeds or beliefs laid 
down by man. 11 
 
None the less it is a fact, paradoxical though it may seem to 
some, that no teaching calling itself Theosophical will bear the 
test of a thoroughly impartial investigation, unless it is consistent 
with the teaching of H. P. Blavatsky ; and this precisely because 
her writings bear the stamp of consistency with the recorded 
teachings of all the great Sages and Seers of Antiquity. 
 
Herein lies the strength of Dr. de Purucker, not only in this 
work but in his other writings. True to the lines laid down by 
Mme Blavatsky, he makes no appeal to dogmatic authority, but 
claims his right to an impartial hearing on the ground that his 
teaching " closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of 
uniformity and analogy'*. "Proof," he defines, "as the pre- 
ponderance of evidence bringing conviction to the mind," and 
goes on to show that if Knowledge is to grow in us then it is 
necessary to check any tendency to crystallization of thought, 
i.e., to limit the understanding by closing the doors of the mind 
to further light upon any particular subject of study. The truth 
is that in the search for the Great Knowledge, progress is seen 
to be as endless as boundless Infinitude inwards and upwards 
for ever towards the Unutterable. Herein perhaps also is the 
secret of humility. 
 
The meaning of any part of this book is not to be understood 
by merely dipping into it here and there. A particular doctrine 
is touched upon in one chapter, outlined in another, then dealt 
 
 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
with in fuller detail until in some later chapter the key thougnt 
to the whole subject is revealed if the preceding ideas have been 
grasped. Thus the mind of the reader is opened gradually to 
receive teaching which becomes ever deeper with each succeeding 
chapter, unfolding before the inner eye a vision of the age-old 
Path that leads at last from darkness into Light. 
 
A. TREVOR BARKER 
70 QUEEN'S GATE, 
LONDON, S.W. 7, 
 
Dec. 2&th, 1931. 
 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
WE sometimes lock ourselves in little boxes of opinion, 
and will not be free for fear. But still sun shines, 
winds blow, waves " boom and blanche on the 
precipices" ; and the winds and sun of the spirit, 
the waves of time. While some are busy proving that no 
Teacher can come, one has appeared among us who Teaches. 
 
The spirit will not be confined by rules that the petty mind 
dictates to it, and we can impose no Thou shalt nots upon 
inspiration. There are certain marks by which we may know 
what comes from the heights : a light to illumine life and the 
hidden things ; a sublimity to enlarge the Soul. Do you not 
see that what is ever-living cannot be cribbed and cabined 
within what was spoken in this year or that, even by Speakers 
with Authority ; because words are finite things : of value as 
carriers of the messages of the Spirit ; harmful and tyrannous 
when we bow our souls to them, and would make their finite- 
ness an absolute ? 
 
H. P. Blavatsky came not to shackle us with new creeds, but 
to bring greatness and freedom to our minds. She pointed the 
way to sublimity of life and thought : her keynote is sublimity. 
She never said, there is a place where evolution stops, or where 
knowledge stops. Because some have given out ridiculousness 
in place of her sublime, it does not mean that the great Lodge 
and its powers and wisdom are exhausted, or that there must 
be no advance in knowledge. 
 
As I understand the book, it makes this appeal : Turn your 
eyes to the mountain-tops of being ; feed your souls on the 
grandeur of Truth. Who has H. P. Blavatsky as a living 
power in his thought is not coffined in a creed, but judges each 
new idea that comes to him by its power to illumine life. 
 
KENNETH MORRIS 
 
LLWYNYPIA, 
 
Nov. 22nd, 1931. 
 
 
 
IX 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
PART I 
CHAPTER I 
 
PAGE 
 
THE SELF : MAN'S INMOST LINK WITH THE UNUTTERABLE. THE ESOTERIC 
 
PHILOSOPHY : TAUGHT IN ALL THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS . . i 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
WHERE is REALITY ? TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN. MAN'S COMPOSITE NATURE 
ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS '. THREEFOLD, FOURFOLD, FlVE- 
FOLD, OR SEVENFOLD 8 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA : OBJECTIVE IDEALISM THE BASIS OF MORALS : 
ROOTED IN THE SPIRITUAL UNITY THE DIVINITY OF THE ALL. THE 
SELF AND THE "SELVES" 17 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
FROM PRIMORDIAL POINT TO UNIVERSE AND MAN. How DOES MANIFESTA- 
TION ARISE ? MANVANTARA AND PR ALA Y A . . . . .26 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS AND THE NEBULAR THEORY. GODS BEHIND 
 
THE KOSMOS : WHY NATURE is IMPERFECT . . . . -37 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
THE DAWN OF MANIFESTATION : LAYA-CENTERS. A CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE 
SPIRITUALLY PURPOSIVE. STOIC DOCTRINE OF THE INTERMINGLING 
OF ALL BEINGS : " LAWS OF NATURE." PHILOSOPHICAL POLYTHEISM 
AND THE DOCTRINE OF HIERARCHIES 48 
 
 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
PAOB 
 
" HIERARCHIES " : ONE OF THE LOST KEYS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. 
THE PYTHAGOREAN SACRED TETRACTYS. THE LADDER OF LIFE : 
THE LEGEND OF PADMAPANI 60 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
TRACES OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY IN GENESIS .... 73 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC COSMOGONY. GLOBES, ROUNDS AND RACES : 
 
COSMIC TIME-PERIODS 84 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF SWABHAVA SELF-BECOMING CHARACTERISTIC INDI- 
VIDUALITY. MAN, SELF-EVOLVED, His OWN CREATOR. Monadologie OF 
 
LEIBNITZ CONTRASTED WITH TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 96 
 
 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
THE COSMIC PILGRIMAGE FROM UN-SELF-CONSCIOUS GODSPARK TO FULLY 
 
SELF-CONSCIOUS GOD ......... 108 
 
CHAPTER XII 
PSYCHOLOGY : ACCORDING TO THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. IMMORTALITY 
 
is CONDITIONAL : THE Loss OF THE SOUL . . . . .120 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. SELF, EGO, AND SOUL : " I AM " AND " I 
 
AM I " 127 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
" HEAVENS " AND " HELLS " : TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY, 
 
AND OF THE EXOTERIC RELIGIONS . . . . . J 37 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE " ABSOLUTE ". GENERALIZED PLAN OF EVOLUTION 
 
ON ALL PLANES. SEVEN KEYS TO WISDOM AND FUTURE INITIATIONS 147 
 
 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
PACK 
 
ATMA-VIDYA : How THE ONE BECOMES THE MANY. " LOST SOULS " AND 
" SOULLESS BEINGS ". MAN, A COMPOSITE BEING : No ABIDING 
PRINCIPLE IN MAN 159 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
THE SILENT WATCHER 178 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
THE SPIRITUAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF ADEPTS. THE " WONDROUS- 
BEING ", THE BUDDHAS, NlRMANAKAYAS, DHYAN-CHOHANS . . IQI 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
THE SEVEN JEWELS AND THE SEVEN STAGES OF INITIATION . .213 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
T^E HIGHER ASPECT OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. INITIATION AND THE 
MYSTERIES : AVATARAS, BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS, THEIR 
RELATION TO GLOBES, ROUNDS, AND RACES 230 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
INITIATIONS AND THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. ROOT-RACES AND THEIR SUB- 
DIVISIONS. GLOBE-ROUNDS. PLANETARY ROUNDS. SOLAR KALPAS : 
How CALCULATED. RACIAL CATACLYSMS 243 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
THE HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION. THE INCARNATION OF THE MANASAPUTRAS 254 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
THE SUN AND THE PLANETS : THEIR ROLE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY DRAMA 271 
 
 
 
PART II 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
THE TEN STAGES OF BEING ACCORDING TO THE SYRIAN SYSTEM. ESOTERIC 
 
METHOD OF TEACHING : PARADOXES : INTUITION . . .285 
 
 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
FAOB 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF SEPTENARY NATURE. CORRESPONDENCES : GLOBES, 
ELEMENTS, HUMAN PRINCIPLES. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS OF THE 
ANCIENTS. RACIAL TIME-PERIODS AND CATASTROPHES . . . 295 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
THE MICROCOSM, A MIRROR OF THE MACROCOSM. ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLES. 
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE ONE LIFE. RELATIVITY : A FUNDAMENTAL 
CONCEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM 305 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
THE Two FUNDAMENTAL KOSMICAL HIERARCHIES : MATTER AND SPIRIT- 
CONSCIOUSNESS. CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS. GODS-MONADS-ATOMS . 312 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
THE ADVENTURE OF AN ATOM. LAYA-CENTERS : SUN, COMETS, AND 
 
PLANETS : SOUL AND MONAD. THE KEYNOTE OF OCCULTISM . 321 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
SPACE : THE BOUNDLESS ALL. INFILLED WITH INTERLOCKING, INTER- 
PENETRATING UNIVERSES. ONE ACTION, ONE HIERARCHICAL IN- 
TELLIGENCE, ONE COURSE OF OPERATION THROUGHOUT NATURE : 
ONE ORGANISM, ONE UNIVERSAL LIFE 328 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
THE INTERRELATION OF GODS, MONADS, ATOMS A KEY TO THE DOCTRINE 
OF EVOLUTION. SUCCESSIVE EMANATIONS : SHEATHS. HIGHER 
BEINGS EMANATING AND CLOTHING THEMSELVES IN HOSTS OF LOWER 
, BEINGS. MORALITY BASED ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE . 336 
 
' CHAPTER XXXI 
 
THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS. THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL LAW THROUGH- 
OUT LIFE AND BEING : AN ENDLESS LADDER OF PROGRESS. ANA- 
LOGICAL PROCESSES OF COSMICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 
THE RIVER OF LIFE 344 
 
 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
PAGE 
 
OUT OF THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE. FROM THE VISIBLE INTO THE 
 
INVISIBLE. THE MAGNUM OPUS 356 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
THE LIFE- WAVE AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS. THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 
 
AS TAUGHT BY THE STOICS 365 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
THE SPACES OF SPACE. THE SECRET DOCTRINE, A UNIFIER : UNIVERSAL 
KEYS. DOCTRINES OF " THE VOID " AND OF " THE FULLNESS " 
CONTRASTED 373 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
OCCULTISM AND THE MYSTERY-SCHOOLS. SEVEN DEGREES OF INITIATION : 
MAN BECOMES A GOD. SEVEN KOSMIC PLANES : OUR PLANETARY 
CHAIN OF SEVEN GLOBES ON THE FOUR LOWER PLANES : THE PASSAGE 
OF THE LIFE- WAVE THERETHROUGH 385 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
INTERPENETRATING SPHERES OF BEING. LOKAS AND TALAS : BI-POLAR 
COSMICAL PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS. THE " HERESY OF SEPARATE- 
NESS " ........... 396 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
THE FRAME- WORK OF THE KOSMOS. LOKAS AND TALAS : PRINCIPLES 
AND ELEMENTS : WORLDS NOT STATES MERELY. SPACE THE 
ULTIMATE REALITY 409 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
DEGENERATION AND CLOSING OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE MYSTERIES. NEO- 
PYTHAGOREAN AND NEO-PLATONIC SYSTEMS : MAIN SOURCES OF 
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC TEACHINGS : 
SYMBOLISM , 417 
 
 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
THEOSOPHY AND OCCULTISM. OCCULTISM : THE QUINTESSENCE OF TRUTH, 
REALITY : A COMPLETE WHOLE. OCCULTISM AND MORAL RESPONSI- 
BILITY. OUR SOLAR SYSTEM: A KOSMIC ATOM : " EGG OF BRAHMA " 429 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
DEFINITIONS OF DEITY : ATHEISM : PANTHEISM. Is THERE A SUPREME 
PERSONAL GOD ? KOSMIC ARCHITECTS AND BUILDERS. REALLY TO 
KNOW, ONE MUST BECOME 435 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES. THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM AND 
 
OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS : WHY " SACRED " ? 447 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES IN ITS FOUR ASPECTS. THE SEVEN SACRED 
PLANETS AND THEIR RECTORS : THEIR RELATION TO OUR EARTH- 
CHAIN. THE CIRCULATIONS OF THE KOSMOS : OUTER ROUNDS AND 
INNER ROUNDS : SISHTAS. ONE UNIVERSAL BASIC LAW : As ABOVE, 
so BELOW. THE " EYE " AND THE " HEART " DOCTRINES . . 458 
 
CHAPTER XLIII 
 
ANALOGY : THE LIFE OF MAN AND THE LIFE OF A PLANETARY CHAIN. 
OCCULTISM AND ETHICS : " LIVE THE LIFE IF THOU WOULDST KNOW 
THE DOCTRINE " 471 
 
CHAPTER XLIV 
 
PRINCIPLES OF THOUGHT AND STUDY : CAN OCCULTISM BE TAUGHT ? 
ANCIENT ASTROLOGY A TRUE SCIENCE. OUR EARTH-CHAIN OF GLOBES, 
THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS, AND THE TWELVE ZODIACAL SIGNS. 
LIFE- ATOMS : THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF THE UNIVERSE . .481 
 
CHAPTER XLV 
 
PHYSIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PNEUMATOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE. TEN 
AND TWELVE PLANES OF THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM : INTERMEDI- 
ATE CRITICAL PLANES. ALL MANIFESTED BEING A GRADED CONTINUUM 
OF INTERRELATED, INTERLOCKED HIERARCHIES : EACH WITH ITS 
OWN BEGINNING AND END. SISHTAS AND THE "SURPLUS OF LIF*" 496 
 
 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
CHAPTER XLVI 
 
PAGE 
 
THE CHELA-LIFE. SEVEN AND TEN LIFE- WAVES : THE COURSE OF THE 
MONADS AROUND THE SEVEN GLOBES : LAWS OF " ACCELERATION " 
ON THE DOWNWARD AND OF " RETARDATION " ON THE UPWARD ARC. 
FIFTH AJJD SIXTH ROUNDERS. THE SACRED " WORD " . . .514 
 
CHAPTER XLVII 
TEACHER AND PUPIL. REQUISITES OF CHELASHIP .... 527 
 
CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSE. THE WAY TO PEACE, BLISS, UNDERSTAND- 
ING, is WITHIN. THE GREAT QUEST : KNOW THYSELF : THE WHOLE 
SECRET OF INITIATION. OUR RESPONSIBILITY : ETHICAL VALUES AND 
THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE : HARMONY 535 
 
 
 
PART I 
 
 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF 
f HE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 
 
PART I 
 
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CHAPTER I
 
THE SELF : MAN'S INMOST LINK WITH THE UNUTTERABLE. THE 
ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY : TAUGHT IN ALL THE ANCIENT 
RELIGIONS. 
 
. . . neither the collective Host (Demiurgos) , nor any of the working powers 
individually, are proper subjects for divine honors or worship. All are entitled 
to the grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever 
striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of his 
ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incog- 
nizable Kdrana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine 
and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart invisible, intan- 
gible, unmentioned, save through " the still small voice " of our spiritual con- 
sciousness. Those who worship before it ought to do so in the silence and the 
sanctified solitude of their Souls ; making their spirit the sole mediator between 
them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their 
sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 280. 
 
FELLOW-STUDENTS of the Ancient Wisdom : 
We stand on holy ground. The Leader's call seems like 
the clarion voice of the Law, of the Ancient Wisdom, which, 
echoing down the ages, rings in our hearts at a moment 
like this, and seems to tell us in accents that we may interpret if 
we have the heart and the soul so to do : " Fideles, surswn cor da : 
Up hearts, ye faithful ones ! " And may we not answer in the 
same spirit which the Leader has shown, has manifested to us 
this evening : " Yea, verily, in the name of Truth, we lift our 
hearts to the shining god within each one of us " ? 
 
We are here this evening in the presence of the agent and the 
representative of the Exalted Men who form the Guardian-Body 
of the Esoteric Philosophy. We must feel called. The hour is a 
solemn one. It is time for us to rise above personality and, face 
to face with ourselves, search our hearts, and endeavor so to 
speak the words which we have learned that, as the Teacher has 
told us, others who have had less chance than ourselves may in 
their turn pass on these truths of the inner life. 
 
In our last two meetings we studied the Three Fundamental 
 
 
 
2 

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Postulates or Principles in H. P. Blavatsky's wonderful* work, 
The Secret Doctrine. I remember in particular the Teacher's words 
in comment after the meeting had ended. They struck me as very 
beautiful, profoundly suggestive. She said : 
 
" Thinking towards the unthinkable is a wonderful, spiritual- 
izing force ; one cannot think toward it without a dispcjsition 
either to think more or feel more without opening up the inner 
consciousness of man. And when that inner consciousness is 
awakened, the soul finds itself closer to the infinite laws, closer 
to THAT, or that Great Center that no words can express." 
 
We have endeavored to reach two planes, which we have to 
compare, to reach, by the appeal to the Inmost within ourselves. 
We are taught that there exists in man a link with the Unutter- 
able, a cord, a communication, that extends from It to the inner 
consciousness ; and that link such is the teaching as it has 
come down to us is the very Heart of Being. It arises in that 
super-sensory Principle, that Unutterable Mystery which H. P. 
Blavatsky defines in the first of the Three Fundamental Pro- 
positions as above human mind. Becoming one with that link, 
we can transcend the powers of ordinary human intellect, and 
reach (even if it be by striving out, upward, towards) that Uc- 
utterable, which is though it is beyond human power to express 
it in words, or beyond human thought which is, we know, the 
Concealed of the Concealed, the Life of Life, Truth of Truth, 
the ALL. 
 
Here is the thought, it seems to me, which illustrates so well 
the Teacher's words ; striving toward this inwards, towards the 
Inmost, we can attain to some conception, if not understanding, 
of the Infinite Principle of all that is. From It, in the course of 
endless duration, there spring into manifestation so the teaching 
runs at the end of the great universal or cosmic Pralaya, the 
beginnings of things. These beginnings eventuate in the forms 
of life and being that H. P. Blavatsky describes in the Second 
and Third Fundamental Propositions. 
 
This inmost link with the Unutterable was called in ancient 
India by the term SELF, which has been often mistranslated 
' Soul '. The Sanskrit word is Atman, and applies, in psychology, 
to the human entity. The upper end of the link, so to speak, to 
use human terms, was called Paramatman, or the ' Self Beyond ', 
the permanent SELF words which describe neatly and clearly 
to those who have studied this wonderful philosophy, somewhat 
of the nature and essence of the thing which man is, and the 
source from which, in that beginningless and endless duration, he 
sprang. Child of earth and child of heaven, he contains both in 
himself. 
 
We pass now from considering the First Proposition to the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 3
 
Secorfd and the Third. And in order that we may understand 
what we mean when we use certain words, it will be useful to 
illustrate our usages of such words. Let us take up the very 
interesting and remarkably well translated book entitled The 
Song Celestial, the work of Sir Edwin Arnold. It is a translation 
into ipngHsh verse of the Bhagavad-Gitd. That work is an episode 
or an interlude in the Mahdbhdmta, the greater of the two great 
Hindti epics. It is found in the sixth book of the Mahdbhdrata, 
i.e., the ' Great Bharata ' ; and in the style of the Hindti writings 
it comprises a dissertation on religious, philosophical, and mystical 
subjects. It has been several times translated, more or less 
successfully. Possibly the best has been that of our second 
Teacher, William Quan Judge. His work is a recension, rather, 
of a translation by Wilkins, modified by Cockburn, and in turn 
corrected, according to the Esoteric Philosophy, by Mr. Judge. 
Sir Edwin's Song Celestial, in book the second, has the following : 
 
... The soul which is not moved, 
 
The soul that with a strong and constant calm 
 
Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently, 
 
Lives in the life undying ! That which is 
 
Can never cease to be ; that which is not 
 
Will not exist. To see this truth of both 
 
Is theirs who part essence from accident, 
 
Substance from shadow. Indestructible, 
 
Learn thou ! the Life is, spreading life through all ; 
 
It cannot anywhere, by any means, 
 
Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed. 
 
But for these fleeting frames which it informs 
 
With spirit deathless, endless, infinite, 
 
They perish. .... 
 
Never the spirit was born ; the spirit shall cease to be never ; 
 
Never was time it was not ; End and Beginning are dreams ! 
 
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever ; 
 
Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems ! 
 
Now these words are exquisitely beautiful. They nevertheless 
contain a mistranslation, a misrendering of the text of this 
wonderful little work. In the first place, Sir Edwin translates 
the Sanskrit word TAT, which we explained in our last study, 
first by the word soul and next by the word spirit. Of course, 
analogically, it has a reference to the Soul and the Spirit of Man ; 
but the Sanskrit of it does not point particularly to the Soul of 
Man. I will read a translation in prose, of these same verses, 
made with no attempt at poetic thought, no attempt to use 
beautiful language, but simply to express the thought : 
 
The man whom these do not lead astray, Bull among men ! who 
is the same in pain and pleasure, and of steady soul, he partakes of 
immortality. 
 
 
 
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There is no existence for the unreal ; there is no non-existence for 
the Real. Moreover, the ultimate characteristic of both these is seen 
by those who perceive true principles. 
 
Know THAT to be indestructible by which this whole Universe was 
woven. 
 
The Sanskrit word for That is TAT ; and by that word the 
Vedic Sages described this Unutterable Principle, from which all 
sprang. The figure is that of the weaving of a web. 
 
The destruction of this Imperishable, none is able to bring about. 
 
These mortal bodies are said to be of the imbodied Eternal, Inde- 
structible, Immeasurable One. . . . 
 
He who knows It as the slayer, and he who thinks It to be the slain : 
both of them understand not. It slays not, nor is it slain. 
 
It is not born, nor does it ever die ; It was not produced, nor shall 
it ever be produced. 
 
It is unborn, constant, everlasting, primeval. It is unhurt when 
the body is slain. 
 
The application that the writer in the Bhagavad-Gitd makes, 
is to the link which we have spoken of, the deathless, undying 
principle within us ; and he describes it by the word THAT, and 
contrasts it with the manifested Universe, which, following t^e 
Ancient Teachings of India, was invariably spoken of as THIS : 
the Sanskrit word is ID AM. 
 
The Sages of Olden Times left on record the inner teaching of 
the religions of the peoples among whom they lived. This inner 
teaching was the Esoteric Philosophy, the Theosophy of the 
period. In Hindusthan this Theosophy is found in the Upanishads, 
a part of the Vedic literary cycle. The word itself implies ' Secret 
Doctrine ' or ' Secret Teachings '. From the Upanishads and 
from other parts of the wonderful Vedic literature, the ancient 
sages of India produced what is called to-day the Ved&nta a com- 
pound Sanskrit word meaning ' the End (or Completion) of the 
Veda ', that is to say, instruction in the final and most perfect 
exposition of the meaning of the Vedic tenets. 
 
In Ancient Greece there were various Schools and various 
Mysteries ; and the Theosophy of Ancient Greece was held very 
secret ; it was taught in the Mysteries and it was taught by 
different teachers to select bodies of their disciples. One of such 
great teachers was Pythagoras ; another was Plato ; and this 
Theosophy was more or less clearly outlined and imbodied, after 
the fall of the so-called Pagan religions, in what is to-day called 
the Neo-Platonic philosophy. It represents actually the inner 
teachings of Pythagoras, Plato, and the inner sense of those 
mystical doctrines which passed current in Greece under the name 
of the Orphic poems. 
 
Of the Theosophy of Egypt we have but scanty remainings 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 5
 
such as exist in what is called ' The Book of the Dead '. Of the 
Theosophy of ancient America, of the Incan, the Mayan, empires 
we have next to nothing. The Theosophy of ancient Europe has 
passed away. All that remains to us is a certain number of 
mystical writings such as the Scandinavian Eddas, and the 
Germanic* books, which are represented, for instance, in the 
Sagas found written in the old High German and in the Anglo- 
Saxon tongues. 
 
A study which anyone can make of the doctrines contained in 
'the Upanishads, in ' The Book of the Dead ', in the Neo-Platonic 
philosophy, in the Scandinavian Eddas, and elsewhere, shows 
that they had one common basis, one foundation, one common 
truth. Various men in various ages at various times taught the 
same truth, using different words and different tropes, different 
figures, different metaphors ; but underneath always was the 
Ancient Doctrine, the Secret Wisdom. 
 
The Theosophy of the Jews was imbodied in what was later 
called the Qabbalah, from a Hebrew word meaning ' to receive ' ; 
that is to say, it was the traditional doctrine handed down, or 
received (according to the statements of the Qabbalah itself) 
through the prophets and the sages of Jewry ; and was said to 
have been first taught by " God Almighty to a select company of 
angels in Heaven ". 
 
We must understand, when we approach the teachings of the 
Ancient Wisdom, that the ancient teachers spoke and thought 
and taught anthropocentrically ; that is, that they all insisted on 
following the psychological laws of the human mind, and there- 
fore taught in human figures of speech, oft using quaint metaphors, 
very odd, and yet so instructive as figures of speech. How wise 
that was ! because they were able to carry on the Ancient Teach- 
ings, and did so in such fashion that least of all did this anthropo- 
centric system encourage the dogmatic rulings that have most 
truly blasted all that was best in the teachings of the Christian 
Church. These tropes, these metaphors, were so quaint that the 
mind understood almost instantly that they were but the vehicle 
imbodying the Truth. Let us remember this, and our work 
becomes immensely more easy. 
 
Now let us take the Qabbalah as a sample of the manner in 
which one Theosophy the Jewish approaches the mystery of 
how the Unmanifest produces the Manifest, how from that which 
is endless and beginningless duration, sprang forth matter, space 
in the sense of material extension, and time. But first let me 
quote from another Sanskrit work, one of the Upanishads, the 
Kena-Upanishad. Speaking of this Unutterable Mystery, it says : 
 
The eye reacheth it not, language reacheth it not, nor does thought 
 
 
 
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reach to it at all ; verily, we know not nor can we say how onff should 
teach it ; it is different from the known, it is beyond the unknown. 
Thus have we heard from the men of olden times, for they taught it 
to us. 
 
The great Sankaracharya, perhaps the most famous of Indian 
commentators on the Upanishads and the marvelously beautiful 
system of philosophy drawn from them called the Veddnta, says, 
commenting on the Aitareya-Upanishad : 
 
There is the One, sole, alone, apart from all duality, in which there 
appear not the multitudinous illusory presentments of unreal bodies 
and conditions of this universe of merely apparent reality ; passion- 
less, unmoving, pure, in utter peace ; knowable only by the lack of 
every adjective epithet ; unreachable by word or by thought. 
 
The Qabbalah is the traditionary teaching of the sages among 
the Jews. It is a wonderful teaching ; it contains in outline or in 
epitome every fundamental tenet or teaching that our own Secret 
Doctrine contains. The teachings of the Qabbalah are often 
couched in very quaint and sometimes amusing language ; some- 
times its language rises to the height of sublimity. What does the 
Z6har t the second of the great books that remain of the Jewish 
Qabbalah (the word ' Zohar ' itself meaning ' Splendor '), have to 
say of the manner in which the Jewish religious books should be 
studied ? It says this (iii, 152 a) : 
 
Woe be to the son of man who says that the Torah [the Hebrew 
Bible, especially the Pentateuch, or rather the first four books of the 
Bible excluding Deuteronomy, the fifth] contains common sayings 
and ordinary narratives. If this were the case we might in the present 
day compose a code of doctrines from profane writings which would 
excite greater respect. If the Law contains ordinary matter, then there 
are nobler sentiments in profane codes. Let us go and make a selection 
from them and we shall be able to compile a far superior code. No ! 
Every word of the Law has a sublime sense and a heavenly mystery. 
... As the spiritual angels had to put on earthly garments when 
they descended to this earth, and as they could neither have remained 
nor be understood on the earth without putting on such a garment, 
so it is with the Law. When it descended on earth, the Law had to 
put on an earthly garment, in order to be understood by us, and the 
narratives are its garment. . . . Those who have understanding do 
not look at the garment but at the body [the esoteric meaning] beneath ; 
whilst the wisest, the servants of the heavenly King, those who dwell 
on Mount Sinai, look at nothing but the soul, 
 
i.e., at the ultimate Secret Doctrine or sacred wisdom hid under 
the ' body ', under the exoteric narratives or stories of the Bible. 
 
In these days, when Modernists and Fundamentalists quarrel 
quarrel unnecessarily, quarrel about exoteric superficialities, 
quarrel about things which arise out of the egoism of men, quarrel 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 7
 
about Ihe dogmatic teachings of the Christian Church, every one 
of them probably based on ancient Pagan Esoteric Philosophy 
it is an immense pity that they do not know and understand that 
this teaching of the Qabbalah as expressed in the Zohar is a 
true one ; it is the teaching of our three Leaders and Teachers ; 
for under every garment is the life. As Jesus taught in parables, 
so the Bible was written in tropes, in figures of speech, in 
metaphors. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER II
 
WHERE IS REALITY ? TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN. MAN'S COMPOSITE 
NATURE ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS : THREEFOLD, 
FOURFOLD, FIVEFOLD, OR SEVENFOLD. 
 
The fundamental Law in that system [i.e., the Esoteric Philosophy], the central 
point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon 
which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUB- 
STANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause. 
 
..." Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led, 
From cause to cause to nature's secret head, 
And found that one first Principle must be . . ." 
 
It is called " Substance-Principle," for it becomes " substance " on the plane 
of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a " principle " in the 
beginningless and endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE. It is the omni- 
present Reality : impersonal, because it contains all and everything. Its 
impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System. It is latent in every 
atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 273. 
 
It is the True. It is the Self, and thou art It. 
 
Chhdndogya- Upanishad. 
 
The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao ; the name 
which can be uttered is not its eternal name. Without a name, it is the Beginning 
of Heaven and Earth ; with a name, it is the Mother of all things. Only one 
who is eternally free from earthly passions can apprehend its spiritual essence ; 
he who is ever clogged by passions can see no more than its outer form. These 
two things, the spiritual and the material, though we call them by different 
names, in their origin are one and the same. This sameness is a mystery the 
mystery of mysteries. It is the gate of all spirituality. 
 
The Sayings of Lao Tzti (LIONEL GILES, Trans.). 
 
 
 
W 
 
 
 
E open Volume I of H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine 
this evening at page 13, and we read the second 
paragraph, which is as follows : 
 
 
 
The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat only 
of the Cosmogony of our own planetary System and what is visible 
around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to 
the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they 
could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and there 
seem to be very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are 
allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say 
openly that not even the highest Dhy&ni-Chohans have ever pene- 
trated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the 
milliards of Solar systems from the " Central Sun/ 1 as it is called. 
Therefore, that which is given relates only to our visible Kosmos, 
after a " Night of Brahma/' 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 9
 
We*choose this as the general text of our study this even- 
ing. Following the Teacher's instructions, as we understand 
them, it seems not only appropriate but necessary to open our 
study of the more secret matters of which The Secret Doctrine 
treats, by asking in what manner or by what method do we obtain 
an understanding and a realization of these doctrines ? Do they 
come to us as dogmatic teachings, or are they derived, following 
the definition that Webster gives of Theosophy in his dictionary, 
by inner spiritual communion with ' God ' ? There is something 
in Webster's definition which is true. The Theosophist does 
believe that he has within himself the faculty of approaching 
divine things, of raising the inner man so that he can thereby 
obtain a more accurate mental representation of things as they 
are, or of Reality. 
 
But on the other hand, if everyone did this, without proper and 
capable guidance and leading and teaching, extreme vanity and 
human conceit as well as many other forces in the human economy, 
would inevitably lead to an immense diversity of opinions and 
teachings and doctrines, each man believing that he had the 
truth and he only, and hence that those who followed him and 
preached his views should form with him a special ' church ' or 
' sect ' of their own. The words themselves would probably be 
avoided, but it would amount to that. 
 
Therefore, here we find the use, the benefit, the appositeness, of 
the Theosophical doctrines which our Teachers have given to us, 
to the effect that these teachings have come down to us from 
immemorial antiquity transmitted from one Teacher to another 
and that originally they were communicated to the nascent 
human race, when once it became self-conscious, by Beings from 
a higher sphere Beings who themselves were of divine origin ; 
and further, that this communication or emanation of their 
spiritual and higher intellectual selves into us, gave us our own 
higher principles. For the Teachers have told us that these 
doctrines have been checked or proved age after age, generation 
after generation, by innumerable spiritual seers, to use Helena 
Petrovna Blavatsky's own words checked in every respect, 
checked as to fact, checked as to origin, checked as to operation 
on the human mind. 
 
Now then, as the older students of this School many of whom 
are here present know well, the faculties by which man can 
attain a knowledge of truth, of the Real, can be called upon or 
evoked at any moment in any place, provided the right conditions 
are made, so that the striving soul may thus reach successfully 
upward or inward, and know. Sometimes, in the most simple 
teachings are found the most divine truths. And why ? Because 
the simple teachings are the fundamental ones. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Consider for a moment, therefore, the seven principles 8f man, 
in their connexion with the seven principles of the universe. The 
seven principles of man are a likeness or copy of the seven cosmic 
principles. They are actually the offspring of the seven cosmic 
principles, limited in their action in us by the workings of the 
Law of Karman, but running in their origin back "into That 
which is beyond : into that which is the Essence of the universe 
or the Universal ; in, beyond, within, to the Unmanifest, to the 
Unmanifestable, to that first Principle which Helena Petrovna 
Blavatsky enunciates as the leading thought of the Wisdom- 
Philosophy of The Secret Doctrine. 
 
These principles of man are reckoned as seven in the philosophy 
by which the human, spiritual, and psychical economy has been 
explained to us in the present age. In other ages these principles, 
or parts, of man were differently reckoned the Christian reckons 
them as Body, Soul, and Spirit, and does not know the difference 
between the soul and the spirit : he thinks there must be a 
difference but does not know what it is ; and many say that the 
soul and spirit are the same. 
 
Some of the Indian thinkers divided man into a basic fourfold 
entity, others into a fivefold. The Jewish philosophy, as found in 
the Qabbalah which is the esoteric tradition of the Jews, teaches 
that man is divided into four parts : 
 
1. The highest and most spiritual of all, that principle or art 
which is to us a mere breath of being, they called Neshdmdh. 
 
2. The second principle was called Ruahh or Spiritual Soul, 
spelled sometimes Ruach according to another method of trans- 
literation. 
 
3. The Astral Soul (or Vital Soul) was called Nefesh, the third 
next lower, which man has in common with the brutes. 
 
4. Then comes the Guf or physical vehicle, the house in which 
all these others dwell. 
 
Over all, and higher than all, higher than the Neshdmdh 
which is not an emanation of this Highest, not a creation, not an 
evolution, but of which it was the production in a sense which we 
shall later have to explain there is the Ineffable, the Boundless, 
called Ain Suf. 
 
The Sanskrit terms which have been given by our Teachers to 
the seven principles of man in our own Theosophical Philosophy, 
are as follows, and we can get much help from explaining the 
original Sanskrit meanings of them, and illustrating the sense in 
which those words were used, and why they were chosen. 
 
I. Sthula means coarse, gross, not refined, heavy, bulky, fat in 
the sense of bigness. Sartra comes from a root which can best be 
translated by saying that it is that which is easily dissolved, easily 
worn away ; the idea being something transitory, foam-like, full 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY ri
 
of holes, as it were. Note the meaning hid in this : it is very im- 
portant. 
 
2. The second principle let us call the Linga-Sartra. Linga is 
a Sanskrit word which means characteristic mark ; hence model, 
pattern. It, as we all know, forms the model or pattern on which 
the physical body is built this physical body, composed mostly 
of porosity, if the expression be pardoned ; the most unreal thing 
we know, full of holes, foamy as it were. We will revert to this 
thought later. 
 
3. The third principle, commonly called the Life-Principle, is 
Prdna. Now this word is used here by our Philosophy in a general 
sense. There are, as a matter of fact, a number of life-currents, 
vital fluids. They have several names. One system gives the 
number as three ; another as five, which is the commonly accepted 
number ; another as seven ; another twelve, as is found in some 
Upanishads ; and one old writer even gives them as thirteen. 
 
4. Then there is the Kama-principle ; the word kdma means 
desire. It is the driving or impelling force in the human economy ; 
colorless, neither good nor bad, only such as the mind and soul 
direct its use. 
 
5. Then comes Manas ; the Sanskrit root of this word means to 
think, to cogitate, to reflect mental activity, in short. 
 
6. Then comes Buddhi, or the Spiritual Soul, the vehicle or 
carrier of the highest principle of all, the Atman. Now Buddhi 
comes from a Sanskrit root budh. This root is commonly trans- 
lated, to enlighten, but a better translation is to awaken and, hence, 
to understand ; Buddha, the past participle of this root is applied 
to one who is spiritually awakened, no longer living a living death, 
but awakened to the spiritual influence from within or from 
' above ' 9 Buddhi is the principle in us which gives us spiritual 
consciousness, and is the^ vehicle of the most high part of man. 
This highest part is the Atman. 
 
7. This principle (Atman) is a universal one ; but during in- 
carnations its lowest parts, if we can so express it, take on attri- 
butes, because it is linked with the Buddhi as the Buddhi is 
linked with the Manas, as the Manas is linked to the Kama, and 
so on down the scale. 
 
Atman is also sometimes used of the Universal Self or Spirit 
which is called in the Sanskrit writings Brahman (neuter), and the 
Brahman or Universal Spirit is also called the Paramatman, a 
compound Sanskrit term meaning the highest or most universal 
Atman. The root of Atman is hardly known. Its origin is un- 
certain, but the general meaning is that of self. 
 
Beyond Brahman is the Para-Brahman. Para is a Sanskrit 
word meaning beyond. Note the deep philosophical meaning of 
this; there is no attempt here to limit the Illimitable, the 
 
 
 
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Ineffable, by adjectives ; it simply means beyond the Br&hman. 
In the Sanskrit Vedas and in the works deriving therefrom and 
belonging to the Vedic literary cycle, this beyond is called That, 
as this world of manifestation is called This. Other very expres- 
sive terms are Sat, the Real ; and A sat, the Unreal or the mani- 
fested universe ; in another sense Asat means ' not Sat 4 ', i.e., even 
beyond (higher than) Sat. 
 
Now this Para-Brahman is intimately connected with Mula- 
prakriti a word we shall explain in a moment. Their interaction 
and intermingling cause the first nebulous thrilling, if the words 
will pass, of the Universal Life when spiritual desire first arose 
in it in the beginnings of things. Such is the old teaching, employ- 
ing of necessity the old anthropocentric tropes, clearly understood 
to be only human metaphors, human similes ; for the conceptions 
of the Seers of ancient times, their teachings, their doctrines, had 
to be told in human language to the human mind. 
 
Now then, a man can reach inward, going ' upward ' step by 
step, climbing higher as his spiritual force and power wax greater 
and more subtil, until he reaches beyond his normal faculties, 
and steps beyond the ' Ring Pass Not ', as Helena Petrovna Blavat- 
sky calls it in her Secret Doctrine. Where and what is this ' Ring 
Pass Not ' ? It is, at any period of man's consciousness, the 
utmost reach that his spirit can attain. There he stops, and looks 
into the Beyond into the Unmanifested from which we came. 
The Unmanifest is in us ; it is the Inmost of the inmost in our 
souls, in our spirits, in our essential beings. We can reach towards 
it. We can actually reach it never. 
 
Now, where is Reality ? Is the Real, is the True, to be found in 
these lower vestures of materiality ? Or is it to be found in the 
State of Being from which everything came ? 
 
The ancient Stoics in their really wonderful philosophy taught, 
and the same teaching originated in the esoteric philosophy of 
Hellas or Greece as found later in the Neo-Platonic teachings 
these ancient Stoics taught that Truth can be known ; that the 
most real thing, the greatest thing, was to be found in ever- 
receding vistas, as the Spirit of man strived inward, ^nd beyond, 
veil after veil falling away as the Wise Man (their technical term) 
advances in the evolution of his soul. They taught that the 
material universe was illusory precisely as our Teachers tell us of 
the Maya ; and the Stoic understood (and this teaching is our 
own) that this apparently dense, gross, heavy, material universe 
is phenomenally unreal, mostly built up of holes, so to say a 
teaching which is beginning to be re-echoed even to-day in the 
writings and thoughts of the more intuitional of our scientists. 
 
The Stoics taught that the ether was denser than the most dense 
material thing, fuller than the most full material thing using 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 13
 
humar^ words, of course. To us, with our human eyes, trained 
only to see objects of illusion, it appears to be the most diaphanous, 
the thinnest, the most ethereal. What was the Reality, the Real, 
behind this All ? The real thing ? They said it was God, Life of 
Life, Truth of Truth, Root of Matter, Root of Soul, Root of Spirit. 
When the Stoic was asked : What is God ? he nobly answered l 
What is God not ? 
 
Turning now to the Ancient Wisdom of Hindusthan, to the 
Ufianishads, let us take from the Chhdndogya-Upanishad, mainly 
in the sixth lecture, a conversation between a father and his son. 
Hearken to the Ancient Wisdom, going back far beyond the time 
when the ancient Brahmanic teachings and the Brahmanas became 
what they are today to the time when real men taught real 
things. The son asks : 
 
" If a man who has slept in his own house, rises and goes to another 
village, he knows that he has come from his own house. Why then do 
people not know that they have come from the Sat ? " [A Sanskrit 
word meaning the Real, the Ineffable of which we have spoken.] 
 
And the father teaches his son as follows : 
 
" These rivers, my son, run, the eastern towards the east, the 
western towards the west. They go from sea to sea. They become 
indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea, do not 
know, I am this or that river, 
 
" In the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have 
come from the True [that is the Real] know not that they have come 
from the True [on account of the Maya], Whatever these creatures 
are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge, 
or a gnat, or a mosquito, that they become again and again." 
 
Now listen : 
 
" That which is that subtil essence, in it all that exists has its self. 
It is the True, It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it." " Please, 
Sir, inform me still more," said the son. " Be it so, my child," the 
father replied. 
 
Now the son is supposed to ask, " How is it that living beings, 
when in sleep or death they are merged again in the Sat [that is, 
the Real], are not destroyed ? Waves, foam, and bubbles arise 
from the water, and when they merge again in the water, they are 
gone/' 
 
" If someone were to strike at the root of this large tree, here," 
says the father, " it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its 
stem, it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its top, it would 
bleed, but live. Pervaded by the living Self that tree stands firm, 
drinking in its nourishment and rejoicing ; 
 
 
 
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? But if the life (the living Self) leaves one of its branches, that 
branch withers ; if it leaves a second, that branch withers ; if it 
leaves a third, that branch withers. If it leaves the whole tree, the 
whole tree withers. In exactly the same manner, my son, know this." 
Thus he spoke : 
 
" This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living self has left 
it ; the living Self dies not. That which is that subtil essence, in it 
all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, 
O Svetaketu, art it." 
 
" Please, Sir, inform me still more," said the son. " Be it so, my 
child I " the father replied. " Fetch me from thence a fruit of the 
Nyagrodha tree." " Here is one, Sir." " Break it." " It is broken, 
Sir." " What do you see there ? " " These seeds, almost infinitesimal." 
" Break one of them." " It is broken, Sir." " What do you see there ? " 
" Not anything, Sir." The father said : " My son, that subtil essence 
which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great 
Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe it, my son. That which is the subtil 
essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, 
and thou, Svetaketu, art it." " Please, Sir, inform me still more," 
said the son. " Be it so, my child," the father replied. 
 
" Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning." 
The son did as he was commanded. The father said to him : " Bring 
me the salt, which you placed in the water last night." The son having 
looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted. The father, 
said : " Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it ? " The 
son replied : " It is salt." " Taste it from the middle. How is it ? " 
The son replied : "It is salt." " Taste it from the bottom, how is 
it ? " The son replied : " It is salt." The father said : " Throw it 
away and then wait on me." He did so ; but salt exists for ever. 
Then the father said : " Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not 
perceive the True [Sat], my son ; but there indeed it is. 
 
" That which is the subtil essence [that is, the saltiness of the salt], 
in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, 
O Svetaketu, art it." " Please Sir, inform me still more," said the 
son. " Be it so, my child," the father replied. (Translation by Max 
Miiller). 
 
Let us turn to another part of this Upanishad, to the eighth 
lecture. And we read as follows : " Harih, Om." Hari is the 
name of several Deities of Siva, and Vishnu, but here, appar- 
ently, it is used for Siva, which, as our first Teacher has taught 
us, is pre-eminently the divine protector of the mystic occultist, 
' Om ' is a word considered very holy in the Brahmanical litera- 
ture. It is a syllable of invocation, and its general usage, as 
elucidated in the literature treating of it, which is rather volumin- 
ous, for this word ' Om ' has attained to almost divinity, is that 
it should never be uttered aloud, or in the presence of an out- 
sider, a foreigner, or a non-Initiate, but it should be uttered in 
the silence of one's heart, in the intimacy of one's inner closet. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 15
 
 
 
We a^ have reason to believe, however, that it was uttered, and 
uttered aloud in a monotone by the disciples in the presence of 
their Teacher. This word is always placed at the beginning of 
any scripture that is considered of unusual sanctity. 
 
The teaching is, that prolonging the uttering of this word, both 
of the and the Af, with the mouth closed (precisely as the 
Teacher has taught us to do it in this School), it re-echoes in and 
arouses vibration in the skull, and affects, if the aspirations be 
pure, the different nervous centers of the body for great good. 
 
The Brahmanas say that it is an unholy thing to utter this 
word in any place which is unholy. I now read : 
 
There is this city of Brahman [that is, the heart and the body], 
and in it the palace, the small lotus (of the heart), and in it that small 
ether. 
 
The Sanskrit word which Miiller, the translator, has not given 
here for ' small ether ', doubtless because he knew not how to 
translate it, is antardkdta, a compound Sanskrit word meaning 
within the Akdia. He called it ' small ether ', doubtless because he 
knew not how to translate it too difficult. I read again : 
 
Now what exists within that small ether, that it is to be sought for, 
that is to be understood. And if they should say to him : " Now 
with regard to that city of Brahman, and the palace in it, i.e., the 
small lotus of the heart, and the small ether within the heart, what 
is there within it that deserves to be sought for, or that is to be under- 
stood ? " 
 
Then he should say : " As large as this ether (all space) is, so large 
is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained 
within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and 
stars ; and whatever there is of him (the Self) here in the world, and 
whatever is not [i.e., ' whatever has been or will be ' says Max Miiller], 
all that is contained within it." 
 
And if they should say to him : "If everything that exists is con- 
tained in that city of Brahman, all beings and all desires (whatever 
can be imagined or desired), then what is left of it, when old age 
reaches it and scatters it, or when it falls to pieces ? " 
 
Then he should say : " By the old age of the body, that (the ether, 
or Brahman within it) does not age ; by the death of the body, that 
(the ether, or the Brahman within it) is not killed. That (the Brahman) 
is the true Brahma-city (not the body). In it all [true] desires are 
contained. It is the Self, free from sin, free from old age, from death 
and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it 
ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine. 
Now as here on earth people follow as they are commanded, and 
depend on the object which they are attached to, be it a country or 
a piece of land, 
 
" And, as here on earth, whatever has been acquired by exertion, 
perishes, so perishes whatever is acquired for the next world by 
 
 
 
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sacrifices and other good actions performed on earth. THbse who 
depart from hence without having discovered the Self and those 
true desires, for them there is no freedom in all the worlds. But 
those who depart from hence, after having discovered the Self and 
those true desires, for them there is freedom in all the worlds." 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER III
 
THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA : OBJECTIVE IDEALISM THE BASIS OF 
MORALS : ROOTED IN THE SPIRITUAL UNITY THE DIVINITY 
OF THE ALL. THE SELF AND THE " SELVES ". 
 
May& or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything 
that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance 
which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power 
of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmean- 
ing confusion of streaks and daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly 
a face or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute 
existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences 
belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in 
degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colorless screen ; 
but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, and the 
things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things 
possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash 
through the material world ; but we cannot cognise any such existence directly, 
so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into 
the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting 
in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our 
only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during 
the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and 
the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each 
advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached " reality " ; 
but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our 
own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 39, 40. 
 
The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary 
therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to 
the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle, the 
Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the 
mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is 
real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself. 
 
Ibid., I, 274. 
 
IN taking up again this evening our study of The Secret 
Doctrine at the point we reached a fortnight ago, I open 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's book, the first volume, at 
page 17, and read the third fundamental postulate at least 
a portion of it : 
 
The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, 
the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root ; and the obli- 
gatory pilgrimage for every Soul a spark of the former through the 
Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity ") in accordance with Cyclic and 
Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely 
spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) 
existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the 
Universal Sixth principle or the OVER-SOUL has (a) passed through 
 
17 
 
 
 
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every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, 
and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by 
self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus 
ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to 
the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel 
(Dhyani-Buddha). 
 
Paul, the Apostle of the Christians " to the Gentiles ", as they 
call him, according to the Christian Gospels in Acts, xvii, verses 
2^-28, spoke to an assembly of the Athenians on Mars Hill, com- 
monly called the Areopagus, and he said the following (the transla- 
tion being ours) : 
 
For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with 
this inscription : " To the Unknowable God." For in It we live and 
move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, 
" For we are also of Its line. 1 ' 
 
The poets of whom Paul speaks were probably Cleanthes the 
Stoic, and Aratus. It is perhaps well to mention that the sense 
of ' Unknowable ', as used in connexion with this word Agnosias, 
is that employed by Homer, by Plato, and by Aristotle* This 
Greek word Agnostos also permits the translation 'unknown', 
but merely because the Unknown in this connexion is the 
Unknowable. 
 
The Athenians had raised an altar to the Ineffable, and with 
the true spirit of religious devotion they left it without further 
qualification ; and Paul, passing by and seeing it, thought he 
saw an excellent chance to ' make hay while the sun shone ', so 
to say, and claimed the Unknowable to which this altar had 
been raised, as the Jewish God, Jehovah. 
 
A fortnight ago, following the Teacher's instructions, we stated 
how it was that man could form some conception of that Ineffable 
Principle of which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky speaks on pages 
14-19 of her Secret Doctrine, as being the first of the three funda- 
mental postulates, necessary in order to understand the true 
teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom ; and we saw that man has in 
himself, as was then said, a faculty transcending the ordinary 
human intellectual power something in Jbdm by which he can 
raise himself upwards or, perhaps better, inwards, towards the 
Inmost Center of his own being, which in very truth is that 
Ineffable : from It we came, back to It we are journeying through 
the aeons of time. 
 
All the ancient philosophers taught the truth concerning this 
same fundamental principle, each in his own way, each with 
different terms, each in the language of the country where it was 
promulgated, but always there was taught the central truth : 
that in the inmost being of man there lives a divinity, and this 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 19
 
divinity is the offspring of the Highest, and that man can becdme 
a God in the flesh or he can sink as the Teacher's words have 
told us this evening lower even than the common average of 
humanity, so that he becomes at first obsessed or beset, and 
finally possessed by the daemons of his own lower nature and 
by those df the lower sphere ; and by these particular daemons 
we mean the elemental forces of life, of chaotic life, or of the 
material sphere of being. 
 
Again, how is it that man cannot see these truths intimately and 
immediately ? We all know the answer is, on account of the 
illusion under which his mind labors, the illusion which is a part 
of himself, not cast upon him from the outside : he sees, for 
instance, and his mind reacts to the vision, and the reaction is 
conducted along the lines of the illusion, which, taking the ancient 
Sanskrit word, our first Teacher has called Maya. 
 
This is a technical term in the ancient Brahmanical philosophy. 
Let us examine its root. What does the word Maya come from ? 
It comes from a Sanskrit root md ; the meaning of ma is to 
measure, and by a trope of speech that is by a figure of speech 
it comes to mean to effect, or to form, and hence to limit. There is 
an English word mete, meaning to measure out, from the same 
Indo-European root. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon as the root 
met, it is found in the Greek as med, and it is found in the Latin 
also in the same form. 
 
Now Maya, as a technical term, has come to mean ages ago 
in the wonderful Brahmanical philosophy it was understood very 
differently from what it is now usually understood to be the 
fabrication by man's mind of ideas derived from interior and 
exterior impressions, and hence the illusory aspect of man's 
thoughts as he considers and tries to interpret and understand 
life and his surroundings and thence was derived the sense 
which it technically bears, illusion. It does not mean that the 
exterior world is non-existent ; if it were, it obviously could not 
be illusory ; it exists, but ^'s not. It is ' measured out ' or it 
stands out to the human spirit as a mirage. In other words, we 
do not see clearly and plainly and in their reality the vision and 
the visions which our mind and senses present to the inner life 
and eye. 
 
The familiar illustrations of Maya in the Vedanta, which is the 
highest form that the Brahmanical teachings have taken, and 
which is so near to our own teaching in many respects, were such 
as follows : A man at eventide sees a coiled rope on the ground, 
and springs aside, thinking it a serpent. The rope is there, but 
no serpent. 
 
Another illustration is what is called the ' horns of the hare '. 
Now the animal called the hare has no horns, but when it also 
 
 
 
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is seen at eventide its long ears seem to project from its head in 
such fashion that it appears even to the seeing eye as being a 
creature with horns. The hare has no horns, but there is then 
in the mind an illusory belief that an animal with horns exists 
there. 
 
That is what Maya means: not that a thing seen does not 
exist, but that we are blinded and our mind perverted by our 
own thoughts and our own imperfections, and do not as yet 
arrive at the real interpretation and meaning of the world, of the 
universe around us. By ascending inwardly, by rising up, by 
inner aspiration, by an elevation of soul, we can reach upwards 
or rather inwards toward that plane where Truth abides in 
fullness. 
 
Bernard of Clairvaux, the French mystic of the Middle Ages, 
said that one way of doing this, and he spoke truly, was by 
' emptying the mind ', pouring out the trashy stuff it contains, 
the illusory beliefs, the false views, the hatreds, suspicions, care- 
lessness, etc., and that by emptying out all this trash, the temple 
within is cleansed, and the light from the God within streams 
forth into the soul a wonderful figure of thought for a Christian 
Mystic, but a true one. 
 
It may be asked : What relationship has our wonderful philo- 
sophy to the many so-called idealistic systems of Europe, par- 
ticularly in Germany, and represented by Bishop Berkeley in 
Britain ? The answer is that there are points of contact, naturally, 
because the men who evolved these systems of philosophy were 
earnest men, and no man can earnestly think and strive upwards 
without arriving at some visions of truth, some faint perceptions 
of the inner life but none of the systems of idealism which they 
taught is exactly the idealism ; which Theosophy is. Theosophy is 
not an absolute idealism, it does not teach that the external 
universe is absolutely non-existent and that all external phe- 
nomena merely exist in the mind. 
 
Theosophy is not exactly either the idealism of Kant nor the 
wonderful pessimistic idealism of Schopenhauer wonderful as 
this great thinker was, and wonderful precisely because he 
derived his knowledge (and confessed it openly) from the Orient. 
The idealism of Theosophy is nearest to the philosophy of the 
German philosopher, von Schelling, who taught (principally) that 
truth was to be perceived by receding inwards and taking it from 
the Spirit, and that the outward world is ' dead mind ' or perhaps 
rather inert mind not the mind of the thinker obviously, but 
the mind of the Deity. Now thi is called ' objective idealism ' 
because it recognises the external object as having existence : 
it is not non-existent, as absolute idealism would put it. Schell- 
ing's ideas come nearest but by no means equal the grandiose 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 21
 
teaching which our great Teachers have taught us is the 
Truth. 
 
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky says on page 631 of the first volume 
of The Secret Doctrine : 
 
Esoteric ^philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism though it 
regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mdyd, temporary 
illusion draws a practical distinction between collective illusion, 
Mahdmdyd, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objec- 
tive relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this 
illusion lasts. 
 
The teaching, as all older students of the Esoteric School know 
and I believe that many of them are here present this evening 
is that Maya is thus called from the action of Mtilaprakriti, or 
root-nature, the co-ordinate principle of that other line of co- 
active consciousness which we call Parabrahman. We remember 
that we discussed these questions at our former meeting, and we 
say that from the moment when manifestation begins, it acts 
dualistically, that is to say, that everything in Nature from that 
point onwards is crossed by pairs of opposites, such as long and 
short, high and low, night and day, good and evil, consciousness 
and non-consciousness, etc., and that all these things are essen- 
tially mayic or illusory real while they last, but the lasting is 
not eternal. It is through and by these pairs of opposites that 
the self-conscious soul learns Truth. 
 
What is the basis of morals ? This is the most important ques- 
tion that can be asked of any system of thought. Is morality 
based on the dicta of man ? Is morality based on the conviction 
in most men's hearts that for human safety it is necessary to have 
certain abstract rules which it is merely convenient to follow ? 
Are we mere opportunists ? or is morality, ethics, based on Truth, 
which it is not merely expedient for man to follow, but needful, 
necessary ? Surely upon the latter ! 
 
And in the third Fundamental Postulate which we read at the 
opening of our study this evening, we find, as was before said, the 
very elements, the very fundamentals, of a system of morality 
greater than which, profounder than which, more persuasive than 
which, perhaps, it would be impossible to imagine anything. 
 
On what, then, is morality based ? And by morality I mean not 
merely the opinion which some pseudo-philosophers have, that 
morality is more or less that which is ' good for the community ', 
based on the mere meaning of the Latin word mores, ' good cus- 
toms ', as opposed to bad. No ! morality is that instinctive hunger 
of the human heart to do righteousness, to do good to every man 
because it is good and satisfying and ennobling to do so. 
 
When man realizes that he is one with all that is, inwards and 
outwards, high and low ; that he is one with them, not merely 
 
 
 
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as members of a community are one, not merely as individuals 
of an army are one, but like the molecules of our own flesh, like 
the atoms of the molecule, like the electrons of the atom, com- 
posing one unity not a mere union but a spiritual unity then he 
sees Truth. 
 
Everyone of us belongs to, and is an inhering part of, that 
Sublime and Ineffable Mystery the ALL which contains and 
is individual and spiritual unity. 
 
We have all of us one inward universal Self, and each one has 
also his individual ego. The ego springs from the Self and the 
Self is the Ineffable, the Inmost of the Inmost, one in all of us 
giving each one of us that sense of selfhood ; although by exten- 
sion of meaning we also speak, and properly speak, of the ' lower 
self ', because this is a tiny ray from the Highest. Even the evil 
man, as our present great Teacher has taught us, has in himself 
not merely the spark of the divine, but the very ray of divinity 
itself : he is both the selfish ego and the Universal Self. 
 
Why then are we taught that when we attain selflessness, we 
attain the Divine ? Precisely because selflessness is the attribute 
of the Paramatman, the Universal Self, where all personality 
vanishes. Paramatman is a Sanskrit compound, meaning highest 
or supreme self. 
 
If we examine our own spirits, if we reach inwards, if we stretch 
ourselves inwards, as it were, towards the Inmost, every one of us 
may know that as he goes farther, farther, farther in, the self 
becomes selfless, the light becomes pure glory. 
 
What a thought, that in the heart of each one of us there 
dwells, there lives, the Ever-Unfolding, the Constant, the Eternal, 
the Changeless, knowing no death, knowing no sorrow, the very 
divinity of all ! How it dignifies human life ! What courage does 
it give to us ! How does it clear away all of the old moldy super- 
stitions 1 What unspeakable visions of Reality, of the Truth, do 
we obtain when we go inwards, after having emptied the mind, 
as Bernard says, of all the mental trash that encumbers it 1 
 
These are the doctrines of our Teachers ; our present Outer 
Head is telling us it daily, hinting at it in this way and in that 
way, using these words and those words, taking the opportunity 
on every occasion that presents itself to awaken us, to instil these 
eternal truths into us. 
 
When man has reached the state where he realizes this and has 
so ' emptied his mind ' that it is filled only with the Self Itself, 
with the selfless selfhood of the Eternal what did the ancients 
call this state ? What did they call such a man himself ? They 
called the state, ' Bodhi ' ; and they called the human, ' Buddha ' ; 
and the organ in and by which it was manifested, 'Buddhi'. 
All these words came from a Sanskrit root, meaning to awaken. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 23
 
When rflan has awakened from the living death in which we live, 
when he has cast off the toils of mind and flesh and, to use the old 
Christian term, has put on the ' garments of eternity ', then he has 
awakened, he is a Buddha. And the ancient Brahmanical teachings, 
found today even in the Vedanta, state that he has become one 
with not * absorbed ' as is constantly translated but has become 
one with the Self of selves, with the Paramatman, the Supreme 
Self. 
 
Hearken a moment to the wisdom of the ancient Orient, not the 
voice of modern Brahmanism (excepting the Vedanta) but to a 
book which was ancient before our ancestors knew anything 
higher than the quasi-barbaric ideas which Europe had two 
thousand years ago. 
 
We read from the Chhdndogya-Upanishad, one of the most 
important of the 108 or more Upanishads. The very word 
'Upanishad' signifies 'Esoteric treatise'. We read from the 
eighth lecture, seventh, eighth, and ninth sections. They con- 
tain such truth that the Teacher has permitted us to take up our 
time in reading it. 
 
" Prajapati said " we interrupt by saying that Prajapati is a 
Sanskrit word meaning governor or lord or master of progeny. 
The word is applied to many of the Vedic gods, but in particular 
to Brahma that is to say the third step from Parabrahman the 
evolver-creator, the first and most recondite figure of the triad 
consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma is the Emanator 
or Evolver, Vishnu the Sustainer or Preserver, and Siva, which 
may be translated euphemistically perhaps as ' beneficent ', the 
Regenerator. This name is very obscure. However : 
 
Praj^pati said : " The Self which is free from sin, free from old age, 
from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing 
but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought 
to imagine, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we 
must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and 
understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires. 11 
 
We interrupt to ask why ? Because this Self of selves, this 
Inmost, is all worlds : it is All, it is Everything. Now to quote : 
 
The Devas [gods] and Asuras [demons] both heard these words, 
and said : " Well, let us search for that Self by which, if one has 
searched it out, all worlds and all desires are obtained/ 1 
 
Thus saying Indra went from the Devas, Virochana from the Asuras, 
and both, without having communicated with each other, approached 
Praj^pati, holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom for pupils 
approaching their master. 
 
They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then 
asked them : " For what purpose have you dwelt here ? " 
 
 
 
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They replied: " A saying of yours is being repeated, Viz. 'the 
Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, 
from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to 
desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is 
which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand. 
He who has searched out that Self and understands it,, obtains all 
worlds and all desires/ Now we both have dwelt here because we 
wish for that Self/' 
 
Prajkpati said to them : " The person that is seen in the eye, that is 
the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless, 
this is Brahman/ 1 
 
Interrupting : the Self that is seen in the eye is a figure of speech 
not infrequently found in the ancient Sanskrit writings ; it signi- 
fies that sense of an indwelling presence that one sees when he 
looks into the eyes of another. 
 
They asked : " Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is 
perceived in a mirror, who is he ? " 
 
He replied : " He himself indeed is seen in all these/' 
 
(Eighth Section) " Look at your Self in a pan of water, and whatever 
you do not understand of your Self, come and tell me." 
 
They looked in the water-pan. Then Prajapati said to them: 
" What do you see ? " 
 
They said : " We both see the self thus altogether, a picture even 
to the very hairs and nails/' 
 
Prajapati said to them : " After you have adorned yourselves, look 
again into the water-pan." 
 
They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their best 
clothes and cleaned themselves, looked into the water-pan. 
 
Prajapati said : " What do you see ? " 
 
They said : " Just as we arc, well adorned, with our best clothes and 
clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well adorned, with our best clothes 
and clean." 
 
Prajapati said : " That is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, 
this is Brahman." 
 
Then both went away satisfied hv their hearts. 
 
And Prajipati, looking after them, said : " They both go away 
without having perceived and without having known the Self, and 
whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this 
doctrine will perish." 
 
Interrupting : they saw Maya and not the Self. 
 
Now Virochana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras and 
preached that doctrine to them, that the self (the body) alone is to be 
worshipped, that the self (the body) alone is to be served, and that 
he who worships the self, and serves the self, gains both worlds, this 
and the next. 
 
Therefore they call even now a man who does not give alms here, 
who has no faith, and offers no sacrifices, an Asura, for this is the 
doctrine of Asuras. They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 25
 
flowers, and fine raiment by way of ornament, and think they will 
thus conquer that world. 
 
(Ninth Section) But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas, 
saw this difficulty. 
 
Interrupting : the difficulty now comes which Indra saw. 
 
As this self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when thet>ody 
is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed, well 
cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind, if the 
body is blind, lame, if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, 
and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see 
no good in this (doctrine). 
 
Taking fuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to Praj^pati. 
Praj&pati said to him : " Maghavat [Indra], as you went away with 
Virochana, satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come 
back ? " 
 
He said : " Sir, as this self (the shadow) is well adorned, when the 
body is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed, 
well cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind, 
if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is 
crippled, and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. There- 
fore I see no good in this (doctrine)." 
 
" So it is indeed, Maghavat/' replied Praj^pati ; " but I shall explain 
him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two 
years. 1 ' 
 
Indra was able to see beyond the maya of the personal self, and 
therefore was searching for the Real, for the True, the Self Itself. 
 
The translation is Max Miiller's. It may be well to add in con- 
clusion that all translations which have been made and may 
hereafter be made are made by ourself, from any one of the 
ancient languages, and if any quotation is taken from another 
translator, his name will be given. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER IV
 
FROM PRIMORDIAL POINT TO UNIVERSE AND MAN. 'HOW DOES 
MANIFESTATION ARISE ? MANVANTARA AND PRALAYA. 
 
The Scintillas are the " Souls," and these Souls appear in the threefold form 
of Monads (units), atoms, and gods according to our teaching. " Every atom 
becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere 
of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral, 
vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man." (Esoteric Catechism.) Again, 
" God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body 
(Atma, Manas, and Sthula-Sarlra) in man." In their septenary aggregation they 
are the " Heavenly Man " (see Kabala for the latter term) ; thus, terrestrial man 
is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. ..." The Monads (Jivas) are the 
Souls of the Atoms, both are a fabric in which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) clothe 
themselves when a form is needed." (Esoteric Catechism.) 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 619. 
 
Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Conscious- 
ness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and 
of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass 
in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast 
of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object. 
 
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as 
independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm) 
which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective. 
 
Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the 
Absolute is essential to the existence of the " Manifested Universe." Apart from 
Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual conscious- 
ness, since it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as 
" I am I," a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind 
at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic 
Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness 
could ensue. 
 
The " Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it 
were, the very essence of its EX-istence as " manifestation." But just as the 
opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the 
One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there 
is " that " which links spirit to matter, subject to object. 
 
This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the 
occultists Fohat. It is the " bridge " by which the " Ideas " existing in the 
" Divine Thought " are impressed on Cosmic substance as the " laws of Nature." 
 
Ibid.. I, 15, 16. 
 
BEFORE we open our study of The Secret Doctrine this 
evening, it should be said that the Teacher has asked 
me to repeat what was before stated with reference to 
the nature of these studies, that is, that they are a sim- 
plification of The Secret Doctrine in the sense of an explanation 
and unfolding of the meaning of the teachings that the book 
contains ; and in order to achieve these ends, it will be of course 
necessary to bring to bear upon these doctrines for comparison 
and in order to show analogy or identity, lines of thought from 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 27
 
the great religions of the world and from the great minds of ancient 
times ; because these, in their essence, have sprung from the 
central source of men's thought and religion which we to-day 
call Theosophy. 
 
Yet before we can really embark upon the study of The Secret 
Doctrine itsfelf, as a book, it will be necessary during the course 
of our studies to clear from our path certain stumbling-blocks 
which are in the way of each of us ; certain ideas and so-called 
principles of thought which have been instilled into our minds 
from childhood, and which, on account of the psychological 
effect they have on our minds, really prevent us from grasping 
the truths of Being that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky has so 
masterly given us in The Secret Doctrine. 
 
In addition, it will be necessary to investigate certain very 
ancient principles of thought, and to penetrate more deeply into 
the real meaning of the ancient religions and philosophies than 
has ever been done in any modern books, because those books 
have been written by men who know nothing about the Esoteric 
Philosophy, men who were mostly rebels against the barren 
ecclesiasticism of the Christian Church; who, in order to gain 
freedom from those chains of ecclesiasticism, actually went too 
far the other way, and saw nothing but priestcraft and evil-doing 
in these old religions, and in the acts and teachings of the men 
who taught them, priests, philosophers, or scientists. 
 
We really, also, cannot understand The Secret Doctrine unless 
we have made these preliminary studies. We may read it as a 
book, as we would take down a book from the shelf in the public 
library and read it, but in doing so we do not get the essence, the 
heart, the core of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's meaning. 
 
Another point always to keep in mind is, that we are, as the 
Teacher has told us more than once in these meetings, actually 
assembled here as fellow-students and members of the Inner 
School we are undertaking the study of the very doctrines which 
formed the core of the heart of the teachings of the Mysteries 
of ancient days. These Mysteries were divided into two general 
parts, the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater. 
 
The Lesser Mysteries were very largely composed of dramatic 
rites or ceremonies, with some teaching ; the Greater Mysteries 
were composed of, or conducted almost entirely on the ground of, 
study, and later were proved by personal experience in initiation. 
In the latter was explained among other things the secret 
meaning of the mythologies of the old religions, as for instance 
the Greek. 
 
The active and nimble mind of the Greeks produced a mythology 
which for grace and beauty is perhaps without equal, but it 
nevertheless is very difficult to explain ; the Mysteries of Samo- 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
thrace and of Eleusis the greater ones explained amcfog other 
things what these myths meant. These myths formed the basis 
of the exoteric religions ; but note well that exotericism does 
not mean that the thing which is taught exoterically is in itself 
false, but merely that it is a teaching given without the key to it : 
such teaching is symbolic, illusory, touching on the truth : the 
truth is there, but without the key to it which is the esoteric 
meaning it yields no proper sense. 
 
We open our study of The Secret Doctrine, this evening, by 
reading from Vol. I, page 43, second and third paragraphs : 
 
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of every- 
thing, worlds as well as atoms ; and this stupendous development has 
neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our " Universe " 
is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them " Sons of 
Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each 
one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and 
being a cause as regards its successor. 
 
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured 
as an out breathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is 
eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the 
Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When 
" the Great Breath " is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is 
regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One Existence 
which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos. 
(See Isis Unveiled.) So also it is when the Divine Breath is inspired 
again the Universe disappears into the bosom of " the Great Mother," 
who then sleeps, " wrapped in her invisible robes." 
 
A fortnight ago we were studying the question of Maya and the 
relationship of the inner being of man to the Ineffable Essence ; 
it remains for us briefly to study how man, who has a personal 
element in him, sprang forth from the very essence of imperson- 
ality, if one may so call it. We can say at once that the Infinite 
and Impersonal never becomes finite and personal. How, then, 
does the spirit of man (already the first film over the face of the 
Absolute, as it were) come into being ? Let us remember that 
the manifestation of worlds, and, deductively, of the beings 
who inhabit those worlds, took place in the extension of matter 
popularly called ' space '. A center, first, is ' localized ' a very 
poor word to use ! and is, de facto, not infinite, not eternal ; if 
it were, it could neither manifest nor come into outward existence, 
for this is limitation. The Eternal, the Ineffable, the Infinite, 
does not ever manifest at all, either partially or in toto. Words 
themselves are misleading in treating of these subjects ; but what 
can we say ? We must use human expressions in order to convey 
our meaning. 
 
How then arose manifestation ? The Ancient Wisdom tells 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 29
 
us the following : In the seeds of life remaining in space from a 
planet which had previously run its Manvantara and had passed 
into latency or Prakriti-Pralaya there came (when the hour 
struck for manifestation to begin again) into being in these seeds 
of life the activity called in Sanskrit trishnd (thirst, if you like, 
desire for manifestation), thus forming the center around which 
was to gather a new universe. It had by karmic necessity its 
particular place in space and was to produce its particular kind 
of progeny : gods, monads, atoms, men, and the three elementary 
or elemental kingdoms of the world as we see it around us : 
from the karmic seeds which were brought over and which were 
lying latent from the preceding Manvantara. 
 
The Universe reimbodies itself (it does not ' reincarnate ', which 
means coming into flesh), following precisely the analogical lines, 
mutatis mutandis, that the soul of man does in reincarnating, 
making the necessary allowances for varying conditions. As 
man is the product of his former life, or rather of his lives, so is a 
universe, a solar system, a planet, an animal, an atom the very 
great as well as the so-called infinitesimal the fruitage, the 
flower, of what went before. Each of these bears its load of 
karman precisely as the soul of man does. 
 
The teachings relating to the evolving of the inner planes of 
Being, which precede and produce the outer planes, are very 
esoteric, as our Teachers have told us, and belong to a study 
higher than we venture to approach at the present time, but we 
can form some general idea of how it is done, as has already been 
said, by analogy and by comparison with the life of man. 
 
When manifestation begins, what is called ' duality ' super- 
venes. It would seem to be a procession something like this, 
were we to symbolize it by a diagram. (See page 30). 
 
Consider this uppermost straight line a hypothetical plane : 
it may be, humanly speaking, immeasurable miles in depth or in 
extension, but mere extension has nothing to do with the general 
concept. Above it stretches the infinitude of the Boundless, and 
below the diagram is the Boundless, and inwards through it is the 
Boundless, interpenetrating everywhere ; but for purposes of 
our present illustration we will say that it is ' above '. 
 
Let us place anywhere we may please a point A, another one 
A 7 here, and a third A" there. We have now reached, after a long 
period of latency or pralaya has passed, a period of manifestation 
or manvantara ; such a point as A, or A" or A", we will call the 
Primordial Point, the first breaking-through into the cosmic 
plane below ; the spirit-force above arising into activity in the 
seeds of being and forcing its way down into the lower life of 
manifestation not pushed nor moved by anything outside of itself 
is driven into manifestation by the karmic life of its own essential 
D 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 31
 
being, by the thirst of desire or blossoming forth, like a fresh 
upspringing in early summer of a flower, in which the tendency 
in manifestation is outward. This first appearance is conceived 
of in philosophy as the First or Primordial Point ; this is the 
name given to it in the Jewish Theosophy called the QabMllh. 
 
From the moment that the Point, as it were the seed of life, 
the germ of being all these are but names for the one thing, 
the spiritual atom, the spiritual monad, call it what you will 
from the moment that it bursts through into the lower life as it 
were, differentiation or duality sets in and continues thencefor- 
ward to the end of the Great Cycle, forming the two side-lines 
of the diagrammatic triangle. We may call one A B the Brahma 
(masculine), and the other A C the Prakriti or Nature (feminine). 
Brahm. is frequently also called Purusha, a Sanskrit word 
meaning Man, the Ideal Man, like the Qabbalistic Adam Qadmdn, 
the primordial entity of space, containing in Prakriti or Nature 
all the septenary scales of manifested being. 
 
At all times, from the very first instant when duality sets in, 
there is an unceasing attraction between these two lines or poles, 
and they join. Remember that this symbol is merely a paradigm, 
that it is merely a paradigmatic scheme or representation. 
Absolutely, it would be absurd to say that life and beings pro- 
ceed into manifestation as geometric triangles only ; but we can 
represent it symbolically to our minds in this fashion. When 
these two join, the Father and the Mother, spirit (or Reality) 
and illusion (or may a), Brahma (or Purusha) and Prakriti (or 
Nature), their union produces the Son. In the Christian scheme 
they give the spiritual or primordial Son the name of Christos ; 
in the Egyptian scheme Osiris and Isis (or her twin sister Neph- 
thys which is merely the more recondite side of Isis) produce 
their son Horus, the spiritual Sun, physically the sun or the 
Light-Bringer ; and so similarly in the different schemes that 
the ancient world has handed down to us. 
 
From the interaction of these three, by inter-polar action, by 
the spiritual forces working in and out, two other lines fall down- 
wards according to the mystical way in which this scheme of 
emanation is taught and they also join and form the square 
or the manifested Kosmos. 
 
Now from the Central or Primordial Point is born or proceeds 
the Sun of Life. By It and through It is our union with the 
Ineffable. Man may be down here a physical being on earth, 
or anywhere else a luminous, ethereal entity : but it matters not 
where he is or what his body : for once the seven principles of 
his being are in action, man the thinking entity, is produced, 
linked by his seventh principle, and his sixth, with that Sun of 
Life. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
To every ' man ' of the unnamable multitudes of self-conscious 
beings belonging to this Kosmos or Universe, there extend 
respectively upwards or downwards, two natures : one of which 
is a ray of spirit connecting him with the divine of the Divinest, 
and from that extending upwards in all directions and linking us 
in every sense of the word with the Ineffable, the Boundless, 
which is, therefore, the core of our being, the center of our 
essence. 
 
The appearance and evolution of man as a human being on 
this planet Terra, follow the same line of Nature's wonderful 
analogical working that a planet does in space, or a sun does 
with its brothers of a solar system, the planets. Man, thus being 
in very truth a child of Infinity, the offspring of the Ineffable, 
has latent within himself the capacity of the Universe. 
 
And on this fact depends what we have so often been told of 
the getting of ' powers '. The very method by which we do not 
get them, the very way of missing and losing them, is to run after 
them, strange as it may sound, because this is the impulse of 
vanity and selfishness. If we, then, selfishly seek them, what do 
we get ? We get the action of the lower powers upon us ; it is a 
growing thirst for sensation which we do get, and this leads us 
towards and into the nether abyss of Matter, the opposite pole of 
the Boundless, if it is followed. 
 
But in the great Soul who has passed by and thrown off this 
thirst for personal acquisition, in whom the grasping spirit for 
self is no longer dominant, who feels his Oneness with everything 
that is, who feels that every human being, yea the very pismire 
that laboriously crawls up a sand-knob only to tumble down again, 
is himself no metaphor but an actuality : a different body, but 
the same life, the same essence, the same things latent in it as in 
him in him indeed lies the power of ascending the ladder of 
Being, drawn by the link with the Highest in his innermost 
nature. He and they are both filled full of latent powers and 
forces, and he and they may become in time very Gods, blazing, 
as it were, with power like the Sun ; and the only way is utter 
selflessness, because selflessness, paradoxical as it may sound, 
is the only way to the Self, the Self Universal. The personal 
self shuts the door before us. 
 
Of course we cannot crush out of our being the sense of self- 
hood, nor is that desirable ; but in the lowest aspect it takes upon 
itself the forms of all selfishness, until the being of the man 
who follows the ' left-hand path ', as they call it, or the path 
downwards, ends in what the early Christians stealing from the 
Greeks called Tartarus, the place of disintegration. 
 
When man ascends beyond the reach of matter, he has cast off 
the bondage of Maya, or illusion. Let us remember that when 
 
 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OF HIE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 33 
 
manifestation opens, Prakriti becomes or rather is Maya ; and 
Brahma, the Father, is the spirit of the consciousness, or the 
Individuality. These two are really one, yet they are also the two 
aspects of the one Life-ray acting and reacting upon itself, much 
as a man himself can say, " I am I ". He has the faculty of self- 
analysis, or* self-division ; all of us know it, we can feel it in our- 
selves ; one side of us, in our thoughts, can be called the Prakriti 
or the material element, or the Mayavi element, or the element of 
illusion ; and the other, the spirit, the individuality, the God 
within. 
 
Yet as man sees life, as he runs his eye down the scale of beings, 
he sees it through Maya ; in fact, he is the child of Maya on one 
side, as he is of the Spirit on the other. Both are in him. His 
lesson is to learn that the two are one and that they are not 
separate ; then he no longer is deceived. His lesson is to under- 
stand that Maya, the great Deluder, is the famous snake or serpent 
of antiquity, which leads us out from the ' Garden of Eden ' 
(employing a Biblical metaphor), through experience and suffering 
to learn what illusion is and is not. 
 
Also matter, which is the mayavi manifestation of Prakriti on 
this plane (and I mean here physical matter), itself is not sub- 
stantial. The most dense and rigid things we can think of, per- 
haps, are the metals, and actually they are, perhaps, the most 
porous, the most foamlike, the most evanescent, as seen from the 
other or higher side of being, from the other side of the plane. 
So well is this now beginning to be understood that even our more 
intuitive scientists are telling us that ' space ', which seems to 
us so thin, and tenuous, is in reality more rigid than the hardest 
steel. Why is it that electricity prefers metals as a path, to 
common wood, or cotton-wool, or some other such thing ? 
 
Before we go further, it would seem necessary to study a 
little what we mean by the words Manvantara and Pralaya. Let 
us take Manvantara first. This word is a Sanskrit compound, 
and as such means nothing more than ' between two Manus ' ; 
more literally, ' Manu between '. ' Manu ', or Dhyani-Chohan, 
in the Esoteric System, is the entities collectively which appear 
first at the beginning of manifestation and from which, like a 
cosmic tree, everything is derived or born. Manu actually is the 
(spiritual) tree of life of any Planetary Chain, of manifested being. 
Manu is thus (in one sense) the third logos ; as the second is the 
Father-Mother, the Brahma and Prakriti ; and the first is what 
we call the Unmanifest Logos, or Brahman (neuter) and its cosmic 
veil Pradhana. 
 
Pradhana is also a Sanskrit compound, meaning that which 
is ' placed before ' ; and from this, it has become a technical 
term in philosophy, and means what we would call the first 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
filmy appearance of root-matter, ' placed before ', or rather* around, 
Brahman, as a Veil. Root-matter is m&la-prakriti, root-nature, 
and corresponding to it as the other or active pole, is Brahman 
(neuter). That from which the First or Unmanifest Logos pro- 
ceeds is called Para-Brahman, and Mulaprakriti is Its Kosmic 
Veil. Parabrahman is another Sanskrit compound, meaning 
' beyond Brahman '. Mtilaprakriti, again, as said above, is a 
Sanskrit compound meaning mtila root, prakriti nature. 
 
First, then, the Boundless, symbolized by the O I then Para- 
brahman, and Mulaprakriti its other pole ; then lower, Brahman 
and its Veil Pradhana ; then Brahma-Prakriti or Purusha- 
Prakriti (Prakriti being also maya) ; the manifested Universe 
appearing through and by this last : Brahma-Prakriti, Father- 
Mother. In other words, the second logos, Father-Mother, is the 
producing cause of manifestation through their son, which in a 
Planetary Chain is Manu. A Manvantara, therefore, is the period 
of activity between any two Manus, on any plane, since in any 
such period there is a root-Manu at the beginning of Evolution, 
and a seed-Manu at its close, preceding a Pralaya. 
 
Pralaya : this is also a Sanskrit compound, formed of laya, from 
a Sanskrit root lt t and the prefix pra. What does li mean ? It 
means to dissolve, to melt away, to liquefy, as when one pours 
water upon a cube of salt or of sugar. The cube of salt or of sugar 
vanishes in the water ; it dissolves, changes its form ; and this 
may be taken as a figure, as a symbol, of what Pralaya is : a 
crumbling away, a vanishing away of matter into something 
else which is yet in it, and surrounds it, and interpenetrates it. 
That is Pralaya, usually translated as the state of latency, state 
of rest, state of repose, between two manvantaras or life-cycles. 
If we remember distinctly the meaning of the Sanskrit word, our 
minds take a new bent in direction, follow a new thought ; we get 
new ideas ; we penetrate into the arcanum of the thing that takes 
place. 
 
Now there are many kinds of Manvantaras ; also many kinds of 
Pralayas. There are, for instance, the Universal Manvantara and 
the Universal Pralaya, and these are called Prakritika, because 
it is the pralaya or vanishing away, melting away, of Prakriti or 
Nature. Then there is the solar pralaya. Sun in Sanskrit is 
Sfirya, and the adjective from this is Saurya ; hence, the saurya- 
pralaya, or the pralaya of the solar system. Then, thirdly, there 
is the terrestrial or planetary pralaya. The Sanskrit word for 
earth is Bhflmi, and the adjective corresponding to this is Bhau- 
mika : hence, the bhaumika-pralaya. Then we can say that there 
is the pralaya or death of the individual man. Man is purusha ; 
the corresponding adjective is paurusha : hence, the paurusha- 
pralaya, or death of man. So, then, we have given examples of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 35
 
various praiayas : first of the Prakritika, or dissolution of Nature ; 
next the solar pralaya, the saurya ; next the bhaumika or the 
passing away of the earth ; and then the paurusha, or the death 
of man. And these adjectives apply equally well to the several 
kinds of Majivantaras, or life-cycles. 
 
There is another kind of Pralaya which is called Nitya. In its 
general sense, it means ' constant ' or ' continuous ', and can be 
exemplified by the constant or continuous change life and death 
of the cells of our bodies it is a state in which the entity, the 
indwelling and dominating entity, remains, but its different 
principles and rftpas undergo continuous change. Hence it is 
called Nitya. It applies to the body of man, to the outer sphere 
of earth, to the earth itself, to the solar system, and to all Nature. 
 
It is likewise represented by a symbol that our first great 
Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has given us from the Oriental Wisdom, 
the out-breathing and in-breathing of Brahman. This symbol, 
by the way, is not solely Indian. It is found in the ancient Egyp- 
tian texts, where one or another of the Gods, Khnumu, for in- 
stance, breathes forth from his mouth the cosmic egg. It is 
also found alluded to in the Orphic Hymns, where the cosmic 
serpent breathes forth as an egg the things which are to be, or 
the future universe. Everywhere, especially where ancient religion 
or philosophy has longest retained its hold, there do we find 
the symbol of the cosmic egg. Religions of less age and of less 
influence do not so often employ it. The cosmic egg was found as 
a symbol in Egypt ; it was found in Hindfisthan ; it was found 
in Peru, where the ' Mighty Man ', the Sanskrit Purusha, the Ideal 
Man, the Paradigmatic Man, was called Manco Capac, and his wife 
and sister was called Mama Oello, which means ' Mother-egg ' ; 
these brought the universe into being, becoming later the sun and 
the moon respectively. 
 
Why did the Ancients symbolize the beginning of manifestation 
under the form of an egg ? Let us ask : Is it not a fine symbol ? 
As the egg producing the chick contains the germ of life (laid by 
its mother, the hen, and fructified by the other pole of being) so 
the cosmic egg, which is the Primordial Point of which we spoke 
in the early part of our study this evening, also contains the germ 
of life. The egg itself also can be called the germ of life, and the 
germ of life within the egg can be called the inner germ that 
more subtil point which receives those impulses of which we have 
spoken before, coming down from the highest center of com- 
munication between the outward world and the inner, the lines 
of inner magnetic action and reaction. And when the chick within 
the egg is formed, it bursts its shell and comes forth into the light 
of day, precisely as we saw was the case with the Primordial Point. 
When the karmic hour had struck, it burst forth, as it were, into 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
other spheres of manifestation and activity. The Ancients, 
carrying the figure still farther, even spoke of Heaven as a dome- 
like affair, as the upper part of an egg-shell. 
 
Let us think more deeply of these ancient symbols. The 
Ancients were not fools. There is a deep meaning in these olden 
figures of speech. Why did Homer speak of his Olympus, the 
abode of Zeus and the Gods, as being brazen, like brass, one of the 
hardest and most intractable things that the Greeks knew ? Why 
did Hesiod speak of the same as made of iron ? Because they 
realized that the life here in matter and of matter, was based upon 
an evanescent substratum, and that the lower world of matter is, 
as has been so often said, evanescent, foamy, full of holes, as it 
were, and unreal. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER V
 
THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS AND THE NEBULAR THEORY. 
GODS BEHIND THE KOSMOS : WHY NATURE IS IMPERFECT. 
 
To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual 
and psychic, as well as physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the 
anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his 
shell-side and in ignorance of the interior work. . . . 
 
. . . The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic Space, 
not merely with its illusive appearance and behavior. That of official physical 
science is to analyse and study its shell the Ultima Thule of the Universe and 
man, in the opinion of Materialism. 
 
With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of 
such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir W. Herschel, who believed 
in a Spiritual world, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfac- 
tory compromise. But the views of those physicists differed vastly from the 
latest modern speculations. Kant and Herschel had in their mind's eye specula- 
tions upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as the present aspect, of the 
Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint ; whereas modern 
Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mys- 
teries of being. The result is what might be expected : complete failure and in- 
extricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so-called scientific 
theories, and in this theory as in all others. 
 
The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a primeval 
matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as 
everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the 
sidereal bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial 
pregenetic matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out 
through Space in an extremely sublimated condition. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 588-590. 
 
WITH the Teacher's permission there are three points 
which it would seem necessary to touch upon slightly, 
before we begin our evening's study. 
The first is with regard to the question of morals, 
that is to say, right conduct based upon right views, right think- 
ing. We have touched upon this matter at nearly every meeting 
of this Lodge, because the line, the path, of duty of right conduct 
based upon right views is the Path of all who would tread on- 
ward to the Ancient Wisdom and to the Ancient Mysteries. Our 
Teachers have told us this again and again, and the great thinkers, 
philosophers, and religious men, of all ages, have told us the same 
thing. 
 
These meetings, as our present Teacher has told us so often, 
are not for purposes of intellectual study only, nor to amuse 
ourselves with abstruse and mystic knowledge ; but mainly, firstly, 
principally, for the purpose of gaining a right foundation for right 
views, which shall govern human conduct. When we have this 
 
37 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
foundation we have the beginnings of all laws ; we can affect the 
world not only by our own views and by our own acts, but by 
those of other members who will come in and swell our number ; 
and, further, we shall be able in time to affect for good even the 
governments of the world, not directly and immediately perhaps, 
but at least indirectly and in the course of time. All the horrible 
things that perplex and confuse and distress mankind today arise 
wholly, almost, out of a lack of right views, and hence, a lack of 
right conduct. We have the testimony of the Greek and Roman 
initiates and thinkers that the Ancient Mysteries of Greece taught 
men, above everything else, to live rightly and to have a noble 
hope for the life after death. 
 
Next, the second point : in our last meeting we touched upon 
the Ancient Mysteries in the ancient Mystery-Schools, and we 
took as examples those of Greece, from which the Romans derived 
their own Mysteries but we touched upon one point only, the 
mythological aspect ; and this mythological aspect comprises 
only a portion a relatively small portion of what was taught 
in the Mystery- Schools, principally at Samothrace and at Eleusis. 
At Samothrace was taught the same Mystery-teaching that was 
current elsewhere in Greece, but here it was more developed and 
recondite ; and the foundation of these Mystery-teachings was 
morals. The noblest and greatest men of ancient times in Greece 
were initiates in the Mysteries of these two seats of esoteric 
knowledge. 
 
In other countries farther to the east they had other Mystery- 
Schools or " colleges ", and this word " college " by no means 
necessarily meant a mere temple or building ; it meant " associa- 
tion," as in our modern word colleague, " associate ". The Teu- 
tonic tribes of northern Europe, the Germanic tribes which 
included Scandinavia had their. Mystery-colleges also ; and 
teacher and neophytes stood on the bosom of Mother-Earth, under 
Father-Ether, the boundless sky, or in subterranean receptacles, 
and taught and learned. We state here at once that the core, the 
heart, the center, of the Ancient Mysteries was the abstruse 
problems dealing with Death. These teachings we still have, and 
when the Teacher says that it is time to give them out, they will be 
forthcoming ; she is the judge as to when this shall be. 
 
The third point is with regard to the paradigms or diagrams 
which we may find necessary to use from time to time in order to 
illustrate certain teachings. Remember that these paradigms are 
relative and changeable ; they are not hard and fast or absolute 
things ; this fact must be kept always clear in the mind, and 
around these diagrams or paradigms the mind should never be 
allowed to crystallize. Why ? Because any paradigm, any par- 
ticular combination of geometrical lines, can illustrate different 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 39
 
thoughts or things, as, for instance, the paradigm of the triangle 
from which hangs the square (as used at our last meeting) can 
apply equally as well to the highest combined principle in man, the 
spiritual-mental monad, as to the lower principles into which the 
monad falls at the beginning of incarnation or manifestation, and 
from whichf it will resurrect when the first chimes of the pralayic 
bells are heard in the Aka6ic spaces. 
 
We will now resume our study. We take up, as our general 
theme, the same two paragraphs on p. 43 of Vol. I of The Secret 
Doctrine, which we read at our last meeting : paragraphs one and 
two : 
 
The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of every- 
thing, worlds as well as atoms ; and this stupendous development has 
neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our " Universe " 
is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them " Sons 
of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, 
each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, 
and being a cause as regards its successor. 
 
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as 
an outbreathing and inbreathing of " the Great Breath/' which is 
eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the 
Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When 
the " Great Breath " is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, 
and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One 
Existence which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes 
the Kosmos. (See Isis Unveiled.) So also is it when the Divine Breath 
is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the 
Great Mother/' who then sleeps " wrapped in her invisible robes/' 
 
It was the intention to take up this evening the dawn of mani- 
festation as it is found in the " Hebrew Book of Beginnings", 
called Genesis, and to study this and to show its similarity and 
likeness, and the fundamental identity of truth on which it is 
based, as compared with the other religions of the world. But in 
view of the fact that we were obliged at our last study to touch 
upon the first coming-into-being of the veil cast over the face of 
the Ineffable, it would seem best this evening to undertake, if we 
have time, a short sketch of what in science is called the Nebular 
Theory, how far the esoteric teachings run with it, and where and 
when they part from it. 
 
The Nebular Theory, as originally taught in science by the 
Frenchman Laplace but derived by him from the great German 
thinker and philosopher, Immanuel Kant stated that the space 
which is now occupied by the planets of the solar system, was 
originally filled with a very tenuous form of matter, in a highly 
incandescent (or burning) state. Let us say just here that this 
particular theory of Laplace as regards incandescence, has never 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
been proved, that it is not subject in all respects to mathematical 
demonstration, and cannot be, and that it itself, if taken as a 
whole, forms one of the greatest proofs against the truth of the 
nebular theory as it was then stated, and as it has since been modi- 
fied in some degree by modern thinkers. 
 
Laplace further stated that this nebula was in a cbndition of 
slow rotation, or circular moving, in the same direction in which 
the planets now move around in their orbits, and in the same 
direction in which the planets and the sun now move around their 
axes. In other words, the present orbital revolution and rotation 
of the planets are derived from this mechanical, original, circular 
motion of the primal nebula. 
 
Laplace further stated that this hot, immense object cooled, 
and as it cooled it shrank, according to a certain law of heat, and 
this shrinking, according to a law of dynamics, increased the 
velocity of rotation, and the momentum of any point on its sur- 
face. Now, as everyone knows, the parts of a wheel which are 
nearest the periphery, the circumference, move with the greatest 
momentum, and the greatest speed, though no faster, in another 
sense, than do the particles at the hub. This increase of rapidity 
in whirling around grew so great that a time came when the 
centrifugal force overcame the centripetal or cohesive force, and 
then this whirling nebula threw off a ring, and this ring also con- 
tinued going around, and condensing, and finally formed a sphere 
or ball which became the outmost planet, Neptune. And so 
progressively the other planets came into being, the core of the 
nebula remaining as our sun. In brief, as the nebular body con- 
tracted and condensed its matter, the same phenomenon occurred 
again in the same way, and thus the second outermost planet, 
Uranus, was thrown oft, and so on until all the planets had come 
into being as spheres. Now some of these tenuous, still nebulous 
planets, by contracting and thus increasing their rotational 
velocity, themselves evolved rings around themselves, which in 
their turn were thrown off from their parent-planets, and following 
the same course as their parent-planets, became spheres, which 
thus became the satellites, the moons of the respective planets ; 
while the center of the original nebula condensed into the (sup- 
posedly) incandescent or fiery ball which is the sun. 
 
When H. P. Blavatsky first brought the Theosophical teachings 
to the Western world, questions of cosmogony, or the beginning 
and primal development of the universe, came much to the fore, 
and she was asked, and her Teachers were also asked through her, 
in what respect the nebular theory ran side by side with and 
" corroborated " the exposition of the theory of the occultists, 
the esoteric theory ; and the answer then given was called " an 
evasive answer "* It aroused criticism and some angry language. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 41
 
Why, i{ was asked, if the Teachers know these wonderful truths, 
had not they illuminated the world with the splendor of their 
teachings ? Why did they keep them and other things hid ? No 
teaching can be bad for man, if it is true, it was argued. Which 
was a very foolish argument, indeed, so far as it goes, because 
many teachings are true, and are yet utterly unfit for the average 
man to have. However, we are going to investigate that question 
to-night. 
 
The nebular theory, the Teachers said, was, in its main outlines, 
and in certain respects only, fairly representative of what the 
esoteric teaching was, but it yet, for all that, had vital defects ; 
and these defects they did not entirely specify nor did they fully 
outline them ; but they gave clear hints where the defects lay and 
what they were ; and they also gave a clear, logical, and concise 
reason for their reticence, which was obligatory and unavoidable. 
 
Now the main defect in the theory of Laplace was as probably 
the older students who are assembled here this evening know well 
enough that it was a purely mechanical, purely mechanistic, 
purely materialistic hypothesis, in some respects uncorroborable 
even by mathematics, and based upon nothing but the fact that 
in the vast abysses of space, astronomers, investigating wastes 
of stellar light, found nebulae and nebulosities, and, adopting 
Kant's idea, argued dogmatically upon it. But, nevertheless, 
there was truth in the nebular theory there was some truth. 
Now what is that truth ? And what was the most vital defect ? 
The most vital defect, first, was the fact as hinted above that it 
(the theory) omitted all action of spiritual beings in the universe 
as the drivers, the agents, the mechanics (or mechanicians) of 
the mechanism which undoubtedly exists. We are taught that 
the Esoteric Philosophy does not deny mechanical action in the 
Universe, but declares that where there is mechanical action there 
is government, or, specifically, mechanicians at work, producing 
the movements of the mechanism, in accordance with Karman. 
There must be " law "-givers or " law "-makers or " law "- 
impulsors, if the expression may be used ; and behind these there 
must be the Universal Life. In other words, the vital defect was 
that this nebular theory omitted the first truth of all Being 
that the Gods were behind the Kosmos, spiritual Beings, spiritual 
Entities the name matters nothing. Not God, but Gods. 
" Nature " is imperfect, hence of necessity makes " mistakes ", 
because its action derives from hosts of Entities at work. What we 
see around us all the time is proof of it. " Nature " is not perfect. 
If it had sprung from the " hands of the Immutable Deity ", 
hence perfect and immutable like its Parent, knowing no change, 
it would be a Perfect Work. It is much to the contrary, as we 
know, and its imperfections or " mistakes " arise from the fact 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
that the beings existing in and working in and controlling and 
making nature extend in endless hierarchies from the Inmost of 
the Inmost, from the Highest of the Highest, downwards for ever, 
upwards for ever, in all degrees of imperfection and of perfection, 
which is precisely what we see in the scenes of manifestation 
surrounding us. Our intuition tells us the truth concerning this, 
and we should trust it. 
 
This was well known to the ancients. The Stoics expressed it 
and taught it in their magnificent philosophy. The Stoics of 
Rome and of Greece originally expressed it by what they called 
Theocrasy. Theocrasy has a compound meaning Theos, a god, 
divine being, and krasis, meaning an intermingling an inter- 
mingling of everything in the universe, intermingling with every- 
thing else, nothing possibly separable from the rest, the Whole. 
It is the cardinal heresy of the Oriental religions to-day, notably 
in that of the Buddhists, if a man thinks that he is separate or 
separable from the universe. This is their cardinal heresy, the 
most fundamental error that man can make. The early Christians 
called it the " sin against the Holy Ghost ". If we look around us 
and if we look within, we realize that we are one entity, as it were, 
one great human host, one living tree of human life, woven in- 
separably into and from Nature, the ALL. 
 
The next defect of the nebular theory was that the nebula was 
declared to be in its earliest stages incandescent, burning. The 
esoteric teaching is that it is indeed glowing, but glowing with a 
cold light, the same as, or similar to, that of the firefly, if you like. 
There is no more heat in a nebula than there is in the light of the 
firefly. This light in the nebula, this luminosity, is not from com- 
bustion of any kind ; but, then, what is it from ? It is from the 
indwelling Daivl-Prakriti, " divine nature or light ", in its mani- 
festation on that plane, the same light which in sentient beings 
manifests in a higher form as consciousness in all its degrees, 
running from dull physical consciousness up through the soul and 
the ego : through the self up into the Selfless Self of the Paramat- 
man, or the " Supreme Self " a mere expression of convenience 
as meaning the acme or summit of a Hierarchy, because really 
there is no Supreme Self, which would mean a limit, hence finite- 
ness. If there were, there would be a lowest self. Self is boundless, 
endless, the very heart of being, the foundation and dimensionless 
core of all that is. 
 
Next, the third vital defect : The planets and the sun were not 
evolved or born in the manner stated by the nebular theory. How 
are the sun and the planets born ? (Let me say here by way of 
parenthesis, that this subject should come much later in our 
study, but there is a reason for referring to it now.) Every solar 
or planetary body, the sun and planets in our solar system, and 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 43
 
analogically (that is, by analogy), everywhere else, is the child or 
rather the result or reimbodiment of a former cosmic entity, which, 
upon entering into its pralaya, its Prakritika-pralaya the dis- 
solution of its lower principles at the end of its long life-cycle, 
exists in space in the higher activity of its spiritual principles, and 
in the dispersion of its lowest principles, which latter latently 
exist in space as Skandhas, in what our Teachers have taught us 
is called in Sanskrit a toy0-condition, from the root It, referred to 
in our last meeting, meaning to dissolve or to vanish away ; hence, 
a laya-center is a " point of disappearance " which is the Sans- 
krit meaning, and even the dictionary meaning ; a laya-center 
is the mystical point where a thing disappears from one plane, if 
you like, and passes onwards to reappear on another plane. 
 
To repeat an illustration which we used in our last meeting : 
pour water on a cube of sugar or salt, and watch it dissolve 
vanish as a cube or discrete entity. It has entered its laya-state 
as a cube or entity of sugar or salt. The form of it has gone, and 
itself the sugar or salt has entered into something else. When 
the higher principles of a cosmic body enter into something else, 
what is that something else into which they enter ? They enter 
into the highest cosmic aether, first, and in due course go still 
higher into the intense activity of the spiritual planes ; there long 
aeons are passed in states and conditions to us almost unimagin- 
able. In due course of time, they begin their downward course 
into matter again, or re-imbodiment, and finally, by attraction, 
re-collect their old skandhas hitherto lying latent, and thus form 
for themselves a new body, by passing into manifestation through 
and by the laya-center where those skandhas were waiting. 
 
Those lower principles were meanwhile in Nirvana, what we 
would call Devachan after the death of man, for Devachan as a 
state applies not to the highest or heavenly or divine monad, but 
only to the middle principles of man, to the personal ego, or the 
personal soul, in man. Applied to us this condition is the state of 
Devachan the " land of the gods ", if you like ; but applied to 
a cosmic body it is the state of Nirvana. Nirvana is a Sanskrit 
compound, nir, out, and vdna the past-participle passive of the 
root vd, blow, i.e., literally " blown out ". 
 
So badly has the meaning of the ancient Indian thought (and 
even its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many 
years very erudite European scholars were discussing whether 
being " blown out " meant actual entitative annihilation or not. 
I remember once talking with a Chinese savant he happened to 
be a Chinese Buddhist and he told me that the state of man after 
death was " like this " and he took up a lighted candle which was 
on the table and blew upon it, and the light went out. And he 
said, " That way ". He was right, because he was referring to the 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
lower principles in man. They (not we, our monadic or excitative 
essence), they are merely the vehicle in which we live ; and when 
we die, our physical body is " blown out ", breaks up, enters into 
its pralaya or dissolution, and its molecules, its particles, go into 
the laya-state, and pass a certain time there until Nature calls 
them forth again : or, to put it more accurately in another way, 
until the indwelling impulse in each physical monadic particle 
through the thirst for active being, rises forth into manifestation 
again, and it re-enters some body of appropriate kind and of 
similar evolutional degree. 
 
This is one and only one facet of the secret of the much mis- 
understood doctrine of transmigration into animals. The lower 
elements, the astral body and the astral dregs of the animal or 
physical man, become the principles not the latent higher, but the 
intermediate principles of the beast-world. They are human 
dregs cast off by man. 
 
Now, the cosmic dust resulting from the dissolution of a former 
world rests in a laya-center ; while the highest principles of that 
world or planetary chain are in their para-nirvana, and remain 
there until the divine thirst for active life on the highest plane of 
descent, which re-arises in the cosmic monad of a planet or sun, 
pulls, pushes, or urges, or impels, that monad to the spiritual 
frontiers of manifestation ; and when it arrives at those frontiers, 
it bursts through them as it were, or breaks through, or goes 
through, or cycles downward through, into the plane below it, 
and thus again and again through many planes, till finally the 
cycling monad reaches and touches or lightens all those lower 
elements which are remaining in the laya-center : awakens them, 
re-awakens them, revivifies them, recalls them into being, re- 
illuminates them from within ; and this produces the luminosity 
or nebulosity seen in so many parts of interstellar space. There- 
fore, it is, actually, daivi-prakriti, " divine Nature ", " divine 
light ", in one of its lowest forms the seventh, counting down- 
wards and this same light, or force, on this our plane (our 
Teachers have told us) in one of its very lowest forms, is electricity 
and magnetism. Our Teachers have also told us that the physical 
universe here in which we live the stones, metals, trees, etc. 
is corporealized light. They are all formed of atoms, and these 
atoms, so to speak, are the mystic atoms of this light, the corpus- 
cular part of light, because light is corpuscular : it is not a mere 
" mode of motion " or a wave or something else. Light (our 
light) is a body, as much a body as electricity one of its forms 
is a body, i.e., material, or subtil matter. 
 
Now, then, when this nebula of which we have been speaking 
let us give it the scientific name has attained the point of 
development or evolution downwards into manifestation where the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 45
 
re-imbodying principles of the former world or cosmos, or sun, or 
planet, as the case may be, have sufficiently entered into it, it 
begins to rotate by a characteristic energy, similar to electro- 
magnetism, inherent in itself. Plato tells us that circular motion 
is one of the first signs of entitative, free, existence a saying 
which is often laughed at by our young savants of science, and 
quondam bigwigs of a transitory era of dogmatic thinking. Plato 
defines being as a " body which is capable of acting and being 
acted upon ". It is a good definition to remember, for it implies 
both passive and active existence or manifestation : and he 
said that, with reference to the highest essence of the cosmos 
the Primal Principle of which our first great Teacher speaks as the 
Ineffable That, as the Sanskritists call it it is not " a " being, 
hence limited, possessing bounds, because neither does it act nor 
is it acted upon. It is All, eternally, endlessly All. 
 
So this cosmic nebula drifts from the place where it first was 
evolved, the guiding impulse of Karma directing here and direct- 
ing there, this luminous nebulosity moving circularly, and con- 
tracting, passing through other phases of nebular evolution, such 
as the spiral stage and the annular ; until it becomes spherical, 
or rather a nebular series of concentric spheres. The nebula in 
space, as just said, takes often a spiral form, and from the core, 
the center, there stream forth branches, spiral branches, and they 
look like whirling wheels within wheels, and they whirl during 
many ages. When the time has come when the whirling has 
developed pari passu with the indwelling lives and intelligences 
within the cosmic nebula then the annular form appears, a 
form like a ring or concentric rings, with a heart in the center, 
and after long seons, the central heart becomes the sun or central 
body of the new solar system, and the rings the planets. These 
rings condense into other bodies, and these other bodies are the 
planets circulating around their elder brother, the sun ; elder, 
because he was the first to condense into a sphere. 
 
The idea of modern scientists that the nebular sun threw off the 
planets, and that the earth after partial solidification threw off 
the moon, and that the other planets having moons did likewise, 
is not the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy. It has never been 
proved, and it is criticized daily by men as eminent as those who 
propounded these theories. The nebular theory as propounded 
and ' modified from time to time, Science has never proved ; 
scientists have never been able to prove why so much heat could 
develop and be retained in so tenuous, so diaphanous an object. 
Why, if the luminosity arises from combustion of gaseous matter, 
does it not burn itself out ? It had billions of years, countless 
ages, in which to burn out, and the sky is dotted with nebulae 
which have not burned out yet ; and similarly with regard to the 
 
 
 
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sun. The sun is formed of the same matter as the nebtite, later 
becoming cometary matter. The sun does not burn ; it has no 
more heat in it than has a pane of glass which transmits the solar 
ray. 
 
The sun is not in combustion : it is the generator and storehouse 
of the mighty ocean of force and forces which feed our entire 
solar system. Matter is corporealized or crystallized Force ; 
Force, inversely, may be called subtil Matter or matter in its 
fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh states, for Force and Matter are 
One. The sun is a storehouse and generator of Forces, and is 
itself Force in its first and second states i.e., matter in its sixth and 
seventh states, counting upward. We shall study this subject more 
fully in a later lecture. 
 
These are a bare outline of the teachings that we have received 
on the subjects treated of. The moon comprises another subject, 
which will merit in due time very particular study, indeed. 
 
First a nebula ; then a comet ; then a planet ; but the above 
sketch outlines the state of a solar system in the first era of 
the solar manvantara. Now let us take any one planet and 
shortly, briefly, touch upon the nature of a planetary manvantara. 
The sun, of course, remains throughout the solar manvantara. 
It began with it, and when the solar system comes to an end, its 
(the sun's) pralaya will also come. But the planets are different 
in certain respects. They have their manvantara also, each one 
of them, lasting usually many billions of years ; and when a 
planetary chain or body has reached its term, when its hour strikes 
for going into rest, or into pralaya or dissolution, the manvantara 
ends, and pralaya begins, but in this case it is not a Prakritika- 
pralaya, which, you remember, we alluded to in our last meeting 
it signifies or means the dissolution of Nature. The planetary 
body remains dead, as is now the moon itself, but it sends its 
principles (precisely as the former solar system did which we 
were studying) into a laya-center in space, and they remain there 
for "innumerable ages". Meanwhile the other planets of that 
solar system go through their cycles ; but the planet which we 
have picked out for illustration, when its time comes again to 
descend into manvantara, follows its line of development in 
precisely the same way as outlined before. It descends again into 
manifestation through the inner divine planetary thirst for active 
life and is directed to the same solar system, and to the same 
spot, relatively speaking, that its predecessor (its former self) 
had, attracted thither by magnetic and other forces on the lower 
planes. It forms, in the beginning of its course, or journey, down- 
wards, a planetary nebula ; after many aeons, it becomes a comet, 
following ultimately an elliptic orbit, around the sun of our solar 
system, thus being " captured ", as our scientists wrongly say, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 47
 
by the sun ; and finally condenses into a planet in its earliest 
physical condition. The comets of short periodic time are on their 
way to rebecoming planets in our solar system, provided they 
successfully elude the many dangers that beset such ethereal 
bodies before^ condensation and hardening of their matter shield 
them from destruction. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER VI
 
THE DAWN OF MANIFESTATION : LAYA-CENTERS. A CONSCIOUS 
UNIVERSE SPIRITUALLY PURPOSIVE. STOIC DOCTRINE OF 
THE INTERMINGLING OF ALL BEINGS : " LAWS OF NATURE." 
PHILOSOPHICAL POLYTHEISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF 
HIERARCHIES. 
 
(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3) 
esoteric, within the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the 
Zodiac ; the seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the 
Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual, 
semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings. 
 
The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary, 
or the " four bodies and the three faculties " of Brahma exoterically, and the 
Panchasyam, the five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist 
system. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 213. 
 
. . . The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other reasonable 
and intellectual beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest conceit 
of our age. All that science has a right to affirm is that there are no invisible 
Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point- 
blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under totally different 
conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world ; nor can it deny that 
there may be a certain limited communication between some of those worlds 
and our own. To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely 
divine Spirits, to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be 
seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the 
Earth, which progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each principle in man 
having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings who furnish us with 
the respective invisible elements in us. 
 
Ibid., I, 133. 
 
WE open our study this evening by reading from 
H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 258, 
the second paragraph : 
 
" Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active 
life ; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent of 
Life) ; Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE, which is neither 
Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute life, latent." (Book of Dzyan, 
Comm. iii, par. 18). ..." Spirit is the first differentiation of (and in) 
SPACE : and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is 
neither Spirit nor Matter that is IT the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit 
and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the 
ONE LIFE or the Intra-Cosmic Breath." 
 
In our study of a week ago, we embarked upon a brief dis- 
cussion, or rather a short excursus, with regard to certain 
astronomical factors which enter very largely into the occult or 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 49
 
Esoteric teaching which leads to a proper comprehension of 
Cosmogony or World-Building, and also of Theogony or the 
Genesis of the Gods or Divine Intelligences who initiate and 
direct Cosmogony, as these are outlined in The Secret Doctrine. 
Within the time at our disposal we shortly reviewed the Esoteric 
formulae in which the ancient wisdom is imbodied, and the 
effectual agencies which act at the Dawn of Manifestation ; and 
this evening we shall undertake briefly to review the causal 
agencies or aspects of the same subject. 
 
The dawn of manifestation, as The Secret Doctrine tells us, 
begins in and with the awakening of a laya-center. The Sanskrit 
word laya t as we saw before, signifies in Esotericism that point 
or spot any point or any spot in space, which, owing to karmic 
law, suddenly becomes the center of active life, first on a higher 
plane and later descending into manifestation through and by 
the lower planes. In one sense it (such a /oya-center) may be 
conceived of as a canal, a channel, through which the vitality 
of the superior spheres is pouring down into, and inspiring, 
inbreathing into, the lower planes or states of matter, or rather 
of substance. But behind all this vitality there is a driving 
force, as was before remarked. There are mechanics in the 
universe, mechanics of many degrees of consciousness and power. 
But behind the pure mechanic stands the spiritual mechanician. 
 
It would seem absolutely necessary first to soak our minds 
through and through with the thought that everything in our 
cosmical universe, i.e., the stellar universe, is alive, is directed 
by will and governed by intelligence. Behind every cosmic 
body that we see, there is a directing intelligence and a guiding 
will. 
 
If Theosophy has one natural enemy against which it has 
fought and will always fight it is the materialistic view of life, 
the view that nothing exists except dead unconscious matter, 
and that the phenomena of life and thought and consciousness 
spring from it. This is not merely unnatural and therefore 
impossible ; it is absurd as a hypothesis. 
 
On the contrary, as we may read in The Secret Doctrine, the 
main, fundamental, and basic postulate of being is that the 
universe is driven by will and consciousness, guided by will and 
consciousness, and is spiritually purposive. When a laya-center 
is fired into action by the touch of these two on their downward 
way, becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a 
planet of a solar system, the center manifests first on its highest 
plane. The Skandhas (which, as it will be remembered, we 
described in a former study) are awakened into life one after 
another : first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and 
lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and qualitatively speaking. 
 
 
 
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In such laya-centers the imbodying life shows itself tirst to 
our physical' human eyes as a luminous nebula matter, which 
we may describe as being of course on the fourth plane of Nature 
or Prakriti, but nevertheless in the second (counting downwards) 
of the seven principles or states of the material universe. It is a 
manifestation in that universe of Daivi-Prakriti, i.e., " shining " 
Prakriti, or " divine " Prakriti. As the aeons pass, this laya- 
center now manifesting as a nebula, remains in space steadily 
though slowly developing and condensing (following the impulses 
of the forces that have awakened it into action on this plane) 
as the aeons pass, I say, it is drawn towards that part or locality 
in space if we are speaking of a solar system or towards that 
sun, if we are describing the coming into being of a planet, with 
which it has karmic skandhic affinities, or magnetic attraction, 
and eventually manifests in the latter case as a comet, the matter 
of which, by the way, is entirely different from the matter we 
have any knowledge of on earth, and which it is impossible to 
reproduce under any physical conditions in our laboratories, 
because this matter, while on the fourth plane of manifestation 
(otherwise we should not sense it with our fourth-plane eyes), is 
matter in another state than any known to us probably in the 
sixth state, counting from below, or the second state counting 
from above. 
 
Of such matter is the sun, or rather the solar body, in its 
outward form, composed. It is physical matter in the sixth state, 
counting upwards, or in the second state counting downwards or 
outward ; and its nucleus, which, as H. P. Blavatsky tells us in 
The Secret Doctrine, is a particle or a solar atom of primal matter- 
stuff, or spirit-stuff , is matter in the seventh state counting upwards, 
or the fii;st or highest, counting downwards. 
 
This comet in time, if it succeed in pursuing its way towards 
becoming what it is destined to be, becomes finally a planet ; it 
so becomes unless it meet with some disaster, as when it is 
swallowed up by one or another of the suns which it may pass 
in its far-flung orbit. Some comets have already, in our solar 
system, so nearly reached the planetary state in its first stages, on 
the way to becoming a full-grown planet of the solar system, 
that their orbits lie within the confines or limits of this system. 
Such, for instance, is Encke's comet, having an elliptical orbit, 
and moving around the sun in a closed curve in the space of two 
and a half or three years. Another one is Biela's, which, I 
believe, has not been seen again, after it appeared to break into 
two, I think in the 'fifties of last century. Another one was 
Faye's, having the largest orbit of all these three. Two others 
are de Vico's and Brorsen's. 
 
It would seem as if all those comets which are drawn into 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 51
 
elliptical orbits around our sun, were so drawn because they were 
karmically destined ultimately to become planets of our system ; 
but others, again, suffer another fate. They perish, absorbed 
or torn to pieces by the inexpressibly active influences which 
surround not merely our own but all other suns, because each 
sun, while being the center of its own system of planets, and their 
life-giver, from another aspect is a cosmical vampire. 
 
There is much more on this subject that must be said, but it 
is very doubtful whether, at the present stage of our study, it 
would be wise to embark upon a wider exposition now ; and also 
because we know not whether the Teacher would approve of 
our going into the matter more fully at present. 
 
If possible, we desire this evening to return to the point where 
we were, before embarking upon this excursus, and to take up 
again the same thread of thought then interrupted, continuing 
it this evening with a study of the beginning of things as outlined 
in the Jewish book of Genesis, or " Beginning ", and as illustrated 
more particularly by the Jewish Theosophy called the Qabbalah. 
If the time allotted to us be insufficient to do so this evening, we 
hope to begin that study at our next meeting. 
 
Nothing in the universe is separate from any other thing. All 
things hang together not merely sympathetically and magnetic- 
ally but because all beings are fundamentally one. We have one 
self, one Self of selves, manifesting in the inmost of the Inmost 
being of all. But we have many egos, and the study of the ego 
in that branch of our thought which is embraced under the head 
of psychology, is one of the most inherently necessary and one 
of the most interesting and important that can be undertaken. 
 
Around the ego center, so far as we humans are concerned, 
some of the most important teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom. 
Without going into this study at some length, it is impossible 
for us to understand certain of the teachings in The Secret 
Doctrine. The ancient Stoics (the very wonderful philosophy 
originating with some of the Greek philosophers, and which 
became so deservedly popular among the deeper thinkers of 
Rome) taught that everything in the universe is intermingled, 
or interwoven, not by fundamentally distinct essences or entities 
interpenetrating each other, nor in what we theosophists today 
call " planes of being ", merely, but by various aspects or differ- 
entiations of one common substance, the Root of all, and they 
expressed the principle through the three Greek words, Krasis 
di 'holou, a mingling through everything, an intermingling of all the 
essences in the Cosmos, arising out of, and differentiated from, 
the Root-substance common to all. This is also the teaching of 
our own Esoteric Wisdom. It is the manifestation, in other 
words, of all beings, of all thinking, unthinking, and senseless 
 
 
 
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beings, and of all the gods giving direction and purpose to the 
complex universe, which we see around us today ; and in this 
varied life was placed the primal cause of all the beauty, the 
concord, as well as the strife and discord that do exist in Nature, 
and which is the cause of the so-called mistakes that Nature 
makes. The origin, in other words, of what some people and 
some Christians call the " insolvable riddle " of the " Origin of 
evil ". What is the " origin of evil " ? The Ancient Wisdom says 
that it is merely the conflict of wills of evolving beings an 
inevitable and necessary phase of evolution. 
 
Properly to understand this Intermingling involves another 
important subject of study which we shall take up at a later 
date, and this is the doctrine of Hierarchies. Hierarchy, of 
course, merely means that a scheme or system or state of delegated 
directive power and authority exists in a self-contained body, 
directed, guided, and taught by one having supreme authority, 
called the Hierarch. The name is used by us, by extension of 
meaning, as signifying the innumerable degrees, grades, and 
steps of evolving entities in the Kosmos, and as applying to all 
parts of the universe ; and rightly so, because every different 
part of the universe and their number is simply countless is 
under the vital governance of a Divine Being, of a God, of a 
Spiritual Essence, and all material manifestations are simply the 
appearances on our plane of the workings and actions of these 
Spiritual Beings behind it. The series of Hierarchies extends 
infinitely in both directions. Man may, if he so choose, for 
purposes of thought, consider himself at the middle point, from 
which extends above him an unending series of steps upon steps 
of higher beings of all grades growing constantly less material 
and more spiritual, and greater in all senses towards an ineffable 
point, and there the imagination stops ; not because the series 
itself stops, but because our thought can reach no farther out 
nor in. And similar to this series, an infinitely great series of 
beings and states of beings descends downwards (to use human 
terms) downwards and downwards, until there again the 
imagination stops merely because our thought can go no farther. 
 
The eternal action and interaction or what the Stoics also 
called the intermingling of these beings produce eternally the 
various so-called " planes of being ", and the action of the will 
of these beings on matter or substances is the manifestation of 
what we call the " laws of Nature ". This is a very inaccurate 
and misleading phrase ; but it seems justifiable in a metaphorical 
sense, because as a human legislator or a human law-giver will 
set forth or set down certain rules of conduct, certain schemes of 
action, which are to be obeyed, so the Intelligences behind the 
actions of Nature do the same thing, not in a legislative way, but 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 53
 
by the action of their own spiritual economy. So man himself, in 
similar fashion, lays down the " laws " for the less lives which 
compose his essences the principles under the center which he 
governs and which comprise even the physical body, and the 
lives building it. Each one of these lives, as was said before, is 
a microcosmic universe or cosmos, that is to say, an ordered 
entity, an entity ruled by inescapable or ineluctable habit, which 
the scientists of our own race, applying the rule to universal 
cosmical action, call the " laws " of Nature. 
 
And they in turn, these less lives, have similar universes under 
them. It is unthinkable that the series can stop or have an end, 
because if it did, we should have an infinity that ends, an un- 
thinkable proposition. It is merely the paucity of our ideas and 
the feebleness of our imagination which make us to suppose that 
there may be a stop at certain points ; and it is this feebleness 
of thought which has given birth to and promoted the rise of 
the different religious systems ; in one case the monotheism of the 
Christian Church, and in another case the monotheism of the 
Mohammedan peoples, and in another case still the monotheism 
of the Jewish people. Of these three, the Jews have had the 
longest history and the wisest history, for the Jews originally 
were never a monotheistic people. In their early history they 
were convinced polytheists using the term in the philosophical 
sense, lest people imagine when they hear of Polytheism that it 
means our absurd modern Western misconception of what we 
think the cultured Romans and Greeks thought about their gods 
and goddesses, or what we think they ought to have believed, 
which is conceited nonsense. 
 
The popular mythology of the Greeks and Romans, as also 
that of ancient Egypt or of Babylonia, and that of the Germanic 
or Celtic tribes of Europe, was understood in a different way 
from our gross misconception of it ; and conceived of in a different 
way by the wise men in those days, who understood perfectly 
well all the usual symbols and allegories by which the esoteric 
teachings were outlined and taught in the popular mythologies. 
And we must remember that " exoteric " does not necessarily 
mean false. It means only that in exoteric teachings the keys 
to the esoteric teachings have not been given out. 
 
We often hear the claim made by monotheistic believers, that 
the great " prophets " of Israel, the so-called wise men of that 
people, knew better than their ancient predecessors what their 
people ought to know and believe. They these prophets 
taught monotheism, we are assured, and redirected the thoughts 
of the people away from the ancient beliefs indeed, the multi- 
plicity of beliefs towards one tribal God whom they called 
Jehovah, a word, by the way, which the later orthodox Jewish 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
religionists held and still hold so sacred that tney would 
not even pronounce it aloud, but in reading aloud substituted 
for it another word, when this word " Jehovah " occurred in a 
sentence in the Jewish Bible. Now this substitute word is 
" Adonai ", and means " my Lords " in itself a tru confession 
of polytheistic thought. Judaism is replete in its Law, or Bible, 
at least, with polytheism ; and so prone is the human heart to 
follow the instincts of its spirit, that when the Christian Church 
in its blindness overthrew philosophical Polytheism, as an error 
in religion, the reaction, fully to be expected as a consequence, 
finally and, indeed, very soon set in, and that Church answered 
the cry of the human heart by substituting " saints " for the 
injured and banished Gods and Goddesses, thus inaugurating a 
cultural adoration of dead men and women for Powers, Intelli- 
gences, in Nature ! They had to give them saints in order to 
supply the places of the forgotten Deities ; and even gave to 
these saints more or less the same powers that the ancient gods 
and goddesses were reputed to have exercised and to have had. 
They had a saint as a patron or protector of city, state, or 
country St. George for England, St. James for Spain, St. Denis 
for France, and so on. The same thought, the same function, 
the same desire satisfied the instincts of the human heart 
cannot be ignored or violated with impunity. But how greatly 
different was the initiate view of the Wise Men in " Pagan " 
times I 
 
Now when the Ancients spoke of the multiplicity of Gods they 
did so with wisdom, understanding, and reverence. Is it con- 
ceivable that the great men of the ancient days who then dis- 
covered and established the canons of belief followed by us 
usually ignorant of our great debt to them even to-day in all 
our lines of thought, and which we value like little children and 
have valued since the rebirth of literature in our Western world, 
is it conceivable, I say, that they had no conception of cosmical 
or of divine unity, something which even the average man of 
intelligence to-day will come to ? How absurd I No ! They 
could think and they knew as well as we do, but they also knew, 
yea, even the degenerated thinkers in the early ages of the 
Christian era, that if " God " made the world, being a perfect 
and infinite Being, his work (or Its work) could be only a perfect 
and infinite work, worthy of its perfect and infinite Maker, free 
from vanity, free from limitations, free from sin, free from decrepi- 
tude and ceaseless, gnawing change. Yet, as we see and consider 
the things around us, as we know that the world, being an 
exemplar of change and hence of limitations and decay, therefore 
cannot be and is not infinite, we know the instincts of our being 
tell us that it is the work of less beings, of minor and limited 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 55
 
Powers, however exalted spiritually ; and as we penetrate into 
our own thoughts and study the life of the beings and of the nature 
around us, we see also that there is life within life, wheel within 
wheel, purpose within purpose, and that behind the outward 
manifestations or action (the " laws of Nature ") of the so-called 
Gods, there are still more subtil Powers, still more exalted Intelli- 
gences at work : verily, wheels within wheels, lives within lives, 
and so on for ever : an unending and boundless Unity in Multi- 
plicity, and Multiplicity limitless and unbounded in Unity. So, 
as said before, when we speak of the unity of Life, or of the 
" divine unity ", we merely mean that here our penetrating 
spirit has reached the limit of its present powers, a point at 
which human thought can go no farther. It has run to its 
utmost limits, and from the feebleness of it, we are bound in 
truth to say, Here is as far as our thought can go. It is our 
present " Ring called ' Pass Not ! ' " But this honest confession 
of human limitation does not mean that there is " nothing " 
beyond. On the contrary, it is a proof that Life and space are 
endless. 
 
Now the Neo-Platonists who first came into prominence in the 
early centuries of the Christian era and who, with the Stoics, 
provided Christianity with all that it had that was philosophically 
good and spiritual and true taught that the summit, the acme, 
the flower, the highest point (that they called the " hyparxis ") 
of any series of animate and " inanimate " beings, whether we 
enumerate the stages or degrees of the series as seven or ten or 
twelve (according to whichever system we follow), was the 
" divine unity "for that series or Hierarchy, and that this hyparxis 
or flower or summit or beginning or highest being was again in 
its turn the lowest being of the Hierarchy above it, and so extending 
onwards for ever. 
 
Change within change, wheel within wheel, each Hierarchy 
manifesting one facet, as it were, of the divine cosmic Life, each 
Hierarchy showing forth one thought, as it were, of the divine 
thinkers. Good and evil are relative, and rigidly offset and equili- 
brate each other. There is no absolute good, there is no absolute 
evil ; these are mere human terms, only. " Evil " in any sphere 
of life, is imperfection, for it. " Good " in any sphere of life, is 
perfection, for it. But the good of one is the evil of another, 
because the latter is the shadow of something higher above it. 
 
Just as " light " and " darkness " are not absolute but relative 
things. What is " darkness " ? Darkness is absence of light, 
and the light that we know is itself the manifestation of life in 
matter hence a material phenomenon. Each is (physically) a 
form of vibration, each is, therefore, a form of life. 
 
Various names were given to these Hierarchies considered as 
 
 
 
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series of beings. For instance, let us take the standard and 
generalized Greek Hierarchy as shown by writers in periods 
preceding the rise of Christianity, though the Neo-Platonists, as 
we have seen, had their own Hierarchies, and gave the stages or 
degrees thereof special names. It is often asserted by those 
people who know everything I mean the bigwigs of the modern 
day, who even believe that they know better what the ancients 
believed than the ancients did themselves that Neo-Platonism 
was evolved merely to oppose and overthrow, and to take the 
place of the wonderful, soul-saving, spiritual doctrines of 
Christianity, forgetting that from Neo-Platonism and Neo- 
Pythagoreanism, and Stoicism, early Christianity drew nearly 
everything of religious and philosophic good that it had in it. 
But the Neo-Platonic doctrine was, in sober fact, actually the 
setting forth to a certain degree only of the esoteric doctrine of the 
Platonic school, and was, in its esoteric reach, the teaching which 
Plato and the early Pythagoreans taught secretly to their 
disciples. 
 
We now resume our thread. The hyparxis, as we showed, 
means the summit or beginning of a Hierarchy. The scheme 
started with the divine, the highest point of the series or its 
Divinity : 
 
(i) Divine. (2) Gods, or the spiritual. (3) Demi-gods, some- 
times called divine heroes, involving a very mystical doctrine. 
(4) Heroes proper. (5) Men. (6) Beasts or animals. (7) Vegetable 
world. (8) Mineral world. (9) Elemental world, or what was 
called the realm of Hades. As said, the Divinity (or aggregate 
Divine Lives) itself was the hyparxis of this series of Hierarchies, 
because each of these nine stages was itself a subordinate Hier- 
archy. The names mean little, you may give them other names ; 
the name itself matters not much ; the important thing is to get 
the thought. Now, as said before, remember that this Esoteric 
Wisdom taught that this (or any other) Hierarchy of nine, hangs 
like a pendant jewel from the lowest Hierarchy above it, which 
made the tenth counting upwards, which we can call, if you like, 
the Super-Divine, the Hyper-Heavenly, and that this tenth was 
the lowest stage (or the ninth, counting downwards) of still 
another Hierarchy extending upwards ; and so on, indefinitely. 
 
Now when the Christians finally overthrew the ancient 
religion ; when the karmic cycle had brought about an era of 
what Plato called spiritual barrenness and we remember to 
divide the work of evolution into two parts, epochs of barrenness 
and epochs of fertility when the Christian religion came in as 
part of an epoch of barrenness, the Christians took over very 
much of this ancient thought, as was only to be expected ; 
history merely repeated itself. And they derived it, as was said 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 57
 
before, mainly from the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagoreans and 
the Neo-Platonists, but mostly from the Neo-Platonists. This was 
done in very large part, at Alexandria, the great center of Greek 
or Hellenistic culture at that time ; the chiefest thinkers of the 
Neo-Platoqists also lived in Alexandria. This Neo-Platonic 
stream of beautiful thought in the Christian religion, entered into 
it with special force around the fifth century, through the writings 
of a man who was called Dionysius the Areopagite, from the 
" Hill of Ares ", or Mars, at Athens. The Christian legend runs 
that when Paul preached at Athens, he did so on Mars Hill, or 
the Areopagus, and that one of his first converts was a Greek 
called Dionysius ; and Christian tradition goes on to say that 
he was, later, the first Christian Bishop of Athens. Now this 
may all be fable. However, the Christians claimed it as a 
fact. 
 
Now in the fifth or sixth century, five hundred years more or 
less after Paul is supposed to have preached in Athens, there 
appeared in the Greek world a work calling itself the writings of 
Dionysius, the Areopagite claiming authorship from this same 
man. It is evidently the work of a Neo-Platonist-Christian. 
That is to say, of a Christian, who for reasons of his own, perhaps 
policy (social or financial), remained within the Christian Church, 
but was more or less a Greek pagan, a Neo-Platonist at heart. 
This work, by coming out under the name of the first (alleged) 
Bishop of Athens, Dionysius, almost immediately began to have 
immense vogue in the Christian Church ; and it remains to this 
day, not indeed one of the canonical works, but one of the works 
which the Christians consider among the greatest they have on 
mystical lines, and perhaps their most spiritual work ; it very 
deeply affected Christian theological thought from the time of 
its appearance. 
 
One of the works comprised in this book, attributed by the 
Christians themselves to Dionysius, Paul's first convert in 
Athens, is a treatise on the Divine Hierarchies, in which the 
teaching is that God is infinite and therefore did the work of 
creation through less abstract and spiritual beings ; and a scheme 
of Hierarchies is here set forth, one lower than another, one 
derived from the other ; which is exactly the teaching in the 
Qabbalah, the Theosophy of the Jews ; which also is exactly 
the teaching of the Neo-Platonists and essentially that of the 
Stoics, and of the old Greek mythology. It is a " pagan " teaching 
throughout, and merely became Christianized because adapted 
to the new religion, and because Christian names are used : and, 
instead of saying and enumerating gods, divine heroes, demi-gods or 
heroes, men, animals, etc., the names are God, Archangels, Thrones, 
Powers, etc. But the schematic or essential thought is the same : 
 
 
 
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and, furthermore, there are actually passages in the works of 
this Dionysius which are taken word for word wholesale 
from the writings of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, who lived and 
flourished and wrote voluminously on Neo-Platonic subjects in 
the third century. 
 
Now this work, particularly in the field of dogmatic ecclesias- 
tical thought, formed the basis of much of the theology of the 
Greek and Roman Churches ; we may even say that on it their 
mediaeval theology was actually based. It formed the main 
source of the studies and writings of the Italian Thomas Aquinas 
(i3th century), one of the greatest mediaeval doctors of the 
Christian religion, and of Johannes Scotus, called Erigena, an 
Irishman (gth century), and probably of Duns Scotus (i3th 
century), a remarkable Scot ; and of many more. Spenser, 
Shakespeare, and Milton, to speak only of English literature, 
are full of the spirit of these writings. They provided much of the 
mystical thought of the Dark Ages, and ultimately in a degener- 
ate form helped to give rise to the hair-splitting and quibbling 
and squabbles of the quasi-religious writers known as the School- 
men. But these men had lost the inner sense or heart of the thing 
through the ecclesiastical growth and political power of the 
Christian Church, and they began to argue about things of no 
spiritual consequence whatever ; such as the query, Which came 
first : the hen or the egg ? or, How many angels can dance on the 
point of a needle ? or, If an irresistible force meets an immovable 
obstacle, what then happens ? These most pragmatical and 
useful diversions and intellectual vagaries lasted for a certain 
time, and then, with the renaissance of thought in Europe, due 
largely to the labors of the devotees of Science and natural 
Philosophy, the European world gradually began to pull out of 
this mental slough, and brought in an era, which is now in full 
and strong current, and which has inaugurated and continued, 
for good or for ill (perhaps both), the streams of human thinking 
as we see it today. Do we Theosophists presume vainly to 
interpret the lessons of universal history when we say that we 
are the forerunners and the makers of the new era a far nobler 
and more spiritual cycle which is to come, and is even now 
dawning, albeit coming to being in no little sorrow and tribulation 
of both soul and intellect ? 
 
In conclusion, we may call attention to the fact that just about 
the time when the first 5000 years of the Hindu cycle called the 
Kaliyuga (lasting 432,000) came to an end, there also came to 
an end a certain " Messianic " cycle of twenty-one hundred 
years (actually, if we come to exact figures, 2160), which is, 
note well, just one half of the Hindti-Babylonian root-cycle of 
4320 years. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 59
 
In our next evening of study we hope to take up, with the 
Teacher's permission, the outline of Cosmogony and Theogony 
from the Polytheistic standpoint, as found in the Book of Genesis, 
the first of the Jewish Bible. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER VII
 
" HIERARCHIES " : ONE OF THE LOST KEYS OF THE ESOTERIC 
PHILOSOPHY. THE PYTHAGOREAN SACRED TETRACTYS. THE 
LADDER OF LIFE : THE LEGEND OF PADMAPANI. 
 
Theophilosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of ;Eons 
in time and space in our Round and Globe the Mysteries of Nature (at any 
rate, those which it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils 
of those same now invisible " heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols. 
The keys thereto passed from one generation of " wise men " to the other. Some 
of the symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were brought therefrom 
by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous " Triangle." The latter 
figure, along with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and scientific 
descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic, 
as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed 
" Geneses." The ten points inscribed within that " Pythagorean triangle " are 
worth all the theogonics and angelologies ever emanated from the theological 
brain. For he who interprets them on their very face, and in the order given 
will find in these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden) the 
uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to terrestrial man. 
And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were 
evolved the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by which the latter 
was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the womb of the same 
" Mother " as its fellow-globes he who will master the mysteries of our Earth 
will have mastered those of all others. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, pp. 612, 613. 
 
" It is that LIOBT which condenses into the forms of the ' Lords of Being ' 
the first and the highest of which are t collectively, JIVATMA, or Pratyagdtmd 
(said figuratively to issue from Paramatma. It is the Logos of the Greek 
philosophers appearing at the beginning of every new Manvantara). From 
these downwards formed from the ever-consolidating waves of that light, which 
becomes on the objective plane gross matter proceed the numerous hierarchies of the 
Creative Forces, some formless, others having their own distinctive form, others, again, 
the lowest (Elementals) , having no form of their own, but assuming every form 
according to the surrounding conditions." 
 
Ibid., II, pp. 33, 34- 
 
W' 
The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated 
by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, 
each having a mission to perform, and who whether we give to them 
one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels are 
" messengers " in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic 
and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their respective degrees 
of consciousness and intelligence ; and to call them all pure Spirits 
without any of the earthly alloy " which time is wont to prey upon " 
is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was, 
 
60 
 
 
 
*E open our study this evening by reading from The 
Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 274 : 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 61
 
or prepa&s to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or 
a coming cycle (Manvantara). 
 
When we ended our study last week, because of the short time 
that the Teacher has set for us in which to speak, we left un- 
mentioned a number of very important things, which we shall 
have to take up this evening before we can proceed to the particu- 
lar study that was to follow in proper course the excursus which 
we embarked upon three weeks ago. 
 
First a few words more concerning the Nebular Theory or 
Hypothesis and the Planetary Theory deriving from it, as con- 
sidered from the Theosophical standpoint, and consequently a 
further explanation or rather development of the doctrine of 
Hierarchies, which will lead us to the study towards which we 
have aimed, that is to say, the consideration of Cosmogony or the 
beginning of worlds as outlined in the Jewish Book of Genesis or 
" Beginnings ". 
 
About one hundred years ago, more or less within a few years 
of each other, there died three remarkable men, namely Kant, 
perhaps the greatest philosopher that Europe has produced ; 
Sir William Herschel, the astronomer ; and the Marquis de 
Laplace ; the first a German, the second a German-Englishman, 
or an Anglo-German, and the third a Frenchman. All these three 
men in some degree were responsible for the enunciation and the 
development of the theory of world-beginning which eventuated 
in the Nebular Hypothesis of Laplace. It is interesting also to 
note that all three men were of humble birth, and by the force 
of their own intelligence and character became, all three of them, 
remarkable men. Kant was, I believe, the son of a saddler ; Sir 
William Herschel was also of humble origin, and was in youth an 
oboist in the Hanoverian Guards ; and Pierre Simon Laplace 
was the son of a farmer ; Laplace was ennobled, and upon him 
was conferred the nobiliary title of Marquis. 
 
Now the Nebular Theory really originated with Kant ; he it 
was who laid down the basic lines, the fundamental ground, as it 
were, upon which the Nebular Theory was later developed 
mathematically by Laplace. Coincident with Kant's work and 
writings was the astronomical work of Herschel in England, 
and those two men were responsible for the fundamentals of the 
Nebular Theory. Laplace took it up after they had more or less 
laid down the main lines, developed it into what is called the 
" Nebular hypothesis or theory of Laplace ", and on account of 
its explaining in mathematical form the mechanism of the 
universe, that is to say, of the solar system and the planets, and 
their satellites, it has been called a " magnificently audacious " 
hypothesis. It was Laplace who carried the theory a good deal 
farther than the work of Kant and Herschel than the point 
 
 
 
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where Kant and Herschel had left it ; and, in a sense/ Laplace 
materialized it. As H. P. Blavatsky tells us, if the nebular 
theory had remained at the point where Kant and Herschel had 
left it, there would be little for the Theosophical writers and 
thinkers to do except to develop it and explain it in accordance 
with the Esoteric Philosophy. 
 
It is very interesting to note that another great man, Sweden- 
borg in Sweden, also worked upon the same theory and apparently 
had very nearly the same ideas that Kant and Herschel had as 
regards a nebular genesis of cosmical systems. Now these two 
latter men had a spiritual idea back of the theory which they 
enunciated, and it was the abandonment of that spiritual idea 
by Laplace, and the substitution by him of a mechanico-mathe- 
matical theory in its place, which furnished those influences which 
directed the nebular hypothesis away from the line and thought 
and teachings as laid down in the Esoteric Philosophy, as taught 
by the ancient Teachers. 
 
The nebular hypothesis has in some respects been much changed 
since the day of Laplace ; scientists have thought more about it, 
a fact which was also true in 1887 or 1888 when H. P. Blavatsky 
wrote The Secret Doctrine. There has been an attempt by later 
astronomers of our own day, Sir Norman Lockyer, and the 
American astronomer and mathematician See, to replace a 
nebular origin of cosmical bodies at least in part with what has 
been called a planetesimal hypothesis or a planetesimal origin 
that is to say, that the bodies of the solar system have been built 
up of and by cosmic dust and tiny planets drawn together by the 
force of gravitation. Now this theory is, philosophically speaking, 
at an immense distance from the teachings of the Esoteric Philos- 
ophy, although this Philosophy does admit and teach that at a 
later stage in the evolution of cosmical bodies, collection and 
concretion of stellar dust is, actually, one of the phases in the 
growth of worlds. 
 
Theosophy admits that a planet or a solar system, in the course 
of its formation, does gather to itself " star-dust " and vagrant 
bodies dispersed in space ; but this factor in its growth is not its 
origin. The origin of a sun, of a solar system and of the planets 
in it, and consequently of the entire universe within the encircling 
zone of the Milky Way, has a spiritual background, has spiritual 
essences or gods behind it, who form such a system, and direct it, 
and are the mechanicians in it and of it. Their work is carried on 
(more or less) along the main lines of the nebular theory as 
enunciated by Kant and Herschel : that is to say, space is etern- 
ally filled with matter in a certain state or condition of being, 
and when this matter, as Kant and Herschel would have said, 
receives the divine impulse, it is concreted and becomes luminous, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 63
 
and this* concretion is further (and later) strengthened by its 
drawing into itself, from the immense spacial expanse in which 
it is, material " star-dust " and larger bodies. 
 
Now, when we look up at the sky we see material bodies, 
fourth-plane bodies seen with our fourth-plane eyes, but behind 
these fourth-plane bodies there are spiritual intelligences, which 
are called in the Esoteric Philosophy, Dhyan-Chohans, or " Lords 
of Meditation ". As the Ancients put it, every celestial body 
is an " animal ". Now the word animal comes from the Latin, 
and means a living being. Commonly, in speech, we speak of 
" animals " when we should say " beasts " or " brutes " ; that 
is to say, a " brute " is an entity which has not yet been raised 
to the level of a self-conscious entity ; it is brute in the original 
Latin sense, i.e., " heavy ", " gross ", hence irrational and incom- 
plete ; it is not yet finished. But an animal really means a 
living being, and in that sense the word applies to men ; also, 
in the view of the Ancients, it applies to the stellar, solar, and 
planetary bodies they are " animals " in the sense of being 
living things, with a physical corpus or body, but nevertheless 
animate or insouled : in the mystical teachings of the Esoteric 
Philosophy they are insouled things, as indeed every atom is, 
every tiny universe, or tiny cosmos. 
 
Now this insouling is done by (or is the action of) what is 
commonly called Hierarchies. There is not for every individual 
entity in Kosmos, whether atom, beast, man, god, planet, or sun, 
one concreted soul, as it were, derived from the universal World- 
Soul, with nothing no connecting links above it and nothing 
below it not at all. There are no true vacancies in Nature, 
physical, astral, or spiritual : there are no vacuums. Everything 
is linked on to everything else, by literally countless bonds of 
union, which is another master-key to the teachings of the 
Esoteric Philosophy. As in man, so in every other unit of being, 
in every other entity, the universal life manifests through a 
Hierarchy ; the multiform and varied qualities of beings are 
but the life-rays of a Hierarchy, that is to say, grades or steps of 
consciousness and matter, ascending from below upward, or if 
you like, coming downwards from above, through all of which 
the center of consciousness call it soul or ego for the moment 
must pass in its evolution towards godhood. 
 
Now this teaching of Hierarchies is fundamental. It is one of 
the present-day " lost keys " of the Esoteric Philosophy. Nothing 
can be understood adequately without a clear comprehension of 
it. As man is in our ordinary psychology considered to be a 
triad, or a triform entity body, soul, and spirit so he may be 
considered from another point of view as a four-fold entity, or 
as a five-fold, or a six-fold, or a seven-fold, or (the most esoteric 
 
 
 
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of all) as a ten-fold entity. Why ten ? Because ten, the*Teachers 
have told us, is the key-number which explains the compound 
fabric of the universe. The universe is built on a denary scale, 
that is, on a scale counting by tens. In a few moments we shall 
develop in outline the philosophical import of seven and ten. 
Let us say now that man is septenary in our view (5nly because 
we reckon in as principles, two elements of his being which are 
not, strictly speaking, human principles ; one the physical 
body which really is not a " principle " at all : it is merely a 
house, his " carrier " in another sense, and no more belongs to 
man except that he has excreted it, thrown it out from himself 
this physical body, we say, is no more himself than is the 
house in which his body lives. He is a complete human being 
without it. 
 
The second strictly non-human principle is the highest of all 
the seven, the Higher Self, the Atman, the seventh non-human 
because it is universal. The Self no more belongs to me than 
to you or to anyone else. Selfhood is the same in all beings. But 
beyond the Atman, there is the Paramatman, which we have 
briefly studied before, the Supreme Self. The Atman is, as it 
were, the star of our own self-issue, the Root of our selfhood, the 
point where we cling, as it were, to the " Highest ". If we can 
conceive of an ocean of superspiritual ether, so to speak, and in 
that ocean call it consciousness a vortex, a laya-center, a 
point, a Primordial Point, whence the six principles below it 
flow forth into concrete manifestation through its vehicles the 
souls or egos we obtain a very crude conception of the Root of 
our being. It is the Atman, the channel or spiritual point where 
the superspiritual breaks, as it were, from and through a barrier 
downwards into individualized life. This process we shall 
more fully explain later, and shall then illustrate it by 
diagram. 
 
Now this matter of Hierarchies as dealt with in the different 
world-religions virtually in the same manner but under different 
names and in different paradigmatic schemes. For instance, you 
can think of the ten parts or grades or steps of a Hierarchy as one 
under the other, like the floors in a house, or like the flats in an 
apartment-house, a very gross simile, it is true, but having the 
advantage of suggesting steps or planes, and of suggesting high 
and low. We can think of a Hierarchy in another, more subtil, 
manner, as consisting in triads of spheres, or living centers, three 
triads hanging from the tenth or highest point ; and that highest 
center is, as already explained, the point beyond which our 
thought and imagination can soar no higher, and we merely say 
that this center is the highest that the human intellect can reach. 
But we know that beyond it, this tenth which is our highest, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 65
 
there is also the lowest center or plane of another Hierarchy still 
higher from which our Hierarchy hangs as a pendant ; and so 
on endlessly. We cannot say of Infinity, that the Infinite begins 
here and ends there : if this were so, it would not be infinite, it 
would not >e boundless. Our doctrine of Universal Life, of 
Universal Consciousness, of one Universal " Law " working 
everywhere, means that that " Law " manifests in every atom, 
and in every part of Universal Being, and in all directions, 
and for all duration, and in the same manner everywhere ; 
because it cannot manifest in radically diverse ways ; if 
so, it would be many fundamental " laws " and not one 
" Law ". 
 
For instance as regards Hierarchies in our last study we 
considered the Hierarchy of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, which 
is really the esoteric teaching of ancient Greece in the form that 
Plato gave to it. And there were nine stages, nine degrees, 
hanging, as it were, from the topmost, the spiritual sun or the 
central sun. We can conceive of these Hierarchies as seven con- 
centric circles around and deriving from a central point, the 
Highest Triad, which we can call the infinite or the Primordial 
Point ; or, again, we can call this primordial point the At man 
or Self of the thinking entity, man, and then the other spheres 
or circles of being around him, will stand for his six other 
principles, somewhat in this fashion : 
 
 
 
 
This is one way of representing a human individual Hierarchy, 
the different spheres or concentric circles, six of them, all flowing 
forth from the center, or seventh element, the Self. All Hier- 
archies are divided into seven, nine, or ten. The reason for this 
is a question that we shall have to go into by and by. There is 
no need to represent all these methods or paradigmatic schemes, 
but the idea is the same in all. Another way of representing a 
 
 
 
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Hierarchy by paradigm is, as said before, by like lines, ten of 
them, in this way : 
 
 
 
. 5 
.6 
 
. 7 
 
.8 
 
 
 
or by representing the nine stages or spheres as three triads on 
three planes, and the tenth on its own fourth plane : 
 
 
 
We have studied the system of the Neo-Platonic Hierarchies 
in brief outline ; and, if we have time, we shall take up this 
evening two other paradigmatic schemes by which Hierarchies 
are variously represented. Let us call earnest attention here to 
the important fact, before going farther, that these schemes, 
these paradigmatic representation^ on a flat surface, do not 
mean that the grades or steps or planes of being are either flat 
surfaces, or are like " nests " of boxes ; they merely show by 
analogy, by hints, the relations and the functions of the grades 
among themselves. 
 
It is obvious to any thinking man that the Hierarchies of being 
do not rise one above another like the floors of a house ; it is 
perhaps true that all over the world they are so represented by 
different systems ; but this is merely to show that there is a high 
and a low, a series of conditions or states of spirit and matter. 
Just as we would teach children, so the ancient Teachers taught 
us, in simple ways. Nor are we to imagine that the Hierarchies 
actually extend somewhere in space in the form of triangles or 
circles. We represent them in this way in order to show their 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 67
 
intermingling relations and their interpenetrating functions 
among each other. Why, however, do we separate the grades 
into triads ? Because certain ones of these grades or planes are 
more nearly related, intermingle more easily, function more 
easily together, since their conditions or states are more closely 
akin, (i) the first triad, the highest ; (2) the intermediate ; 
(3) the lowest triad ; and all overshadowing the corpus, the 
physical body. Or we can take another scheme, and have the 
three lowest centers forming the bottom triad ; the three inter- 
mediate centers next ; and then the three highest ; all the three 
triads hanging from a point, the Primordial Point, " God ", if 
you like. 
 
Now let us consider the question : Have the Christians a 
Hierarchy in their theology ? They have ; and by this I mean 
that the Christians had one, apparently from the earliest times, 
till the natural resiliency of the human mind began to exert 
itself in rebellion against the dogmatism and materialization of 
the Christian teaching which reached its climax in the epoch 
preceding the Renaissance of thought, when the discoveries of 
science freed the human mind from its dogmatic shackles. 
Nevertheless, up till that time this teaching of Hierarchies con- 
trolling living beings flourished in the Christian Church, and it 
originated in the form it then had, as we pointed out in our last 
study, in the writings of Dionysius, " the Areopagite ". One of 
his works was called On the Celestial Hierarchy, and it showed 
how all spiritual being was divided into a Hierarchy of ten degrees 
or stages, the tenth or highest being God. This mystic writer 
followed this work with another called On the Ecclesiastical 
Hierarchy, and he claimed as a good Christian, or in order to 
please his good Christian friends there is every reason to 
believe that he copied the hierarchical scheme of the Neo- 
Platonic philosophy, which was purely pagan, of course that 
on earth the celestial Hierarchy was re-enacted or reflected or 
repeated in an ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which was the Christian 
Church, topped by Jesus as the highest representative thereof 
and as the " Logos of God " ! 
 
Now what were the names that Dionysius gave to the grades 
or stages of his Hierarchy ? First, God, as the summit, the 
Divine Spirit ; then came the Seraphim ; then the Cherubim ; 
then the Thrones, forming the first triad. Then Dominations, 
Virtues, Powers, forming the second triad. Then Principalities, 
then Archangels, then Angels, the third triad counting down- 
ward. 
 
It is interesting to note that this Hierarchy is syncretistic, 
that is, composite, taken from different sources, and built up into 
a unity. Seraphim and Cherubim are from the Hebrew. This 
 
 
 
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plural word Seraphim comes from a Hebrew root meaning to 
" burn with fire ", hence, to be inflamed with love. Cherubim 
is a curious -word, but scholars generally think that it means 
" forms ". The Seraphim are mystically believed to be red in 
color, and the Cherubim dark blue. The Thrones, the Domina- 
tions, the Virtues, the Powers, the Principalities, are all taken 
from the Christian teachings of Paul in the Epistles, Ephesians 
i, 21, and Colossians i, 16, and are distinctly mystic. The two last, 
the archangels and the angels, are not at all Christian in their 
origin, but are derived in indirect and tortuous descent from the 
ancient Greek and Asiatic especially old Persian system of 
thought which recognized messengers or ministers or transmitters 
between man and the spiritual world ; the Greek word angel 
originally meant " messenger ", and the highest type of these 
were called archangels, or angels of the highest degree. 
 
Now the fault, or rather inadequacy, of this Christian system 
is that its highest point reached no higher than this god here, a 
modification on Greek lines of the Jewish Jehovah ; and it went 
no farther below in reach or extent than man himself. The 
Ineffable, Unthinkable, on the one hand, and the immeasurable 
spheres of beings below man, on the other hand, are ignored. It 
was merely a chapter torn out of the Ancient Wisdom and taken 
over into Christianity ; but small and imperfect as it was, it 
provided Christianity with all the mysticism and spiritualizing 
thought that saved it from utter materialism in religion during 
the Middle Ages. 
 
Let us now take up another Hierarchy, the Jewish scheme of 
the Qabbalah. You see that there are nine degrees here, nine 
degrees all pendant from the Supreme Self or God. Now the 
Jewish Qabbalistic Hierarchy, or Hierarchies, or system of Hier- 
archies, is an outgrowth of the teachings and thinkings of the 
Jewish doctors or Rabbis, from a time very far back, and is 
actually a reflexion of esoteric Babylonian teachings. 
 
As the Book of Genesis (the first few chapters of it at least) is 
very largely taken from the Babylonians, so the Jews derived 
their Angelology, or system of angels or angelical Hierarchies, 
from that same source. Now this teaching found its finest 
expression in the Jewish Theosophy, called the Qabbalah (this 
word, as said before, meaning to receive i.e., traditionary lore 
handed down from teacher to teacher), and the teaching of the 
Hierarchies in the Qabbalah is fundamental, the whole system 
being based on it : it implies the intermingling and the inter- 
change of all life and all beings, between low and high, in this 
regard exactly as in our own teaching. Hence the Qabbalah is, 
so far as it goes, a faithful reflexion of the Esoteric Philosophy. 
The Qabbalah, as outlined in the book Zohar a word meaning 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 69
 
splendor , this book is often called the " Bible of the Qabbalists " 
is in large part exoteric from the Theosophical viewpoint, 
because all our teachings, with regard to certain things, 
are in the Zohar, but not all the explanations are there, and 
this fact makes the book exoteric, in so far as the keys are 
lacking. 
 
Now the teaching in the Qabbalah with regard to the Hierarchies 
and the Ladder of Life, is, that from the Boundless, or Ain Suph, 
down to infinity below, the Ladder of Life consists of steps, or 
degrees, or grades, of consciousness and of consciousnesses, and 
of being and of beings, and that there is a constant interchange, 
an interflow of communication, between these innumerable 
grades of the various Hierarchies or worlds. Precisely our teach- 
ing naturally ! The Qabbalistic Hierarchy consists of, or more 
accurately is typified by, nine grades or planes or spheres hanging 
from a tenth (or a first, if you like) , all together making ten. They 
bore the following names. The first is called the Crown, the 
Primordial Point, the first and highest of the Sefiroth (sometimes 
spelt Sephiroth) or the grades, steps, planes, spheres, before 
spoken of. The next Sephira is called Wisdom. (We have no 
time now to give the Hebrew words here ; they may be found 
in any book on the Qabbalah.) 1 The next, the third, is called 
Understanding, or, perhaps better, Intelligence. These form the 
head and two shoulders of the Adam Qadmon, or Archetypal Man, 
or Ideal Man. According to the thinking of the Qabbalists, as 
these Hierarchies are particularly and sympathetically related to 
certain respective parts of the human body, so these three just 
spoken of have each its respective relation : certain parts about 
the crown of the head, or in the head, or from the head, or 
belonging to the head, for the first Sephira ; the right shoulder 
to Wisdom ; the left to Understanding. The right arm is called 
Greatness, or sometimes Love ; the left arm is called Power, or 
sometimes Justice, and is considered a feminine quality ; the 
breast or region of the chest or heart is called Beauty. The right 
leg (remember I am speaking generally of the Archetypal Man) 
is called Subtility ; the left leg is called Majesty, and is con- 
sidered a feminine quality. The generative organs are called 
Foundation. 
 
Now these make nine. Each of these grades is assumed to 
emanate from the one above it. First the Crown ; from the Crown, 
Wisdom ; from the Crown and Wisdom, Understanding ; from the 
three Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding comes the fourth ; 
from the four all together comes the fifth ; from the five all 
together comes the sixth ; and so on down to the ninth ; and 
 
1 See I sis Unveiled, II, 213; and Theosophical Glossary. 
 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the ninth, with all the forces and qualities of the others behind it, 
produces this round being, an egg-shaped container or 
" carrier ", or vehicle, an auric egg, and this auric 
egg, as the tenth, is called Kingdom, or sometimes 
Dwelling-Place, because it is the fruit or result or 
emanation, or field of action of all the others,' manifesting 
through these different planes of being. 
 
Now why should the Hierarchies sometimes be numbered or 
reckoned as seven, and sometimes as ten ? Because ten is the 
most sacred fundamental number in occultism. It is that upon 
which the universe is built. The fabric of being is built along the 
lines of the decad or ten. The Pythagoreans, members of one of 
the most mystic of the ancient Greek schools of thinking, had 
what they called the sacred Tetractys, a word referring to the 
number four ; and how did they represent this Tetractys ? In 
this fashion : First a point above and alone, the Monad ; then 
two points below that, or the Dyad ; then three points below 
these, or the Triad ; and then four points below these, or 
the Tetrad ten points altogether. 
They had an oath which they con- 
sidered the most sacred adjuration 
of the Pythagorean School, which 
they uttered when they swore by 
the " Holy Tetractys ". What is 
this oath? It is worth remem- 
bering : " Yea, by the Tetraktys, 
which has supplied to our soul 
the fountain containing the roots 
of everflowing nature ". This 
is just full of profound thought. Finally, the tetraktys em- 
blematized (among other things) the procession of beings into 
manifestation. First the Primordial point, then the line, then 
the superficies, then the cube i +2 +3 +4=10. 
 
Now what, finally, is the difference between the system of 
seven and that of ten ? The seven is the fundamental number 
of the manifested universe ; but over the seven hovers eternally 
the infinite and immortal Triad, the Unmanifest. This is the key. 
Some religions specialize in sevens ; but all religions have the 
ten, also, in their various numerical schemes. 
 
As H. P. Blavatsky says we have not time to read her words 
in full to-night, although I had intended to read, after finishing 
this explanation, her own words on this very subject from her 
esoteric Instructions No. i (we must remember that this is an 
esoteric gathering) and also from The Secret Doctrine the 
number ten is the secret or sephirical principle of the universe, 
because on and through this denary system the universe is 
 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 71
 
formed and built. Man (as a whole) is tenfold, the universe (as 
a whole) is tenfold, but both are septenary in manifestation. 
Every atom, every living being, and every universe is a complete 
Hierarchy of ten degrees : three highest considered as the Root, 
and seven lower in active manifestation. This Root, or Highest 
Triad, is a mystery-teaching, concerning which very little open 
explanation is to be found even in the ancient literatures. 
 
In The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 98, H. P. Blavatsky 
first enumerates certain things which you can see for yourself 
in the Stanza there printed, to wit : " The Voice of the Word, 
Svabhavat, the Numbers, for he is One and Nine " ; to which 
she joins the following as a foot-note : 
 
Which makes ten, or the perfect number applied to the " Creator," 
the name given to the totality of the Creators blended by the Mono- 
theists into One, as the " Elohim," Adam Kadmon or Sephira the 
Crown are the androgyne synthesis of the 10 Sephiroth, who stand 
for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularised Kabala. 
The esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern Occultists, 
divide the upper Sephirothal triangle from the rest (or Sephira, 
Chochmah and Binah [that is, the Crown, Wisdom and Understand- 
ing]) which leaves seven Sephiroth. . . . 
 
Then on page 360 (very unfortunately we did not have time 
to refer to this at our last meeting) she says here in relation to 
other matters : " The 10, being the sacred number of the universe, 
was secret and esoteric . . . " ; and on page 362 : "... the 
whole astronomical and geometrical portion of the secret sacer- 
dotal language was built upon the number 10. . . ." 
 
It may be interesting and well worth while to point out here, 
that these quotations give the reason why the numerical com- 
putations of the Esoteric Philosophy have not yet been satis- 
factorily solved by students with a mathematical turn of mind 
because they will persist in working with the number seven, 
alone, in spite of Madame Blavatsky's open hints to the contrary, 
for she says openly that the number seven must be used in 
calculations in a manner hitherto unknown to Western mathe- 
matics. The hint ought to be sufficient in itself alone, because 
the seven, considered as a basis for computation, is a very 
unwieldy and awkward number with which to calculate. The 
subject is alluded to in veiled manner in Instructions No. I, 
page 9, in speaking of Padmapani, or the " Lotus-handed " one 
of the names in Tibetan mysticism of the Bodhisattwa Avalo- 
kitewara. H. P. Blavatsky says, after narrating a legend 
concerning this character : 
 
He vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding 
that in case of failure he wished that his head would split into number- 
 
 
 
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less fragments. The Kalpa closed ; but Humanity felt him not within 
its cold, evil heart. Then Padmapani's head split and was shattered 
into a thousand fragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re- 
formed the pieces into ten heads, three white and seven of various 
colors. And since that day man has become a perfect number, or Ten. 
In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOR, AND NUMBER is so 
ingeniously introduced as to veil the real esoteric meaning. To the 
outsider it reads like one of the many meaningless fairy-tales of 
creation ; but it is pregnant with spiritual and divine, physical and 
magical, meaning. From Amitabha no color or the white glory are 
born the seven differentiated colors of the prism. These each emit a 
corresponding sound, forming the seven of the musical scale. As 
Geometry among the Mathematical Sciences is specially related to 
Architecture, and also proceeding to Universals to Cosmogony, 
so the ten Jods of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made 
to symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had 
also to be divided into ten points. For this Nature herself has pro- 
vided, as will be seen. 
 
One more citation, in order to finish the subject. On page 15, 
H. P. Blavatsky writes shortly as follows : 
 
As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, arc ten, why 
should we divide Man into seven " principles " ? This is the reason why 
the perfect number ten is divided into two, a reason which cannot be 
given out publicly : In their completeness, i.e., super-spiritually and 
physically, the forces are TEN : to wit, three on the subjective and 
inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in mind that 
I am now giving you the description of the two opposite poles : (a) the 
primordial triangle, which as soon as it has reflected itself in the 
" Heavenly Man/' the highest of the lower seven disappears, returning 
into " Silence and Darkness " ; and (b) the astral paradigmatic man, 
whose Monad (Atma) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to 
become a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER VIII
 
TRACES OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY IN GENESIS. 
 
The oldest religions of the world exoterically, for the esoteric root or founda- 
tion is one are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes- the 
Chaldaean, the outcome of these entirely lost to the world now, except in its 
disfigured Sabaeanism as at present rendered by the archaeologists ; then, passing 
over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish, 
esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian Magism ; 
exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of allegorical legends. 
Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the frag- 
ment of a highly philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 10. 
 
The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the incognisable Cause 
does not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only 
exhibits periodically different aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds. 
Now the collective Mind the Universal composed of various and numberless 
Hosts of Creative Powers, however infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when 
contrasted with the unborn and undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect. 
That which is finite cannot be perfect. . . . 
 
The Hebrew Elohini, called in the translations " God," and who create 
" light," are identical with the Aryan Asuras. They are also referred to as the 
" Sons of Darkness " as a philosophical and logical contrast to light immutable 
and eternal. . . . The Zoroastrian Amshaspends create the world in six days or 
periods also, and rest on the Seventh ; whereas that Seventh is the first period 
or " day," in esoteric philosophy (Primary creation in the Aryan cosmogony). 
It is that intermediate /Eon which is the Prologue to creation, and which stands 
on the borderland between the uncreated eternal Causation and the produced 
finite effects ; a state of nascent activity and energy as the first aspect of the 
eternal immutable Quiescence. In Genesis, on which no metaphysical energy 
has been spent, but only an extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity to veil tho 
esoteric Truth, " Creation " begins at the third stage of manifestation. " God " 
or the Elohim are the " Seven Regents " of Pymander. They are identical with 
all the other Creators. 
 
Ibid., II, pp. 487-8. 
 
THIS evening we open our study with the following 
citation from the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, 
page 224 : 
Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the 
offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris) ; in its qualitative and 
physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the "Ancestors/ 1 the lowest 
Dhyinis, or Spirits of the Earth ; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual 
nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and charac- 
teristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the 
handiwork of hosts of various spirits"; distributively, the tabernacles of 
those hosts ; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them. 
 
And on page 225, second paragraph : 
 
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the " Lord 
God " ; but he is the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into 
 
73 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the singular masculine gender. The first Dhy&iis, commissioned to 
" create " man in their image, could only throw off their shadows, like 
a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (See 
Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the 
dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. 
 
In opening our study this evening it seems advisable first to 
speak of two things, a less thing and a greater thing ; we take 
the less thing first. As has been seen from the beginning of our 
studies, as outlined by the Teacher, we have been bringing 
forward for our consideration at every one of our meetings, 
teachings found in the great religions of the world, mostly of the 
past, which are similar to or identical with our own. This has 
been done in order to join all these teachings, as found in the old 
religions, with the teachings as given by H. P. Blavatsky today, 
that is, with Theosophy. This shows the universality of thought 
in religions and thereby induces a spirit of kindliness and brother- 
hood, and leads to the accentuation of the moral sense which so 
greatly lacks in the comparative religious study of the doctrines 
of the predominant ancient religions by the mass of scholars in 
the Occident today. It does away at one sweep with the egoistic 
opinion that " we are more perfect and morally better than you 
are ", with the idea that we Occidentals are a superior people, 
and with the idea that a certain race and a certain religion are, 
by the fiat of the Deity, the chosen receptacles or vehicles for the 
only truth : that all the other religions are false, and that those 
who professed them in ancient times were merely brands prepared 
for the burning ! 
 
The second thing and the greater, is this. We have constantly 
been bringing forward certain religious or philosophical analogies 
and certain points of view thereupon which are veritable doctrinal 
touch-stones ; our aim being that those who may read these 
studies, as outlined by the Teacher, shall be enabled to have at 
hand, and through the thoughts therein expressed to have 
clear-set in their own minds, keys by which to test the truth and 
reality of the essential or fundamental doctrines of these ancient 
religions ; because all these doctrines in their essence and in their 
inner meaning, in those old religions, are true. In this sense 
Brahmanism is true, in this sense Buddhism is true, likewise 
Confucianism, and the doctrines of Laotse called Taoism. They 
are all true in that sense. 
 
But all of them have been, in greater or less degree, subject to 
the influences of certain creations of human fancy ; and for one 
who has not been trained in these studies, it is often difficult to 
separate the merely human fancies from the Nature-true teachings 
of the ancient Wisdom- Religion. All the ancient religions sprang 
from that same source Theosophy, as it is called today. But 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 75
 
it is, as said before, sometimes difficult to know what is the 
original teaching and what the merely human accretion or 
creation. These creations of human phantasy and irreligious 
fear are very evident in the two modern monotheistic religions, 
which have sprung from Judaism, that is to say in Christianity 
and in Islam. In these two the human accretions of phantasy 
are very marked ; but in both of them there exists a solid sub- 
stratum of mystical thought based on the ancient teachings of 
the Wisdom-Religion. 
 
In Christianity it is particularly in the Neo-Pythagorean and 
the Neo-Platonic forms, as Christianized somewhat and as 
manifested in the teachings of Dionysius, called " the Areo- 
pagite " ; and in the later Mohammedan religion it is manifested 
somewhat more distantly in the borrowings from Greek thought 
mainly, though also from other sources, as we find them outlined 
by the Mohammedan doctors and thinkers, such as Ibn Sina, 
commonly called Avicenna in Europe, a Persian, who lived and 
wrote at the end of the tenth century ; by Averroes in Cordova, 
Spain, properly called Roshd, who flourished during the twelfth 
century ; and by another eminent Mohammedan scholar (mention- 
ing these three out of many) Al Farabi, of the tenth century, by 
descent a Turk. The Ancient Wisdom also affected the teachings 
of Mohammed in a highly mystical form, though greatly changed, 
as shown in the Sufi doctrines, which are particularly and mani- 
festly of Persian origin, owing their rise to that spiritual-minded 
and subtil people, the Persians. These doctrines are a very 
welcome contrast with the hard and mechanical religious beliefs 
which arose out of the egoism of the crude Arabian tribes of that 
period. 
 
Now the main theme of our study this evening is the considera- 
tion of the opening verses of the " Book of Beginnings ", called 
Genesis the first book in the Law of the Jews. We shall first 
read the English translation of these verses as found in the so- 
called " authorized version ", and of the same chapters we shall 
make a translation for ourselves, in which you will be enabled to 
see the difference from the former ; and we will explain what the 
difference is, and how it comes to be, and for this purpose we 
shall have to go into a brief exposition of certain peculiarities of 
the ancient Hebrew tongue. 
 
In the " authorized version " of the English Bible, called the 
version of King James, the Book of Genesis opens as follows, 
Chapter I, verse I : 
 
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 
 
2. And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was 
upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters. 
 
 
 
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3. And God said, Let there be light ; and there was light. 
 
4. And God saw the light, that it was good : and God divided the 
light from the darkness. 
 
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. 
And the evening and the morning were the first day. 
 
6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 
 
7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which 
were under the firmament from the waters which were above the 
firmament : and it was so. 
 
8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and 
the morning were the second day. 
 
9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered 
together unto one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so. 
 
10. And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering together 
of the waters called he Seas : and God saw that it was good. 
 
VERSE 26. 
 
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness : 
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every 
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
 
27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him ; male and female created he them. 
 
Now, in the first place, Hebrew is a Semitic tongue, one of the 
company of languages of which Arabic and Ethiopic and Ara- 
maean (or Aramaic) and Phoenician and Assyrian are other 
members. The Hebrew in which the Bible is written is called 
the Biblical Hebrew. It is ancient Hebrew. The language spoken 
in Palestine at the time when Jesus is supposed to have lived 
upon the earth in Jerusalem and around that district, was 
Aramaean, and not Hebrew, which was then extinct as a spoken 
language, and of course when he spoke to his disciples he spoke 
to them in Aramaean. 
 
The Hebrew language as found in the ancient manuscripts of 
the Bible none earlier, probably, than the ninth century of the 
Christian era is written with " points ", taking the place of 
vowels, because Hebrew writing is a consonantal system its 
alphabet is wholly consonantal. It has the alef, or " a ", which 
is nevertheless reckoned as a consonant. It has the waw, or 
" w ", and it also is reckoned as a consonant ; and it has the 
yod, or " y ", also reckoned as a consonant, but it has no vowel- 
signs proper. 
 
Thus, the language is written without true vowels. Further- 
more, in the most ancient manuscripts and certainly it was so 
in the original or pre-Christian era texts the letters are all " run 
together ", following one after another, without separation of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 77
 
words. There were some marks possibly, by which certain things 
in the text were pointed out as of particular importance ; but 
the letters followed one another interminably, with no separa- 
tion into words, and without vowels. So, you see, there is an 
open field for many kinds of speculation, even for very able 
Hebrew scholars, as to what any certain combination of letters 
found in this endless stream may have originally meant. This 
way of writing was universal, practically, in ancient times ; the 
earliest Greek and Latin manuscripts of the New Testament are 
written in this fashion, which merely followed the ancient custom, 
as may still be seen on the ruins of public buildings in Greece and 
Rome. Obviously, interpretation, or correct reading, was often 
dubious : the reader might be very doubtful of the original sense 
of a passage in a manuscript so written. 
 
So much was this the case that there arose in Palestine at an 
undetermined date but we know that it may go back to about 
the time of the fall of Jerusalem before Titus, or, say, about the 
beginning of the Christian era a school of interpreters, who 
interpreted by what they were pleased to call " tradition ", 
Masorah, that is to say, " traditional " knowledge, how the 
Hebrew Bible should be read, how these streams of consonants 
should be divided up in reading into words, and what vowel- 
points should be put there in order to fix the pronunciation in 
accordance therewith. This system of " points " was probably 
not introduced into the text till the seventh century. This school 
was called the School of the Masorah, and its expounders and 
followers were called Massoretes. 
 
This school of the Masorah reached its fullest development and 
completion probably in the ninth century of the Christian era. 
But while this school depended upon what it called " tradition ", 
there is no certainty of proof that their interpretations of their 
own combinations of letters into words were always correct. 
They seemed to have got, however, and to have passed down to 
posterity, some knowledge of the general original sense. 
 
In order to illustrate this matter, let us take the first five 
English words of Genesis : we drop all the vowels, retaining only 
the consonants, and we have this : Nthbgnnnggdcrtd. You 
could here insert vowels almost ad libitum, in seeking a meaning. 
" In the beginning God created ", and now imagine endless lines 
of such consonants ! 
 
Add to it the fact that Hebrew writing begins at the right 
hand and runs to the left. Furthermore, it begins at what we 
would call the end of the book, and runs to the front, as writings 
in other Semitic tongues do. This fashion of writing was not 
uncommon with other peoples in ancient days. Greek and Latin 
writing in ancient times sometimes followed this system, but 
 
 
 
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later, as you can see today if you have been in Greece or in 
Rome, in the old inscriptions on the temples and elsewhere, it 
usually began at the left and went to the right, usually with no 
breaks for words. In the very old Greek writings (and elsewhere 
too) they also had what they called boustrophedon, from two 
Greek words meaning ox-turning, taken from the path followed 
by the plowing ox : when it starts, let us say, from one end of a 
field it goes to the other end and then turns and goes back and 
over it, in the opposite direction, but aside and parallel with 
the other line, in plowing its furrows. This method is not followed 
in the Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible that we possess. 
 
Now, in beginning our translation of the first verses of Genesis, 
we are met, in the very first two words, by a difficulty. These 
words can be translated in two or three different ways. The 
translation as given in the European Bibles, and as found in the 
" authorized " English version, is a fairly correct rendering so 
far as mere words go ; but anyone who has undertaken transla- 
tions from a foreign tongue and particularly from a dead tongue, 
and more especially again from a tongue which is a religious 
tongue and evidently written more or less in cipher, can realize 
the difficulties there lie in picking out the various meanings which 
any one word may have, in choosing which is the word that is 
best for the translation, which word carries the meaning nearest 
to the intention of the writer. The first two words as usually 
read are " be " and " rshith " ; and so divided, their meanings 
are as here follow : Be means in, reshith means beginning, this 
second word being a feminine form, and coming originally from 
the masculine word Resh, or Rosh, meaning (among several other 
things) head, chief part, first part. Hence we may translate Be 
reshith as " In first part ", or " In highest part ", etc. 
 
But this same combination of letters Brashith could also be 
translated (by dividing differently) as Bore, one word, a verb, and 
shtth, another word, a noun ; meaning Bore, or " forming ", and 
shtth, an " institution ", " establishment ", " arrangement ". 
" Forming the establishment (or arrangement) " of what ? 
The text goes on to say what is arranged or established By 
arranging " formed the Elohim Heaven and Earth/ 1 
 
Furthermore, the word resh, or rosh, above selected, may also 
mean " head " as before said, signifying " wisdom ", or " know- 
ledge " : hence, " In wisdom the Elohim formed Heavens and 
Earth ". Remember, it is permissible to put in vowels almost at 
choice, because vowels do not exist in the original text of the 
book, in the Bible, itself ; hence the opening for more than 
merely one interpretation. 
 
Resh, or r6sh, then, also means " head " ; it also means 
" wisdom " ; it also means " host " or " multitude ". So here 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 79
 
we may select still another a fourth translation : Bertsh, " in 
multitude ", or " by multitude ". Yithbdre would then be the 
next word, " formed Elohim ". Here comes again another 
remarkable change in meaning and I am making these remarks 
in order to point out how the Hebrew text of the Bible may bear 
many translations. Supposing then that we divide the first 
fourteen Hebrew letters of the text into the following word- 
combinations : Be-resh yithbdre Elohtm, we get (by using yithbdre, 
which is one of the forms of the Hebrew verb, called the reflexive 
form, meaning action upon oneself) the following translation : 
" By multitude ", " Through multitude, the Gods formed them- 
selves ". What follows in the text ? " into the heavens and the 
earth ". That is : " In a host (or multitude) the gods formed 
(made) themselves into the Heavens and the Earth ". See the 
vast difference in meaning from the " authorized version ". This 
last translation we believe is the best ; it shows at once the 
identity of thought with all other ancient cosmogonic systems. 
 
" By multitude formed " (or " evolved " : this word Bdrd 
means to " fatten ", to " shape ", to " become heavy or gross ", 
to " cut ", to " form ", to " be born ", to " evolve ") ' ' by (or 
in) multitude " or " through (or in) multitude evolved Elohim 
themselves into the heavens and the earth ". 
 
Now the fourth word, Elohtm. This is a very curious word. 
The first part of it alone is el, meaning God, divinity, from which 
comes the second, a feminine form, eloh, Goddess. 1m is merely 
the masculine plural. So, if we translate every element in this 
single word, it would mean, " God, Goddess, plural " showing 
the androgynous essence of the divinities, as it were : the polar 
opposites of the Hierarchy ; the essential duality in life. 
 
Verse 2. " And the earth became ethereal ". Now the second 
word a verb in the Hebrew text of the second verse answers 
to two Latin verbs : esse, to be, and fieri, to become ; but almost 
always its original sense is fieri, to become, like the Greek 
gignomai, meaning to become, to grow into a new state of some- 
thing. " And the earth became " or " grew into ethereality ". 
The two next words (" tohti " and " bohu ") of the text, which we 
here translate " ethereality ", are very difficult words rightly to 
interpret. They both mean " emptiness ", " waste ", " Immateri- 
ality", hence " dissolution " ; the fundamental idea means 
something unsubstantial, not materially gross. We continue our 
translation : " And darkness upon the face of the ethers. And 
the Rtiahh (the spirit-soul) of the Gods (of Elohim) (fluttered, 
hovered) brooding/ 1 The word we translate " brooded " is 
derived from and means the action of a hen which flutters, and 
hovers, and broods over the eggs in its nest. How graphic, how 
significant is this figure of speech ! 
 
 
 
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You see the same thought here that you see in practically all 
the ancient teachings ; the figure or symbol of the cosmic soul 
brooding over the waters of space, preparing the world-egg : that 
of the cosmic egg and the divine bird laying the cosmic egg. 
" And the spirit-soul of Elohim brooding upon the face of the 
waters ", says the Hebrew text. Now " waters ", as we have 
shown before, was a common expression or symbol for space, the 
ethereal expansion, as it were. We continue our translation : 
" And said (the) Elohim (The Gods) Light, come-into-being ! 
and Light came-into-being. And saw (the) Gods the light, that 
(it was) good. And divided Elohim between the light and 
between the darkness. And called Elohim the light day, and 
the darkness called they night. And (there) came-into-being eve, 
and (there) came-into-being morn. Day one. And said Elohim 
(let there) come-into-being an expanse in (the) midst of the 
waters, and let it be a separator (divider) between waters and 
waters. And made Elohim (or the Gods) the expanse, and they 
separated between the waters which (were) below the expanse, 
and between the waters which (were) above the expanse, and (it) 
came-to-be so. And called Elohim (the Gods) the expanse 
heavens, and (there) came-into-being eve, and (there) came-into- 
being morn. Day second. And said Elohim (the Gods) " (let 
there) be-gathered-together (i.e., solidified, condensed) the 
waters above the heavens into one place, and (let there) be-seen 
the dry-part (the solidified or manifested part) " (the word means 
" dry ", in opposition to humidity. Humidity means water, 
standing for space. It means, therefore, the collected matter 
of a planet to be, of a solar system to be, or a universe to be), 
" and (it) came-to-be so. And called the Gods the dry-part earth, 
and the solidification (gathering-together) of the waters called 
they seas. And saw Elohim (the Gods) that (it was) good." 
 
Now turn to verses 26, 27, 28 of the same, the first, chapter. 
" And said (the Gods) Elohtm, Let us make humanity (the word 
is Adam) in our shadowy image (in our shadow, in our phantom. 
The word is tselem), according to our pattern (or model). And 
let them descend into the fish of the sea and into the flying 
creatures of the heavens, and into the beast, and into all the 
earth, and into all moving creatures which move upon the earth. 
And formed (or shaped or evolved, the same verb as above, 
Bdrd) Elohim (the Gods) humanity in their phantom, in the 
shadowy image of Elohtm, formed (or evolved) they him." 
 
Now come two very interesting words, usually translated 
" male and female ", which are two of the meanings respectively 
found in the dictionaries ; but the root-meanings of these words 
are the following : " thinker and receiver " (or receptacle) : 
" thinker and receptacle evolved they them. And blessed them 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 81
 
the Elohim ", that is, the Elohim blessed them, " and said to them 
the Elohim, ' be fruitful, increase, and fill the earth '/' and so forth. 
You see, therefore, that here, merely by using other words 
than those usually chosen by Christian translators, or later 
Jewish translators, and yet recognised dictionary words, and by 
forcing no meanings, we have found the identical meanings of the 
Esoteric teachings as outlined in The Secret Doctrine when treat- 
ing of these subjects. First the Hierarchy and its manifested 
divinities evolving the universe or Kosmos out of themselves, 
using the reflexive form of the Hebrew verb bard, as shown 
above. Furthermore, a study of the first verse of Genesis will 
show us that the evolution treated in it has no relation solely 
and especially to the creation of this earth or of any other par- 
ticular earth, but is a general doctrine having reference rather to 
the first manifestation of material being in ethereal space, and that 
the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea and the beasts, which 
are spoken of, do not necessarily refer (although they could) to the 
particular animals which we know under those names on earth, 
but do also refer (in accord with a well known fact of ancient 
mythology) to the " animals of the heavens " of which we spoke 
in our last study, i.e., to every globe of the starry spheres, to 
every nebula and to every comet, all such being considered in the 
ancient teachings to be a living being, an " animal " having its 
physical corpus or body, and having behind it its Director, or 
Governor, or Divine Essence, or Spirit. 
 
Furthermore, we see that the Elohim evolved Man, Humanity, 
out of themselves, and told them to become, then to enter into 
and inform these other creatures. Indeed, these sons of the 
Elohim are, in our teachings, the children of light, the sons of 
light, which are we ourselves, and yet different from ourselves, 
because higher, yet they are our own very selves inwardly ; for, 
in fact, the Elohim, became, evolved into, their own offspring, 
remaining in a sense still always the inspiring Light, within or 
rather above according to the interpretation authorized by the 
very words chosen from the dictionary and flaunting no rule of 
Hebrew grammar. For, following the ancient teachings of the 
Esoteric Philosophy, and strengthened by exactly similar thought 
in the Babylonian religious teachings from which these Hebrew 
teachings originally came, we see that the Elohim projected 
themselves into the nascent forms of the then " humanity ", 
which thenceforward were " men, 1 ' however imperfect their 
development still was. 
 
What were these Elohim, these divinities, these Gods ? In the 
hierarchical system of the Qabbalah they are the sixth in deriva- 
tion from above, from the first or the Crown, and thus are by no 
means the highest. They were, cosmogonically, the manifested 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Formers, or Weavers, of the Web of the Universe. Jehovah, 
spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis, is the third angelic 
potency, counting downwards from the Crown the summit of 
the Hierarchy of the Qabbalah. 
 
In chapter five of Genesis, verses i and 2, there is ap interesting 
expression. We translate : " This (the) book of the generations 
of humanity (Adam) . In the day of Elohim (of the Gods) evolving 
humanity, in the pattern (or model) of the Elohim, made they 
him. Thinker-and-receptacle made they them, and blessed them 
and called their name humanity (or Adam) in the day of their 
making." Evidently, it is not here question of a single human 
pair, of a man and a woman in our sense, but of nascent androgy- 
nous humanity, and they had one name, Adam, and their attributes 
were thinker and casket (or receptacle) : ethereal beings 
children of the Elohim who are themselves capable of thinking 
and of receiving and understanding and developing under the 
lessons which were to follow from their incarnations in the lower 
fleshly beings they themselves evolved, and signified under the 
terms as set forth here the " fowls " of the " air ", and the 
" fish " of the " sea ", and every living thing which moveth 
upon the face of the earth. 
 
These ancient writings have more than one mystical or esoteric 
application, or, as H. P. Blavatsky says, they have more than 
one key. But, again, what or who were these Elohim ? They 
were our theosophical monads. It is curious, by the way, that 
Leibnitz, the great Slavic-German philosopher, evolved a theory 
of monadic evolution which is singularly like our own in some 
respects. For him, the universe was replete with progressing 
entities, which he called " monads ", spiritual beings which 
evolved through the forces innate in themselves, yet acting and 
reacting upon each other a faithful echo, in so far as it goes, of 
the Ancient Wisdom-Religion. 
 
Again, what do we mean when we speak respectively of 
emanation, evolution, and creation ? Emanation and evolution are 
closely similar in meaning. Emanation is from a Latin word 
meaning " flowing out ", and in all the ancient teachings of 
importance the idea was that the Gods actively, transitively, 
" flowed out " from themselves their offspring or children. 
Evolution is also a Latin word and means " rolling out ", 
" unfolding ", something which is unfolded ; and obviously a 
thing which is " flowed out ", using the words " flowed out " 
transitively, is also unrolled out, unfolded out. 
 
Now creation originally in its Latin sense meant practically 
the same as does this Hebrew word Bard. It meant " making ", 
" shaping ", " carving ", " cutting " of course out of pre- 
existing material or matter, and the Christian theory (which was 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 83
 
more or less that of the Jews in their later days) that God made 
the world " out of nothing ", is preposterous, absurd, both 
historically and linguistically. It is founded on no ancient 
teaching whatever, and it arose naturally enough, in a sense, 
from the monotheistic mania, which endeavored to make God 
extra-cosmic, apart from the universe, and above it, a pure spirit, 
having no relation of ineluctable union with his creatures, God 
the " Father and Maker " of them, and yet an absolute personal 
non-entity having no " body, parts, or passions ", yet a Person 
withal ! ! Of course the two concepts are contradictory and 
mutually destructive, and had we the time it would be easy to 
dilate further the preposterous absurdity of which we speak. 
 
We can see, therefore, in closing our study this evening, that 
it is very difficult to say which of these three : Emanation, 
Evolution, Creation, is first in the order of procession. Was it 
emanation, followed by evolution, followed by creation ; or was 
it evolution, followed by emanation, followed by creation ? Cer- 
tainly, creation in its original sense of shaping, forming comes 
the last of the three, as is easily shown. The difficulty lies in the 
fact that in every cosmic act of emanation we immediately 
perceive an act of evolution or unfolding ; and in every act of 
evolution we immediately perceive an act of emanation. Every 
monad pari passu passes from one into the other, just as all 
mankind evolved pari passu from one into the other. We should, 
probably, say that emanation, evolution, creation, work simul- 
taneously and co-ordinately, during manifestation. 
 
But taking the question from a purely philosophical standpoint, 
it is probably accurate and best to say that the first step from 
what we call the Unmanifest into the Manifest is emanation, a 
flowing out from its source of a monad or rather a host of monads, 
which, as they in turn follow the pattern set for them by their 
source and their Karmic past, grow darker, and more material, 
proportionately as they recede from their central fount of life ; 
and, again, as they emanate, they also evolve, bringing out from 
within that which they innately are or have, and they do this in 
accordance with the karmic lines or patterns upon which we have 
faintly touched in previous studies, when speaking of the Skan- 
dhas, because every act of emanation and of evolution begins a 
new life-cycle following the pralaya or rest-period of a former life- 
period or manvantara. Then finally, when the period of self- 
consciousness is reached in the cyclical progression of evolution, 
comes a period of will, conscious choice, when man begins to 
" create " or fashion voluntarily ; that is, through the exercise 
of his will and his intuition and his intellect, he carves his own 
destiny and likewise affects the world creationally which exists 
around him. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER IX
 
OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC COSMOGONY. GLOBES, ROUNDS AND 
RACES ! COSMIC TIME-PERIODS. 
 
Can one fail to recognise in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, being 
almost unacquainted with the Aryan Hindu philosophies, little known in his day, 
he wrote : 
 
" We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the 
Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright 
judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas upon 
celestial mechanics and physical sciences . . . could not see in the stars and 
planets only that which we see : namely, simple masses of light, or opaque bodies 
moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction 
or repulsion ; but they saw in them living bodies, animated by spirits as they saw 
the same in every kingdom of nature. . . . This doctrine of spirits, so consistent 
and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique 
conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all 
blended together. ..." (gypte, pp. 450 to 455.) 
 
It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion 
about his origin and the genesis of everything in the universe of Heaven and 
Earth, between which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link, 
and the feeling of its presence, no science can ever progress, and the realm of 
knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (IT. P. BLAVATSKY), II, pp. 369-70. 
 
E open our study tonight by reading once again 
from page 224 and page 225 of The Secret Doctrine, 
Vol. I, as follows : 
 
Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the 
offspring of the E16him of Life (or Pitris) ; in its qualitative and 
physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the "Ancestors/' the lowest 
Dhy&nis, or Spirits of the Earth ; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual 
nature it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and charac- 
teristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the 
handiwork of hosts of various spirits ; distributively, the tabernacles 
of those hosts ; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of 
them. 
 
And the second paragraph on page 225 : 
 
Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the 
" Lord God " ; but he is the child of the Eldhim, so arbitrarily changed 
into the singular masculine gender. The first Dhyllnis, commissioned 
to " create " man in their image, could only throw off their shadows, 
like a delicate model, for the Nature-Spirits of matter to work upon. 
(See Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of 
the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. 
 
In our last study we called attention to the first chapter of 
 
8 4 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 85
 
the Hebrew Book of Genesis, and translated verses I to 10, and 
verses 25, 26, and 27 thereof. The intention was to show that 
the Ancient Wisdom was outlined even in the Jewish Book of 
Beginnings, even as it is elsewhere found in the scriptures of the 
other great world-religions. Of course, in all meetings where the 
time at one's disposal is limited, such as it is in these meetings, 
it is impossible adequately to treat every point of interest, and to 
deal with every phase of the subject at once ; for this reason the 
Teacher has instructed me first to sketch an outline of a subject 
under discussion, and in later studies to return to the details. 
 
Now in continuation of our study of the esoteric sense under- 
lying this first chapter of Genesis, we must point out that this 
chapter does not deal with man as we now know him. The 
" man " spoken of in this first chapter is the spiritual being 
which descended into matter in the first Round of this man- 
vantara, as a spiritual, or rather ethereal, being ; and consequently, 
when in verse 27 we translated the peculiar phrase, " Thinker 
and receiver formed (or evolved) they him ", we must understand 
that this allusion does not refer to sexual man and woman of the 
present time. These words, thinker and receiver, refer to the 
spiritual nature of the then ethereal vehicles of humanity, not to 
our present day man or woman ; and the word receiver can also 
be translated receptacle, the vehicle or house of the higher nature. 
Also, at the period dealt with in this verse 27 of the first chapter 
of Genesis, man in the general sense humanity was of double 
sex, or androgyne ; hence, obviously, there was no " woman " 
then. This first chapter practically ignores the first, purely 
sexless, state of ethereal Adam ; and enters upon its description of 
" man " when the latter was already sinking into material 
existence as a semi-self-conscious ethereal androgyne. In other 
words, the first chapter does not detail the separation of the 
sexes, which occurred far later. This general statement is plainly 
shown by even the exoteric rendering of the teaching but let us 
read from another chapter of Genesis, verse 5 of Chapter II : 
 
And every plant of the field BEFORE IT WAS IN THE EARTH, and 
every herb of the field BEFORE IT GREW : for the Lord God had not 
caused it to rain upon the earth, and there WAS NOT A MAN to till the 
ground. 
 
" Man " had not yet come. Let me preface future explanations 
by saying that this second chapter of Genesis deals with the third 
and the fourth Rounds of our Manvantara, the latter or fourth 
being our present round ; and more particularly with the Third 
Root-Race of our Fourth Round ; whereas chapter first is a highly 
generalized and succinct Jewish epitome of early cosmogony, and 
ends with a similarly brief allusion to Rounds first and second. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
And in verses 19, 20, 21, and 22, we find the following : 
 
19. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the 
field, and every fowl of the air ; and brought them unto Adam to see 
what he would call them : and whatsoever Adam called every living 
creature, that was the name thereof. 
 
20. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, 
and to every beast of the field ; but for Adam there was not found a 
helpmeet for him. 
 
21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and 
he slept ; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead 
thereof ; 
 
22. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he 
a woman, and brought her unto the man. 
 
As in verse 5 above, I use here the ordinary English translation 
of the so-called " Authorized Version ", although, as a matter of 
fact, a very luminously different translation could be made of 
these verses. It would lead us too far from our main point to 
do so now. 
 
Now, in the first place, this second chapter records a different 
method from that recorded in Chapter I, and a change as regards 
the evolving of the ethereal being from the Elohim, having 
reference to the making of physical humanity, or " man ", from 
the " dust of the ground " (verse 7). In the second place, this 
English word rib of verses 21 and 22 should be translated side, the 
allusion being to the separation of the androgyne or dual-sexed 
humanity of Race the Third of our Fourth Round into sexed 
humanity as now existent. 
 
Now Plato in his Banquet, page 189, alludes to this same 
historical physiological fact of pre-history, and says that (one of) 
the early races of mankind was bi-sexually formed ; that they 
had great and terrible powers, and that their wickedness and 
ambition waxed very great, so that Zeus grew angry at their 
wickedness, and decided to cut them in two, as one would divide 
an egg with a hair. This Zeus did ; and bade Apollo to render 
the two halves more shapely, etc. Apollo so did, and he closed 
up the flesh of the two halves. Since then all mankind was man 
and woman. A typically Platonic tale, imbodying actual facts 
of forgotten history. 
 
This deals with the earliest portion of the Fourth Root-Race, 
and much more especially with the middle period of the Third 
Root-Race of the Fourth or present Round on this planet. Up 
to the present time we have not had the need to set forth the 
teaching regarding the Rounds and Races ; but we are fast 
approaching the time when we shall have to develop that subject. 
 
We will now leave, for the present, with a few more words of 
explanation, the outline of emanation and evolution as found in 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 87
 
the Jewish Bible and as outlined by us at our last study and thus 
far this evening ; and therefore first, before leaving it, it will be 
well to say a few words on the question of the Elohim, a subject 
upon which we touched last week. 
 
Elohim is a word frequently found in the Jewish Bible, and is, 
as stated in our last preceding lecture, in itself an evidence of 
the polytheistic bias, teachings, and beliefs of the ancient Jewish 
people. The Bible itself shows it. Usually this word a plural 
common noun is to be translated as " Gods ". But in most 
places where it occurs in the Hebrew text it is translated in the 
English " Authorized Version " as God. There is no true or 
solid reason for such a translation ; the proper rendering is 
Gods ; but the monotheistic and Christian tendencies of the 
translators made them set the translation for what they considered 
to be the best interests of the Christian Church, and their God 
Almighty ; so they translated it in various places by various 
names, as for instance, it is translated as " Judges " in Exodus 
xxi, 6 ; xxii, 8, 9 ; and in many other places ; but the essen- 
tial, intrinsic meaning is always Gods, or beings having divine 
standing. 
 
We now approach in our studies very difficult and, indeed, 
highly esoteric matters. In the first place, let us never forget that 
the Elohim, the Gods, who are spoken of under various names 
in the various religions of the ancient world as the creators or 
rather evolvers or parents of mankind, are spiritual beings who 
are ourselves. And the key to this apparent riddle is found in 
the doctrine and exposition of the Hierarchies of individualized 
life, as outlined in a former study. 
 
A Hierarchy can be considered as an aggregate unit, as a 
collective entity in the same sense that an army is ; neverthe- 
less, an army is composed of units ; and yet, again, this army of 
beings in any one Hierarchy is indeed from another aspect more 
than a mere collective entity, because it is united in its apex, in 
what is actually the fount of that Hierarchy. This fount is the 
hyparxis or spiritual sun from which all the other nine planes or 
classes of the Hierarchy emanate and evolve down to the lowest, 
thence beginning a new Hierarchy ; even as the hyparxis of any 
one Hierarchy is the lowest class or plane of a superior Hierarchy, 
and so practically ad infinitum. 
 
Man is a spiritual being throughout, through and through and 
through. Matter itself is but one manifestation of spirit. We live 
in a universe of spirit, and although matter exists it exists as 
Maya, illusion ; not as a mere illusionary nothing, but as some- 
thing, as a modality, so to say, of spirit ; but as we grow higher 
into the upper planes of the hierarchical scale, the maya, for the 
sphere of life embraced by that Hierarchy, fades away from 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
before our eyes, -and we see truth in greater degree and pro- 
gressively more widely the higher we go. 
 
With regard to the descent into matter, or falling into matter, 
of mankind, that is to say the descent into manifested being of 
the spiritual entities, the spiritual hierarchy which man actually 
and properly is, we must remember that we cannot understand 
this profound subject very well without undertaking an outline 
or sketch, more or less complete, of what are the Rounds and 
Races ; yet before doing this, we must clear away from our minds 
certain scientific conceptions, or rather misconceptions, which 
have been implanted in us by intensive teaching from childhood, 
and which have for that reason become a part of our mental life. 
 
Two main pillars of our modern science are the following : 
first, the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy : that is to say, 
that the amount of force or of energy in the universe is constant, 
and no increase can be created to add unto it, and no amount can 
be taken away from it ; the second great pillar is the doctrine 
of the Correlation, or the Convertibility, of Forces : that is to 
say, that any force can, at least theoretically, be converted into 
some other force, as mechanical motion into electrical and 
electrical into mechanical, and so forth as regards the other 
forces working in matter. 
 
Now these two theories or doctrines of science do make an 
approach in certain respects to the esoteric conception of the 
wonderful element back of and causative of all the changes in 
Nature, but nevertheless the conception of the Esoteric Philosophy, 
as our Teachers have shown it to us, cannot accept either of these 
two doctrinal pillars of science as thus conceived. First, the 
doctrine of the Conservation of Energy. It is perfectly true that 
no " new " force can be " created ", and it is likewise perfectly 
true that no energy or force can ever be utterly lost. Forces are 
not converted or transformed, as the twin doctrine of science has 
it ; it is possible, however, for a force to pass from one plane of 
being into another to come into one plane from a higher, or, 
indeed, from a lower. In other words, it is possible for a force- 
or energy-element outside of some plane to enter into being and 
manifestation upon it. Hence, the materialistic doctrine of a 
universe of dead, lifeless, non-vital matter nothing above it 
or beyond it or below it or through it cannot be accepted by 
the students of the Esoteric Philosophy. 
 
As regards the correlation or Convertibility of Energy. It is 
true, in one sense, that all the forces in the universe are correlated. 
It is a fundamental axiom of Theosophy that the Universe, our 
Universe, any Universe, is a living organism, and hence that its 
energies or forces, and all of them, are correlated ; but this does 
not mean that one force can become another. The idea offends the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 89
 
very essence, the very foundation of the Esoteric teaching with 
regard to manifestation, its Hierarchies, and individual lives 
all offspring of the ONE LIFE. What happens is rather this : 
That one force is not turned into or converted into another, but 
evokes or calls forth or arouses into active life or manifestation 
a "force " which was not " latent" a curious contradiction of 
sense but which was in equilibrium. When the modern scientist 
speaks of latent or potential energy, it is to the Occultist a con- 
summate logical absurdity, the very name energy or force meaning 
activity, and to talk about a " latent force " is like talking about 
" latent activity " or " dead life ", or a square triangle, or a flat 
sphere. It is impossible as long as we base our conception on 
the scientific postulates. But and note this well, please : a 
Theosophist, an Occultist, could use this phrase " latent force ", 
because in his mouth the phrase has a meaning and sense. 
 
For instance, a spiritual hence latent or non-material force 
is not " converted " into matter ; a material force is not " con- 
verted " into spirit. Why ? Because spirit and matter, or force 
and matter, are not two, but fundamentally and essentially ONE. 
Throughout the long period of manvantaric time there is a gradual 
evolution of one thing into another, but this procession of life is 
not accomplished along the lines or by the methods of the scientific 
theories which apply in the doctrine called the Convertibility of 
material Energy. The latter is a dream to us : it does not 
exist. 
 
This is, in fact, a subject which we shall have to develop more 
fully at a later period of our study, but we come now to the 
question of the descent of spiritual and then ethereal man into 
matter, down the ten steps of the Hierarchical scale. We saw in 
a former study that this descent was begun by the entrance 
through a laya-center of the spiritual entities seeking mani- 
festation on lower planes, the time having struck for them to 
open their great Maha-Manvantara or the world-period which 
was to follow. As soon as the spiritual essences touched the high- 
est degree of the lower plane, our fourth-matter plane, it stirred 
the particular laya-center therein to which they were directed 
by karmic energy, into corresponding activity or sympathetic 
life. Ths first manifestation thereof as seen from the same plane 
was the nebula, a cloudy nebula ; the second stage, aeons later, 
was a spiral nebula ; and the third, aeons still later, was an annular 
nucleated nebula, like a ring with a globe in the center ; the 
latest stage, before the evolving body settled into life as a planet, 
was a comet, directed or drawn to that particular solar system or 
sun to which it was karmically related in the former Planetary 
Manvantara. 
 
Now the Life-Cycle, or Manvantara, of a planet, consists 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
objectively of seven Rounds, or smaller manvantaras, around 
seven globes ; but this is preceded by three elemental cycles 
ten in all. The first three stages or cycles, call them the three 
elemental Rounds, if you will, are on the three archetypal planes 
above the seven ; this period is not yet really ethereal mani- 
festation : it is the first descent of the Arupa (or bodiless) beings, 
of spiritual nature, into sub-spiritual manifestation ; but when 
the third or lowest of the three archetypal planes has been 
traversed, by that time the life-wave or life-essence has con- 
solidated sufficiently in ethereal matter to form an airy shape 
or ethereal globe. This globe thence starts on the manvantaric 
cycle down into matter, a cycle which proceeds in several stages, 
actually seven, and upon and in seven globes, as already stated. 
 
During the first Round, upon the first globe, the life-wave has 
to complete a Ring consisting of seven Root-Races on that 
globe ; after, or rather at, the end of the evolution of each Root- 
Race, respectively, its (the Root-Race's) surplus energy is there- 
upon exploded or protruded into the sphere lower and there 
forms the first, second, third, etc., element of the second globe 
of the first Round ; the life-energy or life-wave has to run a ring 
of seven Root-Races in and upon that second globe, and when 
each such Root-Race has reached its end there, its surplus energy 
is thereupon exploded or protruded exactly as before into a 
magnetic center below it, and the seven there, after all have 
arrived, form the third globe, and so on till the seven globes are 
formed. This is the first Round. Beginning with the second 
Round on the seven globes, the process is altered in important 
particulars, because all the seven globes are already formed, as 
globes. 
 
At the end of the first Round there is a planetary Obscuration 
or Rest-Period, when the entities leave the last globe, the seventh, 
and enter into a (lower) nirvanic period of manvantaric repose, 
answering to the devachanic or between-life-states of the human 
entity between its respective lives. And so also at the end of 
the second Round, and of the third, when we reach the fourth, 
which is our present Round. 
 
As the Life- Wave cycles down into matter, it grows with every 
yuga (or Age) grosser, and more material, until the middle of the 
fourth Round (ours), when it begins to ascend. Every Round is 
grosser than its preceding one until the present, our fourth, the 
most material, is reached. This descent is called the " Shadowy 
Arc ", or " Cycle of Darkness ". We have, already, passed the 
lowest or middle period of the fourth Round, and in consequence 
now have begun the ascending arc, or the " Luminous Arc " ; 
we have three and a half more rounds to run before we reach the 
and of the Kalpa, or Planetary Manvantara, when the gr$at 
 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 91
 
Nirvana or para-Nirvana of the entire septenary Planetary 
Chain of the seven globes takes place. 
 
Now as regards the geometrical outline of the course followed 
by this descent into matter, we may consider it to be in the form 
of an epicycloid. Let me try to explain diagramatically what is 
here meant by an epicycloid. An epicycloid is formed when a 
point on a small circle, which runs around and upon the convex 
side of the circumference of a larger circle, traces a curve which 
touches the circumference of the larger circle at the beginning and 
end of each revolution of the smaller circle thereupon, as at 
A and B in the figure. The curve 
A-B is the epicycloid. For instance, 
this figure shows the two circles : we 
will say that the point on the smaller 
circle begins its curve at A, rolling 
upwards to the left ; at B, the point 
on the smaller circle has completed 
a full revolution ; the curve A-B is 
the epicycloid. 
 
Any point on this smaller circle 
as the latter rolls along the out- 
side of the circumference of the larger circle will describe or 
generate a curve, which is an epicycloid ; and as there is a geo- 
metrical relation between the commensurable radii of any two 
circles : for instance, if the radius of this smaller circle is one 
and the radius of the larger circle is seven, the proportion being 
1:7, the rolling point will describe or generate seven arcs or cusps 
around and upon the circumference of the larger circle. 
 
Now each one of these seven arcs represents here, geometrically, 
a globe of a Round. (Equally well does it represent geometrically 
one of the seven Root-Races on each globe during any Round.) 
In the first Round, the Life- Wave, starting from the seventh or 
highest plane, after its third full elemental cycle of and in the 
arupa world, begins to form the rupa or form-world ; and as the 
smaller circle rolls along the circumference of the greatest cycle, 
so to say, the Life- Wave (or globe) progressively grows more 
material, each one of these arcs which the cycling smaller circle 
makes on the circumference of the greater, representing a sphere 
of being, and also geometrically represents the Life-Wave of the 
planet beginning the evolution of material existence, " rising 
upward " (or increasing in material density) until it reaches 
its maximum of materiality, and then " descending " or decreasing 
in materiality until it again touches the plane of departure, the 
circumference of the greater circle (or cycle). 
 
The process by which the spirit descends into matter is called 
in Sanskrit Pravritti (which we may paraphrase into English as 
 
 
 
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"earth-birth", or "earth-day' 1 ), practically the same word as 
evolution or emanation, in our modern tongues ; the process of 
entering upon or ascending along the " luminous arc ", ultimately 
to find itself home again in the spiritual world, is called Nirvritti. 
Both words are from the Sanskrit root vrit, meaning to revolve, 
or to roll. The prefix pra answers to the preposition forth or 
forward, and the prefix nirto the prepositional phrases " out of ", 
" away from ", hence backwards, or reverse action. Pravritti is 
therefore used to mean the evolution or emanation of matter, which 
is equivalent to the involution of spirit ; Nirvritti, the evolution of 
spirit the reverse process. 
 
What are the durations of the time-periods during which the 
Life-Wave manifests in the Manvantara of seven Rounds, and in 
the seven respective planets of each Round ? As our first great 
Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has told us, the doctrines concerning 
the time-periods have been from immemorial time considered too 
esoteric to be given to the outward world in anything at all 
approaching fulness of teaching or detail, but throughout the 
teachings that have been openly given there are many hints of 
immense value. For instance, the time required for one Round 
that is the cycle from globe A to the last globe of the seven (we 
will call it Z), starting from the Root-Manu or collective " human- 
ity " of globe A and ending with the Seed-Manu or collective 
" humanity " of globe Z is called a Round-manvantara, and its 
period is 306,720,000 years. It is called " manvantara " because 
it is the " reign of one Manu " say a certain quality of Humanity. 
Now this word " manvantara " is Sanskrit and means between 
manus, i.e., between a Root-Manu on globe A and the Seed-Manu 
on globe Z, for a JRowwd-Manvantara. Now to this period of 
306,720,000 years must be added the length of the Sandhi, 
meaning " connexion ", or " junction ", or interval, according to a 
certain method of calculation, necessary in order fully to complete 
the evolution of the planet for the Round ; this sandhi is of the 
length of a krita-yuga, or 1,728,000 years, which brings the com- 
plete period or term of a I?0*md-Manvantara to 308,448,000 years 
of mortals. 
 
As has already been stated, there is, after the end of every 
round, an obscuration which also lasts for a certain period which 
we do not here specify ; but this can be found by any reader of 
these studies who cares to give the subject thought, and to be 
guided by the teachings already given. 
 
But how long a period do the seven Rounds take for their 
course ? What is the period of a maha-manvantara, or great 
manvantara, sometimes called a Kalpa, after which the globes 
no longer go into mere obscuration or repose, but die utterly ? 
The period of the Maha-Manvantara or Kalpa is also called a 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 93
 
" Day of Brahma ", and its length is 4,320,000,000 ; and the 
" Night of Brahma ", the planetary rest-period, which is also 
called the para-nirvanic period, is of equal length. Seven Rounds, 
as said, form a Day of Brahma. 
 
These figures are the Brahmanical figures, and they are also 
the figures of esoteric Buddhism (for we insist that Buddhism 
has an esoteric doctrine) ; the root-number 432, as any student 
knows, is also found in the chronological doctrines of ancient 
Babylonia ; it is likewise the real meaning in the chronological 
line of the Pythagorean Tetraktys, 1-2-3-4, the 432 springing 
from the unity or monad, a subject of which we spoke in our last 
study. 
 
We are also told that the duration of a planet's life, i.e., of a 
planetary chain of seven globes, is one of 360 divine days, corre- 
sponding to a divine year, and that Brahma's life (or the life of the 
universal system) is one hundred of those divine years expressed 
in 15 figures of years of mortals. A planetary manvantara is also 
related to the duration of life of a solar system ; a planetary 
manvantara (or seven Rounds) is a " day " of Brahma, as already 
said ; each of these days lasting 4,320,000,000 years of mortals, 
which really means the life-time of a planet during its seven rounds, 
and corresponding to one incarnation of a human life on earth. 
 
How long, then, does Brahma live in any one of his manifested 
universes, which we know are called the " out -breathings of the 
Self-Existent " ? We can calculate it 4,320,000,000 times 100, 
times 360, or in other words, 36,000, lives has any planet to live 
before the prakritika-pralaya (or the elemental pralaya) sets in, 
the end of that life (or pravritti) of the Universal system. 
 
What happens when comes the end of a solar system ? At a 
former meeting we spoke of the " bells of pralaya ". It was with 
no intention of attempting to be rhetorical, or of employing 
oratorical phraseology that we used this phrase. We have no 
such ambition. We chose the words because the teachings are 
that when the great (or maha-) pralaya comes upon the planets 
of any system, and their sun, then strange noises of various 
kinds are heard in the air of a planet belonging to such a solar 
system ; and these noises are repeated in miniature, so to say, 
not only at the end of the planetary manvantara (or the life-time 
of the planet), but also in still smaller miniature at the end of 
every Round. These phenomena are likewise alluded to in other 
religions than the Indian, as for instance in the Christian and Jewish: 
in Revelation, vi, 14 ; and in Isaiah, xxxiv, 4. The Christian 
writers speak of the time, 2 Peter, iii, 10, 12, when the " elements 
shall melt with the fervent heat ", and " the heavens shall pass 
away with a great noise ", but they " look for new heavens and a 
new earth " or a new planetary manvantara and allude to 
 
 
 
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pralayas as the- time when "the heaven departed as a scroll 
when it is rolled together", etc. These allusions to pralayic 
disintegration are figurative to a certain extent, but are suffi- 
ciently along the lines of the ancient Eastern thought to show us 
whence they came from the archaic Wisdom-Religion (Theo- 
sophy) of the Orient. We are told that some of the strange 
Noises that will occur towards the end of the prakritika-manvan- 
tara, before the cosmic or prakritika-pralaya sets in, are strange 
hollow boomings, strange cracklings as of musketry-fire, strange 
bell-like ringings as of the snapping of immense metallic belts. 
 
Now the sun is both the heart and the brain of our solar system, 
and sends seven-faceted life into every atom of its universe, the 
solar universe of which we and our planet Terra are a part. The 
sun itself is in some respects a vampire, but it is also pre-eminently 
and essentially a life-giver ; it is, cosmogonically, our Elder 
Brother, and not at all our physical parent as modern scientific 
wiseacres would have it ; it is also in a vital sense our Father- 
Mother, because through it, from planes superior to our own, 
come down the life-streams from worlds (systems) above ours 
yet our planet as all the other planets also in a relative degree 
receives these life-streams, as every individual atom and every 
human being, in the smallest miniature thereof, receives the same 
individually from the Inmost of the Inmost within itself or him- 
self. This is, as you will remember was stated in former studies, 
the same spiritual life ; but cosmically, that is to say, with regard 
to the universe, the sun is the brain and heart of our system, 
vitalizing and informing the endless hosts of beings under its 
systemic sway. 
 
We do not see the (true) sun. The sun is not burning, or 
incandescent. Heat exists around the sun, but it is not from 
burning gases or incandescence. We see the sun's robes, or 
reflexion, but we do not see the sun itself. It is, in very truth, a 
spiritual thing, and we think we receive our entire supply of heat 
and light from it because the forces flowing from the sun act in 
conjunction and reactively with the forces on our own earth 
forces working in the universal nature around us. If most of our 
light is due to the sun, this is not the case with 75 per cent of the 
heat which we receive, which comes most of it from our own 
globe and its forces, and especially from the immensely thick 
clouds of cosmic dust which fills all space. The electro-magnetic 
forces at work between this cosmic dust and our earth furnish 
most of the terrestrial heat. 
 
I wish this evening, before closing, to call your attention to 
the fact that the ancient initiate-astronomers, when speaking of the 
seven sacred spheres of our universe, the seven or nine in which 
the bodies of the solar system and the stars were set beyond 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 95
 
which was the Empyrean or the fiery sphere desired to convey a 
meaning which is now lost for the masses. There was a meaning 
of deep and wide significance also in their geocentric teachings. 
They knew as well as do we (and we have proofs of it), that the 
earth and the other planets whirl around the sun in elliptical 
orbits, but they had a reason for teaching the geocentric doctrines 
in public, and some day we shall have need to go into an analysis 
and proof of this assertion. 
 
Let us close our evening's study in calling attention to the fact 
that Theosophy is a doctrine of hope ; it is a doctrine of spiritu- 
ality ; it is a doctrine which refines and elevates man ; it is a 
doctrine in which there is room for the humblest to understand 
something and for the brightest and highest and most spiritual 
of us to put their feet on the lowest steps of that spiritual stair 
along which they may climb in hierarchical ascendings up to the 
highest, not only in our own planet, hand in hand with the great 
Buddhas of former times, and of the times to come, but beyond 
our planet and beyond our own solar system into those illimitable 
spiritual spheres in which the solar system now exists, and through 
which we derive our life spiritual, mental, psychical, pranic, and 
physical. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER X
 
THE DOCTRINE OF SWABIiAvA SELF-BECOMING CHARACTERISTIC 
INDIVIDUALITY. MAN, SELF-EVOLVED, HIS OWN CREATOR. 
" MONADOLOGIE " OF LEIBNITZ CONTRASTED WITH TEACHINGS 
OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
The MONAD emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconscious- 
ness ; and, skipping the first two planes too near the ABSOLUTE to permit of any 
correlation with anything on a lower plane it gets direct into the plane of 
Mentality. But there is no plane in the whole universe with a wider margin, 
or a wider field of action in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and 
apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in its turn an appropriate 
smaller plane for every " form," from the " mineral " monad up to the time 
when that monad blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But all 
the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, 
throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or 
the partial or total obscuration of matter two polar antitheses as it ascends 
into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of materiality. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY) I, p. 175. 
 
.... In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an 
independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure 
Essence of the Universal Sixth principle or the OVER-SOUL has (a) passed 
through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and 
(b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and 
self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees 
of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, 
up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the 
Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won 
by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of 
metempsychoses and reincarnations. 
 
Ibid., I, p. 17. 
 
HE general text of our study this evening is found in 
The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 83, stanza 3, 
verse 10 : 
 
 
 
T 
 
 
 
10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS 
FASTENED TO SPIRIT (Purusha), THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS, 
AND THE LOWER ONE TO MATTER (Prakriti) ITS (the Spirit's) SHADOWY 
END ; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUB- 
STANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SWABHAVAT. 
 
(a) In the Mndukya (Mundaka) Upanishad it is written, " As a 
spider throws out and retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the 
ground ... so is the Universe derived from the undecaying one " 
(I, i, 7). Brahma, as " the germ of unknown Darkness," is the material 
from which all evolves and develops " as the web from the spider, as 
foam from the water," etc. This is only graphic and true, if Brahmi 
the " Creator " is, as a term, derived from the root brih, to increase 
or expand. Brahm& " expands " and becomes the Universe woven 
out of his own substance. 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 97
 
The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who 
says : 
 
" Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the garment thou see'st Him by." 
 
In the course of our studies we have been advancing stage by 
stage, step by step, from general principles, and our course has 
been always towards that point of emanation and evolution which 
finds itself at the dawn of manifestation, or the opening of Man- 
vantara. We have touched upon many subjects but lightly, 
because the intricacy of the theme did not at the time permit us 
to go into and to follow side-avenues of thought, however attrac- 
tive and important they might be ; but these avenues we shall 
have to explore as time and opportunity bring once more before 
us, in the course of our study, the portals which we have passed 
and perhaps have merely glanced into. 
 
As the Teacher has directed, we have brought to the attention 
of those who will read these studies certain fundamental natural 
principles, as fundamental and important in their respective 
bearings as the two foundation-stones of popular Theosophy 
today, called Reincarnation and Karman. One of these principles 
is the doctrine of Hierarchies, upon which much more could and 
should be said than has hitherto been said, and it will be said in 
due time. 
 
Another such fundamental principle or doctrine a true key 
opening the very heart of being, and, besides other things, reaching 
into the root-meaning of the so-called " origin of evil " and of the 
inner urge towards right and righteousness, which man calls his 
moral sense is that which flows forth from the philosophical 
conceptions behind the word Swabhava, meaning, generally, the 
essential characteristic of anything ; the mediaeval scholastics 
spoke of this essentiality of things as their Quidditas, or Quiddity, 
the whatness of anything : that which is its heart, its essential 
nature, its characteristic essentiality. The word Swabhava (a noun) 
itself is derived from the Sanskrit root BM, meaning " to become ", 
or " to be ", and the prefix of the word, the three preceding 
letters, sva, is also of course Sanskrit and means " self/ 1 The 
word thus translated means " self-becomingness ", a technical 
term, a key-word, in which philosophical conceptions of immense 
and wide-reaching import inhere. We shall develop some of these 
more fully as we proceed with our studies. 
 
In the quotation from the stanzas which we have read this 
evening, you will have noticed the word Swabhavat, from the 
same elements as is Swabhava, from the same Sanskrit root. 
Swabhavat is the present participle of the verb bhu, meaning 
that which becomes itself, or develops from within outwardly its 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
essential self by emanation, evolution ; in other words, that which 
by self-urge develops the potencies latent in its nature, in its self, 
in its Being of being. We have often spoken of the " Inmost of the 
Inmost ", as implying that " inmost " link or root by which we 
(and all other things) flow forth from the very essence of the heart 
of things, which is our UTTER SELF, and we have spoken of it 
sometimes with the hand placed upon the breast ; but we must 
be exceedingly careful not to think that this Inmost of the Inmost 
is in the physical body. Let me explain just what I mean. 
The Qabbalists divide the planes of nature into which the ten 
Sephiroth became queer English, this, but very accurately and 
correctly expressing the thought into four during manifestation, 
and they were called the four 'Oldm, a word having originally the 
meaning of " concealed " or " hid " or " secret ", but also used 
for time, likewise used almost exactly in the sense of the Gnostic 
teaching of " Aions ", (aeons) as spheres, Lokas in Sanskrit. The 
highest of the Qabbalistic 'olams, or spheres, was 'Oldm Atsiloth, 
meaning the " seon " or " age " or the " loka " of " condensation/' 
The second was called 'Oldm Hab-Beriah, meaning the aeon or age 
or loka of " creation ". The third in descent and increasing 
materiality was called 'Oldm Ha-Yetstrah or loka of Form. The 
fourth, last, most material and grossest, was called 'Oldm Ha- 
'Asiah, meaning the seon or world of " action " or "causes ". 
This last plane or sphere or world is the lowest of the four, and is 
sometimes called the world of Matter, or, again, of " shells ", 
man (and other physical entities) sometimes being considered 
a shell in the sense of being the garment or the vehicle or " shell " 
or corpus of the indwelling spirit. 
 
Now psychologically these four spheres were considered as being 
copied, or reflected, or as having a locus (place) in the human 
body ; and, in order to correspond with the four basic principles 
into which the Jewish Qabbalistic philosophers divided man, 
Neshdmdh (or spirit) was supposed to have its locus in the head, 
or rather hovering thereover ; the second, RAahh (or Soul), was 
supposed to have its locus or center in the breast or chest ; the 
third, the lowest of the active principles, called Nefesh (or the 
animal-astral soul), was supposed to have its locus or center in 
the abdomen. The fourth vehicle was Guf, or the inclosing shell 
of the physical body. The "Neshdmdh, the highest of all, from 
which the others emanated stage by stage, the Rtiahh from the 
Neshamah, the Nefesh from the Rtiahh, and the Guf from the 
Nefesh (the Guf actually is the linga-Sarira, esoterically, and 
secretes the human physical body) should not be considered so 
much in the head as over-shadowing as it were the head and body. 
It may be likened to a solar ray, or to an electric ray, or again 
to the so-called " golden chain " of the great Greek poet Homer 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 99
 
and the far later Neo-Platonic philosophers, which connects Zeus 
and all lower entities ; or to the chain of beings in a Hierarchy 
linked by their hyparxis with the lowest plane of the next higher 
Hierarchy. 
 
Now this " Inmost of the Inmost " is in that part of us which 
overshadows us, which is above us physically, rather than in us. 
And it really is our spiritual Monad. Therefore, before we can 
know what we mean by the Swabhava, and the wonderful 
doctrine fundamentally emanating therefrom, we must under- 
stand what we mean by Monad and the sense in which the word 
Monad is used. Those who were students of H. P. Blavatsky 
while she was alive with us, and who have studied under our 
two other Teachers, W. Q. Judge, and the present one, Katherine 
Tingley, will realise the necessity of making our sense clear by 
choosing words which shall convey clearly and sensibly, and 
without possibility of misconception, the thoughts which lie 
behind the words. In European philosophy, monad, as a philo- 
sophical word, seems to have been first employed by the great 
Italian philosopher, the noted Giordano Bruno, in thought a 
Neo-Platonist, who derived his inspiration from the philosophy 
of Greece, now called Neo-Platonism ; a more modern use of the 
word monad, in a spiritual-philosophical sense, was that of the 
Slavic-German philosopher, Leibnitz. Monadism formed the heart 
of all his teachings, and he said that the universe was composed, 
built up, of monads : that is to say, he conceived them to be 
spiritual centers having no extension, but having an inner and 
inherent energy of development, the respective hosts of monads 
being of various degrees and each one achieving its own develop- 
ment by an innate characteristic nature (or Swabhava). The 
essential meaning of this, as it is at once seen, is characteristic 
Individuality, which is Self, pursuing its own unfoldment and 
growing by stages higher and higher through self-unfolding or 
self-becoming (or Swabhava). Leibnitz taught that these monads 
were connected, spiritually, psychically, and physically, by a 
" law of harmony ", as he expressed it, which is our Swabhavat 
the Self-Existent, developing during manifestation into the Hosts 
of monads, or monadic centers. 
 
Now Leibnitz seems to have taken (at least in part) the main 
philosophical conception, as regards his monads, as developed in 
his philosophy in his Monadologie from the Flemish-Nether- 
landish mystic, Van Helmont. This man Van Helmont, however, 
took it from Bruno, or, perhaps, directly, as Bruno did, from the 
Neo-Platonic philosophers. As far as the basic ideas of Bruno, 
Van Helmont, and Leibnitz go, they very much resemble each 
other ; they resemble also the teaching on this subject of the 
Esoteric Wisdom, Esoteric Theosophy, but only in so far as we 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
consider manifestation, because the monads themselves, in their 
ultimate, enter into the " silence and darkness ", as Pythagoras 
would have put it, when the great Maha-Pralaya or cosmical 
Dissolution begins. A monad in the ancient teachings now called 
Theosophy remember that " Theosophy " really means the 
Wisdom which the Gods or divine beings study, a truly divine 
thing means a spiritual atom we are compelled here to use 
popular language ; and a spiritual atom is equivalent to saying 
pure Individuality, the selfness of the Self, the essential nature or 
characteristic or Swabhavic core of every spiritual being, the 
self of itself. This Esoteric Wisdom derives this Self not its ego, 
which is an entirely different and lower and inferior thing it 
derives this divine Monad, it derives this divine Substance- 
consciousness, from the Paramatman (which we have studied 
before), the so-called " Supreme " Self, not that this Supreme 
Self is God in the curiously contradictory Christian sense, not 
supreme in that sense, but supreme in the sense of absolute, 
unconditioned, and all-pervading universality for and in a single 
cosmical aggregation of Hierarchies, for it is the summit, acme, 
pinnacle, and Source thereof. 
 
Now, if we remember what we have studied in our former 
meetings in this connexion, and the conceptions that we figurated 
on the blackboard by means of paradigmatic schemes, or diagrams, 
we shall recollect that we represented the highest that we could 
intellectually conceive of as a triangle, figuring it thus in our 
minds not that this highest actually is a triangle, which would 
be ludicrous, but representing it diagrammatically to ourselves 
in that fashion ; and the highest sphere in the mathematical 
sense of being without physical extension as we conceive of such 
from which all the succeeding ten steps, planes, degrees of any 
Hierarchy radiated, we called the Boundless, the Without Bounds, 
the Ain Suph as the Qabbalists said : and that the two aspects 
of the Boundless formed, so to speak, the two sides of this divine 
triangle, one of these two aspects being Para-Brahman (" beyond 
Brahman "), and the other being Mulaprakriti (or " root-nature "). 
It must be remembered, in this connexion, that any diagram- 
matic representation may and often does figurate different 
conceptions when the premisses differ. And next, that from this 
divine triangle there was a reflexion, as it were, an emanation, 
into the lower shadow, into the substance or matter below, the 
rays of the upper sun shining into the lower atmosphere, so to say, 
and illuminating it, and that this lower illuminated atmosphere 
or substance was called the lower monad, and the upper was called 
the higher monad ; and that, as the energy or life-waves swept 
downwards through the second monad or the lower monad, the 
square or manifested nature came into being as the third stage of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 101
 
evolution. With the premisses before stated, therefore, this upper 
triangle, which may be considered as one, or a trinity in unity, is 
the upper monad, or the Inmost of the Inmost, the self of the 
Self ; and the lower triangle is its emanation, its three lines 
representing Father, Mother, and Son. The Father, again, may 
be considered as the Primal Point of the second or lower triangle, 
that is to say the point forming the apex of the triangle, which 
is a laya-center through which stream down into our sphere the 
manifesting forces which themselves become the universe. (See the 
figure infra.) 
 
 
 
 
And herein we may see an example of the philosophical value 
of the hierarchical system considered as a representation of 
Nature's symmetrical architecture, because each stage of the 
downward progress, each step or plane downwards, is informed, 
insouled, by the upper parts which remain above ; while the 
lower planes or parts are spiritually and ethereally and physically 
secreted and excreted step by step, plane after plane, and cast 
forth like foam on the substratal waves of life. The physical 
nature as we see it even on this our own plane, is, so to speak, 
concreted divinity, and it actually is concreted light, because 
light is ethereal matter or substance. 
 
Some day we shall have to study this question of spirit and 
substance, force and matter, and their relations and interactions, 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
more thoroughly than we have been able to do thus far in our 
lectures. 
 
Now, from the highest of the highest, from what is to us the 
unknown of the unknown, the inmost of the Inmost, through all 
these planes, there streams down, as it were, the Divine Ray, 
passing from one Hierarchy to another Hierarchy below it, and 
then to another still lower, and then to a third yet more material, 
and so on till the limit of the cosmical aggregate is reached, when 
it begins to ascend along the stupendous Round, returning 
towards its primal Source. Note carefully that as it descends it 
evolves these various Hierarchies from itself ; and on its ascending 
Round, draws them back into itself again. Surrounding this 
immense spiritual aggregate, we are taught to conceive an aura 
as it were, taking the shape of an egg, which we can call, if you like, 
following the example of the Qabbalists, the Shechindh, a Hebrew 
word meaning dwelling or vehicle, or what the Esoteric Philosophy 
calls the Auric Egg in the case of man, and representing in this 
paradigmatic scheme the universe which we see around us in its 
highest aspects, for this aura is the very outgrowth of mula- 
prakriti ; while this mystical line which we draw in the figure as 
running down through all the various grades of the Hierarchy, is 
the stream of the Self, the Unconditioned Consciousness, welling 
up in the inmost of everything. 
 
Now to come back to the word Swabhavat, the " s0//-becom- 
ing ", the " srf/-Existing ". It is, in the super-spiritual, following 
the above paradigmatic scheme, the second Divine Monad or 
second Divine Logos ; or, looking at it in another and lower way, 
it is the first cosmic Monad, the reflexion of the primeval or primal 
Divine Monad above it, and is the first manifestation or quiver 
of cosmic life when the end of universal pralaya having come, 
the cry goes forth, so to say, on the watch-tower of eternity, 
" Let there be manifestation and light ! " 
 
The Elohim in a former stage were Monads ; and you remember 
that we translated verses 25, 26, and 27 of the first chapter of 
Genesis, a translation radically different from that given in any 
European translation, and we saw that these Elohim said, " Let 
us make man in our own shadow, (or phantom) (that is, in our 
own shadow-selves or matter-selves), and in our own pattern ", 
in other words, they made man by becoming him ; in other words 
again, Humanity is the lower principles of the Elohim themselves 
as Monads. 
 
So the monad is the inmost of ourselves, not as a soul, as a 
" gift of God ", but as the highest part of ourselves ; and our very 
bodies are concreted spirit, which is on this plane the lowest, the 
shadowy end, the matter-end, of the self-Hierarchy which each 
one of us is. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 103
 
Let us remember again that each Hierarchy has its SwabMva, 
or specific characteristic. To exemplify it by colors, one Hier- 
archy is predominantly blue, another is predominantly red, 
another green, another yellow or golden, and so on ; but each 
one has its own forty-nine roots or divisions, forty-nine aspects 
of the one underlying Root-Substance common to all, so that of 
necessity each one of these forty-nine in its turn develops one of 
the other colors. So that, if we could perceive it spiritually, we 
should see all nature around us everywhere flashing and corusca- 
ting in a most marvelous interplay of colors a wonderful picture ! 
This is sheer fact, not a metaphor. And, furthermore, there is 
for every Kosmos a cosmic Hierarchy which includes all the 
lesser Hierarchies thereof, and each Hierarchy, large or small, is 
linked on, above and below, (or outward and inward) to other 
Hierarchies, higher and lower, and each separate, individual 
Hierarchy consists of nine (or ten) planes or degrees. Seven of 
these are, throughout, on the manifesting planes. Hence, a 
Hierarchy, strictly speaking, consists of ten planes housing ten 
states of matter and ten forces ; but seven thereof are manifesting 
forces ; the seven in manifestation run from the arupa (or form- 
less) to the rupa (or form) worlds ; and they are all linked together, 
co-ordinated together, combined together, beyond present human 
conception or understanding. 
 
It is along these lines of spiritual thought that the dogmatic 
religious or scientific system quarrels, if we may use this expres- 
sion, with the Esoteric Philosophy, because that system is based 
at least as regards the scientific view upon purely mechanical 
and materialistic hypotheses, invented by the scientists of the 
last century concerning the nature and action of what is called 
" matter " and " force ", as if there could in reason be a true 
definition or explanation of these two on a basis of fortuitous 
mechanicalism arising out of utterly lifeless " matter ". 
 
Let us say now, although it is departing a little from our main 
theme, that force is simply matter on a higher plane ethereal 
matter, if you will ; and that physical matter is simply force on our 
plane : matter actually is naught but concreted force ; or, to reverse 
the idea, force is nothing but sublimated or etherealized matter, 
because the two, matter and spirit, are one. It is best and truest 
to say that matter is concreted or compacted force ; just as 
Nature (matter as we know it) is equilibrated spirit. 
 
Now we may once more return to this wonderful teaching of 
Swabhava, after this rather long but necessary explanation or 
introduction. The Monad is our inmost Self ; each man has his 
own or rather is his own Monad ; each being of whatever 
degree or kind has its particular characteristic nature not 
merely the outer or vehicular characteristics that change from 
 
 
 
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incarnation to incarnation, and from manvantara to manvantara 
but every entity, high or low, has, so to say, a keynote of its 
being, and this is its Swabhava : the selfhood of the S^lf , essential 
characteristic of the Self, by the urge of which the Self becomes 
the many selves, producing and manifesting the hosts of varied 
qualities and types and degrees. Now note carefully : The 
urge behind evolution or development is not external to the evolving 
entity but within itself ; and the future results to be achieved in 
evolution that which the evolving entity becomes lie in germ or 
seed in itself ; both this urge and this germ or seed, arise out of 
one thing, and THIS is ITS SWABHAVA. 
 
Remember what we said in our former study about the nature 
and evolution of the universe. What is a or any universe ? 
It is a self-contained and self-sustained and self-sufficient entity in 
manifestation, but is merely one of countless hosts of other uni- 
verses, all children of the Boundless ; there is, for instance, an 
atomic universe, and a terrestrial or planetary universe, and a 
man or human universe, and a solar universe, and so on indefi- 
nitely ; yet all hang together, interpenetrate each other, and 
form any cosmical aggregate. And how and why ? Because each 
universe, great or small, is a Hierarchy, and each Hierarchy 
represents and is the development of and is a part of the spiritual 
urge and evolving germ arising out of the Self, thereof, of the Self 
of each, each developing and evolving its own particular essential 
characteristic ; and all these forces taken together are the 
Swabhava of any entity. Swabhava, in short, may be called the 
essential Individuality of any monad, expressing its own charac- 
teristics, qualities, and type, by self-urged evolution. 
 
We should note also in passing, that perhaps the most mystic 
school in Buddhism, which H. P. Blavatsky says has practically 
kept most faithfully to this one of the esoteric teachings of 
Gautama-Buddha, is a school still extant in Nepal, which is called 
the Swabhavika school, a Sanskrit adjective derived from the 
noun Swabhava ; this school comprises those who follow the 
doctrine of Swabhava, or the doctrine which teaches the becoming 
or unfolding of the Self by inner impulse the 5^//-becoming. We 
do not, according to it, become " through the grace of a God " ; we 
become whatever we are or are to be through our own selves ; we 
make ourselves ; derive ourselves from ourselves ; become our own 
children; have always done so, and will for ever do so. This applies 
not only to man, but to all beings everywhere. Herein we see the 
root, the force, the meaning, of morals. Responsible for every act 
we do, for every thought we think, responsible to the uttermost 
farthing, never anything " forgiven ", never anything " wiped 
out ", except when we ourselves turn the evil we have done into 
good. We shall have to discuss more fully, some time, the question 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 105
 
of the " origin of evil " which is involved herein. We may note 
in passing that this school is called " atheistic " and " material- 
istic ", simply because of two reasons : first, the profound 
thought of this doctrine is misinterpreted by Occidental scholars ; 
second, many of its followers have, in fact, degenerated. 
 
You see immediately the ethical force of such a doctrine as this 
of the Swabhava, when it is properly understood. We become, what 
we are in germ in our inmost essence ; we also follow and make a 
part of (likewise) the type and the course of evolution of the 
particular planetary chain to which we belong by affinity, of 
which we spoke briefly in our last meeting. We first follow along 
the shadowy arc down into matter, and when we have reached 
the lowest point of that arc, then, through the inner impulses of 
our nature, through what our present Teacher Katherine Tingley 
calls " self-directed evolution " which is the very heart of this 
doctrine of Swabhava, one of the most fundamental doctrines in 
the esoteric philosophy when we have reached the bottom, I 
repeat, then the same inner impulse carries us (provided that we 
have passed the danger-point of being attracted into the lower 
sphere of matter) up the luminous arc, up and back into the 
higher spiritual spheres, but beyond the point of departure 
whence we first started downward on our cyclical journey into 
material experience for that Manvantara. 
 
We make our own bodies, we make our own lives, we make 
our own destinies, and we are responsible for it all, spiritually, 
morally, intellectually, psychically, and even physically. It is a 
manly doctrine ; there is no room in it for moral cowardice ; 
no room in it for casting our responsibility upon the shoulders of 
another God, angel, man, or demon. We can become Gods, 
because we are gods in the germ even now, inwardly. We start 
upon our evolutionary journey as an unself conscious God-spark, 
and we return to our primal source of being, following the great 
cycle of the Maha-Manvantara, a self-conscious God. 
 
Let us say here that we have come at this point to what is 
a great puzzle for most of our Occidental Orientalists. They 
cannot understand the distinctions that the wonderful old 
philosophers of the Orient make as regards the various classes 
of the Devas. They say, in substance : " What funny contra- 
dictions there are in these teachings, which in many respects are 
profound and seem so wonderful. Some of these Devas (or divine 
beings) are said to be less than man ; some of these writings even 
say that a good man is nobler than any god. And yet other parts 
of these teachings declare that there are gods higher even than 
the Devas, and yet are called Devas. What does this mean ? " 
 
The Devas or divine beings, one class of them, are the unself- 
conscious sparks of Divinity, cycling down into matter in order 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
to bring out from 'within themselves and to unfold or evolve self- 
consciousness, the Swabhava of Divinity within. They begin 
their reascent always on the luminous arc, which never ends, in a 
sense ; and they are Gods, S//-conscious Gods, henceforth, taking 
a definite and divine part in the " great work ", as the Mystics 
have said, of being builders, evolvers, leaders, of Hierarchies ; 
in other words, they are monads which have become their own inner- 
most selves ; which have passed the " Ring Pass-Not ", separating 
the spiritual from the divine. Remember and reflect upon these 
old sayings in our books ; every one of them is pregnant with 
meaning, full of thought. 
 
Now this, therefore, is the doctrine of Swabhava : the doctrine 
of inner development, of bringing out that particular essential 
characteristic, or Individuality, which is within, of self-directed 
evolution ; and you must perforce see the immense reach that 
it has in the moral world, in the theological world, in the philo- 
sophical world, yea, even in the scientific world as regards the 
knotty problems of evolution, such as the " evolution of species ", 
inheritance, development of root-types, and many more. 
 
We shall one day have to study more carefully, than the mere 
sketch we have given here, these divine, very divine, doctrines, 
especially in their bearing on questions of human psychology ; 
for upon these doctrines depends the further (and a better) com- 
prehension of the very tenets which we have outlined this evening 
and at former meetings. We cannot understand the universe 
nor the working and interplay of the forces therein until we have 
mastered at least to some degree, and followed out, the injunction 
of the Delphic Oracle, " Man, Know Thyself 1 " A man who 
knows himself truly, knows all, because he is, fundamentally, all. 
He is every Hierarchy ; he is gods and demons and worlds and 
spheres and forces, and matter and c6nsciousness and spirit 
everything is in him. He is in one sense built of the roots of 
everything, and he is the fruit of everything ; he has endless 
time behind him and endless time before him. What a gospel of 
hope, what a gospel of wonder, is this ; how it raises the human 
soul ; how the inmost part of us aspires when we reflect upon this 
teaching ! No wonder that it is called the " teaching (or Wisdom) 
of the Gods ", Theosophia that is to say, the teaching which 
the Gods themselves study. How does a man become a Mahat- 
man or Great Self ? Through self-directed evolution, through 
becoming that which he is in himself, in his innermost. This is the 
doctrine of SwabMva. 
 
And here we should at least allude to the mystery of individu- 
ality. Remember that personality is the mask (persona, as the 
Latins said) or reflexion in matter of the individuality ; but being 
a material thing it can lead us downward, although it is in essence 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 107
 
a reflexion of the highest. It is an old saying that those things 
are most dangerous which have reality or truth in them ; not 
those things which are truly unreal or false, because they of them- 
selves fall to pieces and evanish away in time. 
 
Monads, psychologically (we have the four monads, the divine, 
intellectual, psychical, and astral, corresponding to the four 
basic planes of matter, but all four Monads deriving from the 
highest) from the standpoint of generalization, are spiritual atoms, 
Buddhic atoms, being universal principles so far as are concerned 
the planes below, the Buddhi being perhaps the most mysterious 
of the seven principles of man, and, from our present viewpoint, 
the most important. But the human monad (as contrasted with 
the divine monad above it), the potentially immortal man, com- 
prises the three principles, Atman, Buddhi, and the higher Manas. 
These three principles are required in order to make a self- 
conscious God. Atman and Buddhi alone cannot make a self- 
conscious God ; they are a god-spark, an undeveloped or un- 
evolved God-spark. We have to use in this connexion human 
terms ; we have not the proper terms in English nor in any other 
European language properly to express these subtil thoughts. 
 
In conclusion, let us remember that while each man has the 
"Christ" within himself, and can be "saved" only by that 
" Christ ", he can be saved by that inner " Christ " only when 
he chooses to save himself ; the initiative must come from below, 
from himself. And while some people, through misunderstanding 
of this wonderful doctrine of Swabhava, may speak of " fatalism ", 
we can do no more this evening than to say emphatically that this 
doctrine is not fatalism ; it is absolutely the contrary of the 
fatalistic hypothesis, which asserts that there is a blind or un- 
known or conscious or unconscious force outside of man, directing 
him, driving him, in his choice, acts, and evolution, to annihilation 
or heaven or hell. That is not the doctrine of Swabhava and it 
is not taught in the Esoteric Philosophy. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XI
 
THE COSMIC PILGRIMAGE. FROM UN-SELF-CONSCIOUS GODSPARK 
TO FULLY SELF-CONSCIOUS GOD. 
 
Unveil, O Thou that givest sustenance to the Universe, from whom all 
proceeds, to whom all must return, the face of the True Sun, now hidden by a 
vase of Golden Light, that we may see the Truth and do our whole duty on our 
journey towards thy Sacred Seat, 
 
Paraphrase of The Gdyatri, one of the most 
sacred verses of the Hindu Scriptures. 
 
 
 
N page 605 of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine 
find the following : 
 
 
 
^L^^r But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism 
before criticising what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine 
refuses (as Science does, in one sense) to use the words " above " and 
"below," "higher" and "lower," in reference to invisible spheres, as 
being without meaning. Even the terms "East ' ' and ' ' West ' ' are merely 
conventional, necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For, though 
the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles, North and South, yet 
both East and West are variable relatively to our own position on the 
Earth's surface, and in consequence of its rotation from West to East. 
Hence, when " other worlds " are mentioned whether better or worse, 
more spiritual or still more material, though both invisible the 
Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our 
Earth, as the theologians and the poets do ; for their location is no- 
where in the space known to, and conceived by, the profane. They are, 
as it were, blended with our world interpenetrating it and inter- 
penetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and 
firmaments visible to us ; there are still greater numbers beyond 
those visible to the telescopes, and many of the latter kind do not 
belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as invisible 
as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar system, they are yet 
with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to 
their respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation 
of these worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes 
enclosed one within the other, like the toys called Chinese nests ; 
each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having no 
direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already 
said, may be, for all we know, or feel, passing through and around us 
as if through empty space, their very habitations and countries being 
inter-blended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, because 
we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them. 
 
This seems to be a very appropriate general text for us to 
choose in closing our sketch of the Hierarchies ; and more 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 109
 
particularly this evening our development of the doctrine of 
Swabhava, upon which we touched in our last meeting the 
doctrine of the characteristic nature, of the individuality, or type- 
essentiality, of each individual monad, growing and manifesting 
and becoming itself in the manifested world in which it is itself 
the seed of its own individuality. The bearing of this concept on 
the doctrine of evolution " rolling out or unfolding of what is 
within " and especially on the mooted and knotty problem of 
the so-called " origin of species ", is simply immense, for it is 
the key thereof. 
 
We can use the word individuality for the meaning of Swabhava, 
provided we do not use it in contradistinction with personality. 
It is individuality in the sense of signifying the being and the 
unfolding of that particular quality or essential characteristic 
which distinguishes one monad, one human entity, one cosmos, 
one atom, from another of the same kind. Fundamental as 
is the doctrine of Hierarchies, and illuminating as is the 
light that it throws upon other problems, it itself cannot be 
properly understood without its complementary doctrine of 
Swabhava ; and, vice versa, we cannot properly understand the 
doctrine of Swabhava without understanding the doctrine of 
Hierarchies. 
 
We hope this evening to develop the true meaning of Swabhava, 
and thus to finish this part of our study, having now reached the 
frontiers, as it were, of cosmical manifestation ; and in beginning 
our study of it in detail, we are obliged to touch upon a very 
essential aspect of the Doctrine, another aspect of it which is 
fundamental for the proper understanding of this portion of the 
teaching of the Ancient Wisdom ; it is a portion which pertains 
to psychology. Indeed, this doctrine of Hierarchies and this its 
complementary doctrine of Swabhava, are both in a very large 
measure fundamentally psychological. 
 
Swabhava is a Sanskrit term, a noun derived from the root 
BM, meaning " to become ", and hence " to be ", a psychological 
concord which is found also in several other languages, as in both 
Greek and English for instance. In Greek the word is gignomai ; 
and in English it is be. In old Anglo-Saxon we have this word 
with the essential future sense completely retained and psycho- 
logically distinctly felt ; to wit : ic beo, thu bist or byst t he bith or 
biath, etc., meaning " I, thou, he will be ", in the future sense of 
become. It is obvious that the psychological force of this means 
that being is essentially a becoming a growth or evolution or 
unfolding of inner faculty. 
 
English, as a matter of fact, had originally and still has only 
the two natural grammatical tenses the imperfect tense, or the 
tense of imperfect or incomplete action, commonly called the 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
" present " ; and the perfect tense of perfected or completed 
action, or the past. 
 
Now what constitutes one Hierarchy, as different in essence 
or Swabhava from another Hierarchy ? It is its Swabh.va, or 
the seed of individuality which is it and is in it. It is that seed, 
which developing, makes a Hierarchy, and that seed in developing, 
follows the laws (or rather nature] of its own essential being, and 
this is its Swabhava. In The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky 
often speaks of one particular quality or plane of Universal Being, 
which she calls Swabhavat, the neuter present participle of the 
same root Bhu (spoken of a moment agone) and used as a noun. 
Like Swabhava, it is derived from the same root, with the same 
prefix, and means that particular thing which exists and becomes 
of and in its own essential essence ; call it the " Self -Existent ", 
if you like ; it is, though a Sanskrit word, a Buddhistic term, 
and its Brahmanical equivalent in the Vedanta would probably 
be the cosmical side of Paramatman ''Supreme SELF", the 
individualized aspect of Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti Superspirit- 
Rootmatter. 
 
Swabhavat is the spiritual essence, the fundamental root or 
Spirit-Substance, the Father-Mother of the beginning of mani- 
festation, and from it grow or become all things. It can be 
conceived of as Spinoza did the Netherlandish Jewish phil- 
osopher, the absolute idealist as God, as the one Underlying 
Being or Substance ; though in our studies we have eschewed 
most sedulously the use of the term " God ", for a reason herein- 
after to be set forth. Or it can be conceived of as Leibnitz did, 
as a collective Unity of an infinitude of emanated monads or 
" entelechies ", to use Aristotle's term. Spinoza was an absolute 
idealist, while Leibnitz was an "objective idealist ", which we 
also are, by the way. Swabhava is the characteristic nature, the 
type-essence, the individuality, of Swabhavat of any Swab- 
havat, each such Swabhavat having its own Swabhava. 
 
Now the main and essential meaning of the doctrine of Swab- 
hava is the following and it is so fundamental, so important in 
order properly to understand what follows, that we are going 
emphatically to urge it upon the attention of everyone. When 
cosmical manifestation begins or opens, it does not open helter- 
skelter, in disordered confusion, or by chance ; it begins in con- 
formity with the characteristic seeds of life, called, commonly, 
" laws ", which have been in latent existence through the period 
of the maha-pralaya preceding the beginning of the new man- 
vantara, and these " laws " we use the term under strong 
protest are really the intrinsic and ineluctable karmic habits of 
nature to be this or that, its Swabh&vas, in short its hosts of 
innumerable entities or essential natures ; and these " laws " 
 
 
 


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are actually impressed, stamped, upon ethereal and physical 
matter by the monadic essences or the monads. The SwabMvas 
of the monads give their Swabhavic natures to Nature ! The 
monads are individuals, and conceiving them as collected together 
in a unity and forming a body of a still greater Monad, Leibnitz 
gave to this greatest Monad the Latin term Manas Monadum 
the " Monad of monads 11 . This Monad is, in short, our Hier- 
archical summit, of which we have several times spoken before. 
But where is there any need to call this " Monad of monads ", this 
Hierarchical apex or summit, " God " ? We can conceive of 
something still higher, and so forth almost at will. To stop at 
any point and call it " God " would simply be creating a deity 
a " God " man-made, truly ! 
 
However, a man must pause somewhere in thought. So we 
begin with Swabhava, which, being an abstract term, is not a 
limit or boundary in itself. It is pure Individuality working in 
spirit-matter of which it is the highest part, or summit. Now 
this essential nature (or Swabhava) of a monad develops and 
becomes in matter a Hierarchy, whether that Hierarchy be an 
atom, a man, a planet, a sun, a solar system, or a cosmical 
universe (or a universal cosmos) such as we find within the 
encircling zone of the Milky Way. The monad does so following 
the driving essential urge of its own inner essence, its individu- 
ality, its Swabhava. Hence it is that as the monads are 
individuals, so are the resultant Hierarchies individualized. And 
generalizing, as the monad grows into or becomes the Hierarchy, 
descending the " shadowy arc " that is, descending into matter 
as it becomes matter in its lower parts the upper portion of the 
monad remaining always in its own pure unadulterated state it 
reaches a certain point which is the end of its cyclical develop- 
ment for that period of evolution (or manvantara), and then it 
begins cycling upward and back again, and this part of its journey 
is called the " luminous arc ", because its tendency is towards 
" light ", or spirit, following the phraseology of the ancient 
sages. 
 
We studied some time ago in the Hebrew Bible, Chapter I, 
verses 25 and 26, how the Elohim (in the translation that we 
made) said : " Let us make ' man ' in our own shadowy image 
(in our own shadow), and in our archetypal pattern ". These 
E16him who so " spoke " were monads, together forming a 
Hierarchy, each one of them, again, a Hierarchy by itself. As 
each individual man is a subordinate Hierarchy of the greater 
Hierarchy of Humanity, so Humanity is a subordinate Hierarchy 
of the still greater Hierarchy of the planet, and the planet Terra 
a subordinate Hierarchy of the still greater Hierarchy of the 
solar system ; and so forth, as long as you care to follow the 
 
 
 
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thought. Man is himself composed of less beings ; he himself 
is a microcosm, or little universe ; he to these less beings is as a 
God he to them is the Monas monadum, the Monad of monads. 
We shall later see reasons of great force why we have sedulously 
eschewed using this word " God ". It is a colored word, spoiled 
with the thoughts which have been tacked on to it, attached to 
it ; colored by them all, and it is for these reasons a dangerous 
word to use, because both misleading and inadequate. 
 
As this monad in the beginning of manifestation in cosmos 
breaks through the laya-center, which you will remember we 
have studied before that is to say through the neutral point, 
the vanishing-point where spirit becomes matter, or vice versa 
(you can call it the Atman of the six lower degrees or principles 
which are to follow in sequential evolution) as the descending 
monad breaks through the encircling matter of the cosmos around 
it, it follows in its course its own inner urge, or, rather, is driven 
thereby ; it is self -expressive, but still self-unconscious ; but when 
any particular " atomic " part of this cosmic monad reaches 
self-consciousness, and becomes a man, the path that its evolution 
follows thenceforward is consciously self -directed, as our present 
Teacher has so constantly taught us. Up to the time of the 
entrance of the S//-conscious mind into man (a matter which we 
will explain in a few moments), the evolving entity is under the 
impulse, the propulsion, of dire and implacable necessity, which, 
however, is most emphatically not fate ; and this is because, up 
to this critical point in evolution, the evolving entity is an 
imperfect being still : it is not a ^//-conscious thing, but an 
unselfconscious godspark. It cannot as yet direct its own 
destiny on the planes of manifestation, but automatically follows 
the course of the Hierarchy to which it belongs. This spiritual- 
mental impotency ceases when the self-conscious state has been 
reached, which is in man ; from this moment, in growing degree, 
man becomes himself a creator a creator, self-consciously, of 
himself ; he reaches upward or inward or outward the adverb 
matters not and becomes that which he essentially is within, 
continually aspiring toward the Inmost of the Inmost ; and he 
finally reaches the point, at the end of this Day of Brahma- 
after seven planetary Rounds where he blossoms forth into a 
self-conscious god, not yet " God ", or the summit of the Hier- 
archy to which he belongs by karmic descent, but a god. No 
longer is he a non-self-conscious monad, but a self-conscious 
monad, a planetary spirit, a Dhyan-Chohan, to use a beautiful 
Buddhistic term, a " Lord of Meditation ", one of that Wondrous 
Host of spiritual beings who are the full-blown Flowers of former 
World-Periods or Manvantaras. This Wondrous Host are the 
Perfect Men of those former World-Periods ; and they guide the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 113
 
evolution of this planet in its present Manvantara. They are our 
own spiritual Lords, Leaders, and Saviors. They supervise us 
now in our evolution here, and we follow the path of the general 
evolution outlined by them in our own present cyclic pilgrimage. 
When we first started on this pilgrimage as un-self-conscious god- 
sparks, destined to become self-conscious men in this our Man- 
vantara, it was these Dhyan-Chohans Flowers of the former 
Manvantara who opened the path for us, who guided our 
uncertain steps as we became Men, incarnations of our higher 
selves. But when we became self-conscious entities or Men, we 
began to guide ourselves ; and to work consciously with them 
according to our evolution, to " work with nature ", as H. P. 
Blavatsky nobly expressed it, is our highest duty and our brightest 
hope. It is our future destiny to become such godlike beings our- 
selves, thereafter, in our turn, to inform, inspire, and guide less 
evolved entities in future Manvantaras, as we have been informed, 
inspired, and guided by them ; and finally, after many kalpas, 
after many Days of Brahma each one of such " Days " a period 
of seven planetary Rounds we shall become a conscious part 
of the Cosmical Logos, the Brahmic Logos, using the phrase 
Br&hmic Logos as meaning the highest conscious entitative 
intelligence of the solar system ; thence upward and upward 
for ever. 
 
We return to our main theme. Now when the monad has 
reached the first point of cosmic manifestation, it has already 
descended through the first three of the ten planes or degrees or 
steps, i.e., through the three planes or degrees or steps forming 
the upper triangle or triad of the ten planes, in and on which 
the universe is built. It now begins definitely to cycle downward, 
and its entrance into cosmic manifestation, as already said, is 
the laya-center which is the Atman or universal spirit, no more 
belonging to any particular entity or man than does the Atman 
of any entity or man in any other planet of any other solar 
system. Atman is ourselves merely because it is the link which 
connects us with the Higher. As a matter of fact, the human 
being or man consists of five principles, because the Atman is 
not his except as a " plank of salvation " ; and his gross physical 
body is not really a principle at all. This matter of component 
principles in man we shall have to go into more fully when we 
take up our study of human psychological composition. 
 
Now the upper triangle of the ten above alluded to, actually is 
extended or developed out from the monad itself, as the petals and 
leaves of a flower are extended or evolved out of its seed : it 
draws its life and being from within itself. It is the elemental 
world, spiritually speaking ; as the three worlds below our 
mineral kingdom are the elemental worlds of ourselves, materially 
 
 
 
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speaking, forming an elemental world, " spiritually " speaking, of 
the Hierarchy below our own. 
 
This inner urge driving the monad to express itself in manifesta- 
tion and form, is the will of higher beings, working through itself, 
of which higher beings it forms an integral part : just as our 
brain, or our body, follows the implacable, dire law of necessity, 
which we impose upon brain or body by our thoughts and our 
will, yet both brain and body are parts of ourself in matter. The 
monad must reach self-consciousness in order to " free " itself 
and thus become a self-conscious, self-directed god. 
 
These things are so important for properly understanding our 
future study that we feel necessitated again and again to return 
to them. They are basically fundamental, lying at the very root 
of all our teaching. Understand clearly and well that this is 
not fatalism. That doctrine runs directly contrary to the doctrine 
of Swabhava, the doctrine of s^/-expression. 
 
As an egg unfolds within itself the germ which is to become the 
future chick ; or the human egg, the ovum, unfolds the germ 
within it which is to become the future child of man, similarly 
does the universe develop, similarly does an atom develop, thus 
also does a monad develop. It is unfolded within the auric egg. 
The human ovum, the seed of the plant, each is nothing but an 
egg. The shape may differ, the life-form may differ, but this 
has nothing to do with the principle of unfoldment of which we 
are speaking. The encasement within the auric egg envelops the 
germ of individuality or Swabhava which is destined to follow 
its course along its own characteristic line of unfoldment : what 
is in the egg or seed comes out, each species according to its own 
kind, and this is its Swabhava. The Greek Stoic School taught the 
existence both cosmically and infinitesimally of spermatic 
logoi, " seed-logoi ", each such spermatic logos producing 
creatures after its kind and according to its own essence like the 
Hebrew Biblical Elohim and this is again Swabhava. 
 
We saw in our study of the Qabbalah I think it was last 
week, or the week before how the highest world unfolded itself 
and from itself emanated or evolved the second world, thus 
actually becoming the second world : being thus both parent and 
child. The second world was thus the child of the first ; the 
third was the child of the first and the second ; and the fourth, 
the "world of shells " or of beings living in gross bodies, or 
" shells " was the child of the first, the second, and the third, 
all working together in order to produce this fourth. Note well, 
however, that each superior sphere or world remains intact on 
its own plane, though evolving from itself the next succeeding 
inferior world. 
 
The Stoics had a doctrine of development which in its essence 
 
 
 


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is the pure teaching of our own philosophy, though expressed in 
different form and under different names. They expressed it 
in this wise, following the mechanical mode so agreeable and dear 
to the Greek mind. It is curious, by the way, that the Oriental 
mind has always preferred to follow the psychological and spiritual 
lines of thought, rather than the mechanical, or, as we would 
now say, the " scientific ". But the Stoics taught in Greece, and 
later in Rome, that the mechanism of the Essential Nature of the 
Deity and this essential nature is our Swabhava, what we would 
call " Father-Mother " was tension, and slackening of this 
tension, this slackening of tension being the first act of World- 
Building. They took as an analogy in illustration of the idea the 
well known fact that when a metal grows hot it then expands, 
and finally is vaporized ; and using this simple matter-of-fact 
analogy they said that the " natural " state of Pneuma (" Spirit " 
=the Deity) is fire not physical fire, but the seed of that cosmic 
element from which physical fire springs. The slackening of this 
tension produced the first differentiation of the Primal Substance 
or Pneuma =" God " and this differentiation then awoke to 
active life the life-seeds, slumbering or latent, which came over 
from the previous period of manifested life ; the life-seeds, or 
seed-lives their spermatic logoi, alluded to before by us thus 
awaking, proceeded to build and guide the forthcoming World 
Period and all the entities in it, each such seed-life bringing forth 
from itself its essential species, or characteristic essence our 
Swabhava. This is the teaching, in miniature, but as the Stoics 
gave it, of the Esoteric Philosophy. 
 
Now when the universe was to come forth from its own being, 
taught the Stoics, the " tension " of the Primal Substance or 
Divine Fire slackened, or contracted as it were, and this con- 
traction, by condensation, gave birth to the aether ; next, as the 
tension slackened in the aether, this gave birth to " air " ; and 
it, next, to " water " ; and it, finally, to " earth ". We are not 
speaking of the material fire, air, water, earth, that we see around 
us, but we refer to the elements or " seeds " of these, the earth and 
the water and the air and the fire that we see around us being 
merely material samples or the last progeny, as it were, of the 
elemental seeds from which these respectively sprang. " Fire " 
gave birth to the " aether ", the latter being its shadow, the 
shadow of itself. The " aether " gave birth to its shadow, or 
" air ", its encasement or body ; and the " air " to " water " ; 
and the " water " to " earth ". The Stoics taught further that 
all these things can be respectively transformed one into the 
other the dream of the alchemist, and also the dream, psycho- 
logically, of initiates in our own School, who aim and strive to 
transform the base into the pure, the material into the spiritual. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Returning once more to our main theme, it is to be noted that 
naturally, as the Monad the root or the individuality of a 
Hierarchy of any kind cycles down into matter, it produces 
from itself, it expands outwardly from itself its own shadows (or 
lower vehicles) which grow constantly more dense in direct pro- 
portion to the greater descent of the Monad. In this connexion 
the question arises, that as there are certainly worlds of happiness, 
worlds of peace, in the higher spheres, how about those nether 
worlds : how about those lowest states of being of which H. P. 
Blavatsky speaks as the avichi ? All our Teachers have told us, 
and our present Teacher emphasises it constantly, that there is 
no hell in the Christian sense. Such a " hell " is a vague bogey 
of the imagination ; but there are, in very truth, lower spheres ; 
just as there are higher, so there must be lower. There cannot 
be good without evil, for the one is the shadow of the other and 
balances it in nature. These lowest spheres have a well defined 
part to play in the great Cosmic Drama. They are the Cleansing 
Houses, so to say, of the souls of those who persist in evil-doing. 
Like attracts like. These lower spheres are necessarily entered 
into by those who wilfully, through a prolonged series of incarna- 
tions, refuse to follow the spiritual light within themselves. 
Like attracts like, we repeat it. As a matter of fact, such souls, 
so stained and weighted with evil, are actually pursuing their 
own cyclical pilgrimage, drawn by attraction to like spheres and 
dwellings. As our Teachers have said, during the cyclic pilgrimage 
of the atom-souls down into matter many millions and millions 
have failed to pass the danger-point and, instead of thereupon 
beginning their journey " homeward " up the " luminous arc ", 
are swept into the terrible maelstrom of the current that goes 
downward farther into matter ! Therefore, into relatively 
greater suffering. These must wait until their time comes again 
in the next Manvantara, and another chance in the future kalpa 
of the earth. For this Day of Brahma, for this manvantara of 
seven Rounds, all is ended for them as regards their conscious 
journey back to their divine source. 
 
These are doctrines (such as that of the avichi-nirvana, just 
hinted at and alluded to in the preceding few sentences) which 
were taught in the ancient esoteric schools. From them, by 
misunderstanding and corruption of them, have been derived 
the bogey-doctrines of a fiery, material Hell in which are, for 
eternity, to burn the ethereal souls of wilful sinners ! These souls 
are said to be of an asbestos-like nature, forever burning fiercely 
yet never consumed, like pitch burning for utter eternity in 
utterly endless fire ! What frightful nightmares of a gross and 
materialistic " religious " teaching 1 It is amazing how the 
mind of man will invent things to torture itself with. But it 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 117
 
also shows that back of all these fearful, nightmare-doctrines 
and dogmas there is some fundamental fact which the untaught 
mind sees through thick clouds darkly and falsely, and distorts ; 
some element of truth which needs only proper explanation for 
understanding. 
 
And how the human heart must melt in pity ! Do we realize 
how real these doctrines were to our ancestors of only a few score 
years ago ? And that in some backward-looking churches today 
these same horrible doctrines are still taught as actualities, though 
more or less secretly as if in utter shame, and that there are 
misguided and unhappy men who believe them, and on their 
death-beds suffer in anticipation the tortures of the damned, 
tortures worse, certainly, than any which nature has prepared 
for them as guerdon for their mistakes and sins ? Think of the 
horror of it ! Think of the duty that we owe to our fellow-men 
to teach them the proper explanation and meaning of these 
distorted and tortured doctrines in all their sanity, in all their 
beautiful hope ! There is a moral element involved in it for us. 
People sometimes ask what is the use of studying The Secret 
Doctrine ? What is the use of spending so much time in studying 
the Rounds and Races ? Here is one of the uses. Essentially 
you cannot change men until you have changed their minds. 
Teach men properly and nobly to think, and you teach them properly 
and nobly to live, and properly and nobly to die. There is nothing 
like a noble thought to lift a man. It is sheer folly and egoism 
that says, " What is the use of these so-called noble thoughts ? 
My thoughts are good enough for me ". 
 
After all that has previously been said, nevertheless, we have 
just begun our exposition of Swabhava. We shall not have this 
evening the time and opportunity to touch upon the very 
important psychological aspects of it which we had hoped to do. 
We have still a few moments of time, however. Let us then try to 
illustrate more clearly this doctrine of Swabhava on the line of 
it chosen before. Imagine, then, an individual monad sending 
its ray, or descending, through that sphere which becomes the 
spiritual-atomic plane of the six planes below it. It (this ray) forms 
it itself into respective principles and planes as time passes, and 
it gathers and gleans the experiences of each separate plane. 
Leaving that spiritual-atomic or Atmanic plane, it evolves out 
of itself its shadow, which is like an encasement, an aura, thus 
forming its auric egg there, and this second plane or principle we 
call our Buddhi, and as the monadic life or ray passes still farther 
down into that shadowy life, this buddhic plane and principle 
become to it the Real and the True. As cycles of time pass on, 
the descending monadic ray (or seed) evolves another shadow, 
another encasement, another subtil body, another aura, another 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
auric egg, out of itself, and this is our Manas. Each of these three 
principles as indeed have all the seven has seven degrees, 
seven stages, from the " atomic " of any one of the three down 
to its lowest, which is its " corpus " or " body ". And so on with 
the remaining four lower planes and principles of man. Each one 
of these principles is " fully " developed on our globe in the 
respective and similar one of the Rounds of the seven of the Day 
of Brahma. Further, on each one of the seven globes of the 
Planetary Chain, one of the seven principles especially is 
developed. Again, as just shown, at the end of each Round, one 
plane and one principle of the seven is developed, preparatory to 
evolving the succeeding one in another Round. It takes fully 
two Rounds, for instance, to bring out two planes and two 
principles in full : but during the first and the second Rounds, 
for example, the other planes and principles have been coming 
up by degrees, evolving little by little, developing step by step. 
The chick does not grow in a day : the child does not become a 
man in a week ; his soul does not develop within him in a fort- 
night. If a man lived the life he should, he would be at his best 
and noblest at the time when he thinks it is time for him to draw 
up his legs in bed and die. The physical body may be then ready 
to die, but the man within, that which is the real being, should be 
growing greater and nobler and grander. It is for this that we 
really live. 
 
And so runs the course of evolution to the end of the seven 
Rounds, each Round bringing out one principle and one plane, 
as said ; in each Round, each one of the remaining principles is 
brought out or evolved in less degree, there being thus to use 
Ezekiel's figure " wheels within wheels ". At the mid-point of 
the fourth Round, which is the middle Round, there comes a 
time when the monadic ray reaches the very acme of materiality 
when the life-wave reaches a point where it branches both 
downward and upward, and then, in the words of Ezekiel, 
chapter 18, " the soul that sinneth, it shall surely die ", meaning 
that the monadic ray courses downward, and loses all chance for 
ascent back homeward along the " luminous arc ", for that 
manvantara. It follows the downward path. But those others 
that can and do follow on, they indeed pass the danger-point. 
I have spoken of this twice already this evening, because it will 
probably be the matter of our next study. 
 
A Day of Brahma is composed of seven Rounds, a period of 
4320 million solar or rather terrestrial years. Seven of these 
Days, again, are required to make a Solar Manvantara, which is a 
term used in the Esoteric Philosophy in a peculiar sense, because 
seven times seven Rounds are needed in order to bring out to 
their fullest, each of the seven principles and seven planes of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 119
 
which the manifesting Hierarchy is composed. Of the life of 
Brahma, we are told one-half is already passed, one-half of 
311,040,000,000,000, plus some few more billions of our years ! 
I refer to the Stirya-Siddhanta, an ancient Sanskrit cosmogonical 
and astronomical work, which, from the statements and facts 
given within it, claims an age of somewhat more than two million 
years, according to popular interpretation. I think our modern 
Orientalists in their great wisdom give its origin as occurring 
more or less around the beginning of the Christian era, or later, 
simply on the one ground that the Greeks brought to north- 
western India certain forms of computation, which are found in 
the Sfirya-Siddhanta, a theory which is purely arbitrary, and 
based upon no certainly ascertained fact except the self-evolved 
or " Swabhavic " theories of the Orientalists themselves ! 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XII
 
PSYCHOLOGY : ACCORDING TO THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. IMMOR- 
TALITY IS CONDITIONAL I THE LOSS OF THE SOUL. 
 
Stoop not down, for a precipice lies below the earth, 
Drawing under a descent of seven steps, beneath which 
Is the throne of dire necessity. 
 
Psellus, 6, Plet. 2 ; (CoRY, Chaldean Oracles). 
 
Devilish (asurya) are those worlds called, 
With blind darkness (tamas) covered o'er ! 
Unto them, on deceasing, go 
Whatever folk are slayers of the Self. 
 
Hd-Upanishad, 3. (R. E. HUME'S translation, p. 362.) 
 
IN opening our study of the Holy Science which we are 
privileged here again tonight to investigate, let us begin 
by reading from H. P. Blavatsky's Seer el Doctrine, 
Volume I, the last paragraph on page 272 : 
 
(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages . . . 
 
Next page, second paragraph : 
 
(2) The fundamental Law in that^ system, the central point from 
which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon 
which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous 
divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause. 
 
Last paragraph : 
 
(3) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown 
Absolute Essence. 
 
Next page, second paragraph : 
 
(4) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because 
all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that 
of the Sun. 
 
Last paragraph : 
 
(6) The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As 
above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth ; and man the micro- 
cosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm is the living witness to 
this Universal Law and to the mode of its action. We see that every 
external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, 
organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or 
emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion 
or change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless 
provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three func- 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 121
 
tions named, so with external or manifested Universe. The whole 
Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series 
of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a missioiji to perform, 
and who whether we give to them one name or another, and call them 
Dhy&n-Chohans or Angels are " Messengers " in the sense only that 
they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely 
in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence ; and to 
call them all pure Spirits without any of the earthly alloy " which time 
is wont to prey upon " is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of 
these Beings either was, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the 
present, then in a past or a coming cycle (Manvantara). They are 
perfected, when not incipient, men ; and differ morally from the 
terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only 
in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human 
emotional nature two purely earthly characteristics. 
 
And on pages 21 and 22, beginning in the middle of the 
sentence : 
 
. . . the differentiation of the "germ" of the Universe into the 
septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active 
manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers, 
shapers, and ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe, 
in the only sense in which the name " Creator " is intelligible ; they 
inform and guide it ; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and 
control evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations of 
the ONE LAW, which we know as " The Laws of Nature ". 
 
Resuming our thought from our last study of two weeks ago, 
we shall take up this evening an outline of the psychological 
nature of man, because, as mentioned before, if man understands 
himself, he understands that from which he came, and which he is 
he understands the universe proportionately with his own 
development of spirit and of mind and of the percipient faculties 
that go with the development of spirit and of mind in man. In 
order to enable us more easily to understand, and more clearly 
to set forth, the essential characteristics of man's psychological 
economy, we shall endeavor to show how closely these are 
related to two fundamental theorems, or principles, or doctrines, 
of the Wisdom-Religion ; and these two are (i) the Law, or 
rather the fact of Hierarchies ; and (2) the Law (we use the term 
again under strong protest) of the Essential Nature of things, 
called Swabhava ; as said before, the latter is a Sanskrit term 
meaning self-e volution, s//-formation, s//-development, self- 
becoming. In it inheres the foundation of the law of morals. As 
is obvious, Man is responsible to himself, and because man is a 
part of other things, he is therefore responsible to other things 
also. Likewise, as a corollary of the foregoing, after death man 
does not " meet his Creator ", but verily he has to meet and to 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
reckon with his creature, that which he has built up in himself 
during his life, his astral self. 
 
What makes a rose bring forth a rose always ? Why does the 
seed of an apple invariably bring forth apples ? Why does it not 
bring forth thistles, or daisies, or pansies ? The answer is very 
simple ; very profound, however. It is because of the Swabhava, 
the essential nature in and of the seed. Its Swabhava can bring 
forth only that which itself is, its essential characteristic, its own 
inner nature. The Stoics of Greece and Rome expressed this fact 
of evolution by saying that in the opening of a period of Manifesta- 
tion, it is the Pneuma " Spirit " which relaxes its tension, 
condensation or concretion thereupon ensuing of the said Pneuma 
or Spirit, and evolution begins, emanation and evolution both 
begin, following the causes set up and active in the preceding 
period of Manifestation. There spring into life co-ordinately 
with the opening of the new period the " spermatic logoi ", the 
" seed-logoi ", an expression translated from the Greek sper- 
matikoi logoi, spermatic reasons, seed-reasons, " Logos " meaning 
" reason ", hence " cause ", among other things. It was these 
seed-logoi, or spermatic logoi, which were the fruits or results, the 
karmans, as we would say, of former periods of activity. Having 
attained a certain stage of evolution or development, or quality, 
or characteristic, or individuality in the preceding Manvantara ; 
when the next period of evolution came, they could produce 
nothing else but that which they were themselves, their own inner 
natures, as seeds do. The seed can produce nothing but what it 
itself is, what is in it ; and this is the heart and essence of the 
doctrine of Swabhava. The philosophical, scientific, and religious 
reach of this Doctrine is simply immense ; it is of the first 
importance. 
 
The habit, or, if you like the word, the " law " (we use this 
word again under protest), of Swabhava can work only in that 
which is itself, because only its own vehicle, its own self, is 
appropriate for the manifestation of itself obviously ! Hence, 
the manner of evolution and emanation, and the progress of 
the Hierarchies, are as set forth before ; that is, that from 
the highest, evolution and emanation proceed downward into 
the more material ; and so on down the line of the " shadowy 
arc" into matter, until the turning-point of the descent is 
attained; whereupon begins the ascent along the " luminous arc". 
 
We must note well, however, that the higher does not leave 
its own sphere in this process ; the higher does not wholly become 
the lower, and the lower wholly become the still lower, leaving 
a vacuum or an emptiness above. The higher spheres remain 
always. It is like the flame of a candle laid at the wick of another 
candle ; and from that one candle, as our first great Teacher has 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 123
 
said, you can light all the candles of the universe, without 
diminution of its energy or of its force or of its characteristic 
essence. The highest remains always the highest ; it is that 
part of itself, as it were, that is the developing energy acting from 
within ; its Skandhas it is which you will remember we have 
studied before which produce, as the Stoics would have said, 
this t( relaxation of tension ", this condensation or concretion of 
parts of itself. A perfect analogy is found in the intro-uterine 
development of man, and his descent into incarnation. His 
spiritual nature does not come down and become his actual body ; 
it remains always his spiritual nature ; but from it it throws out 
parts of itself, its lower aspects or principles, if we may so put the 
idea ; and these, as the manvantaric cycle proceeds, in their 
turn, each one in its turn, secretes, protrudes, and excretes 
something lower. So that the physical man, the body, is in very 
truth the " Temple of the living God ", which is itself the Glory 
thereof, hence a part of the Temple ; the Temple, verily, is the 
lowest manifestation of the living God within. 
 
Now Swabhava works through the Hierarchies. We have 
returned to these two capital matters time after time, because it 
is all-important from the philosophic, from the spiritual, and 
from the ethical aspects, that these things should be as clear as 
possible in our minds. Take, for instance, the cosmogonical 
relation. We are not created by an extra-cosmic God ; Karman, 
on the other hand, is not an extra-cosmic entity which said, 
" I create ", and the world sprang into being. The highest 
essence, the inmost of the essence of every Hierarchy, of the 
practical infinitudes of Hierarchies, inter-locked and co-related 
and working together and forming the universal cosmos in which 
we live the highest part of each one of these Hierarchies is a 
super-divine monad, which we can call Parabrahman-Milla- 
prakriti. And its first manifestation or downward-looking energy, 
its first breaking-forth into the plane below, is Brahman acting 
in turn through its cosmic veil, Pradhana, as you will remember 
we have before studied ; and then comes Brahma-Prakriti, other- 
wise called Purusha-Prakriti, which is the cosmic soul or 
individual, and the nature or the vehicle in which it manifests ; 
the logos and its universe ; the monad, and its sheaths, and so on. 
 
Having these things clearly in mind, we can now take up 
directly and more easily, more comprehensibly, the study of what 
we mean by the psychology of man. The word is ordinarily used 
to signify in our days and in the seats of learning in the Occident 
a study more or less cloudy, mostly beclouded with doubts and 
hypotheses, actual guess-work, meaning little more than a kind of 
mental physiology, practically nothing more than the working 
of the brain-mind in the lowest astral-psychical apparatus of the 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
human mind. But in our philosophy, as we all know, the word 
psychology is used to mean something very different, and of a 
nobler character : we might call it pneumatology, or the science 
or the study of spirit, because all the inner faculties and powers 
of man ultimately spring from his spirit. But as this word 
" pneumatology " is an unusual one and might cause confusion, 
let us retain the word " psychology ". We mean by it the study 
of the inner economy of man, the interconnexion of his principles, 
so to speak, or centers of energy or force what the man really is 
inwardly. 
 
Man, like everything else in the universe, is founded upon the 
dekadic skeleton or numerical framework of being the number 
ten. Three of these ten elements or planes or principles belong to 
the arupa or formless world, and seven belong to the world of 
manifestation and form. These seven latter principles produce 
each other on a downward scale in the process of manifestation, 
exactly as the Hierarchies do, each one emanating or evolving 
a lower, and this lower evolving or emanating a still lower one, 
and so down to the seventh or lowest. 
 
Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential 
bases ; the Sanskrit term is Upadhi. The meaning of the word 
is that which stands forth following a model or pattern, as a 
canvas, so to say, upon which the light from a projecting 
lantern plays. It is a play of shadow and form, compared with 
the ultimate Reality. These three bases or updhis are, first, 
the Monadic or spiritual ; second, that which is supplied by the 
Lords of Light, the so-called Manasa-Dhyanis, meaning the 
intellectual and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that 
makes man Man ; and the third basis or Upadhi we can call the 
vital-astral-physical, if you please. 
 
Now these three bases spring from three different lines of 
evolution, from three different and separate Hierarchies of being. 
Remember that each Hierarchy possesses in itself in embryo 
everything that the entire universe is and has, the least as the 
greatest, if we can say " least " and " greatest " of that which is 
endless, at any rate the least and greatest of any period of 
manifestation. This is the reason why man is composite. He is 
not one sole and unmixed entity ; he is a composite entity, he 
is a thing built up of various elements, and hence his principles 
are, to a certain extent, separable. Any one of these three bases 
can be temporarily separated from the two others, without 
bringing about the death of the man physically. But the ele- 
ments, so to say, that go to form any one of these bases, 
cannot be separated without bringing about physical dissolution 
or inner dissolution. 
 
Now these three lines of evolution, these three aspects or 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 125
 
qualities of man, as said, come from three different Hierarchies, 
or states, often spoken of as three different planes of being. The 
lowest comes from the earth ; ultimately from the moon, our 
cosmogonic mother. The middle, the manasic or intellectual- 
intuitional, from the sun. The monadic from the Monad of 
monads, the supreme flower, or acme, or rather the supreme 
seed of the Universal Hierarchy which forms our Cosmical 
Universe or Universal Cosmos. 
 
It depends upon a correct understanding of the general inter- 
connexion or the inter-working of these three separate parts of 
the economy of the inner man, whether we shall obtain a proper 
grasp of our future studies. We meet, as we have seen, at every 
step if we have followed our studies properly new ideas, new 
thoughts ; new links with the universe of light and being around 
us, and of which we also are children. How terrible it would be 
if we were to reach the limit of all that it was possible to know ! 
On the contrary, endless vistas of growing knowledge are always 
before us, and we cannot attain them otherwise than by mounting 
the steps of knowledge one by one. 
 
We have heard it said by our Teachers that immortality is 
conditional. This is a certain Truth. Immortality is not uncon- 
ditional, and why ? For the reasons just pointed out. Man is a 
composite being, and, as the Buddha said in the closing words 
of his life, " Brothers, all that is, is composite and transitory. 
Therefore work out your own salvation ". This contains the 
core of the whole philosophy of evolution, and occultly designates 
ultimate immortality or annihilation for any one manvantara, 
for man as a thinking entity. 
 
Immortality is assured if the central principles which compose 
the intellectual-intuitional man, have succeeded in rising to the 
monadic plane where they become one with the monad, shining 
upon them as a spiritual sun. And the loss of a soul for the 
manvantara is assured if its Swabhava, its essential, characteristic, 
energies, are directed downwards into brute matter. 
 
The Teachers have told us, however, that the loss of the soul 
cannot ensue as long as even one sole, single, spiritual aspiration 
remains functionally active. Only when the unhappy entity 
has arrived at the point where it can say, " Evil, be thou my 
God!" when not one single, quivering aspiration spiritward 
remains, is it " lost " for the manvantara, when its essence, as it 
were, is inverted, and its tendency is downwards, downward into 
the avichi, where, as the Teachers have told us, circumstances 
may bring about an almost immediate annihilation of it, or, 
perhaps, a manvantara of Avichi-Nirvana, a fearful state indeed, 
contrasted with the wondrous Nirvana of the Dhyan-Chohans, or 
Lords of Mjditation. 
 
 
 
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On the one hand we may raise ourselves to become a God, yea, 
even while dwelling in the flesh. On the other hand we may 
allow ourselves to sink to the eighth sphere, where we pass into the 
yawning portals of the " Planet of Death ". Has it ever occurred 
to any one of us to ask, Why are we here ? Why, having had 
an infinity in which to evolve, are we not higher than we are 
now ? Has it ever occurred to any one of us to ask whether we 
may not be the " fallen angels ", those very spiritual " athletes " 
who in a former great manvantara failed to win onwards to the 
goal, failed to rise, failed to make the goal intended for them, 
and were " cast down " to work our weary way upward again ? 
 
Again, what do we mean by " soul " as contrasted with 
" spirit " ? We speak of the human soul and the spiritual soul, 
and we speak of the astral soul, and we speak of the animal soul. 
But we do not use those terms in connexion with the word 
" spirit ". It is our Teachers who first have used those expressions 
in the connexions noted above. Does it not teach us that the 
meaning of soul is that of a vehicle, an upadhi, in general ; that 
vehicle, or any vehicle, in which the monad, in any sphere of 
manifestation, is working out its destiny ? But these vehicles 
are conscious vehicles, they are living and sentient vehicles having 
each one its own consciousness and its own thinking faculty ; 
even these gross physical bodies of ours are not merely insensible 
stocks. The physical body has its avenues of dull consciousness 
and life ; it can feel, and, after its own poor dull manner, it can 
think. 
 
So, then, the loss of the soul is the loss of that which we, through 
interminable ages, very, very laboriously have built up as our 
inner temple, our home, in which we should rise to meet the Gods, 
to become one with them ; and more it is the vehicle through 
which we should carry up with us entities below us at present, 
but through us approaching our own dignity of humanity 
entities of which the soul is actually composed, even as the atoms 
in our physical bodies are infant-souls, physical entities, embryonic 
things which we are informing and inspiring, if, indeed, we are not 
sentencing them to a cycle of woe. 
 
With Knowledge comes responsibility. The moral law will not 
be thwarted. It cannot be played with. At every step, with 
every morn, at every turn, at every choice, we face the right- 
or the left-hand path, and we are forced to choose ; we must see 
to it, every time, whether our feet are to be set upon the " lumin- 
ous arc ", or upon the " path of shadows " leading us downwards. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XIII
 
THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. SELF, EGO, AND SOUL : " I AM " 
 
AND " I AM I ". 
 
. . . Nothing in nature springs into existence suddenly, all being 
subjected to the same law of gradual evolution. Realize but once the pro- 
cess of the mahd cycle, of one sphere, and you have realized them all. One 
man is born like another man, one race evolves, develops and declines like another 
and all other races. Nature follows the same groove from the " creation " of a 
universe down to that of a mosquito. In studying esoteric cosmogony, keep a 
spiritual eye upon the physiological process of human birth ; proceed from cause 
to effect establishing . . . analogies between the . . . man and that of a world. 
. . . Cosmology is the physiology of the universe spiritualized, for there is but 
one law. 
 
The Mahatma Letters, pp. 70-71. 
 
E open our study of The Secret Doctrine this evening 
by reading from page 178, and a small portion from 
page 179, of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, 
as follows : 
 
 
 
w 
 
 
 
Now the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence (if such a term be 
permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and animal, though the same 
throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the 
Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be 
very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its 
slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and after an 
incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being ; 
in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an 
atom of horneblende. Instead of saying a " Mineral Monad," the more 
correct phraseology in physical Science, which differentiates every 
atom, would of course have been to call it " the Monad manifesting in 
that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom." 
 
As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by 
Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees 
of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad not the 
atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through 
which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence. 
 
Now, in resuming this evening our study from last week, it will 
perhaps be well to preface it by reminding ourselves of the two 
general desires which the Teacher had in mind, in inaugurating 
our studies ; first, the elucidation of the teachings contained in 
H. P. Blavatsky's wonderful work ; and secondly, the providing 
of tests, doctrinal tests, as it were, not tests in a dogmatic sense, 
but doctrinal or mental tests which each one of us may have in 
 
127 
 
 
 
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mind to remember and to apply when he takes up some book 
treating of the ancient religions of the world, or of the modern 
theories concerning those religions as given out by some modern 
thinker. 
 
The world at the present day is simply overwhelmed with books 
of various sorts treating of quasi-spiritual, and of so-called psychic 
and quasi-psychic matters, and to one who does not know the 
key-doctrines of Theosophy, who has not, as H. P. Blavatsky had, 
at his mental elbow, so to say, the teachings of the Ancient 
Wisdom-Religion by which all these various matters may be 
tested and proved, there is place for much mental confusion, 
indecision, and doubt as to what the real sense or meaning there- 
of may be, because many of these books are written very ably ; 
but ability in writing well is no sign or proof that an author 
understands properly the ancient thought ; such ability is merely 
the capacity of presenting certain thoughts the writer's own 
views clearly and often very praiseworthily ; but merely praise- 
worthy writing is certainly no proof that a writer possesses an 
adequate and sufficient criterion of the ancient truth itself. 
 
Having therefore these doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom- 
Religion (Theosophy) in mind, and properly understanding them, 
we have tests by which we may prove to ourselves whether such 
and such a doctrine of any religion, ancient or modern, or such 
and such a teaching of any thinker, ancient or modern, is in accord 
with that primeval spiritual and natural revelation granted to the 
first members of the first human and truly thinking race by the 
spiritual beings from whom we likewise derived our inner essence 
and life, and who are, really, our own present spiritual selves. 
Not being tests in a dogmatic religious sense at all, they are not 
" necessary to salvation ". Heavens and hells do not depend for 
their reality upon their acceptance or rejection by men, for 
instance ; but we mean that Theosophy provides us with tests 
which are tests in the same way as are the facts which an expert 
in mathematics or in chemistry or in any other branch of science 
or natural philosophy is enabled to employ in order to ascertain 
when something new comes under his eye, or under his hand, 
whether this new thing agrees with the truths already established 
by himself and his collaborators in work. 
 
At our last meeting we treated perforce only vaguely, and in a 
mere sketch, of the difference existing between the spirit and the 
soul. The spirit is the immortal element in us, the deathless 
flame within us which dies never, which never was born, and 
which retains throughout the entire maha-manvantara its own 
quality, essence, and life, sending down into our own being and 
into our various planes, certain of its rays or garments or souls 
which we are ; and furthermore, that these rays, in descending, 
 
 
 


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constituted the life-essences of a Hierarchy, whether we treat of 
our own selves as individual human beings, or whether we think 
of the atom, or of the solar system, or of the universal cosmos. 
 
We have this evening to consider more particularly the nature 
and differences of Self and ego ; and if we have time we shall 
have need to remark at some length upon a doctrine which is 
very strange to Western ears, and yet which contains in itself the 
core, the very heart of what emanational evolution is, and which 
also shows to us what our destiny is. It is that destiny which 
leads us both downwards and then upwards, back to our spiritual 
source, but possessing rather being something more than we 
possessed or rather were when we began our great evolutionary 
pilgrimage. 
 
Now, before we start upon a sketch of the nature of, and the 
difference between, self and ego, let us undertake very briefly an 
analysis of what we mean when we speak of karman, for it is 
necessary here. As we all know, karman is a Sanskrit word, and 
it is derived from the Sanskrit root kri, a verb meaning to make 
or to do. By adding the suffix ma to the root kri or the stem kar, 
which comes, through one of the rules of the Sanskrit grammar, 
from the root kri, we have the abstract noun, Karman. Literally 
it means doing, making, hence action. It is a technical term, 
that is, a term from which hangs a whole series of philosophical 
doctrines. 
 
We can consider it best from the standpoint of translating it by 
the word results, because this word " results ", or " fruits ", 
seems to be its most general application in the technical sense of 
the Esoteric Philosophy. Now Karman is not a law ; no God 
made it. A human law, let us remember, is a maxim of conduct 
or order of right, laid down by a law-giver, forbidding what is 
wrong and inculcating and commanding what is right. Karman 
is not that. Karman is the habit of universal and eternal Nature, 
a habit inveterate, primordial, which so works that an act is 
necessarily, by destiny, followed by an ineluctable result, a 
reaction from the Nature in which we live. It was called by Mr. A. P. 
Sinnett, one of H. P. Blavatsky's early helpers, the " law of 
ethical causation ", an inadequate and misleading term, because, 
first, Karman is more than ethical, it is both spiritual and material 
and all between. It has its application on the spiritual, mental, 
psychical, and physical planes. To call it the " law of cause and 
effect " is much better, because more general, but even this 
does not describe it adequately at all. The very essence of the 
meaning of this doctrine is, that when anything acts in any state 
of imbodied consciousness, it sets up an immediate chain of 
causation, acting on every plane to which that chain of causation 
reaches, to which the force extends. 
 
 
 
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Human karman is born within man himself. We are its creators 
and generators, and also do we suffer from it or are clarified through 
it, by our own previous actions. But what is this habit in itself, 
das Ding an sich, as Kant would have said, this inveterate, 
primordial habit of nature, which makes it react to an arousing 
cause ! That is a question which we shall, at some future time, 
have to go into more fully than we can do it this evening ; but 
we may say this much : that it is the will of the spiritual beings 
who have preceded us in bygone kalpas or great manvantaras, and 
who now stand as Gods, and whose will and thought direct and 
protect the mechanisni and the type and quality of the universe in 
which we live. These great beings were once men in some former 
great manvantara. It is our destiny ultimately to become like 
unto them, and to be of their number, if we run the race of kalpic 
evolution successfully. 
 
Man, as our first great Teacher has set it forth, weaves around 
himself from birth to death a web of action and of thought 
each one of them producing results, some immediately, some 
later. Each act is a seed. And that seed inevitably, by the 
doctrine of Swabhava, which we have been studying, will produce 
the results which belong to it, and none other. 
 
Swabhava, as we remember, is the doctrine of the essential 
characteristic of anything, that is, that which makes it what it is, 
and not something else : that which makes the lily a lily, and not 
a rose or a violet ; that which makes one being a horse, and 
another a fly, and another a blade of grass, and so on its essential 
nature. 
 
Now in our study of the Hierarchies in former meetings, we 
remember that we noticed that each Hierarchy proceeded from 
its own seed, its own seed-logos or the highest part of it, its crown 
or pinnacle ; and that everything rolled down from it, rolled out 
from the seed into being. So the human body grows from a 
microscopic seed, as it were, into the man we know, partaking 
of the nature around it, because it is a composite being. All 
composite things are temporary and transitory. If they were 
not composite, they could not manifest in any manner whatever. 
It is the compositeness, the compound nature of them which 
enables them to learn and to mingle with, and to be one in the 
manifested sense with all the manifested universe around us. 
 
You doubtless remember what we mentioned in former studies 
of the wonderful doctrine of the ancient Stoics of Greece and 
Rome, called the Krasis di' holou, the mingling through every- 
thing, the intermingling of all ; when this doctrine was applied 
to the Gods, the ancient Stoics called it Theocrasy, not theocracy, 
which means something else entirely. Theocrasy means the inter- 
mingling of the Gods, even as human thoughts mingle on earth. 
 
 
 


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Now the Self remains eternally itself on its own plane, but in 
manifestation it intermingles, if we may use that term, with the 
spheres of matter by raying itself, as does the sun ; by communi- 
cating itself as the divine ray ; it shoots down into the spiritual 
world, and thence into the intellectual world, and thence into the 
psychic world, and thence into the astral world, and thence into 
the physical. It creates at each one of these stages, at each plane 
of the Hierarchy, a vehicle, a sheath, a clothing, a garment, and 
these, just expressed by various names, on the higher plane are 
called " souls ", and on the lower plane, " bodies ", and it is the 
destiny of these souls " garments " or " vehicles " or " sheaths " 
of the spirit ultimately to be raised upwards to divinity. 
 
There is an immense difference which is the strange doctrine 
alluded to a short while ago and which we shall have to study 
this evening between purely unconscious spirit-life, and fully 
self-developed, self-conscious spirituality. The monad starts out 
on its cyclic journey, as was said before, as un-self-conscious God- 
spark, and ends it as a self-conscious God, but it does this through 
assimilation of manifested life and by carrying up with itself 
the various souls which it has created in its cyclic pilgrimage, in 
them developing its inner essence and through them understand- 
ing and coming into relation with other monads and other soul- 
selves. It is the raising of the soul (or rather the souls) through 
the Self, to divinity, that constitutes the process of evolution, the 
unfolding of the potentialities and capacities of the divine Seed. 
 
We may now ask : What is the difference between the Self and 
the ego ? The individual Self, we know, is a spiritual or rather 
monadic " Atom ". It is that which in all things says " I am ", 
and hence is pure consciousness, direct consciousness, not reflected 
consciousness. The ego is that which says " I am I " indirect 
or reflected consciousness, consciousness reflected back upon 
itself as it were, recognising its own mayavi existence as a " separ- 
ate " entity. See how marvellous these teachings are, for if we 
understand this doctrine aright, it means spiritual salvation for 
us ; and if we understand it wrongly, it means our going down- 
wards ! For instance, intensity of egoism is the understanding 
of it wrongly ; and, paradox of paradoxes, impersonality is the 
understanding of it rightly. As Jesus said in the first three 
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, voicing one of the teachings 
of the Ancient Wisdom, " He who saves his life shall lose it, but 
he who gives up his life for my sake, shall find it." 
 
Here we have the real meaning imbodied in a " dark saying " 
of a matter that we studied somewhat at our last meeting : the 
doctrine of the " loss of the soul ", which we cannot touch upon 
more at length this evening. We shall do so, however, at some 
future meeting ; but there, in words ascribed to Jesus and thrice 
 
 
 
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repeated, we have the inner meaning of this mystery : the because , 
the why, and the how of it. 
 
We return to the strange doctrine mentioned before, strange 
to Western ears, strange to Western thought. You will remember 
that H. P. Blavatsky frequently describes the processes of evolu- 
tion and of development, as the starting out of the spiritual 
essence down the " shadowy arc " into matter, and its growing 
more and more dense, compact, and heavy the deeper it goes into 
the ocean of the material world, until it passes a certain point 
the turning-point of the forces which arising in itself urge it 
forward in that Maha-Manvantara ; and that then it begins to 
rise again along the upward cycle, the " luminous arc ", back 
towards the divinity from which it emanated as a Ray or Rays. 
This monadic essence, this monadic stream, passing into evolution, 
is, like an army or host, composed of a quasi-infinitude of indi- 
vidual monads. We may call them spiritual " Atoms ", un-self- 
conscious God-sparks. They gather to themselves as they descend 
into matter which is eternally there from the infinitude of evolving 
beings in all stages of development which had preceded them 
or, rather, they derive reflected or indirect consciousness (self- 
consciousness) from that contact and intermingling. They 
begin to have more than the mere feeling or rather simple cognition 
of " I am ", or pure consciousness ; they begin to feel themselves 
self-consciously at one with all that is. The un-self-conscious 
God-spark is beginning self-consciously to recognise its own 
essential and inherent divinity. It is developing s0//-consciousness, 
and this s//-consciousness is what we call the " ego ", the recogni- 
tion that " I am / ", a part or ray of the ALL recognising that 
wondrous truth. 
 
Now consider the Hierarchy of the human being growing from 
the Self as its Seed ten stages, three on the arupa or immaterial 
plane ; and seven (or perhaps better, sii) on the plane of matter 
or manifestation. On each one of these seven planes (or six 
planes), the Self or Paramatman develops a sheath or garment, 
the upper ones spun of spirit, or light if you will ; and the lower 
ones spun of shadow or matter ; and each such sheath or garment 
is a soul ; and between the Self and a soul any soul is the ego. 
First in order is the Self, the divine entity or thing, or monad, 
behind all ; and growing from within it, like a sun developing 
from within its own essence, along the karmic lines or paths of 
the memories or " results " or " fruits " brought over from the 
preceding great Manvantara, thus developing strictly according 
to the Skandhas in its own nature, is the ego, contacting and inter- 
mingling with matter and the other hosts of intelligences of this 
MahSl-Manvantara. The ego throws out from itself as the seed 
will throw out its green blade, developing into the tree with its 
 
 
 


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branches and its twigs and its numberless leaves it throws out 
from itself its garment or sheath or vehicle spun of light or spun 
of shadow, according to the plane or point upon which it is ; and 
this ethereal or spiritual or astral garment of the ego is the soul 
that is, any soul. 
 
There are many souls in man. There are likewise many egos 
in man ; but back of them all, both egos and souls, is the deathless 
flame, the Self. Remember that the ancient Egyptians also 
taught of the various souls of man, of the manifold selves of man, 
of the several egos of man. We have not spoken often as yet of 
the ancient Egyptian teachings, because they are exceedingly 
difficult on account of being inwrapped in complicate symbol and 
allegory ; they are the most hid, perhaps, the most inshrouded 
with tropes and figures of speech of any ancient system. But the 
old truths are there ; they are the same age-old teachings. 
 
Now evolution is the unfolding, the developing, the bringing out 
from the divine Seed within of all its latent capacities, its Swab- 
hava in short : its individual characteristics or the essence of its 
being. The whole effort of evolution, however, is not merely 
to bring out that which is within each individual Seed ; but also 
that each individual monad, and each ego, and each soul, shall 
gather up from the matter in which it works, other less progressed 
entities which become parts of itself, and shall carry them along 
with it on the arc of the evolutionary journey upwards. 
 
Each one of us is therefore a potential Christ, a potential 
Christos, because while we are, each one of us, a Christos within, 
intrinsically, each one of us is, or should be, a " savior " of his 
fellow-men likewise, and of all the lower beings under him, under 
his guidance and sway. If a man or woman ill-treats or treats 
nobly the atoms of his or her body, he or she is held responsible 
at the hands of karman, so to say, before the Divine Tribunal of 
his own Self ; yea, to the very last farthing, he shall be held to a 
strict accounting. Look at the dignity with which this noble 
teaching endows and crowns our human species ! What a sublime 
meaning do the doctrines of our Teachers have in this light ! 
Man is responsible ; because when he has achieved self-conscious- 
ness even in minor degree he becomes a creator thereby, and 
becomes therefore responsible to a co-ordinate extent. He 
becomes a collaborator and co-worker with the Gods whom he is 
destined to join as one of themselves. 
 
If the life-stream, if the stream of monads, if any individual 
monad has passed the lowest point of its manvantaric cycles 
safely, has safely swung past the path leading downward at the 
mid-point of the fourth Round, and successfully starts out on the 
upward way, along the " Luminous Arc ", it is safe to a certain 
extent, but not yet wholly so, because that same test comes 
 
 
 
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again at the mid-point in each Round. But the mid-point of the 
fourth Round is the most critical. We all know what a Round is, 
and the seven through which we must pass before we complete 
our evolutionary pilgrimage on this planet. But if the monadic 
spark passes safely through each of the three Rounds to come, 
then in the last Round, on the last or seventh globe, in the last 
race of that globe, he shall blossom out as a Dhyan-Chohan, a 
" Lord of Meditation ". Already almost a God. And those of 
us who shall have made the race successfully, shall, after the 
long Nirvana that awaits us after the seven Rounds are completed, 
which Nirvana is a period of unspeakable bliss corresponding 
to the devachan between two earth-lives ; those of us, I say, who 
shall have become these Lords of Meditation, shall become the 
forerunners, the makers, the developers, the Gods of the future 
planet which shall be the child of this, as this globe, Terra, was 
the child of our mother, the Moon ; and so on for ever, but always 
advancing higher and higher up the rungs of the wondrous Ladder 
of Cosmic Life. 
 
Now this is the strange and wonderful doctrine, strange and 
wonderful to Western ears. Endless are the ramifications of 
thought which spring from it. Think of the destiny before us ! 
Yes : and it is also wise, as our Teachers have often told us, to 
look at the other side. Let us turn our faces from the morning 
sunlight occasionally, and look in the other direction. Remember 
that we have innate and ineluctable moral responsibilities where 
ethical problems are involved. We have, to a certain extent, 
knowledge ; hence power, hence responsibility. Behind us, 
trailing upwards, are infinitudes of beings who are less than we. 
Each one of them is on the same path whereon we have trodden, 
ourselves ; each one of them having to go over that same path, 
stained with the blood from our own feet. And shall they fail 
for lack of our help ? They shall have to pass the danger-point, 
even as we have done ; because the teaching is that at the middle 
point of every evolution there is a downward path, leading into 
spheres of being grosser and more material than ours. 
 
When our planet first started, or rather first was started, on 
its course of emanational evolution, the propelling agents in that 
were the Dhyan-Chohans from the lunar chain, i.e., those who 
had run the evolutionary race successfully there ; and behind 
them, trailing after them, we came, seven classes of us, the most 
evolved, the less, the less, the less, the less, the animals, the 
vegetables, and the minerals. 
 
Our time is drawing to a close this evening, but there is one 
point which it seems incumbent upon us to touch upon at least 
slightly. When Leibnitz, the great German philosopher, spoke of 
the inherent urge in every monad propelling it into manifestation, 
 
 
 


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he spoke from the ancient books, from the Pythagorean and the 
Neo-Platonic teachings, of which he was a student, and he meant 
what we do when we speak of the Swabhava, the essential nature 
of a thing. There is, however, one point of his teaching to which 
we must allude, where he says in substance that our world is the 
best possible world in the universe. Those of you who are acquain- 
ted with the great French philosopher, Voltaire, may remember 
his book, Candide, or "Optimism", in which Voltaire evidently is 
tilting at the optimistic theories of Leibnitz, and in which two of 
his characters are the inveterately irrational optimist, Dr. Pan- 
gloss, and the young man, Candide, Dr. Pangloss's pupil, a young 
philosopher, a thorough-going selfish optimist, who accepted all 
the rebuffs of life with great indifference and calmness, and with 
a smile at human misery. And Voltaire has a passage commenting 
upon these two characters (Candide, Ch. VI), where he says, 
with all that pungent, aphoristic point, which is so great an 
ornament of the French genius, " Si c'est ici le meilleur des 
mondes possibles, que sont done les autres ? " That is, " If this 
is the best of all possible worlds, how about the others " ? A very 
comprehensive remark indeed, and a very true one. It is not the 
best possible of all worlds. Far from it. It were indeed a weary 
and hopeless outlook for our human kind, if it were ! Yet the 
great German philosopher was right in this sense, that it is the 
best possible world which the world's karman has enabled it to be 
or to produce ; and if it is not better, we ourselves are largely 
responsible for it. 
 
We see in this amusing reference to the theories of Leibnitz 
and Voltaire, the true meaning of the word optimism. Our own 
majestic philosophy gives us a far wider vision, a more penetrating 
insight into things ; a profounder understanding of the so-called 
Riddle of Life. Everything is relative, one of the greatest teachings 
of the Esoteric philosophy. There are no absolutes (in the usual 
European sense of that word) anywhere. Everything is relative, 
because everything is interlinked and intermingles with every 
other thing. If there were an absolute, in the European sense, 
there could be nothing but the barren silence and immutability 
of complete and utter perfection, which is impossible, for there 
would be in such case, there could be, no growth, no future growth, 
no past development, spiritually, mentally, or in any other 
wise. 
 
We now close. At our next meeting, upon the Teacher's 
direction, we shall take up the study of the so-called Hells and 
Heavens, for this branch of our investigation is a very necessary 
part of the psychological side of our study which we began at our 
last meeting ; and we say this evening only this, that, as before 
often remarked, all the doctrines and dogmas and teachings and 
 
 
 
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tenets of the great world-religions, are based fundamentally upon 
some more or less obscure truth : usually very much obscured 
by ignorance or fanaticism, or by both ; and, in conclusion, let 
us note well that there are no hells, and there are no heavens, as 
these are commonly supposed to be ; but spheres of life and ex- 
perience corresponding to each class of the myriad degrees of 
entities in being. As Jesus is said to have stated in the Christian 
Gospels : " In my Father's house are many mansions ". There 
are in the endless Kosmos innumerable appropriate places of 
retributive bliss or retributive woe for all grades of souls, and in 
these karmically appropriate places, the countless hosts of evolving 
entities of all classes find their properly and exactly adjusted 
places. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XIV
 
" HEAVENS " AND " HELLS " : TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILO- 
SOPHY, AND OF THE EXOTERIC RELIGIONS. 
 
The devachan [' heaven '] merges from its highest into its lowest degree by 
insensible gradations ; while from the last step of devachan [downwards] the 
Ego will often find itself in Avtchi's [' hell's '] faintest state, which, towards the 
end of the " spiritual selection " of events may become a bona fide " Avlchi." 
 
The Mahatma Letters, p. 188. 
 
From Kama-Loka then . . . the newly translated " Souls " go all (but the 
shells) according to their attractions, either to Devachan or Avlchi. 
 
The Mahatma Letters, p. 199. 
 
Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels. . . . 
 
Light of Asia (ARNOLD). 
 
WE open our study this evening by reading from The 
Secret Doctrine, Volume II, page 273, the following : 
For the evolution of Spirit into matter could never have 
been achieved ; nor would it have received its first impulse, 
had not the bright spirits sacrificed their own respective super-ethereal 
essences to animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his inner 
principles with a portion, or rather, a reflection of that essence. The 
Dhy^nis of the Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the 
NOUMENOI of the actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of 
the Seven Powers of nature the grosser effects of which are perceived 
by us in what Science is pleased to call the " modes of motion " the 
imponderable forces and what not are the still higher noumenoi of 
still higher Hierarchies. 
 
This is an exceedingly interesting paragraph. It contains, in 
small compass, the entire outline of the studies that we have been 
pursuing for some weeks past. 
 
In taking up this evening the study of the so-called " heavens " 
and " hells ", it may be well first of all to repeat what was said 
in the conclusion of our last study : that there are no heavens 
and there are no hells, as these are outlined in the exoteric religions. 
Those conceptions are based, however, upon teachings which 
actually came from the Mystery-doctrines, and, as we have 
before said, they contain in themselves the outline of a truth, 
indeed, of a great truth, when properly understood. But while 
we do not accept the Christian heaven and the Christian hell, nor 
the Mohammedan heavens nor the Mohammedan hells, nor the 
literal exoteric teachings concerning them as found among the 
 
137 
 
 
 
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Buddhists and the ancient Greeks and the Romans, nevertheless 
there actually are in Nature certain spheres of being in which 
those portions of man's constitution which survive the death of 
the physical body, find appropriate dwelling-places ; they are, in 
fact, retributive realms or spheres of being, to which are magneti- 
cally attracted those parts of his constitution which in him are 
of similar or identical quality. 
 
Jesus, in the Gospel " according to John ", I4th Chapter, the 
second verse, says the following : "In my Father's house are 
many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go 
to prepare a place for you ". He said this in the long final address 
which he gave to his disciples before his arrest and appearance 
before the authorities, according to the Christian legends. 
 
Now there is no great religion of the ancient time which does 
not teach in more or less clear and definite form the existence of 
certain forces of " reward " or of retribution, acting after man's 
death in appropriate spheres in which the so-called soul of man 
meets with retribution, or, as some say, " punishment " or 
" reward ", after physical death. Those spheres in which the soul 
shall receive appropriate retributive purgation, or " punishment ", 
are called hells, in the English tongue ; and those in which the 
soul shall receive appropriate retributive repose and reward are 
commonly called heavens ; and because these words are familiar 
to Europeans, and represent with fair accuracy the general idea 
of post mortem retribution prevalent in all great religions, it 
may be best for us to use them. But we must positively clear out 
of our minds, wash our minds clean of, all ideas that have been 
put into them by the miseducation of the dogmatic theologies, 
if we are to gain a correct idea of what the Esoteric Philosophy 
teaches on these lines. 
 
We must remember that we are studying the occultism of the 
archaic ages. Now this word " occultism " meant originally only 
the science of things hid ; even in the Middle Ages of Europe, 
those philosophers who were the forerunners of the modern 
scientists, those who then studied physical nature, called their 
science " occultism ", and their studies " occult ", meaning the 
things that were hid, or not known to the common run of mankind. 
Such a medieval philosopher was Albertus Magnus, a German ; 
and so also was Roger Bacon, an Englishman ; both of the 
thirteenth century of the Christian Era. 
 
Therefore, " occultism " as we use the term, and as it should be 
used, means the study of the hid things of being, the science of 
life or universal Nature ; in one sense this word can be used to 
mean the study of unusual " phenomena ", which meaning it 
usually has today among people who do not think, or who will 
not think, of the vastly larger field of causes which " Occultism ", 
 
 
 


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properly speaking, investigates. Doubtless mere " phenomena " 
have their place in study, but they are on the frontier, as it were, 
on the outskirts, and they are the superficialities of occultism. 
In studying true occultism we must penetrate deep into the causal 
mysteries of being ; and, in very truth, we have been doing this 
since the Teacher inaugurated these studies : step by step, have 
we been going deeper into the realm of causes. 
 
Now, in order fully to comprehend the destiny of the soul, post 
mortem, and before its next rebirth in a physical body on this 
plane, it is incumbent upon us first to say that there is a vast field 
of teachings with regard to death upon which we do not feel at 
present privileged to roam. This is a matter which rests entirely 
with the Teacher's discretion, and only upon her explicit instruc- 
tions will anything be said regarding that field in these studies. 
Yet there are certain things which we can touch upon. The 
reason for our necessary reticence and silence with regard to the 
forbidden field mentioned, is this, that, as remarked in one of our 
former studies, the teachings with regard to the deeper mysteries 
of death give keys to mysteries of still greater magnitude and 
scope, and in ancient days were communicated only to a chosen 
few, at any time. Any one of you who chooses to look into the 
religious mystical literatures of the world, can prove this fact for 
himself. 
 
In former studies we have traced the peregrination of the monad 
from the state of latency into manifestation, as viewed from below. 
Now the monad is a spiritual " atom ", so to say ; let us call it 
this evening a spiritual radical (radicle), using this word " radical " 
in precisely the double sense in which H. P. Blavatsky used the 
word " radical " when she spoke of comets as " those long-haired 
sidereal radicals " with a touch of real humour in one sense, but 
also hinting, by the use of the word, at a great truth of the 
Esoteric Philosophy with regard to comets in calling them 
" radicals ". You know what radical originally meant. It meant 
a (little) root, from the Latin radix, hence its application to a 
comet as the root or the germ of a future world. So, also, a monad 
is a radical, a radical in both the senses in which she used them, 
an " aggressive " (in the sense of self-acting, self-developing) 
entity, and also a root, a germ of a future God. 
 
Now this radical, in order to attain self-consciousness, and con- 
scious self-consciousness, must pass down the " arc of shadows " 
until it reaches the turning-point of the great Cycle in that man- 
vantara, and as an integral part of and belonging to the Hier- 
archy evolving in that manvantara. By that time, if its Karman 
is so, it has reached conscious self-consciousness, and is manifest- 
ing on our plane as a man. Thereupon it starts upwards along 
the " luminous arc ", or the arc of ascension, and if it is successful 
 
 
 
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in its cyclic pilgrimage, it finally blossoms forth into a God. We 
must remember "this general outline if we wish to understand 
clearly what we mean by " heavens " and " hells ". 
 
The whole aim of evolution, the entire destiny of the spiritual 
radical, is the elevating of the consciously personal into the 
consciously impersonal so important a thought that we are 
obliged to say that it lies as the very first conception and as the 
root of the whole Esoteric Philosophy. A self-conscious God can 
be such only because it has a vehicle of self to work through ; and 
this is what the spiritual radical lacks when it starts out on its 
cyclic pilgrimage. Manhood must be raised to Godhood. 
 
Now we may begin to see here the meaning of what our first 
Teacher spoke of as the " loss of the soul ". At every step down- 
ward, as its self-consciousness is slowly and gradually evolved in 
any manvantara, the monad fabricates into itself, or secretes from 
itself, and excretes from itself, vehicles proper for its cognizing 
the forces and matter on the various planes through which it 
passes, and in which it manifests. Those on the higher planes are 
egos, and each ego secretes its own appropriate vehicle, called a 
soul. Consequently, there is an ego and a soul for each step down- 
ward : a dual vehicle for manifesting the monadic essence on every 
plane. Through the whole, as a golden cord, runs the Self, the 
innermost consciousness, the spiritual "I am ". The ego-soul 
gives to the monad the consciousness " I am I ". The Self, how- 
ever, is the same in all of us. " I am I " is the quality only of the 
ego. Therefore the important thing is to " save " the ego. The 
higher egos are saved because of previous salvation gained in 
former manvantaras. But the lower egos and their souls are built 
up out of the matter and consciousness of this manvantara, and 
they must be " saved ". The state of human consciousness in 
which we mankind now live in this epoch and in this man- 
vantara, is called in the individual the human soul, the human 
ego ; and this human soul and this human ego must be " saved ", 
because our self-consciousness is centred therein. We use the 
word " saved ", because none better occurs to us : at least the 
word is familiar. This " saving " means that the ego-soul must 
be rescued from the magnetic attraction of matter. 
 
But what happens if its education is incomplete when at the 
bottom of the arc, before beginning the ascent along the " luminous 
arc ", and it becomes unable to run the race and fails ? Suppose 
that the pull of matter is too strong and that its attraction is 
downward. Slowly, in that case, the links with the higher Self are 
broken, the golden chain is ruptured, and the whole effort of the 
monad in that manvantara is lost. The entity cycling downward 
is what is called a " lost soul ". 
Now a " lost soul " has naught to do with the " heavens " and 
 
 
 


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the " hells ". The state of Nirvana, again, has nothing to do with 
the " heavens " and the " hells ". The " heavens " and the 
" hells " concern only the truly human entity : that is, the human 
ego and the human soul ; only this grade of consciousness, for to 
it belong those consciousnesses which can partake of the concep- 
tion of, and can experience, felicity or misery. Nirvana is beyond 
felicity ; it is, of course, beyond misery ; its opposite pole is 
Nirvana-avichi, a subject which we shall have to discuss, if we 
have time for it, either this evening or at our next study. Nirvana- 
avichi is the utter contrast of Nirvana, it is the lowest point, the 
nether pole of conscious being. 
 
Now when the body breaks up at physical death the astral 
elements remain in the " shadow- world " with the same conscious 
center, as in life, clinging within them, still vitalizing them ; and 
certain processes there go on of which our Teachers have more or 
less fully told us ; and consequently there is no need for us to 
take time this evening in discussing what Kama-Loka is or Deva- 
chan is, particularly. But when the " second death ", after that 
of the physical body, takes place and there are many deaths, 
that is to say many changes of the vehicles of the ego, when the 
second death takes place, what becomes of the human center, the 
truly human entity ? We have been told that the higher part of it 
withdraws into itself all that aspires towards it, and takes that 
" all " with it into the devachan ; and that the Atman, with the 
Buddhi, and with the higher part of the Manas which is the so- 
called human soul, or the mind becomes thereupon the spiritual 
monad of man. Strictly speaking, this is the divine monad within 
its vehicle Atman and Buddhi combined with the human ego 
in its higher manasic element ; but they are joined into one after 
death, and are hence spoken of as the spiritual monad. 
 
The human monad " goes " to Devachan. Devachan is a 
Tibetan word and may be translated as God-land, God-country, 
God-region. There are many degrees in Devachan : the highest, 
the intermediate, and the lowest. What becomes of the entity, on 
the other hand, the lower human soul, that is so befouled with 
earth-thought and the lower instincts that it cannot rise ? There 
may be enough in it of the spirit-nature to hold it together as an 
entity and enable it to become a reincarnating entity, but it is 
foul, it is heavy ; its tendency is consequently downwards. Can 
it therefore rise into a heavenly felicity ? Can it go even into the 
lower realms of Devachan and there enjoy its modicum of the 
beatitude, bliss, of everything that is noble and beautiful ? No. 
There is an appropriate sphere, a sphere appropriate for every 
degree of development of the ego-soul, and it gravitates to that 
sphere and remains there until it is thoroughly purged, until the 
sin has been washed out, so to say. 
 
 
 
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These are the so-called " hells ", beneath even the lowest parts 
of Devachan ; and the " arfipa heavens " are the highest parts of 
the Devachan. Nirvana is a very different thing from the 
" heavens ". Nirvana is a state of utter bliss and complete, un- 
trammelled consciousness, a state of absorption in pure Being, and 
is the wondrous destiny of those who have reached superhuman 
knowledge and purity and spiritual illumination. It really is 
personal absorption into or identification with the Self the 
Highest SELF. It is also the state of the monadic entities in the 
period that intervenes between minor manvantaras, or Rounds, 
of a Panetary Chain ; and more fully so between each seven- 
Round Period, or Day of Brahma, and the succeeding Day or new 
Kalpa of a Planetary Chain. At these last times, starting forth 
from the seventh sphere in the seventh Round, the monadic 
entities have passed far beyond even the highest state of Deva- 
chan. Too pure and too far advanced even for such a condition 
as the devachanic felicity, they go to their appropriate sphere and 
condition, which latter is the Nirvana following the end of the 
seventh Round. 
 
Now what do the Ancients say in their exoteric religions, about 
these so-called " heavens " and " hells " ? Every such ancient 
religion taught that the so-called heavens are divided into steps 
or grades of ascending bliss and purity ; and the so-called hells 
into steps or grades of increasing purgation or suffering. Now the 
Esoteric Doctrine, our Occultism, teaches that the one is not a 
" punishment ", nor is the other, strictly speaking, a reward. The 
teaching is, simply, that each entity after physical death is drawn 
to the appropriate sphere to which the karmic destiny of the 
entity magnetically attracts it. As a man works, as a man sows, 
in his life, that and that only shall he reap after death. Good seed 
produces good fruit ; bad seed, tares and perhaps even nothing 
of value or of spiritual use follows a negative and colourless life. 
There is no " law " of karman ; we repeat, there is no " law " of 
karman. There are no " laws " of nature ; we repeat, there are 
no " laws " of nature. What is a natural " law " ? Is a natural 
" law " a God ? Is it a being ? Is it an entity ? Is it a Force ? Is 
it an energy ? If so, what God produces it ? The word " law ", 
however, is convenient enough provided we understand what we 
mean by it. Perhaps no better word, in our day, could be found 
for ordinary usage in writing popularly or in conversation. But 
do not let us make the mistake of taking abstractions for realities. 
In this study of the marvellous doctrines of our Occultism we shall 
never move a step forward towards a proper understanding of 
Nature, if we do make this mistake. We must wash our minds 
clean, of occidental scientific and theological miseducation. The 
so-called " laws of nature " and the " law of Karman " are simply 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 143
 
the various workings of consciousnesses in Nature : truly and 
actually, they are Habits, habits of beings. We replace the abstrac- 
tions of occidental science and theology with the action and the 
ineluctable results thereof of consciousnesses and wills in the 
spheres of being of the Hierarchies of Life. We are simply abus- 
ing our intelligence, stultifying our intellects, when we go around 
and around the vicious circles of materialistic theory and think we 
have satisfied our inquiring minds by replacing the work of end- 
less Hosts of Beings in and of Nature with an abstraction called 
" law " or " laws ". Think of it ! Do we realize that not one 
single great thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever 
talked about " laws of Nature ", as if these " laws " were living 
beings ; as if these abstractions were actual entities which did 
things ? Did the " laws of navigation " ever navigate a ship ? 
Does the " law of gravity " pull the planets together ? Does it 
unite or pull the atoms together ? Nonsense. This word " law " 
is simply an abstraction, an expression for the action of entities in 
Nature. The word " law ", as said before, is perhaps a convenient 
term, and if we understand what we mean when we use it, then all 
right. But we must understand it, The ancients put realities, 
living beings, in the place of " laws ", which, as we use the term, 
are only abstractions ; they did not cheat themselves so easily 
with words. They called them Gods. Very good; call them, 
then, Gods. They called them spiritual entities. Very good, then. 
Call them so. Call them Dhyanis, or by any other name you 
please. But pin your faith, direct your intellects, to actual, living 
beings, to realities, not to nothingnesses, not to abstractions, which 
have no reality except as modes of speech. 
 
Let us take for example the ancient Brahmanical teachings. 
There, we find many divisions of " heavens " and " hells " ; but 
the common one is the division into seven lower spheres, or lokas, 
or " hells ", or infernal halls ; and the seven superior lokas, which 
we may call " heavens ". The Buddhist teaching usually gives 
the number as 21 hells, for which the common word is Narakas ; 
and the Buddhists also used the word lokas for the higher spheres ; 
but note well that in all ancient systems, these higher and lower 
spheres or grades were in ascending and descending steps. There 
was the highest, and all the others which followed, decreasing in 
felicity and purity by degrees, each one growing more material 
and less happy with each step downward, until they passed in- 
sensibly into the higher hells, and here again still further increas- 
ing in materiality downward until the end of the Hierarchy of 
these stages was reached. 
 
Now among the very lowest of these hells, the Buddhists placed 
Avichi ; this is a Sanskrit word, and its general meaning is " wave- 
less ", having no waves, or movement, suggesting the stagnation 
 
 
 
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of life and being, in immobility ; it also means " without happi- 
ness " ; or " without repose " ; and below that another Hier- 
archy begins, a new world ! What endless realms for speculation 
open to us here ! 
 
We can here but sketch our remaining time this evening is so 
short an outline of the doctrines concerning the " heavens " and 
the " hells ". In beginning with a general outline, we are pursuing 
the general plan of study as it has been authorized by the Teacher. 
First, we try to give the general sketch, the general view, later 
filling in the necessary details as we pursue our subject, although 
frequently alluding to another teaching connected with it, pur- 
posely doing so ; and in this way we are following the ancient 
system or method of teaching these different subjects. In our 
modern Occidental institutions of learning, it is customary, 
perhaps a rigorous requirement, that the lecturer shall pursue to 
the end all details of a subject embarked upon : opening one line 
of investigation and not deviating from it until everything in 
theory and practice, or supposed to be there, is known, or thought 
to be known ; and when that one line of study is fully exhausted, 
and when the intellect is completely crystallized in that form, and 
weary, then opening a new line of investigation. This method is 
positively contrary to Nature. Neither child nor adult learns life's 
lessons in such artificial fashion. The ancients knew better the 
psychology of teaching and learning. They built up, first, the 
general view, such as has a man on a mountain-top with the 
general topographical view before his vision, whence he constructs 
a topographical survey which he retains in his mind ; and when 
he goes down into the valley, he is enabled easily to fill in all 
necessary details. This is Nature's method, if we may so speak of 
it ; and it is what is called the Platonic method : first the general, 
then the particular. In logic, this is called the deductive system, 
as opposed to the Aristotelian or inductive method, on which 
modern Western teaching is based. 
 
Now the Egyptians, as we know from their papyri, taught the 
existence of many spheres after death, the many planes of felicity 
and beatitude and the many planes of suffering or purgation, 
spheres which the defunct entity had to pass through before 
it reached one or the other of the goals of post mortem life : 
" heaven " or " hell ". The teachers of ancient times had a way, 
an allegorical way, of expressing the course of life after death, and 
in this manner kept the intuition alive and active without touch- 
ing upon forbidden matters, secrets or mysteries of the sanctuaries. 
Let us take in this connexion, as illustration, the teaching of the 
Mithraic religion, which came very close, at one time, to ousting 
completely the Christian doctrine. The Mithraists taught the 
existence of seven (and nine) heavens, each one preceded and 
 
 
 


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followed by another one, inferior or superior, respectively ; and 
each one was to be attained by a " ladder ", which was only a 
graphic, a neat, way of speaking. Of course they meant only that 
the " ladder " was a representation of the steps, grades, or 
degrees, which the soul had to climb, in order to attain the goal ; 
and the " ladder " was likewise a figure of the degrees of the 
hierarchy the steps, the planes, the spheres, of which it is com- 
posed. They had also their seven degrees of initiation, based upon 
the rising scale existent in Nature ; and two other degrees which 
were considered as too sacred to speak of openly ; and this makes 
nine degrees in all. 
 
How about the ancient Scandinavians ? Take the case of their 
Niflheim, a word meaning " cloudy (or misty) dwelling-place ", 
" home ", or " mansion ". This nebulous region was the ninth, 
the lowest, in their system, and itself was composed of nine minor 
worlds or spheres. Very careful indeed were the writers of the 
Eddas in the way they taught ; but they give us enough to show 
us the same identical teachings as found elsewhere over the world. 
I am speaking here more particularly of the Prose Edda, which is 
more open in its esoteric allusions than is the poetic Edda, the 
Edda of verse. Now the Prose Edda tells us that on one side, the 
northern, of the cosmic space, were cold and gloom, and it gives 
to this sphere the name Nifl = " nebulous region", which is a 
generalizing of the meaning of the name ; Nifl had nine divisions 
or degrees ; but more particularly Nifl was the name of the lowest 
of the nine ; still, the Edda gave that name to the entire series of 
nine spheres, on the north. A middle region was the Ginnungagap, 
an Old Norse word which can be translated perhaps as yawning 
abyss, or abyss (or Gap) of abysses ; this was the middle or inter- 
mediate sphere ; and then came Muspellheim, to the south, a place 
of fire and flame and warmth, not necessarily anything like the 
Christian hell, for, as a matter of fact, it was nearer like a heaven 
than a hell ; elemental or divine beings lived there, a natural 
thought to the cold-enduring Scandinavians. Their hell was cold ; 
and the hells of Southrons were hot ; these words being merely 
appropriate ways of expressing things to be easily apprehended 
by the people. 
 
What did the early Christians or the medieval Christians believe 
as regards " heaven " and " hell " ? Let us choose the descriptions 
of Dante, the great Italian poet, for instance ; for he echoes the 
ancient pagan teaching remarkably in some ways ; always in a 
distorted manner, it is true ; but you can see the ancient truth 
under all that he wrote. How significant it is that he made Vergil, 
the great Latin poet, his conductor through his Infernos, or hells, 
and through his Purgatory ; but in due deference to his Christian 
teachers and the Christian age in which he lived, when he came to 
 
 
 
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the heavens, which he describes, he has a Christian guide, his 
Beatrice, and of course he had to follow his Christian doctrines. 
Dante divides his hells into nine circles. He divides his Purgatory 
into seven circles, preceded by the Ante-purgatory, and followed by 
the Terrestrial Paradise, which make again nine. In each of these 
hells, and in each of these divisions of Purgatory places of 
purification he shows the lowest as the most terrible ; the 
second above it is not quite so fearful, and the third less so than 
the second ; and so on up through the eighteen circles or degrees 
of Hells and Purgatory to the topmost one of the Purgatory, which 
is scarcely, if at all, unpleasant. Finally, Dante divides his 
heavens into nine, and these are topped by the Empyrean, the 
dwelling-place of God and his Angels 1 ! Thus, there are nine 
hells ; seven divisions of Purgatory, with the Ante-purgatory 
and the Terrestrial Paradise again nine ; nine heavens ; the 
Empyrean : 9+9+9+1=28, divisions of non-physical life, each 
one appropriated to punish certain vices or reward certain virtues 
after death. A curiously faithful, curiously distorted, and often 
grotesque, parody of the archaic doctrine. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XV
 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE " ABSOLUTE ". GENERALIZED PLAN OF 
EVOLUTION ON ALL PLANES. SEVEN KEYS TO WISDOM AND 
FUTURE INITIATIONS. 
 
Containing all things in the one summit of his own hyparxis, he himself 
subsists wholly beyond. PROCLUS . ^ ^^ gf ^^ p ^ (CoRy } 
 
 
 
You will not understand it, as when understanding some particular thing. 
 
DAMASCIUS. (CORY.) 
 
Things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand body, 
But only as many as are lightly armed arrive at the summit. 
 
PROCLUS : Commentary on the Cratylus of Plato. (CORY.) 
 
 
 
N opening our study this evening we read first from The 
Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 570, the first paragraph : 
 
 
 
T 
 
^ While the Christian is taught that the human soul is a breath 
of God being created by him for sempiternal existence, i.e., 
having a beginning, but no end (and therefore never to be called eternal) 
the Occult teaching says, " Nothing is created, but is only transformed. 
Nothing can manifest itself in this universe from a globe down to a 
vague, rapid thought that was not in the universe already ; every- 
thing on the subjective plane is an eternal is : as everything on the 
objective plane is an ever becoming because transitory/ 1 
 
Now, in resuming our study this evening, you will remember 
that at our last meeting, on account of the lack of time, we were 
obliged to confine ourselves to a short review of the subject of the 
Heavens and Hells as doctrinally held by various exoteric re- 
ligions ; and in considering several theological or philosophical or 
mythological teachings about them, we had reached the view- 
point of the medieval Christian theology, as represented in the 
Divina Commedia of the great Italian poet, Dante ; and we found 
in that really noble poem that Dante wrote of nine Circles com- 
prised in his Inferno or Hell ; seven belonging properly to his 
Purgatory, but preceded by the Ante-Purgatory, and the seventh 
Circle of the Purgatory followed by his Terrestrial Paradise, thus 
forming nine Circles or Departments in that division. Then he 
speaks of the nine Heavens, topped finally by the Empyrean, in 
which last sits God surrounded by the holy Angels and the spirits 
of the Just. So that we find here once again, as we found in the 
other systems that we have mentioned, the wonderful number 
nine as the root-number of division. 
 
'47 
 
 
 
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We also touched briefly upon the ancient Scandinavian beliefs 
in regard to this subject as found in the Younger or Prose Edda, 
and merely vaguely alluded to the teachings therein contained. 
We also spoke of the beliefs of the Greek and Latin Stoics ; and 
we might also have pointed out that in an important so-called 
" Hermetic " work, supposed to have had its origin in Egypt, but 
which has been greatly altered by later Christian hands the work 
I refer to being called The Divine Poemandres there are seven 
spheres or stages of being spoken of, as also vague allusions to an 
eighth, while a ninth is merely hinted at also. 
 
Now turning to ancient Greece again, we find that the great 
Greek poet Homer, in the Eighth Book of the Iliad, makes his 
Zeus speak, in addressing the gods and goddesses, of the " Golden 
Chain ". Zeus tells the other divinities in very masterful language 
of his supreme power, and that if they all, the gods and goddesses 
of high Olympus, were to drag downward at one end of that 
Chain, and he were to hold the other, he Zeus himself, alone, 
could drag it upwards with all the gods and goddesses, all the 
seas and the earths, and hang that Golden Chain, with them all 
at the nether end, to one of the pinnacles of heaven. What is 
the meaning of this curious tale ? The following : 
 
This Golden Chain represents the concatenation of the living 
Hierarchies which we have studied before. The Golden Chain 
of all Being, inward and outward. In the same address to the 
assembly of the Divinities of Olympus, Zeus speaks as follows : 
" Any one of you who despises my words and will, I shall cast 
down into gloomy Tartarus . . . which is as far below Hades as 
Earth is below Olympus ". This shows us somewhat of Homer's 
representation of the framework of Kosmos, which was somewhat 
as follows : Earth, or rather the Universe, was represented as 
a sphere : Olympus was placed at the upper or northern side or 
pole ; what was called " Earth " was the next part below ; 
below Earth was Hades ; and at the nether pole from Olympus 
was placed Tartarus. Homer, through his Zeus, tells us that as 
far below Olympus as Earth is, so far below Hades is Tartarus. 
 
The Greek poet Hesiod, in his Theogony, beginning with Verse 
721, also tells us that if a brazen anvil were allowed to fall from 
Olympus to Earth it would take nine days to fall, and would 
reach the Earth on the tenth ; and if that same brazen anvil, in 
continuing its course, were to fall from Earth to Tartarus, it 
would again take nine days to fall, and would reach Tartarus 
on the tenth. So the Latin poet Vergil, Aeneid, vi, 577-579, 
has the same general idea. 
 
We see therefore in Greek and Latin mystical thought the same 
principle of Hierarchies and scales of nines and tens that we have 
met with before. The theory calls for a continuous succession 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 149
 
of planes or spheres of being, ranging from higher to lower ; 
repeated uninterruptedly throughout the range of any general 
hierarchical system of worlds. For instance here, beginning at 
Tartarus, there follows a new Sub-Hierarchy, a new sphere, a 
new Egg, of Being ; just as the Olympus of any one such system 
is the nether pole of a still higher Hierarchy than itself. And so 
on throughout the Universe. 
 
Now this " nine days' falling " of Hesiod's " brazen anvil ", 
and any other similar figure, is simply the well known mythologic 
way of speaking, rendering in an easily understood form for the 
general public, with their sleeping minds, the esoteric doctrines, 
the doctrines of Occultism, that is to say, the facts of Inner Being, 
as those are found in all the mystical teachings of all the ancient 
nations. 
 
Now this subject of the Hells and Heavens, as was pointed out 
in our last study, rests upon several fundamental esoteric factors 
which we have been studying continuously since the Teacher 
inaugurated these meetings last January. As said at our last 
meeting, there are in very truth no " Hells " and no " Heavens ", 
in the ordinary Christian sense, at all. But there are Spheres 
of Retribution, Spheres of Probation, which are particular 
spheres of being ; and some of these hells, as described for in- 
stance in the Brahmanical and in the Buddhist religions, are 
actually spheres of near-pleasure, rather agreeable than other- 
wise ; they are described as really very pleasant and interesting 
places 1 But they are still lower than the heavens, so called. 
 
We might consider the description of some of the so-called 
Heavens, on the other hand, as not so exceedingly pleasant ; 
the idea being that just as are the conditions among men on 
earth, so it is among appropriate spheres of retribution or pro- 
bation or purgatorial cleansing : when the compass of man's 
life on earth has been brought to its end, everything then moves 
according to strict analogy and according to strict gravitational 
attraction. Nothing can go to any sphere or go into any state 
for which it is unfit. Everything finds its exactly appropriate and 
similar goal, or home, or sphere. 
 
These heavens and hells are states, of course ; so is earth-life a 
state. But if a thing is a state it is also the state of a thing ; 
and if it is a thing, it must have place, or position, or locality. 
That is obvious. So, therefore, while these heavens and hells are 
states, they are likewise localities, places. The Ancient Wisdom 
speaks of them in general, refers to them in general, by the 
Sanskrit word meaning " The three worlds " Tri-bhuvana, i.e., 
meaning three briefly generalized abodes or mansions or dwelling- 
places ; as Jesus says in the Christian scriptures : "In my 
Father's house are many mansions ". As the Teacher has just 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
pointed out, they are states of mind for the entities who dwell 
therein, and it is through these states of mind that the pur- 
gatorial cleansing of the soul-nature is accomplished. 
 
Why does a man go to hell ? Because he wants to go to hell. 
Why does a man go to heaven ? Because he desires to go to 
heaven. A man goes wherever he wills to go. If during his life he 
has lived an evil existence, it is because the impulses and attrac- 
tions of his being were such ; and can such a soul, inwrapped with 
earthly attractions, ascend into spiritual spheres ? Can the 
operations of spiritual beings, of the so-called higher " laws of 
nature ", attract a man whose soul is absorbed in heavenly 
aspirations into one of the lower and pain-racked spheres of 
purgation ? Never. Think of the meaning involved in this 
thought. We must therefore take warning therefrom, and live 
in accordance therewith. Let us hearken to these doctrines, 
sublime in their grandeur. Every word of them is pregnant with 
profound meanings. 
 
Now let us go a little farther. You may remember that some 
months ago we pointed out that in the Ancient Wisdom, in the 
ancient Occultism, there was a teaching which actually had 
originated a modern scientific doctrine, born nevertheless in a 
distorted form of materialism, regarding the operations of nature, 
the so-called " conservation of energy ", which is one of the great 
pillars of modern materialistic science ; and also its twin dogma, 
the so-called " correlation of forces ". Those two scientific 
doctrines were born of the supposition that there is nothing in 
existence but inert, lifeless, soulless matter, impelled by strange 
and unknown and perhaps undiscoverable impulses, which were 
called " forces ", springing forth in some unknown and perhaps 
undiscoverable way. Science is changing its viewpoints in many 
directions, it is quite true, but yet some materialistic ideas still 
remain. Now, in our time, everything is supposed to be funda- 
mentally force ; matter itself is supposed to be force. The ideas, 
as you readily see, still are the same ; the words alone are changing. 
It is, however, a step ahead, but we should not let ourselves be 
carried away by mere words, providing the thought behind the 
words is the same and as fully materialistic as ever. 
 
But there are signs that other changes also are rapidly taking 
place in scientific realms. Within three weeks, the present 
speaker read the report of an address by an eminent English 
physicist, an honor and credit to his country, intuitional in some 
ways, who tells us what the latest discoveries are demonstrating 
to the scientists of the time. What is this new light ? Just what 
we pointed out some months ago as a fundamental teaching of 
the ancient Occultism, that Force is simply Matter in an ethereal 
state ; or, to put it in another and a truer way, Matter is simply 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 151
 
crystallized Force, so to say, Force and Matter being in essence 
one. This scientist further tells us that modern thinkers are 
now beginning to believe that Matter is not eternal. Of course, 
we also believe that, provided that by " Matter " we mean merely 
physical matter, the basic may a or " illusion " of physical 
being. But if we mean by " Matter " the substratum, the 
essential substance of being, we differ instantly, for indeed That 
is eternal. IT is Mula-prakriti, root-substance, the Garment of 
Parabrahman. 
 
Now again, what do we mean when we speak of Parabrahman 
and Mula-prakriti, Essential Consciousness, and Essential Nature 
or Essential Substance or " Matter " ? We mean this : that 
Parabrahman-Mtilaprakriti can be for any human intellect 
merely the absolute state of the Hierarchy, the highest portion, 
its Flower, its Principle, its Root, its Seed That from which the 
rest evolves, or goes out and becomes the manifested universe we 
live in and know and are a part of. As Paul says in the Christian 
Gospels, " In him [that is, in It the Greek allows this transla- 
tion] we live and move and have our being ", i.e., we are It, in 
other words ; that is, in the sense of being essentially a part of 
the Flower of our Hierarchy, the highest to us, for IT is the Root 
of Consciousness of and in our Kosmical Universe or Universal 
Kosmos, which latter is all that is comprehended within the 
zone of the Milky Way, that is, the Universal Kosmos that we 
know of. The Summit of it, is this Root from which all these 
numberless inferior worlds or universes inside it have come 
forth, have evolved forth ; its children the solar systems, the 
suns, the stars, the planets : all the living beings, all the atoms, 
all the worlds or universes ; in short, the Kosmos ; all come 
forth from IT. It is the Summit, the Flower, the Acme, as also 
the Seed ; it is the Absolute Paramatman, Supreme Self, which 
you will remember we have studied before, as we have more or 
less all the teachings that we are now passing briefly in review, 
because this is, as the Teacher has told us this evening, the last 
of our present studies until her return from Europe. 
 
Now what do we mean by the word " Absolute " ? Do we 
mean " God " ? If you like that word. If you really wish to 
call it " God ". But do you know anything about " God " ? 
Don't we see that the instant in which we stultify our intellects, 
cripple our intuition, limit the soaring of our interior faculties by 
speaking of bounds, whether inferred in thought or word, then we 
reach ends and halt ? Now, remember always in this connexion, 
that beyond and beyond and beyond the Kosmical Universe, 
beyond our ken, beyond our imagination, there is always endless 
life, endless being, for there is no end anywhere ; and this thought 
is what was meant in the ancient Occultism when its teachers 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
spoke of that "* circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose 
center is everywhere ", the " Boundless ", the " Without Bounds ". 
This Latin word " Absolute ", misused as it is in modern philosophy 
and even among our own selves, is the exact translation of the 
Sanskrit Mukti, or Moksha, which I will allude to in a moment. 
" Absolute " is the modern English form of the past participle 
passive of the Latin word absolvere, meaning " to loosen ", " to 
set free ", "to release ", and hence " perfected ". Not utter, 
limitless perfection like the immortal gods in some religions were 
supposed to have, which is always impossible. But the relative 
perfection, the Summit, the Acme, the Flower, the Root, the 
Seed, of any Hierarchy ; and particularly for us of that Hier- 
archy which is for us the highest our Kosmical Universe, of 
which we have spoken. 
 
Now the Sanskrit words Mukti or Moksha : the former comes 
from the Sanskrit root much, meaning " to release ", " to set 
free'', as said. Moksha from the Sanskrit Moksh, with an almost 
identical meaning, and probably a desiderative of the same root 
much. The meaning is that when a spirit, a monad, or a spiritual 
radical, has so grown in manifestation that it has first become a 
man, and is set free interiorly, inwardly, and from a man has 
become a Planetary Spirit or Dhyan-Chohan, or Lord of Medita- 
tion, and has gone still higher, to become interiorly a Brahman, 
and from a Brahman the Parabrahman for its Hierarchy, then it 
is absolutely perfected, free, released : perfected for that great 
period of time which to us seems almost an eternity, so long is it, 
virtually incomputable by the human intellect. Now this is the 
" Absolute " ; limited in comparison with things still more 
immense, still more sublime ; but so far as we can think of it, 
"released " or " freed " from the chains or bonds of material 
existence. 
 
When the great period of the Universal Kosmic Pralaya 
occurs, and the universe is indrawn (following the Oriental 
metaphor) into the bosom of Parabrahman, what then happens ? 
The spiritual entities then enter into their Para-Nirvana, which 
means exactly for them what is meant for us when we speak of 
the death of the human being. They are drawn by their spiritual 
gravitational attractions into still higher Hierarchies of being, 
into still higher spiritual realms, therein still higher rising and 
growing and learning and living ; while the lower elements of 
the Kosmos, the body of the universe (even as does our physical 
body when the change called death comes, Death, the " Twin 
Sister of Life ", to follow our Teacher's beautiful metaphor, her 
beautiful trope of speech), .follow their own particular gravita- 
tional attractions : the physical body to dust ; the vital breath 
to the vital breath of the Kosmos ; dust to dust, breath to 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 153
 
breath : so with the other Kosmic principles, as with man's 
principles at his decease : the kama of our nature to the universal 
reservoir of the kamic organism ; our manas into its Dhyan- 
Chohanic rest ; our monads into their own higher life. Then 
when the clock of eternity points once again for the Kosmos to 
the hour of " coming forth into light " which is " death " for 
the spiritual being, as death for us is life for the inner man when 
the Manvantara of material life comes around again (the period 
of spiritual death for the Kosmos is the material life of manifesta- 
tion) then in the distant abysms of space and time the Kosmic 
Life-Centers are aroused into activity once more : first the stage 
of the nebular fiery cloud; then the whirling nebula; then 
the spiral nebula ; then the ringed nebula ; then the sun and the 
planets, and finally the human and other beings that grow on the 
last ; each one of these planets having its seven Rounds to fulfil 
in the forthcoming Planetary Periods, time after time, during 
endless life. Endless hope and experience lie in this marvellous 
scheme ; but always at every step on the Path there is a dividing 
of the ways for those Entities which have attained moral respon- 
sibility, an up and a down, for the " moment of choice " is really 
continuous. 
 
At the present period (for our great Maha-manvantara we have 
lived somewhat more than half of the maha-manvantaric cycle) 
we are, for the Maha-manvantara of our Kosmical Solar System, 
at the point where matter has already reached its ultimate degree 
of development in our Hierarchy. We have lived, according to 
the ancient numerical teaching, one hundred and fifty-five 
trillion, five hundred and twenty odd billion solar years. One-half 
of our Maha-manvantara is gone ; and there still remain nearly 
one hundred and fifty-five trillion, five hundred and twenty 
billion solar years. More accurately, we have slowly passed the 
actual lowest point of the great Universal Kosmical Cycle. That 
lowest point, where matter reached its greatest degree of physical 
manifestation for us, for our great Wave of Life was when the 
moon had reached the middle point of its Fourth Round, which 
was ages and aeons before it became our physical satellite. The 
ancient teachings are that as the great Parabrahman of our 
hierarchical System has one hundred (Divine) Years of life to 
live, each year having three hundred and sixty Days, and each 
Year being divided into twelve months, and as Fifty Divine 
Years have passed, therefore on this planet Terra, on this Earth, 
we have attained to or reached the first (Divine) Day of the 
first Divine Month of the ascending cycle of the second Period of 
Fifty Divine Years. We have, then, come down the cycles for 
the last one hundred fifty-five trillion", five hundred twenty odd 
billion years, cycling down, in and through our Hierarchy, to the 
 
 
 
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lowest point of it in the moon ; and have, since that point was 
reached ages agone, slowly and painfully begun our climb upwards 
again towards the Ineffable, the Summit of our hierarchical 
System, our " Absolute ". Please remember very carefully that 
we use this word "Absolute" only in the sense and meaning 
hereinbefore explained. 
 
How did the " Absolute " become the " Absolute " ? By 
chance ? There is no " chance ". There is nothing but endless 
life and endless consciousness and endless duration, working 
according to the Principles and Elements of inherent nature, 
which is called Swabhava in our Sanskrit works. The root- 
meaning of this word Swabhava is " self-generation ", " self- 
becoming ". We generate ourselves throughout all times : give 
ourselves our own bodies ; climb our own ladders, step by step ; 
seek our own hells and find our own heavens. And, the whole 
purpose, the whole effort, of universal evolution, according to the 
teaching of this Ancient Wisdom, is this : raising personality 
into Individuality ; substance into divinity ; matter into spirit ; 
grossness into purity. 
 
Whence then came the " Absolute ", the " supreme self ", or 
" spirit " or Paramatman, of which we are sparks ? By growth 
from within outwards ; and from without inwards. It was once 
in incalculable aeons gone by, a Man. Think of the sublimity 
involved in this teaching ; consider the almost endless aeons of 
the past ; and that what in its far, far-away origin was a spark 
of divinity, a spark of another and former " Absolute ", is now 
our " God ", our Paramatman, our " Supreme Self ", of which 
we are verily the children, and " in which we move and live and 
have our being ". What is the main lesson that we may draw 
from this ? What was the psychological mystery hinted at by 
us in our last meeting, and to which allusion was then but slightly 
made, because the Teacher had to close our evening's study before 
we had ended our theme ? It is this and we touch but lightly 
upon it here, because it belongs to a higher degree than this 
present one. Our human souls are gods in embryo ; our human 
souls were formerly animal souls ; our present animal souls will 
in a future manvantara become human souls. Our human souls 
in a future manvantara will become Monads. Man, if he make the 
manvantaric race successfully, is destined to be the composite 
Logos of a forthcoming Hierarchy ; as he now in fact is, in the 
inferior Hierarchy of himself, the Logos of the quasi-infinitude 
of less beings composing his personal nature. Reflect long over 
this mystery, wonderful, sublime ! 
 
Are these teachings not thought-compelling and wonderful ? 
No wonder we have held them secret and sacred in the Ancient 
Wisdom. Why ? For many reasons. First, because they 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 155
 
could not be understood without the necessary spiritual and intel- 
lectual training ; and yet it is remarkable, it is truly astonishing, 
how often and how, in so many ways, we see allusions to them in 
the ancient exoteric teachings of the various religions. Remember 
that " exoteric ", in the ancient religions, does not mean " false ". 
The word merely means those teachings for which the key has 
not been openly given. 
 
I have noticed and read in some of the translations from the 
Welsh made for us by our own Theosophical Welsh scholar, 
Professor Kenneth Morris, teachings that I believe to be taken 
from the ancient Welsh books, which have caused me to gasp 
in amazement, that these teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, so 
sacred and occult, should have been so boldly put forth by the 
ancient bards in open language. But I looked again, and I saw 
how a Master-hand had worked, disguising and hiding while 
openly teaching. The arrangement, the very beauty, of the 
imagery used, misled the too inquiring and the too clever mind. 
But for him who has the key, as we students have, it is easy to 
follow. Likewise have I found the same method not only in the 
wonderful Celtic teachings, but also in the teachings of ancient 
Egypt, and of other countries. 
 
The Teacher has told me that at a former meeting I touched too 
slightly upon the " much vexed question ", as some people call 
it, of good and evil. That is a subject which properly comes at the 
close of the studies concerning " Purgatory ", " Hells and 
Heavens ", which end this evening, and which we shall now 
briefly treat of. Christian thinkers have found it impossible to 
solve this problem satisfactorily to any thinking and reflective 
mind. But though it is to them and others a " much vexed 
question ", to a student of the Ancient Wisdom it is really very 
simple. How can a Christian who believes that his God, that his 
Creator of all that is, One who therefore must be likewise the 
creator of evil how can he reconcile this necessary conclusion 
with his other teachings concerning his Deity, for instance that 
God is all good, and from Him proceeds necessarily therefore 
nothing but good ? Is evil then the work of the Devil ? What 
child would not then ask, Whence then the Devil and the evil 
proceeding from him ? From God ? But is God not all good ? 
Hence the inevitable deduction that God is either not all-good 
or not all-powerful. Evil would not be, could not be, by their 
theory, unless a fruit of God's wisdom, because if the case were 
otherwise, it would exist without the divine permission, i.e., 
contrary to God's will, which ex hypothesi is impossible, since 
God is all-powerful. The logical difficulty under their theory is 
complete and unanswerable by it. 
 
Now what then really is the origin of what is called " good " 
 
 
 
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and " evil " ? The explanation lies in the teaching we have 
spoken of more clearly this evening than previously. Good and 
evil arise out of the conflicting action of the multimyriad wills in 
manifestation. Good is relative ; there is no absolute good. Evil 
is relative ; there is no absolute evil. If good were absolute, its op- 
posite, its shadow, or nether pole evil, must also be absolute. Both, 
however, are relative things. They offset and balance in Nature 
the one the other, like all other " pairs of opposites ", such as 
heat and cold, high and low, day and night, north and south, etc. 
They arise, as just said, out of the conflict of wills, conscious and 
unconscious. All the innumerable, multitudinous beings in mani- 
festation, are, each one of them, more or less " selfish ", more or 
less seeking its own, hungering and thirsting for sensation of 
various kinds. Even spiritual evil exists ; and there are high 
agents of " spiritual wickedness ", of which the Christian Apostle 
Paul has spoken, forming the opposite agencies to the high 
agents of good. The latter ones, agents of spiritual wickedness, 
are called by us the " Brothers of the Shadow ", and the others 
are called by us the " Brothers of the Light ". The Brothers of 
the Shadow work in and with matter, for material and selfish 
purposes. The Brothers of the Light work in and with Nature 
for spirit, for impersonal purposes. They contrast one with 
another. 
 
These two bodies represent two fundamental Paths in Nature, 
the one the Right-Hand Path, the other the Left, and are so called 
in the Ancient Occultism. The Sanskrit name for one, the " Left- 
Hand Path ", is Pratyeka-Yana. Ydna means " Path " or 
" Road ", and also " Vehicle " ; and we can translate Pratyeka 
in this connexion by the paraphrase " every one for himself ". 
Our first Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, as you will well remember, 
has spoken of the Pratyeka-Buddhas, high and in one sense holy 
beings indeed, but craving spiritual wisdom, spiritual enlighten- 
ment, for themselves alone, selfishly, in indifference to the sorrow 
and pain of the world, yet so pure withal that they are actually 
Buddhas of a kind. 
 
The other body follow the Path which in Sanskrit is called 
Amrita-Ydna, the Immortal Vehicle or Path of Immortality. 
 
The one, the former, is the path of the personality ; the other, 
the latter, is the path of the individuality ; the one is the path 
of matter ; the other is the path of spirit ; the one leads down- 
ward, the other Path loses itself in the ineffable glories of conscious 
immortality in " eternity ". 
 
Now these are the two bodies of entities representing the two 
sides of Nature, and the conflicts or oppositions of these two 
sides of Nature, together with the battles of will with will, of the 
hosts of beings in manifested existence, produce the so-called evil 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 157
 
in the world, arising out of the selfish activities of the inferior 
or less developed or evolved entities. Selfishness, therefore, is the 
root of all evil. The old teaching is true, and that is all there is 
to it. On the highest planes of being, there is neither good nor 
evil ; there is neither life in our sense, nor death ; there is neither 
beginning nor end of personal action of any kind. But there is 
what is called in the wonderful ancient Brahmanical teachings, 
Sat, Chit, Ananda ; Sat meaning " pure being " ; Chit, " pure 
thought " ; Ananda, " bliss " ; and this is the state of what one 
may call the " Absolute ". 
 
In closing our study this evening, let us remember that the 
Kosmic work of the Monad, the spiritual radical, is so important 
that we refer to it again here. It itself can evolve only by raising 
inferior souls and psychological vehicles into self-conscious 
entities, which thus in turn themselves become Monads. THIS 
 
IS THE GENERALIZED AND ENTIRE PLAN OF EVOLUTION ON ALL 
 
PLANES. This is our Great Work. This is our high destiny. Our 
Supreme Self, our Paramatman, our Supreme Monad, our Highest 
Self, the Summit of our Hierarchy, is doing that work con- 
sciously ; we as self-conscious humans are doing it in our smaller 
way ; and this is the whole plan of manifested being, the general- 
ized outline of kosmic evolution, as said just now. No man 
can live unto himself alone ; no man can rise to spirit alone. It 
is of the very essence of Nature, that he must, willy nilly, carry 
with him, up or down, innumerable other entities and inferior 
selves, along the upward or the downward path. 
 
Now a few words more on a very important subject. The 
Ancient Wisdom tells us that there are seven doctrinal Keys to 
Wisdom and future Initiations, With the Teacher's instruction 
and permission, during the studies which we began last January, 
of those seven Keys we have briefly alluded to five. What are 
they ? These seven keys, the ancients called the Sapta-Ratndni, 
the " Seven Jewels " or " Gems ", or " Treasures ", and they are 
as follows. First, that operation of Nature using Nature in the 
sense of the absolute, total aggregation of all that is : inside and 
outside, backwards and forwards, up and down, right and left, 
everything, everywhere that is, that operation of Nature 
which in Man manifests as Reimbodiment, or Reincarnation, and 
which can be briefly expressed as the change of his vehicle or 
body when his inner state or condition changes ; for by the 
operations of Nature he is finally called to gravitate towards, or 
must go to, another state or condition and place. This is called 
death, but it is another form of life. There is the first Key. 
Apply it to our teachings in its many and various reaches. 
 
The second Key is the doctrine of Action and Reaction, called 
Karma. These first two Keys we have but briefly touched upon 
 
M 
 
 
 
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in these preparatory studies. In future studies we shall find it 
necessary to go into them more in detail. 
 
The third Key is the doctrine of interpenetrating Beings or 
Existences, otherwise called the doctrine of Hierarchies, which 
are also inseparable and universally interpenetrating Planes or 
Spheres. EVERYTHING EXISTS IN EVERYTHING ELSE. There are, 
in strict truth, no absolute divisions, anywhere, neither high nor 
low, neither within nor without, neither right nor wrong, nor up 
nor down. Fundamentally, there is naught but an eternal Is 
and an eternal Now. As the ancient Stoics said so finely, Every- 
thing interpenetrates everything else. The very atmosphere we 
breathe, for instance, is vibrant and living with the multitudinous 
Lives ; they are in the air we breathe ; the monadic essences or 
lives are in the air we breathe, in our bones, in our blood, in our 
flesh, in everything. Think of it, then ; let your thought go 
free, release yourself inwardly. Let your imagination carry 
you into the wonders that these Keys open up to our minds. 
Conscientious study of the Ancient Wisdom and a pure and 
unselfish life will be your unfailing guides. 
 
The fourth Key is the doctrine of Swabhava, the doctrine of the 
essential characteristic of any entity, of any spiritual radical ; 
the doctrine also of self-generation or self -becoming, in manifesta- 
tion, thus affirming one's responsibility in and for oneself. This is 
the most abstruse, the most mystic, of the four Keys, hitherto 
mentioned, for actually it is the Key to the other three Keys ! 
 
The fifth is the key to self-conscious Being and Existence, a 
subject to which we have alluded this evening and also in our 
last study ; for the entire aim, method, and operation of Universal 
Being is the raising of the inferior to the Superior ; and this 
Great Work cannot ever be achieved by following the " Path 
for Oneself ", the Pratyeka-Ydna, but by following the Amrita- 
Ydna, the Immortal Vehicle, or the Path of self-consciousness in 
Immortality. Make your thought free, I repeat ; let it go out 
released ! 
 
As regards the other two Keys, I ought to say, perhaps, that 
they belong to high degrees of Initiation. I know but very little 
of the seventh. The Teacher has told me almost nothing ; and 
my studies have taught me very little about it, so closely is it hid. 
I know this, however, that understanding and use of this seventh 
Key can be reached by very few men on this earth. As regards 
the sixth Key, we are taught that it can be reached by great 
effort in the higher degrees of Initiation, the lower degrees of 
which we all have the opportunity of undergoing in the Teacher's 
presence. 
 
This evening closes the last of our preparatory studies. We 
shall go to higher themes in the future. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XVI
 
AXMA-VIDVA : HOW THE ONE BECOMES THE MANY. " LOST SOULS " 
 
AND "SOULLESS BEINGS ". MAN, A COMPOSITE BEING: NO 
ABIDING PRINCIPLE IN MAN. 
 
Thus, therefore, the doctrine of the Egyptians concerning principles, proceed- 
ing from on high as far as to the last of things, begins from one principle and 
descends to a multitude which is governed by this one ; and everywhere an 
indefinite nature is under the dominion of a certain definite measure, and of the 
supreme unical cause of all things. 
 
IAMBLICHUS, on The Mysteries, Section viii, 3. (THOMAS TAYLOR.) 
 
. . . But at the close of the minor cycle, after the completion of all the seven 
Rounds, there awaits us no other mercy but the cup of good deeds, of merit, 
outweighing that of evil deeds and demerit in the scales of Retributive Justice. 
Bad, irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from its fifth Prin- 
ciple, and has to be annihilated, to disappear in the Eighth Sphere. A mite, as 
I say, collected from the Personal Ego suffices to save him from the dreary Fate. 
Not so after the completion of the great cycle : either a long Nirvana of Bliss 
(unconscious though it be in the, and according to, your crude conceptions) ; 
after which life as a Dhyan-Chohan for a whole Manvantara, or else " Avichi- 
Nirvdna " and a Manvantara of misery and horror as a you must not hear 
the word, nor I pronounce or write it. But " those " have nought to do with 
the mortals who pass through the seven spheres. The collective Karma of a 
future Planetary is as lovely as the collective Karma of a is terrible. 
Enough. I have said too much already. 
 
The Mahatma Letters, p. 171. 
 
E open our evening studies, taking them up to- 
night at the point where we left them last summer, 
by reading extracts from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, 
pages 206-7-8. 
 
There are four grades of initiation mentioned in exoteric works. . . . 
Three further higher grades have to be conquered by the Arhan who 
would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. . . . The Arhats of 
the " fire-mist " of the 7th rung are but one remove from the Root- 
Base of their Hierarchy the highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial 
chain. This " Root-Base " has a name which can only be translated 
by several compound words into English " the ever-living-human- 
Banyan." This " Wondrous Being " descended from a " high region/ 1 
they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of 
the sexes of the Third Race. 
 
... It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous 
Being, called the " Initiator/' and after him a group of semi-divine 
and semi-human beings. " Set apart " in Archaic genesis for certain 
purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the 
highest Dhynis . . . to form the nursery for future human adepts, 
on this earth and during the present cycle. These " Sons of Will and 
 
 
 
w 
 
 
 
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Yoga " born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is ex- 
plained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind. 
 
The " BEING " just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the 
Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known 
Sages and Hierophants . . . have branched off. As objective man, 
he is the mysterious (to the profane the ever invisible) yet ever- 
present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially 
among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he 
who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who 
holds spiritual sway over the initiated, Adepts throughout the whole 
world. He is, as said, the " Nameless One " who has so many names, 
and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the 
" Initiator ", called the ' ( GREAT SACRIFICE ". For, sitting at the thres- 
hold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which 
he will not cross ; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this 
life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen 
post ? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which 
he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not 
know aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its heaven ? Because the 
lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to their home are never 
sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless desert 
of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show 
the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a volun- 
tary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating 
himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has 
sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect 
may profit by the GREAT SACRIFICE. 
 
We have here read one of the most sublime passages in this won- 
derful book ; and the beautiful words that we have heard read from 
our Teacher's manuscript, lead up to them in a manner which is 
appropriate and which opens the way for what we have to say 
this evening. 
 
It is hoped to comment upon and illustrate, if possible, the 
matters spoken of in what we have just read from The Secret 
Doctrine. We cannot do this altogether directly ; the subject is 
too profound and no sufficient preparatory study has been made ; 
but we can do so indirectly to some extent. It is necessary to do 
so to some degree because this sublime subject is the seventh of 
the seven Jewels (counting upwards) which, you will remember, 
we spoke of in one of our late meetings. You will remember that 
these seven Jewels or Gems or Treasures were given as follows, 
counting from below upwards : The first or lowest is Rebirth, 
or rather Reimbodiment, better still, perhaps, Regeneration. 
In Sanskrit it is called Punarjanman ; and in Greek it is called 
Palingenesis ; both words representing practically the same 
thought : the first element in each word meaning " again " or 
" anew ", and the second element in each meaning " generation " 
or " birth " " coming into being ". 
 
 
 


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The second Jewel, counting upwards, is the doctrine or fact in 
Nature called Karman, the doctrine of " Results ". The third 
Jewel, counting again upwards, is the doctrine of " Hierarchies ", 
of which the Sanskrit term is Lokas. The fourth, again upwards, 
is the doctrine of " Swabhava ", which we have studied some- 
what, as you will remember, in former meetings, this Sanskrit 
word having two general philosophical meanings : first, self- 
begetting, self-generation, self -becoming, the general idea being 
that there is no merely mechanical or soulless activity of Nature 
in bringing us into being for we brought ourselves forth, in and 
through and by Nature, of which we are a part of the conscious 
forces, and are our own children. 
 
The second meaning is that each and every entity that exists is 
the result of what he actually is in his own higher nature ; he brings 
forth that which he is in himself interiorly, nothing else. A par- 
ticular Race, for instance, remains and is that Race as long as the 
particular Race-swabhava remains in the racial Seed and mani- 
fests thus ; and so forth. Likewise is the case the same with a 
man, a tree, a star, a god what not ! 
 
The fifth Jewel, counting still upwards, is the doctrine of 
" Evolution ", which we have already very briefly studied in the 
Theosophical sense. This esoteric teaching is not the doctrine 
of transformism, which is, properly speaking, the correct name 
for the materialistic doctrine of Darwin, and of the Frenchman 
Lamarck from whom, doubtless, he drew the idea ; but the 
theosophical idea of unfolding, or unwrapping ; a doctrine with 
its corollary, " Involution " expressed by two words, these 
Sanskrit words being first, Pravritti, meaning the unfolding-forth 
of the spirit-entity into matter, or of matter-lives into spirit- 
entities, as the case may be ; and the other word is Nirvritti, 
meaning the infolding of spirit-entities into matter, or of matter- 
lives into spirit-entities, as the case may be. 
 
Now the sixth and the seventh Treasures, or Jewels, were 
touched upon very slightly at one of our recent meetings. We 
venture now to add a few more ideas to what was said before. 
The sixth Jewel is the doctrine expressed here also by two com- 
pound words of contrasted sense : first Amrita-Yana, a Sanskrit 
word meaning " Immortality- vehicle ", " carriage " or " bearer ", 
or rather " Path ", of Immortality, and referring to the individual 
man ; and the other word is Pratyeka-Yana, a Sanskrit word 
meaning (in paraphrase) the " Path of each one for himself ". 
It is impossible to translate this latter compound word into 
English by a single word. Both the idea and the vocable do not 
exist in English, It may perhaps be approached by the Theosophic 
idea latent in the word personality ; and the mysterious relation of 
Individuality to personality is included in these two compound 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
" catch-words " or technical terms ; and therefrom hangs an 
entire doctrine or department of thought of the wonderful 
philosophy of Occultism, the Esoteric Doctrine. With it as 
also with the seventh Jewel are connected closely the doctrines 
of the Ancient Wisdom relating to the Monads of the various 
classes : Whence they came, How they came, yes, and Why they 
came. 
 
We are touching upon all these profound subjects very lightly 
at present, because they will all recur again and again in future 
studies, and will in due course be more fully illustrated and 
explained more clearly as far as we may go in this Group. 
 
Now, the last or the seventh Jewel, counting upwards, is called 
Atma-Vidya, literally meaning the " Knowledge of the Self " ; this 
compound is only a catchword as are the others ; but it imbodies 
and hides a doctrine which is truly sublime. You will remember 
that the present speaker, in connexion with this seventh Jewel, 
stated that he knew little, or almost nothing, of it. This phrase 
was badly chosen, and perhaps produced a misleading impression. 
It was not the intention, if so, to give that impression. It 
is well understood that any earnest and devoted student of this 
Esoteric School can understand at least appropriate parts of this 
mysterious doctrine something at least the degree of his 
apprehension thereof depending upon his inner state of enlighten- 
ment, his fidelity to his Teachers, his loyalty to the principles of 
the Esoteric School, and his ability in understanding and pene- 
trating somewhat into the depth of the teachings of this School. 
 
But while this is the case with the students, each one according 
to his capacity, others higher than we are can understand more 
of it ; naturally, the Teachers understand more of it than we do. 
Probably, however, there are not ten men to-day on earth who 
can understand this doctrine in its fullness. It is a Wonder- 
teaching that even our Masters have probably not solved utterly. 
The Masters of the Masters know more of it than the latter do, 
i.e., the Chohans, as they are called " Chohans ", a Tibetan word 
meaning " Lord ", used in the sense of Preceptor, or Teacher. 
But the main and essential meaning of this wondrous doctrine, 
running all through it, is this, which is its keynote : How THE 
ONE BECOMES THE MANY : and this is the most difficult problem 
that the human spirit has ever attempted to solve ! 
 
Take as an analogy, for instance, the Monad. To speak of the 
Monad as " descending " into matter, is to speak wrongly, though 
constantly this phrase is used, because it is a convenient method 
of expression ; and if this fact is understood, it is probably per- 
missible as a phrase. But actually, when we come to study the 
facts, very soon we see and we know that the Monad does not 
" descend " into matter. Similarly, the One, though it is appro- 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 163
 
priate and convenient to speak of it as " becoming the Many ", 
never becomes many, remains eternally itself, the Summit of the 
Hierarchy, its Root-base, which is this Wondrous Being, the 
Supreme Initiator, on whatever plane it may be placed. Yet 
the Many flow forth from It ; and It is their Supreme Self, their 
Param&tman. 
 
This, then, is the general theme of our discourse this evening ; 
but because we have no time now to make a complete resume of 
our studies during the course of last Spring and Winter, the 
Teacher has permitted me this evening to go over very shortly 
a few doctrines which were touched upon in former studies, for the 
sake of brushing up our recollection of them. The first one that 
we turn back to, then, is the doctrine of Swabhdva, as contrasted 
in meaning with the ideas involved in the kin-expression, Swa- 
bhavat. This difference in meaning, which is very great, is not 
generally understood, and the two words often have been sadly 
confused by students. They are very different in meaning, 
though both come from the same Sanskrit root Bhu : Swabhdva ; 
Swabhavat. Let me tell you here that the Sanskrit sound repre- 
sented in English as " a ", is pronounced like the " u " in but or 
tub ; but when the " a " is written as " a ", with the circumflex 
accent, it is pronounced a h, as in father. This difference of pro- 
nunciation is very important. 
 
Now Swabhdva means what has before been explained, this 
evening and also at former meetings. As just said, these two 
words are both nouns derived from the same Sanskrit word B/wJ, 
meaning " to become " not "to be " in the passive sense so 
much, but " to become ", to " grow into " something. The quasi- 
pronominal prefix Swa y means " self" ; hence the noun means 
" self-becoming ", " self-generation ", " self-growing " into some- 
thing. Yet the essential or fundamental or integral Self, as said 
before, does not do so. Like the monads, like the One, the Self 
Fundamental sends down a Ray from itself, as the sun sends a 
ray from itself into the darkness of matter ; and it is this spiritual 
Ray which " descends " into matter ; self-generating or self- 
becoming a self-conscious entity in its turn ; the solar light, the 
sun itself, remaining ever in its own integrity or ens, never 
descending, never commingling integrally as an entity, with the 
multitudinous hosts of matter-lives, its own children ! 
 
Now, Swabhavat is called by H. P. Blavatsky, " Father- 
Mother ". It is a state or condition of Kosmic consciousness- 
substance, where spirit and matter, which you know are funda- 
mentally one, no longer are dual as in manifestation, but one : 
that which is neither manifested matter, nor manifested spirit, 
alone, but both are the primeval Unity ; spiritual AkaSa ; where 
matter merges into spirit, and both now being really one, are called 
 
 
 
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" Father-Mother ", the spiritualization, so to say, of spirit- 
substance. See how we have to hunt for adequately expressive 
words in our wretchedly imperfect European languages ! The 
Sanskrit word expresses the idea, if you understand it, instantly. 
 
These two nouns, then, as you see, are from the same root, and 
the two words are closely connected in origin, but they are not 
the same in meaning at all. Swabhdva is the self-generation of 
anything, of any entity, of any monad. Swabhavat is the Father- 
Mother, the kalpic akaic Spirit-Substance, never descending 
from its own state or condition, or from its own plane, but the 
quasi-infinite reservoir of being, of consciousness, of light, of life, 
and the source of what science, in our day, so ridiculously calls 
the " Forces " of Nature Universal. 
 
These deeply mystical and very profound themes we shall have 
to go into more fully in the future ; but for the present it will 
suffice to remember that Swabhavat is Kosmical Spirit-Substance, 
the Reservoir of Being and of Beings. The northern Buddhists 
call it Swabhavat, more mystically Adi-Buddhi " Primeval 
Buddhi " ; the Brahmanical scriptures call it " Akaa " ; and 
the Hebrew Old Testament refers to it as the Kosmic 
" Waters ". 
 
Now the next subject which needed a little illustration, was the 
very solemn question of " lost souls ", as contrasted with " soul- 
less " beings. It may be well to say that these three or four 
subjects are briefly again touched upon this evening because it 
has come to attention that these matters have been mistaken 
by some of our hearers. There is an immense difference between 
" lost souls " and " soulless " beings. A " lost soul " is one in 
whom the " golden thread " uniting the lower thinking entity 
with its Higher Self is completely ruptured, broken off from its 
higher essence or root, its true Self. The case here is hopeless, 
virtually ; there can be no more union for that lower self, which, 
at the moment of final rupture, commences sinking immediately 
into the " Eighth Sphere ", the so-called " Planet of Death ". 
A " soulless " being, a " soulless " man, is one in whom the 
thread has been worn, so to speak, very thin ; or, rather, where 
the spiritual and impersonal aspirations in this life and in other 
lives have been so few, the attempts to unite with the higher 
part of the self have been so weak, that slowly the spiritual ray 
has been withdrawing itself from the lower part ; but it is not 
yet ruptured completely. It still remains ; and even one single 
holy and impersonal aspiration may cause reunion. It is not a 
" lost soul " ; but so far as the human entity is practically con- 
cerned, it is properly called a " soulless " being, for the entity 
lives almost wholly in his lower principles. " Soulless " beings 
furnish those cases which are popularly spoken of among men as 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 165
 
" men and women without conscience ". They seem to have no 
moral sense, although their mental and psychical faculties may 
still be strong and keen. 
 
These are the worst cases of " soulless " human beings. Other 
cases are those of men and women who merely do not seem to 
care for anything that is good and beautiful and true, noble and 
high and lofty ; their desires are of the earth, earthly ; their 
passions are strong and their intuitions are weak. These cases 
are very common indeed ; so much so that our first great Teacher, 
H. P. Blavatsky, says in her I sis Unveiled that we " shoulder 
soulless men " every day of our lives. Look into the faces of the 
men and the women whom you see on the streets. Remember 
that our present Teacher has been telling us for years about the 
men and women whom she sees or has met and talked with in 
her functions as Teacher and philanthropist. Go to town ; go 
anywhere ; go into the streets of a great city. Look even into the 
eyes of those of your own fireside, perhaps ; I do not allude, 
necessarily, to any one here ; but I am speaking generally. The 
situation actually is a terrible one. There is a full possibility that 
a weak-souled human being, perhaps beginning merely in giving 
way to the lusts of the will, and to the passions of the mind, and 
to the instincts of the lower nature, may, little by little, but 
inevitably and surely, starve out, or wear away by attrition, all 
the attachments of the higher Ray which bind it into the lower 
nature, and which, if they were fully strong and active, would 
make the man (or woman) a walking god among us ; verily, a 
god in the flesh. Instead of this, in the worst cases of the 
" soulless " being, you would have before you little more than a 
human shell (alive, but spiritually almost dead) in the man or the 
woman, as the case may be. A " soulless " being was once an 
ensouled man or woman ; who, before the former state, had the 
same chance successfully to run the race that we all have. This is 
indeed a solemn verity, and one which our first Teacher has told 
us should be taught and reiterated in our teaching, because it is 
truly helpful as a warning. Not one of us is absolutely safe at this 
midway stage of our evolutionary journey ; for not one of us 
knows what he is capable of, either for good or ill. I have 
listened to our Teacher speaking, hinting at these truths, and I 
have read her words in print and in manuscript, and I have 
wondered sometimes how many have caught the thought her 
warning. 
 
There is the truth ; and it is no trifling matter. Is there any 
reason for wonder that all our teachers have told us repeatedly 
that every teaching that is given in our School is founded upon 
what men commonly call " ethical principles of conduct ", and 
must be studied in that light ? It is the only thing that, put into 
 
 
 
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sincere practice, will save us surely ; for these principles come 
first and in the middle and at the end of our studies. 
 
Now, in future studies we shall have to trace to the end the 
destiny of these two classes of beings ; but it may be well to say 
a few words now of the fate of the " lost soul ". There are two 
general classes of these : the lower, but not the worse ; and the 
higher, the worse. In order to make the meaning of this very 
difficult subject more clear, I shall have to go into a new but 
collateral thought, which is the key. MAN is A COMPOSITE 
BEING. On this fact of human nature reposes a most wonderful 
truth which is at the foundation of the marvellous psychological 
doctrines of the Lord Gautama-Buddha. It is as follows, a 
corollary of the immediately preceding statement. There is no 
abiding principle whatsoever in " man ". Fix this like steel into 
the core of your minds. It will save you from myriad dangers 
if rightly understood, " Man " is not his higher nature ; " man " 
is that which is called the " human nature ". Do you realize how 
greatly men and women live in what the Hebrews call the Nefesh, 
i.e., live in their astral souls ? We do so realize it, as students of 
this School, probably every one of us. To a certain extent such 
unison with our lower principles is necessary ; but to follow the 
beautiful old simile of the ancient philosophers, the astral soul 
should be our vehicle, our <( bearer " ; so to say it should be 
made a " horse " to carry us on our journey ; or, to change the 
figure, a chariot in which we should ride ; a " horse " which we 
must drive. We, the inner Self, should govern and drive our 
astral steed ; but should never allow it to control us. 
 
In order to make this more clear, examine the diagram opposite. 
You will notice that man's seven Principles and Elements 
are divided into three separate parts : a lowest triad, purely 
mortal and perishable ; an intermediate duad, psychical, com- 
posite, and mostly mortal : Kama-manas, the " man" proper, or 
" human nature " ; and a Higher Duad, Atma-buddhi ; immortal, 
imperishable ; the Monad. At the death of the human being, this 
Higher Duad carries away with it all the spiritual essence, the 
aroma, of the lower or intermediate duad ; and then the Higher 
Duad is the Higher Self, the Reincarnating Individuality, or 
Egoic Monad. Man's ordinary consciousness in life at this stage 
of evolution is almost wholly in the lower or intermediate duad ; 
when he raises his consciousness to become one with the Higher 
Duad, he becomes a Mahatman, a Master. 
 
Now this lower part of the nature is composite. There is 
nothing permanent per se in it whatever ; as an entity, nothing 
abides. It is ordinary " man " as he is to-day, and in him there 
is no abiding self-principle whatsoever. If you fasten your 
thoughts and your affections to the things of the lower nature, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 167
 
you will de facto, of necessity, follow it, and become it, as outlined 
and shown in and by the doctrine of Swabhava. As a man thinks, 
so is he ! Now the Hebrew words in this old saying, which is 
taken from Proverbs, Chapter 23, verse 7, are Englished : " As he 
thinketh in his heart (Nefesh), so is he ", but the Hebrew word 
nefesh used here really means " As he thinks in his lower nature, 
that he is (becomes] ". A Sanskrit commentator, Yaska (Nirukta, 
x, 17), in his glossary on a certain Vedic text, has the following 
remark, exactly to the point on the same subject : Yad yad 
 
 
 
fe 
 
h 
 
 
 
ATMAN 
BUDDHI 
 
 
 
Higher Duad. Monad 
 
per se. 
 
Immortal. Divine Soul 
 
when united with the 
 
" aroma " from lower 
 
duad. 
 
 
 
 
525 
 
< 
 
a 
 
 
 
2 
3 
 
 
 
MANAS 
 
KAMA 
 
 
 
LINGA-ARIRA 
 
STHULA-$ARlRA 
 
 
 
Lower or Intermediate 
Duad. " Man " or 
" human being ". Con- 
ditionally immortal. 
Astral soul. 
 
 
 
Lowest triad. Body. 
Mortal. Physical 
"soul". 
 
 
 
rdpam kdmayate devatd, tat tad devatd bhavati, that is : Whatever 
body (or form, or shape] a divine being (divinity] longs for (that is, 
wants, desires, i.e., gives himself up to], that very thing the divine 
being becomes. Here is the secret of the whole thing. We are 
what we make ourselves, our own children. Nothing but that. 
And, if our thoughts are upwards, we come finally into the com- 
panionship of the divinities ; and, before reaching them, come 
into the companionship of the Holy Teachers, because we make 
ourselves such, we become like them ; and they, in turn, answer 
the call. 
But if, on the contrary, our thoughts are running downwards, 
 
 
 
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and we wear away the " silver thread " or the " golden thread " 
which binds us to our Higher Nature, we then naturally gravitate 
or go downwards : down, down, down ; until at last the final 
rupture of the Golden Chain or Thread comes, and the soul 
becomes the " lost soul ", a lost astral soul ; and its destiny is as 
follows. There are two classes of this kind of soul, as remarked 
before. The first class is the lower but not the worse ; the first 
class, then, consists of those human beings on this planet (or on 
any other planet which possesses a humanity similar to ours) 
who through native weaknesses of soul and from lack of spiritual 
attraction upwards, go to pieces after a certain interval of time, 
long or short as the case may be : the lower part of the nature 
being composite and impermanent and non-enduring, following 
" natural laws " finally simply breaks up and vanishes much as 
the human body dies and decays. That is the end of it ; it is 
finally annihilated. 
 
The monad of such a soul, meanwhile, there being nothing, no 
" aroma " of aspiration or yearning upwards, to take away from 
that life or from those lives because, mind you, it is perfectly 
true that " lost souls " as well as soul-beings can reincarnate. 
They can indeed. There are children born " lost souls " ; as a 
fact it is very rare, perhaps ; but the fact can and does take 
place the Monad, I say, of such a " lost soul ", in due course of 
time " reincarnates " again ; and the " lost soul " episode is like 
a blank page in its " book of Lives ". 
 
Now the second class, and the worse by far, are those in which 
the soul is vitally strong. They are those who are spiritually 
evil, paradoxical as it may sound ; those which the Christian 
teachers have spoken of in the New Testament as beings of 
spiritual wickedness and iniquity. One may wonder how it can 
come to pass that a being which has ruptured the Golden Thread 
can still have spiritual qualities or parts. That is one of the dark 
and solemn mysteries which we may have to go into in more detail 
later.. We have no time this evening to do so, beyond pointing 
out that the explanation lies in an understanding of esoteric 
psychology, and of the nature of high astral matter. But let me 
point out this : if a soul can receive an impress, can receive an 
impulse, and it most certainly does, that impress or impulse will 
carry it on until its initial strength is exhausted, until the impulse 
no longer exists, until the impulse has worked itself out. Now, 
through many, many, lives of spiritual evil-doing, these beings 
who have eventuated as " lost souls " have built up through the 
intensity of their will a bank account, so to speak, of certain 
forces of nature, impulses of evil, of pure matter, running hot 
and strong. And when I say ' ' hot " I do no t mean in the ordinary 
emotional sense, as when one speaks of the " heat of passion ". 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 169
 
All such passion is dead. Nay. But running hot like the fires of 
hell : revenge, hatred, and antagonism to anything that is highly 
good or nobly beautiful, and all such things. These impulses here 
exist, and they have a spiritual source, for they are degraded 
spiritual energies, spirit fallen and crystallized into matter, so to 
speak. Very difficult to explain, indeed, is this abstruse subject ; 
but this is the gist of it. Lastly, I might add that these beings 
can (and do), under certain conditions, go far lower : they enter 
the Lower Path, and go still farther down : and if the evil be 
strong enough in certain rare cases, their terrible destiny is what 
our Teachers have called an avtchi-nirvdna (avichi being a 
generalized term for what is popularly called " hell "), aeons of 
unspeakable misery, self-imposed, until final dissolution ensues, 
and Nature knows them no more. 
 
Of course you remember that we have studied the subject of 
Hells and Heavens before, but as yet we have had no time to go 
into this matter at length. Avichi is a generalized term for places 
of evil realizations, but not of " punishment " in the Christian 
sense ; where the will for evil, and the unsatisfied evil longings 
for pure selfishness, find their chance for expansion and final 
extinction of the entity itself. Avichi has many degrees, or 
grades. Nature has all things in her ; if she has Heavens where 
good men and true men find rest and peace and bliss, so has she 
other spheres and states, where go or gravitate those who must 
find an outlet for the evil passions burning within. They, at the 
end of their avichi-nirvana, go to pieces and are ground over and 
over, and vanish away finally like a shadow before the sunlight in 
the air ground over in Nature's laboratory. 
 
Now, you remember that we spoke in other studies of the 
so-called " laws of Nature ", and it was pointed out that in our 
esoteric teachings there are no " laws of Nature ", and this for 
two reasons : first, because there is no such thing as " Nature ". 
Nature is not an entity ; it is an abstraction. Nature is not a 
goddess or a god ; it is not a being or a planet ; it is not a sphere 
or a universe. Nature is the abstract aggregate, so to speak, the 
immense aggregate, of all beings and things, interblending and 
acting and interacting upon each other : spiritual, inter- 
mediate, and lower ; and their interblending and interconnexion 
produce what we call " Nature ". The beings here referred to, of 
course, are of all grades, from the most material, the most degraded, 
up to the highest, of any Hierarchy. And the second reason is 
that these aggregated beings that we call very conveniently by 
the term of Nature, are not " ruled " by " law ". Who or what 
makes any laws that Nature shall or must follow or does follow ? 
No one, neither devil nor god. But the query may and ought to 
arise : Does not Nature follow certain courses, and when the 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
circumstances arid conditions are identical, are not those courses 
always the same, which are what we call laws ? Of course, yes ; 
nobody denies a fact. We deny the explanation. Explanations 
are important. If a man comes to you and says something to you 
and you find that he is merely talking, giving you words when 
you want the bread of life, are you going to take what he says 
for truth ? Are you going to take the words only, and be satisfied 
with husks ? Or are you going to think, and say : " My dear 
Sir, I have looked into what you tell me ; what you say is merely 
words ; nobody denies the facts that are ; but I want an explana- 
tion of those words and of those facts. I want something that 
will feed my soul ". Do you get any food for your soul when you 
hear mere talk about mechanical, incomprehensible " laws of 
Nature " ? Do you realize that no great thinker in antiquity at 
any time ever used such empty language as "laws of Nature "with 
the concomitant ideas or lack of ideas ? Never. The expression 
containing the notion " laws of Nature " is a modern product 
derived from two sources : first from the Christian religion ; and 
second from modern scientific materialism. Men, during all the 
ages, have been fully aware that " Nature " pursued certain very 
regular courses, modernly called " laws ", and always followed the 
same courses ; but our forebears had other and wiser explanations 
of these regular courses in natural phenomena, for they knew 
more of the inner mysteries of being, because they had true 
Religion behind and within themselves ; they had a universal 
philosophy ; and last but not least they had what were called 
Initiates, who personally could go behind and into Nature, enter 
into her and know her at first hand. 
 
Now what causes Nature to act as she does ? The modern 
scientist will tell you that he means by the " laws of Nature " 
those sequences of events which always happen in the same way 
when the circumstances and conditions are the same ; the 
regular order of phenomena and forces. The Christian theologian 
tells you what he means by the " laws of Nature " probably 
somewhat as follows : " Well, brother, it is probably the Will 
of God Almighty, who, it is true, has not vouchsafed to us a full 
explanation of these difficult problems ; but it is fundamentally 
the Divine Will which has once and for all time created the machine 
of Nature and has set it in running ". About two or three or four 
or five or six hundred years ago these gentlemen had another 
explanation, somewhat different from the above, because modern 
science had not yet begun to be aggressively vocal with views 
or a view of its own ; and this other theological explanation was 
that it was God Almighty Himself who personally and actively 
guided and ordered these things which " Nature " produces. 
" He sent his rain upon the iust and the uniust : he caused the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 171
 
sun to shine, and the rain to fall ", and much more to the same 
tune. But then came along certain sceptical thinkers and they 
said, " Ha, ha, God the Creator ! Then He created diseases ; He 
creates the evils in men's hearts. It must be so, not otherwise, 
because He created man and all things else, and, being all-wise, 
He must have known what He was doing. Therefore, why 
punish a man for doing what he cannot avoid doing, because God 
created man and his mind and his heart and his will ? " 
 
So the theologians' later idea, apparently, was that God manu- 
factured the world with His own Almighty Hand, and set it to 
spinning, and set the various elements thereof each to running 
in its own way, and let it go forth with a primal impress of the 
Divine Intelligence upon it. 
 
I think that I am quoting correctly the early modern theo- 
logical idea. 
 
Now the Initiates, knowing Nature's arcana, had words fitted 
to express exactly what they desired to say ; words which are 
impressive and which are not mere abstractions ; although when 
convenient they too used abstractions ; they used such words 
as " Principles " and " Elements " of Nature. It is quite true 
that such words are catchwords, technical words ; but they 
knew precisely what they meant by them. They also spoke 
mystically and theologically of the " gods ". It is one of the most 
lamentable things for scholars to-day, that owing to the deliberate 
and wilful suppression by the Christian Church of so many of the 
truths of antiquity, the average scholar or student has no more 
idea of what the ancients meant by the " gods " and their actions, 
than he has of what is taking place at this moment on the star 
Sirius. Yet, when understood and properly explained, Poly- 
theism is seen to be a wonderful and a sublime teaching. It 
does not mean, for instance, that each god is as great and as single 
as, or omnipotent and omniscient like, the Christian theological 
notion of their God. Not at all. The gods, i.e., spiritual entities, 
are the higher inhabitants of Nature. They are an intrinsic part 
of Nature itself, for they are its informing Principles ; they are 
as much subject to the wills of still higher Beings call these 
wills the " laws " of higher beings, if you will as we are, and as 
are the animals below us. We are gods to the beings composing 
our bodies. The atoms in our body are, in their way, conscious, 
and we are like gods to them. And what they might call the 
" laws of Nature " are what we think and what we will. Nature is 
conscious from beginning to end, in varying degrees ; although 
in reality there is no " beginning " and no " end ", which are 
vain dreams. 
 
Furthermore, Nature has two aspects, a positive aspect and a 
negative aspect. Please understand that I am using the word 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
" Nature ", with the meaning pointed out before, because the 
ordinary expression is convenient, the term is understood ; if a 
speaker has to spend some three minutes or more in order to 
explain each time anew an already explained use of a word, he 
will never arrive at the end of what he wishes to say ; so, once 
having made an explanation of what we mean by " Nature " and 
" laws ", we may use these or other common words because they 
are convenient. Our Teachers also have used these words con- 
stantly ; and H. P. Blavatsky constantly speaks of the " laws 
of Nature ", and the " fundamental law of Karma " ; so again 
does our present Teacher, Katherine Tingley, constantly speak 
of the " Higher Law ". Who has not heard highly educated 
people say that the sun " rises in the east " ? Of course they 
and we know that the sun does not " rise in the east ". Men very 
frequently find it useful and convenient to use ordinary language 
in order intelligently to voice a thought. But this does not mean 
that they should be held to rigid literal account for what every 
sane man should know perfectly well is merely a convenient mode 
of expression. The so-called " laws of Nature ", therefore, are 
the action and interaction and interplay of consciousnesses and 
wills in the Kosmos not so much considered as personalized 
consciousnesses and wills, but by us those words are used more 
as abstractions, meaning the combined and aggregate action- 
results of all consciousnesses and wills in the Kosmos. Yet 
actually, when traced to causes, to their sources, these " laws " are 
the consciousnesses and wills in action of the multimyriad hosts 
of beings that compose and are " Nature " itself, working through, 
in, and by, " matter ", their vehicles abstract ly called " Nature ". 
" Nature " has these two poles or sides : the positive pole or side 
and the negative pole or side. Examine yourself closely, and you 
will find that even your mind is dual, like everything else, for it 
mirrors Nature. It has its passive side, its " unconscious re- 
flexes ", just as the body has, just as Nature has. It has also its 
positive or active side. There is a great difference between the 
conscious will and the unconscious will. Take the body as an 
instance of what I am trying to say ; e.g., the beating of the 
heart, the automatic winking of the eyes, the processes of 
digestion. These are unconsciously performed acts, under the 
control of unconscious or semi-conscious elemental entities ; when 
normally functioning, man's will has nothing self-consciously to 
do with them. They represent the passive side of his will as 
expressed through those elemental minds. But he also has an 
active or positive side in which he wills and thinks, and acts 
accordingly, and for these latter things he is held responsible, he 
incurs karmic responsibility. 
So is it exactly the same, in Nature ; as is illustrated by this 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 173
 
example of the passive and active wills in man's own mind and 
body. The " laws of physical nature " are the action-results of 
the passive side of the beings and consciousnesses who and which 
compose what is called " Nature " ; and the higher those beings 
are, the less is their active or positive side manifest on the lower 
planes. 
 
Work therefore with Nature, and not against her ; violate none 
of her laws, if you desire health and happiness. Remember what 
H. P. Blavatsky says in The Voice of the Silence : Let us para- 
phrase it : Work with nature and follow her ; become one with 
her, and she will make obeisance unto you as an active, self- 
conscious Co-worker a Master. Happiness can be found only 
in obedience to this fundamental truth of inseparable unity. 
There is no happiness in unbrotherhood, in acting solely for your- 
self, in trying to impose your personal will on others. It is by 
giving, that life is found in all its beauty, by giving the self to the 
ALL. There is no happiness like it ; there is no way for inner 
development to come so quickly and so siirely and so safely to 
the student as that which lies in giving up the personal self 
to nobly impersonal aims. It is the Way to Peace and Power. 
 
The Teacher whispers to me to continue for a few moments 
longer and we have as yet not even begun our evening's study 1 
Let us, then, occupy the few more minutes of time that the 
Teacher has given us, in referring to an interesting phenomenon 
of Nature that took place during this last summer. I refer to the 
near approach of the planet Mars to Earth ; and I speak of this 
with intent, because it is going to illustrate a point in the substance 
of our theme. 
 
You will doubtless have heard how our scientists have concluded 
they say that their theory is true, but it is absolutely false 
according to Theosophy that the planet Mars is older than the 
Earth ; and the sole reason for their saying this is because when 
they examine what they can see of the surface of Mars through 
their telescopes, they see no sign, certain and convincing to all, of 
even vegetable life. Apparently, they see no particular organic 
activity of any kind on that ruddy sphere ; and they at once 
jump to the conclusion, like a lot of thoughtless fellows, that 
Mars is dead, in a state something like that of the moon, and that 
therefore it is very much older than our planet Earth. Now, in 
the first place, to the student of the Ancient Wisdom, the " age " 
of a planet may be of two kinds. Does it mean older in spiritual 
experience because, remember, a planet is an " animal " in the 
Greco-Latin sense, and " animal " means " living being ", for it 
is a hierarchy of lives or does it merely mean that the physical 
sphere is older than ours ? 
 
Now the teaching of the Ancient Wisdom is that Mars is 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
younger than the Earth. Its body, its physical sphere, is younger ; 
but, at the present time, it is in a state of " obscuration ". It is 
what we may call asleep ; it is more than merely asleep, actually, 
for the vastly larger part of its hosts of lives, of its living entities, 
have left it in order to go to higher spheres or globes of the 
Martian Planetary Chain. But this again does not mean one has 
to be very careful in the use of expressions in our studies that 
there is no life on Mars. When our own physical body is asleep, 
does it mean that it is in decay, that it is dead ? Are there no 
vital processes going on in the sleeping human body ? Of course 
there are, many : recuperation ; reinforcing of the bonds of the 
inner nature. Not of the inner nature itself ; but there is the 
strengthening of the bonds connecting the vital astral entity 
with it. 
 
Now there are and this will illustrate another point there are 
on the planet Mars in its present state of obscuration certain 
beings left there by the receding Life-Wave of Mars when that 
planet went into obscuration ; and these beings are called in the 
Sanskrit language tishtas, meaning " remainders ", or " remains ", 
i.e., those whose duty it is to keep the Seeds of Life on that planet 
until the incoming flow of the returning Life- Wave in the new 
Manvantara to come, shall find these bodies ready for them and 
in all ways appropriate. Now these tishtas are of seven kinds : 
three elemental ; the mineral ; the " plant " ; the " beast "- 
type there, which represented the human on Mars ; and one 
other. There are certain ones of these sishtas which are not at 
all of the lower types ; they must have been higher than the 
average of its humanity when that planet went into obscuration, 
in order to provide for the more evolved humanity coming down 
on its succeeding Round, fit and appropriate vehicles for the new 
Life-Cycle, or Manvantara, there. Generally, then, the Sishtas 
are those superior classes each of its own kind and kingdom 
left behind on a planet when it goes into obscuration, in order to 
serve as the seeds of life for the inflow of the next incoming 
Life- Wave when the dawn of the new manvantara takes place on 
that planet. 
 
Venus, on the contrary, is now actively engaged in its last 
Round. The planet Mercury, on the other hand, is just beginning 
its last Round. Both these planets are far older than the Earth. 
Mars is younger I am not here talking of the spiritual age ; I 
am talking only of the age of the physical body, the sphere. You 
will find it generally the "law" and I am using this term 
" law ", remember, because it is convenient you will find it, 
generally speaking, a physical fact of Nature in our Solar System 
that the farther a sphere (or planet) is from the sun, the physically 
younger it is. Mars, as a matter of fact, has ended its Third 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 175
 
Round. We of the Earth are in our Fourth ; Venus is in its 
Seventh and last ; and Mercury is just beginning its Seventh. 
 
I have brought up this matter, because there are some who 
have misunderstood H. P. Blavatsky's teaching in The Secret 
Doctrine regarding the six companion-globes of the Planetary 
Earth-Chain, saying that we came to Earth from the planet Mars 
which is thus made one of the globes of the Planetary Earth- 
Chain ; that we are now on Earth ; and that we shall in the 
future (next) manvantara go to Mercury, which is also made one 
of the Planetary Earth-Chain. 
 
This is utterly wrong. Now, as we have just said, Mercury is 
in its Seventh Round ; we are in our Fourth, and our next round 
will be our Fifth. It is true that Mars has ended its third Round ; 
but while the planets farther from the sun generally are the 
younger, physically, than those nearer it, this does not mean that 
they are necessarily the younger spiritually. For instance, you 
may take the planet Saturn. The planet Saturn, spiritually, is 
farther advanced than is the planet Mars, or than is our planet 
Terra. 
 
If you take up a book of astronomy and compare the varying 
density of the planets as there given in the tables, you will have 
a rough-and-ready, and very generally accurate, rule by which 
to go in order to find out which of the physical planets are 
physically older than others. But then this does not refer to 
spiritual age or evolution ; and this fact shows the complexity 
that confronts the student in his study of these doctrines, which 
really are very simple, but seem complex to us because our minds 
are matter-minds and not spirit-minds. It is difficult to think 
about such things with the minds we have, because they are 
matter-built. They go to pieces at our death ; and these subjects 
are based on spiritual facts. Hence the confusion under which 
Mr. Sinnett, and others who followed his lead, have labored 
even to the extent of denying their own teachers ! 
 
The planet Saturn is surrounded with belts and I am in very 
deep water here and 1 wish to speak slowly so as not to give a 
mistaken impression. I did at the last meeting, when I said that 
the present speaker knew little or nothing of the Seventh " Jewel. 11 
It was not my intent to give that idea. My intent was to say that 
he knew little or nothing of the higher teachings regarding that 
Seventh " Jewel " the planet Saturn is the last, counting out- 
wards from the sun, of the " Seven Sacred Planets " of the 
ancients. As regards our Solar System, Uranus and Neptune, 
certainly not the latter, really do not belong to it. Actually, 
physically, they do, because they are under that system's influence, 
somewhat like visitors entertained in a home ; but they do not 
belong to or form a part of the septenary of the " seven sacred 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
planets " of antiquity of which you all doubtless have read. Those 
" seven sacred planets " provisionally may be named as follows : 
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. I say 
above " provisionally/ 1 because there is much more behind this 
matter of the " Seven Sacred Planets " than appears openly. For 
instance, the sun and the moon are reckoned in the above list as 
two substitutes for the two real planets ; and Mars to a certain 
extent is in the same category. We can say no more of 
this here. 
 
Now shall we say that the sun and moon represent two other 
planets ? Let us take provisionally the list as usually given, 
including the sun and the moon ; each one of these seven globes 
is a body like our own earth in that each is a septenary Chain, 
sevenfold in composition : six other superior globes of finer 
matter above the physical sphere or globe ; just as we humans 
have our six principles above this " bearer " or " carrier " 
miscalled a " principle/' which we call our body. This does not 
apply in toto to the moon, because the moon is dead ; yet even 
the moon has its six companion-globes. The mysteries concerning 
the moon, I may remark in passing, are more than interesting, 
and if the Teacher permits it, we shall sometime go into them as 
far as we can properly do so ; but excepting the moons, all the 
other globes and planets of the Solar System have, each one, six 
companion-globes of finer matter, all fully alive ; unless in 
" obscuration " ; and in the planetary life these form a peculiar 
analogy with man's seven principles ; for if we could see our own 
principles, could see what the plan of each principle is, we should 
find that it is an actual rupa or form. Yet let me here enter a 
caveat : the six companion-globes of any planet or other sidereal 
body are not, really, the six principles of such a body, for each 
one of these seven globes forming part of a Chain, has its own 
individual seven principles and elements. So each planet or 
sidereal body has its six companion-globes, forming together a 
Planetary Chain ; and only those globes which are on the same 
Kosmic Plane of nature or being, are physically visible to each 
other. For instance, we can see only the fourth (planetary) plane 
globes of each of the other Planetary or Sidereal Chains, because 
we are on the fourth planetary Plane, as they are. If we were 
on the Kosmic Plane above us, we should see two Jupiters, two 
Saturns, and so forth. 
 
The sun also is septenary, as said just now. A wonderful 
teaching lies here in that connexion. The moon, dead as it is, 
has also six companion-globes ; and when we leave this earth in 
" obscuration " at the close of this earth-Round, and go to the 
globe above this, we shall see then the two lunar bodies belonging 
to that plane, and also two suns. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 177
 
We now close our evening's study ; and express the hope that 
at the next meeting which the Teacher may call, we shall have 
more opportunity and a clearer field to go at some length into the 
truly sublime subject which H. P. Blavatsky has set down for us 
in The Secret Doctrine in the extracts first read this evening. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XVII
 
THE SILENT WATCHER. 
 
. . . For countless generations hath the adept buildecl a fane of imperishable 
rocks, a giant's Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will 
yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to 
invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten 
superstitious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours ; we will 
not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day 
when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no 
amount of opposition and ignorant malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow 
will be found to prevail. 
 
But until that day of final triumph someone has to be sacrificed though we 
accept but voluntary victims. The ungrateful task did lay her [H.P.B.] low 
and desolate in the ruins of misery, misapprehension, and isolation : but she will 
have her reward in the hereafter for we never were ungrateful. As regards the 
Adept not one of my kind, good friend, but far higher you might have closed 
your book with those lines of Tennyson's " Wakeful Dreamer "you knew 
him not 
 
1 ' How could ye know him ? Ye were yet within 
 
The narrower circle ; he had well nigh reached 
 
The last, which, with a region of white flame, 
 
Pure without heat into a larger air 
 
Up-burning, and an ether of black blue, 
 
Invests and ingirds all other lives. . . ." 
 
The Mahatnia Letters, p. 51. 
 
E open our study this evening by reading a part of 
the passages of The Secret Doctrine that were read 
at our last meeting, that is to say from Volume I, 
pages 207 and 208. Page 207 first : 
 
The Arhats of the " fire-mist " of the 7th rung are but one remove 
from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy the highest on Earth, and 
our Terrestrial chain. This " Root-Base " has a name which can only 
be translated by several compound words into English " the ever- 
living-human-Banyan." This " Wondrous Being " descended from a 
"high region," they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before 
the separation of the sexes of the Third Race. 
 
And then we pass over without reading it again, the paragraph 
at the bottom of that page, beginning " The ' BEING ' just 
referred to ", and ending with " but a few Elect may profit by 
the GREAT SACRIFICE ", on page 208, and read now the last 
paragraph on that page : 
 
It is under the direct, silent guidance of this MAHA [which means 
" great "] GURU [which means " Teacher "] that all the other less divine 
Teachers and instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening 
of human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is through 
 
178 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 179
 
these " Sons of God " that infant humanity got its first notions of all 
the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge ; and it is they 
who have laid the first foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations 
that puzzle so sorely our modern generation of students and scholars. 
 
As we noted at our last meeting, we are approaching a part of 
our studies where, to use the words of the old thinkers, we feel 
almost that we should remove our foot-gear, because we stand on 
holy ground. The sublime passages which were read at our last 
meeting and now again at this one, contain, in fact, the outline 
of the meaning of the seventh of the seven Jewels or Treasures 
of Wisdom, which has the catch- word or technical name of Atma- 
Vidya. This phrase literally signifies " self-knowledge ". 
 
Now this Sanskrit word Atman is exceedingly difficult to trans- 
late, but the English word " self " seems to come nearest to an 
adequate rendering of it. Atma-Vidya means much more than 
ordinarily we might understand by the words " Knowledge of 
the self " ; yet, were we to know the Self in its fullness, we should 
know all knowledge that it is possible for man to know ; hence, 
that title or technical name is given to it as descriptive of the 
entire branch of the Esoteric Philosophy which this seventh 
Jewel contains. As it is, we can know only parts of this branch 
of the Esoteric Philosophy. We are told that it is hinted in the 
ancient writings, particularly in the Sanskrit, that even the most 
spiritual beings on earth in this our age know not fully all that 
is contained in this Treasure. There are possibly not a dozen 
thinking beings on earth to-day, who of course would comprise the 
very highest and holiest men that the earth has brought forth up 
to the present period of evolution, who can in any sense fully 
understand it. But we can have and understand appropriate 
parts of this sublime Wisdom-mystery ; and it is these that we 
are going to attempt to try to elucidate, to the best of our 
capacity, this evening. 
 
Now we stated at our last meeting that this seventh Treasure 
or Jewel can be considered as a study of the problem of how the 
One becomes the Many ; but it was also said that, as a matter of 
fact, the One essentially never becomes the many. One might 
as well say that the sun which gives us our light comes down to 
earth in order to do it ; but it does not ; it sends out its rays, 
emanations from itself, which illuminate, vitalize, and quicken 
our world of matter ; and similarly is the case with the One. 
 
Further, what do we mean by " the One " ? Obviously, we do 
not mean the personal God of any exoteric theology. No matter 
how great, how vast in compass spiritually, we may consider this 
One to be, it is still a unity, a being, and therefore it is finite. 
Therefore, in order to elucidate our problem, we turn to another 
 
 
 
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one of these seven Treasures, and we find an illustration of this 
particular branch of our problem in the lokasa technical word 
for the Hierarchies, as is also Brahmdnda, or " Egg of Brahma ", 
of which the One is the Root-base if we consider it as the origin 
of all the beings and things in that Hierarchy ; or the Flower or 
Summit or Acme, if we consider it as the aim and end of our 
evolution. This, therefore, is the One. But there are other Ones, 
Ones innumerable, in the Kosmical Universe ; some higher than 
our highest, or lower than our lowest degree. 
 
You doubtless remember that in studying the Doctrine of 
Hierarchies we showed that these Hierarchies are endless in 
number. They themselves, each one of them, can be considered 
as a unit ; and there are many above us and many below us : 
innumerable ones above us and innumerable ones below us ; 
innumerable ones within and innumerable ones without our 
Kosmical Hierarchy. They are endless in number in all direc- 
tions. From this One of our hierarchy, however, and we mean 
in this instance the Universal Kosmos or the Kosmical Universe, 
comes all our life, all our being, all that we are without and 
within. It is the Source and Origin of everything that we can be 
and know, working in and upon that background of the Bound- 
less which comprises the limitless aggregate of all other Hier- 
archies whatsoever. 
 
The most extended, the vastest, and the most immense 
Hierarchy of our unfettered imagination is but as a mote of dust, 
as a single Atom, in comparison with the Boundless. The Bound- 
less cannot ever nor in any sense be considered as one, as a mere 
unity. One implies the finite, the beginning of computation, or 
enumeration ; and we must think of the Boundless as a zero, 
signifying endless and limitless infinitude, with no qualifications 
whatsoever that belong to all that is manifested or limited ; and, 
on the other side of the illustration, signifying the all-encompass- 
ing, endless, boundless, Fullness of the ALL. This is SPACE ; 
which is either the unlimited Fullness of the ALL, or the unlimited 
Emptiness of the All, according as we view it. The latter view 
is the profoundly spiritual bunyatd of the Buddhist philosopher. 
 
Let us turn for a moment to another kindred subject. Have 
you ever thought doubtless you have ; but I remember that, as 
the Teacher has asked me to point out, these studies are pursued 
not so much for ourselves as for those students not resident here 
who have not the chance that we here have, and who will read 
them have we ever considered and pondered over the meaning 
of the word immutable when people use it as sometimes happens 
when speaking of such subjects as Space, the Boundless, etc. ? 
Has it ever occurred to us to try to realize that if the Boundless 
were " immutable " even for the minutest fraction of a second, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 181
 
the entire fabric of universal kosmical being would vanish away 
in the twinkling of an eye, like a shadow on a wall ! All that we 
can know or mentally figurate of so limitlessly vast a subject as 
the Boundless, is such thoughts as we vaguely express in words or 
phrases like " Boundless Life ", etc., which is Motion : endless 
and beginningless Activity. " Immutability " is a phantom of 
the imagination ; a mere reflexion in our minds of finite pause. 
There is ceaseless Motion, ceaseless and endless and beginningless 
Life in the horizonless Fields of the Boundless. 
 
But when we consider the One, the Summit, or the Root-base 
of our own Hierarchy, or of any other Hierarchy we can by 
spiritual intuitions grasp the Truth concerning It ; but if we go 
beyond that Hierarchy, going up step by step from lower to higher 
spheres, we shall always, we must always, reach a point where our 
understanding and imagination fall powerless before the immensity 
of the (to us] non-understandable ; because we can in nowise en* 
compass or comprehend it ; only can we see that in IT and from IT 
is the Infinite Life, which in its ceaseless unending motion is" immut- 
ably " the same always. Only in this paradoxical sense is the word 
" immutable " permissible. So much, then, for the Boundless. 
But as regards the One, it is analogically " immutable " only for 
its own period of activity as Source of a Hierarchy, and only for 
those below it ; and hence you will find our Teacher occasionally 
speaking of the " immutable law ", that which for the " seven 
eternities " during which our period of manifestation endures, 
" varies not, and knows no shadow of turning ". And why ? 
Because that highest Summit, that One, is the Supreme Silent 
Watcher, the Supreme Life-Giver, the Great Supreme Sacrifice, 
to use H. P. Blavatsky's terms, of our own great Kosmic Hier- 
archy, which is the highest that our imagination can attain to. 
But do not confuse this Supreme Silent Watcher with the Silent 
Watcher of the less Hierarchy of the Teachers. 
 
When our Hierarchy goes into pralaya which means the 
release of its entirety of lives and life for higher and spiritual 
things of greater value and of nobler compass than those we now 
have or can even conceive of when that happens, I say, it is but 
as the passing, as it were, of a cloud hitherto over the " face of the 
Boundless ", and hosts of other universes are then coming equally 
into manifested life as ours will then be passing out of it for its 
pralayic rest. Try and form some simple concept of the meaning 
of endless and beginningless Eternity and of the Boundless, and 
drop it there : unceasing life, endless activity, never-ending life 
and consciousness in unceasing motion everywhere. It is only 
" parts " which, as compared with the Totality which is the 
Boundless, are as nothing only such " parts ", so to say, this, that, 
or another, " part ", which in its may a of manifested life and 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
unmanifested repose, alternately is active or passive ; which 
passes away and then returns again. The wise ancients never 
bothered their heads much about any foolish attempt to fathom 
the Boundless or the limitless Eternal. They recognised the 
Reality of Being, and let it go at that, knowing well that an ever- 
growing knowledge of the Universal Life was and is all that 
human intelligence could ever attain to, by an ever-expanding 
Consciousness. 
 
This alternate appearing and disappearing of worlds or Hier- 
archies, is the teaching imbodied in the first of the seven Jewels 
or Treasures of Wisdom. As the human spirit sends down its ray 
and reincarnates by means of that ray into a human being of 
astral matter and of mind-matter and of flesh, so similarly, when 
the time comes for a Hierarchy to re-imbody itself, to undertake 
its task anew of Palingenesis or repeated self-generation, the same 
relative course is run. Never let us forget the ancient axiom of 
the Esoteric Wisdom which the Hermetists so beautifully 
expressed : As above so below. What happens in heaven is 
mirrored on earth, mutatis mittandis. Man's palingenesis, as a 
microcosm, is but a faithful copy of the palingenesis of worlds ; 
of his own kosmic Hierarchy as the Macrocosm. 
 
Let us now turn to our main theme for to-night, after the 
preliminary observations first made. As the Summit of our 
Hierarchy is One, the Root of our ens, in which we " move and 
live and have our being ", as the Christian Apostle Paul puts it ; 
so similarly in the spiritual-psychological Hierarchy there is a One 
in whom we are all rooted, in whom psychologically and mystically 
and religiously, yea and aspirationally, we live. This One is the 
Great Initiator, the Great Sacrifice, the Wondrous Being referred 
to by H. P. Blavatsky ; the Supreme Head of the Hierarchy of 
the Teachers. From it originally come our noblest impulses 
through our own Higher Selves ; from it come the life and 
aspiration we feel, stirring oft in our minds and hearts ; from it, 
through our higher natures, come the urge to betterment, the 
sense of loyalty and troth, all the things which make life holy and 
bright and high and well worth living. 
 
It was during the Third Race of Humanity of this Fourth 
Round on this globe, when the incarnate ray in each of the units 
of the then mankind had evolved forth its vehicle (by generating 
from within itself this vehicle, fit for the expression of itself, of the 
divine spirit within) ; and then that vehicle, or soul, was become 
self-conscious. Then, as time passed, there came a period when an 
Interpreter, a Guide, a Teacher, of the Race of mankind, was 
needed, because the race was rapidly sinking with every sub-cycle 
of the Great Age more totally into matter and consequent 
illusion and spiritual defilement, for such is produced by the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 183
 
evolving of matter. The Dhyan-Chohans, the " Lords of Medita- 
tion ", who were men from a former great Period of Activity of 
our Planet Terra, beings from a former Manvantara, were then 
leaving or withdrawing from this earth ; they had already done 
their cyclical work, done all they could, in informing, inspiring, 
and illuminating the then Mankind ; but they now needed 
successors more like the sinking Men of the period. By reason 
of a Mystery which we cannot elucidate here, the noblest repre- 
sentatives of the then humanity became the direct and willing 
vehicles of self-conscious Rays from these Dhyan-Chohans, 
" Lords of Meditation ". It was not exactly what is called in 
Brahmanism an Avatara a " descent " which means the over- 
shadowing incarnation of a portion of a high spirit in a high human 
being ; but it was the actual indwelling (fully conscious on both 
sides, and relatively complete) of a portion of the essence of a 
Dhyan-Chohan in a fully conscious, willing, and utterly self- 
sacrificing, Man of high degree. Now, please mark well : the 
highest one of these incarnations, the noblest Man-fruit of human 
evolution produced up to that time, became the head of this 
spiritual-psychological Hierarchy literally, and in very truth, in 
his case, was a Man infilled with a Dhyan-Chohan : what might 
actually be called an incarnate god. This was and still Is the 
Silent Watcher, the Initiator, the Wondrous Being, the Great 
Sacrifice " sacrifice " for a reason which I explain elsewhere. 
 
Pause a moment. Let us think away for a moment from the 
thread of our theme. Let us consider the immense hope, the 
profound intellectual splendor, and the spiritual beauty which 
we find in these teachings. They are well worth thinking over, 
indeed ! If anything, Theosophy, the Esoteric Wisdom, is a vast 
doctrine of hope, not of mere " optimism " as the word is 
ordinarily understood ; but a doctrine of vitalizing hope and 
interior illumination. Ah, there, in these wonder-teachings, is the 
Path along which we may ascend. More particularly, it depends 
on ourselves whether our ascent along the stairway of that Ray 
which is living and working in each one of us is achieved or not ; 
and pray listen carefully whether or not we ascend by our 
being consciously linked through that Being with the Highest. 
That Being, that Wondrous Being, does not " come down " and 
" descend " into us ; because for It this would be pollution of a 
sort not to be tolerated ; yet we are linked with It by and through 
the Ray within us. As the sun sends forth innumerable rays, yet 
remains ever the sun ; so through this Being pours, as the Root- 
base of our spiritual-psychological Hierarchy, a Ray which is 
instinct and alive in every normal child that comes into the world. 
 
Now it depends upon us whether we follow along that Ray 
upwards or, as pointed out at our last meeting, abandon our 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
divine birthright, and follow the lure of Chaos and the Pit 
respond to the exhalations from " hell/' There are people, 
perhaps, who may not have understood the meaning of the word 
" annihilation " as we use it. Let us understand that annihila- 
tion, strictly speaking, exemplifies what our present Teacher 
Katherine Tingley calls the " infinite mercy of the Higher Law ". 
There is no such nightmare as " eternal suffering ". Those human 
beings who have forfeited their divine birthright, go to pieces ; 
they lose their personal entity ; but when that has happened, there 
remains but an empty psychic shell. When we lay our body down 
at death and it goes to pieces and its atoms are returned to the 
earth which gave it birth, is there anything very dreadful in that ? 
Take the same rule and apply it to the case of the " lost souls ", 
of which we were speaking at a former meeting. 
 
If anyone desires to get a masterly outline of this subject, let 
him turn to The Key to Theosophy, pages 77 and 92 and 93, and he 
will there find what H. P. Blavatsky tells her readers of " annihila- 
tion ", and more particularly in connexion with the Buddhist 
teaching as taught by the Lord Gautama the Buddha. Why I 
say the " Lord " Buddha, will be explained in a moment. 
 
This Wondrous Being is the Chief, the Master-Initiate, the 
Head and Leader of the spiritual-psychological Hierarchy of 
which our Masters form a part. He is the " Ever-living-human- 
Banyan " Tree from which they hang as leaves and fruits, 
spiritually speaking. So also do we, spiritually speaking. On 
every globe, on every man-bearing planet of every sun in the 
infinitudes of Space, we are taught that as far as great spiritual 
seers know, the same thing exists there. There is over each one a 
Master-Teacher, and in each case he merits the term which H. P. 
Blavatsky gives him, taking it from her own Teachers, of The 
Great Sacrifice. Why is he so called ? Because, from boundless 
compassion for those lower in the scale of Evolution than he is, 
he has renounced all hope and opportunity in this Manvantara of 
himself going higher, out of this sorrow-laden world, and remains 
behind among us as our Great Inspirer and Teacher ; he himself 
can learn nothing more of this Hierarchy, for all knowledge 
pertaining to it or possible in it is his already. He has sacrificed 
himself for all below him. 
 
Now there are some people who talk of sacrifice of that sort as 
if it were something gruesome or evil ! Why, is there anything 
more sublimely beautiful than the giving of self in noble service to 
others to all ? Is there anything which actually can lead man 
higher ? Is there anything which opens the heart more ? Is there 
anything which opens more the doors of inspiration ? And, on the 
other hand, is there anything which more quickly closes these 
doors, or more fully belittles man, which more quickly shrivels the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 185
 
self, than does its opposite : personality, selfishness, egoism ? Ay, 
there is a joy, an unspeakable joy, in self-sacrifice of this high 
kind. The Wondrous Being is technically called " The Great 
Sacrifice " because, having reached the pinnacle of evolution in 
this our Hierarchy, he can learn nothing more in or from that 
Hierarchy. He has deliberately renounced further progress for 
himself in our Manvantara ; and this truly is the greatest of 
sacrifices ; and he has renounced it in order to live for those less 
beings who are weary, and who stumble on the Upward Way ; 
following the dictates inherent in that noble cry : " How can I 
live in heaven when one single being on earth must suffer ? " You 
are reminded of the old story of the Scotsman who, when told by 
his Dominie that his dog could not go to heaven with him, 
answered instantly: "Oh, Dominie, if my dog cannot go to 
heaven with me, then shall I stay here on earth with my faithful 
dog ; for he never would abandon me I " That is a touch of the 
same spirit of devotion. 
 
In the great Indian Epic, The Mahdbhdmta, we find a closely 
similar tale of one of the great heroes of that work, who, having 
met with severe trials of many kinds, on his way to Swarga or 
Heaven, successfully passed them all ; but when he finally reached 
the confines of Heaven he was met by the Devas, who told him : 
" Brother, your faithful dog enters not here ". And he said : 
" Oh, then shall I go back with my dog, my faithful companion 
who loved me and who has followed me everywhere. Shall I 
abandon him and leave him outside ? " And the Devas, accord- 
ing to the beautiful legend, then opened wide the gates of Heaven, 
and the heavenly choristers began to sing a paean of welcome and 
praise to the faithful hero-heart, who would have renounced his 
own unspeakable bliss for the sake of a loving and faithful creature 
less evolved than he. 
 
This is the spirit of renunciation of self for others, as exemplified 
in legend and story. Is there anything more beautiful than it ? 
 
Now let us go a step farther. Let us leave our theme for a few 
moments and take up again a matter which we feel was not fully 
understood, perhaps, due to our insufficient exposition of it at our 
last meeting. We spoke then of there being two classes of " lost 
souls ". That is quite correct. But we must also point out that 
there are likewise two sub-divisions, in the second of these two 
classes, and these two sub-divisions of the second class are those 
who fully merit the old Christian term " workers of spiritual 
iniquity ". The first sub-division comprise those who are com- 
monly called conscious sorcerers ; and the second comprise the 
same type of beings but include those who have reached such a 
point of inner power, yea, of evil spiritual strength, that they are 
able even to defeat Nature's call to dissolution for the entire term 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
of the Manvantara. They merit truly the old mystic saying, 
" workers of spiritual evil ". 
 
In order to make this difficult subject somewhat clearer, consult 
and reflect over the subjoined diagram, giving a brief outline of 
the various consciousnesses in a Hierarchy : 
 
Dhyan-Chohans 
 
SahSans ' ' ' The " Awakened "' f Vari US 
 
 
 
Chelas 
 
 
 
degrees. 
 
 
 
Good Men 
 
Soulless Men .... Very numerous. The " Living 
 
Dead ". 
 
 
 
Class i. Men thoroughly evil . Very few. 
 
 
 
Class 2 
 
 
 
(Spiritual Sorcerers. 
Sub. div. I 
Chohans of Conscious Evil. 
Sub. div. 2 
 
 
 
Lost Souls : actu- 
ally, or to be. Des- 
tined, all, for anni- 
hilation. Class 2 are 
extremely few. 
 
 
 
The entire system hangs like a Chain from the Primeval Seed, the 
Root-base of the Hierarchy. 
 
The first sub-division comprises those who are annihilated when 
this globe goes into its " obscuration " ; but to the second sub- 
division belong they who are almost human incarnations of what 
the Tibetans called the Lhamayin ; or sometimes they may even 
be overshadowed by the Mamo-Chohans, which preside at the 
Pralayas. These last, however, are not exactly " devils " or evil 
entities, but rather beings whose destiny it is for the time in view 
to carry on the work of destruction, of desolation. As regards the 
higher spiritual sorcerers and workers of evil, the second sub- 
division, their final destiny is truly terrible, for there awaits them 
at the close of the Manvantara the avichi-nirvdna, the absolute 
contrast and nether pole of the Nirvana of spirit ; and then a 
Manvantara of unparalleled misery. They arc the polar opposites 
of the Dhyan-Chohans. Final and utter annihilation is their end. 
Nature is bi-polar ; and as is the action, so is the reaction. 
 
Now annihilation, as it is used in the Esoteric Philosophy, and 
as it is commonly understood by educated thinkers of our School, 
does not mean what people commonly imagine it to be. It means 
the breaking up, the dissolution, of a personal entity, but never of 
the immortal Individuality, which is impossible. We speak, and 
speak correctly, of the dissolution or the annihilation of an army, 
or of the annihilation of a flock of sheep. When the separate 
entities are gone, killed, or whatever it may be, the flock of sheep 
is no more, the flock is dissolved. It is annihilated as a flock, as an 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 187
 
entity. And similarly, annihilation in its psychological sense, does 
not mean that it is the immortal spirit which is annihilated. That 
idea is perfectly ludicrous. An immortal spirit cannot be anni- 
hilated. Its residence, its dwelling-place, is infinite space ; and 
its time is eternity. But as our body dissolves, is annihilated as a 
body, is resolved and dissolved into its component elements ; so 
with the " lost soul " which is at first a mere psychic shell, when 
the impulses which came to it in the time when it was linked with 
an incarnate spirit, have spent their force ; then its term comes, 
it is dissolved, it is annihilated, it ceases, it passes out of being. 
There is nothing left of it, for like a dead physical body, it is 
resolved into its component elements. But in the first stages, it 
becomes spiritually dead, though mentally alive. It is a psychic 
corpse, from which the immortal element has fled. That is what 
a " lost soul " is. 
 
We students of the Esoteric Philosophy, of this School, know 
what happens to the kama-rupa of a man after the death of the 
physical body. It is finally dissolved, or annihilated. It is in 
nature's course that it must be so. I tell you that when we spoke 
at our last meeting of the ancient wisdom-teachings of the Lord 
Buddha, to the effect that there is " no abiding principle in man ", 
using the words of Rhys Davids, the eminent Welsh scholar, who 
is a bright literary honor to his country despite the mistakes that 
he makes in misunderstanding much of the inner sense of the 
Buddhist teaching, we mean simply this, and you all know it : 
that the only abiding thing in man's nature is from and in his Higher 
Self, his higher nature. His body ; his vital force ; his astral 
double, the linga-sarira ; the kamic principle ; the manas ; all 
these pass away at death. Nothing of an abiding principle in the 
combination of these five. Yet while these five component parts 
of man's psychology hang together in physical life, they form the 
" man ". Is there any one of you so egoistic as to think that this 
poor being of clay now speaking before you is the immortal spirit ? 
Or the life which informs it ? Or this poor mind of matter, which 
I am using as an instrument wherewith to speak to you ? No ! 
 
The thought just expressed is commonly supposed and rightly 
supposed to be a Buddhist teaching ; it is also the teaching of 
the Ancient Wisdom ; it was likewise the teaching of the Stoics, 
and also of Plato. Why, it is likewise the teaching of the scriptures 
of Judaism and of Christianity. You doubt it ? Turn to the Book 
of Ecclesiastes, one of the so-called sacred canonical works of the 
latter two religions. We have made our own translation of 
the following passages, for we trust not the translation of the 
theological scribes. They are too harsh on the one hand, and 
insufficiently clear on the other. We find, then, in this Book of 
Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verses 18 to 21, the following ; and please 
 
 
 
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remember that this book is supposed to have been written by the 
so-called " wisest man in the world ", Solomon. Whatever we 
may think of that notion, those who accept this book believe it. 
It is old-fashioned and popular theology. 
 
" Said I in my heart, concerning the nature of the sons of man 
(Addm) (it is) that the Elohim may form them, and to show that 
they are beasts, they themselves. For the destiny of the sons of 
man (Addm) and the destiny of the beast is one destiny to them : 
as dies the one, so dies the other ; and the thinking faculty [the 
Hebrew word is R&ahh, very extraordinary indeed !] is one for all ; 
and the superiority of man over the beast is nothing, because all 
are illusion. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and all 
return to the dust/' But now listen to the following, showing that 
the writer of this, although he certainly was not that mythical 
figure " Solomon ", was nevertheless a man who knew. Listen ! 
" Who knows the thinking faculty of the sons of man which, her- 
self, ascends above ; and the thinking faculty of the beast which, 
herself, descends under the earth ? " There we have the age-old 
teaching regarding psychology, and when properly understood, it 
will easily be seen that every word of it is true. And when the 
Key- Wisdom behind this brief exposition is understood, it will be 
seen to be unutterably beautiful. What vain illusions did those 
misguided men of the early sects of Christendom foist upon the 
early western European world ; what irreligious folly, to teach 
that the physical body of man is such a permanent and necessary 
thing, that it will be resurrected, and, if the life of the indwelling 
soul was good, shall sit with multitudes on the " right hand of 
God Almighty ". What unbelievably crass materialism ! More 
spiritual harm was done to the European races by teachings such 
as this than anything, perhaps, that history records. Like many 
other teachings of early Christianity, this one was a horribly 
mistaken and distorted tenet of the Ancient Wisdom concerning 
the Regeneration of the Personality into an immortal Individu- 
ality one of the ancient Mystery-Doctrines which we explain 
briefly elsewhere. But, on the other hand, it is necessary to teach 
a man of his dual nature, a subject which our present Teacher calls 
to our attention almost daily, begging us to think about it and to 
try to understand it. Teach him that he is in his higher nature 
really an essential spirit, verily, an incarnate god, and that he can 
become consciously that god in the flesh if he will. And teach him 
that if he chooses to follow the beast-nature he becomes as a beast, 
for the inner Self tolerates not this latter course. The silver thread 
(which is golden above) is in that case broken ; and instead of the 
man we have the man-beast, for from the man-beast the Soul 
departs, Nature's merciful liberation of the self-conscious in- 
dwelling Individuality. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 189
 
There is no " endless torture " or punishment anywhere. 
 
Now, my time for this evening is drawing to a close. I have 
not said one-tenth part of what the Teacher has instructed me to 
say concerning this subject of the seventh Treasure in its connexion 
with the " Wondrous Being " ; yet I wish to add a few more 
words to-night before ending. First, as to my reason for using the 
term " The Lord Buddha ". This is the reason. This Wondrous 
Being overshadowed about twenty-five hundred years ago, a pure 
and noble-minded youth born in the north of India. The vehicle, 
this youth, was in all ways receptive, and the Wisdom-teaching 
coming from him was given to the world. This chosen vehicle was 
called Siddhartha as his personal name ; his clan-name was 
Gautama ; and he was later given the title " Sakyamuni " mean- 
ing the Sdkya " sage " ; he was also later called by the title of the 
" Buddha ". This word Buddha is a title meaning the " Awak- 
ened " ; just as the word Christos or Christ, is a title meaning the 
" Anointed ". The Wondrous Being overshadowed, yea, and 
partly entered into, this young man who had come strictly in 
accordance with the law of cycles, at the cyclically appointed time 
in the World's course ; for an Awakened One, a full Christ, that is 
to say a Buddha, was cyclically destined to come at that time. He 
was in the line of the successively-coming Buddhas, and he was 
the noblest, he was the highest, of the Mystic Hierarchy of his 
period, as also he was then the nearest to this Wondrous Initiator, 
of any of our race. We know that our Teachers themselves speak 
of the Lord Buddha as their Teacher. That young man, we are 
taught, came directly from the Lodge : not his body ; but the 
Holy Entity infilling it. He was one of their greater ones. Con- 
cerning all these profound and wonderful doctrines there is vastly 
more that simply cannot be uttered here, for obvious reasons ; 
there is an entire department of the Esoteric Philosophy involved 
which treats of some of the most carefully guarded secrets of 
Nature and Being. We merely, then, hint, and pass on. 
 
H. P. Blavatsky herself, you may remember, took Pansil, a 
Pali word meaning the Five Qualities or Vows (in Sanskrit, 
PaHcha-tila), and thereby became a formal Buddhist. Why ? 
Because, as the Messenger from the Lodge, she knew perfectly 
well that back of the outward teachings, behind the exoteric 
doctrines of Gautama-Buddha, there is the Inner Truth, there is 
the Esoteric Buddhism, as well as the Esoteric Budhism : the 
former word spelled with two ds, meaning the teachings of Gau- 
tama the Buddha ; and the other word spelled with one d, and 
meaning Wisdom. And they are truly one when " Buddhism " is 
properly explained and understood. She knew exactly what she 
was about. Look, for instance, at the way in which she writes of 
the Buddha. 
 
 
 
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But, while all the above is strict and accurate truth, I must 
enter here another caveat. Are we Buddhists ? No. Not more so 
than we are Christians, except perhaps in this sense, that the 
religious philosophy of the Buddha- Sakyamuni is incomparably 
nearer to the Ancient Wisdom, the Esoteric Philosophy. Its main 
fault to-day is that its later teachers carried its doctrines too far 
along merely formal or exoteric lines ; and yet with all that, and 
to this day, it remains the purest and holiest of the exoteric 
religions on earth, and its teachings even exoterically are true. 
They need but the esoteric key in interpretation of them. As a 
matter of fact, the same may be said of all the great ancient World- 
religions. Christianity, Brahmanism, and others, all have the 
same esoteric Wisdom behind the outward veil of the exoteric 
formal faith. 
 
You will remember that H. P. Blavatsky says somewhere that 
of the two branches of Buddhism, i.e., the Southern and the 
Northern, the Southern still retains the teachings of the " Buddha's 
brain ", the " Eye-doctrine ", that is to say his outer philosophy 
for the general world ; and that the Northern still retains his 
" Heart-doctrine ", 
 
Now understand those two expressions. They are Buddhist 
terms : " Eye-doctrine " and " Heart-doctrine " are real Buddhist 
terms. They are also Esoteric Wisdom terms, The " Eye- 
doctrine " is that which is seen ; it may be false and it may be 
true ; but in the technical sense it is a true exotericism lacking 
only the key. The " Eye-doctrine " is sometimes called the 
doctrine of forms and ceremonies, that is, the formal outward 
presentation. Whereas the " Heart-doctrine " is that which is 
hid, but which is the inner life, the heart-blood, of the religion. 
As the eye is seen and also sees ; so, conversely, the heart is un- 
seen, but is the life-giver, and applied to religion the expression 
means the doctrine of the inner heart of the Teaching. As a 
secondary thought, it also gives the idea that it contains the 
nobler part of human conduct, what people call kindliness, 
humanity, compassion, pity. 
 
We hope to resume our studies concerning this Wondrous Being 
when the Leader calls us together again. It depends upon our- 
selves as to how long our studies are to last. It is for the Teacher 
to judge of this, and I think that we all of us I know I so feel 
should bow our heart in gratitude to the Masters' representative 
here among us for giving us this chance to purify our souls with 
the thoughts which come to us not merely from ancient times, but 
from those high Souls who stand back of her, and who, if they do 
not actually " guide " this movement, at least, we are told, they 
" watch over it and protect it ", providing always that we in our 
turn do our full duty by her who sits among us, their representative. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XVIII
 
THE SPIRITUAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF ADEPTS. THE 
 
"WONDROUS-BEING," THE BUDDHAS, NIRMANAK&YAS, 
DHVAN-CHOHANS. 
 
Then the Blessed One spake, and said : 
 
' Know, Vasettha, that (from time to time) a Tathagata is born into the 
world, a fully Enlightened One, blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom and 
goodness, happy, with knowledge of the world, unsurpassed as a guide to erring 
mortals, a teacher of gods and men, a Blessed Buddha. He, by himself, 
thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were, face to face this universe the 
world below with all its spirits, and the worlds above, of Mara and of Brahma 
and all creatures, Samanas and Brahmans, gods and men, and he then makes 
his knowledge known to others. The truth doth he proclaim both in its letter 
and in its spirit, lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, lovely in its consum- 
mation : the higher life doth he make known, in all its purity and in all its 
perfectness.' 
 
(The Sacred Books of the East.) Tevigga Sutta t pp. 186-7. 
 
OUR study this evening begins with reading once more 
a part of the matter from the first volume of The Secret 
Doctrine, which was read at our last meeting, three 
weeks ago, I believe ; namely, on page 207, the end of 
the first paragraph : 
 
The Arhats of the " fire-mist " of the 7th rung are but one remove 
from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy the highest on Earth, and our 
Terrestrial chain. This " Root-Base " has a name which can only be 
translated by several compound words into English " the ever-living- 
human -Banyan." This " Wondrous Being'' descended from a "high 
region," they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separa- 
tion of the sexes of the Third Race. 
 
This evening we are going to make a step forward, in some 
respects, far and away beyond any distance that we have travelled 
on a similar occasion. Our preceding two studies have been for 
the purpose, mainly, of illustrating some of the preliminary ideas 
connected with this wonderful doctrine of the " Wondrous Being ". 
 
First, then, let us note that the key-word of this teaching is the 
word " Banyan ". Doubtless you all know what a banian-tree is, 
a well-known tree in India, and called the Ficus bengalensis, the 
" Bengal Fig ", because it is a relative of the fig-tree. It grows 
rapidly, and soon attains to very respectable dimensions. From 
its branches there hang down tendrils, which, when they reach the 
soil, they strike into the ground and become roots there. And the 
tendril which grew down and rooted itself in the ground becomes 
 
191 
 
 
 
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another tree-trunk, in its turn sending forth branches, these 
branches anew sending forth other tendrils, becoming in their turn 
new roots, which again become new trunks, sending forth other 
branches, developing in their turn new tendrils, and so on. It is 
a wonderful figure of speech to have been chosen for this subject. 
 
Now this " Wondrous Being " is a spiritual Banian. To say 
that it is " our Higher Self ", would be using a misleading phrase ; 
it would be doing violence to the facts. Notwithstanding this, 
however, in one sense it is our Higher Self, our Paramatman. 
From it we spiritually spring ; and when, in the course of the 
cycles, the Life-Wave shall have run its Rounds on this Planetary 
Chain, into the Hierarchical Banian again we shall be withdrawn. 
It is in very truth, so far as this planet is concerned, and so far as 
its thinking entities more particularly are concerned, our " Father 
in Heaven ". The " Wondrous Being " referred to here must not 
be confused with its lower copy, the Supreme Initiator, the Great 
Sacrifice, the Head of the Spiritual-psychological Hierarchy of 
Adepts, the more immediate subject of our present study. 
 
You will remember that in our former studies we pointed out 
that the course of the evolution of man, more particularly of his 
psychological nature, was a copy in miniature of the development 
not merely of worlds of the Macrocosmic Scale, but also of various 
high Spiritual Beings who form the directing Intelligences of the 
Kosmos, and of their Vehicles in the universe. First, when the 
time comes for manifestation, for the sending forth of a life-wave, 
it begins, rounds out, and then completes its evolutionary course 
on the first " plane " of its downward and forward journey. Then, 
passing from that " plane ", to use the ordinary term, and going 
to a lower one, it leaves on the plane or sphere to and into which 
it had first penetrated, vehicles of various sorts, remaining more 
or less active, though the main vigor of the Life- Wave has passed 
on. And so through and in all of the seven planes or spheres of 
manifestation. First in the spiritual world ; then in the psychical ; 
then in the astral ; and lastly in the physical ; thus reaching the 
limit which the active impulse or force of the Evolutionary Wave 
attains in that particular manvantara, which is what we call 
" absolute matter " for that particular Life- Wave : four planes 
from its beginning, counting downwards. Three more planes 
upwards round out the Manvantaric Cycle. 
 
Remember here that our Teaching allows of no such things as 
" Absolutes " in the ordinary sense, for actually all " Absolutes " 
are relative. The Absolute Self, our " Father in Heaven ", is but 
the " Absolute " of our Hierarchy, its crown, its summit, its glory ; 
or, considering it as the beginning of manifested beings, the Root 
or the Seed thereof. And, as all nature works in bi-polar phases, 
" absolute matter ", therefore, is the ultimate depth to which a 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 193
 
spiritual impulse can reach in that particular manvantaric cycle. 
Below it are other complete Hierarchies ; while above our hier- 
archical (not individual) " Father in Heaven " is the lowest plane 
of another but superior Hierarchy, one of innumerable multitudes 
of Hierarchies, which in their aggregate comprise the Universal 
Kosmos. 
 
In our last study we spoke of the care that we should have when 
we speak of the " One " ; the reason is that there are infinite 
multitudes of such " Ones ", a necessary implication of what we 
have said this evening and elsewhere. 
 
Now, as the Monad descends into matter, or rather as its Ray 
one of other innumerable Rays proceeding from it is propelled 
into matter, it secretes from itself and then excretes on each one 
of the seven planes through which it passes its various vehicles, 
all overshadowed by the Self, the same Self in you and in me, in 
plants and in animals, in fact in all that is and belongs to that 
Hierarchy. It is the One Self, the Supreme Self or Paramatman 
of the Hierarchy. It illumines and follows each individual Monad 
and all the latter's hosts of Rays. Each such Monad is a Spiritual 
Seed from the previous Manvantara, which manifests as a Monad 
in this Manvantara ; and this Monad through its Rays throws out 
from itself by secretion and then excretion all its vehicles ; and 
these vehicles are, first, the Spiritual Ego, the reflexion or copy in 
miniature of the Monad itself, but individualized through the 
Manvantaric Evolution, " bearing " or " carrying " as a vehicle 
the Monadic Ray. The latter cannot directly contact the lower 
planes, because it is the monadic essence itself, the latter a still 
higher Ray of the infinite Boundless composed of infinite multi- 
plicity in unity. 
 
The next vehicle is the spiritual soul, the " bearer " of the 
Spiritual Ego. On its own higher plane, this vehicle is, as it were, 
a sheaf or pillar of light. Similarly with the various Egos and 
their related vehicle-souls on the inferior planes, all growing 
constantly more dense, as the planes of matter gradually thicken 
downwards and become more dense, into which the monadic Ray 
penetrates until the final " soul ". The " final soul " is the 
physical body, the general vehicle or " bearer " or " carrier " of 
them all. " Soul ", as the term is here used, is seen to be a general 
expression for any " bearer " or " carrier " of an egoic center, or 
" ego ". 
 
When we call this Hierarchical Wondrous Being our " Highest 
Self ", we mean that it is the Primeval or Originating Seed from 
which we grow and develop into composite entities, the immortal 
divine part of our nature and being. We can consider it, in one 
aspect, as a sheaf of Divine Light separating into innumerable 
individuals or entities (Monads and Monadic Rays) in a Man- 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
vantara ; and when the Pralaya comes, again withdrawing and 
drawn back into Itself, enriched and ennobled, however, through 
its countless Hosts of Manifested Monads and Monadic Rays, 
with the individualizing experience that these latter have gained ; 
because, though at first unconscious " god-sparks ", they are 
now self-conscious divinities. The innumerably various individual 
consciousnesses increase in power and glory and self-cognition by 
means of the life and lives through which It (and they) have 
passed. Hence the Wonder-Teaching flowing forth from this. 
Listen carefully : 
 
Last spring, it will be remembered, by the Teacher's in- 
structions, we pointed out that the one end and aim of all Man- 
vantaric Evolution is the raising of the mortal into Immortality ; 
and we mentioned as an illustration of the idea the beautiful 
Invocation of Katherine Tingley, our present Teacher, " that 
from the corruptible I may become Incorruptible ; that from 
darkness I may go forth in Light ". That, indeed, is the aim and 
end of Kosmic evolution. Have we reached as yet such a state, 
you and I ? We have not ; and our immortality as men is non- 
existent or rather conditional, and will so be until we have 
" raised the corruptible into Incorruptibility ". 
In order to make things more clear, please note the following : 
No Student or Hearer of these Studies should feel discouraged 
at what may seem to him to be the " confusion " caused by using 
such words as " spiritual ", " divine ", " Wondrous Being ", 
" the One ", " hierarchy ", and many more, in various places 
which seem different from other places or conditions. The fact 
is, that such usage is really unavoidable. No European language 
has evolved terms or expressions suitable to these majestic and 
often (to us) complex doctrines ; and hence a speaker is obliged 
to do the best he can in this respect. But please mark this well : 
There need be no confusion whatsoever, and in time there will be 
none, if the student or reader will constantly bear in mind the 
following facts. The entire framework of Kosmos, or Nature, is 
builded throughout in scalar fashion, and on " correspondences " 
and " repetitives " ; so that, actually, the same descriptive words 
are properly applied to any theme of a repetitive character ; for 
the reason that there are no " absolutes " anywhere, and every- 
thing is strictly " relative " to everything else. The only differ- 
ences are those of evolutionary development ; and the relative 
and varying greater or less degree in which " spirit " or " matter " 
is evolved or manifesting. The " divine " of one Hierarchy is 
actually " grossest matter " to another far superior Hierarchy ; 
but within one and the other the " repetitive " rules apply very 
strictly ; because Kosmos or Nature follows one GENERAL 
COURSE and ONE " LAW ", and has one general and throughout- 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 195
 
repeated course of action, which applies as strictly and fully to a 
Kosmos as to the less kosmos, the Atom. 
 
Hence, the " Wondrous Being " of our own Planetary Spiritual- 
Psychological Hierarchy of Adepts, etc., is a correspondence in 
small of the Kosmical ONE of the Universal Kosmical Hierarchy 
of the Solar System, etc. 
 
Bearing this rule ever in mind, confusion will gradually fade 
away into dazzling light of Illumination. It is well worth trying ! 
 
Some perhaps may think it a remarkable thing that in our last 
two studies we contrasted the case of the " lost soul " with the 
case of the Children of this Wondrous Being the Buddhas. 
Naturally the former are the other or nether pole of the Buddhas ; 
as these " lost souls " are, like the Buddhas, cases of extreme 
rarity of occurrence. In our present state of evolution, in which 
these " lost souls " occur, equally rare is the other occurrence : 
the raising of the mortal into Immortality, of the corruptible 
into Incorruptibility. 
 
Let us go into this a little farther. What is it that is " lost " ? 
It is the " soul ". Now what is " soul " ? As I have explained 
before, by our use it is a vehicle on the higher planes manifesting 
as a sheaf or pillar of light ; and on the lower planes, depending 
upon the spirituality of the plane, or its materiality, a more or 
less physically corporeal body. These " souls " in all cases are 
living, more (or less) conscious, sentient entities ; living beings ; 
composite ; each one of them composed of innumerable multitudes 
of less (inferior) entities, as our body itself is composed of quasi- 
infinite numbers of atomic cosmoi, tiny cosmoses, minute 
universes. 
 
Now such a soul becomes " lost ", annihilated truly, when it 
has lost its touch or rather union with that which gives it immor- 
tality or the promise of it. For, if and when, the impulse, all 
impulses or aspirations, towards the indwelling divinity, towards 
its closer union therewith, have faded out or ceased completely, 
then there is nothing left in it to hold it together, for it is wholly 
a compounded thing, as said before, and it then disintegrates, 
falls to pieces, as the physical body will disintegrate in the fire, 
or in the earth. What then happens to the immortal Monad 
which had informed it ? Its career in that vehicle is violently 
checked. The course of nature, of destiny, in that particular 
instance, has been violated and interrupted. Yet all the previous 
spiritual gleanings from the former lives of that Monad in other 
former vehicles, still remain ; and, after a certain period, it (the 
Monad) shoots forth another Ray, another Ego ; although the 
page of the " lost soul " remains blank, so to say it is, as it 
were, non-existent, completely wiped out. Immortality has no 
record of it. It is truly a terrible thing, not only spiritually, but 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
for the higher soul, the spiritual ego, itself (see diagram p. 203). 
I cannot say more of this at present. 
 
On the contrary, on the other side, when once in many, many 
generations the Flower of Spirituality blooms full in a Soul, and 
mortality is raised into Immortality, we have the opposite case : 
a Master is born, consciously immortal, linked for ever with his 
Higher Individual Self. As the one case is one pole, so is the other 
case the other pole of Nature's course. 
 
But when the former soul is " lost ", there is then for it no 
more pain, no more sorrow ; it is wiped out, and vanishes, even 
as a shadow which passes along a wall and is gone. 
 
Now listen ! Modern science tells us in its hypotheses built 
upon its new recent discoveries, that every physical atom is 
composed first, of a central nucleus which is called a " proton " ; 
and, second, that around it go circling, cycling, revolving 
precisely as the planets and many comets in the solar system 
do around the sun other corpuscular bodies called " electrons ". 
We will use these facts as illustrative of our theme because the 
conception is so closely similar in outline to that of the Ancient 
Wisdom. The next idea to grasp is that mere bulk, mere magni- 
tude, is no proof or criterion of greatness, either in spiritual 
grandeur or in physical power. The fact is that every atom in 
the manifested universe is a " bearer " and a " carrier " of lives. 
Our bodies are actually composed and builded up of innumerable 
hosts of such atoms, every one a miniature cosmos or solar system, 
every one of them carrying its hosts of astral-psychic and even 
spiritual infinitesimals. Over all, through all, permeating all, 
controlling all, giving connected and inhering life to all, are the 
predominant life, power, and characteristic of our own personality, 
of our own personal ego as man ; the Paramatman, the spiritual 
Self, the " Father in Heaven " of these infinitesimal beings, 
We are not necessarily greater in essence than any one unit of 
these innumerable hosts of infinitesimals which live, and move, 
and have their being, in one or another or another or another 
atom of our body. There may be entities among them very much 
farther advanced than we are, paradoxical as the statement may 
sound ; and therefore I repeat : " Break the molds of your 
minds ; let in the light ! " Because a thing may be strange to 
the mind and because it may sound new, is it therefore necessarily 
untrue ? How dare you or I or anyone say : " This or that is the 
only truth, the only thing that can be ? " What is the criterion 
of truth here ? What, indeed, is truth, as judged by such 
standards ? 
 
Let us go a step farther. In our body, or, for instance, in its 
organs : the heart, the liver, the brain, and others, each one 
receiving from the predominant personal ego of the man certain 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 197
 
particular rays of force, and each one a kosmical universe or a 
universal kosmos for the hosts of atomic infinitesimals composing 
it ; in this connexion, I say, has it ever struck you, has it ever 
occurred to you, that our solar system is such an atomic 
infinitesimal as compared with the Universal Kosmos ; formed 
of its proton the Sun, and of its electrons the planets, each planet 
bearing its hosts of lives, and forming a part of the vehicle or 
body, if you will, of some immense Titanic Entity, utterly 
beyond our sphere of comprehension ? " God " ? But why 
" God " ? What assurance have we that such a Titanic Entity 
is better than you or I, as " God " is supposed to be ? Mere 
magnitude or bulk, mere material magnitude, is absolutely no 
criterion of anything. Our picture may or it may not be true. 
But the point to get here is this, that as our body is held together 
by the forces driving through it, and coming from us, secreted 
and excreted by you and by me ; so does the One of the Universal 
Kosmos or of any inferior Hierarchy to it send forth and 
control the many. Thus, then, the Universal Kosmical " Won- 
drous Being " is our Highest Self ; which in no way whatever 
contradicts or interferes with the other fact, that each one of us has 
his own monadic Higher Self, a Spark thereof, destined in its turn 
to become in future Manvantaras, the Highest Self of a Kosmos ! 
Profound, sublime thought ! And the Wondrous Being of inferior 
scope and splendor, who is the Root-Base of our own Planetary 
Spiritual-Psychological Hierarchy of Adepts, a miniature as it 
were of the Kosmical, is the one spoken of in the passage of The 
Secret Doctrine which forms our present theme. 
 
Promises made on the Teacher's instructions, in our School, are 
sacred. Following those instructions, it was promised in the 
spring of last year that it would be our duty, if these meetings 
were continued, to simplify and if possible to explain and illustrate 
to the best of our ability and no man can do more the Esoteric 
Wisdom as it was secretly taught in the ancient sanctuaries, 
universally over the archaic world, and as it is taught to-day, as 
far as we know it, by our own Masters and their representatives, 
for that Wisdom is one, the same ages ago as now ; the same on 
another planet as here. There cannot be two Truths in the 
universe. That promise has been carried out, up to the present 
time, under great difficulties, not the least of which is that the 
Teacher's instructions were that these studies should be con- 
ducted in such fashion that when the time came for their publica- 
tion, no one reading them shall comprehend or shall receive the 
full key, excepting only those who have been initiated in this 
group, or who are members of this School. " Initiated " means 
those who have begun a study, as you and I are " beginners ", who 
have begun this sublime study ; and our older students here 
 
 
 
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know it well, for doubtless they have the key to understand it. 
They have received their esoteric instructions, which enable 
them to follow the threads of our difficult themes ; but one 
" outside " could not do so. And this may be said, that upon 
looking over the stenographic reports of such of our studies as 
we have been enabled to obtain and correct, very few changes 
were required to render the thought closed to outsiders, at least 
in part. Those changes which are required are simply in order 
better to illustrate meanings, or changes of the phrasing, or the 
choice of a more appropriate and clearer word, So far, then, our 
task has been successful. 
 
Now, the Hierarchical Wondrous Being has been deliberately 
spoken of in our last two studies and also in this our present 
study, as an Entity, because, generalizing the conception, it is 
an Entity. But there are three forms in which, or planes upon 
which, this Entity manifests ; and for the sake of perspicuity 
and convenience, just here, we are going to use the Buddhist 
phraseology, the phraseology of Buddhism and Tibet, as expressed 
in the Sanskrit language. The highest aspect, or the highest 
sub-Entity of the Wondrous Being is called Adi-Buddha, Adi 
meaning primeval (or the highest). This Adi-Buddha is in the 
Dharma-icaya-state you all know what this word means : a 
Sanskrit compound of two words meaning the " Continuance- 
Body ", sometimes translated equally well or ill the "Body 
of the Law ", both very inadequate expressions, for the difficulty 
in translating these extremely mystical terms is very great ; a 
mere " correct " dictionary translation misses the esoteric 
meaning entirely ; and just there is where Occidental scholars 
make such ludicrous errors at times. The first word comes 
from the root Dhri, meaning to support, to sustain, to carry, to 
bear ; hence to continue ; also human laws are the agencies 
supposed to carry, support, sustain, civilization ; the second 
element, kdya, means " body " ; the noun thus formed may be 
rendered the " body of the Law ", but this phrase does not give 
the idea at all. It is that spiritual body or state of a high spiritual 
being in which the sense of soulship and egoity has vanished 
into a universal (hierarchical) sense, and remains only in the 
seed, i.e., latent if even so much. It is pure consciousness, pure 
bliss, pure intelligence, freed from all personalizing thought. 
 
The second aspect or sub-Entity is called the Dhyani-Buddha, 
" Contemplation-Buddha ", a great descent from the former, so 
far as mere impersonal spirituality goes. This is carried by the 
Sambhoga-kaya, two Sanskrit words meaning " Enjoyment- 
Body ", or rather " Participation-Body ", because the Buddha 
in the Sambhoga-kaya state still participates in, still retains, its 
consciousness as an individual, its egoship and its soul, though it is 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 199
 
still too far above material or personal concerns to care about or 
to meddle with them ; and therefore it would be powerless here 
on our material earth. As H. P. Blavatsky once said, a god from 
the spheres celestial, living solely in its own nature, and without 
a material body to manifest in material spheres, would be utterly 
powerless there. 
 
The third, and lowest, yet in one sense the highest aspect or 
sub-Entity (highest on account of the immense, willing, self- 
sacrifice involved in its incarnation in human flesh) is the 
Manusha-Buddha, meaning " human Buddha ", because born 
in a human body for compassionate work among men. The 
Manusha-Buddha at will or need, lives and works in the Nirmana- 
kaya, " Form-Body ", about which a very wonderful doctrine 
exists, to be explained later. 
 
Now, the Dhyani-Buddhas are one of the ten classes of beings 
which came to our globe from the preceding Planetary Man- 
vantara. Shortly, we will recite them, as follows : three Ele- 
mental Kingdoms, the lowest ; the Mineral-Kingdom ; the Plant- 
Kingdom ; the Beast-Kingdom. I pause a moment in order to 
make a remark. Please do not say " animal " in this connexion. 
We must have precision here. " Animal " means any being 
which has an anima, or vital soul. Man is an " animal " in that 
sense, but he is not a " beast ". His vital-astral-physical body 
is a " beast ", and he works in and with a human soul through 
a beast- or vital, soul, enlightened by a spiritual Soul. We hope 
to have time later to illustrate this point more fully this evening. 
 
Then another Kingdom after the Beast-Kingdom : the 
Manusha-Kingdom or Human-Kingdom. So far, then, we have 
three Elemental Kingdoms, 3 ; then the mineral, 4 ; plant, 5 ; 
beast, 6 ; human, 7. Then begin the Dhyan-Chohans of three 
classes. Man in his higher nature is an embryo Dhyan-Chohan, 
an embryo " Lord of Meditation ". It is his destiny, if he run 
the race successfully, to blossom forth at the end of the seventh 
Round, as a " Lord of Meditation " ; if you like, as a spiritual 
Planetary, or a Planetary Spirit, when this planetary manvan- 
taric kalpa is ended, this Day of Brahma, which are the seven 
Rounds in seven stages each. But there are three classes of 
Dhyan-Chohans, as said ; these three classes in their turn are 
each divided into seven, as you know. Now of these three the 
lowest class being divided into seven, of these seven the fourth 
is that Dhyan-Chohan who is our " God in Heaven ", for this 
Fourth Round. Its spiritual Primary is the Adi-Buddha of the 
Fourth Round. It itself is a Dhyani-Buddha. Let us try to make 
this clearer. On each planet or globe of the seven globes forming 
the Planetary Chain, as the Life- Wave touches it in a Round 
and similarly through all the seven Rounds there is evolved, or 
 
 
 
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rather appears, a Buddha, it might be better to say a Mahsl- 
Buddha ; one at the commencement of a globe's awakening to 
life again ; and another Maha-Buddha when the Life-Wave 
leaves the planet after completing its Round there. Likewise, 
for each Race during such a globe-Round there appears another 
Buddha, who, so to say, is a Ray from the Maha-Buddha of the 
planet, and is called the Race-Buddha ; and he in his turn, at the 
middle of the Race, or when the central point of the race is 
nearing, overshadows a chosen human vessel of purity and 
nobility, or spiritual grandeur, this last becoming the Buddha 
preparing the spiritual way for the great Race-Buddha of the 
succeeding Root-Race, who appears shortly before the close of 
the preceding Root-Race. Such a one (as this last) was the 
Lord Sakyamuni, Gautama-Buddha, of whom we spoke during 
our last study, who is now living on earth, as the Teachers tell us, 
a Nirmanakaya, A Nirmanakaya is the lowest of the three 
mystical vehicles, as we explained a little while ago. It exists in 
seven degrees or kinds, the lowest being the case where the entity, 
the spiritual entity, retains all his human principles except the 
physical body. All. He is a man in every respect, except for the 
physical body, which he has discarded. 
 
Now all these Buddhas, and we have no time this evening to 
illustrate the wonderful mysteries connected with this doctrine, 
no time this evening, at least all these Buddhas of a Round 
derive from the Dhyani-Buddha of that Round. They form part 
of the spiritual-psychological Hierarchy of that Round. It is this 
Dhyani-Buddha, of our Fourth Round, our " Father in Heaven ", 
who is the " Wondrous Being ", the Great Initiator, the Sacrifice, 
spoken of before. The name and titles are sometimes likewise 
applied to that spiritual Entity, the Race-Buddha, who comes 
shortly before or at the beginning of a Root-Race ; and who at 
certain epochs during the course of that Race, chooses a fit 
human vehicle, usually one of the Great Lodge, overshadows 
this chosen vessel or incarnates in it, as the case may be 
depending upon the materiality of the Race and Round and 
many other factors and so overshadowed the Chosen Vessel 
becomes the Manusha or human Buddha. Strictly speaking, 
the Race-Buddha himself is a Manusha, or human Buddha, also. 
As remarked before, probably none of these titles or names are 
hard and fast as limited to one sole entity ; they are often applied, 
mutatis mutandis, to more than one sole Entity or class. This is 
extremely suggestive. 
 
It is in this manner that this subject of the " Wondrous Being ", 
which seems so intricate, but which is actually so simple, is 
explained. It seems intricate on account of its subtilty, but 
it is very simple indeed. It is our brain-minds of matter which 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 201
 
prevent us from seeing it easily and clearly. The Ray running 
through all our individual being, from which we draw our spiritual 
life and spiritual sustenance, comes direct to us from this Hier- 
archical Wondrous Being in whom we all are rooted. He to us, 
psychologically and spiritually, holds exactly the same place 
that the human ego, the man-ego, holds to the innumerable 
multitudes of Elemental entities which compose his bodyr 
atomic infinitesimals, before referred to, are not meant here. 
But listen : 
 
The analogy is correct also in this respect, that if we made it 
universal, kosmic, we would say that that Inexpressible ONE, 
which is the Utmost of the Utmost, and the Inmost of the 
Inmost, of our Kosmical Universe, comprising the greatest 
boundaries of the Milky Way : corresponds to all within the 
Milky Way as our human ego corresponds to the infinitesimal 
atomic universes which compose its own physical body. The 
symbology is there ; the correspondence is there ; and it is by 
the correspondence that we are striving to explain somewhat of 
the Mystery, how the One becomes the Many ; not because the 
One " descends into matter " or becomes " many " materially 
and literally. Not at all. But in the same way that the sun is 
an immense and exhaustless reservoir of vital, psychic, and 
spiritual rays, sending them out through billions of years, 
exhaustlessly ; in the same way this Hierarchical Wondrous 
Being of Kosmic magnitude, through Its inferior but high Wondrous 
Beings of various degrees, enlightens us and uplifts us and inspires 
us, and leads us onward and upward towards immortality, for 
aye doing its best, through Its own spiritual Ray within us, to 
illumine and lighten our material corruptibility, in order to make 
it incorruptible ; that from Personality we may enter Individu- 
ality ; " that from darkness, we may go forth in Light ! " And 
the time will come when we shall do this Work and become 
incorruptible consciously, working with Nature and becoming 
one with her ; for, just as this Wondrous Being is the foundation- 
force back and behind of all that we call Nature, so that same 
Wondrous Being in far-gone former Manvantaras was then a 
Man, even as you and I now are. Such we shall also become, 
if we run the Kosmic race successfully I Wonderful, inspiring 
thought ! 
 
Now, I wish to read a citation from our present Teacher, 
Katherine Tingley, taken from one of her recent lectures, because 
it is so appropriate to our present studies on this point, that if we 
come here with pure hearts and a sincere motive, learning from 
each other in the spirit of true comradeship and brotherly love, 
we shall all get something high and fine, something to urge us 
upward and onward. It will be a holy thing, a benediction. I 
 
 
 
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tell you, the opening of these studies by our Teacher has a deeper 
meaning than appears on the surface. She has told you herself 
that the time had not before come when we could study together, 
and that each one takes from these meetings what he wills to 
take. Listen : "A man gets what he works for, and if he does 
not work for it, he does not get it. But when one wants truth so 
much that he is actually hungry for it, he gets it. It is the wine 
of life, so to speak, the revelation of the book of life. No language 
can describe it ". And again : " Those who desire the truth, 
those who have the courage to enter the new life, those who have 
the desire to be reborn in a sense, must throw overboard every- 
thing that has held them down in their limitations, in their doubts, 
in their fears, their dislikes, and their passions. Man is a majestic 
being if he knows his own spiritual nature, and works assiduously 
to become that which he was intended to be ". 
 
We are cutting brief our lecture to-night ; it is already very 
long ; we have still more to say, and our time for closing is 
drawing near. 
 
Another thought that must be hinted at tonight is, that our 
wonderful book here, H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, is both 
an exoteric book and an esoteric book. It contains doctrines 
which were esoteric before this book was printed. Now they are 
" exoteric ". But if anyone thinks I never did, thank the 
immortal Gods ! if anyone thinks that he knows The Secret 
Doctrine by reading it once or even a dozen times, or a score of 
times, he mistakes greatly the situation. It must be read not 
only between the lines, but within the words. I have found the 
value of the following rule : never take a single statement in it 
and allow your mind to mold itself around it, never let a single 
idea crystallize ; break the molds, let in the light. It is an 
excellent rule. As soon as a man says : "I have the truth. I 
do not agree with such a one of our teachers : I think such and 
such a teacher was wrong ", look out for him, for he is probably 
blind. The molds of his mind are crystallized, and he cannot see 
the light. 
 
I have learned these lessons, and I speak as a witness. Every 
evening, before I go to sleep, I go over the events of the day, and 
I try to find one or more things in which I have allowed my mind 
to crystallize around a thought or a fact ; and I am merciless to 
myself if I catch it or them. Not for a minute do I temporize. 
When I find molds of mind, I break them, for I know too well 
what they mean. 
 
These things, these thoughts that we study, are serious, there 
is no playing with them ; it means going up or going down ; and 
you have the choice of paths daily, momently, instantly. Forgive 
me for seeming a bit personal. I do not mean that as a preach- 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 203
 
ment. I speak from my heart, for I have found the truth of what 
I say, and its great value. 
 
Now to illustrate by a diagram or paradigm this question of 
souls and egos alluded to this evening : 
 
 
 
Archetypal 
 
World. 
 
 
 
Divine Soul or 
Monadic 
Envelope. 
 
 
 
Spiritual Soul 
 
or Individual 
 
Monad: Buddhi: 
 
Fruit and Seed 
 
of Manas. 
 
Higher Human 
Soul. Lower 
 
Buddhi and 
Higher Manas. 
 
Human Soul, or 
 
Man. Manas, 
 
Kama, and 
 
Prana. 
 
Beast-Soul, or 
 
Vital-Astral 
 
Soul: Kama and 
 
Prana. 
 
Physical Soul or 
 
Body: Sthula- 
 
8artraandPr4na 
 
ancj Linga- 
 
sarlra. 
 
 
 
 
Paramatman 
 
or Supreme 
 
Self. 
 
 
 
Atman, 
Divine Ego. 
 
 
 
k Jlvatman, 
\ Spiritual Ego. 
 
 
 
Bhutatman, 
Human Ego. 
 
 
 
Pranatman, 
Personal Ego. 
 
 
 
Beast-Ego. 
 
 
 
Body. 
 
 
 
Please note here what is intended to be an egg-shaped design. 
It is not a graphic representation, that is, a picture ; it is a 
paradigm. A paradigm is a graphic symbol, but not a picture of 
a thing. 
 
Let the three parallel lines drawn above the egg represent, if 
you will, the Artipa-world, the formless world ; and the seven 
planes comprised within the Egg, the RApa- World, seven being 
the number of the principles always in manifestation, held in union 
as an individual by the Higher Triad, the arupa-triad, its Root 
above. 
 
Now, the three higher of the seven within the Egg are also 
called Arftpa, " formless ", but only relatively so. Please remember 
one of the first lessons of our Esoteric Wisdom : There are no 
 
 
 
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absolutes. We speak indeed of " absolutes ", but only as relative 
" absolutes ". The popular, ordinary sense of this word as 
11 limitless or endless completions ", is utterly inadmissible, for 
there are no absolutes, of that kind, for every thing is relative in 
quality and space and time to some thing else, and it must be so 
unless we cast logic and common sense to the winds. 
 
Just think of it : if any thing were " Absolute " in the old 
popular sense, it would be everything, and there could be nothing 
but that in manifestation, hence no change for betterment, no 
progress, no evolution. Relativity which means universally 
occurring relationships in space and time is the very heart of the 
conception of the Kosmos as an aggregate of evolving entities, the 
offspring of infinite Motion, infinite Life, infinite Progress always. 
 
To continue our discussion of the paradigm : Now, through this 
egg-shaped paradigm falls the Ray, from the Arfipa-world, 
represented by this vertical line signifying the Self, universally 
manifesting in every atom it touches in this Kosmos, and it 
permeates them all as the self individual, the self egoic, the 
human self, the astral self, etc. These three highest divisions, 
the Arfipa-Triad, collectively are also called the Paramatman, a 
Sanskrit word meaning the " Supreme Self ", the Summit or 
Flower of the Hierarchy, the Root-Base or Source of that Self. 
Please always keep in mind that there is another Hierarchy above 
our highest division, this division beginning with the lowest, the 
" absolute matter ", of that higher Hierarchy. Everything is 
relative. " Absolute matter " even of our own Hierarchy would 
be intangible, invisible, to us. Why ? Because our present 
physical senses do not belong to its plane, and therefore have 
not been trained by evolution to take cognisance of it ; our senses, 
eye-sight, smelling, tasting, hearing, touching, can cognise only 
those things, and all those things, which they have been built to 
cognise through experience in and through ourselves. We have 
not descended in this Manvantara into the " absolute matter " of 
any other Hierarchy than our own ; we have gone down only 
as far as the stages of this Hierarchy would let us go. I do not 
here mean our Kosmical Hierarchy. I do mean our Planetary 
Hierarchy. Do not be absolute in the application of terminology, 
for the reasons already set forth. We must, when we hear a 
" Hierarchy " spoken of, immediately question which one. When 
we hear the " Self " spoken of, we must immediately question 
which one. When we hear the " soul " spoken of, let us imme- 
diately ask ourselves which soul. This is a safe rule and guide 
to follow in interpretation of any and all passages. 
 
Now, as just said, these three highest planes represented by 
these three horizontal lines paradigmatically represent the 
Paramatman or Supreme Self of the Hierarchy, in the Archetypal 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 205
 
World. If you please, let this topmost circle inside the Egg 
represent the Monadic Envelope or the Divine Soul, which is 
called, from another standpoint, the Atman or Divine Ego. The 
circle on the horizontal plane below the Monadic Envelope let 
us call the Spiritual Soul or the Individual Monad. The Self 
corresponding to it is the Jivatman. Next comes the third circle 
in this Egg, and corresponding to it is the higher Human Soul, 
composed of the lower Buddhi and the higher Manas ; and the 
Self corresponding to it is the Bhutatman, meaning the " Self of 
that which has been ", or the Reincarnating Ego. The fourth still 
lower, is the lower Human Soul or Man, Manas and Kama ; and 
the self corresponding to it is Pranatman, or Personal Ego. The 
next circle, still lower growing progressively darker like all the 
others, which I have attempted to illustrate by increasing the 
shading is the Beast-Soul, Kama-Prana. And the self corre- 
sponding to it may be simply called the Beast-Ego. Finally, the 
lowest " soul " of all, is the physical body or " soul." Remember 
that the word " soul ", in our ancient Wisdom, means " vehicle " ; 
and, of course, this lowest vehicle, the physical body, also com- 
prehends the Prana, and the Linga-arira or Model-body which 
is its background and seed and root. These three are inseparable. 
Now please notice in this diagram the role played by the Self, 
represented roughly by the line dropped from the highest and 
running through and permeating all the planes below its Arche- 
typal Origin. I wish to call to your attention the fact that not 
merely Plato, but the entire Greek school of mystic philosophies, 
spoke of the Self as immanent in Kosmos, and as a Sacrifice, 
which Christian mystics call sometimes the " Christ crucified in 
matter " ; and, if we care to make the application to the exoteric 
Christian religion of the doctrine of the Wondrous Being which 
we have been studying, we shall discover that the whole Christian 
mythos or story was actually drawn from it, the entire thing, and 
distortedly called the " incarnation of the Logos ". In old Greek 
philosophy, the word " logos " was used in many ways, which the 
Christians sadly misunderstood. The Dhyan-Chohan, of which 
we have spoken this evening, is our spiritual logos, the Planetary 
Logos, so far as this Fourth Round is concerned. The spiritual 
entity behind the sun is the Solar Logos of our Solar System. 
Small or great as every Solar System may be, each has its own 
Logos, the Source or Fountainhead of almost innumerable logoi 
of less degree in that system. Every man has his own spiritual 
logos ; every atom has its own logos ; every atom has its own 
Paramatman and Mulaprakriti, for every entity everywhere has 
its own highest. These things and the words which express them 
are relative. Bulk and magnitude have nothing whatsoever to 
do with it ; it is quality, spiritual quality, which is the true 
 
 
 
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criterion. This is a great and useful thing to remember. I have 
found inestimable help in that one rule. 
 
We have only a few minutes more of time this evening. I have 
been asked by the Teacher, briefly to speak of another matter, 
and that is in connexion with the recurring cycles of the year, and 
especially as regards the New Year. H. P. Blavatsky somewhere, 
I think it was in an old issue of her magazine Lucifer at the begin- 
ning of the New Year of 1890, says, among other things in a very 
interesting article, that Theosophists and Esotericists particularly 
should hold the fourth day of January as the beginning of the 
New Year. Now that is an extremely interesting statement ; 
and in general connexion with it, I wish to call your attention 
to one very important fact, which is that our Esoteric Wisdom is 
based entirely on Nature and her fundamental operations. 
Nature, as we understand that word, does not mean only the 
physical, visible universe. That is merely the shell or body of 
Nature the Real. Nature, with us, as has been often stated 
before, means the entire aggregate of everything that is, inwards and 
outwards, of all planes in all spheres throughout the Boundless. 
 
Now the significance of this in the present connexion is that the 
esoteric method of reckoning time is a natural method based 
wholly on recondite operations of Nature. It is not an artificial 
method. You will find that none of the real anniversaries in our 
School is based on man-made ideas or on chance, such as the 
artificial scheme used by the French during the French Revolu- 
tion, for instance ; or dating from the founding of a city, like 
Rome, for instance ; or from the death of some great man, like 
Jesus, for instance. Such methods, as a matter of fact, are un- 
known in the Esoteric Chronology ; though parallels do exist, 
but are based on natural cycles. The Ancient Wisdom bases all 
its chronological reckonings upon the kosmic clock which Nature 
gives us, and which is majestic, infallible, and a perfect time- 
keeper. That clock is the heavenly vault ; and the sun, the moon, 
the seven planets (as the ancients reckoned them), and the stars, 
are the " hands " marking time-cycles. The year mostly used 
in reckoning time, by the ancients, is what astronomers call the 
" tropical year ", so called from the change of the seasons. 
Winter, spring, summer, autumn ; winter, spring, summer, 
autumn ; recurring regularly ; and recurring regularly because 
based on the movement of the earth around the sun, like a hand 
on the dial of the kosmical clock. The so-called anomalistic year 
and the sidereal year were both known to ancient astronomy, 
but were not used except for purely astronomical (not astro- 
logical) calculations, or only rarely for astrological reckoning. 
 
Mark the difference between astrology and astronomy. As- 
tronomy is the science of the movements, and the relations to 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 207
 
each other, of the stars and planets. That is all. It simply tells 
us what they are "made of, where they move, and when they 
move, and how long it takes them to move along certain orbits or 
paths, and is purely exoteric. But " astrology ", mind you, 
which means the science of the stars (while " astronomy " proudly 
calls itself the " Law of the Stars "), just as " geology " means 
the science of the earth : ancient astrology, mind you not the 
pasteboard-science which passes under that name to-day, but the 
ancient spiritual-astral astrology, a true and profound wisdom 
about the evolution of divinity into and through matter, and 
about the human soul and the human spirit taught the science 
of the relations of the parts of Kosmic Nature among themselves, 
and more particularly as that science applied to man and his 
destiny as timed by the celestial orbs. From that great and noble 
science sprang up, as said, an exoteric pseudo-science, derived 
from the Mediterranean and Asian practice, eventuating in the 
modern schemes of so-called " astrology " a poor, degraded, 
and worn-out remnant of Ancient Wisdom. 
 
Now, all nations had ways of reckoning the year and fixing the 
beginning of the year. Not all nations put the opening of the 
year at the same date ; some nations reckoned from the winter 
solstice, that is when the sun has attained its southernmost 
point, before beginning its slow course northwards again. I am 
speaking as an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere of the 
earth. Of course, in South America and in lands below the 
equator, the conditions are reversed. But now we are speaking 
of the northern hemisphere. Other nations reckoned the begin- 
ning of the year at the summer-solstice, about June 2ist or 22nd ; 
while the winter-solstice takes place on or about December 2ist. 
Other nations again reckoned the opening of the year at the 
spring equinox, March 2ist or 22nd. Other nations began the 
reckoning of the year at the autumnal equinox, six months later, 
on September 2ist or 22nd. The Jews, for instance, had two years : 
a civil year, beginning in September, at the autumnal equinox, 
and a religious year, beginning with the spring equinox. The 
ancient Germanic nations of northern Europe before the time of 
Caesar, began the year at the winter-solstice, on December 2ist ; 
the ancient Greeks began their year at different times of the 
annual cycle, but most often, probably, in the autumn ; and 
the ancient Romans began it in the spring. The ancient Egyptians 
began it in the summer ; and the ancient Persians, and the 
Syrians, and other nations, had each its own period for opening 
the year. 
 
The Mediterranean civilizations were already on the downward 
path for many centuries before what in Europe is popularly called 
the year " i A.D." They were slowly losing a great deal of the 
 
 
 
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Ancient Wisdom, and an understanding of its great secrets, and 
it was shown not merely in the manner in which the Eleusinian 
Mysteries were modified and changed, but also in the constant 
shifting and remodeling of their calendars, and in their methods 
of computing time, of calculating chronological periods, the 
beginnings and ends of various cycles, etc. The Romans were 
particularly blameworthy in this regard. They were perhaps 
worse in that respect than any other nation known to us. If 
some dictator or political chieftain wished to have a few days 
more of power, or to prevent or to postpone an election, he would 
begin to meddle with the Calendar, a course of conduct carried on 
with the connivance or through the ignorance or negligence of the 
Pontiffs. And so finally it came about that, on account of the 
disorder of the Calendar, at the time of Julius Caesar to be 
exact in the year 46-47 B.C. the calends of January, that is the 
first day of January, fell on the day of the season which now 
corresponds to the I3th of October ; and if the confusion had 
continued indefinitely, the first of January would in due course 
have taken place in all the months of the year, wandering through 
them, and finally completing its course around the year somewhere 
in March, having completed the cycle. It should be added that 
the old standard Roman year was lunar, consisting of about 
354 days. 
 
Julius Caesar deserves credit for having stopped this confusion 
by his reformation of the Roman Calendar. I do not mean to say 
that Caesar did it all himself ; he did not ; for though he was a 
clever man and an amateur astronomer, yet he had the services 
of an Egyptian or Alexandrian Greek astronomer, a man of 
great ability, called Sosigcnes ; and in the year 47 B.C., when, 
as I say, the calends of January, the first day of January, fell on 
what would now be the I3th of October just exactly as if our 
own " first of January " this year had occurred two or three 
months before in the late autumn, on the season-day properly 
belonging to the I3th of October these two eminent gentlemen 
or perhaps three, if we include M. Flavius put their heads 
together and shuffled the Calendar into conformity with the 
seasons again. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus at that time, and it 
was his duty to take charge of or oversee the correct computing of 
chronological periods, etc. This he did, inserting two extra 
months (one to have 33 days and the second 34 days) between 
November and December of that year, 47, and adding an inter- 
calary period or " month " of 23 days to the preceding February, 
making an addition of 90 days to that year in order to harmonize 
the Calendar with the seasons. That year, then, was 445 days 
long ; and because it was such a long year, and ordinary people 
were so puzzled as to the way in which business, etc., was going to 
 
 
 


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be done, it was called the " Year of Confusion ", but Macrobius 
neatly calls it the " last year of confusion " ! Then Caesar fixed 
the new Calendar to have a mean year of 365 J days, with a leap- 
year each fourth year of 366 days ; an arrangement that has 
lasted to our own time in Europe, but slightly modified. This 
arrangement of the Calendar, of course, abolished the old Roman 
lunar year. But, instead of beginning the year as he should have 
done, according to the ancient reckonings, the old reckoning of the 
Ancient Wisdom, at the beginning of one of the four seasons of 
the year, and when the moon was new ; at the winter-solstice, or, 
if you please, at the spring equinox, or the autumnal, or the 
summer-solstice, if he had taken the old beginning of the year 
of his own people, the Romans, as it had been before in the early 
days, that is to say, on December 2ist, or 22nd, at the winter- 
solstice ; or at the spring equinox in March, of Numa ; every- 
thing would have been " all right ". But now mark what 
happened. Watch carefully. He had Sosigenes whispering in his 
ear, and Sosigenes knew more than Csesar, but he forgot one little 
thing. He said, " Brother Csesar, Imperator ! " This is an 
imaginary conversation, but something like it, I think, must 
have taken place " Brother Caesar, Imperator ! According to 
the old way, the way of our noble ancestors, the year ought to 
begin not merely at the winter-solstice but also at new moon. 
Now the new moon this year does not fall on the day when the 
winter-solstice takes place, but it falls seven days later, for the 
solstice this year falls on December 24th." " That is right ", said 
Caesar. " We will begin the year seven days later than the 
solstice. We will call that day the calends of January ", or, as 
we should say, the first of January. Caesar made December to 
have 30 days ; later changed to 31 days. And that is how our 
habit of putting the beginning of the year on the first of January 
instead of on the day of the solstice, December 21, arose. Had 
Caesar (he had it in his power to do so as Pontifex Maximus) 
proclaimed in his Edict that the Calendar as reformed by him 
would commence running on the first occasion when the winter- 
solstice and a new moon coincided ; or at one of the other three 
beginnings of a Season which coincided with a new moon, it would 
have been exactly right, according to the Ancient Wisdom ; 
because, mark you, all these ancient methods of chronological 
reckoning were not based merely on the fact of somebody founding 
a city, or on the fact of somebody happening to die on a certain 
day, but on co-ordinated astronomical and terrestrial events. 
The ancient methods were based on the time-dial of the Kosmos. 
Caesar should have waited till a new moon coincided with one of 
the two solstices, or with one of the two equinoxes, beginning the 
New Year at the moment the moon was new on that night. 
 
 
 
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Evidently, Caesar felt that he could not wait ; or, perhaps, did 
not desire to wait ; or did not know. 
 
Now, then, as time went on and Christianity in later years 
came into vogue, people naturally kept the beginning of the year 
as on January first, the month-day established in the Julian 
Calendar ; but finally the Christians began to think that they 
ought to have their own day for beginning the new year in a 
religious sense, connected with the supposed birth of Jesus ; and 
so, early in the history of Christianity, eastern Christians took the 
I2th day after December 25, the 6th of January, in celebration 
of the mystical epiphany and birth (and baptism) of Jesus. It was, 
in a religious sense, the beginning of their year. The English call 
this festival " Twelfth Day ", as being the twelfth day after 
December 25th. What a curiously confused mess of ancient ideas 
and new dogmas ! His " birth-day " was later transferred to 
December 25. 
 
Now why was the 6th of January chosen, instead of the 4th ? 
For this reason. The winter-solstice, when Caesar and Sosigenes 
made their corrections of the Calendar, according to their correc- 
tions was made to fall on the 24th of December. The next new 
moon fell, then, on the first of January, which was why Caesar 
said the new year was to begin on that day, the " calends of 
January ". Then, many years later, 14 days after the day which 
the Christians thought the solstice, in their time, December 
23-24, December then having 31 days and not 30 days, as 
arranged by Caesar, was the sixth of January, which the Chris- 
tians called the " Epiphany ", copying an ancient pagan word and 
idea. " Epiphany " is a Christian word which originally belonged 
to the Mysteries of the old pagan Greek religion, and to the 
Ancient Wisdom ; it means, " appearance " of a god, and was 
adopted and adapted to the Christos-mythos. 
 
Now let us return to H. P. Blavatsky and her article in Lucifer, 
mentioned before. We see that calendars can be changed ; that 
calendars can be made by men ; that the Roman Calendar was 
also changed and was made by men ; and that the Julian 
Calendar, with modifications, has come down to us, and is the 
one used in Europe and America to-day. It is no proper calendar 
for Theosophists and especially for Esotericists to use, in order 
to compute the esoteric cycles or the beginning of the true 
esoteric year. 
 
Why did H. P. Blavatsky choose the fourth of January of the 
current Calendar for the beginning of the esoteric year ? Listen, 
Comrades. The true Esoteric Year should begin on the I4th day 
after the winter-solstice, provided that the winter-solstice coincide 
with a new moon. The I4th day thereafter, would, of course, be 
a full-moon day. The day of the winter-solstice could be used as 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 211
 
a beginning of the civil year, if so desired ; and the I4th day 
thereafter as the beginning of the Esoteric Year. Caesar, had he 
wished, or, rather, had he known more, could have so arranged 
his Calendar to fit, either for the new moon at a winter-solstice 
or a summer one, or at one of the equinoxes. But H. P. Blavatsky 
chose January 4, because it was the I4th day after the winter- 
solstice not because it was the " 4th " or any other month-day. 
 
Now January fourth is 14 days after the winter-solstice on 
December 2ist, and when coinciding with a full moon, it is an 
astrological date. It is not a man-made date. It does not depend 
upon a man-made calendar. It falls fourteen days after the 
festival of the true winter-solstice ; and when the winter-solstice 
also coincides with a new moon, a secret cycle opens. Put the 
winter-solstice where it belongs, and ten days will bring you to 
the first of January by our present Calendar. Notice the number 
ten. H. P. Blavatsky also says in her article that the celebration 
of the new year by Esotericists, should be in connexion with the 
Budha-wisdom, a word coming from the same root from which 
Buddha, the Lord Gautama's title, was taken, the root meaning 
" to awaken ". Now, again, what is Budha, from the same root ? 
Budha is the Sanskrit name for the planet Mercury, which the 
Greeks called Hermes, and the Latins Mercurius, and which many 
European peoples, adopting the Latin name, call Mercury. 
Hermes has always been the particular overseer of Mystics in 
many, perhaps all, nations. In ancient Greece, he was given the 
titles of " Psychagog " and " Psychopomp ", meaning " Con- 
ductor of Souls " to the " Nether World ", likewise the Mysteries. 
No matter what form the interpretation of the Ancient Wisdom 
may have taken in ancient times, one invariably finds the planet 
Hermes, or Mercury, associated closely with the teachings of the 
Mysteries dealing with the Afterworld. In India, Hermes was 
named Budha, as just said ; and he was called the Son of Sorna, 
or the Moon. 
 
For instance, in Homer's Odyssey, you read how Hermes led the 
souls of the dead suitors, " gibbering like bats ", to the " meads 
of asphodel ". Bk. XXIV. This allusion to the work of Hermes 
the Psychopomp, the " Helper," is a " mystery " which was 
taken directly from the Eleusinian Mysteries, or, perhaps, from 
still earlier Mysteries. 
 
Mark then, that our new year should begin 14 days after the 
winter-solstice, provided that day is a Mercury-day. Now how are 
we going to know whether it is a Mercury-day or not ? " There 
is the rub ". Have you any idea how the days of the week came 
to be named in the order that they now have, and have had for 
ages, in many parts of the world widely separated from each 
other ? Why one day is called Sun's Day, and another Moon's 
 
 
 
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Day, and another Tuesday Tiw's (Mars's) Day ? Do you know 
the old Anglo-Saxon names for these, by the way ? Wodnesdaeg, 
Wednesday, for Mercury-day ; and Frigedaeg, Friday, or Venus- 
Day ; Thunresdaeg, Thursday, or Jupiter-day ; Saeternesdaeg, 
Saturday for Saturn's day, and so forth. The system was as 
follows : The first hour of a day beginning when the central point 
of the sun is on the eastern horizon of that day, according to the 
ancient system, it was said to be under the direct rule of one of the 
seven sacred planets. Now if the planet Mercury, for instance, 
was the one in control of that first hour, the whole day which 
followed that first hour was called Mercury-day. Every succeed- 
ing hour of that same day was said to be under the control of one 
or the other of the seven planets, following each other in a certain 
order, as follows : Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, 
Moon the Sun and the Moon, however, being substitutes for two 
secret planets. The day has 24 hours ; beginning with Mercury, 
for instance, and counting the seven planets in the order just 
given through all the 24 hours, would bring the 25th hour, which 
is the first hour of the next day, in with Jupiter in control, and 
that day would then be Thursday ; and so on throughout till we 
come to Mercury again one week of seven days. You can easily 
prove this for yourself. As regards the real esoteric Budha-day, 
or Wednesday, or Mercury-day, I say here only this : If the 
winter-solstice is coincident with a new moon, plus something 
else, that day is a real astrological Budha-day ; and, of course, 
14 days later, or two weeks, is likewise a Budha-day, but at full 
moon. Verb, sap ! 
 
Now let us go another step farther. The fourth of January, 
1890, fell on a Saturday, although H. P. Blavatsky, in that 
article, had been speaking of Hermes. But that was merely 
because she of necessity used the week-names and month-days of 
the current Calendar, spoiled and ungeared as it is. So it is 
perfectly obvious that the year she is alluding to was the esoteric 
astrological year, and not the popular one of the current Calendar. 
This manner, above given, of computing cycles of time, following 
the hour of the Kosmical Clock, is the one that was always 
followed in the Ancient Wisdom. They rejected any other way, 
because it is the method or the way in which Nature herself works 
in the Rounds, in the Races, in the Kalpas, etc. 
 
Our time is ended for this evening. We shall resume at our 
next meeting the study of the Wondrous Being, which we have 
done our best further to illustrate this evening by taking the 
further step forward that was promised. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XIX
 
THE SEVEN JEWELS AND THE SEVEN STAGES OF INITIATION. 
 
These Portals lead the aspirant across the waters on "to the other shore." 
Each Portal hath a golden key that openeth its gate ; and these keys are : 
 
1. DANA, the key of charity and love immortal. 
 
2. &LA, the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances 
the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action. 
 
3. KSHANTI, patience sweet, that nought can ruffle. 
 
4. VIRAGA, indifference to pleasure and to pain, illusion conquered, truth alone 
perceived. 
 
5. ViRYA, the dauntless energy that fights its way to the supernal TRUTH, out 
of the mire of lies terrestrial. 
 
6. DHYANA, whose golden gate once opened leads the Naljor toward the 
realm of Sat eternal and its ceaseless contemplation. 
 
7. PRAJNA, the key to which makes of a man a god, creating him a Bodhisattva, 
son of the Dhyants. 
 
Such to the Portals are the golden keys. 
 
The Voice of the Silence (" The Seven Portals "). Fragments from The 
Book of the Golden Precepts, selected and annotated by H. P. Blavatsky. 
 
WE resume our studies this evening from the point at 
which we left them last week, and the main text that 
we shall have to consider is that which was before 
chosen, namely, on page 207 of Volume I of The 
Secret Doctrine, which has already been read twice, the part, 
to wit, dealing with the " Ever-living-Human-Banyan." 
 
As our studies this evening will also include a paragraph on 
page 424 of the same volume, this latter I shall read. It is 
Section XII, called " The Theogony of the Creative Gods " : 
 
To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient 
cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all 
the great religions of antiquity ; as it is only by this method that 
the root-idea will be made plain. Exact science could the latter 
soar so high, while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate 
and original sources would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. 
The original, transcendental and philosophical conception was one. 
But as systems began to reflect with every age more and more the 
idiosyncrasies of nations ; and as the latter, after separating, settled 
into distinct groups, each evolving along its own national or tribal 
groove, the main idea gradually became veiled with the overgrowth of 
human fancy. While in some countries the FORCES, or rather the 
intelligent Powers of nature, received divine honours they were hardly 
entitled to, in others as now in Europe and the civilized lands the 
very thought of any such Force being endowed with intelligence seems 
absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific. 
 
213 
 
 
 
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As preliminary to our observations to-night, it seems a bounden 
duty to make one remark to the effect that the Teacher has told 
me that I am over-cautious, over-conscientious, and therefore too 
apologetic in the manner in which I have spoken. I recognize 
that the admonition is well-founded and perhaps needed. I am, 
likewise, very grateful for the opening that it gives me for some- 
what plainer and more direct speech. So hereafter, instead of 
speaking in a manner so detached as to give the impression that 
anything said could be considered by anyone as " apologetic ", 
we shall pursue a different tactic, follow a different tactic, and 
declare, affirm ; and, if necessary, speak with the authority of 
our School behind us. 
 
Now then, first, has it ever occurred to us to consider, to ask, 
why the doctrines which we have been studying for the past 
months have always been held so secret ? There are three 
general reasons for this, two rather ; the third being a corollary 
of the second. The first is that these teachings have from time 
immemorial been considered the noble reward, the sublime 
reward, for those who give themselves heart and soul and irre- 
trievably to the Teachers and to the Terrestrial-Celestial Body 
that they represent. That is the less reason for the silence. The 
greater is the following, that these doctrines from their very 
nature being so abstruse, so subtil that our poor minds of matter 
find difficulty in comprehending them, would almost of necessity 
be misunderstood without a preliminary training and education. 
It requires literally years of study and training to bring the mind 
into such a state that it can receive these glorious teachings, these 
sublime doctrines that we have been studying, with some modicum 
at least of intelligent comprehension. If they were given out to 
the world indiscriminately, what would be the consequence ? 
Intuitive but otherwise untrained minds would worship our 
Teachers, Masters, as gods ; or the stupid heads in the multitudes 
would persecute them and try to do them to death as " devils ", 
were they to appear publicly and openly live among ordinary 
men. And a third party of the public, the skeptics, would deride, 
would mock, not only the Teachers themselves but their holy 
Message. 
 
These rules of secrecy are based on natural " law ", and on a 
keen understanding of the workings of the human mind. These 
doctrines, Fellow-students, were formulated in the dawn of time 
by giant intellects, and by god-like minds. He indeed must be 
blind and perverse of will who can look upon them after study 
and close examination as speculations or as mere theorizings. 
What a compliment was paid to H. P. Blavatsky by those who 
in their blind ignorance, said that she had invented them ! Think 
of what that means, what a wonderful woman, according to them, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 215
 
she must have been ! And obviously, the truth is the direct 
contrary. Did she ever claim that they were originated and 
formulated by her ? No ; from the beginning she said : "I am 
but a voice speaking for Those who sent me/ 1 
 
These reservations of secrecy, caution, and prudence, are not 
the singular and otherwise unknown rule of the Trans-Himalayan 
School to which we belong. They were the invariable rule of all 
the great Mystery-Schools of past times. Why, even in the latest 
of the exoteric faiths, in the Christian religion, a poor, tattered, 
faded fragment of the Ancient Wisdom you find the same thing, 
and conceived in words, by the way, which are as unkind as it is 
possible to put them in almost cruel in the haughty reserve that 
they signify. Yet they are not so when properly understood. 
I refer to certain words of the so-called Jesus in the ''Sermon 
on the Mount ". You remember them ? But let us read them. 
These warnings were uttered by the mythical Jesus in the 
" Sermon on the Mount " ; and remember, that Sermon is 
prefaced by the words of explanation that he went up onto a hill 
in order to escape from the crowds thronging and pressing him> 
when he then called his disciples unto him and delivered unto 
them, his disciples, the so-called " Sermon on the Mount ", 
evidently a Mystery-teaching. More of this hid meaning we shall 
point out to you this evening. But here are the warnings : 
 
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls 
before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and 
turn and rend you. 
 
Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, 
and it shall be opened unto you ; for every one that asketh receiveth ; 
and he that seeketh fmdeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be 
opened. 
 
Found in the so-called Gospel of Matthew, 
Chapter vii, verses 6-9. 
 
Our Esoteric School never used language of that kind. It is 
extremely doubtful if the real Jesus, the center around which 
were collected the legends of the mystery-figure Jesus, ever used 
them ; but they represent the spirit of esotericism and are a true 
echo of the esoteric methods of the Near East, leaving the frame- 
work of the words aside. They show the immense prudence and 
caution that always surrounded the giving out of any part of 
the ancient mystery-teachings. From immemorial time was it 
always so. 
 
And, another thing. The penalty for betrayal of the Mysteries, 
in later times, was death. Now, before we can pursue our study 
this evening, we must explain that statement. Never in any 
circumstances has the power or the force of the Lodge, has the 
 
 
 
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hand of a Teacher, been raised in violence or in hatred against a 
betrayer, against the unfaithful, no matter how grave the crime 
might have been. Their punishment was in this : they were 
left strictly to themselves ; and the inner penalty was the withdrawal 
of the Deathless Watcher, the Higher Self within, which had been 
consciously and successfully invoked upon entrance into the 
Mysteries, and, in the higher degrees of initiation had been faced, 
literally face to face. The early and automatic penalty was 
inner death by the soul-loss. The betrayer lost his soul. Let me 
tell you further, in passing, that practically all the civil institu- 
tions of ancient times, punishments among others, were based 
upon what took place in the Mystery-Schools. Such, for instance, 
was the crucifixion of the Romans, taken direct from one of the 
ceremonies of initiation, the " Mystic Death " ; taken from it, 
stolen from it ; and made an instrument of legal murder by the 
State, in later, degenerate times. Another instance, also taken 
from the ceremony of the " Mystic Death ", was the " Cup ", 
in India the Somadraft ; in Greece we find Socrates punished by 
drinking from the Cup of Hemlock ; and we are reminded of Jesus, 
praying that the " cup " might pass from him. Numerous other 
very different instances could be cited. 
 
And similarly in Egypt and in other countries, when the 
periods of " spiritual barrenness " of which Plato tells us, had 
succeeded to the period of " spiritual fertility " ; when those 
periods came upon the world, the State then undertook to punish 
in its own name the betrayal of the Mysteries, which by those 
times had become merely a State-institution, and nothing much 
else, merely a part of the religious establishment. Two or three 
instances have come down to us so far as Athens in Greece alone 
is concerned. One was Socrates, IVth-Vth century B.C., who 
unwittingly betrayed some of the secrets of the Mysteries ; and 
despite his innocence of conscious wrong-doing, they unwillingly 
killed that great man. Another was the philosopher-poet 
Diagoras, Vth century B.C., who was accused of impiety, of 
so-called " atheism ", and who fled from Athens. A third was the 
dramatist-poet ^Eschylus, Vth century B.C., who had to flee to 
Italy in order to escape death. He was accused on the same 
grounds, of what was called profanation or impiety. 
 
Another instance which we might mention, of a quite different 
type, is that of the wearing of a crown, or a diadem, by civil 
rulers, formally enacted in the " coronation " of a king a 
ceremony adopted from the Mysteries. Some of the earliest 
crowns which they wore had outstanding spikes, reminding one of 
the " crown of thorns " of Jesus ; or it may have been in the 
form of the Greek diadem, representing, in Greece, the crown of 
the central and west and north-west part of Europe. As just 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 217
 
hinted, this also was a symbol of one of the ceremonies of one of 
the stages of initiations, a ceremony signifying what occurred 
when the one undergoing trial was in a state of samddhi, as the 
Hindus say, and his head was surrounded with a glory or aura 
radiating from the brain like the spikes of the early crown ; in 
which state, also, a nimbus or aura surrounded the body as well 
as the head, but far less strongly. 
 
Now these are the things that it seemed necessary to speak of 
tonight, as part of an introduction to our studies. 
 
Now we embark more particularly upon our main theme. It 
will be recalled, as has been already suggested several times, that 
we have been studying from the time the Teacher inaugurated 
these meetings last year, or about a year ago now, the so-called 
Seven Treasures or Jewels which we have enumerated before ; 
and we are now studying certain aspects of the Seventh or highest, 
more especially in its relation to the Wondrous Being, called the 
Great Initiator, the Lonely Watcher, the Silent Witness, and by 
other such names. And we called attention last week to certain 
of the analogies which our own human life bore to the Kosmic 
Wondrous Being for instance, particularly the analogy of the 
infinitesimals, the lives infinitesimal, living in and upon the 
kosmoi or universes comprised in our own physical body, 
the atomic infinitesimals, and how our personal self was the 
Supreme Self of that host of those almost innumerable atoms. 
That it was the self which held that infinitesimally immense 
Kosmos together, and permeated all in it, and reached through 
all in it, like a mystic Fire. And we also pointed out how, never- 
theless, each one of those atoms, being a universe in itself, had its 
own entire hierarchy, its own series of ten degrees or stages, 
counting from its own supreme, its own parabrahman and 
mulaprakriti, down to its own " absolute matter ". 
 
Similarly, our own Universal Kosmos can be considered as an 
imbodied soul or rather Self, made up of almost innumerable 
Kosmic Atoms or solar and planetary bodies, living with number- 
less Companions on the face of the Boundless. We began to have 
some intelligent comprehension from this study of the Self, how, 
in a sense, the " One " might become the Many, yet remaining 
forever the " One ", merely calling it the " One ", because it is 
the Summit or SELF of that Most Great Hierarchy which our 
imaginations can attain to. But beyond its boundaries there are 
innumerable other such Ones ; and beyond all such Ones, there 
are innumerable hosts of indefinitely greater ONES : and so ad 
infinitum ! The best way by which to represent the Boundless, 
in which they all move and live and have their being, is by the 
age-old symbol of the Zero Limitless Boundlessness. 
 
That symbol is remarkable also in another respect, that it so 
 
 
 
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clearly and beautifully exemplifies the teaching of the Void, the 
Emptiness, called in Buddhism Stinyata, meaning the " empty ", 
the " void ". It is really extraordinary how our Western scholars 
will misunderstand and therefore misrepresent these things. 
They are such literalists that they will take a word and drive that 
word to literal death. They take the form of the thought, the 
body, and see little or nothing of the Soul behind it. They seem 
to have no realization of the mystic meaning behind this wondrous 
thought, the Void, the Emptiness. Do you remember that in a 
former study we spoke of a mediaeval mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux 
in France I think it was, who said that the state a student of 
mysticism should aspire to was that of emptying himself, utterly 
casting out everything that was personal or limiting, everything 
that was bound and finite ? This is a remarkable thought for a 
Christian ; but quite Oriental. Such a state of mind lets the free 
winds of Infinity blow through one, as it were ! 
 
Let us pause a moment over this. The Void is a symbol of the 
Boundless ; hence, it is everything because it is no thing. " No- 
thing " if you like. Not " nothing " in the Christian theological 
sense, but no Thing, no manifestation. It is not a consciousness, 
because it is all consciousness, which is unconsciousness in every 
personal and limited sense ; " consciousness " is a human term. 
Yet it is not " unconsciousness ", because it is all " unconscious- 
ness " of any personal or limited sense, and " unconsciousness " 
is a human term. It is both the limited and the illimitable time, 
and eternity ; everything and therefore no thing. Call it by 
anything and you limit it. It is that which Is and WAS and in 
the utter eternity ever shall BE. And because it is nothing 
finite, because it is not a thing, because it is not one, or two, or 
three, but beyond all numeration ; because it is beyond all 
human thought and similitude and comparison and expression, 
it is called that, which the human mind reaches when it opens to 
its utmost for an abstraction, the VOID, which is likewise utter 
FULLNESS. 
 
Our study this evening calls to us to move forward. Each 
one of our studies lately has been dealing with very difficult 
subjects ; and each one, if properly understood, means a great 
stride forward for us along the Esoteric Path. Tonight, let us 
be more particular in our remarks. At our meeting of last week 
we generalized our theme, as was necessary, in trying to give the 
general view. Tonight we shall particularize. 
 
These seven Treasures, then, represent in doctrinal form the 
seven stages of initiation. Now we are told that there are ten 
stages or degrees of initiation ; which means that there are three 
more than the above named seven of these Treasures. But we 
need not consider these three others. They are utterly beyond 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 219
 
our capacity. They belong, we are told, to Beings who have 
advanced so far beyond us that they can no longer truly be called 
human entities, although they do belong to our Planetary Chain 
by reason of past evolutionary karman. 
 
Each stage or degree of initiation after the third of the seven, 
we are taught, is marked by something more than teaching. The 
first three initiations, or stages or degrees in initiation, we are 
taught, are composed of teachings. With the fourth degree, there 
begins another method. What is this method ? 
 
It is one of the fundamental teachings of Occultism and of our 
Esoteric School, that nothing can be truly known which is not 
experienced, lived through. As a matter of fact, we all know this, 
as it is common experience. One of the so-called laws of our being, 
one of the fundamental conditions of our human nature is this, 
that thoroughly to know a thing, thoroughly to enter into it, 
thoroughly to understand it, you must be it, you must become it. 
You cannot tread the Path until you become and are that Path. 
Thus, therefore, the different stages or degrees of initiation are 
really a kind of " forcing-process ", for certain chosen spirits, 
certain chosen souls, who have proved themselves worthy : a 
" forcing " or developing-process enabling them through actual 
experience, individual experience, to pass through and realize 
the hid secrets of being which the slow processes of evolutionary 
development would have brought to them as the ages rolled by. 
It is, in fact, a quickening or awakening of the man to inner 
knowledge and power. These different stages or degrees of 
initiation are marked by preparatory purifications, first. Then 
came the " death ", a mystic death. The body and lower prin- 
ciples, so to say, are paralysed, and the soul is temporarily freed. 
And, to a certain extent, it (the freed inner man) is guided and 
directed and helped by the initiators while it passes into other 
spheres and to other planes and learns the nature of these by 
becoming them, which is the only way by which knowledge thereof 
roots itself into the soul, i.e., into the ego : by becoming the thing. 
 
The " initiant " is one undergoing initiation and remember 
that " initiation " means " beginning " ; an " initiant " is a 
" beginner/ 1 while a person initiated, an initiate, is one who has 
begun an undertaking. Please also note that " adept " means 
one who is " skilled " ; hence, even in our ordinary life, a chemist, 
a physician, a theologian, a mechanic, an engineer, a teacher of 
languages, an astronomer, are all " adepts ", persons who are 
" skilled ", each in his own profession. Those two words have, 
generally speaking, the same meaning also in the Esoteric School : 
an " Adept " is one who is skilled in the esoteric Wisdom, in the 
teachings of life ; and an " initiant " is one who is beginning 
to learn them. To say that you and I are " beginners ", i.e., 
 
 
 
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" initiants ", is merely stating the obvious truth. It is likewise a 
convenient word, for it tells you nothing definite as to degree or 
stage ; it is a generalization. Hence one could properly ask : 
" Beginning where and what ? " I may be at the bottom rung of 
the ladder of initiation ; and you may be at the top ; yet each 
one of us is beginning, for progress is endless. 
 
Let us then closely examine all these or any other similar state- 
ments, for our own sakes. We are taught strictly to examine, 
strictly to search into, everything that is told us. Our Teacher 
here now, Katherine Tingley, herself works night and day in 
order to awaken us to the realization of things, trying to have us 
live the life, to be it, to become it ; for such is the old teaching of 
uncounted ages gone by. 
 
Now, the passage from The Secret Doctrine to which we have 
alluded this evening, which we also read last week, and again at 
our meeting before that, and which forms our main theme at 
present, in which H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the " Ever-living- 
Human-Banyan ", refers also to the Arhats (a Sanskrit word 
meaning " worthies ") who belong to the seventh rung of the 
spiritual-psychological Hierarchy, being only one remove from 
the Root-Base of their Hierarchy, which is the Wondrous Being 
of our present study, therefore on the eighth plane of the ten 
composing that Hierarchy. There is a still greater and more 
Wondrous Being on the ninth plane ; the highest of all, the Summit 
of all, is on the tenth. 
 
Let us make a step still farther forward. We are taught that at 
the fifth initiation, part of the wonderful experience that the initiant 
of that Degree must go through, is that after due and sufficient 
preparation and purification of the lower self and of the soul 
within, the one under trial in the Mystic Path, meets his Higher 
Self, his own inner god, face to face for " a passing moment ". 
Woe unto him if there be anything in him which cannot support 
the trial ! The warnings given to us in this respect are solemn 
indeed. The Deathless Watcher knows all, and accepts no ex- 
cuses. Those who fail, have indeed another chance in another life, 
or in other lives ; but no base metal either now or then can be 
accepted in this Dread Test. The inner nature must be pure 
gold tried in the fire, nothing counterfeit, nothing that is weak 
and will break or fail when the test comes upon it. You must then 
be fully ready to take your place in the Guardian Wall ; no 
weakling can stand there. 
 
We are further told that in the sixth Degree, instead of one's 
own Higher Self, the initiant meets another One, a matter which 
we will to-night pass over in silence. And in the seventh Degree, 
the same proceeding takes place as part of the Mystic Death, and 
the aspirant can we say " meets face to face " ? No, he becomes 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 221
 
JOY a passing moment the Wondrous Watcher himself ; and either 
 
returns among men as a , or vanishes and is seen no more. 
 
In the former case, he knows, because he has become ! 
 
We have spoken tonight of the Christian mythos. We deliber- 
ately have chosen this term, for truly it is a mythos. The entire 
story of Jesus as it is given in the so-called Gospels is a Mystery- 
story. No such man or being as the Jesus of the Gospels ever 
lived. Remember what a mythos is. It is a tale or allegory im- 
bodying some secret truth. In this case, it is the story of the 
Mysteries partly told in symbol and allegory, partly told with 
some degree of later ignorant embroidery ; but, as a whole, 
representing almost, as it were picturing, what took place in the 
Mysteries of Asia Minor. The manner and style of narrative, in 
all such cases, depended upon the national custom of celebrating 
them, and on the cast of minds of the peoples among whom such 
or another scheme or system of initiation prevailed. But the 
Jesus of the Gospels is a mystery-figure only : a composite figure 
based on mystical teaching. Undoubtedly there did exist a 
young Syrian initiate of that time, around whom were grouped 
these various tales and stories taken more or less bodily from the 
Mystery-Schools of Asia Minor and especially of Alexandria ; 
because Alexandrian mysticism is the main origin of theological 
Christianity, for in that city it had its rise theologically. This 
Syrian initiate, probably a young Jewish rabbi, was possibly 
actually called Yeshua, lesous in Greek, Jesus in Latin. The 
Hebrew word Yeshua itself, means " savior ", and the later 
Christians of course seized upon this name or later conferred it 
upon their supposed founder and wove a mystical tale about his 
name, thus symbolizing his mission on earth as a " savior ". We 
all know the Christian tale. But from the very beginning of it as 
the " Gospels " give it : from the story of the Magi following the 
star, to the mystical death by crucifixion, and the rising again on 
the third day from the tomb, it is nothing but a copy, more or less 
denatured and faded and poorly woven together, of great actual 
Mysteries, the Mysteries of some of the ceremonies of initiation, 
of which the earliest Christians certainly had some knowledge ; 
see Origen and Clement of Alexandria, for instance. But the 
story in its various imperfections shows clearly that it is only 
a feebly constructed allegory, or mythos, of actual initiatory 
occurrences. 
 
Apollonius of Tyana, the Greek, was probably as noble a 
character as was the Syrian Yeshua, or " Jesus ". " Jesus " is 
merely the Roman form of the name. We read of the marvels of 
Apollonius of Tyana, of his works and life, in the mystic " Life " 
written by Philostratus. But Apollonius is a historical character, 
and " Jesus " is not. The story of Apollonius is an interesting 
 
 
 
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one. We read of his " vanishing away " before Domitian, when 
he was on trial before that eccentric and severe monarch ; and 
much more. Why was it that Jesus was said to have been 
" crucified " ? But he was not actually crucified. It is a Mystery- 
story, as I have said ; and not necessarily a Jewish Mystery- 
Story, nor a Greek Mystery-story. Each nation had its own 
Mysteries, greatly resembling one another, but varying in detail ; 
but in all, there was always the " Mystical Death ". There was 
always the " descent into Hades " or " Hell " ; there was always 
the " Resurrection ", the Rising, usually after " three days " ; 
and the " Glorification " at the end of the Trial. 
 
Very many of the things that occurred in the Mysteries were 
taken over into civil functions of the State, and they thus formed 
the types of many institutions in civil life in ancient times. The 
King and his Ministers or Servants, as officers or functionaries of 
the State, were taken over from the ancient Mysteries, as copies 
of the Teacher and his disciples or officials. This is one reason (of 
two reasons) why the ancients wrote of their " Divine Dynasties " 
of primeval times ; and on this also was originally founded the 
idea of the " divine right of kings " in later ages so greatly mis- 
understood and abused. Why, the very calendars of the ancient 
nations were based upon the same thing : they were derived, 
taken over, from the Mysteries. Originally, they were based on 
actual astrological truths, real knowledge of time-periods ; and 
later were misunderstood and misapplied. For instance, have you 
realized that the Christian commemorative holy days of Good 
Friday, and Easter three days later, are practically the same 
thing as the Winter Solstice of December 21-22, and Christmas, 
December 25, three days later ? Both are based on the same 
original idea of the " mystic death ", and the " birth ", or " resur- 
rection ", three days later, of the " unconquered Sun/' exemplified 
in the " death " and " resurrection " of the successful neophyte 
in the mysteries, three days later ! Why was it, I ask you, that 
the Christians adopted both the ancient pagan festival of the 
winter-solstice, and the ancient pagan " Resurrection "-mythos, 
and made an Easter out of the latter ? One being the alleged 
anniversary of their Jesus's birth (Christmas), and the latter the 
anniversary of his " Resurrection " ! Because they wanted very 
much to connect and bind together their newfangled religion 
with the personality of the great Jewish prophet or initiate later 
called Jesus ; and, at the same time, to connect him with the 
archaic Mystery-teachings of the School of Wisdom. Now, as the 
Jewish or rather Syrian festival took place in the month of the 
spring equinox, or rather on the day of the full moon following the 
spring equinox, they copied the ancient Mysteries again here, 
as follows : They, as it were, severed the symbol into two parts, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 223
 
and called one " Christmas ", commemorating the birth of the 
physical body of their supposed Jesus ; and the other part they 
called Resurrection, or Easter, commemorating the " birth " of 
the Transcending Christos. It was a curious tour de force, as the 
French say, a curious feat of " mystical gymnastics ", as the 
Teacher so neatly puts it. But, and please mark this, these two 
dates were actually in very truth closely connected in the ancient 
Mysteries, and very much in the line the Christians followed ! 
What copyists ! 
 
Now, if you take the mystic calendar that guardedly we spoke 
of last week, it is remarkable how it fits in with the Mystery- 
teachings connected with this Wondrous Being, the Great 
Initiator. As to the article in Lucifer, January 1890, referred to 
last week by us, in which H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the date which 
the Esotericists should call the New Year, i.e., January 4th does 
anyone really think that she meant that " January 4th " per se 
has any especially magical or mystical properties or influences ? 
No ; she did not. Our calendar-day for January 4th is a date 
of a purely mechanical Calendar, with nothing mystical or hid in 
it at all. If we were to fall into a period of universal ignorance 
such as the Mediterranean nations fell into after Christianity 
became powerful, we should forget even how to take care of our 
merely mechanical Calendar, and find ourselves unable to make 
it conform to the changing seasons. We should then be in the 
same troubled case as the European peoples were in, in the 
sixteenth century, when Pope Gregory XIII, had certain con- 
temporary mathematicians reform the old Julian Calendar 
because of the disorder it had fallen into through the pure ignor- 
ance of Gregory's predecessors. They did not know how to 
intercalate the necessary days at the proper time, and in February 
1582, when the Julian Calendar was reformed by Papal Bull or 
Edict, they were eleven to twelve days behind the true year. 
Similar was the case when Julius Caesar reformed the Calendar 
in the year 47 B.C., only much worse, for owing to political 
machinations, doubtless, of the different Pontifices Maximi, the 
Calendar of the Romans, as I remarked last week, had fallen so 
far behind the natural year of the seasons that the Calendar 
" January the first ", fell on what was really October 13 th, 
according to nature ; and the Calendar " winter-solstice ", 
December 2ist or 22nd, fell on October 3rd, or thereabouts ; 
and if Caesar had not corrected the growing disorder and confusion, 
the constant loss of the days through wrong or omitted inter- 
calations would have let the Calendar-year fall continually 
backwards all through the natural year, perhaps. So you see 
that when speaking of H. P. Blavatsky and the astrological 
Calendar, most certainly we do not mean merely the mechanical 
 
 
 
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Calendar of common use ; nor did H. P. Blavatsky mean it. 
But she meant a date depending upon real astrological facts ; 
and we adverted briefly to what she really did mean in our study 
of last week. 
 
Remember that astronomy is merely the mechanical aspect of 
true, ancient astrology, and for that reason, astronomy deals 
only with the positions, movements, and physical conceptions of 
planetary and solar and stellar bodies. It is in real fact, merely 
one branch of the ancient Astrology, a sublime " Science of the 
Celestial Bodies ", and we do not mean what modern writers 
miscall " astrology " a " paper-science " at best. We have 
spoken sufficiently strongly against such a misconception at other 
meetings. 
 
Now our real year, our Mystic Year, is quite a different one from 
the civil, or ordinary chronological year. The civil chronological 
year could begin on the true date of the winter-solstice, that is to 
say on the day and moment when the sun is farthest south, and 
just as it begins its journey northwards again. That is one of the 
natural periods of time and season-division ; and it is also an 
astrological time-period, if we wish to form a time-cycle ; but 
with one important change. Now what would be that astro- 
logical cycle ? We could start our Civil Year at the winter- 
solstice when the moon is new just why new, is something I am 
not authorized here and now to say. But fourteen days after the 
true solstice, or on what is now January 4th, according to our 
present Calendar, the moon is full ; and that day opens under the 
control of the planet Mercury or Hermes, the particular leader, 
guide, and director, of initiations and the Teachers. This is the 
case, mark well, when that planet is in " inferior conjunction " 
at sunrise ; or more particularly when Sun, Mercury, Earth, and 
Moon are all in " syzygy " : all along a straight line ; Mercury 
being between Sun and Earth, and the Moon full. The planet 
Mercury then controls the first hour of the I4th day after the 
winter-solstice ; but that solstice must concur with the new moon, 
and Mercury on that I4th day afterwards must be in inferior 
conjunction at sunrise. The I4th day (January 4th) is then a 
true " Wednesday ", or Mercury-day. Thus opens the cycle. 
How long that cycle lasts, I have not had opportunity to investi- 
gate. Our astronomers here can work it out. But thus we should 
have two years : one for what we may call the Civil Year (funda- 
mentally an astrological year) for the purposes of civil chronology, 
by which ordinary time would be reckoned ; and the Buddhic- 
Cycle Year. The civil year would then begin with the day of the 
winter-solstice, let us say December 21-22, in the night between 
December 2ist and 22nd. The next day therefore would be the 
first day of the first month of the new civil year ; but our Mystig 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 225
 
Year, our Buddhic Year, would begin fourteen days after that 
at full moon, on a true Wednesday, or Budha-day . 
 
We turn now to another matter, which, because it is of real 
importance, the Leader has authorized me to take a few more 
minutes this evening for the purpose of attempting more fully to 
explain it. I refer to the diagram which was discussed somewhat 
at our last meeting, and which we then had no time to explain in 
detail. 
 
 
 
Archetypal 
 
World. 
 
 
 
Divine Soul or 
Monadic 
 
Envelope. 
 
 
 
Spiritual Soul 
 
or Individual 
 
Monad: Buddhi: 
 
Fruit and Seed 
 
of Manas. 
 
Higher Human 
 
Soul. Lower 
 
Buddhi and 
 
Higher Manas. 
 
Human Soul, or 
 
Man. Manas, 
 
Kama, and 
 
Pi-Ana. 
 
Beast-Soul, or 
 
Vital-Astral 
 
Soul: Kama and 
 
Prana. 
 
Physical Soul or 
 
Body; Sthula- 
 
arira and Prana 
 
and Linga- 
 
arlra. 
 
 
 
 
Paramatman 
 
or Supreme 
 
Self. 
 
 
 
Atman 
Divine Ego. 
 
 
 
~-\ Jtvatman 
x Spiritual Ego. 
 
 
 
Bhtitatman 
Human Ego. 
 
 
 
Pranatman 
Personal Ego. 
 
 
 
Beast-Ego. 
 
 
 
Body. 
 
 
 
This paradigm, this symbol, can refer either to man, or mutatis 
mutandis to the universe of any full Hierarchy, it matters not 
which Hierarchy. Note then, first, that we have at the top of 
the diagram, the Archetypal World, which is the Root or Seed, 
if we look upon it as the origin or commencement of things, as the 
locus of the initiation of Kosmic evolution and progress ; or 
which is the Flower, the End, the Consummation of things, if we 
look upon it as the full-blown Flower of the Kosmic Evolutionary 
Cycle. It may be divided into three " planes ", so to say, forming 
the Highest Triad or Divine Triad ; the second of these " planes " 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
is called the Paramatman or Supreme Self. The first " plane " 
represents the Parabrahman, with its field of Mulaprakriti ; this 
Highest Triad, as represented, applies to any Hierarchy : this 
Hierarchy, that Hierarchy, any Hierarchy ; as this paradigm is 
representative of all. The Paramatman likewise represents the 
first or Unmanifested Logos. The third " plane ", or lowest of the 
Triad, represents the third or Manifested Logos, or Brahma- 
Purusha-Prakriti. Then, following the diagram downwards, we 
reach the seven Principles and Elements in manifestation, formed 
of the three quasi-arupa or " formless " planes, and of the four 
rupa-planes, or planes of form. The egg-shaped envelope of the 
Hierarchy is divided into these seven planes, if you please, and 
six centers of consciousness, with their inseparable six vehicles 
or " souls ". The vertical line running up and down through the 
Egg, represents the indwelling Self : that Self which in you and 
me and in all, is One ; that which in all of us says " I am ". It 
does not differ in you nor in me, for it is One, the Universal Self 
of the Hierarchy. But what is it in you and me or in any one 
which says " I am /, not yo u " ? that which is s//-consciousness ? 
That, is the ego ; the " I ", but not the Self ; for the Self is beyond 
and outside of all such limitation of consciousness. It recognises 
no distinction between Thee and Me. You remember the beautiful 
Sfifi legend, how the Soul, wandering in search of Truth, came 
finally to the House of God and knocked at the portal. Then in 
answer to the knock, thunder reverberated through the spaces of 
Heaven, and God called out, " Who art thou ? " And the Soul 
replied : " I ". And God answered : "I know not / ". Then 
the Soul wandered again for many ages in tribulation and sorrow ; 
and finally it came anew, and once more knocked at the portal 
of the House of God. And the voice of God called out and said : 
" Who art thou ? " And the Soul replied, and said : " Thou ". 
And the voice of God then answered and said : " Enter into 
thine own, for we are One ". No distinction there of / and Thou 
a beautiful legend imbodying one of the profoundest concepts 
of the Ancient Wisdom. 
 
Further, we have attempted to represent paradigmatically the 
decreasing consciousness, understanding, power, potency, force, 
expansion, comprehension, by the six circles gradually decreasing 
in size downwards, along the central line representing the Self. 
It is impossible to represent adequately on a flat surface a purely 
metaphysical subject ; but our wish in so doing is to show that the 
higher the circle or sphere is, the more spiritual the sphere or 
center is ; the larger and the more comprehending it is in both 
quality and potency, not necessarily in magnitude. Further, we 
have attempted to show the increasing materiality in these 
centers or spheres as they go farther downwards, by thicker and 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 227
 
thicker shading of these centers in the diagram. The highest 
center is the Divine Soul or Monadic Envelope. It is the first or 
highest vehicle of the Atman ; and as an egoic center it is the 
Divine Ego. The next one downwards is the Spiritual Soul or 
the Individual Monad. This, and the one above it, combined, 
are the Inner Christ ; and corresponding to the Spiritual Soul 
or Individual Monad is the Jivatman or Spiritual Ego. It is that 
portion of our spiritual economy which is deathless as an indi- 
vidualized Ego ; deathless until the end of the Maha-Manvantara 
of the Solar System. When the Solar Pralaya arrives in the grand 
fullness of Time, there comes a moment, a final instant which is 
the utter completion or consummation of all things in that system ; 
and in the twinkling of an eye, literally, and instantly, all the 
planets and the sun itself are " blown out ", as it were. The last 
one of all manifested beings has at that instant gone to higher 
planes ; and there being nothing whatsoever left to hold physical 
matter together anywhere within the Solar System, that System 
immediately falls to pieces and vanishes away (as I have said 
before) like an instantaneous shadow passing over a wall. 
 
The second center is comprised of Buddhi, both the fruit and 
the Seed of Manas. This is the center or seed or root or base of 
the Reincarnating Ego. Then below it comes in our diagram the 
Higher Human Soul, composed of the lower Buddhi, and the 
Higher Manas : with the Self permeating it, as said above. 
Corresponding to it as egoic center is the Bhutatman, explained 
at our last meeting, otherwise the Human Ego. Next comes the 
Human Soul or Man. This is formed of Manas, Kama, Prana ; 
and the egoic center corresponding to it is the Pranatman, or the 
personal ego, which is mortal. 
 
There is no abiding principle from and including this, down- 
wards ; no abiding principle in " man " whatsoever. The next 
below is the Beast-Soul, or the Vital-Astral Soul, the Kama- 
Prana ; its quasi-egoic center being the Beast-ego, if you like : 
that elementary principle of egoship in the beast which holds it 
together during its existence. Our teachings do give to every 
animate thing a soul ; not a " human soul " or a " divine soul " 
or a " spiritual soul " ; but a soul corresponding to its type. What 
it is, what its type is, comes from its soul ; hence we properly 
may speak of the different beasts as having, one or the other, a 
" duck-soul ", an " ostrich-soul ", a " bull-" or a " cow-soul ", 
a " chicken-soul ", or a " nightingale-soul ", and so on. The 
lower entities, considered as a Kingdom, are differentiated into 
these different families of animate beings by the different " souls " 
within each ; and of course behind the soul from which it springs, 
there are in each individual entity all the other principles that 
likewise inform Man ; but all the higher principles are latent in the 
 
 
 
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beast. That is why man belongs to another the Human Kingdom, 
for there is in him the Buddhi-principle more or less active. 
Manas springs forth from the Buddhi as the fruit from the flower ; 
but manas itself is mortal, goes to pieces at death. All of it that 
lives after death, is only what is spiritual in it, and that can be 
squeezed out of it, so to say. H. P. B. calls it the " aroma " of 
the manas ; much as the chemist takes from the rose the Attar 
or Essence of Roses. 
 
The last is the physical " soul " or body, the sthftla-Sarira, the 
gross body, pr&na, and the linga-arira. 
 
We have spoken before of the " lost soul " as being at one pole, 
and of the Master at the other pole, of consciousness. It is between 
the higher human soul, and the human soul (or man proper) that 
lies the psychological frontier over which one must pass forwards 
or upwards ; backwards or downwards ; into regeneration or 
degeneration. If you go " upwards " and continue to go " up- 
wards " or rather " inwards " please remember that we are 
obliged to use human language in all such descriptions ; we actu- 
ally do not go " up " in space ; it is quality that we are speaking 
of, the refining of the quality of the human ego ; the penetrating, 
the breaking into, as it were, of the final sheaths of our inner 
being that makes the distinction if we continue to go " upwards " 
or " inwards ", we attain finally to Masterhood. But, contrari- 
wise, if we go " downwards ", if our egoic soul-quality wholly 
deteriorates, then at last we lose the ego-center, the soul-center, 
which divorced from its upper life-thread, is dissipated, and, as 
said, is at last annihilated. There is the cause of a " lost soul " 
at one pole of consciousness ; and of the Master at the other pole. 
When mortality becomes Immortality ; when the corruptible 
becomes the Incorruptible, then do we attain to full and complete 
conscious Masterhood a Lord of Life. 
 
As said before, when the conscious center which we now are is 
given over to full attraction or gravitation towards matter, the 
momentum increases with time and use, and, through attrition 
as it were, that part of us where our egoic consciousness then 
resides, called " soul ", is worn away and finally vanishes. It is 
wiped out, annihilated ; nothing is left of it. It sinks into the 
" Eighth Sphere ", the " Planet of Death ", where it meets finally 
its fearful fate. As to the monadic (the spiritual) essence of our 
being, it then has to evolve a new conscious center or egoic 
vehicle, for future reincarnations. That is where the seriousness 
of this thing comes in. It has to develop or evolve the new soul- 
center, the new egoic center, in order to take up again the link in 
the series of lives ; and it may be that in certain circumstances 
ages upon ages may pass before the newly evolved vehicle of 
monadic consciousness is able to make up the lost time and 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 229
 
opportunities. In the meanwhile, the racial Life-Wave has swept 
far along the Pathway of Destiny ; leaving the " failures " far 
in the rear. 
 
At our next study, we will continue the same general theme 
that we have been studying. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XX
 
THE HIGHER ASPECT OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. INITIATION AND THE 
MYSTERIES : AVATARAS. BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS. THEIR 
RELATION TO GLOBES, ROUNDS, AND RACES. 
 
Truly, " for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness," the 
personalities known as Gautama, Sankara, Jesus and a few others were born each 
in his age, as declared " I am born in every Yuga " and they were all born 
through the same Power. 
 
There is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are outside and beyond 
the cycle of general rebirths. Rebirths may be divided into three classes : the 
divine incarnations called Avataras ; those of Adepts who give up Nirvana for 
the sake of helping on humanity the Nirmanakayas ; and the natural succession 
of rebirths for all the common law. The Avatara is an appearance, one which 
may be termed a special illusion within the natural illusion that reigns on the 
planes under the sway of that power, Maya, ; the Adept is reborn consciously, 
at his will and pleasure ; l the units of the common herd unconsciously follow the 
great law of dual evolution. 
 
What is an Avatara ? for the term before being used ought to be well under- 
stood. It is a descent of the manifested Deity whether under the specific name 
of iva, Vishnu, or Adi-Buddha into an illusive form of individuality, an appear- 
ance which to men on this illusive plane is objective, but it is not so in sober fact. 
That illusive form, having neither past nor future, because it had neither previous 
incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma, 
which has therefore no hold on it. 
 
The Doctrine of Avataras (H. P. Blavatsky), " S.D. Ill," 364. 
 
PLUNGING directly into our subject this evening : it 
will be remembered that we have been studying the 
nature of the " Wondrous Being " of whom H. P. 
Blavatsky writes in the first volume of The Secret 
Doctrine, on pages 207 and 208 ; and it will be remembered that 
the key-words by which we may gain some appreciation of the 
way this Wondrous Being works in humanity, and more particu- 
larly in the psychological Hierarchy, through the cycles of the 
Mysteries and of initiation these key- words were the " human 
Banyan ". 
 
Also we read on page 424 of the same volume, under section the 
I2th, " The Theogony of the Creative Gods ", H. P. Blavatsky's 
words concerning the Hierarchy of Forces, where she points out 
how these Forces were originally understood in their proper 
sense, as Intelligences and Consciousnesses working in Nature ; 
but that each nation, as the cycles of time passed by, understood 
 
1 A genuine initiated Adept will retain his Adeptship, though there may be 
for our world of illusion numberless incarnations of him. The propelling power 
that lies at the root of a series of such incarnations is not Karma, as ordinarily 
understood, but a still more inscrutable power. During the period of his lives 
the Adept does not lose his Adeptship, though he cannot rise in it to a higher 
degree. 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 231
 
these Forces and Intelligences in the same way indeed, but gave 
to them different names, and developed a philosophical under- 
standing of the machinery, so to say, of the Kosmos in slightly 
differing manners or forms, and that these different philosophical 
forms were the various Schools of the Mysteries ; for instance, in 
Samothrace and in Eleusis, in Greece, and similar schools in other 
countries. 
 
Now up to the present time we have been talking in more or 
less generalizing terms regarding this Wondrous Being ; but 
tonight, within the time that our Teacher has set for us, we are 
going to try to particularize, asking ourselves definitely who and 
what this Wondrous Being is. 
 
Now to do that, we are undertaking, as was pointed out before, 
an extremely difficult task, on account of the subtil nature of the 
subjects which in their entirety expose the truth about this 
Wondrous Being. We cannot understand who and what this 
Wondrous Being is without understanding something of the 
initiations of the Mystery-Schools ; and to understand those we 
must understand something of the higher aspect of human 
psychology ; and, again, to understand that, we must understand 
the other doctrines which we have been studying, such as the 
Hierarchies, and the doctrine of the Swabhava, and so forth. 
 
Please understand that these seven Jewels, these seven Trea- 
suries of Wisdom, comprehend in small compass all possible 
human knowledge during this Kalpa ; that is to say, the key- 
teachings which form those seven Treasuries. They comprise 
everything that man has known, that humanity now knows, and 
that humanity can know, in this Kalpa. They are, really, a short 
synopsis in the form of philosophical principles these seven 
Jewels of all possible human knowledge ; and it depends upon 
each one of us how much of that knowledge we can understand. 
 
You probably also have noticed that not one of these Jewels 
can be fully understood if considered alone. They complement 
each other and explain each other. Every one of them is explained 
by the other six. Each one of them explains the other six and 
complements them. Please do not imagine for a moment that 
they are separate and distinct compartments of knowledge in the 
materialistic sense. There is but one Knowledge, one Truth, as 
there is but one Life, and one ultimate Being ; but these various 
Jewels, these seven Jewels, are different facets, so to say, of that 
Truth ; different pillars, to change the figure, in the Temple of 
Divine Wisdom. 
 
It will be remembered that at our last study we spoke of two 
main reasons why the Teachers have kept these and other doc- 
trines so secret, and why the penalties for betrayal of this know- 
ledge were so great. First, because these teachings that we have 
 
 
 
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been studying, and many others, derivatives from them, are the 
sublime reward of those who have proved themselves worthy of 
them, and of going farther in behind the veil of life. But the 
greater reason is that they could not be understood by the 
untrained mind even were they told ; they simply could not be 
understood. Great minds would understand more than would 
little minds, of course ; but on account of the imperfect spiritual 
development of men's minds so far in this Fourth Round, men 
simply cannot understand them without at least some training, 
and the result of unlawful exposure of them would be degradation 
of the teachings, which originally were given to men by the gods 
in the early ages of the human race. 
 
This statement is no vain remark ; these teachings have been 
betrayed in some degree at different times, and they have always 
resulted in what we call " black magic ", the natural result of a 
misunderstanding and of a misapplication of them, and of the 
principles of truth which are in them. Even today we find men, 
and women too, although they know nothing whatever of these 
secret doctrines, going up and down the land, charging for their 
teachings on what they call spiritual realities, and professing to 
know everything in heaven and on earth. Note well that no 
true spiritual Teacher ever charges a money, or any other fee 
for spiritual truths. 
 
Now we all know what H. P. Blavatsky said about such action. 
" I would liever starve in the gutter than take a penny for teach- 
ing spiritual truths." That is the test by which one may know, 
one of the tests at least, the true Teacher from the false. That 
is one way in which a teaching may be degraded. Our Teachers 
have no desire to have these glorious doctrines misunderstood 
and degraded, and, perhaps, human souls in relatively large 
numbers misled and their feet set upon the path which leads 
downward. 
 
Now in Greece we will take this case first as an example in 
Greece there were two bodies of the Mysteries, the Less and the 
Greater. The Less, in Attica, were celebrated in the spring-time ; 
and the Greater were celebrated at about the period of the 
autumnal equinox, in September, at Eleusis. The Less consisted, 
first, of purifications of the soul and mind outwards and inwards, 
mostly inwards, for that is the real purification ; and, second, of 
dramatizations of that which was to take place in actuality later 
in the Greater Mysteries. They represented in dramatic, pictorial 
form, that which the Greater Mysteries were to bring to the 
candidates. 
 
The Mysteries of Samothrace, also a Greek institution, and like 
those of Attica a state-institution in the later days, were probably 
the oldest in Greece. But these two schools of the Mysteries, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 233
 
while teaching the same fundamental verities, and the same 
ultimate truths, did not teach the same things. For instance, 
the Mysteries of Samothrace were what we to-day would rather 
call scientific. They dealt with the nature and operations of the 
Kabeiroi, who belonged to the class of spiritual entities called 
the " Builders ", the lower Septenary ; whereas at Eleusis and 
this name Eleusis means the " Advent " or the " Coming ", and 
the Eleusinia " Things that Are to Come " at Eleusis were taught 
the more theological and mystical doctrines, more particularly 
that which will happen to man after death. Hence the name of 
the place, Eleusis, where they were celebrated, and the name of 
the Mysteries themselves, the Eleusinia, i.e., the things which 
shall be, or shall come. 
 
Each country had its own mystical jargon or dialect or manner 
of speaking of and in the various Mysteries ; and with regard to 
the Mysteries in Greece and in Syria and in Palestine, these 
jargons or technical words nearly resembled each other. For 
instance, in Syria, outsiders were called " swine " and " dogs " ; 
betrayers were called " wolves ". Those of you who remember 
your New Testament will probably remember the instances in 
which " swine " and " dogs " and, I think, also " wolves " are 
spoken of. " Foxes " was a term for those who tried to enter 
the Mysteries unlawfully. All these terms are taken from the 
attributes of certain animals, which man in unlawful action 
copied ; the fox on account of its cunning ; the wolf on account 
of its bold cruelty and lack of conscience that is the reputation 
it has, at least ; swine and dogs on account of the reputation that 
these beasts have always had in the Orient. 
 
But while these terms were a part of the jargon of the Mysteries 
of those countries in those days, as was pointed out at our last 
meeting, it is not the jargon or the dialect or the language used 
in our School. I do not believe, as was said at our last meeting, 
that Jesus ever called those who were not initiates in the Mysteries 
of his time " swine and dogs ". If he did this, the presumption 
becomes a certainty that he did not belong to our School ; but 
as he did so belong, we must conclude that such language came 
from his disciples living probably in Alexandria, where the 
Gospels were almost certainly composed and written in the form 
in which we now have them. 
 
Next and now we turn to the direct subject of our study, to 
our main theme, our main thought. Open wide your hearts ; 
cast out for a short time from your minds all thoughts which are 
personal and unworthy of the atmosphere into which we are now 
entering. At our last study we took four technical words in 
order to explain somewhat by them our present great subject, 
talking around it rather than talking of it, four words used in 
 
 
 
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the Trans-Himalayan Buddhism, because, first, they are the words 
which H. P. Blavatsky used ; secondly, because they are the 
words which are in the esoteric books of the East belonging to 
our School. Three of these are, Adi-Buddha, the primal Wisdom ; 
as a Greek would say, it is the Logos ; then the Dhyani-Buddha, 
or Buddha of Meditation or Contemplation, of which Buddhas 
there are seven ; then the Manushya, the human Buddha. But 
these three are all connected : the Adi-Buddha as the Logos, the 
Dhyani-Buddha as the Causal Buddha, the Manushya-Buddha as 
the Agent on our plane of the Celestial Hierarchy. These Buddhas 
belong to the Celestial Hierarchy, as contrasted with the Kosmic 
Hierarchy or Builders. The fourth word is Bodhisattva. 
 
At former meetings we have spoken of the Planetary Spirits, 
using this term in a general sense as equivalent to Dhyani- 
Chohans or Lords of Meditation. Now this evening we go a step 
farther. The Planetaries are the Builders of the astral-material 
world, and they draw their plan, and they draw their higher life, 
and they draw their wisdom (outside of that which they them- 
selves have won) from the Celestial Hierarchy, the upper Sep- 
tenary ; and this Celestial Hierarchy originates in Adi-Buddha, 
primordial Buddha, or the Logos. 
 
Now for each Round of our Septenary Planetary Cycle (that is 
of this Kalpa, or Day of Brahma comprising all the seven Rounds) 
there is a presiding Dhyani-Buddha, a Buddha of Contemplation, 
a Causal Buddha ; and all the events of all the seven globes of 
our Planetary Chain are under the overseeing or supervision of 
the particular Dhyani-Chohan of that Round. Our present 
Round, being the fourth, is under the supervision of the Dhyani- 
Buddha belonging to the fourth degree of the Celestial Hierarchy. 
For each globe of the Planetary Chain there is what the Buddhists 
call a Bodhisattva, a Sanskrit word meaning " He whose essence 
is Wisdom ". 
 
Now this Bodhisattva is a mind-born son, so to say, of the 
Dhyani-Buddha of that Round. There is a Dhyani-Bodhisattva 
for this globe, and also one for each one of the three globes which 
precede this globe on the downward arc, and likewise a Bo- 
dhisattva for each of the three globes which follow this globe on 
the upward arc one Bodhisattva for each. This Dhyani-Bo- 
dhisattva is the spiritual head of the Spiritual-psychological Hier- 
archy of each globe. Take our globe, for instance. Our Dhyani- 
Bodhisattva is the Wondrous Being, the Great Initiator, the 
Silent Watcher of our globe ; in one sense an emanation from the 
Dhyani-Buddha overseeing all the Round, but not merely an 
exudation or prolongation, so to say, of the Dhyani-Buddha. 
Each Bodhisattva is an entity in himself. He is, so to say, as a 
ray of that Dhyalni-Buddha. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 235
 
Next, during evolution on our earth (and on the other seven 
globes correspondentially) the life- wave runs through seven stages 
called Root-Races. Each one of these Root-Races is ushered in 
by a Manushya-Buddha, a human Buddha, who is the " son " of 
the globe-Bodhisattva in the same way as the globe-Bodhisattva 
is a " son " of the Dhyani-Buddha of the Round. Each one of 
these seven Root-Races is furthermore divided at its middle point, 
so to speak. When half of its cycle is run, then the racial cata- 
clysm ensues, for that is the way in which nature operates ; and 
preceding that cataclysm there is another human Buddha, or 
Manushya-Buddha, of less degree. 
 
Now, is this Wondrous Being a man ? He is. Is he more than 
a man ? He is. Is he a septenary entity ? He is. How is the 
influence of this Wondrous Being communicated to his agents, 
the human Buddhas and the human Bodhisattvas ? 
 
Let us study for a moment an allied subject, a psychological 
one, before we go farther. We cannot understand what comes to 
our theme farther on until we have at least sketched out this 
psychological subject. Man, as you know, is sevenfold. Man 
may be divided in a triform way : a spiritual man, an intermediate 
or highly ethereal man, and an astral-physical man. In other 
words and in " psychological " terms : (i) Divine man, (2) 
spiritual man, (3) personal man. Now, then, what is an Avatara ? 
An Avatara, as commonly supposed, is the descent of a god into 
a human form. That idea is exoteric. It is not false, but simply 
put in that way and with nothing more added in explanation, it 
is very misleading. 
 
You remember what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita : "I 
incarnate in period after period in order to destroy wickedness 
and re-establish righteousness/' Now Krishna there represents 
the Logos, or rather, perhaps, the Logoic Ray ; and the Logos 
or its Ray or Influence on our plane would be utterly helpless, 
inactive, and have no possible means of communication with us 
and our sphere, because that Logoic Ray lacks an intermediate 
and fully conscious vehicle or carrier, i.e., it lacks the intermediate 
or highly ethereal mechanism, the spiritual-human in us, which 
in ordinary man is but slightly active. An Avatara takes place 
when a direct Ray from the Logos enters into, fully inspires, and 
illuminates, a human being, through the intermediary of a Bo- 
dhisattva who has incarnated in that human being, thereby supply- 
ing the fit, ready, and fully conscious intermediate vehicle or 
carrier. This " human being " has no karmic ego of its own. The 
egoity, the ego, the intermediate part, the highly ethereal and fully 
conscious intermediary, the spiritual-human element, is supplied 
by the incarnating Bodhisattva ; that is to say, the highly evolved 
personal principles of a Buddha, otherwise a Nirmanakaya not 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the highest element of that Buddha, which is in Nirvana ; but 
the spiritual-personal element of the Buddha, glorious, pure, and 
great, the spiritual-personal ego enters into the body of that 
utterly pure human being before or shortly after its birth, and 
thus supplies the intermediate vehicle appropriate for the incar- 
nation of the Logoic Ray. That is an Avatara. 
 
For instance, a child is born. That child has an inner psycho- 
astral nature of transparent purity and beauty and it attracts 
magnetically, if you like, but spiritually, actually, a Ray from 
the Logos. Its own Higher Self is fully active, of course, and the 
Logoic Ray which is ITSELF manifests in It. Furthermore, a 
Bodhisattva, under the conditions which prevail when an Avatara 
is required on earth, enters that body also, thus supplying the 
egoic element. So, then, we have this marvelous thing : a pure 
human body with its prana and astral model-body ; but with no 
true karmic ego incarnating, a Bodhisattva supplying that egoic 
element of still greater purity than possible to ordinary men, and 
evolved to the degree required for the incarnation of the Logoic 
or Atmic Ray, that Logoic Ray and the Higher Self of the born 
child really being One. But this mystery in life is a very 
exceptional circumstance. 
 
Now let us turn to another facet of the same psychological 
subject. Take the case of the Lord Buddha. Please notice that 
we here speak of the " Lord Buddha ", although we speak of the 
great Man as Siddhartha, his personal name, and of the Sage 
Gautama, or Gautama-Sakyamuni. Gautama was his family 
name; Sakya, his Clan-name; the title of " Sakyamuni" the 
akya Sage was the title given to him in later life and after. 
When Sakyamuni entered Nirvana during life, he is then exoteric- 
ally said to have " died ", at the age of eighty years ; but our 
teachings show him actually to have lived to one hundred years 
before he gave up his physical body and remained on earth as a 
Nirmanakaya. Now we all know what a Nirmanakaya is ; it is 
a complete man minus the physical body only. But is that all 
there is of this wondrous Mystery ? It is not. The higher portions 
of the Buddha were in Nirvana ; yet the spiritual-personal ego 
remained on earth, active, an active entity, a force for spiritual 
good as a Nirmanakaya, overshadowed by the Nirvnic element, 
and this Nirmanakaya was, please note carefully, a human Bo- 
dhisattva. It is the teaching that this Bodhisattva, the egoic 
element of the Buddha-Gautama, as was the case with previous 
Buddhas, was a spiritual-human Ray from the globe Dhyani- 
Bodhisattva. 
 
You perceive the difficulty, the extreme difficulty, in making 
these subtil and highly spiritual subjects clear to minds untrained 
in our metaphysic. Actually they require years of deep thought. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 237
 
Let us look at it from another aspect again. Who was Jesus ? 
What was Jesus ? Who was Apollonius of Tyana ? What was 
he ? The teaching is that both were incarnations of a Nirmana- 
kaya, and both had the same mysterious connexion with the 
Bodhisattva of the Buddha-Gautama. Please understand that 
Apollonius was not an Avatara, though Jesus was. There are 
close psychological similarities between these two wonder-cases 
of history ; but they are not identically the same mystery. I 
merely note here in passing that mystically a Buddha stands 
higher than an Avatara, for reasons which will be explained in 
due course of our study. 
 
Let us go a step farther. You all have read of the incarnations 
of the Buddhas in Tibet. We are now speaking in exoteric 
language, such as you will read in Sven Hedin or various others 
of the European explorers. Some of them have seen these so-called 
incarnations of the Buddha. Please understand once for all that 
our School is not Lamaism ; our School is representative of the 
Archaic, Esoteric, Wisdom of the World, although it is true on 
the other hand that the esoteric side of Tibetan Lamaism, properly 
understood, is the nearest doctrinal approach to the doctrines, in 
large degree, of our School ; with all the faults that the Tibetans 
may have, with all the various drawbacks, that we Westerners 
may consider them as having, in one way or another, nevertheless 
the esoteric teaching in Tibet is nearer to that of our School than 
any other. 
 
But how did this very curious and interesting doctrine of the 
continued reincarnations of the Buddha in the Tibetan Tashi- 
Lama and the Dalai-Lama, and in various others of the Buddhist 
hierarchy in various monasteries in Tibet, originate ? It origin- 
ated in the mother-doctrine that we are now studying. You will 
remember that H. P. Blavatsky speaks in the passage in The 
Secret Doctrine that we are now studying, of an event that hap- 
pened before the separation of the sexes in the Third Root-Race, 
when a certain " spiritual being " incarnated in men ; and she 
says that this was not a race, but, after this Wondrous Being, 
became a succession of great spiritual entities. It is actually, 
Comrades, the passing on of the inner self, the ego if you like, the 
ethereal man, of that original Wondrous Being that came to 
humankind from superior spheres in order to enlighten and to 
save mankind, beginning with the Third Root-Race passing on 
down through the ages thereafter in vehicles of human flesh and 
mentality even to our present time. You will remember how she 
speaks of this Wondrous Being as a man, and yet not a man, one 
concerning whom legends are rife in the Orient. In all ages there 
have been mysterious allusions to the Master-Initiate, to the 
Great One, to the Head of all Teachers, to the Silent Watcher, to 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the Great Initiator, and so forth and so forth. Tibetan LSlmaism 
drew this teaching of the continued reincarnations of the Buddha 
from that fact. This is an interesting question, and perhaps some 
day, if the Teacher permits, we shall investigate it more fully ; but we 
cannot touch upon Tibetan Lamaism at greater length this evening. 
 
It is necessary, however, to understand that the difference 
between the transmission of an egoic element as in the Buddhaic 
line in Tibet, and those exceptional incarnations called the 
Avataras, is in one sense great ; and in another sense they are 
very much alike. They are very much alike in this, that in both 
cases the Upadhi (or vehicle) chosen for the manifestation of the 
superior entity is a human being. Also in both cases the psycho- 
ethereal Upadhi is a Bodhisattva ; that is to say, in the case of 
an Avatara, the Bodhisattva is the glorified personal man of a 
Buddha, of a Manushya-Buddha ; the lamaic succession is also 
bodhisattvic, but of inferior intensity, so to say a bodhisattvic 
influence, rather than a full incarnation of a Bodhisattva, as in 
the case of an Avatara. 
 
The doctrines that students of Buddhism set forth in the books 
which they publish on Buddhism, in the West, are of course those 
which they derive from the Buddhist books themselves, usually 
with very inadequate understanding of the subtil points of that 
most spiritual of all religions ; and unquestionably these scholars 
strive to understand and truthfully and honestly to set forth that 
which they believe to be the real meaning of Buddhist teachings. 
But it is an amazing thing that they do not succeed better ; and 
the reason is that they come to their study with materialistic 
Western minds, materialistic Western preconceptions and preju- 
dices. They come to their study in an attitude of mind which 
they themselves do not recognise as existing, and hence talk 
sagely when they fail to grasp meanings of the " superstitious 
extravagances of Oriental imagery ", etc. etc. Now how is it 
possible to understand the real nature or the real essence of any- 
thing if you begin your study with the prepossessing idea that you 
know better and more than did the persons who wrote the things 
which you are studying ? Such egoism destroys sympathy and 
obscures true vision ; and if your study be of religious subjects, 
all statements made or doctrines formulated inevitably you will 
look upon as " monkish vagaries ". But, as was pointed out in 
other studies, there is no exoteric doctrine belonging to the great 
ancient world-religions which is intrinsically false. The fact is 
that the exoteric teaching is the truth, but it needs a key in order 
to explain it ; and without the key it actually can be, and usually 
is, misunderstood and misinterpreted, and degraded in a manner 
very similar to that of which we spoke upon opening our study 
this evening. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 239
 
Let us now turn to another subject connected with this, col- 
lateral, and showing another facet of the Jewel. They tell us that 
the human Buddha, the Manushya-Buddha Gautama- Sakyamuni, 
was born 643 years before the first year of the accepted beginning 
of the Christian era. Our doctrine tells us further that a human 
Racial Buddha comes at the beginning of, and a minor one pre- 
ceding the middle point of, a Root-Race. I call your attention 
to the fact that we are now approaching the middle point of our 
Fifth Root-Race. We are in the fourth Sub-Race of that Fifth 
Root-Race, not in the fifth Sub-Race thereof. Please get this 
point clear in your minds. It will be between sixteen thousand 
and twenty thousand years yet before the Racial Cataclysm will 
ensue which will cut our Fifth Root-Race in two, exactly as 
happened to the Fourth-Race Atlanteans and to the Third-Race 
Lemurians who preceded them ; and as it will happen to the two 
Root-Races which will follow ours, the Sixth and Seventh. 
 
Now the reason why some of our former students supposed that 
racially we are now in the fifth Sub-Race, is on account of a mis- 
interpretation, very pardonable it is true, because we all know 
that the subject of cycles and numbers is always closely veiled ; 
this misinterpretation or misconception appears to have arisen 
from what H. P. Blavatsky writes in Volume II of The Secret 
Doctrine on pages 435 and 445 ; and I desire to call your attention 
to the fact that one of the commonest " blinds " that a Teacher 
is obligated to make when writing of esoteric matters in a public 
work is using the same word in varying senses. There is an esoteric 
obligation to do so when it is necessary, in order to tell the truth 
for those who can and who may read, and yet to hide it from the 
" dogs " and " swine " and " foxes ", if you will forgive my use 
here of the New Testament or Syrian " jargon ". I call your 
attention in the above connexion to The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, 
page xliii. This I will read now : " Each Round being com- 
posed of the Yugas [that is, the Ages] of the seven periods [Root- 
Races] of Humanity ; four of which are now passed in our life 
cycle, the middle point of the fifth being nearly reached ". I call 
your attention also to page 610 of the same volume of The Secret 
Doctrine where H. P. Blavatsky says : " But as we are in the 
mid-point of our Sub-Race of the fifth Root-Race the acme of 
materiality in each therefore the animal propensities, though 
more refined ", etc. The " acme of materiality in each " means 
only one thing : the middle point of the fourth of any cyclical series : 
for instance, the fourth Primary Sub-Race ; the fourth Sub-Race 
of the Fourth Primary Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, and 
so forth. 
 
Suppose that for convenience* sake we divide the Races in the 
following way " Root "-Race really meaning the first or root- or 
 
 
 
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originating Primary Sub-Race, but commonly applied to all the 
seven successive Primary Sub-Races of a " Root "-Race and all 
the many other smaller sub-races included in those seven. The 
first " Root "-Race then is the First Primary Sub-Race, of which 
Primary Sub-Races there are seven in the great Racial Cycle ; 
then the Secondary Sub-Race, seven of them in each Primary 
Sub-Race ; then seven Family-Races in each Secondary Sub- 
Race ; then seven National Races in each Family-Race. We 
need go no farther. A few steps more in the series and you will 
come to the unit-entity, or individual man. But please also 
examine page 147 and page 710 of Volume II, for they will well 
repay your close study of them, 
 
In another part of The Secret Doctrine you will remember that 
H. P. Blavatsky, in speaking of the Precessional Cycle of 25,920 
years, here giving the ancient figures, calls it the cycle of a Family- 
Race, that is to say, the Race including seven National Races. 
Our European Race is a Family-Race ; and hence when she 
speaks of the lifetime of our Family-Race she says it has about 
16,000 more years to run. So you see that from our ordinary 
human viewpoint we are not yet very near the great Racial 
Cataclysm ; but from the standpoint of the cycles of the age of 
a Root-Race so short a period as 16,000 years is like saying 
" to-morrow ", or even the " next hour ". A short period of 
16,000 or 20,000 years is insignificant in duration in the drama 
of the soul. 
 
And H, P. Blavatsky somewhere I think it was in her maga- 
zine Lucifer in 1887, or 1888 alludes very graphically to the 
earthquakes then reported in the newspapers as occurring, and 
she calls them the forerunners of that which is going to happen to 
us as a Race. But is America the home to be of the " 6th Sub- 
Race " ? Yes. Which Sub-Race ? " Sub-Race " is vague 
enough 1 Is it to be a sixth Family-Race ? But if America is 
then to be in about 16,000 years, or the latter part of a preces- 
sional cycle of 25,920 years from now, the home of the Sixth 
Family-Race, H. P. Blavatsky goes on immediately, in a masterly 
way, just as any initiate would, to lead the mind on, and she says 
that America is also to be the seed-land, the nursery, of the sixth 
Root-Race, a statement also true, but including a vast period of 
years between the two points ! When that latter far-distant day 
dawns America will then no longer be. Much of the land of the 
Americas that is now above the waters will then be under them, 
and new land, now forming the sea-bottom, will have arisen above 
its surface. For alljwe know, North and South America may be 
more widely united. New land (as the Teacher here present calls 
to me to say) will rise out of the present Pacific, thus raising the old 
Lemurian beds again, to be joined to us here on our Western coasts, 
 
 
 


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So when we read of " sub-races " let us beware, let us be careful, 
lest the molds of our minds, misleading us, lead us astray after 
mere words which are " blinds ". Break the molds of your minds 
at all costs ! Free your minds, keep them plastic 1 Refuse to 
take as the sole truth any isolated statement whatsoever, wherever 
you may find it. Take it, but not alone ; contrast it, compare it, 
study it and analyse it if you want the truth. Especially is this 
necessary when it is a question of cycles, and of the words dealing 
with cycles. Watch carefully when you see the word " sub-race ", 
watch carefully when you read of the " Buddha ". Which 
Buddha ? Or of the " Bodhisattva ''which one ? 
 
So we postpone for a later and more extended study the subjects 
which we have attempted this evening to outline. Much more 
should, and with our Teacher's permission will, be said about 
this Wondrous Being. But, in conclusion, I beg two things, first 
that my words be not misunderstood. We feel deeply the heavy 
responsibility that the Teacher has laid upon us in our studies 
here. I think it a wonderful thing to come here and look at the 
faces of my comrades in the Teacher's presence, and to realize 
the beautiful spirit of fraternal unity that is here ; to realize that 
each one to the best of his or her power is in fullest sympathy 
with all the other comrades. It is a blessing, and personally I 
feel it is as a benediction. But, in closing, do not misconstrue 
my words about this Wondrous Being. Remember the series. 
First the Logos, the Adi-Buddha ; then the seven Dhyanis, each 
one of the seven inspiring and overseeing one of the seven Rounds, 
who is the Causal Buddha, the sun if you like, emanating out 
innumerable inferior beings. Then the Dhyani-Bodhisattvas, for 
each globe of the Planetary Chain, seven of them ; and seven 
Manushya-Buddhas, one such for each one of the seven Root- 
Races on each globe during each Round. There are probably 
almost numberless cases where a Bodhisattva, a Buddhic ray, as 
the cycles of time pass, reaches out from the Lodge of our Masters, 
where the Great Initiator, the Highest One, is, the Man-Emanation 
of the Wondrous Being, and inspires and instils the Ancient 
Wisdom into the soul of some great and pure human being, such 
as was Jesus of Nazareth, and Apollonius of Tyana, and many, 
many others whose names are not familiar to us Westerners. 
 
And in the initiations and we recollect this only at the present 
moment, and it must be said before finishing in the initiations 
there are three things that take place. They are directly con- 
nected with the subject of the Wondrous Being and the Bodhi- 
sattvas. Remember that initiation is the quickening or enlivening 
of the soul of one who is prepared. It is a quickening-process of 
evolution, for producing a more rapid evolving of the inner man, 
which otherwise an ordinary man would achieve only after many 
 
 
 
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ages. In these initiations, and in the fifth, to particularize, there 
occurs what is called the Theophany. The Christians use that word 
and also Epiphany, which is a minor form of the same thing, and 
they say it should be celebrated on the 4th-6th of January, the 
matter having direct relation with the calendar of the solar year 
of which we spoke in our last study, but which we have no time to 
go into tonight. Theophany originally meant the appearance of 
a god. It actually is the following mystery : in the fifth initiation, 
the human being under trial, the chela under trial, meets his own 
god-self face to face, and for a longer or shorter time becomes one 
with it. He then knows truth ; you will remember that the only 
way of really understanding a thing, is to become that thing. And 
that is the real meaning of what takes place in the true, real 
initiations, and the Epiphany is a minor manifestation of the 
Theophany. It is a Greek word meaning shining upon, or illumin- 
ating ; whereas Theophany means the shining forth visibly of a 
god the man's own inner Higher Self. 
 
If the Theophany is more or less complete upon the ending of 
the initiation or the trial, the chela then has Theopneusty } meaning 
divine inspiration. He is consciously united with his inner god, 
his Higher Self. Literally, the inner god of the candidate breathes 
down into him, for a longer or shorter time, depending upon his 
advancement, the wisdom and the knowledge of all the universe, so 
to say, in degree greater or less, depending upon the candidate's 
advancement and receptivity. 
 
The highest of all the ancient initiation-achievements, in 
Greece was called the Theopathy, meaning " suffering a god ", not 
a god who suffers, but one who suffers the conscious entrance 
into him of a god. This is not, of course, an Avatara, which is 
something else entirely, as we have shown above ; but it means 
that at initiation and for a less or greater time afterwards, accord- 
ing to the spiritual power and receptivity of the initiate, he 
becomes, through that holy presence in him, a walking, living 
god, his own Inner Self. Finally, our Teachers tell us that in some 
rare cases the Theophany, the Theopneitsty , and the Theopathy 
last as long as does the life on earth of the Initiate. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXI
 
INITIATIONS AND THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. ROOT-RACES AND 
THEIR SUBDIVISIONS. GLOBE ROUNDS. PLANETARY ROUNDS. 
SOLAR KALPAS : HOW CALCULATED. RACIAL CATACLYSMS. 
 
" As to the Philosophy, by whose assistance the Mysteries were developed 
(and which, we may say, they were designed to teach), it is coeval with the 
Universe itself ; and, however its continuity may be broken by opposing systems, 
it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long as the sun himself 
shall continue to illuminate the world. It has, indeed, and may hereafter be 
violently assailed by delusive opinions ; but the opposition will be just as imbecile 
as that of the waves of the sea against a temple built on a rock, which majestically 
pours them back, broken and vanquished, foaming to the main. However it 
may be involved in oblivion in barbarous and derided in impious ages, it will 
again nourish through all the infinite revolutions of time." 
 
Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, by THOMAS TAYLOR. 
 
Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands : 
" The Superior agrees with the Inferior ; and the Inferior with the Superior ; 
to effect that one truly wonderful Work " which is MAN. For the secret work 
of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabala, " one in Essence, but three in Aspect," 
is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret 
Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line ; the union of the three 
elements is the Occult Solvent in the " Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul or 
Astral Light, at the other ; . . . 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), II, 113. 
 
" The intention of all mystic ceremonies is to conjoin us with the world of 
the Gods." SALLUST. 
 
" The design of the Mysteries is to lead us back to the perfection from which, 
as a Principle, we first made our descent." PLATO 
 
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall sec God " [i.e., their own Inner 
God]. JESUS (in the Sermon on the Mount). 
 
" I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye secth thee." 
 
JOB (a Story of Initiation). 
 
WE continue our study of the subjects which we have 
been treating of for some weeks past ; but this 
evening we are going to speak of another matter 
collateral with our main theme yet very important ; 
and at our next meeting we shall endeavor to take up the 
scattered threads which we have unloosened, both in generaliza- 
tion and in particular, and gather them together and weave them 
into a consistent whole, making as nearly as possible a clearer 
picture for our brain-minds of what we can understand at present 
 
243 
 
 
 
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of the Seventh Treasury of Wisdom. Also, if we have time this 
evening, we shall endeavour very briefly to treat of a matter left 
incomplete at our last meeting, that is to say, the question of the 
seven Root-Races of mankind through which the human wave of 
life passes during the present Fourth Round on our globe. 
 
We open our study this evening in reading from Volume I of 
The Secret Doctrine, page 424, the extract which we have read 
before, but it is convenient to read it again this evening : 
 
To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient 
cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all the 
great religions of antiquity ; as it is only by this method that the root- 
idea will be made plain. Exact science could the latter soar so high, 
while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate and original 
sources would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original, 
transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But as systems 
began to reflect with every age more and more the idiosyncrasies of 
nations ; and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct 
groups, each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the 
main idea gradually became veiled with the overgrowth of human 
fancy. While in some countries the FORCES, or rather the intelligent 
Powers of nature, received divine honors they were hardly entitled to, 
in others as now in Europe and the civilized lands the very thought 
of any such Force being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and 
is proclaimed unscientific. 
 
Note the calm but trenchant irony in this extract. I merely 
call attention to it before passing on. Now this extract, though 
dealing with the various aspects which the ancient religions took 
as the ages passed, leading to their differentiations into the 
so-called great religions of the world, nevertheless fits in very well 
by analogy and by comparison with the subject which we are 
going to treat in particular, although briefly, this evening, that is 
to say the question of initiations and the ancient Mysteries, 
and also a much misunderstood fact in nature closely connected 
with the ancient Mysteries, which was evolved into a doctrine by 
the ancients and called by them the Succession of Teachers 
guruparampard in Sanskrit, and distortedly and faintly reflected 
in the " Apostolical Succession " in the Christian scheme. 
 
The Christian Church very early took over that doctrine of the 
Succession of Teachers, with much other theological timber, from 
the old religions of the countries bordering the Mediterranean 
Sea ; and the doctrine which it took over became for that 
Church the so-called " Apostolic Succession " of the Church of 
Rome, the popes succeeding one another and claiming to be the 
" successors " of the fisherman-apostle of Galilee, Simon Peter. 
We do not care to go into this aspect of the matter, for it is useless 
for our present purpose, and no benefit can be gained by it ; but 
 
 
 


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wherever we look and whatever line of human social or religious 
activity we may choose to take for our study, we shall always 
find that there is a passing on of authority or a passing on of 
teachings, or of both. The various heads of even our political 
bodies succeed one another, and usually carry on a political 
tradition. " Big businesses " succeed one another, and usually 
pass on, from man to man, a tradition of commercial policy and 
expansion ; and so forth, and so forth. It is simply an exempli- 
fication in ordinary practical life of a rule of nature ; that is to 
say, that man, being a mortal being, having to die, but being an 
entity of thought and of heart, does not want to see that which 
he feels to be good, or which he believes to be good, lost ; and so 
he transfers either authority or teaching, or both, to another 
whom he considers fit and capable to carry on his teaching or 
authority, or both. 
 
It is in the religious field of human activity that this system is 
most marked, and where the feeling is the strongest. A succes- 
sion of " prophets " succeeding each other in the ancient 
Mysteries ; a succession of hierophants succeeding each other 
therein, is a fact well known to us, even ordinary knowledge such 
as you may find in an encyclopedia or in school-books. 
 
In Greece, for instance, in taking the Eleusinian Mysteries as an 
example, we know that the Hierophants were drawn from one 
family, the Eumolpidae, living in Athens, and the Torchbearers 
were drawn from another family, the Lycomidae, living in Athens ; 
and we have reason to believe that the Mysteries of Samothrace, 
the seat of an older rite, and which were, like the Mysteries of 
Eleusis, a state-function, were also conducted in the same manner 
by the passing on of the tradition held sacred and incommunicable 
to outsiders ; and the bond of union between the initiates of these 
so-called Mysteries, was considered indissoluble, impossible of 
dissolution, for death merely strengthened the tie. 
 
Now outside of the fact that men like to pass on what they 
think and believe to be good, whence arose throughout the 
various countries of the world of which we have some knowledge, 
the remarkable mystic similarities we know of, whence came to 
them all the closely similar knowledge and authority which were 
passed on from one Head to another ? It must have come from 
somewhere. Men no longer believe in the empty philosophico- 
scientific theory or fallacy of fifty years ago, to the effect that, for 
instance, six men, living in six different isles, will inevitably and 
infallibly tread six more or less identical paths of mental and 
physical thought and ceremony. It was once a scientific heresy 
to doubt that theory. It was called a " fact ", though there 
were no facts to prove it ; it was a theory merely, having no 
other foundation than imagination overworked in order to 
 
 
 
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find an explanation of similarities and identities such as the 
above. 
 
Let us say here that a Theosophist looks with respect and 
reverence upon the discoveries of the many great and noble- 
minded men who have given us brighter views into the shell of 
nature, the outward physical shell, and whose lives often are 
models of self-sacrifice ; but while we recognise that every new 
light shed into our minds, showing us new views into the heart 
of nature, is good for us, and furthermore will tend finally 
to prove our own doctrines, nevertheless every thinking 
Theosophist, and particularly every Esotericist, every Occultist, 
every member of this School, draws a sharp line of distinc- 
tion between Science, the noble knowledge of classified truth, 
and the theories of scientists. We accept a theory if it is 
good, but only as a theory ; and it must be corroborated by 
Nature herself before any Theosophist will accept it as a fact, as a 
part of Science per se. 
 
So, then, we receive the following bit of knowledge from our 
Teachers our Masters have told us that this particular doctrine 
which in the Church of Rome is called the " Apostolic Succession ", 
and in the ancient Mysteries was called the Passing of the Word, 
the Passing of the Knowledge, the Passing of the Authority, or by 
some similar expression, originated in this our own Order, but 
obviously not in our lifetime. We are merely a generation, one 
of many, carrying on the tradition of the Knowledge which 
originated in the final ages of that vanished continent, Lemuria, 
and was more particularly developed in Atlantis, where were first 
established the Ancient Mysteries of which we are to-day the 
ultimate and outward sign of the inward and spiritual truth. 
 
As in the highest of our Lodges, we are taught, the Truth is 
passed from the great Master-Initiator to his successor to the 
Truth and the Authority, so in the inferior Lodges, the same 
system is followed ; and we in our Work merely carry on the same 
tradition. It is saddening to see how learned ignoramuses with 
high-sounding names, or possibly with an alphabetical string of 
academic titles after their names, sometimes talk about the 
Mysteries of which they can really know nothing outside of the 
scattered data found imbodied in old literature. They are mere 
bookmen, readers, and not understanders ; it is also truly 
pathetic to hear some folk talk about the non-necessity of having 
a leader, because they believe that one man is as good as another, 
and that no man can be very much better than another, and to see 
their opinion that all this talk about spiritual, inner light and 
illumination passed on from Initiate to Initiate is just thingum- 
bobbery ! 
 
Are they wise ? But ask them for proof of their theory, and 
 
 
 


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they can give you none. No proof whatsoever ; it is pure specula- 
tion. On the contrary, point out to them even such facts as we 
know, or the things of which history has left certain records in her 
annals, where invariably you will find the same old tradition 
coming down the ages of the passing down of the knowledge and 
of the authority and of the doctrine. 
 
Now when we speak of Mysteries and initiations we use those 
words in a sense which to us is sacred, and with no wish or desire, 
far less with any attempt, to create a false and mischievous atmo- 
sphere of emotionalism. We speak of facts. You know that every 
member of our School is more or less a scientist, i.e., a knower and 
researcher. We are taught to use our brains and our minds and 
our wills first of all for self-conquest, and then to analyse properly 
ourself and the world we live in. Has not our present Teacher 
told us again and again that we must consult our consciences 
before we accept anything ? In order to do that, we have to 
think ; we also know that even if in doing so we should, through 
our own blindness, or incapacity, reject a truth offered to us, we 
shall nevertheless have done aright, because we have been faithful 
to ourselves, to our consciences, and also faithful to our Teacher, 
and that the karman of that rejection will be merely temporary, 
because the inner man understands, and the truth in time will 
dawn in faithful hearts. After all, how greatly preferable it is to 
do so in all honesty and purity of soul, than to be like some who 
have entered this sacred body from improper motives, and with 
envy and jealousy in their hearts and perhaps honeyed words on 
their lips. Heaven help them ! 
 
We are taught that the Mysteries we take those of Greece for 
an example were divided into two parts. Let us particularize : 
take those of Eleusis. You will remember, as was pointed out at 
our last meeting, that Eleusis as a word means Advent, The 
Coming, that which is coming, the promise. As the Mysteries of 
Samothrace were rather what we would call scientific, dealing more 
with the operations of Nature, and the origin of those operations 
and the method of controlling them, and teaching what they led 
to in other words what we would to-day call science ; so the 
teachings at Eleusis were rather those religious and philosophic 
doctrines of esotericism giving to men what the great Roman 
orator, Cicero, called a brighter view of life and a livelier hope as 
regarded death, because they taught of the things which are to be, 
more particularly the so-called, and thoughtlessly so-called, 
" dark mysteries of death ". These Eleusinia were divided into 
two parts, as said above, the Less Mysteries and the Greater 
Mysteries. The Less Mysteries were celebrated in the early 
springtime, more or less about the time of the Anthesteria, the 
Flower-Festival, and the celebrations took place at a small town 
 
 
 
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called Agrae. Those Mysteries were mainly dramatic in form, 
with this one object in view : to prepare him or her who was 
initiated into these Less Mysteries, better to understand, more 
quickly to apprehend, and more easily to seize with the mind, 
that which he was to go through in the Greater Mysteries of 
Eleusis, providing that in the interim and during the time of 
trial he proved himself true and fit and clean. 
 
Even in the days when early Christianity had superseded the 
degenerate and corrupt religions of the Mediterranean countries, 
even then, fallen as the Eleusinia were from their former high 
state, yet they were considered so highly that initiations still 
took place in them. They were actually finally stopped on the 
initiative of the Pagans themselves, the school closed by an order 
of the Christian Emperor Justinian in Constantinople, but closed 
on the petition of the better of the so-called Pagans themselves. 
The truth is that the Mysteries were not overcome by Christianity, 
but fell because of intrinsic degeneracy. Can we imagine what 
those men must have felt in the day when they saw that which was 
dearer to them than life closed and ended by their own will, 
invaded and degraded by degenerate rites and beliefs, and, doubt- 
less, also by the Christian fanatics ? 
 
Now the dramatizations in the Less Mysteries were not what 
we would call " plays ", exactly ; they were " plays " in one 
sense because they were dramas. But they were enacted in the 
form of spectacles in which the would-be disciple, the initiant or 
the one to be initiated, had to take the main part himself or 
herself. Let us give a concrete example, which at least will be 
interesting, and perhaps illuminating, remembering that there 
were various kinds of styles of initiations and of Mysteries existing 
in the different countries ; but fundamentally they were all one 
and still today are one in the great secret sodalities ; but in each 
country the initiations and Mysteries took on different aspects, 
as it were ; as for instance in Hindusthan as compared with 
Greece. The initiator and the neophyte might use a different 
language, and wear different clothing, etc., and perhaps go 
through a different rite, and so on and so on. But fundamentally 
the idea was the same the world over. It must be remembered 
that the Smaller Mysteries were preparations for the Greater. In 
the former, the candidate was taught, and enacted as a drama 
what he would have to experience psychically and spiritually 
in the Greater Initiations. 
 
Now one of these rites was the drama, or the trial rather, that 
the neophyte would have to pass through in actuality later, in the 
Greater Initiation, and it was the meeting with his Inner Self, his 
own Inner Self, not in the vague and abstract way in which we 
today speak of a man as having " found his true self " ; but in 
 
 
 


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the Less Initiation the neophyte was actually put through training 
and purification in order to fit him to undergo the real Test, in 
which he met his own Inner Self face to face, as another individual 
apparently, at first, but at a still higher Initiation to be blended 
with that other Self, his own Self, his Higher Self. 
 
Now this rite is one of the Smaller Mysteries, those of purifi- 
cation and training, and was enacted at the town of Agrae, not far 
from Athens, where the Less Mysteries were held, and it was 
enacted dramatically. The neophyte was then and there taught 
to anticipate and understand what was coming to him if he was 
successful later in the Greater Rite. He was frankly and openly 
told at the last what he was there to meet if he desired to go to 
the end of the path. And similarly with the other stages or 
degrees of initiation. 
 
Now it is not certainly known how many degrees or secret stages 
there were of the Eleusinia, but we know that there were several ; 
and we know that to the very end, before they were finally closed 
on account of their degeneration, they were so carefully guarded, 
so faithfully kept hid, that to this day scholars are mentally 
running around in bewilderment, in an endeavor to find out 
what really was taught in the Eleusinia, in these Mysteries which 
aroused the admiration of the greatest men of antiquity ; in those 
of Samothrace likewise the circumstances of secrecy and degree 
were very similar. 
 
Take Egypt. The Pyramids, we are taught, were simply the 
Great Pyramid especially majestic Initiation-Temples. There 
too the Mysteries and the initiations were most sacredly guarded 
and kept secret. They were kept only for those who had proved 
themselves worthy, not by talk but by act, and who had been tried 
and tested in many different ways. And why ? Because it was 
a dangerous matter for unprepared minds. Our Teachers tell us 
plainly that there were three results of an initiation : one success ; 
another failure, which often meant death ; and the third (a 
partial failure) often meant madness. But success meant glory 
unspeakable. Why was it that madness and death sometimes 
ensued ? Through any outward punishment ? No. The results 
were wholly from within the candidates themselves. They were 
plainly told, these neophytes : " Come with a clean heart, and 
glory unspeakable and knowledge of the gods shall be yours ; but 
come with a perverse and wicked heart, with your mind untrained 
and with your will unset, and you will never be able to face that 
which you will have to meet in the other world ". Because that 
is what the Greater Mysteries were, a passing behind the veil of 
this physical shell. No wonder that the training was severe, 
arduous ! Those ancient men had high hearts in their bodies and 
wise old minds. 
 
 
 
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Now those Mysteries are not dead today. We are taught 
distinctly that the same ancient truths, the same entrance into 
glory, the same beautiful realization of the highest hopes that 
man bears in the secret recesses of his heart, the same surpassing 
knowledge of life and being : all can be had by him who wills and 
who dares and who knows how to keep silent : and we are told that 
the true Esoteric Pathway is here, in this our own Holy Order. 
That is what the Masters have taught us through their repre- 
sentatives, the third one of whom, in our age, sits among us this 
evening. They also have taught us another great truth, that it is 
not a sine qua non for success to have a mighty brain-mind, for 
they have told us plainly that even some of their own Brothers, 
some of the Masters themselves, arc such by virtue of their 
spiritual grandeur, and not by virtue of any brain-mind eminence 
alone nor of any particular mental power ; and they have told us 
further that such of the Masters, spiritual sons of glory, may 
stand high even among themselves. We are further taught that 
this brain-mind of ours is very often a hindrance to us ; it is 
indeed a most useful servant if we keep it a servant, but it is a 
master which will inevitably put our feet upon the left-hand path 
unless illumined and guided by the spiritual nature, because all its 
thoughts are thoughts of self, and all its thinking is for gratifica- 
tion of its own desires ; its horizons are limited, and its outlook 
is short ; its self-born inspirations are few and far between ; and 
it is mortal and dies with the body. It depends upon ourselves 
as to which side of our nature, the higher or the lower, we shall, as 
William Quan Judge used to say, nail our faith, pin it there and 
keep it there. 
 
The other matter mentioned at the beginning of our study this 
evening we shall have to treat very briefly. It is that of the Races 
through which mankind, as a Life- Wave, passes in its journey 
from the beginning of evolution on this globe to its end. You will 
remember that there are seven such Root-Races which form the 
evolutionary Cycle, in this Fourth Round, which is what we call 
one Globe-Round ; and we are at the present time, as said before, 
in the fourth Sub-Race of our present Fifth Root-Race. There is 
confusion about these Races in the minds of some students, because 
our first Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, as was pointed out at our last 
meeting, was under the necessity when she wrote, of keeping quiet, 
or rather hid, certain teachings which she was not then empowered 
publicly to give out. Had there been the proper appeal from her 
students, perhaps she would have done so then. At any rate, our 
present Teacher, Katherine Tingley, has permitted us to give a 
short outline, which we shall use in an attempt to illustrate this 
rather difficult subject. Let each line of the following diagram 
represent a Root-Race. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 251
 
There are seven lines (or Root-Races), and you will notice that 
the junction-line, beginning one Root-Race out of the preceding 
Root-Race, is at the middle point of the former, that is, at the 
fourth Sub-Race of the preceding or Mother-Race. It is so in all 
the lines (or Root-Races). Now we are at present in the Fifth 
 
 
 
 
Root-Race, two races short of the completion of our globe-cycle 
or globe-Round, and our present Fifth Root-Race is almost at the 
point, the middle of our Fifth Root-Race, where the Sixth Root- 
Race to come will branch off. Each Root-Race, each of the seven, 
is divided in our teachings into seven minor Races as follows. 
Notice the recurrence of the number seven : 
 
" i. Primary Sub-Race (7 minor divisions of it). 
 
2. Secondary Sub-Race (7 ,, ). 
 
3. Family Race (7 ,, ). 
One 4. National Race (7 ,, ,, ). 
 
Root- < 5. Tribal Race (7 ,, ,, ). 
 
Race. (Another name may be suggested which is better than 
 
this and the following.) 
 
6. A Tribal Generation (7 minor divisions of it). 
 
7. Individual man (say 72 years). 
 
We say 72 years, because the average man, barring accidents 
and malignant diseases which may carry him off before his time, 
usually lives about 72 years. Some human beings live much 
longer, of course. If we took count of all human deaths : of the 
 
 
 
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babies who die in such numbers in infancy, and of all who die 
in shipwreck, and of all the men killed in wars, and of all the 
murders and of all the diseases, and of the train and of 
the automobile wrecks, and of all such accidents, probably the 
average length of human life to-day would not be more than 15 
or 20 years ; but those cases, after all, are exceptional. Man 
lives to-day, on a natural average, about 72 years, barring all 
accidents, etc., as above suggested. 
 
The following is an interesting calculation, offered only as a 
suggestive thing. Suppose that you desire to calculate the length 
of time of a Root-Race, and please understand that what we are 
saying now is only a rough approximation. Take then 72 years, 
the famous three score years and ten in the Bible a mystery- 
figure, a round number for 72 and multiply it by seven : we get 
one Tribal Generation ; multiply it by seven again, we get one 
Tribal Race ; multiply that by seven and we get one National 
Race, and your figure will come to about 25,920 years, the length 
of the Precessional Cycle ; multiply that by seven again, and you 
get one Family Race ; multiply that again by seven and you get 
a Secondary Sub-Race ; and multiply that by seven once more 
and you get a figure which is really the entire time-period of a 
Root-Race. This calculation is very rough numerically, and is so 
intended to be ; but it is suggestive. 
 
You see we do not count the Root-Race as one of the seven 
here, but make it the all-inclusive one, and why ? Because if we 
did so count it, we should be counting the Primary Sub-Race 
twice. A " Root "-Race really ought to mean the race which 
originates a thing, or is its " root ". It is therefore, strictly 
speaking, from the first Primary Sub-Race that all the others 
of the series grow, exactly as the root of a tree sends up its 
trunk, and the trunk its branches, the branches their smaller 
branchlets, the smaller branchlets still smaller branchings, they 
the twigs, which bear the leaves. Therefore, according to the 
above series, it is the Primary Sub-Race which really is the 
" Root "-Race. 
 
Now there are seven (please mark again, seven) Root-Races in 
one Globe-Round, that is to say a Planetary Round as it passes 
through our Globe. Seven Globe-Rounds equal one Planetary 
Round ; seven Planetary Rounds equal one Kalpa or Manvantara 
or Day of Brahma, and seven Kalpas plus seven Planetary 
Pralayas (or seven periods of planetary rest) equal one Solar Kalpa. 
 
7 Root-Races = i Globe-Round. 
 
7 Globe-Rounds = I Planetary Round. 
 
7 Planetary Rounds = i Kalpa =4, 320,000 of our years 
 
(plus several more ciphers). 
7 Kalpas + 7 Planetary Pralayas =i Solar Kalpa. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 253
 
Now these figures are given because they are fundamental. 
They are accurate as far as they go. We shall have to deal with 
them in future studies. 
 
Please note in conclusion that the drawing on page 251 above, 
illustrating the birth of Root-Races from each other at the middle 
point of each, equally well can represent a Primary Sub-Race or 
a Secondary Sub-Race, or a National Race, or a Tribal Race, etc., 
and the reason is obvious, because there are no perfectly unique 
and singular things in Nature anywhere. Nature does nothing 
but repeat itself, and the man who said that Nature never repeats 
itself uttered a titanic fallacy. Nature does nothing but repeat 
itself. Did you ever see a thing perfectly unique utterly 
different in all respects from everything else ? On the contrary, 
you see everything everywhere repeating itself : the seasons year 
in and year out : day and night year in and year out : the 
planets circling around the sun continually ; their satellites 
circling around their primaries in more or less the same way ; and 
so forth. There is constant repetition everywhere. A tree in 
putting forth its foliage, puts forth its own leaves ; it does not 
put forth something unique and unheard of pumpkin-pies or 
chairs or temples or houses ; it puts forth that which belongs to 
it, as all trees do. 
 
Cycles can be found in every branch of life ; for instance, 
children are born on the average at the end of ten lunar months 
or nine solar months. A child can live and be perfectly healthy 
and successful, if born at seven months after conception, but it 
is a child of great sensitiveness, high-strung, of nervous tempera- 
ment, and it needs the most anxious and loving care, because it 
has to finish its growth in the cold outside, and Nature takes two 
other months to do it normally. 
 
Now, as said before, we shall endeavor at our next study to 
link together into one consistent and more easily understood whole, 
the various threads of thought which we have gathered up out of 
our teachings, both in generalization and in particular, and to 
weave them into a whole so consistent, so coherent, that even our 
brain-minds can grasp at least some message, some notion, of what 
the sublime theme that we have been studying within the last few 
weeks treats of. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXII
 
THE HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION. THE INCARNATION OF THE 
 
MlNASAPTJTRAS. 
 
Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge and the Deva- Wisdom thou 
hast won must from thyself, the channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another 
bed. 
 
Know, O Naljor, thou of the Secret Path, its pure fresh waters must be used 
to sweeter make the Ocean's bitter waves that mighty sea of sorrow formed of 
 
TnA -f*oi-o r\f rvt^n 
 
 
 
Now^bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva Compassion speaks and 
saith : " Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer ? Shalt thou be saved 
and hear the whole world cry ? " 
 
The Voice of the Silence (" The Seven Portals "). 
 
Chosen Fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts. For the daily use 
of Lanoos (disciples). Translated and annotated by H. P. BLAVATSKY pp 
70-71, 76. ' **' 
 
TN opening our study this evening let us read from The Secret 
Doctrine, Volume II, pages 281-2 : 
 
u As the " coats of skin " of men thickened, and they fell more and 
'* ma*f o physical sin, the intercourse between physical and 
me wi,Vn^Vi ^ S st PP ed - The veil of matter between the two 
SL ^ d^selor ^^-Kier ^n to penetrate. The 
mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the TElft^KS PY tteir^es- 
tial teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light, 
the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused 
and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil. With the 
masses they degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of 
exoteric religions, of idolatry full of superstitions, and rnan-, or hero- 
worship. Alone a handful of primitive men in whom the spark of 
divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its intensity 
as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to 
bad purposes remained the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed 
to mankind by the divine Teachers . . . and tradition whispers, 
what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the 
germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period : 
 
" The inner man of the first . . . only changes his lodyjrom time to 
time ; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvana, spurning 
Devachan and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind. 
. . ." " Out of the seven virgin-men (Kum&ra) four sacrificed themselves 
for the sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain 
till the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever 
present. When people say of one of them, ' He is dead ' ; behold, he 
 
254 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 255
 
is alive and under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the 
Soul, and the Seed of undying knowledge. . . ." 
 
. . . Higher than the " Four " is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens 
that still more mysterious and solitary Being described in Book I. 
 
the Wondrous Being of whom we have spoken before. 
 
Would that I had our Teacher's profound and capacious mind 
and her capacity for exposition, because tonight we are going to 
do our best to illustrate in as simple terms as possible the sublime 
subjects that we have been studying for some weeks past, gather- 
ing up the stray threads of thought and trying to weave them 
into a consistent and logical whole. 
 
Plunging then directly into our study, let us first ask ourselves 
one question. Whither are we as a Race, as men, as thinking 
entities, traveling, in what direction ? The Ancient Wisdom tells 
us that we are traveling inwards, not " up ", not " down ", not to 
" right " nor to " left ", not " forward " nor " backward ", but 
inwards, leaving the realms of matter, taking them with us in fact 
by spiritualizing the inferior coatings : traveling inwards on that 
Path which began with our " descent " (if you like the term) into 
matter, into manifestation, and henceforward raising matter 
towards spirit, its real source or root, following the path which we 
ourselves inwardly are, and marching inwards, ever more inwardly, 
until at the consummation of all things we shall attain a goal, an 
end, even more supernal than that which we left in commencing 
our peregrination downwards into experience. 
 
The next thought that occurs is, Are our Higher natures separate 
from ourselves, paradoxical as it may sound ? Are they our- 
selves ? What are they ? We all know, as students, the teachings 
concerning the seven principles of man ; but when we stop to ask 
ourselves what are these seven principles really : do they form a 
unity, or is each one of them an entity in itself, then we enter upon 
very difficult subjects indeed. Let us say first that the four lower 
principles are borrowed or rather, perhaps, evolved out of ourselves 
in combination with elements drawn from the common store- 
house of Nature, as man takes into his body for his nutrition his 
food formed of atoms, yet each one of those atoms in itself is the 
vehicle of a monad, manifesting in that sphere or plane of life. 
But our three higher principles are each one a separate entity but 
conjoined into an inseparable unity during the Manvantaric cycle. 
And we see the reason why this is so in studying the seventh of 
the seven Treasuries of Wisdom, which seventh is the supreme Key 
of all the other six. 
 
We begin to form some conception of what lies before us in this 
study : how unity becomes multiplicity and how multiplicity 
resolves itself back into unity. Note first the difference between 
 
 
 
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one, unity, and union. Union is an assemblage of things straitly 
united together ; Unity is an assemblage of things but with a 
common head or source, the summit of a hierarchy for instance ; 
whereas one is a monad, an individual, and therefore indivisible. 
Now we are a union in our four lower principles ; we are a unity 
in our three higher principles, our " upper triad " ; and we are one 
in the three highest, the "highest triad", so called for easy 
comprehension. 
 
Now the three principles forming the " upper triad " exist each 
on its own plane, and we feel their influence, because we are in 
spiritual rapport with them. Nevertheless each one exists on its 
own plane in consciousness and power ; we know of each only 
what we have so far evolved ; all we know, for instance, of the 
third principle (counting from the top), the Manas, is what we have 
so far assimilated of it in this Fourth Round. It, as you know, 
will not be fully developed until the end of the next Round. What 
we call our " Manas " is a generalizing term for the reincarnating 
ego I am now speaking of the higher Manas. 
 
Now turning a moment to a collateral subject, we must realize 
that all our consciousness, i.e., the consciousness of the ordinary 
man, pertains to this our present plane, but that there are in- 
numerable other planes of the Kosmos surrounding us, inter- 
penetrating us, and of these other planes each has its own entities, 
its own beings, thinking and unthinking, as our plane has, each 
class appropriate to its own sphere or plane, and that our very 
earth interpenetrates them as they interpenetrate us, and that the 
reason we do not see their habitations and them, and their 
dwellings, and the lower creatures living there, is because our 
senses are not yet fitted to cognise them, have not been evolved or 
trained to know them or see them, for our physical senses have but 
a very limited perception of things. But there indeed they are ! 
Some of these planes belong to our own Hierarchy, and some do 
not. Those which do not, belong to other Hierarchies each having 
its own series of planes or worlds. As in a chord of music each 
note may be distinctly heard, each being separate from the other, 
but together they form a chord, a musical harmony, so it is with 
these planes. It is, if you like, all a matter of differing vibrations, 
this word being used here in its scientific sense. If the vibrations 
are such that our senses can cognise them, we see them then, or 
hear them, or touch them, or taste them, or smell them, as sense- 
perceptions ; and if our senses are incognisant of them, we know 
nothing of them. Yet they are there ! 
 
Similarly with our three higher principles, the " upper triad ". 
The ego exists with its own consciousness, and its own forces, and 
its own dwelling which is a " soul ", and we feel its effects, we feel 
its flux, which to us is an influx ; and similarly with the Buddhic 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 257
 
principle, and with the Atmic ray. We say that the Atman is 
universal, and so it is ; but it belongs (so far as we are concerned 
in our present stage in evolution) to the fourth Kosmic plane, though 
it is our seventh principle. 
 
What I am trying to say is that the destiny of man is to raise 
his focus of consciousness from the lower to the higher ; and with 
each step that he makes "upwards'', or more properly inwards, 
he finds a new world , with its own inhabitants, as said above, with 
its own conditions and " laws ", with the " habitations " of its 
inhabitants ; and following the ancient axiom of the Hermetists, 
" As above, so below ", we can see the perfect truth, the perfect 
fidelity to fact, in stating that these various planes or rather 
Worlds some of which are immensely higher than ours, some 
only a little higher, some immensely lower than ours, some only a 
little lower each one of these planes or Worlds, I repeat, has its 
own life and thinking beings, its own trees, and its own stones, 
and its own storms, and its own fire, its own inhabitants, and its 
own animals, and all the rest of the manifold and various things 
and entities, similar to but not identical with the beings we see 
around us on our plane. Think of the vastness of the spaces of 
consciousness and being which this thought brings home to us, 
the illimitability of life, its utter and perfect endlessness, promising 
endless evolution before us, as there have been endless experiences 
and evolution behind us ! The reflexion is an ennobling one. 
 
Now, the summit of every Hierarchy, as so often said, is one : 
and may be considered as one in three or three in one, a philo- 
sophical conception of the ancients whence the Christians got their 
dogma of their Trinity. This is the Uppermost Triad. Next comes 
a unity of what we call our Upper Triad, three separate principles 
per se, yet bound together in a compact unity in the seventh or 
highest principle, the Atman, which is the Self, the " universal 
selfhood ", not our ego, but that feeling or consciousness of self- 
hood which is the same in you and in me and in every human 
being, and even in all the inferior beings of the Hierarchy, yea, 
even in those of the beast-kingdom under us, and dimly perceptible 
even in the plant-world, and which is latent even in the minerals. 
This is the pure cognition, the abstract idea of Self. It differs not 
at all throughout the Hierarchy, except in degree of self-recogni- 
tion. When you say self, you mean the same thing that I do ; but 
when you say myself, I am I and not another, that is the conscious- 
ness of your ego, and it is not the same as when I say / am L When 
this ego is raised from the lower planes to the higher, it comes 
naturally in touch with higher things. From the inferior con- 
sciousness we become by evolution conscious of ourself as a man, 
or subconscious ; and from the man we become a Buddha or a 
Christ, reaching full expanded ^^//-consciousness. And there are 
 
 
 
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thereafter other planes still higher than this, of which we now say 
no more. Finally, the four lowest principles form a union, non- 
permanent, transitory, and dissoluble at death. 
 
Remember that these planes or Worlds extend as such in both 
directions : inwards and outwards one reaching ever into greater 
superiority to us, from our standpoint ; and the other direction 
going, as we expressed it, downwards, or, as it is sometimes 
expressed, along the Path of the Left Hand. 
 
Now let us read here another extract, as our next subject, from 
The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 572 : 
 
Esoterically the teaching differs : The divine, purely Adi-Buddhic 
monad manifests as the universal Buddhi (the Mahd-buddhi or Mahat 
in Hindd philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root 
of divine intelligence, the highest anima mundi [or soul of the world] 
or the Logos. This descends " like a flame spreading from the eternal 
Fire, immoveable, without increase or decrease, ever the same to the 
end" of the cycle of existence, and becomes universal life on the 
Mundane Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like 
seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light (the logoi of Life) ; then the 
Dhy^ni-Buddhas of contemplation : the concrete forms of their 
formless Fathers the Seven Sons of Light, still themselves, to whom 
may be applied the Br^hmanical mystic phrase : " Thou art ' THAT ' 
Brahm." It is from these Dhyctni-Buddhas that emanate their 
chhdyds (Shadows) the Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, the proto- 
types of the sw/>^-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the terrestrial 
Buddhas, and finally of men. The " Seven Sons of Light " are also 
called " Stars." 
 
Oh, sublime beyond ordinary human comprehension are the 
truths of life and the mysteries of being ! We are taught that there 
exists a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky some- 
times called the Hierarchy of Mercy or of Pity. This is the Light- 
Side of nature as contrasted with its Matter-Side or Shadow-Side, 
its Night-Side. It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came 
those semi-divine entities about the middle period of the third 
Root-Race of this Round, and incarnated in the semi-conscious, 
quasi-senseless men of that period, those advanced entities other- 
wise known as the Solar Lhas, as the Tibetans call them, the solar 
spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa who during the third 
Root-Race thus sacrificed themselves in order to give us intel- 
lectual light ; incarnating in those senseless psycho-physical shells 
in order to awaken into a divine flame of egoity and ^//-conscious- 
ness the sleeping egos which we then were. They are ourselves 
because belonging to the same spirit-ray that we do ; yet we, more 
strictly speaking, were those half-unconscious, half-awakened egos 
whom they touched with the divine fire of their own being. This 
our " awakening " was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation 
of the Mdnasaputras, or the Sons of Mind, or Light. Had that 
 
 
 


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incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have continued our 
evolution by merely " natural " causes, but it would have been 
slow almost beyond comprehension, almost interminable ; but 
that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, their immense 
love, though, indeed, acting under Karmic impulse, awakened the 
divine fire in our own selves, gave us light and comprehension and 
understanding ; so from that time we ourselves became the " Sons 
of the Gods " ; the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awak- 
ened, our eyes were opened, responsibility became ours ; and our 
feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet, 
leading inwards back to our spiritual home. 
 
In speaking of initiations at our last meeting, you remember it 
was pointed out by our Teachers that initiation is in fact a quick- 
ening process, but it is also something else ; it is a copy, an 
endeavor to copy, what was done by the incarnation of those 
Lords of Understanding, Sons of Light. It is an attempt to 
stimulate, to awaken into activity, the inner spiritual Self, to 
enliven us more quickly, to enable us to see and understand, saving 
those who successfully pass through the tests aeons and aeons of 
suffering and strife, and, noblest of all, enabling those whose minds 
have become enlightened, themselves to do the same for their 
brothers who are less progressed than they. 
 
Why is it that our Teachers from the very beginning, all our 
Teachers who have appeared among men, as also our three latest, 
H. P. Blavatsky, W. Q. Judge, and Katherine Tingley : why is it, 
I say, that they continually teach us the duty as well as the need 
of self-control, and of pity and of compassion and of spiritual 
understanding ? Why ? Because these things verily are the keys, 
these are the " Open Sesames ", these are the things which unlock 
the portals, not merely to let in the Light, but when the light is 
seen, to give it again to others, for who is the man who would not 
follow it ? 
 
Let us write down the following names, cited in the above 
extract from The Secret Doctrine, and reduce them to hierarchical 
form so that they will more easily remain in the memory. 
 
1. Adi-Buddhi. 
 
2. The second is Maha-Buddhi, which is in fact Mahat. It is 
likewise the First Logos, adopting the Greek method of nomen- 
clature. 
 
3. The third is Universal Light which is also Life, also called in 
the Sanskrit, Divine Matter, Divine Nature, Daivi-Prakriti. The 
Second Logos. 
 
4. The Sons of Light, called the Logoi of Life, the Third Logos. 
 
5. The Dhyani-Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contemplation or 
Meditation. 
 
 
 
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6. The Celestial Bodhisattvas, a Sanskrit word meaning " he 
whose nature is essentially Celestial Wisdom or Bodhi ". 
 
7. The super-terrestrial or superhuman Bodhisattvas. 
 
8. The Mnushya-Buddhas, or the human Buddhas. 
 
9. Men. 
 
This is the Hierarchy of Compassion, emanating or evolving 
from the supernal regions, and they are the flowers of the evolu- 
tionary course ; and these regions themselves form the first (or 
the tenth) or the root, if you like, of the Hierarchy of Compassion, 
counting upwards or downwards. 
 
Now the essential aim of this Hierarchy : the whole purpose 
and strife, if you like the word, of evolution, is to raise the cor- 
ruptible into Incorruptibility, to raise imperfection to Perfection, 
to raise the mortal so that it shall put on Immortality, or, in other 
words, to raise the personal man to be the individual man, to make 
of the human a divine being. The average man has of course not 
yet reached that sublime stage, and hence, as was pointed out 
before, there is no abiding principle whatsoever in personal man, 
because he is composed only of the five lower principles ; and when 
we say " personal " man we mean the man of this period, of this 
epoch, the evolving entity of the present time, the person. But, 
" overshadowing " this person, incarnating in this person (if we 
can use the term incarnating) there is the Divine Flame, there is 
the Divine Seed, there is the constant impulse from the God 
within, telling us always " Come up higher, come to me. Be the 
Path and walk it. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life " in the 
" heart " of each one of us. It is there ; and as soon as the 
personal man consciously allies himself with this Divine Spark, he 
becomes thereby impersonal and immortal in his inner conscious- 
ness and therefore incorruptible, at least until the end of this 
Maha-Kalpa ; and then his sublime destiny is to enter into that 
ineffable Nirvana where he will remain in indescribable bliss and 
universal understanding until the next Kalpa begins, whence he 
starts out anew but on a far more elevated plane. He starts out 
as a Leader of that new humanity. He then finds it his turn to 
become one of that band or company or body of Sons of Mind or 
Light, himself in his turn to endow with self-consciousness and 
future spiritual immortality the semi-conscious beings of that 
cycle to come. 
 
Bodhisattva : this is a key-word. You will remember that it 
was pointed out at a former study that the Dhyani-Buddhas, who 
are fifth in the enumeration of this Hierarchy of Compassion, of 
these Lords of Contemplation, are seven in number, and each one 
of them has governance or rather has the overseeing of one of our 
Rounds. Remember that there are seven Rounds in a Kalpa. He 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 261
 
is its head, the constant stimulator behind, that force in Nature 
which we feel always within us. That " force " is the divine urge, 
as philosophers might call it. It is not, however, yet truly divine ; 
because noble, great, as these spiritual beings truly are, they have 
not yet reached the summit of their own Hierarchy ; but their 
great Work is what we may call the divine urge, the push, behind 
the evolutionary process. Further, each of these Dhyani-Buddhas 
in himself is a Hierarchy, just as we pointed out that every atom 
is a hierarchy, every man is a hierarchy, and, indeed, every entity 
is a hierarchy of greater or of inferior degree, because everything 
that is composite is necessarily divisible into degrees of spiritual 
and intellectual excellence. 
 
How else could the evolving beings learn ? If man existed in 
nothing but the pristine purity of his divine essence, what would 
there be for him to learn, how could he learn ? Each one of these 
Dhyanis has, or gives birth to, so to say, or emanates or evolves 
from himself, seven " sons ", called Celestial Bodhisattvas, and 
each Celestial Bodhisattva has charge of one of the globes of our 
Planetary Chain, so that not only each Planetary Round, but each 
globe also has its spiritual Head. It is a hierarchy in that sense 
again, as well. 
 
Furthermore, let us take our earth, the fourth globe, as a further 
example. The Celestial Bodhisattva of our globe in his turn gives 
birth to seven superhuman Bodhisattvas, and these superhuman 
Bodhisattvas or super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas has, each one, 
charge of one Race of the seven Root-Races in each Round, and 
gives birth by a wonderful process which we shall shortly describe, 
to seven human Buddhas each one, each superhuman Bodhi- 
sattva, to a Race-Buddha. A Bodhisattva, as explained exoteri- 
cally, means one who in another incarnation or in a few more 
incarnations will become a Buddha. That is true, but it is an 
exoteric teaching, that is to say, it is incomplete, and therefore 
misleading. A Bodhisattva from the standpoint of our Occult 
teachings, our esoteric teachings, is more than that. When a man, 
a human being, has reached the point where his ego becomes 
conscious, fully so, of its inner divinity : becomes clothed with 
the Buddhic Ray ; where, so to say, the personal man has put on 
the garments of inner immortality in actuality, on this earth, here 
and now, that man is a Bodhisattva. His higher principles have 
nearly reached Nirvana. When they do so finally, such a man is 
a Buddha, a human Buddha, a Manushya-Buddha. Obviously, if 
such a Bodhisattva were to reincarnate, in the next incarnation or 
in a very few future incarnations thereafter, he would be a Manu- 
shya-Buddha. A Buddha, in the esoteric teaching, is one whose 
higher principles can learn nothing more ; they have reached 
Nirvana and remain there ; but the spiritually awakened personal 
 
 
 
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man, the Bodhisattva, the person made semidivine, to use popular 
language, instead of choosing his reward in the Nirvana of a less 
degree, remains on earth out of pity and compassion for inferior 
beings, and becomes what is called a Nirmanakdya. A Nirmana- 
kaya is a Bodhisattva, a personal man made semidivine. He 
clothes himself in a nirmanakayic vesture. The Nirmanakaya, you 
will remember, is one who is a complete, thinking, spiritual entity, 
minus the physical body only. 
 
Let us take an example of how this works. Remember, please, 
apropos of our subject, that we are studying the nature of the 
" Wondrous Being " only incidentally at present, as being an 
illustration truly sublime of the seventh Treasury of Wisdom, the 
Atma-Vidya, the Knowledge of Self. Now let us take our illustra- 
tion. Some time after Gautama-Buddha died, there was born in 
the south of India a man who made a great mark in the Indian 
world thereafter. His name was Sankaracharya. Acharya is a 
Sanskrit word meaning Teacher or Master ; and the name of the 
man himself was Sankara ; the two words joined together make 
Sankaracharya, " Sankara the Teacher ", as the Hindu Vedantists 
of the Ad wait a or non-dualistic school put it. He was born in 
Southern India as already stated. Now here again is a very inter- 
esting thing, briefly alluded to before. Sankaracharya was an 
Avatara, which means an incarnation of a " God ", and yet he 
stood less high than the Buddha (Gautama) who had preceded 
him, although the latter was a man. How shall we explain that 
wonder ? Easily. The Buddha Gautama became a Buddha 
through his own efforts, throughout innumerable ages ; whereas 
^ankaracharya was in one mystical sense what may truly be called 
an illusion from the standpoint of esoteric manhood. Sankara was 
a man, there was a physical body, there was the great spiritual 
essence within ; but there had been no previous Sankardchdrya. 
Sankaracharya per se, spiritually, was a divine ray. The Atman 
and the Buddhi, born in the body of this Brahmana, were there, 
also the kama, the prana, the astral model-body, and the physical 
body but no illuminated personal ego ; and in order that that 
Avatara at that time in history might do its work, the Bodhisattva 
of the Buddha entered into that body and gave it light, provided 
the illuminating ego, thus repeating the aeon-old mystery of self- 
sacrifice, taking on the " sins " (or Karmic heritage from parents) 
such as they may have been, if any, of that body, thus giving the 
chance for that divine ray, that Avatara, to work in the world : 
providing the vehicle through which it, the divine ray, might 
manifest to and in the world of man. That is the secret of an 
Avatara ; but not every Bodhisattva is necessarily the vehicle of 
an Avatara, for the Avataras come at particular and specified 
periods. Buddhas also come at particular and specified periods, 
 
 
 


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but leave behind them a Bodhisattva, their ego, their illuminated 
thinking part, the Nirmanakaya, devoted to the work of saving 
the race, for of such is the conscious part of the Hierarchy of 
Compassion on our globe. 
 
This was one of the ancient mystery-teachings in the old 
Mystery-Schools. 
 
But that is not all there is to this true and wondrous mystery. 
This same Bodhisattva, we are taught, also provided some 
centuries later the conscious vehicle, the egoic power, in the person 
called Jesus, in Palestine. These are subjects, however, which we 
cannot go into more deeply tonight. They are only an illustration 
how this Hierarchy of Compassion works on earth in its sublime 
overseeing and protective work of and for the human race. 
 
We turn now to some questions which have been handed in to 
us, and which we shall call " hypothetical questions ", four of them 
in number, which, before we close this evening, we shall read and 
do our best to answer, with the Teacher's permission. I mention 
this now before continuing our subject, because the very theme 
upon which we have touched in connexion with the Buddha 
Gautama and Jesus, is mentioned in these questions, questions 
which all of us probably have asked ourselves, and have hunted 
for answers to them. 
 
We have now gained some idea of what we mean by self- 
knowledge, of our unity with all, of how our individuality was 
born, as it were, of heaven and of earth : the inner divine ray and 
the lower personal man, the latter raised upwards until he becomes 
one with that divine ray, thus becoming a fit and purified vehicle 
for it. We have also seen that the study of the " Wondrous Being " 
is a most sublime illustration of the exalted spiritual state to which 
we should attain, and shall attain, run we successfully the race. 
 
Now let us go a little farther in our thought in connexion with 
this " Wondrous Being ". We have seen that He, or It, is both 
as H. P. Blavatsky said, using popular language of heaven and 
of earth. His roots are the Dhyani-Buddha of this Round, and the 
ray reaches him as a man through the celestial Bodhisattva 
emanated by the Dhyani-Buddha, and also through the super- 
terrestrial or superhuman Bodhisattva in ultimate charge of our 
Root-Race. The " Wondrous Being " is here considered in his (or 
its) racial aspect. Note well, however, that there is also a 
" Wondrous Being " for our globe ; also one for the entire 
Planetary Chain, etc. 
 
There is a tradition, and our Teachers tell us that it is a tradition 
founded on truth, that even unto this day, there exists in Central 
Asia a certain mystical and mysterious land, or district if you like. 
It is called Sambhala. This is a word known in Sanskrit literature, 
but because the sayings and legends regarding it are connected 
 
 
 
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with what our self-sufficient European Sanskritists and Orienta- 
lists call " pagan superstition " and the " love of the Orientals for 
imagery " and so forth, our European scholars say that it is a 
" myth ". Blind men ! It is an actual district on earth, in a 
certain part of Tibetan territory, and has been for ages the subject 
of much mystical speculation, and remains so to this day. It is 
the " home " of our exalted Teachers. It is likewise the " home " 
of the " Wondrous Being " considered as man, or in his racial 
aspect. This " Wondrous Being " incarnates himself from age to 
age at will and at pleasure, but never leaves the duty he has taken 
upon himself, nor will he ever drop it until his Work is done. He 
is the spiritual bond and link of the various Bodhisattvas and 
Buddhas of the Hierarchy of Compassion that we have mentioned, 
with superior worlds and with us and the lower beings of our 
Round. This land of Sambhala is described as a place of great 
beauty, surrounded by a high range of mountains. It is said that 
no human eye will ever see it unless permitted to see it. It is said 
that to this land of Sambhala go those who are " called " there, 
sometimes to return and sometimes to remain ; and that there, 
supreme over all the Masters, reigns the human aspect of this 
" Wondrous Being ", the great Initiator, the great Sacrifice. 
 
These are the teachings ; and it is further said that from this 
land, spiritually, continually, and also in actual physical shape at 
cyclical critical periods, go forth Masters into the world. Can any 
thoughtful and spiritual mind read H. P. Blavatsky's story and 
history, what she says and what she did, without reading between 
the lines and behind the words ? Have we ever taken it into our 
hearts how much it meant for her, and to her, when she spoke of 
her " going home " ? Have we ever considered what might have 
been incarnate in that woman-body ? The Saviors take up bodies, 
sometimes, in this manner, as they please from age to age, and 
sex itself matters little, though usually man-bodies are selected. 
Such physical body-instruments as are most appropriate for the 
work to be accomplished are the ones chosen. 
 
We are further told, that these four Kumaras of whom we 
have read this evening " higher than the Four is only ONE " 
are spiritually and originally the four Celestial Bodhisattvas of 
the four Globes of our Round, and by correspondence of the four 
completed Root-Races of our earth, higher than who there is 
none on earth except this ONE. Oh ! let us take these wonderful 
teachings into our hearts and make them a part of us. There is 
infinite beauty in them, hope unspeakable ; there is spiritual life, 
there is intellectual health. What is the matter with men's 
minds ? Does not every one of us know that the average human 
being won't take truth when he sees it, unless it accord with his 
preconceptions ? And why ? Because his mind is so full of 
 
 
 


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and so confused with his own brain-mind ideas, with his own 
opinions, which he thinks are so much superior to anything that 
comes to him from any other source, especially if from an 
impersonal source. We are all in the same mental condition ; we 
are all cursed with these molds of mind which blind us. Every 
one of us, in different degrees, doubtless, some less than others ; 
but we are all cursed with it by our own will, and all we need to do 
is to exercise our will as our Teachers tell us to do, and break these 
molds of mind, in order to let in the light, and the spiritual life, 
and the understanding, yea, and holy compassion. What keeps 
all these out of our minds and hearts as an active force except 
these molds of mind ? " Give up your life if ye would find it ! " 
 
Sometimes men may accuse you and say that you are 
" atheists " because you do not believe in a " personal God ". 
Let me read just here what a great Greek thinker said on that 
subject when he was accused of " atheism ". And let me say, 
before reading : " atheist " meant among the Greeks one who 
did not accept the gods of the multitude, the mythologic gods 
of the State. It was no such term of opprobrium and hatred as 
it has become under the Christian theological dispensation. It 
meant rather " You are a radical ! " not much if anything more. 
But the Christians have turned that perfectly legitimate word 
which meant one who accepted not the gods of the State into 
an expression of hatred, signifying moral degradation. Remem- 
ber that the Christians themselves were called " atheists " by the 
" Pagans ", simply because they did not accept the mythologic 
gods of the State ; and the Christians, when they became power- 
ful, retaliated in kind, and called the " Pagans " " atheists ", 
because they refused to accept the Jewish-Christian God, Jehovah. 
 
But what said Epicurus, called by later ages than his own an 
atheist, and a sensationalist, and possibly by every other evil- 
sounding epithet which men in hatred can heap upon one whom 
they dislike ? " The Gods are, yet they are not what the multi- 
tude imagine them to be. The man who denies the existence of 
the gods worshipped by the multitude is neither an infidel nor an 
atheist ; but he who thinks the gods are what the multitude hold, 
is an atheist and impious/' 
 
Now, our time for this evening is drawing to a close. We take 
up, with the Teacher's suggestion and permission, the four 
" hypothetical questions " above spoken of. These questions 
may have occurred, doubtless have occurred, to each one of us ; 
and perhaps we have searched for answers. I will give them as 
if they had been asked from the floor here. 
 
" I understood you to say in the Thursday meeting, one week ago, 
that Jesus and Apollonius were Nirmdnakdyas : in I sis Unveiled, 
Volume II, page 159, H, P. B. says that while Jesus and others were 
 
 
 
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united to their spirits permanently, Apollonius and others of his class 
were so united only at intervals. I should think a NirmdnakAya 
would be permanently united to his spirit, when working on this 
earth. 1 ' 
 
This question has been largely answered by what we have 
already explained to be the meaning of a Bodhisattva. A 
Nirmanakaya is a state assumed by or entered into by a Bo- 
dhisattva. When that state is ended the Nirmanakaya ends. 
Kdya means " body ", " vehicle ". Therefore, Sankaracharya 
Krishna, Laotse, Jesus, were Avataras in differing degrees. 
There was a divine ray which came at the cyclic time of each such 
incarnation, and the connecting link, the flame of mind, was 
provided in each such case by a member of the Hierarchy of 
Compassion. But these Avataras were not all equally great. 
Apollonius, while not an Avatara, was a Nirmanakaya a Bo- 
dhisattva ; as said before, the Bodhisattva stands actually, in the 
Hierarchy of Compassion, higher than an Avatara, in the same 
way as a man who has gained divinity through his own efforts, 
and remains behind in the world of men out of compassion for 
it, and in order to help it spiritually, really stands higher than the 
devas or gods in their crystallized cold purity. 
 
Jesus, and others such as Krishna and Laotse, were united 
to their spirits permanently : obviously this means not the 
physical bodies of those great men ; but that the particular 
Atma-Buddhic ray which was called on earth Jesus, or Krishna, 
or Laotse, informed men who naturally were always united to 
their spirits, though each manifested through a Bodhisattva- 
Nirmanakaya. They could be nothing else. They could not be 
an Avatara through a being inferior to a Bodhisattva. Apollonius 
and the Bodhisattva -Gautamaand others of his noble type, were 
not permanently allied to their spirits, or rather were not merely, 
solely, Atma-Buddhic rays, because they were men made perfect 
through experience : personal men become semi-divine, and 
actually, as said, such a being stands far higher than a spiritual 
Ray or Monad per se, because such as the Bodhisattvas are the 
Fine Flowers of evolution. 
 
Next question : 
 
" At one Thursday evening meeting, it was declared that the words 
of The Sermon on the Mount were not the words of Jesus, but gatherings 
of Ancient Wisdom compiled by some later writer. I don't understand 
just how in Kathcrine Tingley's addresses, etc., this Sermon and Jesus 
are always placed together as one being the author of the other. I got 
the impression at this meeting that Jesus was merely an Initiate Jew, 
but not nearly of such grand stature as to command the adoration of 
all Christians. However, perhaps I did not hear correctly." 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 267
 
Now our hypothetical question is here framed in a most careful 
manner. In the first place, then, it is not to be said, and it was 
not said, that the Sermon on the Mount was not the logia or words 
of Jesus. What was said, inadequately doubtless on account of 
the shortness of time, was that the Sermon on the Mount, as we 
now have it in the New Testament, was doubtless in all pro- 
bability composed in much the same manner as the four canonical 
Gospels were composed. Doubtless it is based on the logia and 
sayings of the Master, Jesus. Unquestionably a man, Jesus, 
lived. Unquestionably he had a School. Unquestionably he had 
his disciples. Unquestionably he taught them and his sayings 
were treasured by his disciples ; but as time went on, much was 
forgotten, and they were revised and edited, and we now have 
them in the form in which they appear in the New Testament. 
This was rendered easy enough by the fact that a good deal in 
those writings was on matters of more or less common philo- 
sophical, or even esoteric, knowledge ; more or less current in the 
thought of the day ; and it required but little skill to weave 
together these ideas into a more or less logical whole. The very 
fact that the well known contradictions and incongruities in the 
four Gospels when compared, prove various redactions by different 
writers, shows that they were compiled from differing bases of 
theory. For the Theosophist, certain expressions used therein 
show him that the esotericism of Syria played a large part in their 
compilation, as was natural enough. Jesus taught our own 
universal truths ; his half-instructed followers misunderstood 
much. Those expressions and terms were used in the Mystery- 
Schools of the eastern Mediterranean world of that period, but 
do not belong to our School ; and as Jesus certainly belonged to 
our School, the presumption is, as said, that his sayings had been 
" touched up " and with extraneous matter formed into the four 
Gospels. Somebody or rather somebodies doubtless thought the 
scattered Sayings of the Teacher could be improved upon made 
" more clear and easy ". Such has occurred even in our own 
Society. 
 
Such seems to be the fate of nearly all great teachings. There 
is absolutely no preventive of it except the faithful hearts of men 
and women who stand to the death for the pure teachings of the 
one who gave them light and an awakened inner life. That is 
what this our own School is for. Let us never forget it ! 
 
Our questioner was correct in the impression he received that 
Jesus was stated to be an Initiate Syrian a Jew if you like. We 
speak now of Jesus the man ; but I do not think that we ever 
said that he should command, in any circumstances, the " adora- 
tion " of the Christians or of anybody else, because such worship 
is a thing precisely forbidden to all followers of the Truth 
 
 
 
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Impersonal and Ineffable. That idea is a misunderstanding of 
our meaning by our questioner. 
Here is another hypothetical question : 
 
" Another perplexing thing to me is the many different ways in 
which the 7, 9, and 10 principles of man and the Universe are enumer- 
ated. [I must say that our questioner has brains J] In Instructions Nos. 
I and II, by H. P. Blavatsky, it is said that Atman is not really a 
principle of man at all, but that the Auric Envelope makes up the 
seventh. But yet in our esoteric meetings, Atman is often spoken of 
as belonging to man. The esoteric and exoteric enumeration of these 
principles differ, and often Manas is called but one principle, then 
again divided into two and the Lower Manas joined with the Kma 
principle, etc. 1 ' 
 
These well-taken points, of course, are something that each one 
must solve for himself, by studying the literature which we already 
have, so ably written by our older students. Of necessity the 
seven principles are subject to different methods of enumeration, 
because each method of enumeration or presentation in dia- 
grammatic or paradigmatic form, merely shows another vista of 
the truth, shows another facet or way of looking at the one Jewel. 
So a man, if he were in India, who desired to study that wonderful 
monument of beauty, the Taj Mahal, would not merely look at it 
from the front and then go away, but would go inside of it, and 
study it in detail ; and go to the back of it ; and to the right and to 
the left, thus seeing all sides of it, meanwhile gathering all infor- 
mation possible from authorities. In much the same way the 
seven principles, or the ten, are subject to different methods of 
presentation. As a matter of fact, Atman is put as the seventh 
principle, because it is the permanent root of our being ; but if 
we knew the Kama-principle were that root, then it should be 
called the seventh, or rather the first or highest, as being the root 
of our being ; or the Manas, under similar conditions, should be 
called the seventh. The Atman is put as the first or highest 
because the seven principles of man are considered in a generaliz- 
ing way, and the Atman or Self being the root or the highest 
element of being is considered as one of the seven principles, 
though in reality it is a universal principle. 
 
Our third hypothetical question shows how deeply our ques- 
tioner has thought : 
 
" The doctrine of cycles, and the exact number of years the human 
race will take in one Manvantara or a Day and Night of Brahm& to 
reach the 7th Race and 7th Round, taken in conjunction with the 
doctrine of free will, always somewhat puzzles me ; why does not man's 
free will and failures continually keep upsetting the exact number of 
years it takes him to reach to certain future Rounds and Races ? In 
 
 
 


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Theosophy, The Path of the Mystic, Katherine Tingley says that 
Humanity has passed the worst point, the crucial point, in its evolution, 
and that no powers in heaven and hell can stay its progress, but yet 
she keeps on talking to Humanity as if it were on the brink of destruc- 
tion." 
 
Certainly our questioner is a thinker, and that is an excellent 
thing. In the first place, in the large sweep of things, taking the 
seven Rounds as a Kalpa or as a whole, and even more strongly 
so as regards the Solar Kalpa, that is, the cycle of the Solar 
System, the exact number of years of even a human's many 
incarnations is definite and set, in much the same way as the 
number of turns (or days and nights) which our globe, the Earth, 
makes in one year, or one revolution around the sun. In other 
words, the number of days is set and determined in a year, or the 
number of days in a lunar cycle or month. But while that is so 
in the general sweep of things, the doctrine of free will which 
man has, is a very real truth, and man's failures or successes do 
work to retard or to hasten the number of a human being's 
incarnations, for instance, which briefly covers the question our 
questioner has asked. 
 
The total number is set ; but just as the bodies of the solar 
system, the planets, as is known to astronomers, sometimes due 
to their perturbations are occasionally a little behind or a little 
ahead in time, nevertheless in the long run they " arrive on time ", 
as if they were endowed with consciousness, and had to arrive at 
the goal at the time when the hour is set therefor. So man's free 
will can alter the course or time-periods of his incarnations but 
not their number. In any Round, in any Root-Race, he can 
change them in that respect, but he will have to pay for it by 
Karmic retribution, for a reaction sets in ; and there will be an 
adverse current running the other way. Shall we say, finally, that 
man has no free will because he is bound to a globe which he 
cannot voluntarily leave ? Of course not, although he is, nolens 
volens, carried around the sun by our globe's annual course. 
There is much more that might be said to clarify this point ; but 
it is too strictly esoteric to speak of here. 
 
As regards our Teacher's words, permit me to point out that our 
questioner has quoted the Teacher exactly, as far as the sense 
goes. It is a fact that we have passed the worst point, the crucial 
point, in our evolution. It was the middle of the Fourth Race 
of this Fourth Round. Things could not have been worse from 
the spiritual viewpoint, in our entire Manvantara. It was the 
midmost or lowest point of several cycles. We, as a racial body, 
passed through it successfully, but many, many entities fell and 
took the " downward path ", of which we have so often spoken. 
" But yet she keeps on talking to Humanity as if we were on the 
 
 
 
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brink of destruction ". Do not you know that even in this Fifth 
Root-Race, as was pointed out in the last two or three meetings, 
we have not yet reached the middle point of the Fourth Primary 
Sub-race thereof its middle and therefore dangerous point ? 
And that the great racial catastrophe due for our Fifth Root-Race 
has therefore not yet come upon us ? As H, P. Blavatsky pointed 
out in 1887 or 1888, the great tidal waves and earthquakes occur- 
ring in the last few thousand years seem to be premonitions of 
what a few more thousands of years will bring upon us with 
augmented force. 
The last question is : 
 
" The names given to the Absolute in its different manifestations 
are confusing to me (or perhaps just hard to remember), [Our ques- 
tioner has justice on his side. They are not only confusing, but hard 
to remember. The more reason for us to study them.] 
 
" In Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms man's higher Self is called Iswara, 
in the Bhagavad-GM, Purusha ; again it is often called Atman. 
In Chapter VIII of the Bhagavad-Git& the names Adhydtman, Adhi- 
bhuta, Adhidaivata, Adhiyajna, Brahman, and so forth, are all used 
with very subtil differences of meanings/' 
 
They are ; but the meanings are also explained in the first 
part of Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter VIII. We may here point out 
that even as in the arrangements of the seven principles in the 
various books, these names are attempts to show other or different 
views of the one thing. 
 
In conclusion, we will translate these five Sanskrit names, which 
you will find in Chapter VIII of the Gita. Adhyatman means the 
Original Atman or Self, equivalent to Paramatman, or Supreme 
Atman, the highest of the Hierarchy. Adhibhuta means that 
supreme thing, or the higher egoic principle or original element, 
in us coming over from other manvantaras ; it is, so to say, the 
incarnating essence of the element. Adhidaivata means more 
divine, the highest part of all from the serial standpoint, the 
hierarchical standpoint, considering various stages. Adhiyajna 
means the greater, the superior, sacrifice. Krishna in the high 
spiritual sense was the greater Sacrifice, the Primal Sacrifice, the 
first Initiator on the part of the Hierarchy of Compassion, a 
sacrifice through pure love and compassion, than which, in men, 
there is nothing more sublime, because it makes us as one of the 
gods. 
 
And, finally, Brahman, the last word, is, as we all know, a 
Sanskrit word of which the essential root means expansion ; it 
is that part of the celestial economy which first initiates mani- 
festation, the expansion of the one into the many. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXIII
 
THE SUN AND THE PLANETS. THEIR ROLE IN THE 
EVOLUTIONARY DRAMA. 
 
The most mystic of discourses inform us, that the wholeness of him (the 
sun) is in the supermundane orders : for there a solar world and a total light 
subsist, as the oracles of the Chaldaoans affirm. 
 
Unwearied nature rules over the worlds and works, 
That heaven drawing downward might run an eternal course, 
And that the other periods of the sun, moon, seasons, night, and day, might 
be accomplished. 
 
PROCLUS : Commentary on the Tim&us of Plato 264, 4 and 323 (Cory). 
 
 
 
T 
 
 
 
PIE SECRET DOCTRINE, Volume I, pages 279 and 
280: 
 
 
 
Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a 
remote future, we hope to have proven so far the following facts : 
 
(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the Hindu 
sense of the word ndstika, or the rejection of idols, including every 
anthropomorphic god. In this sense every Occultist is a Ndstika. 
 
(2) It admits a Logos or a collective " Creator " of the Universe ; a 
Demi-urgos in the sense implied when one speaks of an " Architect " 
as the " Creator " of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never 
touched one stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the 
manual labour to the masons ; in our case the plan was furnished by the 
Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was left to 
the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demi-urgos is no 
personal deity, i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god, but only the 
aggregate of the Dhy&n-Chohans and the other forces. 
 
As to the latter : 
 
(3) They are dual in their character ; being composed of (a) the 
irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (6) the intelligent soul 
or cosmic consciousness which directs and guides that energy, and 
which is the Dhydn-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the 
Universal mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical mani- 
festations and moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods, 
the whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not always 
perfect ; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding 
intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even 
results very often in evident failures therefore, neither the collective 
Host (Demi-urgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are 
proper subjects for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the 
grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever 
 
271 
 
 
 
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striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best 
of his ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever 
unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all 
causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden 
ground of our heart invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through 
" the still small voice " of our spiritual consciousness. Those who 
worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified 
solitude of their Souls ; making their spirit the sole mediator between 
them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, 
and their sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial 
victims to the Presence. 
 
We proceed to gather up this evening more of the scattered 
threads left over from our former studies. First, let us look a 
little more closely into what is meant by a Bodhisattva. It will 
be remembered that a Bodhisattva was spoken of as the personal 
man relatively perfected ; the case where the personal entity had 
become an impersonal entity, as said before ; where mortality 
had put upon itself the vesture of Immortality ; in other words, 
a case where the personal man has become an Awakened One or 
a Buddha short of Buddahood complete by only one stage ; or, 
to use the Christian (early Christian-Greek) mystical expression, 
a Christ on earth. 
 
Now, a Bodhisattva, being such, practically means what we 
might call the Higher Manas, the Higher Self (not the Highest 
Self, but the Higher Self) fully developed and in the full radiance 
of the dual monad Atma-Buddhi, and thus forms a fit vehicle, a 
fit medium, between the divine and the lower selves of man ; and 
thus provides an appropriate channel of communication in cases 
where an Avatara is due for manifestation on earth. There could 
be no such thing as an Avatara among men were it not for this 
medium supplying the necessary psycho-spiritual link. Pure 
spirit, in endeavouring to act upon earth, can have neither 
effect upon, nor chance of communication with, men, because it 
is the actual divine essence, so to say, of the Kosmos and needs 
the two spiritual qualities or vehicles Buddhi and Manas-taijasa, 
in order so to manifest, and the Bodhisattva, in supplying the 
spiritual egoic quality, the intermediate quality, furnishes that 
necessary medium or vehicle. The Bodhisattva, furthermore, if, 
instead of following its own natural karmic higher course in the 
Nirvanic state, chooses by virtue of the compassion inherent in 
itself, to remain on earth, as a Helper of mankind, in that case 
becomes a Nirmdnakdya, a fully conscious thinking entity upon 
this our human plane, minus only the physical body. It is stated 
in the Esoteric Philosophy that Gautama the Buddha made that 
sublime choice, and furnished the intermediate principle for the 
Hindft Avatara SankaracMrya, of whom we spoke at our last 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 273
 
meeting. There is a tradition and a record among us likewise that 
the same Bodhisattva furnished the intermediate principle of the 
Avat&ric manifestation called Jesus, as also in two other cases 
which we here leave unnamed, the reason being that each race 
and each sub-race, as well as every smaller racial cycle of impor- 
tance, as we know, is under the particular guidance of a Buddha, 
or of minor incarnations or overshadowings by him. 
 
Now Gautama the Buddha was himself an Avatara plus, 
i.e., in a larger sense ; that is to say, instead of furnishing an inter- 
mediate vehicle from himself, in a minor cycle, he was that 
intermediate vehicle himself in his psycho-spiritual totality, 
inspired by his own divine nature, and with his own physical body 
as the " temple " thereof, differing in that respect from an 
Avatara per se, in which the intermediate vehicle is furnished 
by the Bodhisattva-Nirmanakaya of the Buddha under whose 
governance or rather overseeing the particular race in which the 
Avatara appears, runs its course as a minor cycle of the Greater 
Racial Cycle of that Buddha himself. An Avatara, therefore, 
requires the Bodhisattva of the Racial Buddha as a vehicle in 
order to manifest upon earth at the time he is due to appear. A 
Buddha does not, because, although an Avatara in the sense of 
being under the direct and fully actual illumination of his own 
Divine Self (which is a Superterrestrial Bodhisattva, studied at 
our last meeting), he has Karman behind him. It is the direct and 
actual reincarnation of a Divine Man, which an Avatara is not. 
An Avatara is, in a sense, an illusion or maya, because the inter- 
mediate or egoic quality the offspring metaphysically of Karman 
is lacking there and has to be furnished by the Bodhisattva- 
quality or vehicle. 
 
An Avatara, formally only, stands higher than a Bodhisattva, 
but it is a higher stage merely of form of and in a hierarchy, and 
not from the evolutionary viewpoint. A Buddha becomes such by 
self-directed evolution, the great truth that our Teacher Katherine 
Tingley so often tells us of. An Avatara comes by karmic 
racial necessity at certain epochs in the world's history ; a Buddha 
does so likewise, but also by personal choice out of an immense 
compassion for his inferior fellow-beings still involved in the toils 
of material existence. There is the difference, and a very impor- 
tant one it is to remember for our future studies. 
 
We might say in passing that (as our Teacher, I believe, once 
said here) these our studies are doing more for us in a spiritual 
and intellectual sense in these present meetings than has been 
done for any similar body of students for thousands of years in 
the immediate past. We can see at least one reason for it. That 
reason is as follows. At about our present period, what is called 
a " Messianic cycle " is ending, and, naturally, a new one is 
 
 
 
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opening a Messianic cycle running 2160 years, in definite, exact 
figures. These cycles succeed one another continuously. So if 
we choose to count backwards, we can say, if we like, that the 
European Messianic cycle which is ending, or out of which we 
are emerging, is that inaugurated for Europe by Jesus, the Avatara. 
Interesting thoughts come up in this connexion which we may 
safely leave for consideration at another time. 
 
So much for those threads. 
 
Please remember that evolution comprises two lines of action, 
as it were, two forces running collaterally, that is to say the 
spirit or the developed side of existence, on the one hand, and 
that of the undeveloped side on the other hand : otherwise 
darkness and light, or the selfish and the compassionate, which, 
you will remember, is a subject that we alluded to somewhat in 
studying the fifth of the seven Treasuries of Wisdom of the 
Hierarchy of Compassion which is the unselfish or immortal side 
of existence, which we studied more or less fully at our last 
meeting last week. 
 
Now the action and interaction of these two lines of energy 
supply the motive forces behind evolution, behind progress ; 
and the course which evolution takes, really arises in, springs out 
from, and is inaugurated by, the impulses at the opening of the 
Manvantaric Cycle given to the dark or matter-side of existence 
by the Dhyani-Chohans, I mean by the higher parts or Entities 
of this Hierarchy of Compassion studied at our last meeting. 
It is the keynotes furnished by them, the primal and original 
impulses depending of course upon destiny (or karman) which 
give the originating plan and the driving power behind everything 
that happens in that Manvantara throughout its cycle of evolution 
until its close ; and while free-will exists in man as soon as he has 
learned to obey the spiritual statutes of self-consciousness, this 
free will itself, being a divine energy _ and in a sense springing 
itself from the general Dhyan-Chohanic impulse, can in no 
circumstances militate against, be contrary to, or adversely 
affect, the general evolutionary current which bears the manifold 
hosts of entities of manifestation always towards the ultimate goal, 
signalized by H. P. Blavatsky in the ancient saying, " The Day 
Be With Us ", the end of a Manvantara or the opening of Pralaya. 
 
Thus, then, these two lines of energy are eternally co-active 
using the word " eternally " in the sense of lasting throughout the 
Solar Kalpa : on one side, the " dark ", undeveloped forces of 
matter ; and on the other side, the Hierarchy of Compassion 
with its innumerable units urging the hosts of evolving beings 
forward in one direction, the whole effort of the Hierarchy of 
Compassion being to raise other less developed beings or units 
from the matter-side up into the " light-side ". The entities of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 275
 
the Hierarchy of Compassion in past Manvantaras were them- 
selves thus so raised by other Hierarchies of Compassion, now by 
this time far, far ahead of us in evolution ; and it is our sublime 
destiny in the future Kalpa ourselves so to guide the entities 
behind us now, a process called the " Passing on of the Light ", 
as the Greek and Latin poets put it. 
 
Furthermore, as briefly alluded to at our last study, please 
remember that the ancient initiations, and the Mystery-Schools 
in which those initiations took place, were established solely for 
the purpose of " forcing " or quickening the evolution of fit and 
proper candidates. They were established from the same motives 
of Compassion that presided over the acts of the Great Actors of the 
Primal Drama, the opening acts of our Manvantara. They copied, 
as it were in miniature, what took place in those primordial times, 
and what took place in actual life in the Hierarchy of Compassion 
on our earth, or that section, rather, of the Hierarchy of Compassion, 
which we call the Great White Lodge. 
 
Now, let us turn a moment from these loose threads of thought 
which we have here gathered up and woven more neatly into our 
theme, to another collateral and very important matter upon 
which we have touched but lightly, because the questions involved 
are so profound that it was impossible in treating of one subject, 
adequately to make the meaning clear without temporarily 
dropping our main theme ; but it is likewise necessary not to go 
too far ahead and leave these loose threads behind : we must 
gather them in also and weave them into the fabric, into the 
picture, which we are endeavoring to make. 
 
We refer more particularly to the role which the sun and the 
planets of our Solar System play in the evolutionary drama. 
There are great mysteries connected with this, and we are told 
very plainly that not merely the ultimate Word but even speci- 
fying explanations in no circumstances are given out except 
to those who have pledged themselves irretrievably and irre- 
vocably to the Lodge ; and even then they are given out only with 
" mouth to ear ", and " at low breath ". And, furthermore, only 
to those, says H. P. Blavatsky, who have passed successfully 
their fourth initiation, which consists very largely in the personal 
and individual experiencing of the teachings given in the three 
preceding stages three stages of preliminary teaching and training, 
leading to actual personal experience thereof in the fourth ini- 
tiation, in which, we are told, the candidate must leave the body 
of flesh, yea, even the brain-mind, behind, and become that of which 
he was taught ; because only by being can he know. But never- 
theless a great deal has been openly said that is, to the student, 
very illuminating as regards these subjects. 
 
First, at various times we have spoken of the sun, of our solar 
 
 
 
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orb, as the central locus of our Solar System. So it is, not merely 
physically but also in other ways. The sun, paradoxically but 
truly, supplies most of our material, vital powers ; and it is 
interesting to note that the nearer the planets are to the sun, as a 
general rule, the more dense they are. Mark well that Mercury, 
the planet of Bodha and of Wisdom, the particular guardian and 
initiator in the Mysteries, is the nearest to the sun (but one) of 
our seven planets, i.e., the seven Mystery-planets. Note the words 
" but one ". You will remember that the ancients spoke of seven 
" Mystery-Planets ", Saturn, Jupiter, Mars I give them in the 
old order Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. This matter we 
shall develop somewhat in diagrammatic form later this evening 
if we have the time. 
 
The intra-mercurial planet, as it is called, according to our 
teaching became practically invisible to the physical eye during 
the Third Root-Race, after the fall of man into physical generation. 
On March 26, 1859, a body was seen crossing the solar disk, 
making what astronomers call a transit. That body has not been 
seen again ; but there are other reasons which have induced some 
astronomers to believe that there actually is an intra-mercurial 
planet (although they cannot find it again despite the search for 
it) such as the perturbations of Mercury. An attempt at ex- 
planation of these perturbations has been recently made, based on 
the relativity-doctrines of Einstein, and that explanation is now 
in fashion ; nevertheless our teachers say that there is an intra- 
mercurial planet ; we may call it " Vulcan ", as the astronomers 
so called it. 
 
Now, even if Vulcan became invisible during the Third Root- 
Race, it could yet become visible in transit, that is in crossing the 
sun's disk, as this body was actually in 1859 seen to do, because 
although invisible to our unaided sight, yet through the lens of a 
telescope when turned upon the unsurpassed illumination of the 
sun's disk, its body could probably be seen against the great 
brilliance of the solar orb. The immensely great illumination 
provided by the sun would readily throw into shadow, or make 
appear as a shadow, any body of less brilliance, or any body 
normally too ethereal to be seen otherwise. 
 
The seventh planet, our teaching is, is a planet which under 
proper conditions is sometimes seen apparently near the Moon. 
It is said that it has a retrograde motion, and that it is slowly 
dying. It has reached the end of its cycle. I think it erroneous to 
say that the moon " hides "it. That may be a good way, perhaps, 
of expressing a certain appearance, but I think it is a misleading 
one. Let us keep the facts just as they were given us, that it is 
sometimes " seen apparently near the moon ", that it has a 
retrograde motion, and that it is slowly dying. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 277
 
Now Vulcan is in one mystic sense the highest of the seven 
sacred planets ; perhaps not the least dense, but in one sense the 
highest psychologically ; and we have reason to believe that the 
other planet sometimes seen apparently near the moon is perhaps 
the lowest of the seven sacred planets. This does not mean that 
our teaching limits the number of the planets of the solar system 
to seven. On the contrary, we are taught that there are many more 
planets in the solar system than are known to astronomers, some 
perfectly invisible, because they are on planes both higher and 
lower than our plane. There are planets in our system higher than 
ours, higher than any planet visible to us ; there are also planets in 
our system much lower than ours, much lower than any planet 
visible to us. 
 
These seven especial planets were called " sacred " for a reason 
most difficult openly to explain ; but we may say this, that the 
seven planets which we on earth (please note the qualification) 
call sacred, are those planets (and the earth is not one of them) 
which are the Upadhis, a Sanskrit word meaning " bearers " or 
" carriers " (to us) of the seven Solar Forces. They are all 
" higher " in that sense, or from that point of view, than is the 
earth ; and they are all intimately connected with this earth, and 
provide this earth not with its principles but with spiritual and 
intellectual and psychical and astral and vital powers, so to say. 
These seven sacred planets, moreover, are our " Makers 11 , and 
oversee our destiny. 
 
Now this is a bit of the genuine ancient astrology. It is not 
merely to the physical body of the seven planets that we allude ; 
doubtless each physical planet or rather globe has its own astro- 
nomical forces, such as gravitation and magnetism, and so forth ; 
but we are here speaking of the inner or occult action of them. 
Each of the globes of our Planetary Chain, moreover, each of the 
seven globes thereof, is under the particular watchfulness or care 
of one of these seven Mystery-Planets. Furthermore, each Round 
is under the particular overseeing of one of these seven sacred 
planets. Furthermore, each race on any one of the globes, is 
under the particular care and overseeing of one of these seven 
sacred planets. For these reasons, as well as for others still more 
important and intimate on account of their strait connexion 
with our Planetary Chain, were they called the seven " sacred 
planets ". 
 
The Sun and Moon are not two of the seven, although for 
purposes of esoteric astrology they were substituted for the real 
two, because one is apparently near the moon, and one is so near 
the sun. Yet for all that, the sun and moon are both closely 
in interaction respectively with those two. 
 
Now, with regard to the sun. What is the sun ? Is the sun a 
 
 
 
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physical body only ? It is not. It is not really a physical body, 
for it is not gas, it is not gaseous. It is not solid, nor is it liquid 
nor gaseous. The sun is a reflexion. What do we mean when we 
say a " reflexion " ? We do not mean the word in the full, com- 
plete, and exclusive sense in which it is commonly employed, 
as when we speak of the reflexion of an image in a mirror. We 
mean it in this sense, that the true sun is a body strange as it 
may seem to our present-day scientists of energy or force. 
Even our modern science is beginning to understand now that 
force and matter are fundamentally one thing. Some years ago 
everything in the scientific imagination was matter. Now every- 
thing has become force to it. Marvelous, that these scientific 
gentlemen do not see how easily they change the bases of their 
thought, and how dogmatic they so often are as regards each 
new series of bases that they assume I But there the fact is. 
Even science today tells us that matter is simply force, which is 
true. But it is matter all the same. There is no need of running 
to one extreme in trying to pull ourselves out of another. No 
need of incurring the perils of Scylla in trying to evade those of 
Charybdis. Matter exists, it is, it is the upadhi or carrier of 
force, and force is also the intrinsic life of matter. But neverthe- 
less matter exists ; it is a maya, an illusion indeed, but it exists. 
Maya does not mean illusion in the exclusive and full sense of 
non-entity. Not at all. Maya actually implies that something 
exists to produce it, but that the seer of it does not know what the 
reality is behind ; in other words, our senses do not tell us the truth 
about the thing behind the manifestation. That is what maya 
means, not that the thing itself is non-entity. That view is an 
absurdity. 
 
If you examine photographs of sun-spots, if you look at the 
sun through a good telescope and center your gaze upon a sun- 
spot when it is near a limb of the sun, near an edge, you will see 
that as the spot crosses the solar disk, it seems to be black. Now 
why does it appear black ? We know that it is not black in color. 
Our scientists have proved that fact, but the visible disk of the 
sun is so intensely brilliant that the less brilliance of the part 
within the spot, though very brilliant itself, seems dark to our 
eyes. 
 
Suppose that we were to say, that the sun we see is simply like 
the glow around some electrical machines, merely a " reflexion " 
of the electrical current as it were, a mayavi manifestation on our 
plane of a force so immense that we can form no proper conception 
of it. Suppose that we were to think of the sun as occupying no 
space (or dimension) at all, and that what we see, that immense 
apparent body of light, were like an electrical spark, apparently 
a body, apparently occupying space. Suppose that we go a step 
 
 
 


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farther and say that the visible sun which we see is matter in its 
sixth state of ethereality, and that what is behind that tremen- 
dously brilliant veil or reflexion is an atom, so to say, an infini- 
tesimal part of matter-substance, matter in its seventh state. It is 
easy to follow this thought. The sun is a mass of force ; as even 
the medieval philosophers said : " Brother, when a man tells 
you that he has seen the sun, laugh at him. He has not. The 
sun is invisible. The true sun, the origin and center of these 
high forces, is on higher planes, and we merely see on the sixth 
sub-plane of our Kosmic Plane this intense brilliance covering 
so vast a space as the apparent sun does/' 
 
Furthermore, while the sun gives us our light on earth, it 
probably does not furnish us with 30 per cent of the heat that we 
have, and then not by direct physical radiation, but in some- 
what the same way in which the electric current furnishes us 
with heat, or in a similar way. In the same way would be, perhaps, 
too strong a manner of putting the fact. Forces emanate from 
the solar heart or center and reach the meteoric veils encircling 
the earth, and arouse electro-magnetic currents, producing thus a 
part of the meteorological phenomena which we experience in 
storms and fair weather and rain and snow and ice. The earth 
itself produces probably 70 per cent or more of the heat which we 
know ; and such things as storms are caused mostly by electro- 
magnetic action and reaction, if I may use that expression, 
between the innate prana or vital forces of the earth, and the 
meteoric continent which surrounds our globe like a veil. For 
we are encircled during our Manvantara, and every other planet 
of the solar system is similarly encircled during Us Manvantara, 
with a thick veil of meteoric dust, most of it very fine, some of 
it of more or less large bodies. 
 
Take Venus, for instance, or Mercury. They are surrounded 
each one with its own veil of meteoric or kosmic dust : each one 
veils her face, or his face. This meteoric veil acts in one sense as 
does a cushion, thus forming a protection to its planet. We do 
not see for that reason the real face of the planet. But Mars has no 
such veil. Why ? Because the vital essence of that Planetary 
Chain has left Mars' physical globe for its other globes. 
 
The Teacher asks me to reserve until next week the diagram 
which was to have been shown to you this evening, at which 
point of study we have now arrived. Let us briefly point out that 
the diagram in question is taken from the mystical Syrian thought 
in vogue before the Christian era, and represents the exoteric 
astrological ideas that the Syrians then had of the relationship of 
the planes of being, and necessarily therefore of the planets and 
the mystical positions occupied by each of them in the evolu- 
tionary drama. They put it this wise. First and highest was 
 
 
 
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the Milky Way", which to them was the utmost limit of this 
Hierarchy or Universe. Second came the Nebulae and the 
Comets, and they were represented in spiritual hierarchy by 
the Seraphim. The third grade still lower were the Fixed Stars, 
and they were represented by the Cherubim. Then taking a leap 
over the immensities of the space of our universe, these old thinkers 
of Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and doubtless Persia, and of course 
Phoenicia, and all the other countries of Asia Minor, began the 
inferior series with the planets of our solar system. First Saturn, 
the seat of the Thrones ; then Jupiter, the seat of the Domi- 
nations ; then Mars, the seat of the Virtues ; then the Sun, the 
seat of the Powers ; then Venus, the seat of the Principalities ; 
then Mercury, of the Archangels ; then the Moon, of the Angels ; 
then our earth. They also enumerated five Elements an 
enumeration which is exoteric, but it is the same as the esoteric 
as far as it goes. Our earth, as well as interplanetary space, 
comprises these five Elements, and when we say our " earth " 
we mean not merely our physical planetary body of this Element, 
upon which we move, but the entire sphere comprehended between 
the Moon and the earth. These five Elements were named 
Ether, Fire, Air, Water, gross matter or Earth. Outside of this 
Hierarchy or Universe or Kosmos, they placed the " Celestial 
Waters ", even as the first chapter of the Hebrew book of Genesis 
speaks of the " Spirit of the Elohim moving over the Waters ". 
" Celestial Waters " was a name frequently given by the ancients 
to what the Greeks called Chaos, undeveloped matter, or, as we 
to-day would say, " spatial deeps ". 
 
Our time of study this evening is drawing to a close. Let us, 
however, point out the interesting fact that this same series of the 
planets shows us clearly that the ancients must have understood 
perfectly well the mechanism of thfe framework of the visible 
Solar System, and that, if their thought was geocentric, making 
the earth the center of the Kosmos, it was a natural thought ; 
and that as man is instinctively anthropocentric, he cannot 
naturally think from another standpoint. So, naturally, the 
ancient astrologers and astronomers, with their feet on earth, 
calculated from the earth, and saw from the earth, and placed 
man, looking up towards the spheres of the Solar System, on earth 
as the center of observation, even as we do today, not meaning 
at all that they knew nothing of the heliocentric system, which 
we know they did know. 
 
Look then, what can this mean ? This cannot mean anything 
but one thing, and that is, that these planets were so placed on 
account of and because of the relative time occupied by each in 
making the circuit of its orbit, to wit : Saturn, practically 30 
years ; Jupiter, the next " lowest ", practically 12 ; Mars, the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 281
 
next " lowest ", practically two ; the Sun (or the Mystery- 
planet, the sun supplying its place) one year ; Venus, the next 
one, 7 months ; Mercury, 3 months ; the Moon, i month. We 
would like to point out also that the days of our own common 
week are based upon this series, and then we shall close for this 
evening. 
 
Why, in putting the planets in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, 
Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, did they not make their week of seven 
days follow that order ? Why ? Because, dividing the day and 
night into 24 hours, each day, beginning at sunrise, opens with 
its first hour under the governance of some particular planet. 
If you calculate through the 24 hours, beginning with Saturn, 
(there being seven planets, seven sacred planets) during the 
24 hours they go into 24 three times, with three over. Three 
times seven is 21 hours, with three over : 22, 23, 24, the 25th hour 
being the first hour of the next day. Three times seven running 
through the 24 hours, we find that if the first hour began with 
Saturn as presiding planet, the 8th hour would also be under 
Saturn, the I5th would be under Saturn, the 22nd would be under 
Saturn, the 23rd then would be under Jupiter, the 24th under 
Mars, and the 25th hour, the first of the next day, would be Sun 
or Sunday. So by taking this list and counting each 4th, begin- 
ning with the one just ended, as the first (or adding 3 more to the 
hour just ended), gives you the days of the week. Thus : Saturn, 
Jupiter, Mars, Sun, SUNDAY. Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, 
MONDAY. Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, TUESDAY (Mars 1 Day) ; 
Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, WEDNESDAY, being the Anglo-Saxon 
Woden, corresponding to the Latin and Greek terms. Mercury, 
Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, THURSDAY (Thor's Day). Jupiter, Mars, 
Sun, Venus, FRIDAY. Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, SATURDAY, 
again beginning the second or following week. 
 
So the order and names of the days of our week are ultimately 
based upon a very interesting and occult reason ancient astrology 
explained and given to the world only in the Mysteries as we know 
them. The order and names of the days of the week were the 
same in India and in Northern Europe, and in some parts of 
Asia, a matter which has never yet been satisfactorily explained 
by our calendarists and astronomers. The reason is found in the 
fundamentally identical astrological system common to the 
entire ancient world. 
 
 
 
PART II 
 
 
 
PART II 
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CHAPTER XXIV
 
THE TEN STAGES OF BEING ACCORDING TO THE SYRIAN SYSTEM. 
ESOTERIC METHOD OF TEACHING .* PARADOXES I INTUITION. 
 
Their writings also [i.e., of the Pythagoreans], and all the books which they 
published, most of which have been preserved even to our time [i.e., to the time of 
lamblichus], were not composed by them in a popular and vulgar diction, and 
in a manner usual with all other writers, so as to be immediately understood, 
but in such a way as not to be easily apprehended by those that read them. For 
they adopted that taciturnity which was instituted by Pythagoras as a law, in 
concealing after an arcane mode, divine mysteries from the uninitiated, and 
obscuring their writing and conferences with each other. 
 
Life of Pythagoras, p. 56 (lamblichus). 
 
Philosophy, according to his (Plato's) acceptation, being not merely a set of 
doctrines but the perfecting of the whole spiritual life. 
 
Plato and the Older Academy, p. 160 (Zeller). 
 
It moves. It moves not. 
It is far, and It is near. 
It is within all this, 
And It is outside of all this. 
 
Isd Upanishad, p. 363 (Hume). 
 
Eus open our study this evening by reading from The 
Secret Doctrine, Volume I, pages 435-6, as follows : 
Mor Isaac shows the ancient Syrians defining their world of 
the " Rulers " and " active gods " in the same way as the Chal- 
deans. The lowest world was the SUBLUNARY our own watched by the 
" Angels " of the first or lower order ; the one that came next in rank, 
was Mercury, ruled by the " ARCHANGELS " ; then came Venus, whose 
gods were the PRINCIPALITIES ; the fourth was that of the SUN, the 
domain and region of the highest and mightiest gods of our system, the 
solar gods of all nations ; the fifth was Mars, ruled by the " VIRTUES " ; 
the sixth that of Bel or Jupiter was governed by the DOMINIONS ; 
the seventh the world of Saturn by the THRONES. These are the 
worlds of form. Above came the four higher ones, making seven 
again, since the three highest are " unmentionable and unpronounceable." 
The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of the Cherubs; 
the ninth, belonging to the walking and numberless stars on account 
of their distance, has the seraphs ; as to the tenth Kircher, quoting 
Mor Isaac, says that it is composed " of invisible stars that could be 
taken, they said, for clouds so massed are they in the zone that we 
call Via Straminis, the Milky Way " ; ... That which comes after 
and beyond the tenth world (our Quaternary, or the Artipa world), 
u 285 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the Syrians could not tell. " All they knew was that it is there that 
begins the vast and incomprehensible ocean of the infinite, the abode 
of the true divinity without boundary or end." 
Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians. 
 
We continue our study tonight from the point where we stopped 
last week. The main thought this evening that seems to call first 
for further illustration is the subject of the bi-polar nature of 
being, that is to say, that there are two interacting energy- 
substance lines in the Kosmos, which together comprise the 
totality of all evolutionary processes : first, the lower, the Kosmo- 
kratores, or World-Builders ; and second, the higher, the Intelli- 
gences impelling the former into action and overseeing their 
evolutionary ways. The second class is of course the higher, and 
comprises what we, following H. P. Blavatsky, have called the 
Hierarchy of Compassion. 
 
Now these two lines of action, or classes, may also be called 
(a) the Left-Hand or Matter-Side, and (b) the Right-Hand or 
Spirit-Side, i.e., (a) the Builders, the Kosmokratores, who are in 
fact (in one sense) the lower principles of (b) the Dhyani-Buddhas, 
who are the Right-Hand, or Spirit-Side, of being, which latter are 
of the Inner Kosmos, as the Kosmokratores or Builders, also 
called Planetary Spirits or Dhyani-Chohans of a lower grade, are 
of the Outer or Material Kosmos, i.e., as said above, the left-hand 
side, the matter-side, the night-side, the dark side. 
 
From the interaction of these two quasi-opposing Forces (or 
Elements) in Nature come into self-consciousness the innumerable 
monads of Inner and Outer Space, because this night-side or 
matter-side, is made up of the lower principles of the Light-Side, 
as it were ; and these lower principles are composite, formed of 
simply innumerable numbers of monads in almost infinitely vary- 
ing degrees of development. The higher monads form the vehicles 
of the Dhyani-Buddhas, the Hierarchy of Compassion ; but there 
are monads, hosts of them, of intermediate and lower degrees, and 
of still lower and of the lowest degree ; and the lowest form the 
material world, which we see around us. As said above, from the 
interaction of the indwelling force and of the vehicle in which it 
works, or, in other words, from the informing spiritual powers 
impelling and urging these monads in various states of evolution 
towards further progress, spring the various degrees of conscious- 
nesses in Nature. We are some of these monads, both our Higher 
Egos and our personal egos. We ourselves are monads in the 
particular state of evolution in which we find ourselves ; and we 
are on our way to becoming conscious co-workers with Nature : 
or, in other words, slowly evolving out (or into) the Dhyani- 
Chohans or Lords of Contemplation, the Manasaputras, of future 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 287
 
Manvantaras. We were, in former Kalpas, or Manvantaras, 
monads in a still lower state of evolution than that in which 
we are now, forming then the vehicles of Those who are still ahead 
of us, and who now still work through us, through our higher and 
our personal egos, and who thus inspire us to progress upwards, 
and who are, in fact, our Inner Gods : our very Selves, yet 
different ! 
 
The work of evolution is, in fact, as so often said in these 
meetings under the Teacher's explicit instructions, the raising of 
the personal into the Impersonal ; the raising of the mortal to 
put on the garments of Immortality ; the raising of the beast to 
become a man ; the raising of a man to become a god ; and the 
raising of a god to become still more largely divine. When we 
say " raising a beast to become a man ", we do not, however, 
thereby mean the scientific hypothesis miscalled " evolution " 
and properly called transformism. The Theosophic doctrine of 
evolution is immensely greater, infinitely (if we can use that 
expression) more profound, than those scientific theories. A 
beast never becomes a self-conscious, thinking man according to 
the scientific merely mechanical doctrine of materialistic trans- 
formism, any more so than a pile of mortar and bricks self-develops 
into a mansion, or a rough block of marble into a noble statue. It 
is the inner monad, the indwelling fire, which continually urges 
or brings forth into action the latent lives and forces in the atoms. 
Each atom in itself is a sleeping soul, and this, awakened, is what 
evolves or develops, not the merely physical body. Remember 
the threefold category that H. P. Blavatsky gives us : Gods, 
first ; Monads, second ; Atoms, third : Gods, the divine or 
highest triad ; Monads, the upper triad of the septenary ; and 
the Atoms, the lower quaternary of the septenary. Each one of 
those atoms, which are simply incalculably great in numbers, 
forming the lower quaternary as already said, is a sleeping god, 
an embryo god rather. Its inner nature must be brought out, 
and that bringing out is evolution, the bringing out of inner 
capacities, each atom-entity making, as it does so, its own vehicles. 
This is the doctrine of Self-directed Evolution, following the urge, 
the primordial impress, of the Dhyani-Chohans. All this has been 
set forth by us before, in other studies. 
 
In past studies we have spoken of the Initiations (and of the 
doctrine of Evolution taught anciently therein) as being a 
" Forcing-School ". We are grateful to our Teacher for reminding 
us that this word " forcing " is ambiguous. The word is subject to 
misinterpretation. Let us then put in its place the word quicken- 
ing, or awakening, the word " quickening " meaning " life " in 
contrast with what is inert or dead ; therefore, it was the quicken- 
ing, the enlivening, the bringing out of that which is within. 
 
 
 
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This idea is the key-thought of the Theosophical doctrine of 
evolution. 
 
A beast no more develops mechanically into a man than do 
pieces of ivory, and cupfuls of polish, and pieces of wood and rolls 
of wire, naturally fall together and take proper form and " trans- 
form " themselves into a piano. Impossible 1 What makes a 
piano is the architect of it, the man, the thinker ; so evolution 
is the working upon and in matter of the spiritual entity which 
takes and forms and urges onwards the material vehicles in which 
it is. This is the key of the Theosophical doctrine of Evolution. 
 
When we speak of the incarnation of the Manasaputras, the 
thinking entities, the " Sons of Mind ", it is of course understood 
that they are parts of, or entities from, the Hierarchy of Com- 
passion, from the Light-side of Nature ; and while evolution, 
the natural evolving (with the primordial spiritual or Dhyani- 
Chohanic impress behind it) of Nature into higher beings would 
take place and actually takes place continuously, as already 
pointed out, that process would be almost interminable in length 
of time were it not for the higher beings who give us of their 
light and their life, and thereby much more quickly lead us on. 
That is what is meant by the Manasaputras 1 " descent into 
incarnation ". They are our higher natures, and, paradoxical as 
it is, are more largely evolved beings than we are ; they were the 
spiritual entities who " quickened " our personal egos, which were 
thus evolved into self-consciousness, relatively small though 
that yet be. One, and yet many ! As you can light an infinite 
number of candles from one lighted candle, so can you, from a 
spark of consciousness, quicken and enliven innumerable other 
consciousnesses, lying, so to speak, in sleep, or latent, in the 
atoms. 
 
This brings us directly to another matter. We all possibly have 
heard of " contradictions " in The Secret Doctrine, or in our 
esoteric teachings. There are no contradictions there ; there are 
apparent contradictions, if you like, but an apparent contradiction 
is really the figure of speech called a paradox. It is the famous old 
way of the ancient Schools of Occultism, to teach by paradoxes 
or by parables, as Jesus is said to have done. There is manifest 
a profound knowledge of human psychology in basing teachings 
on this principle. The aim is deliberately to arouse the mind, to 
astonish, to make the hearer think for himself. You cannot teach 
a child to eat or to walk by walking for it or by feeding yourself 
for it. It must learn to feed itself. It must itself learn to walk. 
 
Similarly, students, neophytes, must learn to think for them- 
selves, to stand upon their own feet. It is, I repeat, a very 
profound knowledge of psychology, of human thinking, which 
made the ancient Teachers, and makes our Masters of Wisdom 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 289
 
today, to follow the same old principles, a method which our 
Teacher here has instructed us to follow when these studies were 
begun. You will have noticed that in no case has any subject 
been at first openly and fully stated or followed to its ultimate, first 
because it is impossible ; second, because it was obviously neces- 
sary to say certain things first, trying to arouse attention, trying 
to arouse honest objections not merely criticisms but honest 
objections in your own mind which you yourselves must solve ; 
and then later other aspects of the subject were brought out and 
other sides of the teachings were given. Some of you know this 
fact, of course ; but I am speaking more particularly of our 
younger and newer members. This method is a system of teaching 
diametrically opposite to that pursued in the Western world 
since the downfall of the Mediterranean civilizations. The 
popular method today is that of the pure brain-mind, of that 
mind which is mortal and goes to pieces with the death of the 
body. Its forte is the mere memorizing of times, places, names, 
dates, etc., in short, everything that can be memorized from 
books or daily occurences, and stuffed into the brain ; and this 
mind dies. That is one reason why we do not remember our past 
incarnations, because our minds were puny and dealt with little 
and evanescent things. But, Comrades, the memory of our past 
incarnations nevertheless inheres and remains in our higher 
natures, for this nature deals only with principles and generals ; 
and some day, when we shall have passed out of and beyond our 
planet, we shall remember those past lives, unless indeed they be 
those cases of incarnations of a lost soul, in which cases there 
remain only blank pages, as it were, in the spiritual Volume of 
Life. 
 
We are picking up stray threads of thought this evening, 
threads which it is necessary, as said before, to weave into the 
picture which the Teacher has instructed us to attempt to outline 
and to define. Let us illustrate some of these so-called " contra- 
dictions " by a few examples. Thus : The moon is older than the 
sun ; the sun is older than the moon. No contradiction is here, 
but there is a paradox. Again : the sun is older than any of its 
planets ; the planets are older than their sun. No contradiction 
again, but a paradox. Let us explain these paradoxes at once. 
Tracing the evolution of the solar system according to the Esoteric 
Philosophy, we point out first that the Milky Way is the store- 
house of celestial bodies to be ; as it were, the nursery from 
which seeds of future suns go forth to begin their manvantaric 
courses. When the time comes for such an event to happen, a 
comet, in its primordial ethereal robes, starts forth to enter upon 
its peregrinations, and after circling around and passing through 
what is to us illimitable Space for long aeons of time, it, driven 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
by karma, or drawn by karma, or under the guidance of karma, 
if you will, reaches that particular region in Space which was 
actually the spot or region occupied by itself in a former imbodi- 
ment as a sun, and it settles there, and awakens and enlivens and 
quickens the solar dust around it (for Space is full of it), and we 
then have a nebula. Furthermore, it gathers around itself larger 
ethereal remnants of its former self, when it was also a sun ; 
and these accrete to themselves other particles " wandering in 
Space ", as we can say ; and in due course these other bodies, 
with their accretions, become the planets of the new solar system. 
 
What is a planet ? What its origin ? A sun runs through its 
kalpic course, its manvantaric period, which is a Solar Manvan- 
tara ; and when its time comes to go into pralaya, into its Rest, 
its internal force is weakened and it dies. This is not an event 
of a day, but an event requiring much time ; and what was its 
lowest principle (corresponding to our physical body) disintegrates 
into literally innumerable particles. Call them " atoms " if you 
like. Remember, please, that the sun is neither solid nor will 
it be then, when it dies nor is it liquid, nor is it gaseous. After 
its death, it dissolves into innumerable " atoms " or particles, 
and these particles begin their long peregrinations through the 
fields of Space, wandering in the immense solitudes for long, long 
aeons ; until that indwelling entity of the former sun, which has 
its own inspiring inner presence, comes again under the form of a 
comet and reawakens what is now the solar dust of its former 
vehicle-self in the space where it formerly was that dust being the 
remnants of its own former body. And these particles of the sun 
that was, are attracted to it again, and form its suite of planets. 
Thus, in a sense, the planets of a sun are its " moons ". 
 
So, you see, as an entity, the sun is older than any one of its 
planetary system, remnants of its former body ; but the planets 
are older than the sun that now is, because they actually are 
particles of the former sun that was of this plane. Where is the 
contradiction ? A paradox, truly, which we had to solve ; for 
the solving quickens our intuition, and that is one of the main 
aims and purposes of this system of teaching, the quickening of 
the intuition. Our brain-mind is a most admirable servant when 
under direction, but it should never be our master. It is not even 
a good servant ; it has no self-respect. It has no discrimination, 
judgment, intuition, nor understanding. 
 
And similar to the above is the paradox concerning the moon. 
Perhaps at some future study we may have time to explain it. 
Also similar is the case of the planetoids, or the so-called asteroids, 
of which there are so many between the planets Jupiter and Mars. 
They are remnants of a former solar manvantara. 
 
Further, all the planets not in " obscuration " or sleeping (as 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 291
 
Mars is) are surrounded with thick and often greatly condensed 
clouds of the kosmic dust which they have accreted unto them- 
selves ; it actually is the former solar dust of now disintegrated 
moons and planets. For over our own heads and over and 
around every one of the non-sleeping planets of our solar system, 
there is a continent, literally a continent, of this kosmic dust, 
so thick is that solar dust and so numerous are the bodies or 
particles of various sizes which compose it. It acts as a veil pro- 
tecting us from the terrific energy of the sun, acting not merely 
as a veil of protection against his rays alone, but also against 
other accidents that might happen to us, were there no such 
protecting veil surrounding our globe in thick folds. 
 
Mars has at present none or very little of such a protecting 
veil, simply because its life-energies have gone to another globe 
of the Martian planetary system the Martian Planetary Chain 
and the attractive magnetic force which holds together such a 
veil therefore is largely absent. But Venus and Mercury, for 
instance, have, as we have, such a protecting veil, although much 
thinner in Mercury's case than in that of Venus, because Mercury 
is just emerging from " obscuration ", and it is what the astrono- 
mers see when they look at those planets through their telescopes, 
when they see the " clouds ", and note that they cannot see the 
face of the planet itself. They really see the veil. We are not 
conscious of the veil protecting us. Somewhat like a man in a 
room with one of those white net curtains over his window he 
can see outwards, and discern what passes in the street beyond ; 
but the man in the street cannot easily see him. 
 
As a final example this evening of the use of the paradox in our 
study, I take the following. At a former study we said that 
Nature never repeats herself. We repeat it this evening : Nature 
never repeats herself. In a later study we stated that Nature 
does nothing but repeat herself. We repeat it this evening : 
Nature does nothing but repeat herself. Contradiction ? No. 
Paradox ? Yes. Let us see if we can make this apparent con- 
tradiction a little clearer. What are cycles ? Repetitions. What 
are hierarchies ? Repetitions. What are the main repetitions 
of a general type ? Principles, forces, planets, suns, orbs, atoms, 
monads, gods all are manifold repetitions of primal spiritual 
impresses. Nature works in no other way than by repeating 
herself repetitions on inferior planes of primordial principles 
or root- types. 
 
Now, what mean we in saying that Nature never repeats 
herself ? Let us here use our common sense. We are not here to 
amuse each other with folly. Nature likewise never repeats 
herself, because you will never find two principles identical, no 
two cycles are identical, no two men are identical, no two monads, 
 
 
 
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no two suns, no two planets, no two souls, no two egos are 
identical. Our paradox then is solved by remembering that 
Nature's method is Unity in endless diversity. 
 
We return now to our main theme. The Syrians had the 
following method or system of describing the stages of being 
which we represent in the accompanying diagram : I, The Milky 
Way, or the first principle. II, Nebula and comets, or Seraphim, 
 
 
 
 
 
v. Thrones \ 
 
 
I 
 
 
 
 
 
Dom/nct+fons 
 
 
 
 
6 
 
 
Virtues 
 
 
 
 
ft 
 
 
7 
 
 
Powers 
 
 
^FORM 
 
 
0) 
 
 
o 
 
 
Prin c /P o ///ye S 
 
 
/ 
 
 
o 
 
 
Rrchan gels 
 
 
I k 
 
 
 
 
J 
 
 
1 /> 
 
 
 
flnqe/3 
 
 
 
 
sphere 2, counting downwards. Ill, The fixed stars, or Cherubim. 
These three were the " Formless World ". Then the planets. 
IV, Saturn, Thrones ; V, Jupiter, Dominions ; VI, Mars, 
Virtues ; VII, Sun, Powers ; VIII, Venus, Principalities ; IX, 
Mercury, Archangels. X, Moon, Angels. Earth, Men. These 
eight were the " World of Form ". 
 
Then we will draw, if you please, a circle which will represent 
a sphere, and let it be our earth ; and we will divide this earth 
into five zones, the topmost one being that of Ether ; the one 
underneath it being Fire ; the one underneath that being Air ; 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 293
 
the one underneath that being Water ; and the lowest one being 
Earth. 
 
Please understand also that the Syrians conceived of this 
World-System as a sphere, as a Kosmos ; hence, our design 
must have a circle surrounding it a conventional figure, it is 
true, and not implying any particular limitations, but signifying 
the bounding circle of that particular Kosmos or Hierarchy. The 
Syrians further said that outside of this Hierarchy, of this Kosmos, 
there were the " Celestial Waters ", meaning thereby what the 
Greeks called Chaos, or Kosmic Matter undeveloped for us, the 
Waters of Space, in other words. As regards this metaphor, 
" Celestial Waters ", you will remember what the Hebrew Bible 
also says about the " spirit of the Elohim " or gods, moving on 
the face of the " waters ". 
 
Now, the three highest planes are what we call arupa, or 
formless ; and the other seven (or eight) planes are riipa, or 
formed. They taught that in the beginning of things, i.e., when 
Kosmic Evolution began, the Primordial Essence evolved forth 
the most subtil and the most spiritual Element, and this naturally 
was the highest, the Milky Way, where all things begin in this 
system ; and that the next step in evolution downwards was the 
comets and the nebulae ; and then the "1122 fixed stars " ; 
and then the various solar systems our own solar system, as an 
example, bringing us thus to the first of the seven planetary 
regions. Any other solar system would have answered, but ours 
naturally was chosen, being ours. Each of these steps down- 
wards represents the stage that the evolving Wave of Life had 
to pass through before it finally culminated in material existence 
as on our earth, for instance ; finally passing through the last 
seven stages, the surrounding planes of the globe. First of these 
last seven was what we may call the Nameless Element ; then 
the Superether ; then the Ether ; and then the Fire ; and then 
the Air ; and then the Water ; and then the Earth ; these 
elements not being the material things familiar to us by those 
names, but, so to say, the spirits of the elements, the primordial 
matter of which our " elements " are merely the material repre- 
sentation. 
 
You will notice and we point this out in concluding our study 
this evening that the Christian Apostle, Paul, speaks of several 
of these powers or Elements pertaining or belonging to the 
various planets as above described in the Syrian system, such as 
the Dominions, and the Virtues, the Thrones, the Principalities, 
the Archangels, and the Angels. You will also remember that in 
a former study we pointed out that really all Christian mysticism 
was founded by Dionysius, the so-called Areopagite, who also used 
these same names ; so that in addition to the thoughts which 
 
 
 
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Christianity drew from NeoPlatonism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism, 
it also drew from (through Paul himself who was a Syrian) these 
ancient mystery-teachings as exoterically expressed in the Hier- 
archy as shown hi the diagram this evening. But behind this 
outward expression there was the same exposition, there was the 
same esoteric system and truth, that we have been studying for 
some months past. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXV
 
THE MYSTERIES OF SEPTENARY NATURE. CORRESPONDENCES I 
 
GLOBES, ELEMENTS, HUMAN PRINCIPLES. THE SEVEN SACRED 
 
PLANETS OF THE ANCIENTS. RACIAL TIME-PERIODS AND 
CATASTROPHES. 
 
But upon this one of those more ancient priests (of Egypt) exclaimed, O Solon, 
Solon, you Greeks are always children, nor is there any such thing as an aged 
Grecian among you. But Solon when he heard this, What (says he) is the motive 
of your exclamation ? To whom the priest : Because all your souls are juvenile ; 
neither containing any ancient opinion derived from remote tradition, nor any 
discipline hoary from its existence in former periods of time. But the reason 
of this is the multitude and variety of destructions of the human race, which 
formerly have been and again will be ; the greatest of these indeed arising from 
fire and water ; but the lesser from ten thousand other contingencies. 
 
But whatever has been transacted either by us, or by you, or in any other 
place, beautiful or great, or containing any thing uncommon, of which we have 
heard the report, every thing of this kind is to be found described in our temples, 
and preserved to the present day. 
 
The Tim&us of Plato, pp. 446, 447 (THOMAS TAYLOR). 
 
ET us open our study this evening by reading from the 
first volume of The Secret Doctrine, pages 611-12, 
section 15, entitled " Gods, Monads, and Atoms ". 
 
The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries 
of Nature are to be found only in Eastern esoteric sciences. So vast and 
so profound are these that hardly a few, a very few of the highest 
Initiates those whose very existence is known but to a small number of 
Adepts are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there, 
and one by one facts and processes in Nature's workshops are per- 
mitted to find their way into the exact Sciences, while mysterious help 
is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is at the 
close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such 
events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of 
5,000 years of the present Aryan Kaliyuga ; and between this time and 
1897, there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and material- 
istic science will receive a death-blow. 
 
. , . From the very beginning of Mons in time and space in our 
Round and Globe the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which 
it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those 
same now invisible ' ' heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols. 
The keys thereto passed from one generation of " wise men " to the other. 
 
At our last meeting we discussed a diagram showing the Syrian 
views, from an exoteric standpoint, of the external and internal 
 
295 
 
 
 
 
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structure of the Kosmos ; and some of you, who perhaps observed 
carefully, will have noticed that this diagrammatic Hierarchy 
seemed to be represented as all on one plane. Now that is true, 
in a certain sense ; but there is much in connexion with that 
fact that we could not then and now cannot speak of, for the 
simple reason that we have not as yet laid the foundations for 
properly understanding it. Let it then suffice this evening to say 
that, as a matter of real fact, the Hierarchies interact and inter- 
mingle cross each other in all directions, as it were. 
 
As remarked in a former study, the direction of our evolution 
is " outwards " at first, and " inwards " secondly. On descending 
the Shadowy Arc or the Arc of Matter in the beginning of the 
Manvantara of this our Planetary Chain, the direction which we 
followed, as members of our planetary Life- Wave, was from 
within outwards, i.e., from inner planes, from inner worlds, con- 
stantly proceeding " downwards " that is, into ever-increasing 
materiality ; and when we reached the middle of the Fourth 
Round on this our Globe, which is the central or turning-point 
of the Manvantara of this Planetary Chain, the impulse slackened 
and finally reached its close in what we call the Fourth Root- 
Race, the Atlantean Race. Thereafter the reverse process began 
its action, and progress, advancement, development, retraced 
its steps, as it were, in a spiral, the direction thenceforward being 
from without inwards, or an ascent in ever-increasing spirituality. 
This process of a primal " descent " into materiality, followed by 
a " reascent " into spirituality, is the course followed not merely 
in the construction, development, and consummation of the 
destiny of a Planetary Chain, and of all Planetary Chains, but 
also is the course followed in the larger cycles of evolution, such 
as the Solar Kalpas, for instance, which comprise, each one, 
seven of the Planetary Manvantaras. Seven Planetary Man- 
vantaras make one Solar Kalpa ; in other words, seven " Days 
of Brahma " or seven Planetary Cycles, each cycle consisting 
of seven Rounds, form one Solar Kalpa (or Manvantara). 
 
Now, in order to assist our minds in understanding our study 
this evening, in order to help us in conceiving the idea, let us 
draw seven circles representing seven globes : three on the down- 
ward cycle or Shadowy Arc, one at the bottom or turning-point, 
and three on the ascending or Luminous Arc or Cycle. We may 
number with the letters of the alphabet (on opposite page). 
 
Now, these circles represent, if you will, the globes of the Plane- 
tary Chain, and the evolution of the Life- Wave beginning in Globe 
A and running there through its appointed cycles, completing 
them, and then entering B ; after completing its course in B, 
then entering C ; and then, on ending its course for the Round 
in C, entering D, where we are now, and also in the Fourth Round, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 297
 
We are thus half-way around the course for our Round, the 
Fourth, and somewhat more, because we are the Fifth Root-Race 
of our Globe D, on which seven Root-Races must run their 
course. 
 
Each of these globes, furthermore, is builded out of, and has its 
correspondence with, what the ancients called the " Elements ", 
that is to say, the bases of the seven Principles of Nature. They 
are furthermore called " Rudiments ", not in the sense of some- 
thing incomplete, but in the original sense of root-things, origin- 
ants. The Sanskrit word for the Principles is Tattwa, meaning 
 
 
 
 
" a reality ", not the Uttermost Reality, the Absolute of any 
Hierarchy, but its root-differentiations in manifestation ; and 
the word for the Elements is Bhfitas, each Element springing from 
its predecessor or superior and giving life and birth to another, 
its inferior. The ancients always reckoned four Elements, and 
sometimes five ; our School reckons seven in all. The usual 
enumeration of the ancients, is as follows : " ^Ether ", " Fire ", 
" Air ", " Water ", and, lastly, " Earth ". The last two Principles 
to be enumerated, and the last two Elements, the bases of the 
former two, have been given no names exoterically, because they 
are not yet known by our present senses. Human consciousness 
does not yet recognise them, but they are recognised, taught of, 
and named, in the Esoteric Philosophy nevertheless ; and they 
are called, for the second, Anupapddaka-tattwa, a Sanskrit word 
 
 
 
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very difficult to explain in English. The general meaning is that 
it does not proceed from anything else, i.e., " parentless ". It 
proceeds from itself. Finally, the first of all the seven, the upper- 
most on the descending arc of nature, is called Adi-Tattwa or 
" original tattwa ", for the Principle ; and Adi-BMta for the 
corresponding Element, because it belongs to the same plane of 
being of the Kosmos as the Principle Adi-Tattwa, but in a some- 
what lower degree, being the base or vehicle of the former, the 
Principle. 
 
These Elements, of course, are not the familiar things which 
we know under these names, " fire ", " water ", " air ", or 
" earth " but these familiar things are their correspondences 
on our Earth, in a mystic sense. Now, although the seven Globes 
of the Planetary Chain are not the seven Elements respectively, 
each to each, yet each Globe is builded up out of them all, and 
one of the seven Elements predominates, furthermore, in each 
one of the Globes respectively. All this will be elucidated in our 
future studies, when we come to study the Lokas and Talas. For 
instance, on Globe A : the fire-quality would not be our material 
earth-fire : it would there be the spirit of fire, so to say, the root 
of fire ; because in the Esoteric Philosophy " Fire " is not merely 
the result of combustion, according to modern scientific ideas, 
but is an actual Element, a Rudiment, a Base. And similarly 
with "Air", proceeding from "Fire", born from "Fire". 
And similarly with the Element " Water ", proceeding from 
" Air ", born from it ; and again " Earth " born from " Water ", 
i.e., the Element " Water ". 
 
It is likewise the old Stoic doctrine, that the Elements give 
birth one to another. Manifestation begins on the spiritual plane, 
and as the life-impulses reach forth into grosser forms, into 
" matter " (to use the popular expression), the succeeding 
Elements (Bases, Rudiments) are born, each one from the 
preceding one, and from all preceding ones. For instance, " Earth " 
is born not merely from the Element " Water ", but likewise 
from " Fire ", and " Air ". Furthermore, the seven Rounds of 
a Planetary Chain, the seven Globes of a Planetary Chain, and the 
seven Root-Races of any Globe thereof, has each its predominating 
correspondence with one of these seven Elements. Please under- 
stand that we mean not at all the familiar things we know on our 
Earth by those names, but the Bases, the Originants, the "spirits " 
of them, as it were : the causes, the tattwas, the Real Things 
which produce what we see here on our Earth. 
 
Furthermore, the seven " sacred planets ", to which we have 
alluded in former studies, are, each one of them, a manifestation, 
an incorporealization, of the powers of one of the seven Solar 
Logoi, or spiritual Forces of our Solar Kosmos, of which Force- 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 299
 
Elements we may see a faint manifestation, or, if you will, an 
adumbration, in the seven colors of the solar spectrum. We 
reserve further clearer explanation of this for future studies. 
 
Please note also that our own human seven " principles ", 
correspond each one, respectively and relatively, with one of these 
Elements. The seven principles and elements of man are a 
duplication in him of the seven Principles and Elements of the 
Kosmos. The seven Elements, or Bases, or Rudiments, are the 
seven Vehicles of the seven Principles of the Kosmos. These 
elements are at the same time substance and energy or force, 
because energy and substance fundamentally are the same thing. 
Matter and force are fundamentally the same thing. It is, as it 
were, the upper and the lower side, the inward and outward, the 
impulse and its results or fruits. 
 
And furthermore, with regard to the seven sacred planets 
mentioned above : when the Esoteric Science of the ancients 
spoke of seven sacred planets, certain ones especially were 
designated, because, as a matter of fact, each of the planets 
known to us is itself connected with seven other planets who are 
to it its seven sacred planets. Our earth is not one of the seven 
sacred planets of the ancients. Those seven sacred planets were 
Saturn ; Jupiter ; Venus ; Mercury ; the planet very near to the 
sun, at present invisible but suspected, and called by some 
modern astronomers Vulcan ; a sixth which we merely mention, 
at present ; and a seventh sometimes seen near the moon by 
those who " have eyes to see " I 
 
It will be recollected that it was remarked at a former study 
that the Vulcan-planet was first discovered, or supposed to be 
discovered, on March a6th, 1859, when it was seen in transit across 
the solar disk, and astronomers since then have searched for it and 
have not been able to find it. The teaching with reference to that 
planet, the highest (in one sense) of our seven sacred planets, is 
this, that it became invisible to our physical senses at about the 
middle point of the third Root-Race ; but as we have now reached 
again, on the upward Arc, the plane corresponding to the degree 
of plane-development of the third Root-Race ; in a relatively 
short cyclic period, it should begin again to show itself ; but even 
today, while it might be generally invisible on account of what 
we may call its ethereality, if searched for by telescope it might 
nevertheless be seen, under favorable conditions, crossing the 
solar disk. And why ? Because the truly indescribable brilliance 
of the sun throws anything that appears before it, into visibility, 
so to speak, as a darker body, and it could thus be seen as such a 
shadowy body crossing the solar disk. At least that is one reason, 
probably, why astronomers have searched for this planet and 
have or have not yet found it. 
 
 
 
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With regard to the seventh mentioned above, which is the 
" lowest " of our seven sacred planets, the one esoterically spoken 
of as " near the moon ", that planet is in its last or seventh Round, 
and is therefore dying. The probability is that it also, to our 
present physical senses, is more or less ethereal, and therefore 
practically invisible, except in certain very favorable conditions. 
Before our planet shall have reached its last or seventh Round, 
our Moon will have disintegrated into stellar dust, but by that 
time this secret or mystery-planet " near the moon " and now 
dying, will be dead, and will be to us as a moon ; not a true moon 
in the sense of our lunar mother, but rather a satellite. It will 
appear to us as a moon ; and, indeed, will be a " moon ", because 
it will be a dead body. 
 
There is a great deal that simply cannot be said at least not 
yet about these seven sacred or mystery-planets, for the simple 
reason that these studies, by the Teacher's instructions, are to be 
published, and we understand perfectly that there are certain 
things that the public has no right to know. But we have pointed 
out before that the seven principal Dhyani-Chohans, or Lords 
of Meditation, are very intimately connected, each, to each, 
respectively, with the seven mystery-planets or sacred planets, that 
is, the seven which are the sacred planets for the earth. There 
are many other planets in our solar system ; but only seven of that 
number are our seven sacred planets. 
 
Each other planet, Jupiter, let us say for instance, has its own 
seven sacred planets, and all belonging to our solar system, but 
not all of them would necessarily be our seven sacred planets. Yet 
each one, by the interconnexion or intermingling of the elements 
of Kosmic construction, each one of them, I say, is a solar locus. 
Here again is something that we must touch upon before we pass 
on farther. 
 
Man is higher than the globe he lives on. Man is higher than 
the sun. You and I sitting here, occupy a status spiritually 
higher than the sun, although it is the spiritual and vital locus 
of the solar system. The sun we see is not the true sun. The sun 
we see is merely the focus of the titanic forces playing on the 
other side, through it. And man is higher than it, and yet comes 
from it, from the inner side of it, so to say. Further, as pointed out 
in another study, do not be carried away by scientific theories, for 
science is absolutely no criterion of spiritual knowledge, which is, 
as yet, far beyond its scope or reach. Our physical bodies, i.e., the 
body of each one of us, is a kosmos, even, relatively speaking, 
a universal kosmos. Even our modern science is beginning to 
suspect this truth, and the scientists now speak of the atom, 
formed of its electrons and protons, as composing a miniature 
solar system. There is no particle of substance or matter which is 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 301
 
free from life, barren of intelligent life and lives ; and there are 
beings in and on the electrons of the atoms of our body which are 
higher than the personal self of us is. A sublime thought to think 
about ! We have, indeed, higher responsibilities inherent in us 
than we dream of. Our body, in very truth, is a Temple of Life ! 
 
It may be said by some few who think they know our views, and 
who do not, that we speak somewhat harshly of scientific men. 
We do not admit the charge, for it is false ; but we have said, and 
we now repeat it, that we have no hesitancy in rejecting scientific 
theories when we honestly cannot accept them, or believe them 
untrue. A f act, per se, is a divine thing. We are grateful for the noble 
and often self-sacrificing labors of scientific workers ; nobody, no 
people on earth today, is more grateful to science, when it means 
classified and ordered knowledge, than are the Theosophists. But 
the mere scientific theories of scientific men are another thing 
entirely ; and we have no more patience with them when we 
believe them untrue, than with any other untruth ; we have 
such degree of gratitude and of patience, on the other hand, for 
what we conceive that they possess of truth. No more. We 
attack no honest man, whatever be his private opinions. We 
attack no facts. Every real fact is a friend to us ; and we welcome, 
we applaud, we laud, the magnificent efforts of the researches 
and researchers into nature ; but to take wholesale and to swallow 
at a gulp something that some scientific bigwig may dangle before 
our eyes, merely because he attempts to foist his personal opinion 
or hobby upon the world, is another thing entirely. 
 
I have received a letter from a friend which is well worth reading 
in this connexion at this point. I cite a portion of it with an 
included quotation concerning the planet Vulcan : " ' Seeliger 
has conclusively shown that there is enough of the cosmic dust 
which forms the Zodiacal Light to account for all the discrepancies 
in the movements of Mercury ', and so make a ' Vulcan ' unneces- 
sary. 
 
" This was written about twelve years ago, and was supposed 
to settle the whole difficulty of Mercury's 42 seconds per century 
change in perihelion position ". Note first : the perturbations 
in the movements of Mercury were first explained by an unknown 
planet called Vulcan. Well, Vulcan could not be found again, so 
the theorists said that it must be cosmic dust which produces 
these perturbations. Second theory : I quote again from the 
letter : " Then comes friend Einstein and starts explaining it in 
an entirely different way ", and " cosmic dust " in its turn is 
scientifically made away with. Then comes " Professor Poor, of 
Columbia University and shows that Einstein's theory about 
Mercury upsets the positions of the other planets more than it 
helps Mercury so there you are ! 
 
 
 
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" I admire their .wonderful ingenuity in making theories for the 
marvels they have discovered under the limited conditions at 
their disposal, but we certainly must keep an open mind on the 
things which are subject to such various interpretations ". 
 
Very well put. It covers the ground very neatly. 
 
We are nearing the conclusion of our study for this evening, but 
meanwhile there is a matter which requires some treatment before 
we close, and that is with regard to the Root-Races of any globe 
of our Planetary Chain. Take the Races, for instance, of our 
own Globe D, of our Planetary Chain, Globe D being the lowest 
in the Chain, as you know. Now these Root-Races occupy vastly 
more time in their evolution than is commonly supposed. Time 
runs into millions of years for any and for each Root-Race. It is 
commonly supposed by some who have not read H. P. Blavatsky's 
Secret Doctrine with the attention that they should have given to 
it, that our Root-Race, the Fifth, is only about one million years 
old now. That idea is not true, and H. P. Blavatsky says nothing 
of the sort. In Volume II, page 435, of The Secret Doctrine, she 
says that our Fifth Root-Race is about one million years old, as 
a race sui generis and quite free from its parent-stem. How many 
more million years did it require to reach even that point, born as 
a Root-Race at about the central point of the Mother-Race ? It 
required millions of years for our Race to reach the central point 
of its career, where we are now. Our great racial catastrophe, 
which will come upon us as their own came in due time upon all 
other former Root-Races, and as such a catastrophe will come 
upon the two Races which are to succeed our Fifth Race, i.e., the 
Sixth and Seventh Root-Races, has not yet reached us, but it is 
coming. And we shall then have work to do if we are faithful to 
our Teachers, and to our School, during those trying epochs, aeons, 
periods, of the far future. 
 
And another thing: While each Root-Race is destroyed 
alternately by fire and by water, let us not forget that the other 
elements likewise are at work at the same time ; but it is fire 
and water more particularly which affect and cause the displace- 
ments of continents or rather their submergence ; and the 
emergence or rising of the new lands. There is an interesting 
point of our doctrines in this connexion, and I now briefly allude 
to it. 
 
The teaching is that the First, the Third, the Fifth, and the 
Seventh Root-Races, are what may be called aqueous ; and the 
Second, the Fourth, and the Sixth those with even numbers- 
are what we may call the terreous Races ; in other words, those 
with uneven numbers, i, 3, 5, and 7, flourish on our Globe at 
times when the oceans cover more of its surface than does the 
land ; and the conditions are reversed in the Second, Fourth, and 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 303
 
Sixth Root-Races, when there is more land than water on the 
Globe's surface. Fire destroyed the First Race, as it destroyed 
the Third Race also ; water destroyed the Second and also the 
Fourth Race ; and fire will destroy the Fifth, water the Sixth, 
and fire again the Seventh. Now, geologically speaking, it is 
this alternation in extent of land or water which brings about this 
cyclical condition. Let us try to make this matter a little more 
clear. The Third Race perished by fire, which means the action of 
subterrene earthquakes and of volcanoes, principally, followed 
by submergence. Now the Third Race was an " aqueous " Race, 
that is to say, there was then more water on the face of the 
earth than land. So today, in our Fifth Race, at about the 
middle period of our Race's life-cycle, there is one-fourth as much 
land as of water on the surface of the globe, i.e., three times as 
much water as land. When our Root-Race shall be drawing 
towards its end, the coming catastrophe will be shown by immense 
systemic and minor seismic and volcanic disturbances, announc- 
ing the submergence of our continental system and the emergence 
of new lands for the following Sixth Root-Race, the working of 
fire. When the Atlantean system fell, when the Atlantean 
continental system had its catastrophe which slowly overwhelmed 
it with flood, it was water which caused it. There was then more 
land than water ; nature sought a readjustment, a better balance, 
and that great system perished by floods. The water came and 
submerged the land, of course also accompanied by earthquakes 
and the action of volcanoes. We must not imagine that when 
a Root-Race perishes through fire or water as the chief causative 
agent, that there is then no aqueous or terrene-fire disturbance. 
On the contrary, fire and water work together, but the one or the 
other then predominates. The Fourth, the Atlantean, was a 
terreous period, and Nature followed her usual course in cases of 
disturbed equilibrium " and the waters came and overwhelmed 
the land/ 1 Whence the " waters came ", is a most fascinating 
subject for study, but we have no time to go into it tonight. 
Ours is an aqueous period ; and in due course the waters will 
slowly tend to disappear, giving place to new lands in the future, 
the dwelling-places to be of the next, the Sixth Root-Race. 
 
Katherine Tingley ; 
 
I would like to ask Professor de Purucker if he will make an 
explanation which I think would be satisfactory to you, and 
which he could do much better than I and show what will be 
the state of civilization, what will be the state of humanity, at 
the ending of these different races when the end comes ? How 
will evolution be marked ? Will not those people who will seem 
to be the " victims " of the terrible catastrophe which comes at 
 
 
 
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the end of every race, have the knowledge of the secrets of death, 
and look upon rebirth as a glorious release ? 
 
Prof, de Purucker : 
 
I think certainly so ; yes, it is so. The end of every race brings 
with it a perfection of what that race was striving to accomplish. 
And I dare say that if we could look back and know what took 
place when the continent of Atlantis sank, we should realize 
that even those comparatively few who by death left the physical 
body during that catastrophe, had the realization that what they 
had to undergo was no more and no less than merely one form of 
death inevitable to all men sooner or later. They knew better 
than we do now, although far more sunken in matter, that life is 
eternal, for, actually, there is nothing but life everywhere ! And 
their physicians could have told them, and did tell them, for they 
knew, that every disease of our bodies comes about from an 
excess of life, particularly what we may call the malignant or 
wasting diseases. In these cases it is life running riot in the body, 
and that is what causes death. They knew it better than we. 
 
Furthermore, no one should think that in these racial catastro- 
phes, every one is swept away in a moment in a fearful confusion 
and chaos, and that there is no hope, and that everything is but 
wild despair. Not at all. These catastrophes come on slowly. 
The continents sink through the ages. Man migrates and leaves 
the sinking lands behind, and moves to higher and better ones, new 
ones, fresh ones, where new races are born out of what we justly 
may call the death of the old. 
 
Nothing, I suppose, that I might mention, could equal the 
horror of the catastrophe of Lisbon years ago, when tens of 
thousands of people perished in an earthquake ; or the fearful 
catastrophe at Messina, in Sicily, only a few years ago ; and other 
earthquakes and tidal-waves which you all may remember. We 
are in our own great cyclical catastrophe now, though it is but 
beginning. How much worse is the agony of heart, let us say, of 
one who is at the bedside of one whom he loves ! Ah ! There 
you have anguish ! But sudden catastrophes, when they do occur, 
occur mostly on a relatively small scale. When the races near 
their ends, the continents sink slowly. There are much worse 
things than merely losing the physical body, for those whose 
destiny it is to be in a racial catastrophe. They will know the 
beautiful secrets of death. At the end of our race we shall know 
it far better than the Atlanteans did. But not one so perishes 
individually, unless it is his personal Karma. How about the tens 
of thousands who perish yearly in steamer, train, automobile, mine 
and various other accidents ? Pray reflect. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXVI
 
THE MICROCOSM, A MIRROR OF THE MACROCOSM. ELEMENTS, 
PRINCIPLES, MANIFESTATIONS OF THE ONE LIFE. RELATIVITY : 
A FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM. 
 
" Man," says Van Helmont, " is the mirror of the universe, and his triple 
 
nature stands in relationship to all things." r . Tr .. , T 
 
I sis Unveiled, I, 213. 
 
. . . there is but one element. . . . This element then is the to speak meta- 
physically one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the 
phenomenal universe. The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of 
ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uniniti- 
ates) the sixth principle of the universe call it Punish akti, while to speak of 
the seventh outside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five 
are but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so 
is the universe the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm 
but as the drop of rain water is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither 
in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many 
tendencies for the evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down 
to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate 
their productive potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of being. 
 
The Mahatma Letters, p. 91. 
 
ET us open our study this evening by reading from The 
Secret Doctrine, Volume I, section 16, pages 638-9. 
In ancient Symbolism it was always the SUN (though the 
Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant), that was supposed 
to send forth the chief Saviors and Avat^ras. Hence the connecting 
link between the Buddhas, the Avataras, and so many other incarna- 
tions of the highest SEVEN. The closer the approach to one's Prototype, 
" in Heaven/' the better for the mortal whose personality was chosen, 
by his own personal deity (the seventh principle), as its terrestrial 
abode. For, with every effort of will toward purification and unity 
with that " Self-god/' one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual 
entity of man is drawn higher and ever higher to the ray that super- 
sedes the first, until, from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the 
one and highest beam of the Parent-SuN. 
 
That is a superb passage. It contains in embryo the substance 
of our studies for some weeks past. It will be remembered that at 
our last meeting, the Teacher spoke of our School as being a 
Hierarchy. Verily it is so, because while we form the outermost 
circle, as it were, of the Hierarchy of Compassion, we do belong 
to it nevertheless, as distinguished from the bulk of humanity, 
whose inner fires have not been lighted, as ours have been, at least 
in some degree, by our Teachers. We form a body ; and as our 
Teacher, sitting here present, is our highest link among ourselves 
 
305 
 
 
 
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with the Masters, so one of them more particularly is our link 
with the spiritual Hierarchy from which we draw our inner life, 
spiritual and mental, the one whose duty, self-assumed, it is to 
light our fires, so that we in turn may quicken, enliven, and light 
the fires of others, who know even less of the Ancient Wisdom than 
we do. Our supreme chief is that wondrous Being, who, in his 
spiritual capacity, is the Dhyani-Buddha of this Fourth Round, 
whose human representative is the Chief of what we commonly 
call the great White Lodge, he to whom our own Masters look up 
for quickening and enlightenment, he who lights their fires as 
they light and quicken ours. 
 
How is this quickening and lighting done ? How was it that 
the Manasaputras worked, in their incarnations in the hitherto 
senseless humanity, to raise man if we can give to the humanity 
of that time that name from spiritually and mentally senseless 
beings to self-conscious humanhood ? 
 
Listen. Every one of the seven principles of man, as also 
every one of the seven elements spoken of at our last meeting 
(corresponding in the Kosmos to the seven principles in man), is 
itself a mirror of the universe, that is, it contains in itself every- 
thing that the Boundless All contains. Everything is in the 
microcosm that exists in the Macrocosm ; the one, the less, 
mirrors the other, the greater. In other words, each of the 
elements, each of the principles, each of the rudiments to blossom 
forth later into divinity, is itself a septenary or sevenfold entity, 
existing on its own septenary plane, which to it is as palpably 
certain, real, and substantial as this our physical plane is to us 
as seen through our physical eyes and heard through our physical 
ears, or sensed by the media of the other senses, two more of 
which, by the way, are still to be developed. 
 
Now each one being a septenary, each one of these Principles 
or Elements is a copy in miniature, if we may use that word, of 
the Whole. For instance, the principle of Manas is septenary. 
It has its own atman, its buddhi, and its manas the Manas- 
manas, which is its own particular essence, or swabhava ; next, 
its kama or desire-principle ; then its vital essence ; then its 
garment, its linga Sarira, or model-body, so to say, that which 
gives it its own particular shape and conformation, according to 
the qualities of that plane ; and finally its sthtila-sarira, or 
lowest portion or vehicle or carrier or bearer. 
 
Now, these Manasaputras or " Sons of Mind ", children of 
Mahat, are said to have quickened and enlightened the Manas- 
manas of the manas-septenary, because they themselves are 
typically manasic in their essential characteristic or Swabhava. 
Their own vibrations, so to say, could cause that essence of manas 
in ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a 
 
 
 


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musical note will cause sympathetic response in something like 
it, a similar note in other things. 
 
Who are these Manasaputras ? They are ourselves in a sense, 
but we are rather and more particularly those who were quickened 
and enlivened. They are a mystery ; they are at once our higher 
selves not our highest selves but our higher selves, and yet 
different. We have shown in past studies that from the One 
springs all the manifold differentiations of a Kosmic (or any other) 
Hierarchy, and that there is a perfect kinship or unity of being 
throughout. These sublime thoughts can be very clearly under- 
stood if we awaken in ourselves that portion of our nature to 
which they are native and familiar. We can do it, and it depends 
upon us to do it. Why is it that the Masters choose, from time 
to time, a certain one or certain ones, and take him or them to 
themselves ? Because they see in those so selected the inner 
Master already quickened, enlivened, at least to some extent. 
Would they take a beast ? No. Why not ? Because the beast 
is not quickened. Would they take an ordinary man ? No. 
Why ? Because the man is not quickened, he is not awakened, 
he is not yet conscious in himself of the inner essential Buddha, 
the Awakened One. There is no question of arbitrary choice 
about this fact. It is a selection and an election of the fit and 
proper ones ; it is therefore just, it is therefore right. 
 
Let us pursue this thought a little more. Let us take Nature 
and consider her Elements. Now this word " Element " is from 
the Latin and it means one of the rudiments of things, the word 
" rudiment " in its original sense. The Sankhya especially, one 
of the six accepted schools of philosophy of India, and also even 
the Vedanta perhaps the noblest of the six Indian Schools 
both speak of the six original " producers " or Elements of Nature 
as Prakritis, the six prakritis derived from the primal Prakriti, or 
root-Prakriti, the first and highest. The Sankhya also speaks of 
them and so do many students of the Vedanta, as the six Tattwas 
or real elements. Now what is the difference between the six 
Elements or prakritis, and the six tattwas ? The prakriti is the 
vehicular or bearer or carrier-side, so to say, the substantial side, 
and the Tattwa is the analogic or force-side. And these two 
fundamentally are one, because, please remember, matter and 
force, spirit and substance, are both fundamentally one. Matter 
can be called crystallized spirit. We have to hunt for words in 
any attempt to describe these things ; hence this is an inadequate 
expression, but it perhaps conveys the meaning. Para-Brahman 
and Mtila-Prakriti, or " beyond-Brahman " and " root-nature " 
of the Vedanta and the Sankhya, represent the same thought, and 
these two fundamentally are one. Root-nature is the veil, as it 
were, of the primordial energy, the primordial consciousness ; and 
 
 
 
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these prakritis in the Sankhya, these six or seven prakritis, stand 
for the six or seven Elements of Nature, corresponding to our 
human seven principles or six principles. And these are born, or 
issue rather, one from the other, as pointed out in our study of 
the seven globes in our study last week. That prakriti which is 
the higher plane is the parent of the prakriti which is the lower 
plane. First the primordial one gives birth to the second ; Atman, 
let us say, gives birth to Buddhi. And Atman and Buddhi com- 
bined give birth to Manas, issuing from the two former, and con- 
taining the qualities of the preceding two as well as its own. And 
Atman, Buddhi, Manas then give birth to Kama, the fourth in 
order ; and so on down to the seventh or lowest. 
 
Similarly Globe A, the first on the descending arc, gives birth 
to Globe B, and Globe B gives birth to Globe C ; but it does so 
with the swabhavic tattwa of Globe A also working in it. And 
Globe C gives birth to Globe D, our earth, but with the tattwas 
or intrinsic individualities or swabhavas of A and B in it also. 
Globe D thus has the tattwas of Globes A, B, and C inherent in 
it in addition to its own individual characteristic or swabhava. 
 
When the evolutionary impulse has reached its limit in any 
one manvantara and the limits vary in every manvantara, 
because there is no absolute point or position in space, nor any 
one particular plane where every evolutionary manvantaric 
impulse in the Boundless must stop, for so many monads, so many 
hierarchies have so many respective evolutionary impulses and 
their respective ends : that is, when that outrushing impulse that 
comes from above, carrying these prakritis and principles down 
into greater manifestation of matter, has reached the limit 
possible for that particular manvantara, it then turns, as it were, 
around the goal and begins the reascent. 
 
Now we in our Planetary Chain have passed that goal or turning- 
point of the Rounds. In each of the races on any globe of the 
Chain, furthermore ; in each of the globes during any Round ; 
and for each of the Rounds passing through all the seven globes ; 
there is a mid-point in its respective evolutionary course, and 
that mid-point is its respective goal or turning-point, where the 
respective cycle begins a reascent. Hence, there will then be a 
sudden rising of the evolving monads or entities ; and corre- 
spondentially senses hitherto latent and undeveloped will be 
developed, and the principles in nature which we now do not 
cognise will then be cognised and known. Ether, for instance, of 
which we have a mere presentiment today at the middle-point 
of our Fifth Race in the Fourth Round, recognised even by science 
and spoken of, will, during the Fifth Round become an actuality 
in what will then be the atmosphere, as palpable and plain to the 
senses as air is today to us. 
 
 
 


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So, then, when speaking of the Elements or the Prakritis, we 
do not mean that the " earth " and " water " and " air " and 
" fire " spoken of by the ancients as " elements ", are the real 
Elemental Prakritis of Nature. That is absurd. The ancients 
used those words symbolically. These four (or five things, includ- 
ing ether) are merely manifestations four of them so far 
developed of four or five out of the seven sub-prakritis or sub- 
principles belonging to the lowest prakritic Element as manifest 
at this stage on our fourth globe, corresponding to the seventh 
or lowest Kosmic Plane or Prakriti. 
 
As each Principle is itself a sub-septenary and mirrors the 
Boundless, so does each Element mirror all the other Elements ; 
and from each Element can be drawn the life and nature and 
characteristic, in minor degree, of course, of all the other six. 
The above-named qualities of the matter of the seventh or lowest 
prakriti of our Globe, that is to say, solidity, fluidity, air (there 
seems to be no corresponding adjective in English for air, or for 
the following one), fire, are merely the correspondences of the 
similar sub-prakritis of the four Kosmic Elements or Prakritis in 
which our Planetary Chain exists now. Ether as an " element " 
will come next ; and in the sixth Round will be developed the 
sixth element ; and during the seventh Round will be developed 
the seventh. None of the ancient philosophers of the Mediter- 
ranean countries, when speaking of " earth ", " water ", " air ", 
" fire ", " ether ", nor the Hindus, when speaking, for instance 
of Akaia or of Adi-Tattwa, meant the material things which we 
can sense, such as earth and water. They meant the Root- 
Elements of Nature, of which these four or five things that we 
sense, are, as it were, presentments or symbols. 
 
Now, the Greeks called the Elements " Stoicheia " a plural 
diminutive of the word " stoichos ", meaning a series, in other 
words a hierarchy. The singular " Stoicheion " would be an 
entity of a hierarchy, a part of it, one of the composite parts of 
the hierarchy, although modern scholars can trace no ostensible 
reason for giving this name to what they recognise as being the 
ancient conception of the Element of Nature. But our philosophy 
shows why, and explains that the stoicheia are the seven Prak- 
ritis of the Kosmos. Each of the globes of our Planetary Chain 
is an imbodiment of all these Elements or seven Prakritis, but 
in the manner outlined above, of each Element containing in 
parvo all the others. Our earth, for instance, is an imbodiment or 
representation of the lowest Prakriti, but there is water and there 
is air and there is fire, and we know that there is ether in develop- 
ment. We know four and recognise five, an exemplification 
of what has just been said. Nevertheless, the seven globes 
of our Planetary Chain are not the respective correspondences 
 
 
 
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of the seven Kosmic Elements. This would be a " false 
analogy ". 
 
Each one of the grades of initiation, of which we have spoken 
before, corresponds to one of these seven Kosmic Elements ; and 
the trials through which the initiant or candidate must pass in 
order to prove his capacity, are regulated and governed by the 
nature of each one respectively of the seven Prakritis. There are, 
as a matter of fact, ten grades or degrees of initiation and ten 
Kosmic Prakritis seven in manifestation, and three Root- 
Prakrit is or the highest ; but as so often pointed out, in our 
studies, the uppermost three are so far beyond our utmost 
capacity of understanding now that we can do no more than 
mention the fact. Always ten three arupa or formless (to us, 
please understand) and seven in manifestation ; and of these 
seven the upper triad is, relatively speaking, also arupa. 
 
Now let us here point out something very important that is, 
that all the teaching of the Ancient Wisdom is given from our 
plane, so that when we say arupa or " formless ", it does not 
mean that in themselves, an sick, per se, these higher planes or 
entities are formless, which would be absurd. But to us they 
are formless, exactly as ether is formless, because it is not yet 
(for us) developed. We have as yet but a mere presentiment of 
it in this Fourth Round, and only because we are in the Fifth 
Root-Race, corresponding in element to that fifth element, 
"ether". And as a corollary to that, and it is an important 
deduction, as regards the beings inhabiting each element, each 
principle, of the universal Kosmos : their habitations, their 
countries, all that therein exists, to them are as real and palpable 
as are palpable and material things on our plane to us. Force, 
to us, is substance in motion. Do you realize that our most 
dense and rigid matter is force to beings in the hierarchy below 
us ? Do we realize that what we call the density and the rigidity 
of matter are merely such to our senses, and that this very 
density and this rigidity show and prove that our dense and 
rigid matter is but a balancing of opposing forces ? Why, even 
many modern scientists today, making a right-about-face from 
what was utter truth to science some fifty years ago, now say 
that there is no such thing as matter per se, that there is nothing 
but " force ". Matter is therefore to it a maya, an illusion, and 
so it is. But so is force a maya, because it is merely matter to 
something higher than it. All tilings are relative, a statement which 
is one of the fundamental conceptions of the Ancient Wisdom. 
 
So when we speak of these various Prakritis and Principles, 
let us recognise first that these Elements, these Tattwas or 
Principles, from whatever viewpoint we may look at them, are 
all manifestations of the one Universal Life, which is likewise 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 31*
 
Universal Substance in its lower aspect. Spirit and substance 
are fundamentally one, two sides to the same thing. Force and 
matter are fundamentally one, two sides to the same thing. 
 
This, that is so important, we fain would dwell upon much 
longer and give illustrations of its application to our studies. 
Let us make a final application tonight. What is the difference 
between a Master, and me and you ? The former has his higher 
principles awakened and lives in them. And we do not. From 
the scientific standpoint, that is all there is to it ; from the 
philosophic standpoint, we may say that a Master has become, 
as far as he can be, more at one with the Universal Life ; and from 
the religious standpoint or the spiritual standpoint, we may say 
that a Master has developed an individual consciousness, or 
recognition, of his oneness with the Boundless. This is the very 
foundation of the ethics without which there is nothing worthy 
of the Ancient Wisdom and of our School. No man can miscon- 
duct himself without injecting inharmony, disharmony, into the 
human hierarchy of which he is a part, and for this he shall pay, 
yea, to the uttermost farthing. But this is no " vengeance ", no 
punishment, by Nature, which merely readjusts the disturbed 
equilibrium, or disharmony. It arose out of the exercise of free 
will. And the Masters have learned to govern their wills and to 
co-operate with Nature as a whole ; thence they grow in strength 
of soul, and live in unity with the Divine. That is the difference 
between them and us : they live " at one " with the spiritual 
summit of our hierarchy. We can do it likewise. We can do the 
same. It is simply a matter of opening our inner eyes, of cleansing 
our souls, of clearing out from our brains the trash which we eat 
mentally, the husks which the " swine feed upon ", and letting 
in the pure, clear life, the " wine of life ". It is only the molds 
of mind that impede us, nothing but the molds of mind ; and 
when we say the " molds of mind " we do not exactly mean the 
molds of sub-mental matter in which the mind works. That is, I 
think, a wrong way to put it. We mean the crystallization of the 
mind itself, when mental force becomes mental matter. Therefore 
break these molds ; no one can do it for you but yourself. The 
molds of man's mind are his greatest enemy, his worst foe, his 
strongest opponent, because these molds are living substance. 
Your mind is matter, but it is " living " matter ; and every 
thought you think clings to the mind and inheres in it, and 
becomes what the Ancient Wisdom calls an " elemental ", and 
it will finally turn and torture you unless you break them i.e., 
transmute them. What man would do otherwise, when there are 
freedom and light and wisdom and peace and glory and know- 
ledge unspeakable for the having, for the taking, providing that 
we do indeed " take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence " 1 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXVII
 
THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL KOSMICAL HIERARCHIES : MATTER 
AND SPIRIT-CONSCIOUSNESS. CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS : GODS- 
MONADS-ATOMS. 
 
There are, assuredly, two forms of Brahma : the formed and the formless. 
Now, that which is the formed is unreal ; that which is the formless is real, is 
Brahma, is light. 
 
That light is the same as the sun [the spiritual Sun, not our visible sun which is 
only a reflexion, a veil, a form]. 
 
Verily, that came to have Om as its soul (atman). He divided himself (atma- 
nam) threefold. Om is three prosodial units (a-f-w-fw). By means of these 
the whole world is woven, warp and woof, across Him. 
 
Maitri Upanishad, 6, 3, p. 425 (HUME). 
 
An exuberance of power is always present with the highest causes, and at the 
same time that this power transcends all things, it is equally present with all 
with unimpeded energy. Hence, conformably to this, the first illuminate the 
last of things, and immaterial are present with material natures immaterially. 
Nor should it be considered by any one as wonderful, if we say that there is a 
certain pure and divine matter. For matter being generated by the father and 
demiurgus of wholes, receives a perfection adapted to itself, in order to its 
becoming the receptacle of the Gods. At the same time nothing prevents more 
excellent beings from being able to impart their light to subordinate natures. 
Neither, therefore, is matter separated from the participation of better causes ; 
so that such matter as is perfect, pure, and boniform, is not unadapted to the 
reception of the Gods. For, since it is requisite that terrestrial natures should 
by no means be destitute of divine communion, the earth also receives a certain 
divine portion from it, sufficient for the participation of the Gods. 
 
lamblichus on The Mysteries, p. 265, 6 (TAYLOR). 
 
IT is nearly fifty years since our first Teacher brought 
Theosophy to us nearly half a century has passed, and 
those of us who have had the opportunity of studying 
Theosophy during that period, or at least during part of it, 
realize the great changes that have taken place in the thought of 
the world, changes such that we can only ascribe them to the 
spiritual impulses given to the world by H. P. Blavatsky, and 
Those behind her. 
 
At the close of our study this evening we shall point to a 
number of facts, showing how Theosophists, penetrating the 
secrets of the Ancient Wisdom through Theosophy, have fore- 
shadowed, prophesied, if you like, some of the greatest of the 
scientific discoveries, so-called, that have been made during these 
last fifty years. 
 
These are real revolutions in thought, and it is only just that 
we should place the merit where the merit is due, for there is no 
other cause of such revolutions which are not merely still 
taking place, but which have hardly yet reached their maximum 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 313
 
than the work done by the first Theosophical Leader, and the 
spiritual impulse which she brought into the world at that time. 
No other society or no other organization can show anything 
similar in the annals of known history. 
 
We open our study this evening by reading once again the 
latter part of what we read at our last study from The Secret 
Doctrine, Volume I, page 638-9, as follows : 
 
The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven," the better 
for the mortal whose personality was chosen, by his own personal 
deity (the seventh principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with 
every effort of will toward purification and unity with that " Self-god, " 
one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn 
higher and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until, from 
ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and highest beam of 
the Parent-SuN. 
 
Two fundamental lines of thought, we trust, have been brought 
out in our studies with at least sufficient clearness for present 
purposes. Those lines are respectively the exposition of the night- 
side, the matter side, the vehicular side, of nature ; and secondly 
of the light-side, the spiritual side, the divine side, of nature, the 
latter also being in our System called the Hierarchy of Com- 
passion. The former hierarchy which pervades and really ^'s the 
space, the matter-space, or the space-matter, in which the second 
Hierarchy works, is composed of the Hierarchy of the Builders, 
the Masons of the World, the Kosmocratores or world-makers, 
of mystic Greek philosophy. They are the inferior Hierarchy 
spiritually, but have relative dominion over their sub-hierarchies 
from their beginning down to their lowest plane, which forms the 
mere elemental or nature-forces on the lowest plane of their 
kosmic Hierarchy. Such words as " elemental " or " lowest " 
are mere adjectives describing psychological mysteries. As 
hinted, the seven grades of them run up to the lowest of the 
Hierarchy of Compassion, forming the divine side. There is no 
break between them ; actually, they interblend and inter- 
penetrate each other. As the spirit works in the soul of man, 
and the soul of man works in his lower vehicle, so does the Hier- 
archy of Compassion work in and through the Hierarchy of the 
Builders. 
 
This thought is so important for the understanding of the 
Ancient Wisdom, that we call attention to it again and again, 
because it provides the philosophical and scientific framework, 
the structural carpentry, not merely of the universe, but of man's 
own consciousness, and is the groundwork against which we must 
place the picture of what takes place in the processes of Kosmic 
evolution and in that of man, as outlined in the ancient initiations 
and Mystery schools. 
 
 
 
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It was said at a former meeting that man is spiritually higher 
than the sun. So he is ; but it was not said which man pur- 
posely not said. The sun is the vital locus of his system, and so 
terrific are the forces of that same inwardly divine entity, even 
on our plane, that were one of us, a man, to approach within the 
range of those forces, he would be simply annihilated, not merely 
broken up and dispersed as the physical body is at death, but 
reduced to nothing, wiped out. Why ? Because the first five 
(counting upwards), i.e., the five lower principles of his psycho- 
logical economy, would be dissipated into their component atoms, 
each to each on its own plane, and drawn, sucked, into the stellar 
body, and only his higher part, the divine part, the spiritual part, 
belonging to the Hierarchy of Compassion, the Christ part, the 
Buddha part, would remain intact. Why ? Because the latter 
part itself is of the same substance as the hid sun, of which our 
physical sun is merely the reflexion or the manifestation on this 
plane of the divine being behind it. Consequently, when we said 
that man is greater than the sun, we meant that his progress 
along the path of evolution has proceeded farther than that 
entity (considered as a reflexion) which is the sun. He un- 
doubtedly is farther along the path of evolution than is his solar 
locus a paradox, indeed, but true ! It was the entry into the 
senseless " shadows " of his being, i.e., the four lowest of his 
seven principles, by the manas-principle, inferior to the two 
highest, during the middle of the Third Root-Race, in this Fourth 
Round, that made of him the being that he now is, self-conscious ; 
and thereby he became literally an incarnation of the divine. 
 
It now remains with him to bring into activity those inner 
forces, his higher principles, which form his inner spiritual nature, 
and which are not indeed inert, but only sleeping, as it were. We 
speak of the higher principles as " sleeping " in a man, a form of 
speech which is perhaps correct as a manner of expression, but 
really it is the lower ones which are asleep spiritually and need 
awakening. The very root budh, from which we have Buddhi, 
and Buddha and Budha with one d, means " to awaken ", hence 
derivatively " to enlighten ". Our higher principles are actual 
entities living on their own planes, individual beings, fully 
conscious and thinking entities. Fix that thought firmly in your 
minds, if you please. Our higher parts are not inchoate, un- 
co-ordinated, un-developed, sleeping things. They are a unity of 
entities, a spiritual Kosmos in miniature. 
 
The Great Awakening of the lower elements in Third-Race 
Man that was accomplished by the incarnation of these Mana- 
saputras, was repeated, partly dramatically and partly actually, 
as said so often before, in the ancient Mysteries and in the 
initiations, which were thus a copying of what still takes place in 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 315
 
nature, and took place in nature pre-eminently during the third 
Root-Race. And by those Initiations the attempt was still 
further to stimulate, still more to awaken, still more greatly to 
enliven and bring forth that inner and higher nature of man. 
That great purpose formed the core, the heart and the meaning, 
of the ancient initiations. Yet, please mark, initiation and 
Mystery do not ihean the same thing exactly. Though very 
closely similar in purpose and running on parallel lines, of the 
two, initiation meant teaching, awakening, opening the mind. 
The Mysteries were the dramatized forms of what took place in 
the higher degrees. There were three dramatizations, training 
and educating the neophyte for what he must be, and go through, 
in the four higher degrees. He was directed and helped in those 
higher degrees as far as was made permissible by his karma ; but 
the very heart and essence of the trial was a test, and he had to face 
it alone, and himself to prove his spirit-power, to prove the soul- 
nature of him. If he came through the first Trial triumphant, he 
was granted the privilege, and he had the inner strength, to 
undertake the higher degrees. There could, under such con- 
ditions, be no full protection, no mollycoddling. Just the contrary 
of that took place. His teacher watched over his senseless body 
while his inner nature was out exploring the realms of space, yea, 
entering into the sun, entering into the planets, and into the 
moon, and into other things and beings, becoming, losing his selj 
and becoming, that which he had to face and conquer, or fail. 
Glorious were the privileges of victory ; and at the end, at the 
seventh Trial, if and when the final triumph came, he rose a 
glorified Buddha, a glorified Christ, truly a master of men. Then 
he knew, because he had been. This was no mere sensual experi- 
ence, sensual in the sense of being an experience of the senses ; 
hearing, seeing, touching, feeling, smelling, tasting but it was 
being the things and beings of which he had been taught i.e., 
complete knowledge of Life in this Hierarchy. 
 
Such was the meaning of the higher initiation, of those higher 
degrees which went beyond the scope and meaning of the 
Mysteries, which latter were the dramatizations of the processes 
of kosmical life, the preparation for whatever it was that the 
candidate had to face in the four higher initiatory degrees. 
 
In order to make the matter more clear, let us write down a 
symbolic outline of the two lines of growth or development of 
the two fundamental kosmical hierarchies. 
 
On the left or matter- On the right or divine side, the 
 
side : light-side : 
 
CHAOS GODS 
 
THEOS MONADS 
 
KOSMOS ATOMS 
 
 
 
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corresponding each to each ; and psychologically, so far as man 
is concerned, i, the divine ; 2, the spiritual or human ; and 3, 
Kosmic-astral. 
 
Chaos is a Greek word, and is usually thought to mean a sort 
of helter-skelter treasury of original principles and seeds of 
beings. Well, so it verily is, in one profound sense ; only it is 
most decidedly and emphatically not " helter-skelter ". It is the 
Kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds of beings 
and things from former manvantaras. Of course it is this, simply 
because it contains everything. It means space, not the highest 
Space, not the Parabrahma-Mulaprakriti, the Boundless not 
that. But the space of any particular hierarchy descending into 
manifestation, i.e., what space for it is at that particular period 
of its beginning of development. Remember the principle of 
relativity. There are no utter absolutes anywhere and never have 
been and never will be. The directive principles in Chaos are the 
gods of the corresponding column. 
 
Theos is a Greek word meaning god. Corresponding to it are the 
monads. 
 
Kosmos is a Greek word meaning arrangement. Kosmos was 
also used for a woman's paraphernalia, decoration, and all that 
kind of thing : cosmetics and robes and jewelry. It meant that 
which was arranged and kept along the lines and rules of harmony 
i.e., the arrangement of the universe ; and corresponding to 
it in the other column are the Atoms. Note the three corre- 
spondences : Chaos, Gods or divine beings, the kosmic Archi- 
tects ; then Theos, for the builders, the Kosmocratores, corre- 
sponding to the Monads, the spirit-beings ; then Kosmos, the 
universe, arranged as we see it ; and the Atoms, or Vital-Astral 
seeds, on the divine side. 
 
We do not speak here of chemical atoms, please understand. 
These belong to the Kosmos. As used in this outline, Gods, 
Monads, and Atoms, we mean i, the divine ; 2, the spiritual- 
human ; and 3, those ultimate particles of substance which 
inflame, which inspire, which vitalize, the material kosmos. Each 
to each : the Gods work in the Chaos ; the Monads work in and 
through the Theos, the Theoi, the Builders ; and the Atoms as 
the semi-conscious, ultimate entities of matter, work through the 
Kosmos or the manifested universe, as prepared according to 
what is popularly called natural law, in other words the essential 
and inherent operations of Nature, deriving from the Gods and 
Monads. 
 
Such an Atom, according to these parallel columns (which are 
H. P. Blavatsky's, of course) signifies the ultimate particle of 
matter, which ultimate particle is its (matter's) seventh principle, 
its highest principle ; and for that reason the sun is called an 
 
 
 


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Atom, because it is the seventh or highest degree of matter 
or prakriti on this plane. Prakriti means nature or the developing 
power, that which has brought forth manifestation. There are 
seven Kosmical Prakritis, and we are in the first or lowest ; the 
seventh as you count downwards, the first if you count upwards. 
Each of these again has seven sub-planes. The sun as an entity 
is the highest entity of the kosmical system, the solar system. 
But what we see is merely its vehicle, its seventh or lowest or 
material Element or Principle, counting downwards. The so- 
called " solar flames " are not flames. The sun is not burning ; 
it is not in combustion ; it is not hot ; what we see is the aura 
of the sun, the sixth sub-element or sub-principle of the first or 
lowest Prakriti. That aura therefore is the sun's material buddhic 
aura, and looked at from the scientific standpoint it is a globe of 
kosmic forces. Please remember, as so often said before, that 
force and matter fundamentally are the same ; they are simply 
different degrees of manifestation of spirit-substance. Matter is 
crystallized force ; or, if you like, though it is not so good a 
method of describing it, spirit or force or energy is etherealized 
matter. Much better is it to put it the other way. 
 
Matter on our plane is crystallized light. Light is substance- 
energy or energy-substance, either will do. Call it force. And 
light, this force, again is the matter of something still higher 
than it, the Prakriti above it. 
 
Now our time has nearly expired, and we wish to call attention 
to what was spoken of at the beginning of our study this evening 
i.e., certain very important and fundamental principles of 
thought, which the scientists call discoveries of our era made by 
them (or at least in the making by them) but which were antici- 
pated in time by us members of this School, and by others who 
were members and are now dead, anticipated and proclaimed by 
us, and found out from the study of our Theosophical doctrines. 
We have pointed out time and again our relationship to science 
and scientific men in such manner that it would seem impossible 
to misunderstand our meaning ; but perhaps we have been 
misunderstood. Please therefore understand that we of our 
school, the true Theosophists, look upon science, ordered know- 
ledge, ordered and co-ordinated knowledge, as the greatest friend 
and ally we have. But when it comes to the theories or specula- 
tions or dogmas of scientific men, we accept them or reject them 
exactly in proportion as we think that they contain or do not 
contain truth not my truth or your truth, but as they contain 
(or do not contain) those fundamental principles which, by their 
coherency and consistency and appeal to the best in us, announce 
themselves as facts of being, in other words, the principles 
taught in our Theosophical philosophy. 
 
 
 
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We have drawn up a list of a few such anticipations a quarter 
of an hour's work ; and doubtless any one of you could have 
extended the list to thrice or four times its length ; but listen to 
this ! And please let the ideas sink into your minds if they have 
not already occurred to you, and realize what we have done for 
the world outside, if nothing else. We have changed the world's 
thought. Practice without theory is emptiness of mind ; theory 
without practice is folly. A man who has a beautiful theory, and 
does no act to carry it into operation or fact, is a drone, for he was 
not born to be a sloth ; but on the contrary, a man who has no 
theory, whose ideas are not co-ordinated and directed by 
principles, is a mad-man, and acts like a fool. The noblest thing 
that we can do is so to change the thought of the world that men 
will realize their Oneness with the inner beings on the various 
planes of Life Universal, and govern themselves accordingly, not 
merely in the legislatures, but in their teachings and in their 
personal conduct of life, and in their care for their brothers, and 
in their sense of loyalty and fidelity to their teachers, those whom 
they know and believe to have that truth. 
 
It indeed is a Great Work, and in doing it we are carrying out to 
the world that " Lost Word " of which we hear so much, and of 
which so little is known, for it is a phrase and even a word taken 
from the Ancient Mysteries the Greek Logos, which means word, 
the lost logos of man's heart and brain we are indeed bringing it 
back : and rightly, for we are parts, individual units, responsible 
members, of the Hierarchy of Compassion. Ours is a profound 
and heavy responsibility. Our Teachers have told us that those 
who take upon themselves this responsibility, but prove false 
and treacherous to their Pledge, better were it for them, as Jesus 
would say, that they were dead. But enough of this. 
 
We have here sixteen examples. We had no time to draw up 
more. Here they are. 
 
1. That simple Materialism, comprising fortuity, chance, and 
dead matter, producing life and consciousness, as an explanation 
of life and being, is unscientific, unphilosophical, and impossible, 
because contrary to nature and reason ; therefore absurd. 
 
2. That other planets are inhabited by intelligent beings, or are 
not so, as the case may be ; and that this is denied not from 
knowledge but from ignorance only of such planets ; the only 
planet that we do know, our earth, bearing intelligent beings. The 
denial therefore is irrational, purely speculative and theoretical, 
and based solely on supposedly true facts concerning atmosphere, 
cold or heat, etc., as these are known on our planet only. 
 
3. The unreal nature of the physical universe, or sphere, i.e., 
that all we see and know with sensational perceptions, is its purely 
phenomenal appearances. 
 
 
 


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4. That " Force " is etherealized " matter " ; or, preferably, 
that " matter " is equilibrated or " crystallized " forces. 
 
These last two have now been fully admitted by exoteric 
scientists. 
 
5. That electricity and magnetism are particular, i.e., cor- 
puscular : formed of particles or corpuscles, and therefore 
" matter ". They are the phenomenal effects of noumenal Causes 
matter or rather matters. 
 
6. That the so-called " modes of motion ", when H. P. 
Blavatsky first brought her message to the world, i.e. forces, of 
whilom scientists, as a definition of forces, is a childish effort to 
explain forces by ticketing them in a new manner which explains 
nothing at all ; all forces being simply moving matters. 
 
7. That all matter is radiant, i.e., " radio-active ", that is, it 
radiates ; some forms or states of matter more than others. 
Compare the work and discoveries of Becquerel, Rontgen, the 
Curies, Rutherford, and Sully, etc., and the work on similar lines 
of great thinkers in other countries. 
 
8. That light is corpuscular, because a matter, or substance, 
that is, light is a material radiance, in fact. 
 
9. That transmutation of matters, hence of metals, is a fact in 
nature, occurring hourly, momently, instantly ; and continuously 
through time. 
 
10. That the atom is a divisible body i.e., the chemical or 
physical atom ; it is, so to say, merely a smaller molecule. 
 
Numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 have all been admitted by science, 
or practically admitted in some cases in full, in other cases verging 
on full admission. 
 
11. That the physical atom is a tiny " solar system " ; each 
member of such a system being in its own turn compounded of 
physical infinitesimals, or of sub-atoms, or of infra-atoms. That 
also is admitted. 
 
12. That the nebular hypothesis as commonly accepted was 
incomplete, insufficient, as a workable hypothesis, although 
containing certain elements of natural, that is, of occult, truth. 
That also is admitted. 
 
13. That the sun is neither burning, nor even hot, though it is 
glowing in one sense, superficially, i.e., on its " surface " ; nor 
does it recuperate its heat and other forces, as alleged, by 
shrinkage of volume, nor does radium account for its expenditure 
of energy, is practically admitted. 
 
14. That storms rain, hail, snow, wind and droughts ; like- 
wise most of the earth's heat, are not caused by or derived from 
solar energy, but result from electro-magnetic interplay of forces 
between the earth's mass and the meteoric mass, or " veil ", above 
our atmosphere ; such phenomena or effects being accompanied, 
 
 
 
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partly casually, partly effectually, by periodic expansion or 
dilatation of the atmospheric body and by periodic contraction 
thereof ; and that the " glacial periods ", so-called, are largely 
due to the same causes. 
 
A few months ago, let me interpolate, some eminent scientists 
in the northern part of California were investigating the upper 
regions of the atmosphere, and to a certain extent they have come 
to this conclusion, at least in part and in degree. 
 
15. That Darwinism and Haeckelism are inadequate to explain 
and account for the mass of biological phenomena ; and neither 
Darwin's " Natural Selection " nor Spencer's " Survival of the 
Fittest ", are other than minor or secondary operations of Nature ; 
that " transformism " as taught by the modern speculative 
scientist is not Evolution which is what the Ancient Wisdom 
does teach and is both uncertain as a theory because purely 
speculative, and unscientific because as a theory it is based on 
data too few ; therefore it is incomplete and insufficient. 
 
We all know what remarkable changes have taken place in tha 
theories of the Transformists even since H. P. Blavatsky died. 
 
And lastly (16) : That all things and operations in the Kosmos 
are relative, not absolute, in nature ; there being no " absolutes " 
except in the sense of relativity of relationships ; our teachings 
thus anticipating the fundamental concept of Dr. Albert Einstein 
on this point. 
 
At our next meeting, we shall take up the study of the atom. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXVIII
 
THE ADVENTURE QF AN ATOM. LAYA-CENTERS : SUN, COMETS, 
AND PLANETS I SOUL AND MONAD. THE KEYNOTE OF 
OCCULTISM. 
 
The Occult Science is not one in which secrets can be communicated of a 
sudden, by a written or even verbal communication. If so, all the " Brothers " 
should have to do, would be to publish a Handbook of the art which might be 
taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake of people that we 
willingly wrap ourselves and our powers in mystery that we wish to keep our 
knowledge to ourselves, and of our own will refuse "wantonly and deliberately " 
to communicate it. The truth is that till the neophyte attains to the condition 
necessary for that degree of Illumination to which, and for which, he is entitled 
and fitted, most if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity 
must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within. 
Till then no hocus-pocus of incantations or mummery of appliances, no meta- 
physical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these 
are but means to an end, and all we can do is to direct the use of such means 
as have been empirically found by the experience of ages to conduce to the 
required object. And this was and has been no secret for thousands of years. 
 
The Mahatma Letters, pp. 282-3. 
 
ET us open our study this evening by reading an extract 
from Volume I of The Secret Doctrine, page 567, as follows : 
As to the " elemental atoms," so called, the Occultists refer to 
them by that name with a meaning analogous to that which 
is given by the Hindu to Brahm& when he calls him ANU, the " Atom." 
Every elemental atom ... is ... a SOUL ; not necessarily a disem- 
bodied soul, but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL 
VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound 
Souls an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest 
order, a form composed of more or less differentiations. 
 
Majestic, sublime, are the thoughts involved in the study which 
we begin this evening. It ought to be said, perhaps, by way of 
preface, that the frequent interruptions of our studies necessitated 
by circumstances, have prevented us before from entering upon 
this new departure in our studies ; and unless the Teacher, the 
Outer Head, so instructs us explicitly, we shall not, except by 
inference, embark upon our present line of thought more fully 
than we shall do this evening, until she informs us that our studies 
can be continued more definitely. And why ? Because from 
immemorial time our School has set apart a certain portion of the 
year, at certain specified times, of never less than three months, in 
which the studies were pursued daily for hours at a time, with 
intervals of rest ; and these were called periods of initiation. The 
reason for this method was that frequent interruptions, the inroad 
 
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or ingress into the thought of daily occupations, so distracted the 
mind, so tore it away from the higher nature, that it could not 
successfully meet and understand the things which it was then 
supposed to undertake and to try to comprehend. 
 
But doing the best we can, we shall begin this evening, very 
shortly, to undertake a study of the atom, and of what H. P. 
Blavatsky calls its " adventures ", by referring to collateral and 
almost identical subjects : the laya-centers, the sun and planets 
and comets, and the soul and the monad by contrast with the 
above. 
 
As we read in The Secret Doctrine this evening, an atom is a 
soul. A soul is an entity which is evolved by experiences ; it is 
not a spirit, it is a vehicle of the spirit. It manifests in matter 
through and by being a substantial portion of the lower essence of 
the spirit. Touching another plane below it, or it may be above 
it, the point of union allowing ingress and egress to the conscious- 
ness is a laya-center. A laya-center is, therefore, a center in 
" homogeneous " substance. It will be remembered that in a 
former study, we derived this word " laya " from the Sanskrit 
word It, meaning to dissolve. The word " Pralaya " comes from 
the same root, as follows : laya is the noun-form from the root /, 
with a prepositional prefix pra, meaning towards, forwards, hence 
continuous. In other words, " pralaya " means continuous 
dissolution. A laya-center is that part of an entity, of an atom, 
which, as said, being relatively homogeneous substance, matter 
" dissolved " into homogeneity, allows ingress and egress for 
passing consciousness and consciousnesses. 
 
Let us take the laya-center as manifested in the sun. The sun 
at its core is a laya-center. Each planet likewise has at its central 
point, and is in its central point, a laya-center ; each comet is in 
building around a laya-center, its heart or core. Dimensions or 
positions in space have nothing to do with it, because a laya- 
center is not of a physical and material nature. It is the dis- 
appearing-point for all things below it, and the entering-point for 
all things above it, for any one particular entity, be it an atom, 
a sun, a planet, a human being. 
 
The sun, as we see it, is a reflexion, as we have often before said. 
Suppose that we call it a veil, which is perhaps a better word, 
though reflexion is just as good, because it actually is a reflexion 
the sun we see, that is. What do we see when we look at the sun ? 
We see a titanic splendor. That is a reflexion. The sun itself, its 
core, could be held in the palm of your hand, and I mean the part 
of the sun which is behind that splendorous reflexion. That part 
which could be held in the palm of your hand is itself of the 
seventh or highest stage of the lowest prakriti-stage, a particle of 
matter-substance of the lowest cosmic grade, the prakriti. The 
 
 
 


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splendor that we see is the aura of that laya-center, its aura or 
emanations, and these emanations are forces. The sun is a body 
of unimaginable forces springing from, pouring down through, 
this laya-center, from the true sun which is behind the outer veil. 
And the golden disk that we see is but the auric manifestation to 
our physical eyes on this plane of the true sun, pouring through 
the sun at the center of the visible orb. 
 
So it is in a human being. There is a center in his nature 
through which pour the forces from above, and through which 
he himself ascends higher ; and that center is the laya-center of 
his inner nature. 
 
In speaking of the Monad, we must not confuse it with the 
laya-center. A laya-center is the channel, the point, the dis- 
appearing-point, the neutral center, in matter or substance, 
through which consciousness passes and the center of that 
consciousness is the monad. For the present moment we need 
not pause to consider on what plane the monad is acting ; on any 
plane on which it may be acting when it passes from one plane of 
consciousness to another it does so through a laya-center. It will 
be remembered that in our last study or two we pointed out the 
parallelisms running in nature, such as matter and spirit- 
consciousness. Please remember that these words are used 
generalizingly, not defining any particular matter or any par- 
ticular spirit, but only to show, on the one hand, the mass of 
kosmic substance acted upon by the great forces above it, who are 
the beings of life, the hierarchies of universal nature ; and in this 
kosmic body, in this kosmic substance, there are innumerable 
laya-centers, because they are really the " critical points ", the 
translation-stages, by which as individuals we gain access to our 
Higher Self, and by which the divine and spiritual forces entering 
into us from above, pass. The sun is the vital focus of its system, 
outside of other activities far greater still ; but the physical sun is 
that something which we can see with our physical eyes ; and 
further it is a thing of matter, although it is in the sixth degree of 
our stage of Prakriti, counting upwards, the Buddhic stage of the 
lowest prakriti. But the true sun, the spiritual sun, is that divine 
being behind the sun, an entity, a god. The physical sun is its 
body or garment. Just as in ourselves our Higher Nature is a 
god, a divine spark, and that divine spark is a monad. The soul in 
contradistinction with the monad, as pointed out in former 
studies, is its vehicle for manifestation on any one plane. It 
really means vehicle. The spirit manifests in seven vehicles, and 
each one of these vehicles is a soul ; and that particular point 
through which the divine influence passes in the soul is the 
laya-center, and it is, so to say, the heart of the soul, or rather the 
summit thereof homogeneous soul-substance, if you like. 
 
 
 
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It is very necessary to have these preliminary conceptions clear 
and definitely outlined in our minds. The mysteries behind these 
words are sublime, unimaginably beautiful ; but we cannot 
understand them properly without knowing the words which we 
use, and how we use them, and the implications of thought which 
are involved in them when we use them. 
 
All the sectarian departures from the great foundation- 
religions of antiquity have grown out of the lack of following 
that one rule. Understand your terms and use them rightly. 
Disputes have arisen about the meaning of terms, due perhaps to 
the fact that in the origin of any particular religion, those terms 
were not defined in such clever and appropriate manner that later 
dogmatists could not fasten upon them in order to misuse them. 
 
It is actually a most difficult problem. We are always between 
the " devil and the deep sea ". On the one hand we have the 
people who will insist upon literalisms, such as " Pythagoras, the 
Master, said so ". A beautiful sense of loyalty to the Teacher in 
some cases, perhaps ; but see how it can be misused by the would- 
be dogmatists, who insist on taking the letter and losing the 
spirit I And, on the other hand, there are those who think that the 
letter has no importance, which is likewise wrong ; this class thinks 
that they have the spirit and they try to force the letter to conform 
to their conceptions of what the Master taught, or the Masters 
taught, Pythagoras or any other. 
 
So it is necessary that we have these and other similar words 
clearly outlined in our minds. When we undertake the study of 
the atom we embark upon new and vast fields of consciousness, 
and pass in our minds over to other planes ; and our only 
salvation is, as H. P. Blavatsky has told us time and time again, 
to cling like grim death to the fundamental principles of her 
teachings which are the Masters' teachings. We cannot so cling 
unless we know exactly to what we should cling. If we were to say 
that an atom is a god, we would say wrongly. If we were to say 
that the atom contains a god, we should speak only partly rightly. 
If we were to say that the atom manifests a god, we approach a 
step nearer to the truth. 
 
Now comes another thought. What do we mean by atom ? Do 
we mean a kosmical atom, an astral atom, a psychical atom, a 
Buddhic atom, an atmic atom ? Our studies of Theosophy show 
us that all these atoms are variously " souls ", existent on divers 
planes, in various degrees of consciousness ; and we realize then 
that the atom in its essence, in its inmost of its inmost, is a monad, 
a divine spark, a being from former manvantaras, which monad 
has " learned its lessons " so fully that it needs to learn nothing 
more in this manvantara. But it is trailed by a train of skandhas, 
resident in the life-atoms, and which are karmic impressions. 
 
 
 


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These life-atoms are inferior beings, trailing after it, making up 
its bodies, so to say, as certain elements make up our bodies, 
beings for which it is responsible because it affected them in former 
kalpas, former manvantaras, former life-cycles : responsible for 
them because it has soiled them in some instances, and in other 
instances it has cleansed them from the soil. 
 
What are these inferior things that follow in the track of a 
monad ? They are parts of its being, thoughts of its thought, 
children of its soul, offspring of its heart. Sublime thought, in 
which we have the secret of manifestation in the universe, and 
also the secret of the Hierarchy of Compassion ; the secret why 
one-half of nature is what we call matter, crystallized and so-called 
inert ; and why the other half of nature is will and consciousness, 
intelligence and love, understanding and life. And these two 
opposites work eternally together during the manvantaras. At 
every moment in Space and Time, units of this train of inferior 
things, themselves reach comprehension and understanding, and 
pass through their particular laya-center into spheres above 
themselves having meanwhile developed or evolved other inferior 
beings trailing after them. 
 
The processes of kosmic life and evolution are outlined in what 
has just been said. So that when we use H. P. Blavatsky's 
expression and speak of the " adventures of an atom ", we obtain 
some glimpse of the study now before us. Do you realize (I dare 
say you do) that under the Teacher's instruction, in the studies 
which we have followed as faithfully as we have been able to do so, 
there has been laid down the outline, at least the skeleton-frame- 
work, of a system of philosophy entire and complete, so majestic 
in its reaches, so wide in its subject, having such grandeur in its 
possibilities, such profundity in its inmost nature, that nothing 
like it is known in the exoteric literature of the world today ? 
This we have accomplished. Even the magnificent systems of 
exoteric philosophy of the Orient and the best efforts of European 
philosophy which, by the way, are mostly mere verbiage cannot 
compare with it. Their light is as a mere rushlight before the 
blaze of the noonday sun, when we compare them with the 
Esoteric System. 
 
And why is this so ? Because we have outlined the teachings 
of the gods, the teachings formerly taught in the ancient Mystery- 
Schools. Nor have they been more than hinted at. We have not 
said the one-thousandth part of what remains to be said, if it is 
the will and the intention of the Teacher for us to develop these 
noble themes. And mind you, what could be said in our studies 
to come, is not, either in extent or in scope, what could be said, if 
the Teacher so willed, in what we may call strictly esoteric 
meetings. The Teacher has told us that these studies shall some 
 
 
 
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day go to other students of our School. We have been obliged, not 
only by the Teacher's explicit orders, but by the voice of our 
own conscience, to tell, to set forth, to bring together, these ancient 
thoughts of the Mystery-Schools in such fashion that you who are 
members can understand and follow them with comparative ease ; 
and yet if the transcript of what is here said fell into the hands 
of an outsider, he would merely read what might to him be an 
interesting expose of philosophical thought, and perhaps no more. 
If the Teacher should so instruct us to speak on deeper themes 
and this is not for me to say but if the Teacher should so will it 
that we, or some of us, might undertake a study of what we might 
call the life in the heart of our teachings, we should there find 
keys of thought brilliantly illuminating our understanding. 
 
Seven are the keys, our first Teacher has told us, which open 
wide the portals of the Ancient Wisdom. These seven keys we 
have touched but lightly, of necessity lightly, in our allusions to 
the seven Treasuries of Wisdom. In one or another of these seven 
Treasuries, or in one or another of these seven Jewels, lies every 
department of human thought, every thought that human mind 
can give birth to. These seven Treasuries were given and 
explained to the ancient races by members of the Hierarchy of 
Compassion, and by their pupils, and they have been passed down 
to us. But remember that these seven Treasuries, as we have 
already said very plainly, under the names they go by, are mere 
key-words, catch-words, reminding-terms. Beautifully was it said 
by one or more of our Comrades, at a former meeting and it 
showed at least that those Comrades had grasped the heart 
of our thought these sublime ideas make a man " feel at home 
in any part of the universe ". It warms one's heart to hear this, 
because all of you who have heard and understood what the 
Teacher has permitted us to study here together, will have felt 
that this is the very keynote of Occultism, the being one with 
the Universal Life, " at home everywhere ". Occultism is the 
exposition of the essence of life, of the essence of being, and of the 
essence of living. Let us never confuse it with the so-called 
" occult arts ", arts which are strictly forbidden to us as students 
of this School. The Brothers of the Shadow lead on their helpless 
victims with the occult arts, enticing them thereby, and their end 
is non-entity. But our Masters, our Teachers, have told us 
plainly : first learn discipline, first learn the Law. Then the 
powers which you may crave, you will crave only as spiritual 
powers, and only to give yourself and them to others. In the 
Path, our Path, the so-called " occult arts " drop away even from 
the imagination, because their deluding enticements and their 
allurements are clearly seen. I do not imagine for a moment that 
any one of us here needs to be reminded of this, but there are 
 
 
 


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other reasons for saying it, because, as has often been mentioned, 
these studies shall go out to others who know perhaps less than 
we do. They are our brothers and sisters in our divine mission, and 
they need the help which we can give them, and it is our duty to 
warn them. 
 
Our present Teacher, perhaps even more than were the two 
preceding ones, Has been insistent upon the necessity of first 
learning the Law and the learning of the Law means the 
development of the spiritual nature ; and it is the royal road, the 
royal union. Having it, you have everything in the universe ; 
boundless knowledge, for instance, and the powers commensurate 
with it then will come naturally ; but any attempt to cultivate 
them prematurely, any mere longing for them, will pull you down 
as surely as the sun will rise over the eastern horizon tomorrow 
morning ; because it is the personal coloring of the mind, it is 
the personal wish, it is desire and appetite for power and novelty 
that want these things. The divine-human entity, the Buddha, 
the member of the Hierarchy of Compassion by divine right, 
knows these things and wants them not, for he has passed far 
beyond them. The constant urge with him is to go above matter, 
to cleanse the heart from soil, to cast off the garments of the 
mortal man and to put on the robes of immortality which, in fact, 
inwardly are yours already, awaiting simply for each individual 
to recognise them, and to become, as the ancient Egyptian 
expressed it, a " son of the Sun ", a holy initiate. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXIX
 
SPACE : THE BOUNDLESS ALL. INFILLED WITH INTERLOCKING, 
INTERPENETRATING UNIVERSES. ONE ACTION, ONE HIER- 
ARCHICAL INTELLIGENCE, ONE COURSE OF OPERATION 
THROUGHOUT NATURE I ONE ORGANISM, ONE UNIVERSAL 
LIFE. 
 
Either an ordered universe, or else a welter of confusion. Assuredly then, a 
world-order. Or think you that order subsisting within yourself is compatible 
with disorder in the All ? And that too when all things, however distributed 
and diffused, are affected sympathetically. 
 
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself, IV, 27 (KENDALL). 
 
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and 
one soul ; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the 
perception of this one living being ; and how all things act with one movement ; 
and how all things are the co-operating causes of all things which exist ; observe 
too the continuous spinning of the thread and contexture of the web. 
 
Ibid., IV, 40 (LONG). 
 
IN continuing our study this evening, the Teacher asks me 
once more to introduce our subject by calling attention to 
the fact that the teachings of Occultism are based on a 
foundation of ethics and morals ; and, as has so often been 
said, there is the distinction which marks the division-line, as it 
were, between the Hierarchies on the one side, the ascending, or 
Luminous Arc, and those Hierarchies on the other side, the 
Shadowy Arc, or those beings and intelligences which are descend- 
ing into matter for the experience needed in order to enable them 
to take their march on the upward rise. Morals and ethics lie at 
the basis of our own Order. 
 
Ethics is not a subject which is disputable, as between men ; 
only the forms of ethics are ; but the fundamental principles of 
right as contrasted with wrong, of duty as contrasted with selfish- 
ness, of the joy of renunciation and self-abnegation, as contrasted 
with the shrivelling influence of the opposite theories of being 
and there are many in the world in these lies the distinction 
between the Sons of Light and the Children of the Shadow. 
 
It will be remembered that our subject in closing our last series 
of studies was the inauguration of an exposition, as best we could 
set it forth, of the teachings imbodied in the word " atom ". Mark 
first, please, that this does not mean the atom of science. The 
" atom of science " is a more or less clear conception of funda- 
mental material particles which has arisen in the minds of 
scientists in an attempt to explain the phenomena of physical 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 329
 
nature as those phenomena have been studied during the last 
hundred years or so ; and the scientific doctrines concerning the 
atom are based, furthermore, largely on misunderstood teachings 
of certain Greek philosophers. 
 
But if we understand the atom as the doctrine concerning it is 
imbodied in the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, we shall find 
that it is an intelligence and a living being of its kind. Let us then 
open our studies this evening by reading from The Secret Doctrine, 
Volume I, pages 107 and 106 ; from page 107 first : 
 
. . . every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-con- 
sciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself 
and for itself. It is an atom and an angel. 
 
Not a Christian angel ; not a being with wings, etc., but a 
spiritual intelligence. Then from page 106 : 
 
The doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious 
god, aye, even the highest the Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES 
must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this 
does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals 
that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached 
the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now, 
since the middle point of the Fourth Root-Race of the Fourth Round 
was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming 
divine, through self-experience. 
 
These words " self-experience " comprise the thought which our 
present Teacher so frequently emphasises in her instructions to 
us self -directed evolution, a doctrine imbodying the necessity of 
using our spiritual will and our spiritual intelligence for noble and 
altruistic and impersonal aims. Let us say here again that for 
man there is always a choice of paths : the right-hand, the 
Luminous Arc, upward and upward for ever ; and the left-hand, 
the Shadowy Arc, leading down into those spheres concerning 
which we have knowledge, of course, and of which we have already 
several times spoken in these our present meetings, but of which 
the Teacher has not as yet allowed us to say very much in our 
present exposition. That permission may come some day. 
 
Further explaining our present study, be it noted that this term 
or word " atom " is really a " catch- word ". We say " atom ", 
but we actually mean a multitude of thoughts connected with 
cosmogony and evolution. For instance, Gods, Monads, Souls, 
Atoms, are words jointly and separately involved in profound 
doctrines explaining cosmogonical and evolutionary processes. 
And connected therewith very closely is what is called in Occultism 
the " laya-center ", to which we have briefly alluded in former 
studies. In Part III of this volume of The Secret Doctrine, H. P. 
 
 
 
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Blavatsky, in section 15, devotes one of the most beautiful parts 
of her great work to developing the doctrines comprised in what 
she called " Gods, Monads, and Atoms ". 
 
Please understand first, that in these studies, questions of 
spirituality, ethics, religion, are deeply involved. They go to the 
very foundation of our being. They are not mere questions of 
brain-mind disputation, nor mere mental exercises in clever speak- 
ing. These teachings lead directly to the setting of our feet on the 
path of the Luminous Arc ; and we who belong to this Order, and 
have had the benefit already of three Teachers teaching the same 
doctrine, should have some realization, at least, that if there is one 
primal aim and object towards which we look, it is to become more 
fully, more heartfeltly, one with that glorious army of which our 
own Masters are the outer vanguard, as it were, and of which our 
present Teacher is their representative to us. 
 
Now what do we mean by Space ? Look into the dictionary and 
you will find the following definition, probably : " The general 
receptacle of things ". This is a definition of Space which we 
reject. Scholars talk about " infinite space ", and yet call Space 
a " receptacle " a curious commentary upon the loose thinking 
of our age. Obviously, if it is a receptacle it is a finite thing : and 
besides that, the definition entirely misses the heart-meaning of 
the word Space. Understand what we mean by Space, and we 
have a key by which to open much of the nobler teachings hid 
deeply in the elementary studies. Space, as understood in our own 
school of true Occultism, means that all that is is a fullness, perfect 
and continuous absolutely, endless and beginningless ; not a mere 
receptacle, not a mere container, nothing finite ; but the Bound- 
less ALL. Further, Space Is ; it is not merely on or in one plane, 
but on and in seven planes, the seven kosmic planes of our Uni- 
verse, besides penetrating inwards infinitely, endlessly ; and also 
outwardly endlessly. It is the infinite Pleroma of the Greeks, the 
Greek word Pleroma meaning Fullness. 
 
Now, obviously, everything that is, is a part of Space. Space 
not being a mere container, an abstraction of the mind, or a mere 
receptacle, shows why H. P. Blavatsky in her teachings speaks of 
the only " God " we recognise as THAT using the word of the old 
Vedas i.e., Space, the Boundless ALL. This All obviously con- 
tains all things, everything that is ; as shown before in our study 
of that wonderful doctrine of Hierarchies, which is the third of the 
seven " Jewels " or " Treasuries " of Wisdom, which we have 
briefly studied before. Space is infilled with an infinite multitude 
of self-contained universes, interlocking and interpenetrating each 
other. These universes, again, are themselves infilled with end- 
lessly multitudinous beings of all and various kinds, the high and 
the low, the inner and the outer. We cannot say " the highest " 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 331
 
and " the lowest ", because that form of expression would imply ^ 
limits or bounds, frontiers, and Space is limitless. Only within the* 
confines or boundaries of any one universe or Hierarchy may we 
use the superlative form of these adjectives, and say the highest or 
the lowest. 
 
Now, take any one universe or Hierarchy as an instance of the 
general rule. Any universe is infilled with beings finding their 
origin and taking their rise in the Summit, the Acme, the Seed in 
another sense, which is, so to say, the god of that Hierarchy ; and 
this god, at the beginning of any period of manifestation, this 
spiritual, elementary Being, casts off from itself, or throws forth 
from itself, evolves from itself, brings out from itself, a multi- 
tudinous series of hierarchies consisting of less or inferior beings ; 
beings less in spirituality and dignity than itself. They are, as it 
were, the thoughts that the God or " Kosmic Primal Thinker " 
thinks. Take the instance of a thinking human being, as an 
analogy. He thinks thoughts. Each thought has its own life, each 
thought has its own essence, each has its own course to run. Each 
thought is based on a particular vibration, as it were, using words 
common to our understanding to-day. Each has its own particular 
swabhava or intrinsic essential nature, which is its individuality. 
 
So this Summit of the Hierarchy " thinks thoughts ". Now 
I do not mean to say that this Summit is a human being or a god- 
being, which thinks thoughts as we do. The figure here used is 
an analogy only. As a man thinks thoughts, and thus fills his 
atmosphere around him with these living beings, these winged 
messengers called thoughts, so the Primordial Elementary Being, 
the Summit, the Seed, the First to issue forth from the bosom of 
the infinite Mother, casts forth from itself these parts of itself ; 
these monadic aggregations, these kosmic " thoughts ". 
 
And what are these first emanations ? They are what the 
Ancient Wisdom called the gods. And these gods in their turn 
send forth from themselves other multitudinous series of beings, 
less than they less in dignity, less in grandeur, less in under- 
standing. And these secondary emanations or evolutions are the 
monads. And these monads, as they pursue their way down the 
Shadowy Arc, in the beginning of a manvantara, in their turn cast 
forth from themselves, in identically the same way and on the 
same line of action, other entities, less than they, forming still 
more outward Hierarchies, more material intelligences ; and these 
tertiary emanations are the souls. And the souls, as they pursue 
their way down, exactly as their higher progenitors did, cast forth 
from themselves, think forth from themselves, send forth from 
themselves, evolve forth from themselves, beings still less in 
wisdom and spirituality and dignity and power than they. And 
these are the atoms but not the physical atom. Let us cast that 
 
 
 
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idea out of our minds instantly. The atoms of physical science are 
really molecular aggregations of atomic elements only, existing on 
the borderland of the astral plane. 
 
The time will come when we shall set forth more clearly than we 
have time to do tonight, the relation of the atom to the phe- 
nomenal physical world. What we need to do this evening in the 
introductory study now in hand, is to show one action, one 
Hierarchical Intelligence, one course of operation, throughout 
Nature. Please remember that these operations of Nature are what 
the scientists and Christian theologians, in their ignorance, call 
the " laws of Nature ". Now there are no " laws of Nature ", as 
we have set forth and explained before. There are no mechani- 
cally acting " laws ", so-called, because there are no law-givers : 
consequently there are no such "natural laws". But there are 
operations of Nature, and these operations of Nature are what our 
thinkers see, and from lack of understanding the Ancient Wisdom, 
and perhaps from lack of properly descriptive words, they follow 
the analogy of human operations, and say the " laws of Nature ". 
 
But they are the spiritually automatic operations of Beings in 
that vast aggregate of entities and intelligences, which is called the 
Universe, which is but one of infinite multitudes of others in Space. 
All that is, is one vast organism. There is no void and no empti- 
ness anywhere all is infilled and is one boundless fullness. If we 
can fix that thought in our minds, and think of ourselves as linked 
in a chain of beings, an endless chain what Homer called the 
" golden chain " we shall realize the force, the philosophical pro- 
fundity, and the deep meaning of what our teachings set forth 
when they speak of " Universal Brotherhood " the fundamental 
unity of all that is. Every one of us has in himself the potentiality 
of becoming a god, and of advancing from godhood still higher 
into what is now to us inexpressible spheres of divinity. But it 
depends upon ourselves. At each instant the choice lies before us : 
the path to the " right hand ", and the path to the " left hand ", 
adopting the old Buddhist nomenclature. 
 
These two arcs, the Shadowy Arc, the Arc of Matter ; and the 
Luminous Arc, or the Arc of Light, or of Spirit, exemplify in those 
two phrases the duality of nature in manifestation ; and the beings 
on the Luminous Arc are what our own Teachers call the Dhyani- 
Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contemplation, those who once in long 
past kalpas were men as we are now, human beings. The other 
Arc contains the hierarchies which are " descending into matter " 
in order to learn the lessons that we of this kalpa have learned 
in the past ; as the Dhyani-Buddhas, the Sons of Light, did, long, 
long aeons agone, but who now are the Summit of the Buddhic 
Hierarchy of which we in this Order at present form a part, if our 
hearts are sincere and our souls are strong. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 333
 
The beauty and the splendor of these teachings fill the soul with 
awe. It needs but the proper comprehension of them, so firmly to 
fix the mind and the soul to the eternal Truth that nothing will 
ever shake them in future. Ay, if we can but see, there lies un- 
folded the Great Mystery of evolution. Those who have advanced 
along the path have left their records behind them ; and there 
they stand, those glorious entities, armies of them ; the lowest are 
those just beyond us, the chelas, and then higher still are the 
Masters, and the Masters of the Masters ; and then the Chohans ; 
and the Maha-Chohans ; and then the Dhyani-Chohans ; and then 
the DhySni-Buddhas ; and thus endlessly, on and up ; for infinity 
is limitless and endless. And this process of hierarchical develop- 
ment has been going on from eternity in the past, and will con- 
tinue into eternity in the future. 
 
The reason why men, perhaps some even of our own Order, find 
it difficult to accept this sublime teaching is the fact that their 
minds are so full of other thoughts that it is difficult for them to 
drive in and find place and fix in their memory these sublime 
truths. Men will not willingly give up their prejudices ; they 
break not willingly their mind-molds. How many of us, as the 
Teacher has told me, how many of us come to a meeting like this, 
with minds made up on what we " know to be the truth ", be- 
cause, forsooth, we have so read it somewhere, and our minds are 
crystallized in that setting. I speak of no one in particular ; my 
mind is running back into memories of the past and of other 
Comrades with whom I have spoken. I know what they felt ; and 
I know how difficult it is for each one of us, for every one of us, to 
keep the mind always free and plastic, always ready to accept the 
truth, no matter what our own prejudices, religious, philosophic, 
or scientific, may be. I have seen those Comrades come into a 
meeting in a critical spirit, forgetting that the critic is not the wise 
man. The critic unconsciously to himself sees his own littleness ; 
the wise man, the man who knows, will say rather " I will think, 
I will examine this that the Teacher has given me, or allows me to 
hear. This is an opportunity ; I will not reject it because it seems 
difficult for me to believe, or because I have read that H. P. 
Blavatsky at such a passage said so and so ". Remember what 
the present speaker was authorized to say at some former meet- 
ing : pray do not take any one passage of H. P. Blavatsky 's or 
Katherine Tingley's or William Q. Judge's, and build an iron wall 
of prejudice about it, because you think you have understood it. 
Keep the mind fluid and open and plastic ; hold fast to that which 
your soul, your conscience, tells you is good ; and, if necessary, 
wait I Thebes was not builded in a day ; and in our Sublime Work, 
the noblest that ever man had to do, we, the true " Masons of the 
Ancient Order " if there ever was one, are building the " Guardian 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Wall ". We cannot afford to fail through prejudices, our own 
prejudices. Look within, know yourselves. If you fail within the 
ranks, the work is not merely harder for those who remain, and 
doubly hard for the Teacher ; but there is the loss to ourselves, 
to each one of us. 
 
I could tell you stories, if it were permissible and it is not of 
my own experiences, of my own life, that of the present speaker 
who is here but an impersonal voice ; but I cannot do this : it 
would be importing into this meeting something which I am not 
authorized to do ; and I merely bring it to your attention in order 
to show you that I at least for one realize that the Teacher was 
wise in asking this voice to bring it to your attention and for your 
consideration. Keep then your minds open : hold to that which 
is good ; wait, and trust. 
 
Before concluding, there is one thing to which the Teacher asks 
me to devote three minutes ; it is a question which must have 
arisen in every thoughtful theosophical mind, and it has been 
thusly phrased by a Comrade : "If every one is under the 
guidance of the Dhyani-Chohans, how does it happen that, as 
H. P. Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 412, 
end of the second paragraph, ' cruelty, blunders, and but too- 
evident injustice ', are to be found in Nature ? And H. P. 
Blavatsky quotes the saying that Nature is a ' comely mother 
but stone cold ' ". 
 
This question involves more than could properly be answered 
in three minutes, but the principles upon which this thoughtful 
question has been based are very simple indeed. In the first place, 
the Dhyani-Chohans do not " guide Nature " ; not any more than 
man's inner Dhyani-Chohan guides the circulation of his blood, or 
the processes of his own digestion. Those things belong to the 
lower spheres of Nature. There is a Dhyani-Chohan at the head 
of every department of Nature ; but direct interference, the old 
theological idea of an Almighty God interfering with the mess he 
has himself created, is not accepted in our teachings. The Dhyani- 
Chohans do not " guide " the material processes of Nature. They 
are the summit of the Hierarchy and form the " laws " according 
to which Nature works ; but every entity, every monad, every 
atom, every soul, has the power of free will and choice, in more or 
less limited degree, depending upon its intelligence, and must 
exercise it or go down. And there is the key, the answer to the 
question. Man does not control by his thought the beating of his 
heart or the processes of his digestion, or the time it takes him to 
grow from babyhood to youth, from youth to manhood, and from 
manhood to sink into decrepitude. Those things are ruled by what 
are properly called the " nature-forces " ; and the " laws " upon 
which the nature-forces work, are those superior operations which 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 335
 
represent the automatic spiritual activities of the Dhy&ni-Chohans ; 
but to say that they " guide " Nature is untrue ; the idea is a relic 
of the old theological Christian dogmas, which remains in our 
minds ; and we must wash our intellects clean of such thoughts if 
we wish to understand the heart, the essence, of the ancient teach- 
ings, which show one organism, one universal life, in diversified 
action everywhere! And in this one organism, in this one beating 
heart, in this one universal life, there are these multitudinous and 
countless and endless and infinite series of intelligences, each 
working out its own destiny from inward impulses, controlled by 
various higher entities in which they " move, and live, and have 
their being". 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXX
 
THE INTERRELATION OF GODS, MONADS, ATOMS A KEY TO 
THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. SUCCESSIVE EMANATIONS : 
SHEATHS. HIGHER BEINGS EMANATING AND CLOTHING THEM- 
SELVES IN HOSTS OF LOWER BEINGS. MORALITY BASED ON 
THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
But the other medium, which is suspended from the Gods, though it is far 
inferior to them, is that of daemons, which is not of a primarily operative nature, 
but is subservient to, and follows the beneficent will of the Gods. It likewise 
unfolds into energy the invisible good of the Gods, being itself assimilated to it, 
and gives completion to its fabrications conformably to it. For it renders that 
which is ineffable in the good of the Gods effable, illuminates that which is 
formless in forms, and produces into visible reasons (or productive forms) that 
which in divine good is above all reason. Receiving also a connascent participa- 
tion of things beautiful, it imparts and transfers it, in unenvying abundance, 
to the genera posterior to itself. These middle genera, therefore, give completion 
to the common bond of the Gods and souls, and cause the connexion of them to 
be indissoluble. They also bind together the one continuity of things from on 
high as far as to the end ; make the communion of wholes to be inseparable ; 
cause all things to have the best, and a commensurate mixture ; in a certain 
respect, equally transmit the progression from more excellent to inferior natures, 
and the elevation from things posterior to such as are prior ; insert in more 
imperfect beings order and measures of the communication which descends from 
more excellent natures, and of that by which it is received ; and make all things 
to be familiar and coadapted to all, supernally receiving the causes of all these 
from the Gods. 
 
lamblichus on The Mysteries, pp. 32-33. 
 
TO " keep alive in man his spiritual intuitions ", describes 
very well the work of the Theosophical Society in the 
outside world, and also in our own holy Order here. 
But beyond that fine thought we must go if we are to 
understand and fully to put the teachings, which have been given 
us in trust, into our lives, and thereby to develop the moral, the 
ethical, sense which these teachings are first and foremost meant 
to develop and to make living in us, if we are to carry out the 
purpose and aim set before us by those who have brought us 
together into this Order. 
 
Our present Teacher time and again has insisted upon the fact 
that mere disquisitions on philosophic, religious, and scientific 
subjects, impart nothing of permanent worth, are fruitless, bear 
no fruit, unless the spirit of the Lodge is behind them ; and that 
Lodge-spirit cannot exist without the spiritual intuitions which 
exist in the core, in the central part, of every human being. You 
will notice that the entire tendency of our studies has been to 
develop the higher nature of us ; and you know that these studies 
have been strictly laid down for us first by H. P. Blavatsky, as 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 337
 
she derived them from her Teachers, and as carried on thereafter 
by William Quan Judge, and now by our own present beloved 
Teacher. 
 
These teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, now being given to 
the students of this Body, have stood, and will stand the test of 
time and of the human heart. Here is a fact, surely, for which we 
may give heartfelt thanks : that here among us at least is pre- 
served the ancient Wisdom in its purity, and that not one of us 
would fail to risk his life, and that which he holds dearest, in order 
to preserve them pure and undefiled. 
 
Now, this evening we are approaching the end of the elementary 
studies which we have been briefly considering for the last two or 
three years ; and soon it will be our duty to take up more concrete 
aspects of the ancient Wisdom, or Wisdom-Religion ; and, in fact, 
we have already approached these more detailed doctrines in our 
present subject gods, monads, souls, atoms, and bodies. The 
necessity for a clear understanding of those former studies, which 
to some may appear somewhat abstract, is this : their reach into 
the realms of human thought as represented by religion, philo- 
sophy, and science, is immense ; they form, as it were, the 
foundation-stones upon which the ancient Wisdom rests. 
 
It will be remembered at our last study in The Secret Doctrine, 
Volume I, page 107, we read the following : " . . . every atom in 
the universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is, 
like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It 
is an atom and an angel " that is, a spiritual being. Let us give 
our utmost attention to what our Teacher has authorized the say- 
ing of, this evening. We are going to speak more plainly on this 
present subject than we have ever spoken before, although these 
matters have been alluded to frequently ; and the reason for it, 
at least one reason for it, is that the proper understanding of the 
doctrine of Evolution of development and growth rests upon a 
correct vision of the real meaning and interrelation of these three : 
gods, monads, and atoms. 
 
First, it will be remembered that in speaking of Space, we 
rejected the idea that Space was merely a container. Now this is 
not a mere abstraction of thought ; it is an absolutely important 
thing to understand that all Being is one immense organism, 
through which beats one Universal Heart, so to say. You see 
there immediately the basis of morals ; there is no absolute empti- 
ness, no absolute vacuum, anywhere ; all beings are closely related 
and interchained in the strongest bonds of union : spiritual, 
divine, intellectual, mental, astral, physical. Nothing can exist 
without all other things ; for the Kosmos, deprived of a single 
atom, would crumble into impalpable dust. No metaphor this ; 
it is an actuality. 
 
 
 
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Now a monad is often spoken of as " descending " into matter. 
This is a fashion of speaking, a method of speech, as once pointed 
out before. The monad itself does not " descend ", no more than 
does a god drive our streetcars or blacken our boots. How, then, 
does the monadic influence extend itself throughout the different 
planes of Nature, so that in ordinary parlance, it is in fact correct 
to speak of the " mineral monad ", of the " afiimal monad ", of 
the " astral monad ", of the " human monad ", of the " spiritual 
monad ", of the " divine monad " ? In the following way : But 
first as an interpolation concerning the monad, let me read 
something that H. P. Blavatsky says (The Secret Doctrine, 
Vol. II, pages 185-6) : 
 
The terms " mineral/' " vegetable " and " animal " monad are meant 
to create a superficial distinction : there is no such thing as a Monad 
(jiva) other than divine, and consequently having been, or having 
to become, human. And the latter term has to remain meaningless 
unless the difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of 
the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the plane of prime- 
val differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower 
condition the adjectives " higher " and " lower " being used for lack 
of better words and a monad it remains at all times, save in the 
Nirv^nic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. 
 
There you have the matter unequivocally stated. 
 
It was pointed out at our last meeting that when the thrill of 
life in the Boundless All first occurs in cyclical duration, the pri- 
mordial beings issue forth as what are called the " gods ", and 
that these gods, as the ages passed, during the progressive man- 
vantaric periods, sent forth from themselves, or cast forth from 
themselves, or cast out from themselves, or gave birth to, less 
beings, less meaning inferior, of less divinity, or less sublimity, less 
grandeur ; and these beings are the monads. In exactly the same 
way the monads sent forth from themselves (or gave birth from 
themselves to) the souls ; and, please understand, just as the 
monad was in the god, so was the soul in the monad. These 
entities remained latent in the monads as karmic fruitage from the 
previous maha-manvantara. Just as the life remains in the seed 
when cast forth from the plant, and sends forth its green blade in 
the spring-time ; so, when the manvantaric thrill passes over these 
spaces, after the long pralayic rest, the gods send forth the monads, 
and the monads send forth the souls, and the souls send forth the 
atoms. And the atoms similarly send forth from themselves our 
vehicles, our bearers, our bodies. 
 
Let us see if we can illustrate this by a diagram. Let us take an 
immense circle to represent the Boundless All, which of course is 
merely a representation for Space ; then place a point in its 
center. This point represents the first germ of the kosmic life. 
 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 339
 
This point also has its meaning in the sense of a kosmic seed. Now 
 
it is not one point only in the Kosmos that springs into activity, 
 
but innumerable such points, such seeds. The number is limitless, 
 
practically ; and each one of such points 
 
represents an individuality from the previous 
 
maha-manvantara. But these points as 
 
represented in ttte diagram are symbols ; 
 
and the one stands diagrammatically for all. 
 
If you please, this point in the quasi-infini- 
 
tude of a hierarchy, of a universe, is the 
 
beginning of that hierarchy, and it represents 
 
the god of that hierarchy. This god 
 
itself is a synthetic aggregation of multitudinous other gods, as 
 
man's body is an aggregation, a synthesis, of multitudinous less 
 
or inferior lives. 
 
Now this god clothes itself in its emanations, in its pranic aura, 
if you like ; it sends forth from itself pranic or vital effluvia, and 
thus it clothes itself in garments, in sheaths of vitality, flowing 
forth from itself, and these sheaths or garments are its " clothing ". 
Any such god naturally casts its own individuality into its sheath, 
into its clothing : seven degrees or states of it ; its individuality 
is its SwabMva, which we have studied before, an important idea 
to which we have drawn your attention, and on which we have 
laid emphasis. The swabhava of an entity is its individuality, the 
characteristic of it, the essentiality of what it is, as contrasted with 
some other swabhava. In ordinary language we may call it 
" individuality ". That which makes a rose bring forth always a 
rose, and not a lily ; that which makes a man bring forth always 
a man and not some other sort of entity ; that which makes a god 
a god and not a monad, is its swabhava. This is a Sanskrit com- 
pound meaning self-generation, self-pouring out, the pouring out of 
that which is within, and, therefore derivatively its individual and 
own characteristic. Please remember in this connexion that 
always more within, infinitely, boundlessly, more within, are the 
vast states of consciousness living on the equally vast fields of the 
spaces of Space ; the possibilities to be evolved in a man's evolu- 
tion, and the eternities through which he has passed, and the lives 
which he has lived through in the past, are endless. 
 
But passing on. This god sends forth its sheaths, and these 
sheaths consist of less (or inferior) beings. If the god is a pri- 
mordial entity let us call these latter primal. As man clothes 
himself in physical flesh, so the god clothes itself in a garment or 
body, and this garment or body is composed, if you like, of atoms 
divine. Now these divine atoms are the monads. Compared with 
the god they are the mere clothing of it, just as the synthesis, the 
aggregation, of physical lives which compose a man's body and 
 
 
 
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which form his. physical " coat of skin " or clothing, are, as it were, 
the physical monads or the atoms, of the man himself. Similarly, 
let us, then, advance a point farther. The germ, the seed, the 
point above mentioned let us now call a monad one of the almost 
infinite number of monads in each god, forming the clothing of 
each god, the sheaths, the garments of light, that in which a god 
lives, which it has sent forth from itself, its outpouring of indi- 
vidual life. 
 
Similarly acts the monad as did its father-god ; and its sheath 
and its clothing are the souls, as yet latent, most of them, but some 
forming the more active part in which it manifests at any one 
particular time. The same course of action occurs with the soul. 
The soul clothes itself in atoms, the emanations from itself and the 
outpouring of its own vitality, its own prana. And then the atoms 
pour forth from themselves the effluvium of physical-astral life, 
and these vital effluvia form the physical body of man, his astral 
body and his physical body. 
 
So you see just what our first great Teacher means by saying that 
an atom is an " atom and an angel " or a soul. Through all these 
hosts of beings streams the flow of the Self, entering into every 
one, forming in fact the very root of its being, not however the 
personalized entity or the ego, but the impersonal Self, that which 
is the same in you and in me ; the same in the inhabitants of dis- 
tant stellar spaces, as it is in us : the one Self, limitless, boundless, 
the ideation of selfhood, Remember that the ego is the sense of 
'-' I am I ", not " you " ; and here immediately the conception of 
personality enters in. But, as our Teachers have told us, it is in 
raising the personality into impersonality, the ego into divinity, 
the corruptible into the Incorruptible, that consists the whole 
effort and purpose and aim of the divine part of evolution ; and 
that divine part, that particular activity, is that of the higher 
range of the Luminous Arc, of the Buddhic Hierarchy, of which 
the summit are the Dhy&ni-Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contem- 
plation ; and the material on which they work is these other 
monads, souls, atoms, which form the matter-side of nature, 
called the Shadowy Arc. 
 
You will remember that all these things have been alluded to 
by us before ; but tonight remember this one important point, 
that the monad does not " descend into matter ". It casts forth 
from itself its life, as the sun pours forth its vitality in rays ; and 
its life manifests first as a monadic entity of inferior grade, as 
a soul ; and the soul in its turn pours forth Us vitality, manifesting 
in almost innumerable atoms. The monad itself is but one of 
innumerable others, emanated, cast forth, breathed forth, if you 
like to use an oriental metaphor, from Brahm&, the god, the summit 
of our Hierarchy. 
 
 
 


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As said, these garments or sheaths of light are those monadic 
entities which must, during the course of evolutionary progress, 
become denser, darker, thickened, with the passage of time, until 
the ultimate result is the last energy, the last expenditure of the 
divine or monadic force as manifested in the physical body. 
When equilibrium between matter and spirit is finally reached, 
when the lowest point in that kalpa, i.e., in that Day of Brahm&, 
in that period of seven Rounds, has been reached, then step in 
upon the scene the Manasaputras, the " Sons of Mind ", entities 
from the Buddhic Hierarchy, from the Luminous Arc of evolving 
Nature, those who had been men before in former kalpas, and 
who have watched over us, under the guidance of the Silent 
Watcher, their supreme Head, ever since our present kalpa or 
manvantara began, aeons ago. 
 
The monad, in one sense, may be called the active god of the 
Hierarchy ; or, in man's especial case, man's divine Ego, sheathed 
in its garments of light composed of inferior monadic entities 
called souls : and the soul may be called an inferior monad, part 
of the sheaths or the garments of the monad proper. These 
respective garments are cast forth, somewhat as the tree puts 
forth its leaves, its branches, its stems, its fruits. Similarly the 
atoms are born from the pranic or vital essence of the souls, and 
they form our bodies. So we see that every man, in his inmost 
essence that is, inmost for the Hierarchy to which he belongs 
is a divine being, a god ; and his spiritual nature is the monad ; 
and his soul-nature is the ego, that particular entity hovering 
between the pit and the sun, which must be raised from personality 
into impersonality, from corruptibility into Incorruptibility ; 
because in the soul resides that particular part of the psycho- 
logical processes of intellection, which makes a man self-conscious, 
a s^/-conscious being, capable of the ideation of individualized 
being, 
 
Oh, what wonderful thoughts are these ! How they do uplift 
the soul ! Man feels his native divinity, his interior spiritual 
strength ; he feels the power of divinity within his own heart, 
the power for goodness and truth. And how small, how in- 
significant, how unworthy, seem those things that lie apart from 
the path of duty, of right I 
 
How many have been hungry for truth, and have searched for 
it, and yet have found only the husks of a pseudo-esotericism ? 
But they also should have it. Human beings, they have a right 
to it ; but they are not going to get it unless they " work for it ", 
the Teacher calls out to me to say, for such is the archaic Law of 
our Holy Order. The case is exactly as was pointed out in* a 
former one of our study-meetings in this group : these teachings 
have formed the reward, the reward of those who have been 
 
 
 
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faithful. It is delightful to a speaker to look into the faces of our 
Comrades here, and see the quick flash of intelligence and of 
understanding that illumines those faces when such or another 
point has been reached in our study. It is more than gratifying ; 
and it must be for our present Teacher encouraging beyond words 
to express, that it is so. For, surely, her life of self-sacrifice and 
labor, unremitting and unchanging, has in 'this its own fine 
reward. 
 
I have but three minutes more for speaking, this evening, and I 
must soon close our study tonight. But there is one subject 
which for certain reasons must now be touched upon briefly. 
It is a subject which has been deliberately avoided by me hitherto 
for obvious reasons ; I refer to the matter of sex. Such a matter 
would be intolerable, such thoughts would be intolerable, in a 
meeting of this kind, unless the purpose were absolutely right and 
our study demanded its consideration. At our present stage of study, 
it is necessary then to point out this fact, that man, at a certain 
former period of his evolution, was without sex, was sexless, and 
also that in the next coming Root-Race, the Sixth Root-Race, he 
will be without sex as we now understand it. Sex is but a passing 
phase in evolutionary development, and has no more value in 
one sense, to man, than an evil dream has to a man under certain 
conditions. Nature has followed that line, as it were, under 
protest, through the evil doing involved in our past karma, as the 
only way by which souls can find incarnation at present ; but as 
the race grows in spiritual strength and in spiritual knowledge, 
and looks with closer self-analysis into its own inner being, 
children will come into the world without fathers ; and from 
being at first an unheard of, and presumably to be called a portent 
or a prodigy when it first appears, this procedure of generation 
will become the natural course of things in the Sixth Root-Race. 
Our present sexually separated men and women, the present 
method of generation of human beings, of animals, and of some 
plants, will, in those far distant times of the future, be looked upon 
very much as we now look upon the procreative acts of the beasts. 
 
In conclusion : you have heard of the Ancient Mysteries, and 
of the doctrine of the " virginal birth ", as was pointed out in a 
former meeting here. After the fourth degree of initiation, or 
rather beginning with the fourth degree or stage of initiation, 
the future was outlined in the Ancient Mysteries to the candidate 
both by teaching and more especially by causing the candidate to 
pass through himself what was to come to pass in the future ages 
of racial development ; that is to say the initiant had to go 
through, to live through, what the race was to live through for 
the next two Root-Races. Previous to the fourth degree, he was 
taught what the race had already been through, with allusions 
 
 
 


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to the future. When we read, therefore, of the " virgin birth " of 
Christ, for instance, it is true that this has its religious explana- 
tion, its philosophical explanation, its mystical explanation, etc., 
etc. ; but it has also its physiological explanation. You will re- 
member what H. P. Blavatsky says about the seven keys which 
belong to and open each one of these inmost sevenfold mysteries ; 
of which two werg held as particularly secret : the physiological, 
and the spiritual. The physiological key to this aspect of the 
mystery-teaching was, as said, that the initiant had to symbolize 
in his person and had to pass through, or live through what was 
coming ; and he was therefore said, in view of the future racial 
action along the lines of generation, to have been " born from a 
virgin ". Obviously, I cannot say more here about this subject ; 
I merely point to it, and cease. 
 
It is a comforting thing, especially in the present stage of the 
world when humanity is doing its best to throw off the evil 
shackles of Atlantean and Lemurian sin (if we may use this word), 
i.e., to throw off the horrible karma which holds the world in its 
evil grip, to know the causes which brought it to be. This gives 
us knowledge and power to stem this evil stream of human sin 
and misery. And, finally, those who will not accept the truth and 
work with the Law, certainly, as Jesus might have said, will not 
" sit at my table with me when I partake of the wine of the 
spirit in the House of my Father". "Those who have ears to 
hear and to understand, let them hear " and be wise 1 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXI
 
THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS. THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL LAW 
THROUGHOUT LIFE AND BEING : AN ENDLESS LADDER OF 
PROGRESS. ANALOGICAL PROCESSES OF KOSMICAL AND PSYCHO- 
LOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. THE RIVER OF LIFE, 
 
And by the circulations of the soul being merged in a profound river and 
impetuously borne along, we must understand by the river, not the human body 
alone, but the whole of generation (with which we are externally surrounded) 
through its swift and unstable flowing. For thus, says Proclus, Plato in the 
Republic calls the whole of generated nature the river of Lethe, which contains 
both Lethe and the meadow of Ate, according to Empedocles ; the devouring 
jaws of matter and the light-hating world, as it is called by the gods ; and the 
winding rivers under which many are drawn down, as the oracles assert. But 
by the circulations of the soul the cogitative and opiniative powers are signified ; 
the former of which, through the soul's conjunction with the body, is impeded 
in its energies, and the latter is Titanically torn in pieces under the irrational life. 
Introduction to Plato's The Timcsus, pp. 424-425 (TAYLOR). 
 
In consequence of a reasoning process, therefore, he found that among the 
things naturally visible, there was nothing the whole of which if void of intelli- 
gence could ever become more beautiful than the whole of that which is endued 
with intellect : and at the same time he discovered, that it was impossible for 
intellect to accede to any being, without the intervention of soul. Hence, as 
the result of this reasoning, placing intellect in soul and soul in body, he fabricated 
the universe ; that thus it might be a work naturally the most beautiful and the 
best. In this manner, therefore, according to an assimilative reason, it is neces- 
sary to call the world [or universe] an animal, endued with intellect, and generated 
through the providence of divinity. 
 
Plato's The Timaus, pp. 457-458 (TAYLOR). 
 
IN explanation of what was said in the final part of our 
meeting last week, it is certainly advisable to extend the 
explanation to a certain extent. For this reason : the 
idea of bringing in the subject which was then so lightly 
touched upon, was to connect it with the general scheme of evolu- 
tionary development that we shall later have to study more 
fully, and to show that throughout the entire universe of beings, 
there runs one general plan. This is a very important subject 
that we shall have to go into more in detail, later. The present 
allusion to it is merely in order to connect a link which we might 
otherwise pass over. 
 
You all know, of course, that there are seven races all told on 
this planet, in this Round on globe D, and that each of these races 
has its own continent, follows its own course of evolution ; has 
bodies that is, the individual units of the race have bodies 
co-ordinated to and in harmony with the physical surroundings 
in which they live. 
 
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But as regards the question of the division of the human racial 
stream, that is, the later third Root-Race, into the sexual human- 
ity which has evolved into the men and women of to-day, the 
point to be emphasized at present is that what we call sex is but 
a passing phase in racial evolution, and, strictly speaking, is not 
normal to mankind on Globe D of our planetary chain. This 
method of procreation actually was copied from the beasts, 
which " separated " before " man ". Please understand this 
clearly : sex is a transitory phase, a passing phase, in racial 
evolution, and that it has no more importance than that ; and 
further : as we are now evolving on the ascending arc, as we 
have already passed in fact beyond the first steps of the Luminous 
Arc, of the arc of ascent, we shall find as the ages pass that our 
present physiological status as men and women is to be outgrown. 
As a matter of fact, the Atlantean and Atlanto-Lemurian karma 
has weighed so heavily upon us, the fifth race, that we are actually 
belated, and have not at the present date, the middle point of the 
fifth race, reached that stage as regards the evolving of the physical 
body which otherwise we should have reached. 
 
As it stands, however, the teaching tells us that at the end of 
our own fifth race, men and women will be disappearing as oppo- 
site sexes ; and that by the middle of the Sixth Root Race (the 
race to come) men and women as separate sexes shall be no longer. 
The race will consist of beings who are physiologically neither men 
nor women ; and, as hinted just now, the first examples of 
parthenogenetic reproduction are already due, and would have 
shown themselves already, were it not for our being belated, as 
already said, by the heavy weight of our Atlantean karma, 
which we have been carrying, or rather " working off ". 
 
About the middle of the Sixth Race (the race to come) humanity 
then no longer " men " and " women ", but humanity will 
procreate their kind, if we can here properly use this word, 
f ' procreate " at any rate will evolve or give birth to their own 
genus by a process similar to that which took place in the early 
Third Race, a process called in the Esoteric Wisdom " creating 
sons by passive Yoga"; that is to say, by meditation and by 
unconscious will, at first, later to be succeeded by conscious will 
in the Seventh or following Root-Race. The humans of that 
period (the Sixth Root-Race) will produce children by meditation 
and by will ; during the Seventh Root-Race, the last to come on 
this Globe, during this Fourth Round a race which to us now 
would seem glorious the humans of that race will produce their 
kind in the same general manner ; but by consciously exercised 
will and meditation, but still more impersonally and still more 
ethereally than the Sixth Race will do. The Sixth will do so, much 
as the flowers grow from the plants, almost unconsciously as it 
 
 
 
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were, hence by " passive Yoga " ; not so much unconsciously from 
the mental standpoint but physiologically almost unconscious of 
any " procreative " act, or any creative act. The Seventh will 
" create " their offspring with conscious and fully active imagi- 
nation, a force called kriydiakti in Sanskrit. The difficulty is in 
finding words to explain something which to us^of the Fifth Root- 
Race is non-existent, almost, and hence speculative or " unreal ". 
 
The main point then, here, is to realize that this present 
physiological state of sex is a passing racial evolutionary phase ; 
and that every abuse, every misuse, no matter of what kind or 
what the world may think about it, is a reaction contrary to the 
evolutionary " law ", to use the popular phraseology ; and that 
while it is true that the present method is the one which nature 
has evolved at the present time, as said before it is not really the 
method which primordial humanity might have followed. Even 
the Hebrew Bible alludes to this matter in a passage which you all 
may recall. 
 
We of the Fifth Race now are on the ascending arc ; and we 
especially, members of the Esoteric School, should at least attempt 
to lead the race towards a nobler life as pioneers of Nature's 
forthcoming stages, being as we are members of the Buddhic 
Hierarchy, otherwise called the Hierarchy of Compassion. 
 
Our main theme to-night, as you will recollect, is the building 
of the Kosmos, the building of worlds, and the building of man. 
Throughout the vast extent of manifested being, there prevail 
fundamental operations of nature, which men to-day call the 
" laws of nature ", because they do not understand their origin. 
Men personify " nature ", which is a mere generalizing term ; 
and they use the word " law " which is merely a word adapted 
from human action in order to give a name to those fundamental 
movements of Being. But there are operations of " nature ", 
and these fundamental operations of nature are actually the 
life-currents in the spiritual essence governing our hierarchy, as 
the life-currents in man are they which govern the atoms, astral 
and physical, which compose his body. 
 
Remember that space is not a vacuum, space is not a mere 
container ; if so, there would have to be a container of that 
container, and so ad infinitum ; but space is the infinite fullness 
of everything ; it is the Boundless All, without beginning and 
without end ; it is one vast organism ; it is a unity ; everything 
is interlocked and interchained with everything else, and through 
all there runs the one Universal Life ; there is the beating, as 
said before, of the one Universal Heart. This thought is so 
important for a proper understanding of our Philosophy, that its 
repetition surely will be forgiven. There are no vacuum-separa- 
tions, there is no absolute division anywhere. There is no real 
 
 
 


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vacuum ; everything is full ; everything is full with and of 
beings ; and these beings with which the Boundless All is filled, 
are space itself. Therefore, when we speak of space, we mean not 
merely the vast, boundless extension of any one plane, but more 
particularly the invisible spheres, the planes within, ascending as 
it were, going inwards, and inwards, and inwards forever ; and 
outwards likewise/ 
 
The next thought is that through the action and interaction of 
the gods, monads, souls, and atoms, we conceive a world as spring- 
ing forth in the beginning of its manvantara, from and through 
the invisible deeps of space, and extending itself as it were, 
casting itself, projecting itself, forward, in its descent down the 
Shadowy Arc of matter-manifestation. And how ? Not by a 
something or a somebody which existed before itself was there, 
but by making itself its own world, evolving out its own Kosmos, 
which thus becomes its garment or body. 
 
The gods and please do not think of human forms when we 
speak of the gods ; we mean the arupa, the formless, entities, 
beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, 
pure spirits, formless as we conceive form through that imper- 
sonal (and may we say inevitable ?) energy, at any rate, by 
reason of the karmic impulses behind them, project from them- 
selves less bodies, inferior bodies, which are the monads ; and the 
monads do precisely likewise and project the souls ; and the souls 
do precisely likewise, and project the atoms. Each springs from 
each. Through all, furthermore, there runs the boundless Self, 
the boundless soul of the upper realms ; but each one of these 
atoms, each one of these souls, each one of these monads, each 
one of these gods, is its own hierarchy, the supreme part, the head, 
the seed, from which its own following hierarchy springs. Wheels 
within wheels, lives within lives, consciousnesses within conscious- 
nesses, beings within beings a vast and endless congeries of 
interlocked and interrelated and inter-living things. Pray get 
this thought ! It is the very foundation of the Ancient Wisdom. 
All questions of theology that have so embarrassed and perplexed 
the minds of men are solved just by these few simple principles 
of the Ancient Wisdom-Religion. Think upon them for your- 
selves, and make your own deductions therefrom. 
 
Now let us briefly follow the evolutionary course of one hier- 
archy, one solar system. The same " law ", if you like the word, 
the same fundamental operation of nature, runs through all that 
which we find done in the case of a solar system, and is also that 
which takes place in the case of a universe, is that which takes 
place in the case of a sun, of a planet, and of the beings which 
overrun that planet. Suppose then that we figurate a god, a 
divine seven-principled being, starting into activity after its 
 
 
 
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pralayic sleep, bringing with it the karmic seeds, the impulses 
from the previous Maha-Manvantara, everyone of those seeds 
having its karmic Swabhava, its karmic characteristic or essential 
nature ; and starting into immediate activity when the life-wave 
first arouses the sleeping spheres all comprised within the one 
immense entity which we have agreed to call a " god ". We do 
not exactly mean what the Hindus call a deva, which is some- 
thing else ; but a god. But not God, not the Christian God. We 
mean a god, one of the supreme intelligences, each one of which 
is the head of a hierarchy, the hierarchies themselves being 
numberless and " filling space ", being, in fact, space itself. 
 
We simply must keep several ideas in our heads at once in essay- 
ing an exposition of these intricate subjects. There is one of the 
secrets of understanding the Ancient Wisdom : to retain in the 
mind more than one conception at the same time ; it is our safe- 
guard against mental biasses, and it is easy. Let me illustrate : 
A man is driving an automobile : he may be at the same time 
watching the road, watching for other automobiles, while in the 
back of his mind there may be forming some plan of work ; and 
he may also be talking to a friend. Let us keep these various 
thoughts, all that has been spoken of so far this evening, in our 
mind, as we consider this present matter. 
 
Now this god is seven-principled, as said, and each principle 
has its own work to do in the building of its kosmos ; each one acts 
according to karmic impulses originating in the previous man- 
vantara particularly, and in all previous manvantaras in general ; 
and each one of these gods moves into manifestation according to 
the lines traced out for it by its own past consciousness and 
actions ,in former epochs of manvantaric activity. Therefore 
when these seeds of beings start into active existence, the in- 
numerable monads or divine souls divine seeds which form the 
clothing of each one of these seven principles : when all these 
principles spring into activity, each undertakes its own particular 
work, a division of labor as it were, in the divine realms. First 
the highest sends forth from itself a host of less beings, inferior 
beings ; and they find their habitat, their habitation and their 
realm of activity, in the plane next " below ", which is that of its 
second principle. That second principle then begins its own 
especial activity and does likewise ; and thus two of the seven 
principles and realms of being are now working ; and so on down 
the scale until we reach the lowest, the Prithiwl-tattwa, of the 
divine series or scale. 
 
When the astronomer looks into the ethery spaces and sees 
those starry clouds, those nebulous masses, in some cases (though 
not in all, for these nebulae are not all the same, but in those which 
are) destined for the beginning of worlds, he sees there what has 
 
 
 


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so far taken place in material manifestation of a hierarchy through 
the activity of the sub-seven degrees of the lowest or seventh 
principle of a divine entity or " god " informing an otherwise 
invisible life-center, informed by that god's vital essence, which 
is the fundamental life of that hierarchy, the fundamental 
impulse, or what men call the fundamental " law ", the funda- 
mental operation of its nature, the fundamental characteristic, 
the Swabhava. In such manner, then, the vital essence creates its 
own dwelling a sun, a planet, which cycles down, as it were, into 
visible evolution. But mark : each Head of a hierarchy retains its 
own place, powers, and nature ; but its offspring thicken or 
condense ; its offspring thus forming its garments on the several 
planes of being. Each of these garments is a host of living beings, 
atoms, souls the name matters little providing we understand 
the thought. We must use analogies derived from our human 
vocabulary, because we have as yet evolved no words which can 
adequately explain these spiritual things ; therefore remember 
that by the law of analogy such words are applicable, mutatis 
mutandis, as the Latin phrase goes, " making the necessary 
allowances for circumstances ", to various spheres of being. 
 
When this thickening and grossening of the fabric (which takes 
place from each entity shooting forth from itself, emanating from 
itself, other less entities, " less " here meaning " inferior ") 
reaches its lowest degree, then we have a sun and planets. Let us 
take our planet as an instance. When such a planet has reached 
its lowest point of evolution driven by the karmic impulse in- 
hering in it, which is at the middle point of its Fourth Round 
(which we on our planet have passed), then begins the reaction, 
the reversal of the kosmic operation, and the life-currents begin 
to withdraw inwards, thenceforth following the Luminous Arc 
" upwards " : not leaving its " garments " behind altogether ; 
but as they were sent forth, so are they now withdrawn inwards. 
This, then, is an outline of the process of the evolution of spirit, 
and the involution of matter ; just as the processes of projection 
or casting forth were the involution of spirit and the evolution of 
matter on the downward or Shadowy Arc. Thus is the Kosmos 
built. 
 
Now another thought. Each one of these gods, each one of 
these monads, each one of these souls, each one of these atoms, is 
an exhaustless reservoir of consciousness, of force, and of 
matter. Let us take the atmic (or seventh or highest) of the god 
whom we have chosen as example. Such atmic plane or sphere 
is a " laya-center ". A laya-center is a nirvanic center, that 
part, or place, or condition rather or state of being, where homo- 
geneity of substance is, where heterogeneity has ceased, or has 
not yet begun. When such laya-center begins its activity towards 
 
2A 
 
 
 
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evolution, it casts forth, as said, from itself ceaselessly, hosts and 
multitudes of these inferior beings ; but its own inner strength is 
in nowise diminished. It is an exhaustless reservoir, a creative 
center ; precisely as the sun, which is one of the finest analogies 
that we have, casts forth from itself ceaselessly, during a man- 
vantara, practically illimitable hosts of solar rays, yes, and also 
of beings. Each one of these beings has its future cyclic course 
to run ; and from being originally an unconscious god-spark, as 
said in the beginning of these our studies, it has to develop into a 
self-consciotis god, and do the same kosmic work that its own great 
progenitor did or is doing. 
 
We ourselves, when we were not men as yet, unevolved rays 
only, belonged to the lower realms of spiritual being ; then 
pursued our evolutionary course up to self-conscious manhood ; 
and we who are now men, humans, are destined on the future 
planet which shall follow this our present globe the offspring of 
the earth to attain a development greater than manhood here ; 
and those inferior lives which are now trailing after us on the 
evolutionary journey, the beasts, the plants, and the minerals, 
will have then their turn to pass through the human stage. Life 
and being form an endless chain, an endless ladder of progress ; 
yet when manhood has been attained comes moral responsibility : 
at any moment there lies the path before us : the path to the right, 
up the Luminous Arc ; or the path to the left, downwards along 
the Arc of Shadows. 
 
As said before, the Teacher does not permit me to speak fully as 
yet of the subject comprised in the words " downward path " ; 
though it forms half of the teaching, and she certainly will permit 
it one of these days. It is a very important study, because without 
it we cannot understand one half of the processes of evolution 
and involution. 
 
Our time this evening is drawing to a close, but it is necessary 
for us to call attention to the following diagram : 
 
 
 
I. 
 
2. 
 
3- 
 
4- 
5- 
6. 
 
7- 
 
8. 
 
9- 
10. 
 
 
ESOTERIC Brahmanic Elements Mystic 
LINE Tattwas Greek 
 
 
DHYANI- 
* CHOHANS 
 
V PlTRIS 
 
 
Swabhawat 
Adi-Buddhi (a) 
 
Gods 
 
Monads 
Souls 
Atoms 
Bodies 
 
 
Adi-tattwa 
Anupapadaka- 
tattwa 
Akaa-tattwa 
 
Taijasa-tattwa 
V&yu-tattwa 
Apas-tattwa 
Prithiwi-tattwa 
 
 
The ONE 
Spirit 
 
Aether 
 
Fire 
Air 
Water 
Earth 
 
 
First Logos 
Second Logos 
 
Gods. Third 
Logos (Mahat) 
Daimones 
Heroes 
Men 
Beasts 
 
 
ELEMENTAL WORLD 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 351
 
Here we have six columns representing analogical cases of 
cosmical and psychological development. First we have what we 
may call the Esoteric Line ; to the left of that we have placed the 
numbers, I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, representing the full hierarchy 
of ten stages or degrees. The next column gives the Brdhmanic 
Tattwas. Tattwa is a Sanskrit word, which may be translated as 
element, meaning fhe substantial " reality " back of the pheno- 
menal appearance, upon which the seed-consciousness works ; 
the garment or bearer of the inworking consciousness. Then 
come in the next column the Elements, as commonly understood 
everywhere in ancient times. Then comes the Mystic Greek 
system, as found mostly in the nee-Platonic and neo-Pythagorean 
philosophies. And lastly comes the division of the beings com- 
posing the evolving Life- Wave, or River of Life, into two generic 
(general) forms, Dhydni-Chohans, and Pitris. 
 
i. In the Esoteric Line we have first Swabhawat, a Sanskrit 
word meaning, as you know, the self -evolving, the self -developing, 
even translated sometimes as the self -existent. Corresponding to 
this is the Adi-tattwa in the next column, Adi is a Sanskrit word 
meaning original, primordial. Corresponding to this among the 
elements is The ONE. We have no word for this element. The 
ancients referred to it in various ways. We will simply call it 
The ONE, as it is the Seed from which the others spring in 
" descent ", that is to say in thickening and grossening during 
the evolutionary course. The Mystic Greek has the First Logos, 
to correspond. 
 
^ 2. The planes below are next given, reading from left to right. 
Adi-Buddhi, original, or primordial Buddhi ; and when the thought 
is somewhat changed, and a slightly different hierarchy is to be 
followed, it is called Adi-Buddha, individualizing the Hierarchy 
in tracing the development of the Hierarchy of Compassion, 
though when we speak of Adi-Buddhi, we refer rather to the action 
of the principles than to the entities imbodying those principles. 
Corresponding to it in the Tat t was is Anupapddaka-tattwa, 
another Sanskrit word meaning " parentless ", that which does 
not follow an individualized progenitor, therefore " parentless ", 
not that it has no source or origin, but that it itself is the primal 
seed of individuality, which in this particular Hierarchy first 
springs into manifestation in it. The case is like the entrance of 
the manas into man, thereby giving him self-consciousness and 
individuality, which he does not get from his parents. Among 
the elements we may call it spirit. The Mystic Greek has it as the 
Second Logos. 
 
3. The third plane below is the Gods, corresponding of course to 
the Mdnasaputras in man, the sons of Mind. Its Tattwa is Akdta- 
tattwa t the word Akdfa meaning brilliant, shining, luminous. Let 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
me point out here parenthetically that strictly speaking Swabhavat 
is the proper correspondence of Akaa ; but the way in which this 
diagram is arranged, is an attempt to show corresponding intelli- 
gences and activities in the several individual hierarchies here set 
forth ; and therefore AkaSa-tattwa corresponds in it to the Gods 
in the Esoteric Line. Among the elements it is Aether, but not 
the ether of science. The ether of science is* merely one of its 
lower principles. The Mystic Greek has likewise the Gods, other- 
wise composing the third logos. In Brahmanic philosophy this 
plane is called Mahat, a word which means " great ". Mahat 
is a technical term in the Brahmanic system, and is the " Father- 
Mother " of Manas ; it is the " mother " of the Manasaputras 
or " sons of mind ", if you like, or that element from which 
they spring, that element which they breathe and of which they 
are the children. 
 
4. The Monads, corresponding to Taijasa-tattwa, meaning the 
shining, the brilliant, tlie fiery, the sparkling. Among the Elements 
it is Fire. The Mystic Greek has the Daimones corresponding to 
it, beings whom the Christians, with their usual intelligence, 
have turned into " demons " or " devils ". It simply means 
spiritual beings of a certain class ; but this thought is too intricate 
to go into at any length this evening. I may merely point out 
that the Daimones belong to the hierarchy of Consciousness, as 
shown in the diagram, and not to the hierarchy of the Shadowy 
Arc. Socrates, as you know, frequently alluded to his Daimonion, 
meaning his " guardian-angel ". As he said : " My daemon told 
me always never what to do, but always what to refrain from 
doing ". It is, as it were, the " conscience " of later thought. 
 
Now these four classes are grouped under the general heading of 
the Dhydni-Chohans, the " Chohans of Meditation ", the " Lords 
of Meditation ". The following three classes belong to the Pitris 
beings of lower degree, whom you will remember as mentioned 
in The Secret Doctrine, and there called " Fathers ", because they 
are more particularly the actual progenitors of our lower prin- 
ciples ; whereas the Dhyani-Chohans are actually in one most 
important sense our own selves. We were born from them ; 
we were the monads, we were the atoms, the souls, projected, sent 
forth, emanated, by the Dhyanis, as pointed out before. 
 
5. Now the Fifth degree downward comprises in this particular 
diagram what are called souls in the Esoteric Line. In the Brah- 
manic Tattwas we see Vdyu-tattwa. Vdyu means airy, aerial. In 
the Elements, Air ; in the Mystic Greek, the Heroes. These are 
the highest class of the Pitris. 
 
6. The sixth are the Atoms. Please remember, as said before, 
that atom as here used does not mean the atom of science, but 
what we may call the Astral Monad, of which the atoms of the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 353
 
physical world are the emanations, the projections. The atoms, 
the astral atoms, clothe themselves in the physical world, which 
is their garment-offspring. The Brahmanic Tattwa is Apas- 
tattwa ; the Elements show here Water ; and the Mystic Greek, 
Men. 
 
7. The seventh is the Bodies, vehicles merely, corresponding to 
Prithiwi-tattwa. Prithiwi is a Sanskrit word meaning extension, 
i.e., wide, spacious. It is common to speak of Prakriti as " mat- 
ter ", but really Prithiwi is the word better corresponding to 
what we call matter. Prakriti is rather " Nature " and the living 
garment of spirit. The Element is Earth : and the Mystic Greek 
in this hierarchy of entities, shows the Beasts. 
 
These last three classes are the Pitris : and below these seven, 
comes the Elemental world, in three planes. One of these elemen- 
tal planes or worlds we may mention in passing, as it is the 
" Interior Realm " which has its locus or habitation at the center 
of any globe. 
 
Now, the evolution of mankind depends upon and follows that 
of the respective elements in each instance that is to say that 
the human life-wave evolves in each of the seven elements one 
after the other, from the highest downwards to the last ; and 
then on the turn of the Grand Cycle, ascending through them 
all to the highest again. Each globe of the seven of the Planetary 
Chain, each of the seven Root-Races on every globe, partakes of 
the nature and qualities of the kosmic Element it happens to be 
evolving in and through, whether it be what is technically called 
"Earth", or " Water ", or "Air", or "Fire 1 ', or ".Ether", 
or " Spirit ", or the " Nameless One ". Man's seven principles 
likewise correspond to and are derived from the seven kosmic 
Elements, each to each. And mere bulk of body, or size, has noth- 
ing to do with the nature of man and his powers, with the building 
of man, or his destiny. 
 
For instance : the First and Second Root-Races were gigantic 
beings as far as mere size was concerned, but they were otherwise 
mere shells, mere phantom-creatures, so to say, the offspring of 
the Pitris alone, as yet not filled with the divine fires of self- 
consciousness and intellect. They were ethereal on what was 
then an ethereal earth, our present gross planet " Terra ". They 
had no physiological organs, properly speaking, and their shapes 
were different from ours, although the general human skeletal 
frame-work as we now know it was within them, evolved from 
the previous Round on this earth. 
 
In Races the Fifth and the Sixth still to come, humanity will 
evolve bodies corresponding to the surroundings they will then 
be in ; and in very truth, those surroundings themselves will be 
developed or made by the humanity evolving therein, actually 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
evolving their own surroundings, which will be their own emana- 
tions. We may conceive of them, if you like, as very small beings, 
Lilliputian in size, perhaps, but nevertheless of gigantic intellects, 
and of immense spiritual powers. If we will only once realize, as 
even our scientists are beginning to do, the almost limitless forces 
locked up in an atom, a thing so small that it as yet is merely a 
figment of the scientific imagination, which' no one has ever 
seen, or knows anything about except certain deductions which 
have been more or less gradually made by studying the workings 
of the atoms, through the physical phenomena of beings, we can 
realize that if even physical matter contains forces or powers as 
great as even one atom has, what may not man, upon evolving 
that which is within himself, evolving the unspeakable grandeur 
of his inner nature, as he is going to do at least those who will 
pass the " critical periods " we may understand, I repeat, that 
mere size of body does not mean possession of power or of know* 
ledge, or of intelligence or of compassion. As a matter of fact, 
it is perhaps rather the contrary : mere volume or rather mass 
weighing the inner spirit rather heavily down. 
 
And it is quite permissible to conceive of gods so small, that an 
atom, one of our physical atoms, would be a cosmical universe to 
it. And to use the old Brahmanic terms, there sits at the Heart 
of Being a god, thinking divine thoughts, and ruling its universe. 
 
So when we speak of men at the end of the Fifth Race in future 
ages as evolving physical vehicles out from themselves, which 
nevertheless will preserve the same general skeleton outline as 
at present ; when we say that their shape will be neither that of 
man nor of woman, we simply mean that man himself, through 
suffering and experience, and through the evolving of that which 
is lying latent within him, and even now ready to appear, will 
bring forth into exteriorization from within himself his own inner 
nature : a sexless being. From that time forwards, men and 
women will be no more, replaced by far nobler Humans. 
 
You will remember that at our last meeting it was said that 
the time had even now come when children might be produced 
without fathers ; but the race is belated in its evolutionary 
course, and probably ages will yet pass before this partheno- 
genetic process begins. Yet even this process is merely the first 
step to a still more different process to come later ; but it will 
take place before this our Fifth Root-Race ends ; it will come to 
pass partly because men and women are growing more alike , instead 
of more unlike. Clean instinct will then rule instead of the beast- 
impulse. However, as long as marriage lasts, it ought to be 
what every Theosophical Teacher, and what every true The- 
osophist too, feels it should be .* a union of mutual respect and 
kindness, in which each helps the other to grow morally and 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 355
 
intellectually, and anything under this or less than it, is 
degrading. 
 
At the end of this Fifth Root-Race, man and woman as sexes 
will have nearly passed away ; and in the Sixth Race, naturally, 
at certain specified times, without passion, by meditation and by 
passive will and thought, humans will evolve forth their offspring, 
much in the " unconscious " way (though the term " uncon- 
scious " is incorrect) that the flowers bring forth their blooms ; 
and in the Seventh Race of this Round on this planet the humans 
of that splendid time will bring forth from within themselves, 
glorious creations of the active will and of the imagination, their 
" children " ; and there will then be a race of Adepts, of incarnate 
devas upon earth. This will be in the Seventh Race on this 
planet during this present Fourth Round. As said several times 
before, it is only because we have sunken morally and are belated 
that the phenomenon of virginal birth has not yet appeared on 
earth as a physical fact ; though, as pointed out at our last 
meeting, it has been " prophesied " in religious mysteries, and the 
initiation-ceremonies contained one where the initiant, after 
certain conditions had been complied with you will forgive me, 
this is dangerous ground was said to be " born of a virgin ", thus 
anticipating, or rather forecasting, what was to come to the entire 
Race in the future ; this being, as said before, a reward for noble 
service rendered in behalf of mankind. Here is a wondrous 
Truth, concealed and kept hid for fear of the profanation which 
would be sure to follow if these divine mysteries, if these divine 
teachings, fell into unworthy hands directed by scheming brains 1 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXII
 
OUT OF THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE. FROM THE VISIBLE 
INTO THE INVISIBLE. THE MAGNUM OPUS. 
 
5. This (universe) existed in the shape of Darkness, unperceived, destitute 
of distinctive marks, unattainable by reasoning, unknowable, wholly immersed, 
as it were, in deep sleep. 
 
6. Then the divine Self-existent (Svayambhu, himself) indiscernible, (but) 
making (all) this, the great elements and the rest, discernible, appeared with 
irresistible (creative) power, dispelling the darkness. 
 
19. But from minute body (-framing) particles of these seven very powerful 
Purushas springs this (world), the perishable from the imperishable. 
 
20. Among them each succeeding (element) acquires the quality of the 
preceding one, and whatever place (in the sequence) each of them occupies, 
even so many qualities it is declared to possess. 
 
21. But in the beginning he assigned their several names, actions, and con- 
ditions to all (created beings), even according to the words of the Veda. 
 
22. lie, the Lord, also created the class of the gods, who are endowed with 
life, and whose nature is action ; and the subtile class of the Sadhyas, and the 
eternal sacrifice. 
 
 
 
51. When he whose power is incomprehensible, had thus produced tho 
universe and me, he disappeared in himself, repeatedly suppressing one period 
by means of the other. 
 
52. When that divine one wakes, then this world stirs : when he slumbers 
tranquilly, then the universe sinks to sleep. 
 
53. But when he reposes in calm sleep, the corporeal beings whose nature 
is action, desist from their actions and mind becomes inert. 
 
54. When they are absorbed all at once in that great soul, then he who is 
the soul of all beings sweetly slumbers, free from all care and occupation. 
 
57. Thus he, the imperishable one, by (alternately) waking and slumbering, 
incessantly revivifies and destroys this whole movable and immovable (creation). 
The Laws of Manu (Sacred Books of the East, Edited by MAX MOLLER). 
 
AFAR-SEEING hope and a bright peace abide in the 
hearts of all faithful students of our Order ; in those at 
least who have learned to perceive that behind the 
mask of visible things there is a splendor of life and 
consciousness which is theirs for the taking ; and also that it 
depends upon themselves entirely to what extent they may advance 
along the pathway which ascends ever upwards and onwards along 
the Luminous Arc, upon which we, as a race, have been (and are 
now) marching ever since the middle part of the Fourth Root-Race. 
The Mystery-Schools of antiquity made the one great aim and 
object of their studies and initiatory ceremonies the bringing forth 
into actuality in each candidate or initiant, of his immortal 
nature, of that part of him which belongs to, or rather is the 
offspring of, the inner monad ; that which in fact makes him a 
conscious part of the Buddhic Hierarchy, of the Hierarchy of 
Compassion. It is the union of the personal man with these 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 357
 
higher principles of his own nature that produces the " living 
Christ ", or the fully Awakened One called the Buddha. It was 
the object of initiation, as said, not merely to make man con- 
scious of this higher life within him, of these splendors within ; 
but also to enable him to become ready and fit to teach others 
of that life which he himself felt within himself. That was the 
main object and* aim of all the Mystery-Schools the world over, 
however much they may have differed in forms and in the words 
in which they clothed their thoughts. It was, in other words, to 
make each initiant or candidate a living follower and example 
of the Silent Watcher of whom we have spoken in other studies. 
 
Now, there are many Silent Watchers, as has been pointed out. 
The Silent Watcher, in fact, is the Hierarch or supreme hier- 
archial head of any one particular hierarchy of the numberless 
hierarchies in the Kosmos ; the one spoken so inspiringly of by 
II. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine is the chief of the Dhyani- 
Buddhas governing this Fourth Round on this planet. 
 
It would seem a curious thing to refer to in this connexion ; 
and yet it seems a necessary thing to do, to speak of the different 
vagaries of thought, quasi-philosophic, quasi-scientific, quasi- 
religious, which are being spread abroad in the world today. 
 
Many are the teachings of Theosophy, which are now so 
familiar and beautiful, which in the beginning were not easily 
received by many in the world, because they were strange and 
conflicted with the prejudices religious, scientific, and other 
that men had at the time. 
 
How many people objected to the teaching of reincarnation 
when it was first promulgated ! What said one once to the 
present speaker : " I do not want to be reborn a cab-horse ; 1 
do not want to be reborn a flea ; I am a man ! " Obviously, there 
was here no objection to the doctrine of reincarnation which 
teaches no such metempsychosis as that ; the objection was to 
his own prejudices, and he did not know it ! 
 
Similar is the case with some of the doctrines which, with the 
Teacher's permission, will have to be developed and unfolded in 
our studies here. I will not say that among ourselves these 
teachings will meet with misunderstanding ; but among others 
to whom these teachings may go out, they may meet with 
objectors ; the root-thoughts or bases of them will be mis- 
understood at first, and the objectors will not wait for time and 
reflexion to confer an understanding of them. Meanwhile, let us 
remember that the utmost vigorous exercise of the intuitional 
and of the intellectual powers of each student is absolutely 
necessary, and is actually demanded by the rules of our Order, 
We take nothing on blind faith ; but while that is the fact, on 
the other hand there likewise remains for us the duty to cultivate 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the spiritual and meditative faculty within our beings, the 
immortal part of our natures, which tells us first that this Order 
is the link with the Hierarchy of Compassion, and that if we come 
here honestly and sincerely, not hypocritically, not merely in 
order to find out what is being done or said, then we must believe 
that our Teacher knows her business, and that she would not 
tolerate the minutest deviation or divagation frbm the doctrines 
which her heart and intellect tell her are true. 
 
Let us now take up the study which we temporarily closed at . 
our last meeting Gods, Monads, and Atoms, as regards their 
respective work in the building of a world, in the building of a 
Cosmos, and in the building of Man. We refer not only to his 
body of flesh, but this noble doctrine includes also the Why and 
the How, yea, and the When of his descent through spiritual 
spheres into incarnation and his existences in those spheres. Let 
us read first from The Secret Doctrine, Volume II, page 267 : 
 
The doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate 
and inanimate objects on earth, between an animal and a human frame, 
is that in some the various " fires " are latent, and in others they are 
active. The vital fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of 
them. But no animal has the three higher principles awakened in him ; 
tkey-are simply potential, latent, and thus non-existing. And so would 
the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they 
came out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose shadows they 
were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in 
matter. 
 
Out of the invisible into the visible, from the deeps of inmost 
space, when the time comes, the life-wave sends forth its Sowings 
into the exterior and into the outer spheres, making for itself as 
it advances, creating for itself, through the beings which represent 
that wave, its own garments, which kosmically are its planes, its 
worlds. These several stages of evolution or progression, as 
before said, are (i) the gods, whose garments are the (2) monads, 
whose garments are the (3) souls, whose garments are the (4) 
atoms, whose garments are (5) bodies. Refer the order to worlds, 
and the doctrine is true. Refer the order to man, and the doctrine 
is true. Refer the order to the Elemental, mineral, vegetable, 
beast, and human kingdoms of this earth, and the doctrine is 
again analogically true. Stage by stage, degree by degree, as the 
living wave advances, it projects from itself at each stage, it 
casts forth from itself at each stage, innumerable entities inferior 
to itself, which form its vehicles, which we may also call its 
garments, its bodies, or its planes and its worlds. Each god of 
the great host, for instance, from within itself produces multitudes 
of monads ; each monad produces from within itself multitudes 
of souls ; each soul produces from within itself multitudes of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 359
 
atoms ; and these clothe themselves in vehicles of matter, or 
bodies, and all run through their long evolutionary course. Then, 
when the lowest point of the great round of life has been reached, 
the upward cycle begins : there is a re-entering of the vital forces, 
a gathering up, a gathering withinwards, of the hosts of beings ; 
the visible passes back by degrees into the invisible, plus the 
growth and experiences gained during the journey by each 
individual entity. Each one has advanced one plane upwards in 
its evolution ; each one has gone so many milestones farther 
along the path ; and, finally, the Life- Wave enters the divinity 
from which it went forth, but nobler, higher, in every respect. It 
began its long evolutionary course after its equally long pralayic 
sleep, obeying the karmic impulses awakening it to a new life- 
period ; and now having completed it, it is once more ready to 
issue forth again to form a new manvantara, and in order to do 
this, once again develops from within itself new planes, new 
elements, new principles, new hosts of beings as it did before, but 
now nobler, ever new ones going forth, growing ever higher and 
higher in grandeur and power. Such is a general outline of the 
evolutionary course. 
 
You know the old Hermetic saying : " As it is above, so it is 
below ". That saying is found in an ancient writing said to have 
been engraved on an emerald table ; according to the legend, 
it was called the " Emerald Table of Hermes ", and is undoubtedly 
based on one of the ancient Hermetic teachings. I will quote 
the first few lines of it : 
 
True, without error, certain, most true ; That which is above is 
as that which is below ; and that which is below, is as that which is 
above, for performing the marvels of the Kosmos. As all things are 
from the [Primordial] One, by the mediation of One [the Logos 
that is to say the host of Dhy^n-Chohans] so all things arose out of this 
One Thing by evolving. . . . 
 
And that " one thing " is the summit of any hierarchy, the 
divinity already spoken of in giving the general outline of the 
evolutionary procession. 
 
Turning to the Zoroastrian faith, we find the following verses 
in an ancient work (which modern scholars, for reasons best 
known to themselves, try to bring down to late times, but which 
unquestionably contains very archaic thought) called The 
Desdtir, in the chapter called The Book of Shet the Prophet 
Zirtusht, " Zirtusht " being one of the forms of the name which 
in English is called Zoroaster, following the Greco-Latin form : 
they are verses 29, 30, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, as follows : 
 
29. Know, my Friend ! that the essence of the Self-Existent is 
one, and without limits or conditions. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
30. Being is like light ; and light becometh visible. [Mark 
that !] 
 
35. Whatsoever is on earth is the reflexion and the shadow of 
something that is in the [spiritual] World-Sphere. 
 
36. While that resplendent something remaineth in its native 
condition, it is well also with its shadow. 
 
37. When that resplendent thing removeth away from its shadow, 
life removeth to a distance. 
 
38. Again, that light [that resplendent thing] is the shadow of some- 
thing still more resplendent than itself. [Note the hierarchical teaching 
here.] 
 
39. And so on up to Me, who am the Light of Lights [the Hier- 
archical Head.] 
 
It probably has occurred to every thoughtful Theosophical 
mind, that if man has within himself a quasi-divine monad, and 
seated within that divine monad a divinity, a god, it is strange 
that our consciousness of this unity with the Divine through 
this monadic link is not stronger in us than it is today. The 
Christians speak of their " guardian angel ", and so do the 
Mohammedans ; and other peoples, such as the Greeks, spoke 
as did Socrates of the Daimon, the guardian-Self ; but why is 
it that our conscience that of you and of me, and of all other 
human beings is not stronger and more vocal than it is ? Why 
is it that we have to work and struggle inwardly to get this 
interior illumination consciously, which, even according to the 
Christian teachings, must be " taken by violence " ? Is the 
reason not here ? Man is composite ; he is a complex, a com- 
pound being, and lives on different planes, and these planes are 
the seven elements of nature ; and the seven elements of nature 
are its seven principles ; and the seven principles of man can 
otherwise be called man's seven elements. 
 
The monad lives in its own world, in its own logoic activity, 
with its quasi- or semi-divine powers in full action, far more 
self-conscious on its own plane than you are or I am on this our 
plane of consciousness. And similarly with the god within us, 
seated within the monad. 
 
But further. You will remember that in discussing (briefly at 
the time, because we had not yet laid the foundation for it) the 
teaching referring to the Silent Watcher, we pointed out that 
it was based on the fact of the many and the one how man and 
the universe are both, respectively, many and one, many in the 
lower nature, and one in the higher. Now, then, please note 
carefully the following : Our consciousness is no higher than it is 
because we are (each of us) a person ; and it is the raising of this 
person, of this personal self, of this personal soul, into the imperson- 
ality and individuality of the monad, that is the great work, the 
 
 
 


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magnum opus, of life. Here is the answer in brief to the question 
propounded above. The purpose of all initiatory ceremonies 
to put the answer in another form the aim of all initiatory 
teachings of the ancient Mystery-Schools, was, as said in the begin- 
ning of our study this evening, the evocation of the higher self, of 
this inner being ; and it is possible to do it. A strong and in- 
domitable will is *the first requisite. Purity of life is the second, 
mental purity above everything else. And absolute loyalty and 
devotion to the teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom and to the 
Teacher, is the third ; and these three principles of life and con- 
duct are true Raj a- Yoga ; and this " kingly union " is the union 
with the god within, our divine Self. When this union takes 
place, then you have what the Greeks called in their Ancient 
Mysteries, " Theopneusty ", the breathing into the personal of the 
Impersonal Essence. 
 
Yet, preceding this stage or degree of initiation, the second or 
intermediate, there came the first of these initiations, the actual 
and real meeting face to face with the god within, your own 
Higher Ego-Self ; and this degree was called " Theophany ", a 
Greek compound word meaning the " appearance of a god " i.e., 
of that god which is within you, your own inner self. Further, 
when the two preceding unions were achieved, when the high 
degrees of Theopneusty and Theophany had been won, there 
came a third and last stage, which the Greeks called " Theopathy ", 
a Greek compound word meaning " suffering a god ", " enduring 
a god " a meaning later to be more fully explained. Such an 
initiate became even in life an evolved Christos, or as the Bud- 
dhists call it, an " Awakened One ", a Buddha, the awakening 
to the living Buddhic entity within the man, the last stage of 
human knowledge possible on this earth on this Round, the 
Fourth. Very few indeed are they who attain to this supreme 
stage of Incarnate Wisdom ! Such a one was the Lord Buddha, 
Gautama-Sakyamuni, Prince of Kapilavastu. He it is, we are 
told, who today as a Nirmanakaya, forms the summit (or Silent 
Watcher) of the Hierarchy of Sages forming our own Holy Order, 
living among them invisible to those of lower degree and visible 
to those of higher degree ; in what the Buddhists of the north 
call the " sacred land of Sambhala ", that mysterious locality 
which is placed north of the Himalayas, and not so far from what 
is called the desert of Gobi or Shamo. And, that wondrous 
Thing, that wondrous entity, that wondrous being, which was in 
H. B. Blavatsky and worked through her, came from Sambhala 
came from this hierarchy. I do not here refer merely to the 
woman, to the physical body ; no, nor even to the personality 
born in Russia ; but to that wonderful Thing who incarnated in 
hat body, and who left part of " herself " behind there and who 
 
 
 
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went forth into the world crippled psychically, obeying in this 
respect an archaic law, which was the cause of so much mis- 
understanding about her. This Entity did its work in the world 
at the proper cyclic time for its appearance among men : the 
opening of a new " Messianic Cycle ". 
 
You know the warning about " false Christs " which is given in 
the Christian Gospels, in Matthew and in Mark in Matthew, 
chapter 24, verses 23, 24, and 25, and in Mark, chapter 13, verses 
21, 22, and 23. They are practically the same in sense and words, 
and they evidently are both Mark and Matthew taken from 
a former, earlier, Christian Gospel, possibly the so-called Gospel 
" according to the Hebrews ", of which scholars know ; but which 
they have never yet found. At any rate, the writer of the above 
warning spoke truly when, using the alleged words df Jesus, he 
said in substance : " Many shall come after me, teaching false 
Christs, who will try to lead you astray, saying ' Lo here he is ! ' 
and ' Lo, there he is ! ' Believe it not ". Now, these words are 
not necessarily of solely Christian application it is the warning 
against imposture contained in them that we quote. They could 
apply equally well to Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, ancient Americans, 
Scandinavians, to any people living anywhere in the world, for 
the warning could apply to all. Why ? Because there are in 
fact cyclic crises or periods when real " saviors " of men do 
appear, as also " false prophets " and " false Christs ", They 
come always whenever the time is ripe. After every period of 
2160 years, the length of the " messianic cycle ", there comes a 
recrudescence of spiritual faith into the world at times of material 
growth and spiritual decadence ; in those times that Plato calls 
the " barren periods ", a Messenger " comes " from Sambhala, 
and gives his doctrine to men and establishes it, and then passes. 
And instantly copyists, or perhaps false disciples those who 
perhaps are seeking prominence for themselves, or who are 
deceived, or who perhaps are even misled by their own prejudices, 
by the weaknesses of their own human minds let us put it in 
the most charitable way possible begin making sects, begin 
preaching " false Christs n , begin to make an appeal to the 
wonder-loving appetite of the people. And a new sect is born, 
and either dies out or lives on for a time, and the world is priest- 
ridden and man-hierarchy ridden for another series of centuries, 
until by his own spiritual vigor and his mental strength, man 
frees himself again ; and after turbulence and achings of the 
heart there comes a new real light, a new real Christos, a new 
light from the Hierarchy of Compassion. It is the working of the 
same old appeal to men's spiritual inner fires, by the spiritual 
Dhyanis who incarnated primarily in the Third Root-Race on 
this planet in this Round as the Mdnasaputras, and who thereby 
 
 
 


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saved us from aeons of animality and unspeakable degradation, 
and untold ages of lightless wandering. 
 
There is the situation. We must follow either the "right- 
hand " or the " left ", as the ancient Buddhists said. " Keeping 
the link unbroken " means following the " right-hand " path. 
Each one of us as individuals has the choice. None other can 
choose for us. All our Teacher can do is to appeal and to teach. 
Each one of us has his conscience, which he must follow, and with 
which no interference is ever tolerated in our Order. But mark 
you, be sure that the path you choose is the path of conscience 
and wisdom. Be sure you are not led along the left-hand path 
by wiles and guile of many kinds. 
 
These are old and trite sayings, but they have always a proper 
application. Their truth is not lessened by the fact that we are 
all familiar with them. 
 
At our next meeting we shall have to undertake more definitely 
the study of how the life-wave passes into imbodiments, making 
its own vehicles by projection from itself by bringing forth from 
within its own focus of vitality innumerable inferior entities, 
giving them forth as man gives forth his thoughts ; and then in 
future studies show how the life-wave passes down the " Shadowy 
Arc " into ever grosser manifestation, until the critical period is 
reached, when the ascending cycle of the " Luminous Arc " 
begins. We shall have to refer to a wonderful old Greek and 
Roman philosophic school, the Stoic, and show how true were 
their teachings regarding the evolution of the elements, these 
elements following each other down into manifestation, each 
giving form to each. For in this teaching we may find a proper 
understanding of how the Kosmos is built, and how man is 
constructed, and the Why and the How of his evolution, and why 
he is here on earth now and not elsewhere, either farther along 
the path or not so far. 
 
All these are matters which are directly connected with the 
scientific researches of our own day, for modern scientific discovery 
is making great strides forward, and will sooner or later need 
guidance, or it too will take the " left-hand path ". H. P. 
Blavatsky has told us plainly that it is through the Theosophical 
Movement that will come the light which is to enlighten the 
world and guide the footsteps of man on the path along the 
Luminous Arc ; and it is our duty to aid in this noble work with 
all our strength ; and if we do not understand our own philosophy 
properly and rightly, so that we can meet others and talk with 
them convincingly, we are failing in our duty. But those of us 
who have an indomitable will and who have awakened the inner 
Christos within us, even to such a small extent that we can see 
even something of that wonderful Light within which gives us 
 
 
 
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far-seeing hope and abiding peace : those of us who have felt it 
even in slight degree, will realize that in it and nowhere else on this 
earth, nor in any other sphere, visible or invisible, lies the Path, the 
ancient Path, the small, old Path of which the Hindu Upanishads 
speak, that leads to the Heart of the Universe. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXIII
 
THE LIFE-WAVE AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS. THE ESOTERIC 
PHILOSOPHY AS TAUGHT BY THE STOICS. 
 
If, out of the material portion of the ether, by virtue of the inherent restless- 
ness of its particles, the forms of worlds and their species of plants and animals 
can be evolved, why, out of the spiritual part of the ether, should not successive 
races of beings, from the stage of monad to that of man, be developed ; each 
lower form unfolding a higher one until the work of evolution is completed on 
our earth, in the production of immortal man ? 
 
Isis Unveiled, (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 340. 
 
The most positive of materialistic philosophers agree that all that exists was 
evolved from ether ; hence air, water, earth, and fire, the four primordial ele- 
ments, must also proceed from ether and chaos the first Duad ; all the imponder- 
ables, whether now known or unknown, proceed from the same source. Now, if 
there is a spiritual essence in matter, and that essence forces it to shape itself 
into millions of individual forms, why is it illogical to assert that each of these 
spiritual kingdoms in nature is peopled with beings evolved out of its own 
material ? Chemistry teaches us that in man's body there are air, water, earth, 
and heat, or fire air is present in its components ; water in the secretions ; 
earth in the inorganic constituents ; and fire in the animal heat. The Kabalist 
knows by experience that an elemental spirit contains only one, and that each 
one of the four kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits ; man being 
higher than they, the law of evolution finds its illustration in the combination 
of all four in him. 
 
Ibid. I, 343. 
 
FOR thousands of years, our present Teacher has told us, 
there has been no such attempt as there is at present, 
on the part of our Masters, our Elder Brothers, to bring 
forth to the attention of mankind, the doctrines which 
we have been studying at these meetings for the past few years ; 
and that the attempt is such and so great, any student of Antiquity 
may assure himself. The reason is that at about the time of the 
discovery of America there came the end of one of the racial 
cycles, and the inauguration of another, which has culminated 
at the present time into the various spiritual, psychical, and 
physical disturbances both of man and of the earth, such as we 
have been experiencing in the last ten or twelve years. 
 
You remember what Cicero, the Roman orator, tells us of those 
who never had had the immense advantages conferred by initia- 
tion : he tells us, in the metaphorical language of his day, that 
those who were initiated lived and died with a brighter hope 
and a deeper knowledge of man and things ; and that those who 
did not have the supreme advantages of the secret teachings of 
the Ancient Wisdom given through initiation, lived, more par- 
ticularly after death, in what he described as the shades and mud 
2B 365 
 
 
 
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and degradation and sorrow and filth. Words which well merit 
our attention, because Cicero, like most men of his time, had 
indeed passed through the Eleusinian Rites, a fact which we 
know because he himself so tells us. 
 
Now the main subject which we have to study more fully this 
evening is the procedure followed by Nature in the building of 
worlds and of the Kosmos and of man ; and directly connected 
with this our subject, are the different views of the gods, the 
monads, the souls, the atoms, and the bodies, which we have been 
studying this winter. 
 
You remember that the ancient Greeks and Romans had a 
school which they called the Stoic, from the Stoa Poikile or 
Painted Porch, in Athens, Where the Stoic teachers taught. This 
school was founded by Zeno of Citium, in the Island of Cyprus, at 
about the end of the fourth century before our present era ; and 
it formed at about the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, 
the religious science or scientific religion of the most advanced 
thinkers of that era. There is no question that Zeno had been 
initiated, probably in the Samothracian, as well as in the 
Eleusinian, Mysteries ; because we know that the doctrines that 
he taught are not only practically identical as far as they go- 
please note the qualification with our own, but there are 
allusions and hints here and there scattered throughout these 
teachings, which show us very plainly that these doctrines of 
Stoicism did not originate with him, according to the views of the 
modern scholars, but must have taken their origin in a far past, 
in an antiquity originating far beyond anything of which history 
has preserved annals. 
 
Among the doctrines of Stoicism was that of the genesis or birth 
of the elements of the Kosmos. Five were spoken of, and two 
more were vaguely hinted at. The five were JEther, beginning 
with the highest ; then what was called Fire ; then Air ; then 
Water ; and then Earth. Now these kosmical elements are not 
the familiar things which we know by those names, for they were 
taken merely to symbolize, through certain appropriate qualities 
which they possess, the actual Elements of Kosmical being. 
 
Now these Elements of nature, which the Brahmanical 
philosophy called the Tattwas, which you will remember we 
studied very briefly at our last meeting may also be called the 
Principles of Kosmos, precisely as man's seven principles may be 
called the elements of his being. We can say the elements of 
Kosmos, or the principles of Kosmos ; and it means for present 
purposes the same thing ; and we may say the elements of man 
or the principles of man, and it means for present purposes 
precisely the same thing. Seven different qualities or states or 
conditions of Prakriti or nature call it also substance or matter 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 367
 
for the present, if you like. The present is not an appropriate 
time to go into a too detailed distinction of the difference which 
does exist between matter and prakriti. At any rate, the 
Elements are seven different states or conditions or qualities of 
prakriti, the manifested side of kosmical being. 
 
Now these seven Elements or Principles five, as openly 
taught according to the Stoic philosophy were derived one from 
the other, in order as follows : first the Nameless One ; second, 
its progeny or offspring, or child, which is the second element 
lower in the scale ; the third was ^Ether, the progeny or offspring 
of the second, combining in itself, at the same time, the qualities 
or powers of the second, its parent, and of the first, its grand- 
parent, so to say. Then came Fire, containing in itself the 
elements of the three preceding, and also its own particular 
swabhdva or essential characteristic. You will remember what 
Swabhdva means from our former studies of it : it is the par- 
ticularity, the essential nature, the real characteristic, of a thing, 
which makes it different from some other thing. The swabhava 
of a rose makes the rose-plant bring forth a rose always, and not 
a lily or a violet ; and the swabhava of a man brings forth as 
offspring a man always and not a gooseberry or an acorn. This 
is swabhava, or self-nature. Call it " individuality ", if you like ; 
it is the special or germinal individuality. 
 
Then from Fire, as a parent, sprang Air. We are using these 
familiar terms, with a warning, as said before, that they do not 
really mean the familiar material things which we know by those 
names. However, this Element called Air contains in itself the 
qualities of its own nature, likewise those of fire, its parent, and of 
aether, its grandparent, and the qualities of the second and the 
first Elements as well. Then comes Water, containing in itself its 
own qualities and also the qualities of the five which precede it. 
Finally comes the seventh or last, gross matter, or concreted 
substance, containing in itself the qualities of all the six which 
precede it ; each Element giving birth to each following one as 
the Life- Wave ran its course down the Shadowy Arc of manifesta- 
tion, or the building of the framework of the Kosmos. 
 
Thus, said the Stoics, is the Kosmos built enunciating an 
exactly similar doctrine to our own, indeed, identical, as so far 
outlined. Simply change the names : use gods, monads, souls, 
atoms, bodies, or bearers, and add life-force, and the kosmical 
Self as the first, and our seven kosmical Principles are there. Then, 
said the Stoics (expressing here their doctrine in our own terms), 
when the impulse of the evolutionary life-wave had reached its 
ultimate cycle of descent, i.e., had reached its lowest point on the 
Fourth Round, then began the period of ascent ; and Water drew 
into itself, as the Life-Wave advanced upward, Earth, and 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
mingled it with itself ; and Air, following in turn, drew within 
itself the Water containing the Earth, and mingled it with itself. 
Then fire drew into itself the Air containing the two lower Elements 
in itself ; and the ^Ether then in its turn drew into itself the Fire, 
with its elemental containments ; and the Second Element, 
counting downwards, drew into itself the ^Ether ; and finally 
the first, or Nameless One, then drew into itself the Second, 
containing the elemental qualities of all the others : and then, 
using the Stoic language, the " tension " of the divine Essence was 
restored to its own quality and kind, as far as that Essence had 
emanated a Life- Wave of innumerable living particles or Monads, 
and there was repose and bliss and utter peace and ineffable rest, 
until the cyclic time came for the next evolutionary outpouring 
of the innumerable lives. This is, as seen, a doctrine precisely 
similar to our own, as shown in the teaching setting forth the 
evolution of lives during the Rounds of a Planetary Chain. 
Descending along the Shadowy Arc into manifestation through 
matter, the Life- Wave advances downwards until it reaches its 
lowest cyclical point, then rises along the Luminous Arc until all 
is withdrawn again into the Essence which sent it forth, or rather 
from which it went forth ; individual experience gained, many 
stages in evolution passed through, by every unit or Monad of the 
Life- Wave which had come down into matter, for the purpose of 
gaining soul-experience there, and incidentally giving to the 
circumambient matter itself an upward impulse. For matter 
is nothing but " crystallized " spirit ; or, if you like, spirit is 
etherealized matter ; though the former statement is the better 
way by far in which to express the fact. 
 
Now, as pointed out in our last meeting, all this of course 
happens in what is called space. Space is not a mere container or 
receptacle of things, as our modern dictionaries define it, for in 
that case it would be a thing finite in itself ; and, as said before, 
in such case we should have to find or conceive of a container to 
contain the container, and so ad infinitum. But space is the 
endless and beginningless Pleroma, Fullness, as the Greek 
philosophers said : the Boundless All, the field of action of the 
Universal Life, the endless and beginningless fullness. Space is 
the vast, truly incalculable, aggregation of the innumerable 
hierarchies forming manifested Being. We live and move and 
have our being in Space, as the beings living in and upon the 
atoms which compose our bodies, live in our bodies, which to 
them is practically endless space, the illimitable Pleroma. 
 
Break the molds of your minds ; allow your thought to lead 
you into the vast expanse of the universal consciousness which 
these sublime ideas must open to you. Imagine, if you will, 
please, that Life is endless ; that, as said before, throughout all 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 3*9
 
runs the beating of the Universal Heart ; and, furthermore, that 
there is nothing great, nothing small, except by comparison, 
except relatively so, We bring forward again here the thought 
which we have often before expressed, an axiom which is one 
of the fundamental truths of the Esoteric Wisdom, the Ancient 
Wisdom of the olden times, and this fundamental truth or 
principle is that 6f Relativity. Everything is relative ; there are 
no absolutes anywhere, except relatively so ; there are no 
" jumping-off places " ; there are no ultimates ; there are no 
bounds beyond which the evolving spirit may not go. Every- 
thing is related to everything else. How can a thinking man talk 
of infinites, and at the same time speak of absolutes ? Why, the 
very word " absolute ", as pointed out in a former study, means 
what the Hindu word Mukta means, released, free. " Absolute " 
means released, unchained, unbound ; freedom. 
 
You remember that when Paul, the apostle of the Christians, 
during one of his missionary journeys, spoke to the men of Athens 
from Mars' Hill, i.e., from the Areopagus, he used words which are 
unquestionably, I think, the finest in the Christian New Testa- 
ment, for they are purely pagan philosophy, and they are as 
follows below. In addressing the men of Athens, he told them 
that when he disembarked, on coming up to Athens he found an 
altar dedicated to the " Unknown God " to thed agnosto. Now 
he must have disembarked at the old port of Phalerum, the port 
of Athens which was used before (and after) the building of the 
Piraeus. We know also, from the Greek historian and traveler, 
Pausanias, in chapter one, book one, of his work, that there were 
altars in that port dedicated to the " Unknown Gods ". Now this 
word, translated into English as " Unknown " (" agnostos "), 
means in Greek not so much " unknown " as " unknowable " 
unknown in the sense of unknowable ; unknown because it was 
unknowable. 
 
Now Paul, in speaking to the Athenians in his sermon to them, 
used the following words, as given in the Christian writing, 
" Acts ", chapter 17, verse 28. " For in him we live, and move, 
and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, 
for we are also his offspring/ 1 I may also point out in passing 
that the Greek of this passage allows us to translate the Greek 
word " auto " just as well " it " as " him " : " For in It we 
move, and live, and have our being." The Christians of modern 
days, having in mind their personal, active, monotheistic deity, 
in translating this passage naturally took the word as of the 
masculine gender ; but the neuter gender is grammatically correct 
also and philosophically better by far. 
 
Ay, Paul, the " Christian " (shall we so call him ? at any rate 
he was an initiate), Paul, the " Wise master-builder ", as he calls 
 
 
 
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himself, thus hinting at his esoteric affiliations, not only tells us 
that in It we live and move and have our being, but makes 
constantly reference to matters of initiation. The many mystical 
allusions to various matters which occur throughout the writings 
ascribed to him, show very plainly how far the Christianity of 
today has wandered from its first founders. 
 
Now these poets of whom Paul here speaks, af e unquestionably 
the two famous Stoic philosophers, Aratus (a countryman, by the 
way, of Paul, both he and Aratus being probably natives of 
Tarsus in Cilicia) and Cleanthes of the Troad, who wrote, by the 
way, one of the finest examples of Greek religious poems extant, 
greatly admired even by Christian writers, because they believe 
they see in it what they would probably call a nascent monotheism, 
in the Christian sense ! But it was simply a hymn of reverence 
to the Stoic Divine Essence, the Hierarch of the grand Hierarchy 
of our universe, its supreme head, which in the poem Cleanthes 
called " Zeus ". Please always remember that though Zeus may 
be called the Supreme Hierarch of a Universe, or Kosmos, or 
Hierarchy, he is but the Head of one of innumerable other similar 
hierarchies, hierarchies of the vast aggregate, endless and 
beginningless, which compose manifested Being. 
 
Now, in him in It we live, and move, and have our being. 
And this It, is what we very rightly call Space, which is the vast, 
endless and beginningless congeries of living beings. There is no 
vacuum, no vacuity, no emptiness, no " nothing ", anywhere. 
Everything is full, not merely of life, but of living and conscious 
things, and of beings of infinitely varying degrees of consciousness, 
such as you and I are, for example. Think of it ! Open your 
minds, and let the thoughts which this divine idea gives to you, 
stream in. Let them find a habitation in your souls 1 They bring 
endless comfort and peace, and lead to further illumination. 
 
Yea, verily, such is Space, seven-fold Space, more particularly 
the vast spaces of Space inwards, inwards, inwards, endlessly. 
 
In opening our more particular study for this evening, after 
having thus for the time being finished our study left incomplete 
at our last meeting, let us read from The Secret Doctrine, Volume II, 
page 492, the second paragraph : 
 
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, 
collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle 
(a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal differentia- 
tion ; and (b) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from that One 
BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with its 
many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever 
increasing in materiality. The primary Breath informs the higher 
Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on the constantly descending 
planes. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 371
 
A wonderful passage ! Note particularly the reference to the 
" many mankinds ", concerning which matter we shall speak 
at greater length in a future study. 
 
Now during our last study we traced very briefly the evolution 
from a god (one of infinite multitudes of divinities, call them 
" gods ", we will not quibble about names ) of other multitudes 
of inferior beings ; of monads springing from that god and 
forming its luminous garment, its vehicle, its carrier, its bearer, 
its body. Each one of those innumerable multitudes of monads, 
in its turn, sends forth from itself, projects from itself, other 
innumerable multitudes of souls, which form its garment, Us 
bearer, its carrier, its vehicle, its body. Again, every one of such 
souls in its turn sends forth from itself other innumerable multi- 
tudes of atoms, pranic-astral entities not the physical atom of 
science, please and these atoms form the garment, the carrier, 
the vehicle, the bearer, the body of such a soul. 
 
Each one of these atoms, in its turn, concretes around itself, 
gathers to itself, the life-atoms waiting over for it from previous 
cycles of activity, which are the skandhas belonging to that plane 
of manifestation, and thus forms its physical vehicle, in which all 
the other principles (mostly latent) reside. 
 
Now this vast collection of entities : gods, monads, souls, atoms, 
passed down through the kosmical Elements which we have 
described, using the Stoic formulae rather than the Brahmanic 
which are not so well known to European readers, but which 
equally well could have been used ; and as these courses of life, as 
this life-wave, travels downwards into matter, through each 
element, through each one of the seven elements, it gives birth to 
one class of these entities which we have been describing. The 
god lives on the plane of the Nameless One ; the monads live on 
the plane of the second Element, likewise unnamed in the 
literature of the ancients ; the souls live on the plane of ^Ether, 
akaSa ; and the atoms live on the plane of Air, the fourth plane, 
the pranic-astral world. 
 
Thus, the Elements of the Stoics, seven in number, but only 
five openly named, form the principles of nature ; and the life- 
wave in passing through these Elements, builds its appropriate 
habitations in each one of them. At certain appropriate planes, 
these habitations take the form of globes, and these globes are the 
seven forming our planetary chain ; they are globes built of these 
innumerable, multitudinous hosts of atoms, of souls, of monads ; 
some " awakened ", some partly " awake ", some still sleeping in 
the lower spheres. 
 
Then when the hosts of beings composing the life-wave the 
life-wave being composed of the entities derived from a former 
but now dead planet in our case the moon find that the time 
 
 
 
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has arrived for them to enter upon their own particular evolu- 
tionary course, they cycle downwards along the planetary chain 
that has been prepared for them by the three hosts of elementary 
beings, of the three primordial elementary worlds, the forerunners 
of the life- wave yet integral parts of it. Remember, a hierarchy 
consists of ten degrees or states ; three, as the Pythagoreans 
would have said, remaining in the silence and darkness to us 
of divinity, and seven entering into manifestation. This life-wave 
passes seven times in all around the seven spheres of our planetary 
chain, at first cycling down the Shadowy Arc through all the seven 
Elements of the Kosmos, gathering experience in each one of 
them ; each particular entity of the life-wave, no matter what its 
grade or kind, spiritual, psychic, astral, mental, divine, in it, 
advancing, advancing, advancing downwards, advancing until 
at the bottom of the Arc, when the middle of the Fourth Round is 
attained, they feel the end of the downward impulse. Then begins 
the upward impulse. According to the Stoic doctrine, everything 
passes by degrees back towards the divine, through the Elements 
again, the lower being withdrawn into the higher, until at last 
the great cyclic round is finished, and the cycling beings re-enter 
divinity, man being in the front ranks. As so often said before, 
" Man " begins his evolutionary journey an un-self-conscious god- 
spark, and ends it as a self-conscious god. 
 
And when we say " man " of the later stages of that journey, 
we mean the thinking entity. The personal, by that time, will have 
become the impersonal : the mortal will have been raised into 
immortality. These two ideas which our Teacher has included 
among others in her beautiful Invocation, comprise two of the 
most sublime teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, which we have 
but briefly alluded to at various times, but which we shall have 
to study more fully at some future time. The main thing to 
realize at the present time is that Space is a vast, beginningless 
and endless Fullness ; it is the Boundless All ; and, further, that 
it is composed of the numberless Hierarchies, which actually are 
Space itself, the spaces of Space ; and, still further, that these 
Hierarchies in their turn are composed of incalculable numbers 
of evolving beings in all the seven stages of development ; and 
that each such being has its own Grand Cycle to perform I first 
down the Shadowy Arc, and then when the end of that particular 
evolutionary wave or course has been reached, the reascent along 
the Luminous Arc upwards, towards the Source from which it 
originally came. Then, finally, the long pralayic sleep. At its 
end, comes the kosmic re-awakening, obeying the karmic impulses 
from the preceding manvantara and manvantaras, the opening 
of a new evolutionary course through the spheres of Life, but on 
higher and far sublimer levels than before. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXIV
 
THE SPACES OF SPACE. THE SECRET DOCTRINE, A UNIFIER I 
UNIVERSAL KEYS. DOCTRINES OF " THE VOID " AND OF 
" THE FULLNESS " CONTRASTED. 
 
Mme. Blavatsky, speaking on this subject in her Secret Doctrine, quotes from 
the old Book of Dzyan thus : 
 
" An army of the Sons of Light stands at each angle, the Lipika in the middle 
wheel." 
 
The four angles are the four quarters, and the " middle wheel " is the center 
of space ; and that center is everywhere, because as space is illimitable, the 
center of it must be wherever the cognizing consciousness is. And the same 
author, using the Disciple's Catechism, writes : 
 
" What is it that ever is ? Space, the Anupddaka. What is it that ever was ? 
The germ in the Root. What is it that is ever coming and going ? The great 
Breath. Then there are three eternals ? No, the three are one. That which 
ever is is one ; that which ever was is one ; that which is ever being and becoming 
is also one ; and this is Space." 
 
In this parentless and eternal space is the wheel in the center where the 
Lipika are, of whom I cannot speak ; at the four angles are the Dhyan-Chohans, 
and doing their will among men on this earth are the Adepts the Mahatmas. 
The harmony of the spheres is the voice of the Law, and that voice is obeyed 
alike by the Dhyan-Chohan and the Mahatma on their part with willingness, 
because they are the law ; on the part of men and creatures because they ar 
bound by the adamantine chains of the law which they do not understand. 
 
Echoes from the Orient (W. Q. JUDGE), ch. vi. p. 15. 
 
Thou hast to study the voidness of the seeming full, the fullness of the 
seeming void. 
 
Voice of the Silence, " The Seven Portals/' selected 
and annotated by H. P. BLAVATSKY. 
 
 
 
I 
 
 
 
N opening our study tonight, let us again read the passage 
on page 492 of the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, 
read at our last meeting : 
 
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, 
collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle 
(a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation; 
and (b) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from that One BREATH in 
its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with its many 
mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever in- 
creasing in materiality. The primary Breath informs the higher 
Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on the constantly descending 
planes. 
 
We have here in brief compass not only the outline of the hier- 
archical teaching, but also of the entire building of the Kosmos, 
which, repeated in the small, means likewise the building of the 
microcosm or man. 
 
Now, this evening we are going to advance a step farther. You 
 
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will remember that at our last meeting we discussed, more or 
less briefly on account of the shortness of the time, the question of 
the nature of Space, and what Space was, and what Space was 
not. We endeavored to point out that " space ", in the ordinary 
conception of things, means a receptacle or a container, in other 
words, it usually means place. Space is used almost synony- 
mously with place ; but this is not the use which is authorized or 
taught in the esoteric teachings, wherein it is shown that Space 
is the illimitable series of Hierarchies, which do not merely 
fill, but which are the Boundless All, beginningless and endless ; 
and that Space, as the old Greeks put it, was an endless fullness, 
endless and beginningless, and they called it the Pleroma, or the 
Fullness ; one Universal Life, one Heart, so to say, pulsating or 
beating throughout. 
 
We also speak of and please mark this carefully the spaces 
of Space, the inwards of Space, the inward parts, bearing to 
Space the same relation that man's own inner principles bear to 
his outer vehicle. 
 
Now then, tonight we are going to execute an apparently 
complete right-about-face ; after thus having pointed out in 
former studies what Space was considered to be in certain branches 
of the Ancient Wisdom, as among the Stoics, and among the 
Brahmans, and in other schools of thought alluded to merely, 
we shall now take up very briefly likewise the manner in which 
Space is looked upon more particularly by our own Esoteric 
School, and especially by the holders of the esoteric doctrines of 
Gautama the Buddha. 
 
We are now going to say, and prove, that the Secret Doctrine 
of the ages is above everything else a unifier ; that, as said in the 
beginning of these studies which our Teacher has given us the 
privilege to participate in, we are learning, we are beginning to 
understand, a series of doctrines which give us the keys to the 
great religions of the past ages ; and that these keys are universal 
in their proper application, each depending solely upon the inner 
capacities of the individual as to how much he may gain by 
turning a key once around, or twice, or three times, mayhap even 
seven times. 
 
There is a doctrine of the northern Buddhism and we are going 
to choose it in order to illustrate the esoteric teachings regarding 
Space called the Doctrine of the Void, the Doctrine of the 
Empty, likewise found in other schools in past times, such as 
were illustrated by the Greek Atomists, Democritus, Leucippus, 
and Epicurus, and by the great Roman poet Lucretius ; and 
even spoken of by some of the Stoical philosophers, who otherwise 
taught the Doctrine of the Fullness. We have an illustration 
here that may be a lesson to us, as will appear later on this 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 375
 
evening, that things which may seem to be or form a contra- 
diction in The Secret Doctrine or elsewhere in our teachings, are 
not really contradictions, though they may be paradoxes. A 
paradox, please understand, is a statement which appears to be 
or contain a contradiction, but which actually is not one. 
 
Now the word used in the Buddhist Sanskrit writings to describe 
this Emptiness is Sfinyata. Sfinya means empty or void. The td 
is the same grammatical suffix in Sanskrit as tas is in the Latin, 
unitas, trinitas, vacuitas, and is found in English as the ty in 
eternity, or unity, or vacuity, and so forth : therefore Sunyata 
is to be translated vacuity. 
 
These Buddhist philosophers teach that the only reality, the 
only fundamental thing, so to say, of Being, is the Illimitable 
Void. From it in the beginning, or in time, springs forth a 
Kosmos, or spring forth the universes ; and to it they return 
when their cycle of manifestation is ended. This Doctrine of the 
Void please mark is of a far more spiritual nature than the 
Doctrine of the Fullness. It is much more difficult to understand 
than the latter, because our European minds are not trained to 
the thinking required easily to understand thoughts such as these. 
We can much more easily, much more quickly, comprehend and 
understand the fullness of things, than we can the thought that 
out from the illimitable and perfect void, spring into life all the 
infinite manifestations of Kosmic being ; and that back into the 
void they sink again when their life-cycle is run. In other words, 
our European minds find it easier to understand the mystical and 
the religious rather than the truly philosophic and the truly 
scientific. Yet this Doctrine of the Void was taught by the 
grandest intellect, the most titanic spiritual power, known to 
mankind in the annals of recorded and unrecorded history, I 
mean by him whom we call the Lord Buddha, in other words 
Gautama Sakyamuni. 
 
This does not mean that we are Buddhists, as has been pointed 
out before in former studies ; but the doctrines which the Buddha 
taught are also ours, when we apply to them the key which we 
have. You will remember that two kinds of doctrine were taught 
by the Buddha, i.e., the Doctrine of the Eye, very faithfully 
preserved by the southern school of Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and 
so forth ; and what is called the Doctrine of the Heart, that is, 
the hid doctrine, the Mystery-doctrine ; respectively so called 
because the eye can see outward or visible things ; but the heart 
is not seen, and in it, according to the old thought, flow the 
fountains of life. This Doctrine of the Heart is the Esoteric 
Wisdom, the unseen part of the teaching, its Core or Heart, that 
which is not given out to all. 
 
Practically all the religions and philosophies of the Occident, 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
even in Greek and Roman times, have preferred to demonstrate 
their tenets on the background, or on the foundation, of the 
Doctrine of the Fullness ; i.e., that the universe is infinitely full, 
and that this fullness is composed of infinite multitudes of beings. 
Now that doctrine is true we repeat it, repeat it emphatically ; 
but likewise is truer still the Doctrine of the Void. No contra- 
diction exists here, as will be shown. 
 
What do we mean when we speak of the Void, then ? We 
must touch upon this very briefly, because our limited time 
obliges us to pass on to other subjects ; but the Doctrine of the 
Void means, or rather can be illustrated by, two things. When we 
look into what people popularly call the infinitudes of space, what 
do we see ? We see what to us is emptiness. But, as pointed 
out in a former study, this so-called ether (these ethery spaces), 
even according to the theories recently taught by our modern 
scientists, is more rigid than steel, denser than our densest 
matter ; and, as pointed out in a former study, the hard and 
dense material stuff that we know on this earth, the hard rocks, 
the harder metals, etc., are like floating foam, foamy bubbles, 
holes, as it were, floating in and on the infinite vast expanses of 
the Kosmic void. 
 
The other way by which to approach our subject is the follow- 
ing : What is that which is not matter ? Spirit. Can you put 
spirit into a container ? Can it be encompassed or measured ? 
No. Why not ? Because it cannot be contained, in our sense of 
the word. It, to us, is emptiness, void. It is that which infills the 
vast ethery spaces, and it is merely the feebleness of our senses 
and the weakness of our understanding causing us to live in the 
external, which make us foolishly to believe that this which we 
see is the real, and that the so-called ethery spaces are unreal or 
empty in the popular sense. 
 
The Void then, is the higher planes of the Boundless All ; that 
which to us is void, and which therefore was so expressed by the 
ancient philosophers ; teaching as they did the usual sort of 
men, they used simple language so that men could more easily 
understand ; just exactly as in the case of the much misunder- 
stood geocentric system so much mocked at by our wise modern 
.natural philosophers. And yet, is it not true that every point in 
Space is its center ? Why, the idea is a common thought among 
thinking men. Even the rather orthodox French philosopher 
Pascal, copying an ancient Greek figure of expression, says that 
space or infinity is that which has its center everywhere, and its 
circumference nowhere. 
 
Naturally, then, the Ancients looked upon our earth as the 
center of Space, and so would the inhabitants of Venus, or of 
Mars, or of Jupiter, or of the Moon, or of the Sun, or of any other 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 377
 
body or point in space. They spoke and taught anthropocentrjc- 
ally, as pointed out in one of our earlier studies, i.e., from the 
human standpoint of comprehension. 
 
And likewise and this is a passing thought when our own 
ancient esoteric philosophers spoke of the planets, spoke of 
Venus, or of Mars, for instance, as a " constellation " f they 
knew perfectly well what they were saying, and they did not 
speak in ignorance. Why did they speak of a planet as a " con- 
stellation ", which in ordinary astronomical terminology or 
parlance means a collection or a gathering of stars ? Why, 
because every one of the visible planets we see is but one of seven, 
six of them invisible to our physical eyes ; the seven forming a 
" Planetary Chain ". And, furthermore, these planetary chains 
are composed of seven distinct and separate globular bodies, 
forming, to the eye of the seer, a true constellation ; and further- 
more still, each one of these seven globes has fourteen different 
lokas (or rather seven lokas and seven talas) or " worlds ", 
attached to it, making thus, counting all the seven globes, forty- 
nine " worlds " or planes or lokas and forty-nine talas. As hinted 
at in our former two or three studies, where we spoke of the 
Life- Wave coming down and passing through the seven Elements 
of Nature, we implied that the Life- Wave formed and built in 
each one of the seven Elements its appropriate habitat or habita- 
tion. Each one of these seven globes or spheres is built for the 
development of one of the seven principles of man ; and each 
one of these seven globes has its own seven sub-principles or 
sub-elements to boot ; precisely as the interior nature of man has 
built corresponding upddhis or vehicles as his own seven sub- 
principles in each one of his seven greater principles, therefore 49 ; 
and as each principle is bipolar, there are 49x2=98 conditions 
or states all told. Each principle of Kosmos or of man must 
have its chance for manifestation in its own " home ", or Element, 
in its own vibratory surroundings, in its own particular magnetic 
sphere ; and a proper understanding of all this can be obtained 
in no other way than by following the hierarchical evolutionary 
course of the great titanic intellects and spirits which govern 
our kosmos. 
 
The Doctrine of the Void, then, is actually identic with the 
Doctrine of the Fullness. There is a distinction, however, and 
the distinction is, as pointed out, that the Doctrine of the Void 
is the more spiritual of the two, and treats of the upper or superior 
nature of the Kosmos ; of the inwards and the yet more inwards 
and of the still more inwards, infinitely, of the spaces of Space. 
Whereas the Doctrine of the Fullness treats of the Kosmoi, the 
Kosmoses, as they are in manifestation. But the same thought, 
precisely the same idea, lies back of both doctrines. 
 
 
 
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This opens the avenue for a further brief explanation of what 
was pointed out in our last study or two. Some perhaps may 
have thought that there was a radical difference between the 
principles of man and the elements of man, or the Principles of 
Space and the Elements of Space. The difference is not radical, 
it does not go to the root of the case. But there is a distinction. 
Fundamentally the elements and the principles are one. As 
explained before, force and matter are essentially one. Spirit 
and substance are essentially one. Spirit may be called ethereal- 
ized matter, or matter crystallized spirit ; but the latter is the 
better form of expression ; it is permissible to make a distinction 
between a force and its material vehicle, its material self, so to 
say. 
 
The seven great Elements of the Kosmos are the vehicles of the 
seven great Forces of the Kosmos ; and those seven great Forces 
are the Principles of the Kosmos ; hence, the seven great Elements 
in which they work are the vehicles of the Kosmic Principles. 
The Principles are the energy-consciousness side, and the Ele- 
ments are the matter-prakriti side of being. There is the sole 
distinction. But, as said, there is no radical difference between 
them. It is rather a distinction of states or conditions. A force, 
however spiritual it may be, is matter to a still higher force. 
Matter concreted, as we may think it to be, is force to a matter 
inferior to it. The explanation of the paradox lies in pointing 
out the relationship of the planes of being each to each, as these 
work, or are worked upon, in the great Kosmic Void-Fullness. 
 
We would like to point out further that in speaking of principles 
and elements as is here done the seven principles and elements 
of man may be instanced the teaching as above given is accurate 
in every particular. The point to remember is that these so-called 
seven "principles" of man or of the Kosmos, considered as 
descriptive words, are generalizing terms. You could not, for 
instance, separate man into seven naturally distinct pieces and 
lock each piece into a separate receptacle. And why ? Because 
these seven principles are to be thought of much as if we were to 
speak of consciousness and force and matter and energy and 
element, etc. They are generalizing terms. They are the con- 
sciousness-substance, the matter-force, of the Boundless All in 
which man " moves, and lives, and has his being ". Great 
intellects of the past have analysed this matter-force or spirit- 
substance and have shown that it consists in manifestation of 
seven apparently discrete, seven separate, parts, which yet 
essentially are one the One Life, universal and boundless. They 
are, first, the Self ; then the vehicle of the Self, the vehicle or 
fountain of pure impersonal individuality. Then, third, the 
capacity for personal or limited thought, egoity; then the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 379
 
principle of " hate and love " or " attraction and repulsion " in 
the Kosmos or in man, called Kama. Then the vitality or life- 
principle, derived directly from the first ; and then the astral 
and physical bodies, vehicles. 
 
Now you see that these are general principles of being. But 
when we undertake to analyse man more particularly, for pur- 
poses of accurate esoteric study, we shall find, when we come to 
that part of our investigations, that we shall have to be far more 
particular in the terms we use if we are to get a proper under- 
standing of what man is, how he is built, his relationship to other 
beings in the Kosmos, why he evolves as he does, and his final 
destiny. The greatest questions of the spirit-side of nature, the 
greatest questions of psychology, the great problem of psycho- 
physical evolution, are bound up in just this thought that we have 
here enunciated. 
 
Our time is so short at any one of our meetings that we can do 
little more in that time than briefly hint at certain things, taking 
them up at later meetings for further consideration. But mark 
you it is better so. Such was always the method of the ancient 
schools. Never did they teach according to our modern boasted 
system of turning and twisting and hammering at a subject until 
the life went out of it, and the brains of their pupils wearied and 
became set in mental molds. This brain-mind method has no 
element of inspiration in it whatsoever. That method cripples 
the thinking entity. On the contrary, the ancient teaching was 
by proper suggestion, making the disciple to do his thinking for 
himself, on a hint or at an allusion, making his mind to catch the 
holy fires of inspiration, so that he should lighten up his own 
inner temple with the thoughts that his own divine monad 
infused or inspired into him. Parables, hints, suggestions, were 
the Teacher's method ; and then always, at a later date, catching 
up the thought again, opening the door a little wider, raising the 
" Veil of Isis " a trifle more ; rendering help in this manner. 
 
Thus, then, we have seen that the elements and the principles 
are essentially one, dual only in manifestation. We have seen 
that the principles of nature and of man are the energy-con- 
sciousness side of nature and of man ; and that the elements in 
the Kosmos or in man are the matter-prakriti side of nature and of 
man. But remember always that force and matter, spirit and 
substance, consciousness and its vehicle or upddhi, are essentially 
one. As said before, a force or a spiritual energy is concreted 
matter to another one diviner than it ; and the concreted matter 
of our plane is a whirling cyclone of force to the matter inferior to 
it. A fact, this, which even our modern scientists are beginning to 
realize, as shown in their teaching of the whirling electrons, tiny 
bodies, whirling in the molecular aggregate called the physical 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
atom a miniature solar system, they say. A true thought that, 
and inspired. Inspired by what, or whom ? God ? No. We 
know whence comes the inspiration leading to such thoughts as 
these : partly from our own teaching as it is given out by 
H. P. Blavatsky, and partly from more direct though perhaps 
invisible and unknown human help from our Elder Brothers. 
Our Teacher has told us this before. Here is the application, an 
instance, of the fact. 
 
Remember that SfinyatS,, called the Doctrine of the Void, 
refers to the spiritual side of being ; and that the Doctrine of 
the Pleroma, the Doctrine of the Fullness, refers to the matter- 
prakriti side of being, the side of manifestation, which passes 
away when the great manvantara is finished. 
 
But remember also, as said several times already this evening, 
that when we speak of substance or of spirit, of force or of matter, 
of purusha or of prakriti to use the Brahmanical Sankhya terms 
it is only by way of voicing the things which we have learned 
through our various inner faculties and outer senses about the 
Kosmos, and that fundamentally these respective pairs are one. 
Spirit and substance or matter are one, and both will sink back 
again into the vast illimitable Void of the Unbounded Divinity 
when the time of Universal Pralaya comes. Remember the 
ancient mystic saying, so often quoted in our own school, that the 
disciple should learn to know the meaning of the statement : 
the " fullness of the seeming void, and the voidness of the seeming 
full ". 
 
Now, this " seeming full " of matter is truly Sdnya, emptiness, 
mostly holes, so to say. Sfinya is the ancient Brahmanical 
doctrine of mdyd, a doctrine of the Hindti Veddnta, called the 
" end of the Veda ", because it is claimed to be the perfection or 
end of the teaching concerning thq esoteric side of the Vedic 
poems. Maya means " illusion ". Not that the manifested 
kosmos does not exist. It does exist, or it could not be or provide 
an illusion. The illusion consists in not properly understanding 
it. Why, if matter or substance (or nature, prakriti) did not 
exist, you might as well say that spirit does not exist, because 
they are fundamentally one. The truth is that matter is not the 
substantial, infinite element, the essence of reality, which our 
Western minds untaught and undisciplined in these ideas 
think it is, merely because it seems solid to us, and therefore 
" real ". It is illusion because it is deceptive ; and actually, as 
the Buddhists taught, thereby teaching the same thought as the 
Brahmanical Adwaita Vedanta, Sftnyata is the doctrine of 
emptiness, of the elemental vacuity of the Manifested Universe, 
and hence is the doctrine of maya, illusion : illusory because 
unreal. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 381
 
Even the modern natural philosophers, the physicists, the 
chemists, now are beginning to understand that this so-called 
apparent universe is mostly vacuity. They have never yet been 
able to find out what matter really is ; it is a figment of the 
scientific imagination, as commonly explained, and all they know 
about it is simply what their own intuitions and scientific 
deductions have told them : that back of the seeming, back of the 
appearances, there is something concerning which they say 
and they should have credit for the frank and truthful acknow- 
ledgment " We are learning more about it. What it really is, 
we do not know I " 
 
As a final thought tonight, let me point out that although 
we have been speaking during recent meetings of the " gods, 
monads, souls, atoms, bodies ", which still form our present 
subject of study, we have not yet finished it by any means ; we 
have barely entered upon it. Using the term " gods ", we use 
a term which is familiar. It is a good term, a truthful term ; there 
is no reason to reject it ; but yet it is not the term used in our 
own esoteric system. Our own esoteric Tibetan teachings use for 
it the expression Dhydni-Buddhas, and the lower side of the god- 
plane where they belong is occupied by the Dhydni-Chohans. 
Dhyani, a Sanskrit word adopted into the Tfbetan terminology, 
means " meditation " or " contemplation " ; therefore the 
former expression means Buddhas of Meditation or of Con- 
templation ; and the latter means Lords of Contemplation or of 
Meditation. The latter term, however, is not infrequently used 
to include both classes. In the Mystic Greek system, these gods, 
these Dhyani-Buddhas, were called logoi, logoses. The word 
" logos " is a Greek vocable meaning Word. It also has a 
derivative meaning, given as reason. Why ? Because the Greek 
philosophers saw that when a man thinks and desires to express 
his thought, to convey the thought to another, he must use 
words. The word is the carrier of the thought over to another mind : 
and from this simple illustration the word logos, meaning " word ", 
was adopted into the philosophic language and into the religious 
language (and later into Christianity), meaning that power or 
energy or entity which carries the divine thought over to lower 
planes : carried over from the plane above or behind it, from the 
intellect or mind behind it, from the consciousness behind it, to 
lower planes ; in our case, the monads occupy this second or 
lower plane. 
 
In conclusion, I desire to translate from the original Greek 
the first five verses of the Christian gospel ascribed to the disciple 
whom Jesus is said to have especially loved, John, called " John 
the Divine ", " divine " meaning here " theologian ". He was 
thus called " theologian ", we must suppose, because he was 
ac 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the only one of the four writers of the four accepted Gospels who 
wrote anything resembling in style or in matter the fine, lofty, 
theological teachings belonging to the neo-Platonic or neo- 
Pythagorean school an unintended compliment to the latter. 
These quasi-pagan teachings are found in the first part only of the 
" Gospel according to John ". They are as follows and I would 
that I had time more fully to explain them than the necessarily 
brief commentary on them that I can make this evening. 
 
Verse I. 
 
11 In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was towards 
god, and the logos was god." 
 
Verse II. 
 
" This [the logos] was in the beginning towards god/' 
(I am making my own translation, if you please. The so-called 
 
" Authorized Version " is a literary farce, translated to suit the 
 
monotheistic prejudices of the Christian exegetes ; and the 
 
" Revised Version " is no better.) 
 
Verse III. 
 
" All things were generated through it. . . ." (The Greek 
word egeneto, here translated " generated ", could likewise be 
translated " came into being ". The English word " generated " 
itself comes from the same Aryan root. I read again) : 
 
" All things were generated through it, and without it not a 
single thing was generated [came into being]." 
 
Verse IV. 
 
" That which was generated in it was life, and the life was the 
light of men. 11 
 
Verse V. 
 
" And the light shines in the shadow, and the shadow took it 
not up." 
 
Don't you see our teachings alluded to there ? Why, the very 
words used in the ancient doctrine, ay, even from the Book of 
Dzyan, the " spirit and its wing ", the " wing and its shadow ". 
" Shadow " is an ancient mystery-term meaning vehicle or 
body ; as was pointed out in a quotation by me in a recent study, 
read from the Desatir, chapter called The Book ofShet, the Prophet 
Zirtusht, or Zoroaster. There the word shadow was used in 
exactly the same sense. 
 
Note the thought here ; in the beginning of our manifested 
universe existed the logos, being the first entity or thing brought 
into manifestation in the beginning ; and this logos was towards 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 383
 
god. The Greek word here translated " towards ", is pros, 
meaning motion towards a thing. Of course, the logos sprang 
from the spirit divine, " god ", but the attempt here in this gospel 
is to emphasize the thought that its natural aspirations were 
towards its parent-fountain. A great secret of Occultism lies in 
this thought. " As a man thinketh, so is he", says in substance 
a Hebrew writing, Proverbs, thereby uttering a profound truth. 
Man follows infallibly the bent of his nature, his desire. He is 
magnetically drawn towards that which his heart longs for, and 
that which he wants he gets ; if he wants " heaven " he will get it ; 
and if he wants hell, he will be magnetically drawn to spheres 
infernal. This, in brief expression, is an outline of the whole 
mystery of so-called " karmic fruits ", of " heaven " and of 
" hell " and much more which we must here leave unsaid. 
 
" And the logos was towards god " aspiring towards its own 
divine Source ; and this " god " was Swabhavat, " Father- 
Mother " ; not Swabhava, which is an entirely different thing. 
As pointed out before, Swabhavat is what certain Asiatic and 
other schools call " Father-Mother ", the Great Vacuity, Sfinya, 
the Great Emptiness, Akaa in Hindfi writings ; which is the 
Great Void to us, but the Great Fullness in another sense. What 
we call the Great Fullness is the manifested universe flowing 
forth in wondrous procession from the Void, or Swabhavat, or 
" Father-Mother ", or Mahafinya, or AkaSa, various names for 
the same thing. 
 
Verse II. " This was in the beginning towards god." So 
anxious was the writer of this Gospel to point out that the logos 
originated in the beginning, and that the aspiration of the logos 
was towards its parent-source, that he must need repeat it once 
again. 
 
Verse III. " All things were generated through it," that is, 
came into being through it. This shows that it is the demiurgus 
or world-fashioner, which was in the writer's mind, and this logos 
is on the third lower plane only of manifestation, on the third 
kosmic plane ; as we say, the third logos from above, which is the 
manifest logos or the world-maker, the world-artificer. The writer 
continues : " And without it not a single thing was generated." 
So anxious, so desirous, was he to show that there was no creating 
of souls or worlds or anything else by an extra-kosmic god, that 
he has to point out again here that it was the logos, the Kosmic 
Word, carrying its force down from its Parent, that from itself 
generated things, cast them forth, projected them, evolved them, 
exactly as we have been pointing out in our recent meetings as 
being the course or method of manifestation. And these things 
were the monads, the atoms, the souls, and all the rest. 
 
The writer continues, changing the thought-type somewhat, for 
 
 
 
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fear that it will be thought that this generation of the beings 
on so high a plane is the mere matter and gross physical things 
which we see around us : " That which was generated in it [in 
the logos] was life " not stones, trees, stars, planets, etc., men, 
and other things, but life. And the life mark this " was the 
light of men ", the spiritual light illuminating mankind ; in other 
words, man's higher nature, or verily our own,, inner logos, our 
own " inner god ", as I hear the Teacher call to me to say our 
own inner Christos. 
 
And this logos, the Third, or Manifest Logos, is but the vehicle 
of a logos still higher than itself. During the processes of genera- 
ting or bringing forth all these things which are less than itself, 
every single step brings forth light, for light is one of the first 
manifestations of the creative activity remember, creation in its 
original sense means formation. This light of the third Kosmic 
plane is Daiviprakriti. We borrow the word from the Vedanta 
of HindtLsthan ; it means " shining " or " divine prakriti ", of 
which Ak&a or Swabhavat is the " crown ". Swabhavat or 
Akaa is the first manifest kosmic Element or manifestation of 
prakriti, or Essential Nature itself. Remember that there are 
seven Natures, one within the other ; seven Elements ; seven 
kosmic Forces. " And the life was the light of mankind " our 
own higher nature. 
 
And the last verse : " And the light shines in the shadow " 
which, as regards man, is its vehicles or our higher minds. " And 
the shadow took it not up/' i.e., primordial man had as yet 
evolved no vehicle or mind fit to " take it up " or in. 
 
This thought here enables the writer of this Gnostic gospel 
Gnostic at least in the first part thereof to introduce his sectarian 
teachings : " There was a man who was sent from God, whose 
name was John/' to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the human 
logos, the saviour of man. He, Jesus Christ, was this light, who 
" became flesh " (!) and came into the world as the " light of 
men ". Pathetic ! A beautiful teaching of the ancient Mystery- 
religion from the beginning of time, is here taken and adapted, 
and applied as pointed out in a previous study to a mere 
mystery-figure, a mere type-figure of the ancient Mysteries. Not 
that Jesus did not ever live ; a man, a Hebrew rabbi if you like, 
called Jesus, did live ; but the Christos of whom the Christian 
gospels write, is a type-figure of the Mysteries, but much and 
sadly distorted. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXV
 
OCCULTISM AND' THE MYSTERY-SCHOOLS. SEVEN DEGREES OF 
INITIATION ! MAN BECOMES A GOD. SEVEN KOSMIC PLANES : 
OUR PLANETARY CHAIN OF SEVEN GLOBES ON THE FOUR 
LOWER PLANES : THE PASSAGE OF THE LIFE- WAVE THERE- 
THROUGH. 
 
The world meaning that of individual existences is full of those latent 
meanings and deep purposes which underlie all the phenomena of the Universe, 
and Occult Sciences i.e., reason elevated to supersensuous Wisdom can alone 
furnish the key wherewith to unlock them to the intellect. Believe me, there 
comes a moment in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through 
are a thousandfold rewarded. In order to acquire further knowledge, he has no 
more to go through a minute and slow process of investigation and comparison of 
various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first 
truth. Having passed that stage of philosophy which maintains that all funda- 
mental truths have sprung from a blind impulse . . . ; the adept sees and 
feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths the Universal 
Spiritual Essence of Nature, Siva the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator. 
 
The Mahatma Letters, p. 241. 
 
I say again then. It is he alone who has the love of humanity at heart, who 
is capable of grasping thoroughly the idea of a regenerating practical Brother- 
hood who is entitled to the possession of our secrets. He alone, such a man 
will never misuse his powers, as there will be no fear that he should turn them 
to selfish ends. A man who places not the good of mankind above his own good 
is not worthy of becoming our chela he is not worthy of becoming higher in 
knowledge than his neighbour. ^bid p 252. 
 
There is but one general law of life, but innumerable laws qualify and determine 
the myriads of forms perceived and of sounds heard. Ibid., p. 255. 
 
THE search for Truth is the noblest aim that man can pur- 
sue. The original principles of Being were uncovered ages 
upon ages agone, and were co-ordinated into a complete 
and marvellous system. Upon that wonderful system as 
a basis, the Teachers of ancient times laid the foundations of the 
superstructures of the various philosophic and religious systems 
which have come down to us in the world's literatures as now 
extant in the present day. These systems contain in greater or 
less degree fundamental truths of being, the study of which in 
our own time is called " Occultism " the Science of the Kosmos 
and of Man as a part thereof ; telling us of the origin, the nature, 
and the destiny of the universe and of man, a part thereof. The 
Mystery-Schools of antiquity formed the inner focus of the 
ancient thought, and the doctrines there studied were called the 
" Heart-Doctrine ", because they represented the doctrines that 
 
383 
 
 
 
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were hid ; and the various philosophies that they expounded in 
public were called the " Eye-Doctrine ", because they were the 
doctrines in exoteric phrasing of the things that were seen and 
not the things that were hid. The Heart-Doctrine comprised the 
solutions of the enigmas of being, and these solutions were put 
forth in exoteric form under the guise of allegory and in mytho- 
logical treatment, and formed the Eye-Doctrine, or the exoteric 
religions or philosophies. 
 
But all these ancient philosophies were founded on wonderful 
and sublime truths, compared with which the philosophies of 
modern Europe are mere verbiage, little more than fine words. 
The doctrines comprised in Occultism treat, as said, of the real 
nature, origin, and destiny of the Kosmos and Man. These 
Mystery-Schools taught causal things, and their effects in life ; 
they taught of the most intimate and profound relations of the 
elementary beings, whatever their degree in the Kosmos, to each 
other. They taught man that the way to a complete understand- 
ing of the mysteries of being, was by searching within ; that no 
man could understand a truth properly which merely entered his 
ears, without having developed in himself also first the capacity, 
the inner faculty, of comprehension ; and it was the development 
of this inner faculty of comprehension or understanding that was 
the main aim of the schools of initiation. 
 
The whole effort, then, of these initiating schools was to make 
man know himself. Why ? Because the inmost essence of man 
is rooted in the inmost essences of the universe, and by following 
the small, age-old Path, as the Brahmanical Upanishads said, 
which lies within man himself, and to which Jesus alluded when 
he said " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light " by following 
that small, old Path inwards, man could climb step by step 
inwards or " upwards ", inwards and inwards for ever, con- 
stantly expanding into greater fields of consciousness. And this 
evolving of the inner man is achieved through the evocation of the 
spiritual powers latent in man's higher nature. It is, in fact, the 
uniting man's soul to his divine monad, his inner god. 
 
As pointed out in former studies, three were the states, after the 
fourth degree of initiation, which the initiant or candidate must 
win : first came the Theophanic Mystery, which is the appear- 
ance at the solemn moment of initiation of man's own inner god 
to himself ; and this holy presence was called by the Greeks 
Theophany, " the appearance of a god ", i.e., man's own Higher 
Self to himself. And while in the average candidate this sublime 
moment of intellectual ecstasis and high vision lasted but a short 
time, with further spiritual progress of the candidate the Theo- 
phanic communion became more enduring and lasting, until finally, 
ultimately, man knew himself, not merely as the offspring spiri- 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 387
 
tually of his own inner god, but as that inner god himself, in his 
essential being. 
 
That was the first step, the first realization. The second came 
in what the Greeks called Theopneusiy, which is a Greek compound 
word meaning " the inbreathing of a god ", and in which man not 
merely was conscious by inner senses, and outer senses even, of his 
inner divinity, but he felt the inspiration flowing through his 
intellectual and spiritual veins, as it were felt the inbreathing 
from his own inner god, and became, thus, inspired, the very word 
" inspiration " meaning " inbreathing ". With the passing of 
time and the greater purification of the soul- vehicle, which is man 
himself, this inbreathing or inspiration became permanent. 
 
Finally, there came at the seventh initiation the most sublime 
mystery of all, called Theopathy by the Greeks, meaning " the 
suffering a god " a technical term ; that is to say, not that the 
god suffered, but that the initiant, the candidate, suffered himself 
to become, abandoned himself fully to be, a truly selfless channel 
of communication of his own inner god, his own Higher Self ; he 
became lost as it were in the greater Self of his own Higher Self. 
This personal self became absorbed, transmuted ; and its lower 
characteristics vanished away like a cloud before the sun ; and 
with the passing of time and the greater cleansing of the vehicle, 
the soul, the personal man, became blended utterly with his own 
inner god. And that was Theopathy. 
 
Now the various degrees of initiation, as pointed out before, in 
the ancient Mystery-Schools, comprised, first, three degrees, 
which were those of teaching. With the fourth began the personal 
experience ; that is to say, the teaching was continued, but in 
addition to that the initiant, the candidate, was made to be, to 
become, that which before he was taught of, told about ; because 
the only way utterly to know a thing, the only way utterly to 
understand a thing, is to become it. 
 
Ah, there is vastly more in this thought than appears on the 
surface, and more than we have time this evening to enter into ! 
But let it remain in your minds. And the teaching was continued 
with every step higher, up to the seventh, ay, even up to the tenth 
degree. We stop at the seventh, because the three highest degrees 
are far beyond our comprehension, and pertain only, we are told, 
to the highest of our Masters. 
 
Teaching continued even up to the seventh initiation, co- 
ordinately with the self-experiencing, the self-becoming ; and in 
this way man not merely knew, but felt himself, realized that he 
was, one with the Kosmos, not merely its offspring and child in a 
detached manner, but verily, in every sense of the word, It Itself. 
Then came the realization of that Kosmic Self, the Atman, that 
which is the same in you and me, in every dweller on this globe, 
 
 
 
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and in every dweller in every one of the planetary or stellar bodies 
in Space ; the feeling, the sense, the knowledge, " I am ". That 
which separates us is the feeling of " I am 7 ", and " you are you " ; 
and this is the action of the ego, egoism. 
 
Yet, mystery of mysteries, know this : It is only through the 
passing across of egoity into universality, that man becomes a 
god. If there were not the egoic principle enlarged and purified 
to contain it and to understand it, there could be no such thing 
as the Hierarchy of Compassion, there could be no such thing as 
the Luminous Arc. It remains with each one of us, with each 
member of our Holy Order, so to live the life, so to purify his inner 
sheaths of being, so to transmute his soul-essence, that they may 
become fit channels of communication between his own inner god 
and himself. When man has accomplished that, he becomes 
omniscient for our Kosmic Hierarchy ; omniscient, for all know- 
ledge of it and in it is his. And why ? Because his essence of 
consciousness, the egoic essence, has become united through his 
own inner god with the universal plane, the atmic plane ; and 
knowledge and Wisdom then stream through him as the sun-rays 
stream through the atmosphere. 
 
We have read from The Secret Doctrine at three or four former 
meetings a paragraph which we shall repeat tonight, in Volume II, 
on page 492, as follows i 
 
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, 
collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the 
vehicle (a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal 
differentiation ; and (b) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from 
that One BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as 
Nature with its many mankinds [please note that] proceeds downwards 
toward the planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary 
Breath informs the higher Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on 
the constantly descending planes. 
 
We have there, comprised in brief compass as said before, the 
entire outline of the study which we have been pursuing this 
winter under our Teacher's direction, specifically pointed out by 
her to follow along this line ; and at a later moment this evening, 
or perhaps at our next meeting, we shall go into this question of 
the various mankinds spoken of. There is involved in this a great 
and wondrous mystery. Let me merely say at the present 
moment that the humanity of which we form a part on earth 
to-day, that is to say, the particular life-wave which we call 
mankind or humanity or human beings, is not the sole and only 
life-stream of intelligent egos traversing the various rounds of 
evolution on our Planetary Chain. There are six others, all 
evolving contemporaneously with us, some ahead of us, and some 
behind us ; and they are evolving in the various lokas or talas 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 389
 
which we shall try further to elucidate this evening. A most 
difficult subject this, but one which we shall do our best to 
explain, because it is absolutely necessary, even in small degree, 
in order properly to understand the fundamental questions of the 
evolution of the evolving ego. " Evolution " is a subject which 
is interesting the world very much at the present time, and which 
our scientists limit, of course, merely to the physical world, more 
especially as concerns man and the beasts, which are two stirpes 
(to use the Latin word) only of the vastly numerous families of 
evolving beings, some ahead of us and some behind. 
 
Now you will remember that at our last two or three meetings, 
we spoke of the Principles and Elements of the Kosmos. The 
Elements form thereof the vehicular, or bearer, or carrier-side ; 
and the principles form the energy-consciousness side ; and we 
shall this evening limit our study (with mere allusions to human 
elements and principles) to the Kosmic planes, because our 
present endeavor is to get a clear picture, as clear as possible at 
the present time, of what we mean when we speak of " Kosmic 
planes ", of what we mean when we speak of the seven ' ' globes of 
the planetary chain ", and of what we mean when we speak of the 
" Rounds ". 
 
It is most interesting to note that these subjects, which so many 
people have misunderstood to be merely interesting questions 
for intellectual entertainment, are intimately involved with the 
moral, and with the spiritual, nature of man ; and no man can 
have a proper comprehension of ethics and morals, without under- 
standing his proper place in the universe : his origin, his nature, 
and his destiny. What morals need in Occidental thought is a 
foundation based on science and philosophy. Morals are not 
something which is "up in the air " ; they are not something 
which man must merely live by they are that, indeed, but they 
are much more. The moral sense springs from man's spiritual 
consciousness, and no man and we lay it down positively can 
really understand a Theosophical doctrine from the intellectual 
standpoint only and without having the spiritual light upon it. 
And that light, that spiritual light, manifests in man's intellectual 
realm of thought as his instinctive moral sense, that which the 
great German philosopher Kant spoke of as the one thing which 
held him firmly to the belief that our universe was something more 
than mere force and matter. 
 
Remember first, that, as pointed out in the old Hindfi Upani- 
shads and in the several wonderful Brahmanical philosophies, in 
ancient Greek thought, even in Christianity, and pre-eminently 
in our own teachings throughout the world, in fact, in the 
various ancient philosophies and religions when we speak of 
divine things we must understand that we also are a part thereof, 
 
 
 
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and that even the physical world itself, the material world itself, is 
but the garment of the Divine ; imperfect, because it is builded 
by imperfect because evolving hierarchies, by imperfect entities, of 
which we also are examples. Remember what Goethe says, in his 
Faust, I think, 
 
" Thus, at the roaring loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the garment thou see'sfc Him by." 
 
And as Paul, the Christian, said, " In It we live and move and 
have our being." 
 
Search into yourselves. The teachings given out in these 
studies are the keys. Prove them ; examine the literatures of the 
world ; search all things ; and, as Paul said (speaking as an 
initiate), retain that which is good, retain that which you know 
to be true. 
 
Seven, then, as said before, are the Elements of Kosmos ; 
seven, then, are its Principles, working through those seven 
Elements. From the consciousness-side they are consciousness 
on the one hand, vehicle on the other. From the substantial side 
they are force on the one hand and matter on the other. Let us 
illustrate this first of all by seven horizontal, parallel lines, to 
represent the Elements and Principles of Kosmos. 
 
 
 
 
Archetypal 
Wor/d 
 
 
 
 
 
/nfe/lecfual or 
Crecrff've World 
 
 
 
 
Astral or 
Formative World 
 
 
 
 
Physical Cm World 
 
 
 
Please remember that this figure is a diagram. The Elements 
the Principles, of the Kosmos are not really one above another, 
like a series of steps, or like the rungs of a ladder. This figure is a 
diagram only, that is, it is a symbol. The Elements of the Kosmos, 
 
 
 


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the Principles of the Kosmos, the spheres of the Kosmos, are 
within each other, the most spiritual being the inmost. But this 
being impossible in representation on a plane surface, we have to 
figurate the idea schematically, diagrammatically, paradigmatic- 
ally. Therefore this figure merely shows first, that there are seven 
planes in kosmos. Let us next represent the evolving and origin- 
ating life forces, the gods and the intelligences of the three higher 
planes, by a triangle, using the old Platonic and Pythagorean 
symbol, a beautiful symbol, because it shows and suggests the 
originating point, the kosmic point, the seed, from which all divine 
things spring ; and which shows the apex of the triangle also 
vanishing, as it were, through the highest plane, through a laya- 
center, a neutral center, a Nirvana of all things less or lower than it, 
vanishing more inward into something higher. Exactly as a seed, 
an acorn, for instance, will bring forth an oak, in its turn shedding 
its harvest of acorns, so the Kosmic seed sends forth from itself 
these hosts of Hierarchies of beings, themselves producing other 
lower hosts on the downward scale. Let us then represent this 
process by a triangle. 
 
Now the four lower planes of the figure, which are the four 
lower kosmic planes, please understand, represent all the states 
that man can reach to in his present period of development. Our 
own atmic essence springs forth from the fourth kosmic plane, 
counting downwards. Further, let us next represent our planetary 
chain in the following manner, that is to say, by inscribing circles, 
seven of them, on these planes, two on each plane, with the 
exception of the lowest plane, where we inscribe only one circle, 
representing our own globe Terra. Then, we number these 
circles respectively, beginning with the left and going downwards, 
A, B, C, D ; and then going upwards E, F, and G. Please note 
that there are two circles or globes on each plane, with the 
exception of globe D, our own. These seven " planes " are 
really the seven Kosmic Elements respectively. 
 
Now it is extremely tempting to suppose, or to think, that each 
one of these seven globes has a respective habitat or locus or 
place on or in each one of the kosmic Elements, but it is not so. 
That idea is what we call a " false analogy ", a tempting sugges- 
tion leading the mind astray. On each plane there are two globes, 
we repeat a third time, with the exception of the lowest plane on 
which is globe D, which is our earth. 
 
Now, then, when we speak of the seven "Elements" of the 
Kosmos, we mean by " Elements " exactly what the ancients 
meant, which they described by verbal symbols. They spoke of 
four usually, occasionally of five, and they were the same all over 
the world Earth, Water, Air, Fire ; sometimes a fifth, ^Ether, 
was mentioned ; but these were certainly not the material earth, 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
water, air, or fire that we know. These things of earth were 
chosen because they symbolized, by reason of certain attributes 
inherent in them, the four planes or rather Elements of nature, on 
which the seven globes of our Planetary Chain live and move and 
have their being. We can say that Earth represented Kosmic 
Matter, concreted substance, the lowest Element of all ; and that 
Water represented Chaos in the ancient sense j as the Hebrew 
Bible puts it, the " waters " of space, over which brooded the 
Elohim, the gods, mistranslated " God ". And we can say that 
Air is Spirit. The very word spiritus in Latin means breath, wind, 
air. And Fire is the symbol of Divine Light, the first emanation 
of the Kosmic Logos, which we call, adopting the Sanskrit- 
Buddhist term, " Daivi-Prakriti ", " divine nature ", " divine 
light ", light being one of the first emanations in the beginning of 
the evolutionary processional period. 
 
Therefore, when we speak of Elements, we mean rather what 
the average European mind understands by " spheres of action ", 
worlds : the world of kosmic matter, the world of chaos, the 
spheres of spirit, and the world of the Divine Light or Daivi- 
Prakriti. 
 
The logoic world, which is to us the quasi-divine, the fourth 
kosmic plane, counting downwards, comprising the planetary 
globes A and G, let us then call the Archetypal World, and we so 
write it in our diagram. The world beneath, comprising Globes B 
and F, we will call the Intellectual or Creative World. The world 
below that, comprising Globes C and E, we will call, if you please, 
the Astral World or the Formative World. And the lowest 
Element or World of all, on which our sole globe is, our planet 
Terra, let us call the Physical World. 
 
You will here recognise at once what we have stated before in 
connexion with the doctrines of the Hebrew Qabbalah the four 
Worlds that it teaches of. Those of you who have studied the 
Qabbalah may remember that its World of Emanations or 
Archetypal World, is called Atziluth ; then comes the second, 
the world called Beriah, or Creative, following downwards ; and 
then the third world, called the World of Formation, Yetzirah ; 
and finally the fourth or material world, which the Qabbalists 
called the world of shells, Qelippoth, our world, because it is that 
of the most concreted matter, the shell holding all the others ; like 
the shell of an egg, or the rind of a fruit, and so on, and also 
meaning something else in connexion with Kama-Loka, but we 
are not treating of that part of the subject tonight, and merely 
mention it in passing. These Worlds are, of course, our four 
Kosmic Elements. 
 
Furthermore, please remember the next important thought. 
Each one of these seven Kosmic Elements, counting from the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 393
 
beginning, i.e., counting downwards, comprises in itself all the 
others which preceded it, of which it is an emanation. For 
instance, the first, the highest, emanates the second, below it, in 
which it reflects itself, to boot ; yet this second nevertheless has 
its own Swabhdva, to use the Sanskrit term, i.e., its own essential 
nature or peculiar characteristic, but it also is the carrier or 
vehicle of the one above it, as just said. Next, these two 
emanate and reflect themselves into, the third, which yet has its 
own essential nature, but nevertheless is the carrier or bearer of 
those above it ; and similarly with the fourth or lowest World 
or Element. 
 
Every atom, even of the physical world, has everything in it of 
the Boundless Kosmos, latent or developed, as the case may be. 
Note the optimistic trend of thought in this. 
 
Now, then, these four lower Kosmic Elements or planes comprise 
all of us, that is to say, all of us that we have so far developed. The 
summit of the Archetypal or Fourth Kosmic plane, is the Element 
where the laya-center of our atman is our universal kosmic Self. 
Through it stream the divine forces from above, which originate 
or rather are our seven principles, our seven elements of being, 
manifesting in the four lower Kosmic Elements which likewise 
form the seven ranges of Prakriti or nature as we cognise them. 
You will remember that every Kosmic Element in itself is sub- 
divided into seven sub-Elements, i.e., seven degrees of Prakriti. 
So far as we are concerned, the seven sub-degrees of Prakriti or 
Nature on each one of these four lower Kosmic planes, comprise 
the only degrees of Prakriti of which we can at the present time 
have cognisance, because we have not yet evolved the faculties 
within us necessary to cognise the higher ones. 
 
Now, as a concluding thought tonight, you will remember from 
reading the teachings that H. P. Blavatsky gave us in her wonder 
work The Secret Doctrine, that the Life- Wave pursues an evolu- 
tionary course through these seven globes, passing from Globe A 
after finishing its evolutionary cycle on it, to Globe B, finishing 
its cycle on B and passing to Globe C, finishing its cycle on it and 
then passing on to Globe D, and so around the chain, making what 
we call one " Round ". 
 
But we must be cautious in these matters and avoid leaping to 
conclusions. The above does not mean that only when everything 
is finished or perfected on Globe A, we then jump to Globe B. 
Not at all. Seven sub-life-waves evolve on Globe A. When the 
lowest (or the mineral) on Globe A remember that though it is a 
spiritual planet, yet the " mineral " of that spiritual planet is as 
dense and as gross to its inhabitants as our minerals are to us 
has finished its development for that one Round, it feels the impact 
or impulse of the incoming vegetable kingdom, and its surplus of 
 
 
 
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life overflows into Globe B ; and when the beast-kingdom in its 
turn impacts upon the vegetable, and when this latter has run 
its sevenfold course, the vegetable then in its turn overflows into 
Globe B downwards, and the mineral in B passes on to Globe C ; 
and when the human world impulses into Globe A, then the beast- 
world begins to come down into Globe B, the vegetable to pass 
into C, the mineral into D, and so on. This is the process during 
the first Round ; but beginning with the second Round the process 
changes somewhat its order. But we reserve this for future studies. 
 
There is an overflow of the surplus life-forces, as it were, from 
every kingdom into the next globe ; and this complicated process 
is followed (but changed, beginning with Round No. 2) throughout 
all the Rounds, throughout all the seven Globes. When Globe G, 
or the seventh, is reached, there ensues for the Life- Wave a 
Nirvana, answering to the Devachan or heaven-period between 
two human incarnations on earth ; and also between each globe, 
there is a smaller time or rest for the evolving Life- Wave. 
 
Now this process alone is enough to set the minds of many 
people in bewilderment. It seems so complicated ; in reality it 
is very simple. It needs only a little honest thought to under- 
stand it half as much thought as most people give to the 
material things of life : what shall I eat, what shall I put on, what 
theatre shall I go to, how shall I make money, and so forth. 
 
We have spoken of lokas and talas. We shall touch upon that 
matter more fully at our next meeting. But remember this fact, 
if you please, Comrades, at present : each one of these globes is 
divided into fourteen different " worlds ". I do not mean globes ; 
I mean conditions or states of matter. For instance, water may be 
ice or steam, and yet may be water. Suppose that you had to 
explain to a man who had never seen ice, had seen merely water, 
what ice is ; and after trying to do so he said : " The man raves ; 
he is trying to tell me that water, the most fluid of things, under 
certain conditions may become cold stone ". 
 
Secondly, when we say " worlds " (we have to use words in 
order to give some idea of the meaning) we do not mean " globes ". 
A globe is Globe A, or B, or C, or D, or E, or F, or G ; but each 
one of these globes comprises or has seven lokas, or " places ", or 
worlds, or conditions, or states, or kinds, of matter sub-worlds, 
if you like ; and also seven talas, making fourteen altogether. 
Please remember also that these fourteen (or these twice seven) 
worlds are not above each other like the steps in a stair. They are 
within each other, one more inward than another, not exactly like 
the skins of an onion, but each inner one is finer, more spiritual, 
more ethereal, than its next outer ; and the most ethereal, the 
most spiritual of all, is the inmost. 
 
Now these seven lokas on each globe are the fields of action of 
 
 
 


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the ascending sub-waves in the racial cycles : likewise, the 
various kinds of bodies, ethereal or physical or spiritual, or 
whatever else, that the race uses as it passes along the evolutionary 
cycles, correspond in texture and senses with the various lokas 
passed through, and the loka which the evolving entity senses is 
that particular loka or world correspondent to its bodies. And the 
talas are the same thing on the downward sub-waves of the racial 
cycles. The lokas and talas are always working together, two 
by two, one of each, because matter is bi-polar in manifestation on 
the globes ; of the two (one loka and one tala) one is spiritually 
positive, attracting one way, and the other is spiritually negative, 
attracting the other way. 
 
And, lastly, we point out that we are at the present time in one 
of these lokas and in one of these talas ; and that there are six 
other humanities or life-waves evolving similarly to our own 
course : intelligent, thinking beings on our planet I do not 
necessarily say on our Globe D evolving through these lokas and 
talas. How this thought stirs the imagination ! If this process 
of evolution did not so take place, we say in conclusion, there could 
be no completely logical and satisfactory explanation of the 
phenomenon that the early writers upon Theosophical subjects 
called " Fifth Rounders " and " Sixth Rounders ". 
 
At our next meeting, the Teacher has instructed me to develop 
this matter at greater length. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXVI
 
INTERPENETRATING SPHERES OF BEING. LOKAS AND TALAS : 
BI-POLAR KOSMICAL PRINCIPLES AND fcLEMENTS. THE 
 
"HERESY OF . SEPARATENESS ". 
 
All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy ; and there 
is hardly anything unconnected with any other thing. For things have been 
co-ordinated, and they combine to form the same universe [order]. For there 
is one universe made up of all things, and one god who pervades all things, and 
one substance, and one law [one] common reason in all intelligent animals, and 
one truth ; if indeed there is also one perfection for all animals which are of the 
same stock and participate in the same reason. 
 
M. Aurelius Antoninus, vii, 9 (LONG). 
 
Nature has linked all parts of her Empire together by subtle threads of magnetic 
sympathy, and there is a mutual correlation even between a star and a man. 
 
Mahatma Letters, p. 267. 
 
If through the Hall of Wisdom thou would 'st reach the Vale of Bliss, Disciple, 
close fast thy senses against the great dire heresy of Scparateness that weans thee 
from the rest. 
 
The Voice of the Silence (H. P. BLAVATSKY). 
 
IN the Jewish Talmud there is a quaint old story full of 
the profound wisdom of the ancient teachers, about four 
candidates for wisdom ; it tells how they entered into the 
Garden of Delights, a name which the Jews used, especially 
the Qabbalists, to designate the realm of Occultism, of the 
Occult Sciences ; and the names of these four candidates for 
Wisdom were as follows : Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Ahher, and 
Rabbi Aqiba. As the story goes, " Ben Asai looked and lost 
his sight ; Ben Zoma looked and lost his reason. Ahher went 
into the Garden of Delights and committed depredations therein ; 
but Rabbi Aqiba entered in peace and left in peace. And the 
Holy One, whose servants we are blessed be his name said : 
* This old man is worthy of serving us with glory '." 
 
Mark you, here are the four general types of students of the 
Ancient Wisdom. Ben Asai, who lost his sight, was one who was 
attracted by the doctrines and teachings, and, like another case 
mentioned in the Greek legends, looked upon the face of naked 
Truth and was " blinded ". He became, that is, a worse exotericist 
than he was before. He was unprepared, unready. He had 
forced his way into the place where he did not belong. And he 
incurred one of the penalties awaiting those who enter into the 
holy places with an unpure heart and an unprepared mind. 
And Ben Zoma looked and lost his reason ; he was one whose 
 
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nature was so essentially selfish that he looked only for that which 
he himself might gain therefrom. And his nature being unsteady, 
weak, self-centered and selfish, he lost his " reason ", that is to 
say he became the slave instead of the master. You know the old 
medieval saying that the magician who evokes the so-called 
" spirits of the vasty deep " and is not in complete control of 
them, is made a\yay with by them, which is a saying teaching the 
same doctrine that we teach of the utter necessity of spiritual 
preparation, moral preparedness. " For the pure in heart see 
God ", and have naught to fear, which is the Christian method of 
expressing the same idea. 
 
Ahher, who made depredations in the Gardens, was one who 
had will-power and daring, but likewise was he one who considered 
self first of all, and he misused the sacred sciences for self-advance- 
ment and personal gain, for position, and all the rest of it. He 
is the type of the " black magician ", as it is called. The Teacher 
asks me further to say that such a one destroys himself by entering 
into a place for which he is not fitted, that is, Ahher who made 
" depredations " ; and so likewise did Ben Zoma. 
 
But Rabbi Aqiba, who entered in peace, and went out in peace, 
was the type of the man inwardly fully prepared and ready, 
whose nature was so purified by discipline, by s//-discipline, 
so purified by self-forgetfulness and a recognition of the beauties 
of self-abnegation in the true sense, that through him could stream 
the rays coming from the divine heart of Being, from the spiritual 
sun. 
 
Now, what does this allegory teach us ? This parable shows us 
first, that in order to be faithful disciples of our Teachers, and, 
second, in order to gain that which we are supposed to gain, the 
first lesson for us is discipline, s//-discipline, ethics. We con- 
tinually recur in our studies to this point, because it is of the first 
importance. Every man thinks he is ethical and moral. Is he ? 
Ask yourself what you or I would do under real temptation. The 
French have a rather cynical saying that ' * every man has his price " . 
Is it true ? If it is, then neither you nor I, not one of us, is fit to sit 
here this evening. Only when we have passed beyond the point 
where anything on earth can move us or sway our will, or buy us, 
then only are we fit to enter into the Garden of Delight, like the old 
man Rabbi Aqiba, who entered in peace and left in peace a Master. 
 
We open our study tonight by referring once more to the 
extract from the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, page 492, 
which we have read at several ones of our last meetings, because 
around it circles the theme of our present study. Please note 
every word. 
 
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, 
collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the 
 
 
 
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vehicle (a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal 
differentiation ; and (6) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from 
that One BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as 
Nature with its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the 
planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary Breath 
informs the higher Hierarchies; the secondary the lower, on the 
constantly descending planes. 
 
We are going tonight to make a great step forward, to make a 
leap, as it were, over many things that might have been con- 
sidered, but that our Teacher has reserved for future consideration, 
such as the enormously important problems of Death, and of the 
Left-Hand Path, to mention two subjects only. But we are going 
to do our best (although we have not laid the foundation fully 
for it yet) to point out what the Ancient Wisdom meant when it 
spoke of spheres of being. The common term for such a sphere is 
" plane ", which has its value, because we are accustomed to it ; 
and yet we must remember, as our own Teacher has pointed out 
in other words, that this word plane is a loose word, because it 
may mean almost anything as vulgarly used, and it does not carry 
the fundamental thought that these inner worlds are actually fields 
of action, spheres of being, actual entitative worlds, in fact. 
 
Now, you will remember that at our last study we drew seven 
parallel lines, diagrammatical, illustrating the seven kosmic 
Elements, in which work the seven kosmic Forces or Principles 
the energy-consciousness side of Being. Please note this 
evening carefully that these Elements, the kosmical Elements, 
are Worlds. Call them planes if you like, but really they are 
worlds. I do not mean " globes ", necessarily, that is, solid 
spherical bodies. They are around and in globes, yet they are 
truly worlds, spheres of action, spheres of consciousness ; and 
each one of these kosmical Elements, in addition to being a 
World, is infilled with its own " Humanities ", countless, number- 
less, innumerable, beyond all human computation. The human 
stirps, the human lineage, race, class, is but one among many of 
them. 
 
The Ancient Wisdom tells us that there are seven main classes 
of such " Humanities " or stirpes, on every Planetary Chain, and 
on this earth, Globe D of our Chain, man stands at the head of 
the classes below him. These classes are recognised in ordinary 
parlance, in the parlance of our science, as kingdoms ; the human 
kingdom, which it confuses wrongly with the beast-kingdom, 
first ; the beast-kingdom second ; the vegetable-kingdom third ; 
the mineral kingdom fourth ; and below that the three kingdoms 
of the elementals. Call these last nature-spirits, or sub-gtirpes or 
sub-lineages, sub-races, sub-life-waves of being. And you will 
have noticed at our last meeting that, in the diagram we then 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 399
 
drew, we figured a triangle, representing the three higher or arupa 
or formless worlds which thus, with the seven below, make the 
ten of a complete Hierarchy. 
 
Now these kosmical Elements or Worlds or Spheres, are 
divided more particularly into Lokas a Sanskrit word meaning 
places in the sense of worlds and into Talas. And these are as 
given below, using the names found in the Brahmanical literature 
of Hindusthan, names which we have adopted for convenience 
because they are in that literature and are more or less known ; 
but this does not necessarily mean that we accept all the ideas 
connected therewith in the Brahmanical works. We use these 
names because they show that there are actually seven worlds 
or lokas, and seven inferior worlds or talas, which we shall begin 
to define and briefly to describe this evening. 
 
Note that these seven kosmical Elements and Principles are 
in fact these fourteen lokas, or rather lokas and talas, seven of 
each. Let us first enumerate them, name them in order. 
 
Satya-loka . . . . i . . . . Atala 
 
Tapar-loka . . . . 2 . . . . Vitala 
 
Janar-loka . . . . 3 . . . . Sutala 
 
Mahar-loka . . . . 4 . . . . Rasatala 
 
Swar-loka . . . . 5 . . . . Talatala 
 
Bhuvar-loka . . . . 6 . . . . Mahatala 
 
Bhur-loka . . . . 7 . . . . Patala 
 
First the lokas. Beginning with the highest, that is, the 
inmost, we find Satya-loka, a word meaning " Reality "-world ; 
Tapar-loka, the next, is a Sanskrit compound word meaning 
" devotion "- world in the sense of " meditation ", " contem- 
plation 1 ', "introspection"; next, Janar-loka from the Sanskrit 
root meaning " birth " ; Mahar-loka meaning " great " ; Swar- 
loka meaning " heaven " ; Bhuvar-loka, an ancient word coming 
from the Sanskrit root BM, meaning " to grow " or " develop ". 
And lastly Bhur-loka, the lowest. The corresponding Talas are, 
counting downwards from the higher to the more material, 
Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Rasatala, Talatala, Mahatala, Patala. 
 
Now the first thought which we must concentrate our attention 
upon is this, that these lokas and talas are not one above the other 
like the rungs of a ladder ; they interpenetrate, they interblend ; 
they do not merely commingle, but interblend. A man's thought, 
for instance, is not necessarily perfectly divine or perfectly evil. 
It is composite, blended, of both qualities, but not merely mixed. 
There is nothing so mechanical as that about this fact. We are 
studying ethereal and spiritual matters. These lokas and talas 
blend together. For instance, electricity, whether we call it 
 
 
 
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matter or force, is bi-polar. There is a positive pole and a negative 
pole. We may call a loka one of the poles and its corresponding 
tala the other, for these correspond to each other in twos, a 
loka and a tala, each to each. Satya-loka to Atala, Tapar-loka to 
Vitala, and so on down the scale, until we come to the lowest, 
Bhur-loka and Pdtala. 
 
It is commonly said in the Brahmanical literature that the lokas 
are the " heavens " and the talas are the " hells ". Now that is 
one way of expressing a profound truth, but we must beware of 
these words " heavens " and " hells " on account of wrong 
European religious ideas, associated ideas. The actual, esoteric 
meaning is that the lokas are the Luminous Arc, or rather that 
procession of nature and of beings in which spirit or the Luminous 
Arc predominates. And the Talas are the Arc of Shadows, the 
Shadowy Arc, or rather that procession of nature and of beings, in 
which matter predominates. Each one of the lokas works with 
its corresponding one of the talas. Please remember, that here 
is a root- thought. You cannot separate them. 
 
Now each of the seven kosmical Elements corresponds, each to 
each, with the lokas, and each to each with the talas. In other 
words, the seven lokas and the seven talas work correspondentially 
on each one of the kosmical Elements or Worlds. Furthermore, 
each one of the seven globes of our planetary chain has its own seven 
lokas and seven talas by " reflexion ". You know the old esoteric 
principle lying at the basis of all our thought, expressed in the 
so-called Hermetic axiom, " As above, so below " ; " as below, 
so above ". The meaning is that our universe, and every part of 
it, is not an anarchical universe. Everything is inchained with 
everything else, and the higher is reflected or rather reflects itself 
in the lower ; the lower being actually the expression of the 
higher ; or, as expressed in our former three or four meetings, 
the lower worlds are the garments (or expressions, or reflexions) 
of the higher. Nothing is separate from anything else. You 
know the greatest heresy in Buddhism (and this is likewise our 
own teaching) is the so-called " separateness ", the idea or belief 
that anything is or can be considered apart from the whole. 
That is also what the Christians meant when they spoke of the 
" crime against the Holy Ghost. " The few early Christians who 
were initiated considered this crime as the most heinous of 
iniquities, and they were right. 
 
Now then, having gone thus far, we may see that these talas 
or inferior worlds, are, each to each, each in each, actually the 
kosmical Elements. Is this thought clear ? Next, the Forces 
working through these talas or worlds, through these fifelds of 
action : Forces material, ethereal, psychical, spiritual, divine, 
and so on, are the Principles of the Kosmos, the consciousnesses 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 401
 
which infill Space, and are, in fact, Space itself ; and these latter 
are the lokas. 
 
We have pointed out, I think at our last meeting, that these 
Elements may be considered serially somewhat after the fashion 
of the skins of an onion. This is a far better illustration, as being 
more suggestive, than the " plane ' '-system, although this system 
was used too in Ancient times ; and we also pointed out that these 
skins of the earth, these skins of the kosmos, grow more ethereal, 
grow more spiritual, as they proceed inwards. But we do not 
mean please mark this very carefully that these more spiritual 
or inner worlds or spheres are smaller, i.e., inferior in volume to 
the outermost rind. Size has nothing whatsoever to do with 
ethereal or spiritual bearings. Mere bulk or volume has nothing 
whatsoever to do with consciousness. How then can we reconcile 
these two apparently contradictory statements, this paradox : 
that the more you approach the material center of a thing, the 
denser it is ; the more you approach the spiritual center of a 
thing the diviner it is ? You know that the old Greek philosophers, 
the Atomistic Philosophers so-called, such as Democritus, 
Leucippus, Epicurus, etc., followed by the great Roman poet, 
Lucretius, said for instance in their atomistic theories that 
heaven was composed of the finer and more subtil atoms, and 
that the earth, and the planetary and stellar bodies, were 
composed of those which were coarser and heavier and there- 
fore fell together, meaning that they were more strongly 
attracted together. That is true enough, for it is a statement 
made from the tala-side, the matter-side. But now listen. 
 
Remember, we have often spoken of a laya-center, a laya- 
center being the seventh or highest degree of matter (or the first 
degree of spirit), the vanishing-point of matter into higher realms, 
the Nirvana of matter, the Nirvana of any entity of which it is 
the heart, the center. Our laya-center as human beings, is our 
Atman, our Universal Self. Each globe is likewise an atom or a 
monad, or a god, according to the plane or world which we con- 
sider it as being in. Now this laya-center is at the center or heart 
of our being ; it is, in fact, that core of our being, and from it 
radiate, as the rays from the sun radiate outwards, these forces, 
these elements, these skins of being ; these forces and elements or 
skins growing grosser, in one sense, as they proceed farther from 
the center. But the more ethereal the original plane is, or the 
original world or sphere is, or the original field of action is, the 
more spiritual the originating center is, and the wider is its 
outflow of radiation. You catch that thought ? The spiritual 
entity continuously flowing through the laya-center has rays 
which reach far beyond the more material coatings, and which 
in the lowest, radiate scarcely more than beyond its own 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
circumscribed limits. To change somewhat the illustration, the 
spiritual, inner realms of man or of globe, are the various " planes " 
or degrees, or spheres, of the Auric Egg one of the most sacred 
of our teachings, and the one concerning which the least has been 
said. 
 
Let us illustrate this again by an exoteric statement with regard 
to the three lowest of the lokas respectively, Bhur-loka, Bhuvar- 
loka, and Swar-loka. Bhur-loka is said to be, in the exoteric, 
Brahmanical books, our earth. Its field of influence reaches little 
farther than the atmosphere. Bhuvar-loka, they say, has rays 
(or an atmosphere) which reach to the sun, although actually it 
is the world or loka next within the earth not another physical 
world within the physical earth, skin-of-onion fashion, but an 
ethereal world within the physical earth. And Swar-loka is a 
world still more ethereal or spiritual, within Bhuvar-loka, that 
has rays (or an atmosphere) which reach even to Dhruva, or the 
polar star. This may illustrate the point. 
 
And mark you, as a natural fact deduced from this, we could 
have no connexion with beings outside ourselves, or beyond 
ourselves, nor with other planets, or our sun or others, unless there 
were these atmospheric bearers or carriers, these auric rays, 
these atmospheres by which we come into touch with other 
beings and globes and worlds both on our plane and on other 
planes. Is that clear ? A magnet has its magnetism or magnetic 
atmosphere reaching beyond itself, which will illustrate the point. 
It has its limits of reach, of course ; and in the same sense all 
these lokas and talas have their atmospheres ; the inner ones have 
the atmospheres which reach farther than the outer lokas and 
talas ; and so progressively more so as we go inwards. 
 
Now Patala, the lowest of the talas, is also said to be our 
earth. Yes, that statement also is correct from the point of view 
of the kosmical planes. Note also that these lokas and these 
talas, are the bi-polar elements of nature, the bi-polar worlds of 
being, the ascending and the descending : the involving or the 
talas, and the evolving or the lokas. By the action of the talas 
being dominant over the action of the lokas, we " descend ", 
to use the popular phrase, along the Shadowy Arc, into mani- 
festation at the beginning of a manvantara, and having reached 
our earth, which is the turning-point, we then ascend along the 
Luminous Arc, the lokas then becoming the dominant, and the 
talas the recessive, to use the modern, biological phraseology. 
 
Satya-loka could not exist without Atala as its vehicle or nether 
pole. Tapar-loka could not exist without Vitala as its nether 
pole ; and so forth down the scale. Is the thought clear ? This 
is one of the most difficult of things to explain in European words ; 
and yet really it is one of the simplest of conceptions. We must 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 403
 
cleanse our minds first of mechanical suggestions. We must 
understand that we are here dealing with spiritual and psycho- 
logical and ethereal matters and things. There could be no 
Luminous Arc without the lokas, and no Shadowy Arc without 
the talas, as bases respectively and when we say Luminous or 
Shadowy Arc we do not mean an actual arc, for it is a figure of 
speech. We mean those worlds and those processes and those 
processions of beings in nature by which, or in which, or through 
which we " descend " into manifestation or, on the other hand, 
by which we rise and grow into spiritual greatness. Such are 
the two Arcs respectively. Virtue, purity, kindness, compassion, 
pity, mercy, etc., all these things are signs that the entity 
possessing them is evolving the spirit within, and is rising, 
ascending, along the Luminous Arc. And where we see selfishness 
and impurity and unkindliness and cruelty and deception, 
hypocrisy, etc., they are the signs that the entity possessing them 
is under the influence or dominance of the Descending or Shadowy 
Arc, the talas. Nevertheless, from the very beginning and in 
either direction, the lokas and talas are interblended and work 
together, for they are spirit and matter. 
 
These two, Lokas and Talas, therefore work each within each 
other. For instance, our earth, our planet Terra, our globe, on 
and in which we live, has its own particular seven lokas and seven 
talas. As seen from the kosmical viewpoint, the physical loka 
and tala to our present physical eyes are Bhtir-loka and Patala, 
or our earth. It is Patala if we look at it from the material stand- 
point ; and it is Bhur-Loka if we look at it from the energy- 
consciousness side, from the nobler or better side, towards the 
rising side. Remember always that lokas and talas work and 
exist invariably two by two by twos, one of each ; and on every 
plane. 
 
Now, in addition to the seven kosmical Principles being respec- 
tively these lokas, as said before, and the kosmical Elements the 
seven talas ; all fourteen, seven of each, are reflected in each one 
of the seven globes of our chain. " As above, so below " ; "As 
below, so above ". The little is as the great ; the microcosm is 
but a representation or copy in small of the macrocosm. 
 
Suppose that we were to ask ourselves with regard to these 
Lokas and Talas, Where do we stand in the scale ? Where are 
we in loka and tala ? We are in the Fourth Globe of our Chain, as 
we know. Let us then take the fourth loka and fourth tala, 
i.e., Mahar-loka corresponding in scale with Rasatala. But, 
again, we are in the Fourth Round of our Planetary Chain. 
Therefore we have this bi-polar principle emphasized by the 
Fourth Round quality, i.e., Mahar-loka and Rasatala again. We 
are, furthermore, in the Fifth Root-Race of the Fourth Planet on 
 
 
 
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the Fourth Round. Therefore our Root-Race, though evolving 
on that fourth Globe and in that fourth Round, is represented by 
the fifth of each column ; Swar-loka and Talatala. " Wheels 
within wheels ", as Ezekiel, the Hebrew prophet, nobly said. 
 
Furthermore, where are we as regards the kosmic Elements ? 
We have stated this a few moments agone. H. P. Blavatsky, in 
her diagram of these in The Secret Doctrine, which we reproduced 
at our last meeting, shows that our globe Terra stands in the 
lowest of the kosmic Elements, the seventh counting downwards. 
Therefore the kosmical Element in which we and this globe are, 
is Bhftr-loka and Patala, kosmically speaking. 
 
It is these actions and interactions, these interblendings of lokas 
and talas, of these various elements and forces and principles, 
which render any exposition of them so complicated. However, 
it makes knowledge of them precious, for knowledge of these 
things is not cried from the house-tops, but, as said before, is 
given as the reward of merit to those found worthy and well 
qualified. 
 
Let us approach these questions from another standpoint, 
Where are we on the kosmical Worlds or Planes ? We are told 
that Brahma lives one hundred of his years. Brahma., remember 
is a Sanskrit word standing for the spiritual energy-consciousness 
side of our solar universe, i.e., our solar system, and the " Egg oi 
Brahma " is that solar system. We are further told that his life 
is half ended, fifty of his years are gone a figure which we express 
in fifteen figures of our years, i.e., 155 trillions, 520 billions 
(155,520,000,000,000) of years have passed away since our solai 
system, with its sun, first began its manvantaric course. There 
remain therefore, fifty more such years to pass before the system 
sinks into Rest, or Pralaya. As only half of the evolutionary 
journey is accomplished, we are, therefore, at the bottom of the 
kosmic cycle, i.e., on the lowest plane, as the diagram above 
mentioned shows. 
 
And where are we on this planet ? We are on the lowest plane 
here also, because being in the Fourth Round, we have run oui 
course only by half. The lowest kosmical plane, as saiel above 
is Bhur-loka and Patala. As a matter of fact, however, as saic 
at another study, we have advanced a little on the Ascending 
Arc, because our Planetary Chain is the child of the Lunai 
Chain, and the Lunar Chain was on the exact lowest degree. 
 
Now these thoughts are laid before you tonight, if you please 
Comrades, as suggestive propositions for further consideration 
because we might as well say that if the Teacher instructs us to g( 
farther into these things, here are the elements of our studj 
which we then must have clear in our minds. Understand firsl 
that the universe, according to the ancient system, is divided intc 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 405
 
seven grades or degrees of being, which are worlds, lokas and 
talas, that is, these worlds are polarized into lokas and talas, 
two by two throughout. Our earth shows them as bi-polar, 
because it is the only planet on this plane, in this kosmic Element, 
or World, in this particular degree or sphere. It is the turning- 
point of our Planetary Chain where matter spirit equilibrates, 
rendering it bi-polar. Next, that each one of the seven globes 
of our Chain has its own seven lokas and seven talas. As said 
before, they are popularly called " heavens " and " hells ". 
Not that they are " heavens " and " hells " in the European sense 
of the word, but they represent the two sides of being, the duality 
of manifestation, the higher and the lower natures, if you like, as 
well of the planet as of the human being. 
 
Now then, let us go a little farther. In the seven lokas and seven 
talas of our world, working together as they do, two by two, one 
of each, one loka and one tala : in each of these there are in- 
numerable hosts of beings. In the higher ones of the lokas and 
talas, are thinking and conscious entities, as our own human 
stirps (that is, race, lineage, life-wave) is. These lokas and talas 
interpenetrate each other. As H. P. Blavatsky says in a very 
noble passage in The Secret Doctrine, they have each one their 
own " geographical " spheres ; the respective inhabitants of the 
different Lokas and Talas live in their own world, pursue their 
own vocations, work out their own karmic destiny, even as we 
do in our world. It is but human egoism that claims so foolishly 
that ours is the only race of intelligent beings in the boundless 
Kosmos, and which goes so far as even to deny intelligence and 
consciousness to beings even on other physical planets. It is a 
position which is intolerable to the mind of really thinking men, 
because it is based on nothing but ignorance and folly ; nothing 
can be said for the claim whatsoever ; and everything : logic, 
intellect, analogy, comparing thought, intuition, all speak loudly 
to the contrary, and proclaim that there is not an atom of the 
infinite realms of space, which is not fully infilled with its own 
appropriate and proper lines or races of beings. 
 
I beg you to bear these Lokas and Talas in mind. Please 
think of them always by twos, one of each, one Loka and one 
Tala, its correspondence, in the scale, ever working together, as 
inseparable as positive and negative are, as inseparable as good 
and evil are, as inseparable as spirit and matter. They represent 
and in fact are the two sides of being, not necessarily the body- 
side and the spirit-side, but the two contrasting forces, the two 
contrasted sides of Nature, the night-side and the light-side, the 
shadowy side and the bright side. 
 
The three diagrams to which I now call attention are of three 
very ancient symbols coming to us from old Atlantean times, and 
 
 
 
 
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full of suggestive meaning along the lines of our study tonight. 
Let us take first -this one : a circle divided by the twice curved line. 
 
Rising out of the circumference and re- 
entering into the circumference, the line 
proceeds around, forming a figure, of 
which one side is shaded and the other 
is left blank. This is a favorite Buddhist 
symbol. It is found all over the Orient, 
but particularly in Buddhist countries, 
and furnishes one of the favorite motifs 
of Buddhist art. All Buddhist art is re- 
ligious art, of course. Will you please note 
here that in taking one side, the shaded 
side, we find the line leaving the circumference at the top, curving 
around, then re-curving itself, and then at the bottom re-entering 
the circumference. And where it re-enters the circumference we 
find the side left blank or void, moving forth in the opposite 
direction, forming part of the circumference of the circle, ascending 
until it reaches the summit, and then joining the other line which 
first went down from that point in the twice curved line to rejoin 
the point after forming the other side of the circumference. These 
represent the Lokas and Talas, or the involution of spirit and the 
evolution of matter ; and, again, the rising one the evolution of 
spirit, and the involution of matter, joined and inseparable, 
forming one figure ; the circle also suggesting the Boundless All, 
and the shadowy side suggesting the talas, the dark side or the 
matter-side, and the side left void suggesting the spirit-side, the 
great illimitable void of the Boundless All, of the Boundless Self. 
 
I think that this design, this symbol, is one of the most beautiful, 
one of the most suggestive, that I have ever known. The more 
you study it the more it suggests thought. It shows, as said before, 
our lokas and our talas inseparable 
and interworking. It shows the " de- 
scent " of spirit, so to say, and the 
ascent of matter, co-ordinately and 
contemporaneously ; and it shows the 
evolution of spirit, and the involution 
of matter back again into spirit, from 
which it came and which it funda- 
mentally is. 
 
Let us turn next to another old 
symbol. It is the Swastika, another 
favorite Buddhist symbol and otherwise 
found all over the Orient, and even all over the world. It first sug- 
gests motion, evolution ; the broken arms bent at right angles sug- 
gest life, movement, and forward progress, and many other things. 
 
 
 
 


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Next, note the cross figure. We have here and now we come 
to the symbol-meaning of the cross upon which we must lightly 
touch tonight first the vertical line, so called the spirit, and 
then the horizontal line, the matter which it enters and traverses. 
The two work together. Take away either arm, or either part of 
the two lines which make the Swastika, and you no longer have a 
Swastika. This #lso suggests, though less violently, if I may use 
the expression, the Lokas and Talas inseparably joined. 
 
And the third of our symbols is what is known to scholars today 
as the Egyptian tau or ansated or handled cross, also a very old 
symbol dating from Atlantean times, and found on the backs of 
some of the statues on Easter Island. 
 
Note the circle at the top of the cross, and the vertical line des- 
cending from it symbolic of the descent of the spirit into matter 
the horizontal line from the sphere of the divine. Its meaning 
is similar to that of the Swastika. The latter, how- 
ever, emphasizes the movements and circulations 
of consciousnesses in Space, or evolution ; while 
the ansated cross represents a higher plane the 
primordial movements and states of kosmic being. 
 
These symbols are really very beautiful. There 
is no need to sully our thought by adverting to 
questions of phallic meaning into which they have 
been degraded. They can bear that interpretation, 
because you can degrade anything. All life is one, 
and one general design runs through all. But we 
shall not speak of this. The main thing we wish to 
point out now is that in these age-old symbols and 
particularly in this bi-polar, bi- vital, Loka-Tala Buddhistic figure, 
the first we have here, we find the suggested outline, the symbolic 
or paradigmatic form, of the entire doctrine of the higher and 
lower spheres of being, kosmical or human, i.e., of the Lokas 
and Talas, of which we have spoken tonight. 
 
There is one more thing to bring to your attention, if you please, 
Comrades, and that is to point out at least by suggestion, the 
perfect coherence of all the limbs of life. How can one otherwise 
express it, the perfect unity of the mechanism of being ? The 
circulations of the kosmos are carried on not in haphazard form, 
but from sphere to sphere, from world to world, from plane to 
plane, by and through consciousnesses, whether they be gods, 
monads, souls, or atoms, working in the various elements ; and 
more particularly in our solar system this is done through the sun 
and planets, especially by and through their respective inner 
atmospheres of their lokas and talas, spoken of before. 
 
In occultism there are seven sacred planets. We recognise 
many more in our solar system than seven, many more than our 
 
 
 
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scientists do, but only seven planets are held sacred. And why ? 
We can at least Say this much, that these seven planets are sacred 
for us, inhabitants of this globe, because they are the transmitters 
to us from the sun of the seven primal Forces of the Kosmos. Our 
seven principles and our seven elements spring originally from 
this seven-fold life-flow. 
 
Let us put this matter in another light. On this plane, our 
physical globe, Terra, is alone, but on the three other planes of 
being, the globes of our Planetary Chain, two by two, are not the 
seven principles of our earth. That would be a false analogy, 
false analogical reasoning. Remember that at our last meeting 
we spoke then of another false analogy. We must be careful not 
to be led astray by such false analogies. The seven principles of 
our globe are the seven lokas and seven talas belonging especially 
to Earth ; and the seven principles of each one of the other six 
globes of our Planetary Chain, are the respective Lokas and Talas 
belonging to each one of them. Now these two other globes on 
each plane of the three planes above ours, making thus the other 
six globes of our Planetary Chain, receive their respective life- 
force, receive their respective inflow of intellectual and spiritual 
energies and beings from the respective lokas and talas of the sun. 
There are seven suns, but only one sun on this plane, as our globe 
is but one on this plane, the lowest of the seven kosmical planes. 
 
With this thought, let us close our meeting tonight. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXVII
 
THE FRAME-WORK OF THE KOSMOS. LOKAS AND TALAS : PRINCI- 
PLES AND ELEMENTS : WORLDS NOT STATES MERELY. SPACE 
THE ULTIMATE REALITY. 
 
Maitveya : " The sphere of the whole earth has been described to me, by you, 
excellent Brahman ; and I am now desirous to hear an account of the other 
spheres (above the world), the Bhuvar-loka and the rest, and the situation 
and the dimensions of the celestial luminaries." 
 
Vishnu Purdna, II, Ch. VII (WILSON). 
 
She said : " That, O Yajnavalkya, which is above the sky, that which is 
beneath the earth, that which is between these two, sky and earth, that which 
people call the past and the present and the future across what is that woven, 
warp and woof ? " 
 
He said : " That, O Gargi, which- is above the sky, that which is beneath the 
earth, that which is between these two, sky and earth, that which people call 
the past and the present and the future across space alone is that woven, 
warp and woof." 
 
" Across what then, pray, is space woven, warp and woof ? " 
 
He said : " That, O Gargi, Brahmans call the Imperishable." 
 
It consumes nothing soever. 
No one soever consumes it. 
 
" Verily, O Gargi, that Imperishable is the unseen Seer, the unheard Hearer, 
the unthought Thinker, the ununderstood Understander. Other than It there 
is naught that sees. Other than It there is naught that hears. Other than It 
there is naught that thinks. Other than It there is naught that understands. 
Across this Imperishable, O Gargi, is space woven, warp and woof." [It is 
SPACE Itself.] 
 
Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad, 3. 8. vv. 6, 7, 8, n (HUME). 
 
IF Brotherhood is the " Lost Chord ", ethically speaking, in 
Occidental thought, may we not say that the loss of the 
idea that the universe we sense or know of is but the rind 
of things, is the cause of the spiritual and intellectual feeble- 
ness of that same Occidental thought ? We have lost, as Occi- 
dentals, perhaps the noblest concept of all the ancient world, the 
concept which, however, still exists over the larger part of the 
globe today, and that concept, or knowledge to many, is the fact 
that the outside world which our physical senses tell us of, is but 
the shell of things, of Reality, and that the greater part is within, 
behind the veil of physical existence. Think what that means. 
We see but the rind, the husk, the shell, the skin of things ; but 
all the great moving forces are from within, all the great circula- 
tions of the Kosmos are behind the outward seeming, and this 
verity was the core, of the religious and philosophic conceptions of 
the ancient world, and to a large extent forms even today in the 
Orient and among the so-called savage peoples degenerated heirs 
 
409 
 
 
 
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of a greater wisdom of past time the philosophic and religious 
thought which leads them to live and to die in calm peace and 
hope. And in larger spheres of our thinking we must realize that 
if we are to understand the great problems of life, the great 
problems, that is to say, of the various departments of human 
thought : Religion, Philosophy, and Science, we must go behind 
this outward veil, we must penetrate more deeply into the Heart 
of Things. 
 
The thought is sublime because it contains the fundamentals of 
the true exposition of Life, and because it is a veritable key to the 
understanding of the ideas which motivated the civilizations of 
past ages ; and our civilization will never reach that which it 
should be, and indeed which it is destined to be, until this old- 
world thought is brought back into the consciousness of men. 
Then indeed it will guide their conduct because it will give a 
rational explanation of the problems of being ; and men will live 
aright, because they will then understand that what human in- 
tellect calls justice, that is to say, order, rules the entire universe. 
 
We read again from The Secret Doctrine, from Volume II, page 
492, the same extract that we have read at our previous studies, 
four or five of them, because it still forms the main theme of what 
we are here considering and trying to understand, that is to say : 
 
The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind, 
collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle 
(a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal differentia- 
tion ; and (b) of the countless ''breaths" proceeding from that One 
BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with 
its many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are 
ever increasing in materiality. The primary Breath informs the higher 
Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on the constantly descending 
planes. 
 
We continue our study this evening of the frame-work of the 
Kosmos ; and this frame- work itself is constructed in the manner 
pointed out in our last study, i.e., by the lokas and talas. And 
great, unquestionably, was the patience of all here at our last 
meeting, who listened to our study, to our thought, and realized 
the immense complexity of a first presentation of these things 
who doubtless saw that we were following the instructions given 
to us by our Teacher when these meetings were first inaugurated 
by her, to wit, to follow as closely as possible the methods of study 
used in the ancient Mystery-Schools ; and one of these methods 
was never at the first approach of a new subject, openly and fully, 
to voice the teaching concerning it but to begin it first by hint 
and also by talking around it, by talking about it, never at it or of 
it. There were several reasons for this, founded on a profound 
knowledge of human psychology. The whole effort is to enable 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 411
 
the hearer or reader to break his own molds of mind ; and nothing 
perhaps, knowing human nature as we do, so antagonizes or 
renders the human mind more combative than to throw an idea 
at it, so to say. But let the hearer or reader first feel that he is 
taken into the thought by indirection, and by an appeal to his 
own inner spirit. For, indeed, he wants to break his molds of 
mind himself in.the first instance, and to understand of his own 
initiative ; and he is right. Our first duty is to open the way to 
the hearer to think for himself. 
 
This evening, however, having followed the above method at 
our last meeting, we are going to approach the matter directly, 
and clear up the apparent confusion. 
 
One of the other methods which we have followed and you 
have doubtless noticed it is the use of the figure of speech called 
the paradox, for precisely the same reasons outlined above. We 
must, above all things, prevent the crystallization of the mentality 
around one thought ; and in our Order experience has shown that 
the best way to do this is first to talk around and about a thing ; 
then to present one aspect, and then, if possible, a contrasting 
aspect, the antithesis or polar opposite of the former aspect ; and 
very soon the mind which undergoes this process, realizes it and 
says to itself : " I am not going to allow my mind to crystallize 
about this thought alone ; something more is coming, another 
view. I will await, before judging." This process tends, above 
everything else, to prevent dogmatism, whether in religion, or 
philosophy, or science. And mark you, it is the exact opposite of 
the methods of instruction so dear to the Occidental heart, which 
likewise is fascinated by the entifying of abstractions. This enti- 
fication of abstracts, as you know, is the leaning or the attempt 
mentally to think of abstractions as real entities. It is the exact 
opposite of the method followed in all ancient civilizations, and 
even in the Orient today, in dealing with profound psychological 
or spiritual matters. Their wise old Teachers showed them that 
the entification of abstractions distracts the mind and leads it 
away from the primal truths of being, for the mind feels tempo- 
rarily satisfied with phantasms instead of realities, and precious 
time is lost ; while the mind itself is lost in mazes of unrealities. 
This is another example of the profound knowledge of human 
psychology that the ancient Teachers had. 
 
Even in the Christian scheme of thought, such as it is, we find 
Paul following the same line of real entitative instruction by 
parable and trope, in the old manner, in his Letters, in his Epistles, 
to the various so-called " Churches ". If the Christian exegetes, 
the theologians, were students of the Ancient Wisdom, they would 
know at least enough not to take the words of Paul literally, 
because Paul was an initiate, as is shown very clearly by his own 
 
 
 
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writings not necessarily a high initiate, because this word 
" initiate " merely means one who has " entered into " a system, 
and who therefore has some knowledge, has received one aspect at 
least, has passed through one rite or more of the Ancient Wisdom. 
 
Every one of us here therefore is an " initiate " as compared 
with what he was before he joined our Order. You know that 
Paul, in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter xii, verses 
2, 3, 4, writes as follows : " I know a man in Ctrist " note the 
wording, he does not say " I know a friend of Christ ", but " I 
know a man in Christ " " fourteen years agone (whether in body 
I know not, whether out of body I know not, God knoweth). Such 
a one being caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a 
man (whether in body, whether out of body I know not, God 
knoweth), that he was caught up into the Paradise, and heard 
things not to be divulged, which are not lawful for a man to 
utter ". 
 
Now we have made our own translation of these lines from the 
Greek original, and while there is no need to repeat the Greek 
words, I wish to point out that the very words that Paul uses 
here, " heard things not to be divulged ", etc., etc., are the sacra- 
mental words, so to speak, the sacred words, used in the mystic 
ceremonials of the ancient teachings. Further, this shows very 
clearly that this man was Paul himself, otherwise he would have 
known nothing of it. 
 
Thirdly, when he shows that this man, he himself, was " caught 
up to the third heaven ", I must point out that if our theologians 
knew something of the language of the Mysteries, they would at 
least understand that this expression " third heaven " is an old 
form or symbol of speech of the initiations. 
 
Remember, we have spoken at other ones of our studies of 
the fact that beginning with the Fourth Degree of initiation, in the 
ancient times, the candidate was made to be or to become for the 
time being that which he had heretofore been taught of ; he was 
made to go into the different lokas and talas and temporarily be 
the things there in order to know them. One of the methods of 
describing this fact was speaking of being in or of the first heaven, 
the second heaven, the third heaven, the fourth, and so on. It 
was another way of saying, by Paul, " In my third initiation I 
heard things not to be divulged, which it is not lawful for a man 
to utter ". 
 
Now an example of this entification of abstractions, this giving 
to phantasmal notions both substance and form, is shown clearly 
in the scientific and philosophic writings of our European thinkers, 
when they use the word space in the sense of a mere concept. 
Space to them is an abstraction; to us the ultimate Being, 
Reality, All-Life. Just think what that means. Space, ex hypo- 
 
 
 


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thesi, is boundless, is what we call infinite ; and yet they write of 
it and talk of it and speak of it as a mere container, a finite thing, 
and speak of the " dimensions of space ". Space, as Boundless- 
All-Life, can have no dimensions. You cannot bound or mete or 
measure the infinite. What they mean is the dimensions of matter, 
mensuration. They predicate a conceptual abstraction ; then 
proceed to endow it with finite attributes entity ing it, as said 
above ; for to them, space is a mere mental representation. 
 
Some of our occidental thinkers are even speaking of the " fourth 
dimension of space ", implying that there are others beyond, a 
fifth, a sixth perhaps. Now in our School we do not admit this 
idea. Space can have no dimensions. Matter can have three 
dimensions only, because as you will readily see, when you express 
the metes and bounds of manifested substance by length, and 
breadth, and depth, you have covered the entire field that it 
presents. But what is it in these minds which induces them to 
hunt and search for what they so inaccurately call the " dimen- 
sions of space " ? It is the intuition, the recognition, of worlds 
within the outer rind or shell, spoken of before. There is no such 
thing in nature as " Flatland " or a two-dimensional world, 
or a one-dimensional world, because each world comprises all 
" dimensions ". 
 
Consider what we mean when we speak of the Principles and 
Elements of the Kosmos, as pointed out in our last study. The 
Elements are Worlds, and the Principles are the spiritual forces, 
entities, spiritual intelligences at the root of them, which work 
through those Worlds or Elements. And what do we mean by 
World ? We mean exactly we speak English what the English 
usage of the word " world " is. We go out upon our house-tops, or 
into the roads, or into a field, and see what we call the universe 
around us, the stars, and the sun, and again the beings on earth ; 
and all this is a World. No, it is not a globe. A globe is merely 
one of the entities or bodies in a World. So, at our last meeting, 
when we said that these lokas and talas are not globes but worlds, 
we meant just that. We may perhaps call them spheres, if you 
like, but not by using the word " sphere ", please, in the physical, 
geometrical sense. We use it rather in a more abstract sense, as 
when we speak of the sphere of one's activity, the musical sphere 
or the musical world, the intellectual or material spheres or worlds. 
But the word " world " for our present purposes, in order to 
describe these lokas and talas, is far better. Etymologically it 
would never do, because this Anglo-Saxon word was originally 
Weorold, meaning " man-age ", i.e., meaning the age of a man, 
definitely, in those times, taken as of one hundred years, and 
commonly spoken of in literary usage, as an age. It is interesting 
that this word " world " closely corresponds with the meaning, 
 
2 B 
 
 
 
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with the two meanings rather, of the Greek word " Aion ", or 
seon, which originally meant with the Greek Gnostics both an 
epoch of time, a period of time, and a spiritual being or world. 
 
Now these lokas and talas, as pointed out in our last study and 
everything we are going to say tonight was said at our last meet- 
ing ; but this evening we are going to be more definite, go directly 
to the point these lokas and talas, if we refer them to the 
Kosmos, are respectively the Principles and Elements of the Kosmos. 
The lokas are the Principles, and the talas are the Elements. 
Loka means " world ". The Principles, however, are as much 
Worlds as the Elements are. The Principles of the Kosmos are 
higher kosmic Worlds as the Elements are lower kosmic Worlds. 
Pause a moment, and see how simple this conception really is. 
We see the physical world around us, the physical universe. We 
are taught in our Sacred Science that the world (in Occultism that 
is) has seven so-called " Planes ". As remarked before, this word 
" plane " is an unfortunate term in some ways, because people 
associate it with its geometrical meaning of a flat surface. It is a 
loose term, as said before, but it is familiar, and therefore it is 
convenient. The Elements, the Talas, are Worlds ; so are the 
Lokas ; they represent together, in other words, what is popularly 
called the Seven Principles of the Kosmos. The seven principles 
of the Kosmos correspond in their element-side, to the Talas ; and 
the seven Principles, per se, of the Kosmos, i.e., the spiritual side, 
correspond to the seven Lokas. 
 
The difficulty for us arises, perhaps, because we have been so 
accustomed to speak of the seven principles of man, and, Occi- 
dentals as we are, we think of them only as abstractions ; ac- 
customed to our habit of entifying abstractions, we do not con- 
ceive of them as real essential things, so that perhaps in our minds 
we have reduced these principles of man almost to mere words. 
But, as pointed out in a former study, man has seven principles 
and also seven elements or vehicles, in which those principles 
work, each principle in its appropriate vehicle, each principle in 
its corresponding element. Yet we should consider the Kosmos 
in precisely the same manner, because man is but a reflexion of 
the Kosmos, he is the microcosm of the macrocosm. To use the 
old Hermetic saying, " As above, so below : as below, so above ". 
 
So then, knowing that our Universe has seven Planes, that is, 
seven elements from one viewpoint, and seven Principles or the 
energy-consciousness side from another viewpoint, we may now 
definitely say that the Element-side, the vehicle-side, the matter- 
side, the dark side, is the Tala-side. The seven Talas are the seven 
Elements or matter- Worlds of Kosmos ; and the seven Lokas 
which are Worlds also are the seven Principles of the Kosmos. 
 
Now if we were able to ascend into any one of the higher 
 
 
 
 
 
y / 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 415
 
Elements and Principles of the Kosmos, we should find our 
present world reduplicated with modifications, naturally ; but 
each one of these Elements and Principles is a kosmic World, a 
Tala or a Loka respectively. 
 
One of the most interesting symbols in use by men of the ancient 
world, by which they described these inseparable Lokas and 
Talas, was whgj: is called in Hindusthan " Vishnu's Sign ", and 
which for some unknown reason among European mystics is called 
" Solomon's Seal ". This symbol is one of the most wide-spread, 
familiar, and favorite symbols of the Asiatic-European world. 
 
We have here two interlaced triangles, one pointing upwards 
and one pointing downwards, inseparably united in order to form 
this symbol. Separate them, and this symbol no longer exists. 
The triangle with its point upwards 
represents the Lokas, and the one with 
its point downwards, the Talas. This 
is likewise a symbol of human and 
kosmic evolution, of the duality in 
nature, and of the interplay of the 
spiritual and material forces in life. If 
we were to put a point in the center of 
these interlaced triangles, we should 
immediately transfer its symbolic 
meaning to incipient kosmic evolution, 
it then becoming somewhat like the 
figure of the circle with the central point. Also, in human matters, 
it would then be the symbol of what we call a " Master ". Some- 
times, in the last sense, it is written in more simple shape, as three 
dots in triangular form. Sometimes again the three dots have a 
fourth in the center, which is but an abbreviated form of this same 
figure ; but in this case the triangle always points upward, for 
it shows that the aspiration of the Man symbolized is upward, 
signifying the ascent through the Lokas. 
 
This brings us to our next point, and that is that while it is true 
that these Lokas and Talas are " states " in a general sense, it is 
only so in the sense in which " heavens " and " hells " may be so 
considered. They are " states ", of course, but they are also 
localities, because any entity in or possessing a state must be 
somewhere. Devachan and Nirvana are not localities, they are 
states, states of the beings in those respective spiritual conditions. 
Devachan is the intermediate state ; Nirvana is the super- 
spiritual state ; and Avichi, popularly called the lowest of the 
hells, is the nether pole of the spiritual condition. These three are 
states of beings having habitat in the Lokas or Talas, i.e., in the 
Worlds of the Kosmic Egg. And secondly, while the " heavens " 
and " hells " are considered as states, we must remember that 
 
 
 
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'' hell " or " heaven " is not a condition which exists per se> as 
does a world. Each is the state of some thing or some entity which 
is in that state, and, which therefore, being an entity, must have 
position or place, and according to the invariable rules which 
govern the Kosmos, such states must be likewise correspondential 
to similar surroundings in other words, a being in " heaven " or 
" hell " is in a corresponding Loka or Tala. 
 
So then, before closing tonight, we hope that we have made 
one thing perfectly clear, that is, to put it briefly, that these 
Lokas and Talas are respectively the Principles and Elements of 
the Kosmos, and also of every globe in that Kosmos, each one 
of which possesses seven Lokas and seven Talas. These Lokas 
and Talas are inseparable, and each one corresponds to a similar 
one of the other line. That is clear, is it not ? The two highest 
together, the two lowest together, and the intermediate in the 
same way. Please remember the main thought, that these Lokas 
and Talas are Worlds. They are not mere states only, which 
means nothing. An entity possesses or is in a state, but a state 
does not exist per se or " by itself ". That idea arises out of the 
fondness of our European minds for entifying abstractions. A 
state is an abstraction. It must be held or possessed or developed 
by some entity in order to be anything. 
 
And finally, please remember this, that each one of these Lokas 
and each one of these Talas produces the following lower one of 
the scale from itself, as pointed out before when we studied briefly 
the Elements. The highest of either line projects or sends forth 
the next lower. It, in addition to its own particular characteristic 
or Swabhava, contains also within itself the nature of the one 
above it, its Parent, and also sends forth the one lower than it, 
the third in the line downwards. And so on down the scale. So 
that each one of the Principles or Elements is likewise sevenfold, 
containing in itself the sub-elements of that or those of which it 
is the reflexion from above. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
 
DEGENERATION AND CLOSING OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE MYSTERIES. 
NEO-PYTHAGOREAN AND NEO-PLATONIC SYSTEMS : MAIN 
SOURCES OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC 
TEACHINGS : SYMBOLISM. 
 
There never was, nor can there be, more than one universal religion ; for 
there can be but one truth concerning God. Like an immense chain whose upper 
end, the alpha, remains invisibly emanating from a Deity in statu abscondito 
with every primitive theology it encircles our globe in every direction ; it 
leaves not even the darkest corner unvisited, before the other end, the omega, 
turns back on its way to be again received where it first emanated. On this 
divine chain was strung the exoteric symbology of every people. Their variety 
of form is powerless to affect their substance, and under their diverse ideal types 
of the universe of matter, symbolizing its vivifying principles, the uncorrupted 
immaterial image of the spirit of being guiding them is the same. 
 
Thus it is that all the religious monuments of old, in whatever land or under 
whatever climate, are the expression of the same identical thoughts, the key to 
\\ hich is in the esoteric doctrine. 
 
I sis Unveiled (H. P. BLAVATSKY) I, pp. 560, 561. 
 
The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic 
Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous 
conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. 
 
Ibid., II, p. 334. 
 
But to assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously 
unknown, argues, on the part of the asserter, either gross ignorance or else wilful 
fraud - History of Civilization (H. T. BUCKLE) I, p. 180. 
 
PROBABLY there are few things that human beings are 
so irritable about as the various issues involved in 
questioning an accepted religion. Outside of the fact 
that every one knows that religious wars have always 
been the bloodiest and bitterest in history ; even in ordinary life, 
if a man's religious beliefs, or even his vague religious views, are 
touched upon adversely, there is aroused in him a feeling of 
antagonism. In well-bred men and women this antagonism does 
not go far, because they are willing to concede to another a view 
different from their own ; but, sadly enough, it would seem that 
there is very little good breeding in matters of religious feeling. 
No man likes to feel that his religion is subject to derision or 
mockery, because of course to him his religion is the " true 
religion ". It has always been so among the adherents of any 
religion. It is only the wiser ones who are willing to see a view 
which a fellow-man sees, and to consider it honestly, desirous of 
arriving at some knowledge of what the critic or the speaker 
himself believes, or sees. 
 
417 
 
 
 
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Especially is this so in all the various branches of Occidental 
religious thought, derived, as we know, from Christianity and 
Judaism. The old religions, the religions of the ancient world, 
had their popular mythologies, which the people believed in ; and 
some of these old religions are still extant today in the Orient 
and elsewhere. But even among those who were not initiated 
into the Mysteries, which gave men a wider vision of truth and a 
deeper knowledge of human nature, even among those who had 
nothing to live by except the various mythologies, and who 
today have nothing to live by except the various mythologies, 
in all these religions, excepting the Christian, there is a feeling 
among their adherents that the other man may know something 
of value, too. I have often wondered how much in our own 
Society (the Theosophical Movement, that is) this spirit of 
Christian and quasi- Jewish antagonism against another man's 
belief actually exists among ourselves. 
 
Surely no one in our own holy Order here would hesitate a mo- 
ment, or would wish to pause, before giving to a Comrade the right 
to think or believe differently from himself. If one were to hear 
a Comrade express a view which might seem " unorthodox " to 
my view or to your view, what would be the proper attitude for 
us to take ? Do as Paul the Christian said. Listen, and if the 
view expressed is good, that is, something that you know to be 
good from the teachings we have derived from our Teachers, then 
take it. That Comrade may have a view a little nigher to the 
Truth than yours or mine a view which goes a little deeper 
inwards towards Reality. 
 
Now, this spirit of religious bigotry, of course, has resulted, as 
we all know, in the various religious persecutions, in the various 
torturings physical or other and inquisitorial actions of the 
bigots in temporary power. You find nothing like that in any 
of the ancient religions of the globe, neither in present nor in 
past times. Why should it have been and even yet be in the 
religion of the Occident ? As said before, it must certainly lie in 
the fact that the adherents thereof have lost the key to the inner 
knowledge of their own religious beliefs ; and this dates very far 
back. We find Gregory Nazianzen, canonized as one of the saints 
of the Christian Church, writing to Jerome, another saint of 
the Church, his friend and confidant, about the way doctrines 
should be taught, and this is what he says : " Nothing imposes 
better on people than verbiage, for the less they understand the 
more they admire. Our Fathers and teachers often have taught, 
not what they thought, but that which necessity and circumstance 
obliged them to say/' If we compare this with the spirit which 
motivated the great religions of past times, we realize that among 
the initiates of the latter the very expression of a thought which 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 419
 
they felt contrary to truth was uttered to the prejudice of a man's 
own soul ; that living as " whited sepulchres ", to use the 
Christian symbol, i.e., living as hypocrites, living a living lie, was 
considered the one thing that most effectively shriveled the soul 
of a man, that ate out the core of his being, and rendered him 
utterly unfit, not merely for an appreciation of the deeper 
mysteries which lie within nature and within man himself, but 
likewise utterly 'unfit to undergo the least of the tests preceding 
the actual trials of the initiation-ceremonies. 
 
Even at the time when the Christian religion is supposed first to 
have begun its career, although the Mysteries, the initiation- 
systems, had greatly degenerated, they still retained more or 
less of the ancient spiritual fire, and of the ancient truths. So 
that even a Roman Emperor, Nero, master of the Western world, 
was told to his face that he was unfit to pass through the rites at 
Eleusis, and he dared not go there for that purpose. And Nero 
was by no means as bad a man as his Christian critics have tried 
to make him out to have been. We have no wish to whitewash 
a black character, but he was by no means, and we repeat it, as 
black in his life or in the things he did, as some men who pass 
muster as near-canonized saints in the hagiological lists of 
Christendom. 
 
For one thousand years, beginning from the time of Pythagoras, 
and ending about the time of Justinian, the night of an incoming 
dark cycle was beginning to settle upon the world ; and this 
period is cut in twain at just about the time when the birth of 
Jesus is supposed to have occurred. Pythagoras lived in the 
sixth century before the reputed beginning of our era, i.e., the 
present era that is accepted by Occidental peoples ; and Justinian 
lived in the sixth century after the beginning of that era ; and 
it was in his age, and by his order, that the last of the Mystery- 
Schools was closed at Athens, and seven men fled at peril of their 
lives, to Khosru the Great, king of Persia, and lived there in peace 
and dignity and honor at his court, until, due to the whirl of the 
wheel of circumstance, Khosru, victor in his war against Justinian, 
as one condition of the peace which Justinian purchased with 
money, laid it down that these seven philosophers were to be 
allowed to return to their own country in peace and to live in 
peace, and to die in peace ; and so it was. 
 
Compare that noble spirit with the spirit manifest on the other 
side, and you have a slight vision of the inspiration which dwelt 
in what was called the ancient initiatory life, and of the spirit 
which has hovered over the Western World ever since that Year 
One of our era, so called, the Christian era. 
 
Now this does not mean that the slightest aspersion is hereby 
cast upon the character of the so-called Jesus. Not one word 
 
 
 
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would a true Theosophist ever say against the character of that 
great and noble man, nor against the teachings supposed to 
emanate from him personally. But it is probable that the 
Theosophic attempt which Jesus attempted to initiate, did not 
endure for fifty years after his death. Almost immediately after 
his passing, his disciples, all half-instructed, and in some cases 
almost illiterate, men (when I say " half-instructed " I mean 
having very little knowledge of the teachings which their great 
Master attempted to give them), foisted upon the world of their 
time the forms and beliefs of early Christianity ; and had there 
been nothing but these, that religious system had not lived 
another fifty years. But what happened ? During the oncoming 
of the dark cycle after Jesus (which began as before said about 
the time of Pythagoras) the last few rays from the setting sun 
of the Ancient Light shone feebly in the minds of certain of these 
Christian Fathers, Clement of Alexandria for one, and Origen of 
Alexandria for another, and in one or two more like these, who had 
been initiated at least in the lowest of some of the then degenerate 
Pagan Mysteries ; and these men entered into the Christian 
Church, and introduced some poor modicum of that Light, some 
poor rays of it, as it were, which they still cherished ; and these 
rays they derived mainly from the Neo-Pythagorean and the 
Neo-Platonic systems. 
 
People speak of Christianity as if it were wholly derived from 
Judaism. Very little of it is. It is, in its theology, almost wholly 
derived from misunderstood Greek thought, mainly, as said, from 
the Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic systems ; and this is 
obvious to anyone who reads the writings of those who are called 
the great doctors of Christian theology, such as Dionysius, the 
so-called Areopagite, whose system is, in essentials, entirely 
taken from the Neo-Platonic philosophy. Mainly derived from 
him, again, are the present standard theological works of the 
Church of Rome : I mean the works of Thomas Aquinas. These 
are today the standard by which the theology of Rome is directed 
and settled when disputed points are to be adjudicated. And 
yet, while this is so, and while much of that which was taken 
over by the early Christian Fathers still remains as factors and 
words in the Christian theology, it has utterly forgotten the 
spirit of these early pagan thoughts, and that religion today 
stands reduced to a system of forms and ceremonies, mostly. 
 
Now this is the situation that we in our Order are facing in the 
Occident, and above everything else it is our duty to bring back 
the old spiritual life, the old spiritual fire, the holy fire of the 
ancient days, to our fellow-men : not to make the world " pagan " 
again if we can use that term " pagan " in the sense of reintro- 
ducing the old Greek or Roman mythology not at all ; nor t< 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 421
 
make it Buddhist in the sense of introducing the present Buddhist 
religion ; nor the Brahmanical ; nor the Zoroastrian ; because 
all these in their turn are more or less degenerate ; but to bring 
back the essence of true Religion, the living truths, which all 
the great Masters of the world from immemorial time have 
taught. 
 
We meet here again and again and our thoughts doubtless 
follow many different lines, but we must all have thought more or 
less of what our present Teacher doubtless had in mind when she 
inaugurated these our present studies, sowing in them seeds for 
a harvest so great in the future that our present imaginations 
possibly can hardly take them in, even in thought. 
 
The Christians say that the blood of the saints, the blood of the 
martyrs, is the " seed of the Church ". Let us so live that our 
lives shall be the seed of the great Church or Fellowship of the 
future. Ethics lie at the root of it all ; Ethics, in the heart and 
mind of man, are the spiritual light shining through his intellect. 
They are a guide, a light unto our feet when honestly practised, 
unfailing, giving infinite peace to the human heart. When we 
say " ethics " and " morals " we do not mean merely conventional 
systems of right conduct, though those may be good also. We 
mean the cultivation of the understanding, of the instinct living in 
the soul of man, of his intuitional perception, that Right is Right, 
and Wrong is Wrong, outside of any conventional systems what- 
soever, and that if a man errs, he works, not only to his own 
undoing, but to the undoing of others with whom he is inseparably 
linked. 
 
We have been studying at our last few meetings, the theme of 
Gods, Monads, and Atoms, and we have seen that these are 
related to and causative of the evolution of the Kosmos by their 
interworking in the Lokas and Talas and we have seen that these 
Lokas and Talas comprise the structure, the framework, the 
carpentry, of the universe ; that they infill space, and in fact are 
Space itself. There is not, in the absolute sense, a void point 
anywhere. All Being is infilled with swarming multitudes of 
entities in the various and manifold degrees of development in 
which they find themselves. But all follow certain general rules 
of order, certain fundamental operations of the Kosmos, which 
are called in popular parlance, " natural laws ". We have seen 
that the energy-consciousness side is the side of the Principles ; 
and that the matter-prakriti side, or the Element-side, is the side 
of the Talas, as the former the Principles are of the Lokas : 
and yet these are inseparable, these Lokas and Talas, each involved 
with each, the two highest together and the two lowest together, 
and those between in similar manner, two by two, as inseparable 
as the two poles of a magnet ; you cannot have a magnet with 
 
 
 
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only one pole ; " as inseparable also as good and evil, as are light 
and darkness. In fact, these Lokas and Talas are an expression 
kosmically of what we call the System of Opposites, of Contraries, 
which is another way of expressing duality in Nature. They are 
interlinked from the uppermost or highest down to the lowest ; 
and it is by passing through these Principles and Elements, 
through these Lokas and Talas, that the life-waves, the streams 
of beings, undergo their evolution, acquire their experience. 
There are no separations or voids between the hosts of the various 
Hierarchies in the Kosmos, which is another way of expressing 
the same thing. They blend into each other, let us say, if you like ; 
at least as a first suggestion for understanding. They blend 
together by and through their atmospheres, the outermost 
atmosphere of one interpenetrating and interblending more 
particularly with the outermost atmosphere of its superior or of 
its inferior Loka or Tala, as the case may be ; and the thought 
here is of " atmospheres " or auras within each other, inwardly, 
not mere mechanical junctions of atmospheres on any one 
plane. 
 
These innumerable hosts, these swarming multitudes of beings, 
which infill space and are Space itself, work downwards along the 
Arc of the Shadows in their so-called " descent " into matter ; 
and then, when they have reached the bottom of the Grand 
Cycle in any manvantara, they turn, because having reached 
the lowest point possible as regards that Hierarchy, they cannot 
go farther down in it. This is a question which we must go into 
more fully in the future. Please accept it for the moment as a 
proposition. Thus, having reached that bottom-point, that utmost 
point of materiality, for that particular cycle of evolution of 
matter and involution of spirit, they turn and begin the homeward 
course, " ascending " through the Lokas and Talas as they 
" came down " through them, and this ascent is the involution of 
matter and the evolution of spirit, or, to put it in other words, 
matter resolves itself again into the spirit which it funda- 
mentally is. 
 
There is no difference in Occultism between force and matter, 
except in degree of materiality or grossness ; there is no difference 
of kind at all. There is no difference between spirit and substance, 
except in degree, no difference in kind at all. Both are funda- 
mentally one ; and both, when the long ages of the manvantaric 
cycle shall have ended, both, I say, shall sink back again into the 
infinite womb of the Great Void, the Maha-ftnyata, which we 
have studied at a former meeting, that is to say, back into the 
illimitable Kosmos of the spiritual realms, which is " void " 
to our lower natures, but actually an ineffable Pleroma or Fullness 
to the divine Eye within us. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 423
 
It is through the working and interaction respectively of the 
Gods and the Monads and the Souls and the Atoms, that the 
various globes of our Planetary Chain, and of any other Planetary 
Chain, and the various Lokas and Talas pertaining thereto, come 
into being. These latter are the vehicles of the former : their 
garments of light, if you like, on the higher planes, and their bodies 
so-called on the lower planes. They are projected, out-thrown, 
cast forth, emanated, from these Gods, Monads, Souls, and Atoms. 
Please remember that when we say " atom " we do not mean the 
chemical " atom " of modern scientific thought. That " atom " 
is, as said before, rather an aggregate of atomic elements. We 
mean by the term a vital-astral entity. At the heart of it is its 
monad. At the heart of that monad is its god, and that god is 
but a ray of the supreme Summit of the Hierarchy to which it 
belongs. 
 
Remember that any such Hierarchy is but one of an endless 
multitude of others similar to it ; yea, there are others so much 
greater than it, be it as great as your imagination can make it, 
that it itself seems by comparison but as a grain of sand on the 
shores of an infinite sea. It is so, even in the outer spaces of 
astronomy, which the instruments of the astronomers can, or 
at least attempt to, penetrate. There are Kosmoi, Kosmoses, so 
much greater than our own Universal Kosmos (which comprises 
everything within the zone of the Milky Way) beyond our 
Universe, that our entire Universal Kosmos could be placed in 
one of them and lost ; and, on the other hand, there is an actual 
universe at the core of every one of the tiniest atoms of our 
physical make-up, an actual universe infilled with its own hier- 
archies, its own endless hosts of beings. 
 
Remember, please, that bulk, volume, size, have nothing 
whatsoever to do with consciousness, nor with force. And 
greater than that thought is this ; that the worlds we see, the 
universe we see, are but the rind, the shell, the husk of the 
greater part which lies within. We see these things around us ; 
they are repeated by reflexion from what is within. Remember 
the old Hermetic axiom, " As above, so below. As below, so 
above ". 
 
We were speaking of initiations and Mysteries a few moments 
agone, and perhaps some may have wondered, Are there no 
records left of these ? There are many ; but, alas, people do not 
know how to find them. The ordinary scholar takes such state- 
ments as he finds them in his books as simply examples, samples, 
rather, of what he calls the " unexampled superstition of past 
ages ". He knows everything ! Our little mental world of 
100 or 150 or 200 years, is the summum bonum, the ne plus ultra, 
to such minds ; everything that preceded that short period was 
 
 
 
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ignorance and superstition ; but there are some men and women 
who have intellects greater than those, intuitions livelier than 
those, and they have felt and seen at least somewhat of the truth 
in reading these records of bygone times. 
 
I have personally seen statements in such old records which are 
amazingly bold and open. For instance, I make mention of two 
things found in articles or poems written by our Comrade, 
Professor Kenneth Morris, in these cases taken from some of 
the old Welsh writings, and I have marveled that such things were 
left open, simply marveled at it ; but when you read a little 
more you find that the allusion is so masterly interwoven with 
cognate subjects, true but having no direct bearing upon that 
blazing star of light that springs forth to the eye here and there, 
that these other cognate subjects actually hide the esoteric star 
of light, and our modern reader simply reads in such case as he 
would a fine modern poem, and he sees nothing more. There are 
none so blind as those who want to be blind ! 
 
Again : One of our professors of Greek once wrote an interest- 
ing article on some phase of the ancient Greek thought, and it 
came into me as sub-editor of our monthly magazine during one 
of our Teacher's absences abroad. This Comrade had put 
together two statements taken from two different Greek authors. 
He had seen a sudden flash of light, and was fascinated by it. 
In his studies of the Greek literature he saw though darkly the 
connexion and placed these two extracts together, and doubtless 
imagined that he had made a discovery. And he had. Perhaps 
it was by accident, but there it was. Now what was I to do ? 
There I was faced with a difficult situation : sworn not to let such 
things go out publicly, and yet, on the other hand, every true 
disciple of our Teacher never wilfully blinds the light of a Com- 
rade. I wrote to our Comrade, our Greek professor, and told him 
that the article was extremely interesting. I did not question 
the truth of anything that was contained in the extracts he had 
made, but the contrary ; but I could not at the moment see my 
way to putting the article in the magazine as it was ; and I 
suggested a compromise ; I acted upon my thought and returned 
the article to him with the two extracts separated. I deliberately 
pulled apart the two sections, the two extracts, in his article, 
which joined gave a key to a mystery. He wrote back that he 
regretted very deeply that this had to be done ; he was sorry I 
could not see the truth which was in these things, for he knew it 
was true, he felt it was true, but under the circumstances, as I 
was sub-editor, and he presumed that the Leader had authorized 
me to mutilate articles, he was satisfied. The poor man doubtless 
thought that the sub-editor was the sort of man of whom one 
may read in various criticisms of critics of literary efforts. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 425
 
I will take a third instance. Our Comrade, Professor 
Osvald Sir6n, in a very interesting lecture he gave on Chinese- 
Buddhist art a few days ago, twice or thrice, perhaps, mentioned 
two things which are extremely interesting, and they were placed 
in direct conjunction. You remember he told us in his description 
it was a most interesting and instructive lecture of the various 
postures of these Buddhist statues of the Buddhas and Bodhisat- 
twas, that the Bodhisattwas wore what he called " crowns " ; 
and he called attention to the headgear, as represented in these 
statues of the Buddhas, and he called it the Ushnisha. This is a 
Sanskrit word, and it comes from the Sanskrit root Ush, which 
means " to be warm ", " to be hot ", " to be flaming ", or 
" fiery ". Ushnisha is also used in the sense of " turban ", 
because this particular headgear, given to these Buddha-statues 
somewhat resembles a turban. It is of spiral conical form, some- 
what like the spiral shell of some snails. 
 
One of the most interesting and instructive aspects of ancient 
thought and it should be of our studies likewise is that of 
symbology. It has been very truly said by one of our Comrades, 
that once an esoteric thought has been vocally expressed or 
printed, it is exoteric. Of course that is true. That is a fact. 
But let us not lose sight of another fact, that while a thing, an 
esoteric truth, may be proclaimed from the house-tops, unless 
it is understood, it still remains esoteric, although in form, formally, 
it is exoteric. 
 
I think it was Aristotle who first used these words " esoteric " 
and " exoteric ", meaning that which is inward, and that which 
is outward and formal. Of course, that distinction is a true one ; 
yet if you examine the literatures, the symbology of the ancient 
literatures, philosophies, and sciences, with the understanding 
given to us by our own esoteric teachings, you will find that while 
the symbolism is exoteric because it has been published, it still 
remains esoteric because it is unexplained, its meaning is still 
hid. 
 
Now will you please recall to your minds that two years ago, 
I think it was, acting upon our Teacher's instructions, we once 
spoke of the fact that practically the entire life of the ancient 
world in all its branches, religious, scientific, philosophic, social, 
political, what not, was ultimately based on knowledge derived 
from the Mysteries. This fact is so true and goes so far in reach, 
that, for an example, even the dread crucifixion-punishment of 
the Persians, Carthaginians, and Romans, a punishment to which 
only criminals or foreigners were ever subjected, in early times, 
as a form, arose in the initiatory ceremonies. 
 
Now to return more directly to the subject of the " crown " 
and the Ushnisha on the Buddhas 1 heads. The crown, you will 
 
 
 
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remember, in that former meeting of which I have spoken we 
pointed out to be the symbolic sign of one who had passed a 
certain degree in initiation. He who was " crowned " was an 
initiate of a certain grade ; and this was expressed by saying 
that he wore a crown. This wearing of crowns has passed into 
our own European life. The monarchs are crowned, and at their 
coronations they ignorantly repeat a very, very ancient ceremony, 
meaning then a great deal, meaning now nothing. And the 
wearing or use of crowns, at least as a decoration on rings or 
letter-paper, is still retained by European nobility in the form of 
coronets. Originally it meant that the one so entitled to use the 
one or the other of these various crowns, had passed a certain 
grade of initiation, and in some cases a high initiation too, if you 
please. The Bodhisattwas were those who were crowned with 
the Buddhicfire, which was symbolized by the wearing of a diadem 
or a crown, or something similar. The crown, actually, if you 
examine its earliest forms in iconography, in iconographic works, 
you will see evidently originated in two ideas, one of which was 
the sun, used as a symbol, with its spreading rays ; so much so 
that some of the late studies or art-works of the very last age of 
the ancient times, that of the Romans, show one or more of the 
emperors for instance with a halo or a nimbus at the back of his 
head, from which spikes spread out, making a crown or repre- 
senting the solar rays. The solar rite, if you like to call it that, 
was thus symbolized ; and the halo or nimbus back of the heads 
of the Buddha-statues, a fact-symbol copied by the Christians 
likewise, originated from a fact well known to the ancients, and 
even spoken of in the exoteric literature as it has come down to 
us today. This fact and this is the second idea or truth men- 
tioned above is that a saint, as the Christians would say, a holy 
man, as we may say, i.e., one who is in the state of deep samadhi, 
which you all know of or which you all understand the meaning 
of, has his head surrounded with these auric streams, these rays 
from the vital inner fire, which form a glory around his head, and 
sometimes even around the entire body. They stream upwards 
from the back of the head, often symbolically represented in the 
Buddha-iconography as one single, lambent flame soaring upwards 
from and over the top of the skull. In this case you may perhaps 
find that the Ushnisha is missing, its place being taken by this 
flame issuing from the top of the head, a symbolic representation 
of the fire of the spirit and of the aroused and active Buddhic 
faculty in which the man is at the time. 
 
You see how beautiful these thoughts are, how much there is 
merely in studying the outward symbology of these old beliefs. 
How often have I heard this very UshnJsha mocked at by Occi- 
dentals, derided with more or less gentle sarcasm, but certainly 
 
 
 


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it was derision. Such mockery comes from a lack of understand- 
ing. It pays even to put it on the personal, selfish plane, it 
pays to understand and study symbology ! There is one more 
explanation of the Ushnisha, the most secret of all, which we 
mention but pass over at present. It refers to the popular belief 
that the Ushnisha is an excrescence or protuberance of the skull 
itself. 
 
Now, there are a few more things which we ought to inau- 
gurate tonight as a prelude and introduction to the beginning of 
our study when we next meet. Let me first read from The 
Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 569, the following extract : 
 
. . . the ancient Initiates, who were followed more or less closely by 
all profane antiquity, meant by the term " ATOM/' a Soul, a Genius or 
Angel, the first-born of the ever-concealed CAUSE of all causes ; and in 
this sense their teachings become comprehensible. They claimed, as do 
their successors, the existence of Gods and Genii, angels or " demons," 
not outside, or independent of, the Universal Plenum, but within it. 
Only this Plenum, during the life-cycles, is infinite. 
 
We have soon to close our study this evening, but let us first 
point out that in our use of the term " atom ", as H. P. Blavatsky 
always used it, we employ it as, and give it the same general 
meaning that, the ancient Greek philosophers did from whom we 
derive the word. If you remember, it means that which cannot be 
divided ; so, then, it was the ultimate particle of substance ; and 
this indivisible atom did not at all mean the atom in our modern, 
scientific, chemical sense. It meant rather what we called the 
monad, which was the name given to the spiritual One by Pytha- 
goras, and meant exactly the same thing that atom originally did, 
the word used by the old Greek Atomists, such as Democritus, 
Leucippus, Epicurus, and Lucretius of Italy, and by such as they, 
albeit the Atomistic sense was more materialistic than ours. 
Furthermore, this word atom is used by us in a general sense, 
frequently. We have spoken of the sun as an atom, and we 
have spoken of the earth as an atom, and we have called attention 
to the fact that the ancient Hindus in their writings, called Brahma 
(the third hypostasis, so to say, of the Divine Brahman) the Kosmic 
Atom. The idea is that this Kosmic Atom is " Brahma's Egg ", 
from which the universe shall spring into manifested being, as 
from the egg the chick comes forth, in its turn to lay another 
egg. Each of these Kosmic Eggs or Universes gives birth, after 
its rest-period has ended, to its own offspring, each of the former 
derived in similar manner from its own former manvantaric 
 
egg- 
 
And a common doctrine among the ancients all over the 
world, in Hindtisthan or in Greece or Rome, wherever it may 
 
 
 
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have been, was, as so beautifully expressed in a poem by 
Cleanthes, the Stoic : 
 
" Zeus is all that is. Whate'er you see or know or sense or feel 
is Zeus. Zeus is all within and all without." Therefore not an 
atom but is Zeus ; as also every potentiality of the infinite 
Kosmos, as of all Kosmoi ; for every universe or kosmos is but 
one of the vast and incomputable swarms of living entities which 
fill the Spaces of endless and beginningless SPACE. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XXXIX
 
THEOSOPHY AND OCCULTISM. OCCULTISM : THE QUINTESSENCE 
OF TRUTH, "REALITY : A COMPLETE WHOLE. OCCULTISM AND 
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. OUR SOLAR SYSTEM : A KOSMIC 
ATOM : " EGG OF BRAHMA." 
 
It is easy to become a Theosophist. Any person of average intellectual 
capacities and a leaning toward the meta-physical ; of pure, unselfish life, who 
finds more joy in helping his neighbour than in receiving help himself ; one who 
is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake of other people ; and who 
loves Truth, Goodness, and Wisdom for their own sake, not for the benefit they 
may confer is a Theosophist. 
 
But it is quite another matter to put oneself upon the path which leads to 
the knowledge of what is good to do, as to the right discrimination of good from 
evil ; a path which also leads a man to that power through which he can do the 
good he desires, often without even apparently lifting a finger. 
 
Practical Occultism, H. P. BLAVATSKY (Lucifer, II, p. 150). 
 
Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether psychic or intellectual, 
though both are its servants. Neither is Occultism the pursuit of happiness, 
as men understand the word, for the first step is sacrifice, the second, renunciation. 
 
Lucifer, I, p. 7. 
 
Our philosophy of life is one grand whole, every part necessary and fitting 
into every other part. Every one of its doctrines can and must be carried to its 
ultimate conclusion. Its ethical application must proceed similarly. If it 
conflict with old opinions those must be cast off. It can never conflict with true 
morality. The spirit of Theosophy must be sought for ; a sincere application 
of its principles to life and act should be made. Thus mechanical Theosophy, 
which inevitably leads as in many cases it already has to a negation of brother- 
hood, will be impossible, and instead there will be a living, actual Theosophy. 
 
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE. 
 
Charaka, a Hindu physician, who is said to have lived 5000 years B.C., in his 
treatise on the origin of things . . . thus beautifully expresses himself : " Our 
Earth is, like all the luminous bodies that surround us, one of the atoms of the 
immense Whole of which we show a slight conception by terming it the 
Infinite." 
 
I sis Unveiled (H. P. BLAVATSKY), Vol. I, p. 560. 
 
OCCULTISM, as our Masters have told us, and as our 
Brother, H. P. Blavatsky, has told us, is that sublime 
Wisdom delivered to the early races of mankind by 
exalted Beings from other Lokas ; and while in our 
modern times to this Wisdom has been given the name of 
" Occultism ", that is the science of things which are secret or hid, 
and while that name has its correspondence in other languages, as 
in the Sanskrit Gupt&-Vidy&, in the form in which it has been 
presented to the public in our age, it is called Theosophy. One 
may ask oneself : Is there any intrinsic difference between 
2 F 429 
 
 
 
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Occultism and Theosophy ? I think we may say very fairly and 
justly that there is not, that fundamentally the two are one, two 
names for one thing. But H. P. Blavatsky very wisely made a 
distinction, superficial if you like, but convenient, between 
Occultism and Theosophy, and this distinction was thought of in 
connexion with the three grades of members of the Theosophical 
Movement. First, the members of the Theosophical Society, 
who are neither Theosophists nor Occultists necessarily, but who 
are those who so greatly admire our broad and universal platform, 
who are so much in sympathy with the ideals which Theosophy 
sets forth, that they have thrown in their lot with us, and work 
with us. The second class comprises the Theosophists, that is to 
say, those who are more than mere members of the Theosophical 
Society ; they are those who study the particular and certain 
doctrines which in our time have been called Theosophical, and 
which represent the " Eye-Doctrine ", as Gautama the Buddha 
called it, in other words, the publication for the public weal of 
certain chosen and specified doctrines of Occultism, fit for public 
dissemination in our age. Lastly, the third class is ourselves, 
those who belong to our own holy Order, who have given them- 
selves in a larger, in a deeper, and in a more heartful degree than 
the other two classes of us have done, to that sublime Wisdom, 
as we call it above, which has come down to us from immemorial 
time as the revelation, if we may use that word, of the truths of 
the Kosmos, and of course of Man as a part thereof. 
 
This, then, is the distinction, such as it is, between Theosophy 
and Occultism. The Theosophical doctrines are more generally 
for the public, yet they are chosen from the doctrines of Occult- 
ism ; they are the doctrines which are most fit for public dis- 
semination in our age, as already said. 
 
Now the unfortunate part of this matter is the following : 
everything that is of human nature, or which springs from the 
heart or brain of mankind, is de facto subject to imitation or even 
to degeneration ; and consequently this name Occultism, a truly 
noble name in its real meaning, is often greatly, even vilely, 
misused and misunderstood ; it is bandied about in the news- 
papers, and passes from mouth to mouth as signifying little more 
than the so-called psychistic or wonderment-doctrines on which 
the public feeds so avidly. That use is a degradation of the 
original sense. All things which really satisfy the heart and mind 
of man must be of necessity true in degree, otherwise they could 
not so satisfy ; but, as we all know, men's minds and hearts 
sometimes feed on mere " husks ", as it is expressed in the 
Christian New Testament feed on husks which the " swine " eat. 
You know what the symbolic expression " swine " means. We 
have spoken of it before, so we need not now allude to it again. 
 
 
 


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But the point which I wish to impress upon our minds in this 
connexion is, that Occultism is the exposition of the very essence, 
the quintessence, of Truth, of Reality. It cannot be studied by the 
higher mind alone, nor can it be studied alone by those other 
faculties in man which he classes under the generic heading of 
" feelings ". But it must be studied as a complete whole, and it 
answers fully to all demands of man's entire spiritual and psycho- 
logical composition, and is therefore entirely and utterly satis- 
factory. It provides man not merely with a basis for the noblest 
system of ethics the world knows, but describes to him what those 
ethics are, and on what they are founded, and what the due and 
perfect practice of them will lead to ; and that leading, we are 
told, is along that old, small Path, of which the Hindti Upanishads 
speak for those who follow it finally come into direct connexion 
and into confabulation with the all-wise and calm-eyed gods ; 
for that Path leads us directly to the Heart of the Universe the 
" heart " in the mystical and esoteric sense : into those places, 
into those spiritual, super-spiritual, and divine, regions where is 
the core of the being of each one of us. 
 
The various great religions of the present and of the past times 
have sprung forth from the doctrines of Occultism ; each one of 
such religions in its germinal stage, in its beginning, was the 
spiritual offspring of some great and noble man, one of our 
Masters, indeed, who taught publicly during the particular period 
when he appeared among men openly for the salvation of his 
fellows, giving them anew, once again, the age-old truths, or, it 
may be, but a newer version of the ancient light to them, eluci- 
dating the great problems concerning the Kosmos and Man, 
which to those who have not received such light, so harass the 
human heart, and, it may be, the human intellect, with an urgency 
demanding solution. Such a movement was started in our time 
by our great-souled Brother, H. P. Blavatsky. It depends upon 
us almost wholly at the present time, and will in the future so 
depend very largely, whether that effort is to fail as all religions 
in the past, save one, have failed, more or less ; or whether it is 
to go forward successfully, doing the work it was intended to do, 
planting the seeds of right thinking and right action, of human 
brotherhood, and of universal kindliness, in the hearts of all who 
follow it ; or whether, following the left-hand path, the path of 
matter, it is to go down and possibly become even an instrument 
of the Brothers of the Shadows. 
 
Our Teachers have told us plainly, and our present Teacher 
fully as much as her two predecessors, though perhaps in more 
disguised words, that the study of Occultism involves a great 
moral responsibility : that it places such a responsibility upon the 
shoulders of him or of her who studies it, because it awakens the 
 
 
 
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inner man: it awakens his hid powers. And, furthermore, 
precisely proportionate to a man's earnestness is its study 
productive of good, or, it may be, of the reverse. OCCULTISM 
CANNOT BE TRIFLED WITH. It deals with direct and original 
things, if you understand these terms, not with reflected truths. 
Hence, unless a man's heart be absolutely pure I mean by that, 
clean of all personal selfishness he never is safe. There can be no 
trifling with it. It calls out of a man all he is inwardly, and brooks 
no half-way loyalty. 
 
As said to us so many times, the two paths lie always at our 
feet ; at every step they diverge, one to the right and one to the 
left ; and one single act may induce a habit, which will make a 
character, in time, by repetition ; and that character is you or I, 
for it is the exercise of knowledge (or half-knowledge) and will. 
 
It is for these reasons that our beloved Teacher has instructed 
me time and again to refer to the necessity of understanding 
clearly what we mean by morals, and that there is the utmost need 
for their practice by each one of us, by you and by me, every 
moment of our lives. Such practice does not mean merely the 
hypocritical assent of the mentality, with a mental reservation 
that " finally I shall do as I please ". That field of mental 
reservations is precisely where the Brothers of the Shadows make 
their conquests of the hearts of men, on just such lines as those. 
I tell you with all solemnity, that the warning should be, must 
be, heeded. 
 
Now, Comrades, let us open our study tonight by reminding 
ourselves of the fact that the Lokas and the Talas of which we 
have spoken at our several last meetings, as concerns the earth, 
are its seven Principles and its seven Elements respectively ; and 
as concerns the Kosmos precisely the same may be said. Further- 
more, that the seven Kosmical Lokas and seven Kosmical Talas 
comprise the entirety, the totality, of all that is in our solar 
system, which is the Kosmic Atom. In other words, they 
comprise the totality of the Egg of Brahma. You know the 
meaning of that fine old Brahmanical symbol, the Egg, a symbol 
which is found likewise in other religions, such as the Orphic 
system in Greece, and the Egyptian system ; and we know from 
the representations we have of the earth-Mounds, that anciently 
it was equally well recognised in North America. 
 
Now, when we speak of the Kosmic Atom when we speak of 
the Egg of Brahma, which is another way of saying the same 
thing when we speak of it as being the solar system, please know 
that we do not mean the planets together, or the sun alone, or the 
sun and planets together, which last form merely the outward 
rind or shell, as it were (or, if we may use a physiological term, the 
nerve-centers, the ganglia, of the physiological operations), of this 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 433
 
Egg of Brahma. When we speak of the Kosmic Atom, and 
inferentially of the atom of matter as we know it on this earth, 
we mean the vital-astral entity behind it, that particular entity 
considered as a unity, which gives it its life, its swabhava, that is, 
its particular or individual characteristic, that which differentiates 
if from other similar Kosmic Eggs or Kosmic Atoms. We may 
also speak of our earth as Brahma's Egg, but this is by analogy ; 
the real Egg of Brahma is the solar system. 
 
We have said above and have also said at other studies, that 
these Lokas and Talas are the seven Principles and the seven 
Elements of our globe, our globe Terra ; but there are other seven 
Lokas and other seven Talas which are respectively the seven 
Principles and the seven Elements of each one of the other six 
globes of our Planetary Chain, seven of each, to each. One may ask 
oneself, if one has not studied Occultism, why there should be so 
much of the sevening process in our studies : why our doctrines 
should continually run in sevenfold aggregates. The answer of 
Occultism is, because Nature has so builded her structures. 
Outside of such obvious things as the seven principal colors of the 
light spectrum and the seven rays of the sun (which is almost the 
same thing), and the seven notes of the diatonic scale in music, 
and the fact known to students of physiology that many diseases 
run in cycles of seven days or multiples thereof leaving these 
things aside, we find in studying the ancient literatures as showing 
forth the religions, philosophies, and sciences of the past times, 
that while they all state the fact under different forms un- 
doubtedly, they all agree more or less unanimously in ascribing 
to the structural framework of the universe and of man, the same 
system of seven component parts. 
 
This question of numeration is one which we have laid no 
foundation for at present, and therefore we postpone it for longer 
consideration to a future time, Comrades. Suffice it then for the 
present to accept it as a proposition for study. You yourselves 
can prove what has been said. The literatures of the world lie 
open before you. Read them and study them, and you will be 
convinced as all other sincere students have been convinced 
who have done it. Remember what " proof " is. " Proof " is pre- 
ponderance of evidence bringing conviction to the mind. Study 
therefore the evidences and prove the facts. 
 
Now the Gods, Monads, and Atoms work through the Kosmic 
Egg inwards and outwards, that is, they work through the Lokas 
and Talas. As H. P. Blavatsky says in the first volume of 
The Secret Doctrine, on page 619 : 
 
" God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, 
and Body (Atmd, Manas, and Sthula-Sarira) in man/' In their septenary 
aggregation they are the " Heavenly Man." (See Qabbaiah for the latter 
 
 
 
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term) ; thus, terrestrial man is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly 
, . . " The Monads (Jivas) are the Souls of the Atoms, both are the 
fabric in which the Chohans (Dhynis, gods) clothe themselves when a 
form is needed." 
 
They so clothe themselves, in order, as pointed out in our former 
studies of the Gods, Monads, Souls, and Atoms, to evolve forth 
the universe ; as the Hindi! Upanishad puts it, as a spider spins 
a web. That is a beautiful symbol. From out of themselves, 
from their own substance, they weave the geometrical pattern 
of the Kosmos and therein work. 
 
The study of the structure or frame-work of our Kosmic Atom 
is a vast, profound, and intricate subject, and before we can 
properly do it justice in any sort of study, it would seem better 
first to undertake at least a cursory examination for at this point 
we have now arrived in our studies of the building of our own 
Globe, as a part of the Planetary Chain in which it is one of the 
seven links. Indeed, let us go a little farther than that, and study 
the working of the Life- Waves of and in our Planetary Chain. 
Our Planetary Chain, as said before, may itself be considered the 
Egg of Brahma, the Kosmic Egg, the fruit of its parent, i.e., the 
Planetary Chain of the preceding Manvantara ; and it itself is to 
be the parent of its own future offspring, the Planetary Chain to 
come when we in our own Chain shall have run our cyclical 
evolutionary course and sunk into our long and well-earned 
Pralaya, or rest. In other words, after we have rejoined those 
super-spiritual spheres from within which we came in the very 
beginning of things ; to remain there in peace and in bliss ineffable, 
until the seeds latent in us, the fruitage of our present and future 
acts and thoughts, shall spring into activity in due time. For all 
things move in regular courses and according to order, which shall 
bring us down, in far-distant aeons, as said before, into the 
fabrication of the Planetary Chain to be. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XL
 
DEFINITIONS OF DEITY : ATHEISM ! PANTHEISM. IS THERE A 
SUPREME PERSONAL GOD ? KOSMIC ARCHITECTS AND 
BUILDERS.. REALLY TO KNOW, ONE MUST BECOME. 
 
" Thus there is but one Absolute Upddhi (basis) in the spiritual sense, from, on, 
and in which, are built for Manvantaric purposes the countless basic centers on 
which proceed the Universal, cyclic, and individual Evolutions during the active 
period." 
 
" The informing Intelligences, which animate these various centers of Being, 
are referred to indiscriminately by men beyond the Great Range as the Manus, 
the Rishis, the Pitris, the Prajdpatis, and so on ; and as DhyAni-Buddhas, the 
Chohans, Melhas (fire-gods), Bodhisattvas, and others, on this side. The truly 
ignorant call them gods ; the learned profane, the one God ; and the wise, the 
Initiates, honor in them only the Manvantaric manifestations of THAT which 
neither our Creators (the Dhyan-Chohans) nor their creatures can ever discuss or 
know anything about. The ABSOLUTE is not to be defined, and no mortal or 
immortal has ever seen or comprehended it during the periods of Existence. The 
mutable cannot know the Immutable, nor can that which lives perceive Absolute Life.*' 
 
Therefore, man cannot know higher beings than his own " progenitors." 
" Nor shall he worship them," but he ought to learn how he came into the world. 
 
There is frequent confusion in the attributes and genealogies of the gods in 
their theogonies, as given to the world by the half-initiated writers, Brahmanical 
and Biblical, the Alpha and the Omega of the records of that symbolical science. 
Yet there could be no such confusion made by the earliest nations, the descendants 
and pupils of the divine instructors : for both the attributes and the genealogies 
were inseparably linked with cosmogonical symbols, the " gods " being the life 
and animating " soul-principle " of the various regions of the Universe. Nowhere 
and by no people was speculation allowed to range beyond those manifested gods. 
The boundless and infinite UNITY remained with every nation a virgin forbidden 
soil, untrodden by man's thought, untouched by fruitless speculation. The 
only reference made to it was the brief conception of its diastolic and systolic 
property, of its periodical expansion or dilatation, and contraction. In the Uni- 
verse with all its incalculable myriads of systems and worlds disappearing and 
reappearing in eternity, the anthropomorphised powers, or gods, their Souls, 
had to disappear from view with their bodies : " The breath returning to the 
eternal bosom which exhales and inhales them," says our Catechism. 
 
... In every Cosmogony, behind and higher than the creative deity, there is a 
superior deity, a planner, an Architect, of whom the Creator is but the executive 
agent. And still higher, over and around, within and without, there is the UN- 
KNOWABLE and the unknown, the Source and Cause of all these Emanations. . . . 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), II, pp. 34, 42, 43. 
 
WE approach this evening one aspect of Occultism 
which has always been held as very sacred and very 
carefully guarded, and that is the study of other 
worlds than ours, not as those worlds have been set 
forth in the exoteric religions, but in accordance with the secret 
Wisdom which has been handed down to us from immemorial 
time. We mean the teaching concerning the superior globes of our 
own Planetary Chain ; and on a misunderstanding of the doctrines 
 
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concerning the teaching regarding the Planetary Chain have been 
based the exoteric views of the heavens and the hells of the 
various exoteric faiths. 
 
One might ask oneself what the proper answer is to give to 
those who might ask any one of us, " Is a Theosophist an Atheist ? 
Does he believe in God ? If not, why not ? " Now these questions 
are directly connected with the proper understanding of the 
doctrines about the Planetary Chain. Let us then first devote a 
few moments to answering these questions for ourselves. Are we 
Atheists ? Now, how can we answer that question before we know 
what we mean by the term ? If we take a modern dictionary, 
for instance the Century Dictionary, and look up the definition 
which it gives of the term " Atheism ", we find three general ones, 
as follows : The first is : " The doctrine that there is no God." 
And then follows a quotation from Sir J. R. Seeley, from his 
book, Natural Religion, page 26, as follows : " Atheism is a 
disbelief in the existence of God that is, disbelief in any 
regularity in the universe to which man must conform himself 
under penalties/' Notice the peculiar limitation of thought 
involved in this. If there is no regularity in the universe there- 
fore there is no personal supreme God, and therefore if you don't 
believe in such a God, the universe is irregular and anarchical, 
and you are an Atheist ! 
 
The second definition is as follows : " The denial of theism, 
that is, of the doctrine that the great first cause is a supreme 
intelligent, righteous person. 1 ' The third definition is " Godless- 
ness ", with the implied meaning that if you don't accept the God 
of the one who gives the definition, you are an Atheist, and you 
live a " godless ", that is, an evil life. Such, then, are the 
definitions given in a standard work. 
 
Now any tyro-student of history knows that this question or 
idea of belief in a god or in no god has varied, or rather has 
received different treatment, in different ages. You will remember 
doubtless that when the Christian religion first began to run a 
more or less successful course in Greece and in the Roman Empire, 
educated Greeks and Romans called the new Christian sect an 
atheistic sect. They were called atheists, " atheoi ", merely 
meaning one, or rather those, who did not accept the established 
gods of the state, that is, the gods of the state-religion ; and the 
term bore with it no particular or necessary implication of evil 
doing whatsoever. It was very much as if an European or 
American were to say today : " Such and such a man is a Free- 
thinker, or a Confucianist, or a Buddhist, or a scientist," etc. 
 
Now when the Christians grew more powerful and had in later 
ages the upper hand of the so-called Pagans, they in their turn 
retaliated by calling the Pagans atheists, because the latter did 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 437
 
not accept the Jewish-Greek, new-fangled Christian God. In 
other words, the term actually means : "If you accept my God 
you are not an atheist ; and if you do not accept my God you are 
an atheist/' 
 
That is just about what atheism has always meant, if we consult 
the pages of history. But if we think of atheism as containing 
in itself a necessary implication of evil doing, we lower ourselves 
to the mental viewpoint of certain very narrow-minded Christians 
to whom all who do not accept their particular variety of religion, 
their particular understanding or misunderstanding of Deity, are 
atheists. We are reminded of course of that Scottish lady of the 
legend, of whom we have all heard, who with her husband 
composed a kirk ; she and her Jamie alone composed the kirk. 
But she was " nae sae certain aboot Jamie ". Therefore she alone 
composed the kirk, and her husband Jamie, poor man, came very 
near to being (in her eyes) an atheist. 
 
Now that is the spirit that has governed Christian thought 
practically ever since the death of its founder. So, therefore, 
when we ask if a man is an atheist, we must be careful first to 
ascertain what we mean by the term. I have been called an 
atheist because I do not accept the old orthodox definition of the 
personal Christian God. I reject the term, if it mean living an 
immoral life. I reject it with all the indignation of which I am 
sensible, if the word be so used, for it is an imputation which is 
grossly unjust. And doubtless any one of you feels exactly as I do. 
Was it not the author of the Plough and the Cross, a very clever 
Irish writer, who said somewhere that our " forefathers were afraid 
of ghosts ; but we are afraid of names/' i.e., of labels and 
tickets ? 
 
Now notice the second definition given above, that a man is an 
atheist if he does not believe in the existence of a supreme, 
personal, first cause, who is an " intelligent, righteous person ". 
I reject such a deity ; therefore, according to the dictionary, I 
am an atheist. But if anyone were to ask me, and say, " Are you 
an atheist ? " I would say, No. And if he were to say, Why ? 
I would say, Because to me the Boundless All is totally instinct 
with consciousness and life, an infinitely immense and swarming 
multitude, endless and beginningless, of beings who form not 
merely the heart of the pulsating life of all that is, but provide 
the very consciousnesses which govern and control the innumer- 
able universes of and in the Boundless All, 
 
Why, if you turn even to the canonical scripture of the Christian 
religion and ask what Paul meant when he spoke of Deity, we find 
there, from him, two definitions worthy of the initiant that the 
man was, when he said, first : "In It we live, and move, and 
have our being/' This is pure pantheism not as misunderstood 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
in the grotesque sense which the Christians have misgiven to it, 
i.e., that every stock and every stone is God, thus showing their 
profound ignorance of the high and noble philosophical meaning 
behind the term Pantheism ; but in the sense that all is Life, and 
that it is impossible to conceive of, nay, even to touch the smallest 
point of Space or Being, which lacks that Limitless Life. For 
back of A lies B, which is still greater than A ; back of B lies C, 
still greater than B ; back of C lies D, yet more grandiose ; and so 
on infinitely, with never an end. What blasphemous ideas have 
come down through the ages regarding this question of Deity ! 
Here in our Occidental Christianism we have a god, a bundle of 
contradictions, a misunderstood rendering of Neo-Pythagorean 
and Neo- Platonic, and of some Judaic thoughts, the curious and 
contradictory compound called the Christian Deity I mean the 
theological definition thereof. 
 
Then another saying of Paul from his Epistle to the Romans, 
in chapter n, verse 36 : " For out of It, and through It, and 
back to It are all things/' Pantheism this, pure and simple, even 
as we understand it. 
 
Or, if we turn to the English rendering of John's Gospel, 
chapter 4, verse 24, we find an affirmation of the opposite thought, 
which particular translation sprang from the orthodox rendering 
of the text by the later Christians, where this Greek verse is 
mistranslated as saying " God is a spirit ". The Greek original 
could equally well and even better be translated : " God is 
Spirit ". So be it. They may worship " a spirit " if they like, a 
spirit who is a " righteous person " ; but those whose hearts have 
expanded under the beneficent influence of the Wisdom-Religion, 
and whose minds have opened to somewhat of the understanding 
which every faithful student of that Wisdom should possess, can 
only reject such a definition of the Deity that he cannot accept, 
with the indignation which the definition deserves. 
 
No Theosophist, H. P. Blavatsky has somewhere said, has ever 
denied Deity, i.e., limitless Life in the Boundless All ; but this 
Deity is nothing like, nor in any sense can it be compared with, 
a finite creator, which such a " person " is supposed to be, however 
" supreme " and however " righteous " and however great that 
supposed " person " or that " spirit " may be imagined to be. 
 
Now, if someone were to ask you, " Is there a supreme personal 
God ruling the Planetary Chain and is it your God ? " the answer 
is No. There is a host, a multitude, a hierarchy, of intelligent 
and of thinking and of highly spiritualized beings, from which the 
Planetary Chain sprang forth, but it is not our god, nor do we 
worship any such. Those beings are our progenitors, our Elder 
Brothers in a very exalted sense, for they were men in former 
manvantaras long since past ; but our " god ", never, not even 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 439
 
when considered as a unity and called the Logos. Our Deity, 
if it is anything, is that indescribable, Boundless Life, in its 
highest aspects, back of everything, forming a background of all 
manifested being on whatever plane, and in which all is, and from 
which all is, and to which all is ; indescribable, unthinkable, and 
therefore ineffable. 
 
You remember that when Gautama the Buddha was asked 
What is God ? and Is there God ? that greatest and noblest of 
Masters was silent. And when asked a second and a third time 
What is God ? he again was silent. Three times was he asked the 
question, and three times he preserved his silence. 
 
In our recent studies we have attempted to show that the 
entire system of beings, the structure or frame-work of the 
universe on the background of the Boundless, sprang forth from 
the action and the intermingling of the Gods, the Monads, the 
Souls, and the Atoms ; and that these produced the various 
Planatary Chains of our Solar System, that is to say, of the 
Kosmic Atom, or, as the Brahmanical thinkers named it, the Egg 
of Brahma. From these Gods, Monads, Souls, and Atoms, the 
manifested being of the Solar System came forth. 
 
Let us then turn next to our own Planetary Chain. You will 
remember that it is stated to be composed of seven globes, of 
which our present earth is the fourth and on the lowest Plane of 
the seven ; and that this Planetary Chain is working in four of 
the Planes or Worlds of the Solar System, in the four lowest 
Worlds thereof, as a matter of fact, our earth occupying the lowest 
Element or World of the seven which compose the Solar System. 
These seven Elements are otherwise the Kosmical Lokas and Talas, 
or Kosmical Worlds, Principles and Elements working together ; 
they are the Worlds within the outer seeming, more ethereal than 
our world, of which ours is a copy, not necessarily a copy in every 
detail, but a copy on general lines, even as the physical body of 
man is a copy on general lines of the soul of him ; and as his soul is 
a copy on general lines of the spirit of him ; and as the spirit of 
him is a copy on general lines of his divine root, a god-being or 
godhead from which he sprang. 
 
You will also remember that we have pointed out that there are 
two general lines or hierarchies of spiritual beings who brought 
forth our Kosmos, of which our Planetary Chain is one part ; and 
these two are respectively the Architects and the Builders. The 
Architects form the higher or more spiritual side, and actually 
form the line of the Luminous Arc ; and the Builders or Con- 
structors form, on the other hand, the Shadowy Arc. 
 
In the Buddhist system of Tibet, the general name of Dhyn- 
Chohans, or Lords of Meditation, is given to both these lines of 
beings ; but more particularly the Architects are called the 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Dhy3,ni-Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contemplation. The Greeks 
called the World-Builders, the Masons of the world, by the general 
term of Kosmokratores, a compound Greek word meaning World- 
Builders. They are those who receive the creative or constructive 
impress from the Beings of the Luminous Arc, or the Dhyani- 
Buddhas, and carry it out. 
 
Now in each of these two lines there are seven grades or rather 
classes : there are seven classes of the Dhyani-Buddhas, and seven 
classes of the Dhyani-Chohans ; and so far as our own Planetary 
Chain is concerned, these seven classes are reflected, repeated, 
therein. " As it is above, so it is below. 1 ' 
 
Furthermore, each one of the seven globes composing our 
Planetary Chain is under the particular oversight I think it 
would be wrong to use the word direction or " guidance ", but 
rather the over-seeing under the particular over-seeing or care 
care is perhaps the best word to describe this extremely meta- 
physical concept under the care of one class of these Dhyani- 
Buddhas and one class of the Builders. That is to say, Globe A, 
for instance, the first, on the descending arc of our Planetary 
Chain, is under the care or watchful inspiration or oversight, of 
one class of these seven of both lines. Globe B is under the care 
of the second class of each line. Globe C under the same care or 
inspiration of the third class of each ; and our own Globe D or 
fourth has likewise its own Dhyani-Buddhas and Builders of the 
fourth class ; and the three globes of the ascending arc, similarly. 
 
Do not confuse these two lines, because the distinction is very 
important if we are to obtain any adequate understanding at all 
of this branch of the Ancient Wisdom. The Architects then, of the 
Luminous Arc, provide the model, lay down the plans. They are 
the Architects, the overseers, and their work is carried out by these 
inferior grades or classes of spiritual beings called the Builders. 
 
Now with regard to this very question of God, considered 
briefly above, you will remember that the Gnostics, during the 
time of the beginning of the Christian era, claimed, and we claim 
with them, that the Christian God, Jehovah, whom the Christians 
call the " Creator ", could not for that very reason be a very high 
god. The very attributes and functions of creation or formation 
that were given to him, show, said these Gnostics, that he was 
but an inferior deity, a Builder, receiving his " orders ", so to say, 
from the Divine Architects and supernal Planners and Thinkers 
of the Kosmos, he himself thus being but a Builder ; as they so 
well put it, the manifold imperfections and incompletenesses so 
plainly apparent even to us humans, in the kosmical system, 
proclaim that it could not be the work of an all-perfect and 
kosmically omnipotent Deity ; from Utter Perfection could spring 
forth only a Perfect and Complete Work. The early Christians 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 441
 
were unable to understand the deep philosophy behind this 
unanswerable axiom, and waxed very wroth and indignant indeed 
against what they called the " blasphemous opinions " of the 
Gnostics. In common with all thoughtful minds, you will see the 
deep philosophical and religious implications that lie behind this 
argument or axiom, but upon them we cannot longer pause this 
evening. Remember this, though, that in all the ancient faiths, 
you will find two'general classes of spiritual beings at work in the 
Kosmos, and they are always divided, as we have already said 
this evening, into the Thinkers or Planners or Architects, the 
Inspirers ; and into the Builders. There is, finally, vastly more in 
this thought than we have time to go into this evening. 
 
Now the Silent Watcher of whom we have spoken at other 
meetings, is the highest of the Dhyani-Chohans of our Globe ; but 
there is likewise a Silent Watcher for each of the other six globes, 
and for the Planetary Chain as a whole. There is likewise a Silent 
Watcher for the entire Kosmical for the entire Solar System. 
So when we say " Silent Watcher ", without further defining, it is 
like saying " spiritual being " or " hierarchical head ". It is a 
generic term. As remarked at those former meetings, where our 
Teacher instructed us to develop this thought somewhat, we 
pointed out that one such Silent Watcher is on our earth today, 
the supreme head of our Holy Order, the highest link with the 
spiritual beings of the hierarchy higher than ours upward along 
the Luminous Arc. He is, so to say, our supreme Master, our 
supreme Chief. 
 
You have all studied, of course, in the doctrine concerning our 
own Planetary Chain, what are commonly called the seven 
" Rounds ", meaning that the life-cycle or Life- Wave begins its 
evolutionary course on Globe A, the first of the globes, then, 
completing its cycles there, runs down to Globe B, and then to 
Globe C, and then to Globe D our earth ; and then to Globe E, on 
the ascending arc, then to Globe F, and then to Globe G. This is 
one Planetary Round. Then ensues a Planetary Nirvdna until 
the second Round begins in the same way, but in a more 
" advanced " degree of evolution than was the first Round. 
Please note that one such Round is a Planetary Round. A globe- 
Round is one of the passages, one of the seven passages, of that 
Life- Wave during its Planetary Round, on any one and therefore 
on and through each of the globes : when the Life-Wave has 
passed through Globe D, for instance, and ends its cycles on 
Globe D, that is the globe-Round of Globe D for that particular 
Planetary Round ; and so with all the globes respectively. There 
are seven globe-Rounds therefore (one globe-Round for each of the 
seven globes) in each Planetary Round. Furthermore, when seven 
Planetary Rounds have been accomplished, which is as much as 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
saying49g/ofo-Rounds (or globe-Manvantaras), then ensues a still 
higher Nirvana than that between Globes G and A after each 
Planetary Round, which is called a pralaya of that Planetary 
Chain, which pralaya lasts until the cycle again returns for the 
new Planetary Chain to form, containing the same series of living 
beings as on the preceding Chain and which are now destined 
to enter upon that new Planetary Chain, but on a higher series of 
planes than in the preceding one. 
 
Next, when seven such Planetary Chains with their various 
Kalpas or Manvantaras have passed away, this sevenfold Grand 
Cycle is one Solar Manvantara, and then the entire Solar System 
sinks into the Solar or Kosmic Pralaya. Our own sun is then 
extinguished, suddenly, like a flash of light, or like a shadow 
passing over a wall. After just a " flickering ", finally the light 
goes out, and the great mass of entities pass into spiritual realms 
far higher than any of those attained during the highest point of 
attainment in the period while the Solar Manvantara lasted, 
because they are then entering upon their Solar Nirvana. 
 
Let us draw again the same diagram that we copied from 
H. P. Blavatsky at a former meeting, from page 200 of Volume I, 
 
 
 
 
Z X 
 
 
 
 
Archetypal 
Wor/d 
 
 
 
 
 
/nfe/lecfua/ or 
Creative World 
 
 
 
 
or 
Formative World 
 
 
 
 
Physical (7)\ World 
 
 
 
DIAGRAM I. 
 
 
 
of The Secret Doctrine. The seven parallel lines represent, if 
you please, the seven planes or worlds of the solar system. 
Above or on the lowest line of these seven let us place a circle to 
represent Globe D, our earth. On the next plane above we also 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 443
 
place two more circles to represent the two globes immediately 
above our own, called respectively C on the left and E on the right. 
On the plane above that we place two more globes, and call these 
respectively B on the left and F on the right. And on the plane 
above that, the fourth Kosmic plane counting upwards, we draw 
two more circles to represent the two highest globes of our chain, 
respectively A on the left and G on the right. 
 
Now please remember that these kosmic " planes " are merely 
so-called for purposes of convenience. They are actually the 
seven kosmical Lokas and Talas of the Kosmic System, that is 
to say, of the Solar System. But each one of these is a true 
World, they are worlds as truly as our own is, which we perceive 
when we look up and see the stars above us, and look to the earth 
and see the earth beneath our feet, the trees growing therefrom, 
the human and other animate beings walking with us, etc. etc. 
Each one of these kosmic " Planes " is a World, but each is again 
subdivided into septenary divisions, into seven divisions, all of 
them together making forty-nine subdivisions of the seven 
main divisions (or Worlds) of the Solar System. 
 
Let us illustrate this by another diagram. We draw again seven 
parallel lines. And let these represent, if you please, the lowest 
 
 
 
o 
 
 
 
Globe D in Hound X 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
E 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DIAGRAM II. 
 
solar World, or Plane, of the seven, the lowest Kosmic World, 
our World, the World we are in now. It, like all the others, 
is septempartite or divided into seven parts or divisions, repre- 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
senting matter or spirit from the grossest to the highest degree 
of each in our World, from the ethereal (highest) to the most 
material (lowest) ; and on one of these planes our globe Terra is 
at present. I hope that this is clear. 
 
Now what is the manner in which the Life- Wave in any Round 
works ? For the moment, if you please, we shall omit considering 
the previous three globes, A, B, and C, on the descending turn, 
and consider only our own Globe D, or Earth. These seven lines in 
the diagram are intended to represent respectively the seven grades 
or materializations of matter in the lowest of the seven Kosmic 
Planes, growing * more material from the top downwards. Now 
then, our Globe D in Round the First is in the highest or topmost 
of these seven sub-planes of our own lower Kosmic Plane, and 
our own Kosmic Plane, please remember, is the lowest of the 
seven of all the Kosmic Planes. It is the seventh and lowest. 
The Life- Wave during Round I passes through our earth, after 
evolving it forth, a process which we are to study in detail later ; 
it is a process of evolutionary development which occupies many 
millions of years ; and after finishing its globe-Round I, leaves 
our Globe D and passes to the next higher Globe E. All right. As 
this Life-Wave is descending into matter for the first three 
Rounds, our globe during Round first will be on the highest sub- 
plane of the lowest Kosmic Plane or World. The second or next 
Round will find our globe materialized and on sub-plane the 
second, counting downwards ; in Round the third, still more 
materialized and on the third sub-plane downwards ; in Round 
IV, that is, where we are now, our globe has reached its grossest 
state of matter ; the downward cycling ceases, and the ascent 
begins. 
 
What about sub-planes 5, 6, and 7 ? Those planes have to do 
with questions which our Teacher has instructed me not to touch 
upon at present and here ; but we may say that they are related 
to the destiny of beings who have followed the left-hand path, 
and who ultimately reach the utmost point of physical materiali- 
zation in sub-plane the seventh, or the grossest possible in our 
Solar System, and the last. 
 
We see, thus, that the Life- Wave in making its First Round, 
the Round No. I, as is illustrated in diagram i, passes through 
(on its descending arc through the lowest four Kosmic Worlds or 
Planes) the highest sub-plane or sub-world of each one of these 
lowest four Kosmic Worlds, forming in each such Kosmic World, 
a globe, one of the then-in-the-making seven globes of the Chain. Is 
this clear ? In Round No. I the Life- Wave forms Globe A on sub- 
plane the highest of the fourth Kosmic World (or Plane). See 
the diagram. In Round No. I the Life- Wave forms Globe B on 
sub-plane the highest of the fifth Kosmic World (or Plane). In 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 445
 
Round No. I the Life- Wave forms Globe C on sub-plane the highest 
of the sixth Kosmic World (or Plane) ; and so with the lowest 
Globe D, our earth ; and on the ASCENDING scale likewise we see 
Globes E, F, and G, similarly formed, each on the highest sub- 
plane of the respective Kosmic Worlds (or Planes). Round No. II 
begins (after the long, long Planetary Nirvana) on Globe A on 
the second sub-plane of the fourth Kosmic World or Plane ; 
then the life-waVe passes to Globe B on the second sub-plane of the 
fifth Kosmic World or Plane ; then to Globe C on the second 
sub-plane of the sixth Kosmic World or Plane ; then to Globe D 
(our earth) on the second sub-plane of the seventh or lowest 
Kosmic World or Plane. Similarly, during this second Planetary 
Round, to all the globes on all the second sub-planes of the 
ascending arc. Each such passage of the Life- Wave in and through 
each globe of the seven globes, forms a globe-Round, as said 
above. 
 
So with Round III, and again with Round IV, where we are 
now on Globe D, on the fourth sub-plane of the seventh or lowest 
Kosmic Plane or World. That is to say that the Life- Wave 
during each Planetary Round passes through the seven globes 
of the Chain, and from Kosmic Plane to Kosmic Plane ; but 
during each one Round passes through only one sub-plane of 
each Kosmic World or Plane : the result of this being that during 
the seven Rounds, it passes through 49 sub-planes, and the 
beings composing the Life- Wave thereby have the chance of 
working out the destiny for which they came into active mani- 
festation and evolution ; for the whole purpose of the evolutionary 
processes of the Kosmos is for the gaming of Self-consciousness 
through individualizing experiences i.e., experiences which 
individualize (evolve, bring out) the Monads. And in order to 
attain that end, each Monad must not merely undergo and 
mentally experience the various phases and natures of the uni- 
versal Life, but be them. As pointed out before in our studies, 
the initiations of old times, the real initiations, the initiations 
which brought to man's consciousness the knowledge of the 
spiritual truths of Being, were based on this fact : that no man 
could really know anything merely by being taught about it, but 
he must be it, he must become it. From the fourth initiation 
onwards (as pointed out before), in the old Mystery-Schools, the 
system of teaching only during the first three initiations was 
changed into both teaching and personal experience beginning 
with the fourth initiation, these personal experiences growing 
grander and greater with each higher step that the candidate or 
initiant took ; until finally, if he was successful in all the seven 
degrees, he attained the divine status from which he started 
forth in the beginning of the Kosmic or Solar Manvantara, plus 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
divine self -consciousness, self-awakening, and became thereby a 
Buddha, an Awakened One ; or a Christos, to adopt the old 
Greek mystery-term. 
 
During our next few studies we shall continue to investigate 
the subject of the Planetary Chain. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLI
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES. THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM 
AND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS *. 
 
WHY " SA'CRED " ? 
 
But Time was generated together with the universe, that being produced 
together they might together be dissolved, if any dissolution should ever happen 
to these. And time was generated according to the exemplar of an eternal 
nature, that this world might be most similar possible to such a nature. For its 
exemplar is permanent being, through the whole of eternity ; but the universe 
alone was generated, is, and will be, through the whole of time. After this manner, 
therefore, and from such a cogitation of divinity about the generation of time, 
that he might give birth to its flowing subsistence, he generated the sun and moon, 
and the five other stars, which are denominated planets, for the purpose of 
distinguishing and guarding the numbers of time. But the divinity, as soon as 
he had produced the bodies of these stars, placed them, being seven in number, 
in the seven circulations formed by the revolution of the nature distinguished 
by difference. . . . But with respect to the other stars, if anyone should think 
proper to investigate their circulations, and through what causes they are 
established, the labour would be greater than that of the discourse itself, for the 
sake of which they were introduced. 
 
The Timaus of Plato, pp. 467-468 (TAYLOR). 
 
The lower world is subject to the sway of the upper world. 
 
In the beginning of its revolution the sovereignty over this lower world is 
committed to one of the slow-moving stars. 
 
Which governeth it alone for the space of a thousand years. 
 
And for other thousands of years each of the heavy-moving stars, and swift- 
moving stars becometh its partner, each for one thousand years. 
 
Last of all the moon becometh its associate. 
 
After that, the first associate will get the sovereignty. 
 
The second king goeth through the same round as the first king ; and the 
others are in like manner his associates. 
 
Last of all the first king is for a thousand years the partner of the second king. 
 
Then the period of the reign of the second king is also past. 
 
And understand that the same is the course as to all the others. 
 
When the Moon hath been king, and all have been associates along with it, 
and its reign too is over, one Grand Period is accomplished. 
 
After which the Sovereignty again returneth to the first king, and in this 
way there is an eternal succession. 
 
And in the beginning of the Grand Period, a new order of things commenceth 
in the lower world. 
 
And, not indeed the very forms, and knowledge, and events of the Grand 
Period that hath elapsed, but others precisely similar to them will again be 
produced. 
 
And every Grand Period that cometh resembleth from beginning to end the 
Grand Period that is past. 
 
The Desdtir : " The Book of the Prophet, the Great Abad," vv. 102-116. 
 
(Mulla Firuz Bin Kaus, trans.) 
 
VAST are the reaches of both the space and the time, 
and profound are the mysteries likewise, connected 
with, and involved in the subjects with which our 
present cycle of study is opened ; for these subjects 
deal in general with what we may call collectively the Doctrine 
 
447 
 
 
 
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of the Spheres ; that is to say, that particular and fundamental 
branch of the archaic philosophy and religion of the Ancient 
Wisdom which was most especially developed in the countries 
surrounding the Mediterranean or Inland Sea a favored study 
there, even as in the farther Orient, among the archaic sages of 
Hindusthan, the doctrines regarding the workings of the various 
monadic states of consciousness were more largely developed and 
prized. 
 
You will remember that in the last one of our studies, we 
sketched, though briefly, the outline of the Theosophical doctrine 
dealing with the Planetary Chain of our Earth, at which subject 
we had arrived, but which we had no time to develop. Now this 
subject of Planetary Chains is a special case, as mathematicians 
would say, of the general Doctrine of the Spheres ; this subject 
has always been one of the most carefully guarded, considered as 
one of the most sacred and occult, because it leads us, in its 
ultimate reaches, directly to the Heart of Being. In order to 
reach that Heart of Being, we have to pass through many secret 
chambers of Mother Nature, chambers which have been held 
secret from all but members of our own Order, from immemorial 
time ; and the Arcana of which have been guarded as one of the 
most sacred possessions of the Chiefs, the Guardians, of this our 
holy Order. 
 
Our Teacher, in coming with me to the Temple this evening, 
asked me to refer briefly, if only in a mere sketch, to our former 
studies, so that before taking up the study of the evening, which 
will lead us on in the same and closely related themes for several 
future meetings, we may have some recollection of the general 
theorems which we have been considering for the past few years. 
You will remember that these our studies were originally opened 
by taking into consideration the general outline of Cosmogony and 
Theogony as found in the archaic Cosmology and Theology of the 
Ancient Wisdom. This was sketched in all its general aspects, as 
an outline only, details being left for filling in at future dates. 
We passed in review only in sketch, please bear in mind how 
worlds are born, how, like children, they spring from the womb 
of Nature ; how, from a germ, they grow into youth, reach 
maturity, then decline, and finally decay, followed by ultimate 
death ; again to resurrect in cyclic rebirth from that same womb 
of Mother Nature. 
 
It was shown also, although only in sketch, merely in order to 
give the general outline of the case, that these doctrines of the 
Ancient Wisdom, mystic, marvelous, wonderful, leave no query 
unanswered, leave nothing to be built upon mere faith blind 
faith that is ; but that each theorem of its philosophy must be, 
and is, proved, as the study of it progresses. 
 
 
 


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Remember what " proof " is. Proof consists in bringing 
conviction to the mind ; conviction of its reality, based upon 
evidence, is the proof of a fact or theorem. Remember that the 
various circumstantial things which we may bring in production 
of proof, are merely the evidential part, the evidences of reality. 
 
Then, as we passed in review, in sketch, in outline only, these 
general theorems, we finally arrived at the doctrine concerning 
the Planetary Chains, which, as said, is a " special case ", as the 
mathematicians put it, of the general theorem of the wonderful 
Doctrine of the Spheres. Henceforth our studies go more into 
detail ; and our Teacher in the beginning of our studies, in- 
structed us so to conduct our lectures, our studies together, 
that the written report of these may go out and help those who 
are seeking deeper knowledge of the Ancient Mysteries and of the 
Ancient Wisdom than they can get from the books of the world ; 
all the while closely veiling from outsiders who have no right to 
them, the esoteric and occult keys. You will understand most of 
them, probably, by a mere allusion. One of the reasons for this 
policy, is that some students have accepted certain statements 
of Mr. Sinnett on this very question of the Planetary Chain, 
to the effect that two of the physical planets of our Solar System, 
Mars and Mercury, were two of the members of our Earth's 
Planetary Chain, although H. P. Blavatsky in this very volume 
of The Seer el Doctrine published several years before her death, 
declared positively that this notion is wrong ; for indeed, it is 
not true. 
 
As our studies proceed, you will see for yourselves that it cannot 
be true ; that it is in itself a preposterous idea ; an error based 
on a pitiable confusion of mind and showing utter lack of know- 
ledge of Occultism. Let me ask parenthetically, Who was the 
originator of this idea ? You will remember that the earliest 
teachings were given through H. P. Blavatsky ; through 
Damodar (who later went to Tibet to join the Teachers) ; and 
through one or two others, to two Englishmen in India, two 
Anglo-Indians, Mr. A. 0. Hume and Mr. A. P. Sinnett, of both of 
whom we shall have more to say at a future date ; and that the 
philosophical, religious, and scientific teachings that Mr. Sinnett 
received in answer to queries sent by him to the Masters through 
H. P. Blavatsky and Damodar, were later incorporated by him 
in two of his works, The Occult World, and Esoteric Buddhism, as 
he called them both good books for their time, as far as they 
went, but criticized also by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine 
for their materialistic bias of presentation, and for their over- 
emphasis on certain aspects of the teachings, to the neglect of the 
higher, the more spiritual, the more intellectual, portions, in 
the attempt by Mr. Sinnett to " reconcile " the teachings of the 
 
 
 
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Ancient Wisdom with what he obviously thought was the last 
word of human knowledge, the scientific theories and fads of his 
day. Those scientific theories and teachings are already out of 
date now, lost to mind and mostly forgotten. Science has 
" moved " ; but the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom have 
remained ! 
 
Now we open our study this evening, after these preliminary 
observations, by reading from The Secret Doctrifte, Volume II, 
first, on page 699, " On Chains of Planets and Their Plurality," 
the following : 
 
Did the Ancients kno^y of worlds besides their own ? What are the 
data of the Occultists in affirming that every globe is a septenary chain 
of worlds of which only one member is visible and that these are, 
were, or will be, " man-bearing/' just as every visible star or planet is ? 
What do they mean by " a moral and physical influence " of the sidereal 
worlds on our globes ? 
 
Such are the questions often put to us, and they have to be considered 
from every aspect. To the first of the two queries the answer is : We 
believe it because the first law in nature is uniformity in diversity, 
and the second analogy. " As above, so below/' 
 
And then on page 703 : 
 
When, therefore, we find in the Bibles of Humanity " other worlds " 
spoken of, we may safely conclude that they not only refer to other 
states of our planetary chain and Earth, but also to other inhabited 
globes stars and planets ; withal that the latter were never specu- 
lated upon. The whole of antiquity believed in the Universality of 
life. 
 
In entering upon the present phase of our study, we are obliged 
to go into detail. The general aspect, as said before, of our work 
together, has been passed. But this entering upon a more detailed 
study is attended naturally with increased difficulties, not only 
because of the many subjects that we are more or less perforce 
obliged to meet in following the main theme of our discourse, 
but also from the fact that not one iota of teaching can be omitted 
at any one point ; it must at least be alluded to if the teaching 
is to remain complete and whole and not a divided thing. Hence 
we shall go slowly. It were indeed easy to hurry over this subject, 
easy to get a general outline ; but in such case, we could go but 
little farther than the surface-meaning in The Secret Doctrine ; 
and our Teacher's instructions to us are : Simplify by illustration, 
supporting it by confirmation and proof. 
 
Hence, let us first consider what we mean by the Doctrine of 
the Spheres, one of the most archaic of the Ancient Mysteries. 
We mean four things, speaking generally. First, we shall pass 
these four in review, briefly touch upon two, merely alluding to 
one, and studying in detail the fourth, which is the subject of our 
 
 
 


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present thought, the Planetary Chain of this Earth. These four 
general aspects of this Doctrine of the Spheres, are as follows i 
First the Universal Solar System. We mean by this, our Sun and 
all the planetary bodies in the solar system, visible or invisible, 
seen or unseen, known or unknown, owning the Sun as their 
primary. Modern science today recognises seven, eight, or perhaps 
nine planets, and a host of planetoids, and no more, as belonging to 
the solar system. Modern astronomy knows nothing of the great 
body of the Universal Solar System except its physical shell, 
the outer physical clothing of it, the seven, eight, or nine planets 
which we can see with the physical eye in the heavens, and which 
are counted as follows : Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, 
Uranus, Neptune. But the Ancient Wisdom, the Esoteric 
Teaching, tells us that there are actually scores of planets in the 
Universal Solar System of ours, and that these scores excepting 
those counted by astronomy are all invisible to us, to our eyes 
of fourth-plane matter or seventh-plane matter, according to 
the way by which we may count. All of you who have 
been members of this School for years past, will know what is 
meant by that. 
 
First : Neptune is not a member of our Universal Solar System, 
according to the Ancient Wisdom. We will deal with this matter 
later. Next, Uranus is not a member of our Solar System, but is 
a member of the Universal Solar System. We shall fully explain 
what we mean by our Solar System. Can you blame Mr. Sinnett 
for not understanding, and therefore thinking that he knew more 
than the Master did and than H. P. Blavatsky did, and that the 
archaic Teachings contained contradictions, when the man could 
not get it through his head that the same words may be used with 
different meanings ; and that one of the favorite, sanctified, 
methods of concealing truth from those not qualified to get it, is 
to say two, three, four, five, six, seven different things with the 
same words ? 
 
First, then, we have the Universal Solar System, comprising 
the septenary Sun and all the planets of the Solar System, visible 
or invisible, and on seven planes. Then, we have our Solar System, 
which is the second of these four aspects of the Doctrine of the 
Spheres before mentioned, and is the group usually called the 
" seven sacred planets " of the ancients, as these seven are related 
to our Planetary Chain. The third is something to which we 
shall merely allude as occasion arises, and not go much farther. 
Our Teacher has told us in this Group of students to say nothing 
much of this third aspect. It is alluded to by H. P. Blavatsky in 
the first volume (pp. 163-164) of The Secret Doctrine in her 
answer to part of Mr. Sinnett's misunderstanding regarding the 
Earth's Planetary Chain. You will remember where she speaks 
 
 
 
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(I quote in substance) of the relation of Mars and Mercury and 
the " four secret planets " to our earth ; and she explains that 
" they all bear a relation thereto which no initiate will speak 
of, much less explain ". The fourth aspect is our Earth's Planetary 
Chain per se. 
 
Now Mr. Sinnett asked his question of the Teacher as follows : 
" What other planets of those known to ordinary science, besides 
Mercury, belong to our system of worlds ? " Please mark those 
four last words. And he continues : " Are the more spiritual 
planets (A, B and Y, Z) visible bodies in the sky or are all 
those known to astronomy of the more material sort ? " And the 
answer came as follows : " Mars and four other planets of which 
astronomy knows yet nothing. Neither A, B nor Y, Z are 
known ; nor can they be seen through physical means however 
perfected." And yet despite that, Mr. Sinnett taught and claimed 
for years that two of our visible planets, Mars and Mercury, form 
part of our Earth's septenary Planetary Chain. 
 
Now you will remember how H. P. Blavatsky answers, or 
rather alludes to, Mr. Sinnett's misunderstanding of the Master's 
teaching. She does this in The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, especi- 
ally on pages 162-168 inclusive. Anyone in reading these pages, 
unless he has a stultified mind or is entirely ignorant of occult 
doctrines, must instantly sense that she is alluding to and hinting 
at more than one thing. Read those pages and ponder them 
well. At our next meeting we are going into this matter more 
deeply. 
 
Now, then, for a brief review, first, of our Universal Solar 
System. We mean by that expression all bodies and every body 
belonging to the sun, and revolving around it. The sun is their 
primary ; they circle around the sun as satellites or planets, 
visible or invisible ; that is, the expression Universal Solar 
System means not only the mere shell of nature composed of the 
seven, eight, or nine planets, that the eye sees but also the 
great inner core of the Solar System, its seven planes of Being. 
There are actually scores of planets in our Universal Solar System, 
of which we see only seven physical ones, on the same plane as the 
Earth ; and if we count our globe as one, there are eight. Neptune, 
however, as already said, does not belong to it ; Uranus does not 
belong to our System of Worlds (or our Solar System), but it 
does belong to the Universal Solar System, because it is a true 
planet intimately connected with our Sun as regards its origin 
and destiny. 
 
In order to make this point more clear, let me illustrate what 
Neptune is by a very fortunate illustration which we can draw 
from modern science. You know that modern chemical physics, 
or physical chemistry, teaches that the atom is composed of a 
 
 
 


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central nucleus, which has been called the proton, answering in 
the atom to what our sun is in the Universal Solar System ; and 
that around this central nucleus, revolving with vertiginous 
rapidity, are other bodies which they call electrons ; and the 
chemists teach us, at least they theorize and Occultism says 
that this theory is true, you can find the proof of it in The Secret 
Doctrine to tjje effect that if one of these atomic planets or 
electrons is torn out from that atom, the atom itself is altered 
or changed ; not alone does the electric charge of the atom vary, 
but the atom itself is de facto altered ; and also if, so to say, the 
atom is electron-hungry, if an electron should, so to say, pass 
near I am using very simple language in order to convey the 
idea should pass near that atomic solar system, it may be 
captured, in which case the atomic electric hunger is satisfied, 
while the atomic valency is altered. 
 
Now, Neptune, although a " planet " in the sense that it does 
revolve around the sun, is not a true member of our Solar System 
in any sense. It is a " capture ", and its capture changed in one 
sense the entire nature of our Universal Solar System ; and it 
will remain " captured " until the karmic time shall come for it 
to leave us. It is captured exactly as some of the planets have 
captured " moons ". Why is it, we may ask, in passing, that 
Venus and Mercury have no moons ; and that Mars is said to 
have two ; and Saturn nine ; and Jupiter nine ? Whereas, we 
know by our teaching that each planet can have but one true 
moon, the others being mere captures, satellites. Now, suppose 
we were to say, that in the past aeons of time, a comet, nearing 
the planetary stage, passed sufficiently close to the gravitational 
attraction of our Universal Solar System on its own plane of 
being, to be captured, and that due to the interplay of various 
forces, it settled into an orbit around our Sun ; and that long 
aeons later our astronomers discovered it and named it 
" Neptune ". Please consider that as a theory. We will leave 
it, if you will, for the time, and call it a " theory ". 
 
Now, we have said that Uranus is not a member of our Solar 
System. We repeat the statement. It is a member, however, of 
our Universal Solar System, because it is one of the bodies circling 
around the Sun. 
 
You see how it was that Mr. Sinnett, through lack of esoteric 
training, through lack of knowledge of the Ancient Wisdom, 
through being absolutely psychologized with the splendid achieve- 
ments in purely physical discovery of the marvelous scientific 
advance of his day the " Last Word of knowledge ", it actually 
was proclaimed in the scientific periodicals of that day preferred 
the scientific theories and fads of the period to the tenets of the 
Ancient Wisdom, those tenets which have been proved by 
 
 
 
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generation after generation of titanic intellects, of Men, Great 
Seers, who had for immemorial ages tested Nature, sending their 
Souls into the very womb of matter, into all its seven planes or 
spheres, and finding out the truth, the reality, of things. 
 
Now, please note : Mr. Sinnett 's question referred to " our 
system of Worlds ". Do you not see how vague that question 
was ? Do you realize that this correspondence had been con- 
ducted between those two gentlemen, Mr. Sinnett 'and Mr. Hume, 
and the two Teachers called M, and K. H., for several years ; 
and that these two Teachers had begged Mr. Sinnett to adopt a 
definite nomenclature, a definite phraseology in English, so that 
there could be no misunderstanding of terms, by the questioners, 
when answers were returned ? The spirit of the letters written 
by Messrs. Sinnett and Hume was peculiar ; their ideas of occult- 
ism were extremely vague and limited. You see how vague is 
Mr. Sinnett's expression " Our System of Worlds ". At least four 
different aspects of the Doctrine of the Spheres could be meant by 
those words. The Teachers had been urging Messrs. Sinnett and 
Hume to adopt a definite English terminology and nomenclature, 
which, indeed, Mr. Sinnett did adopt, to a certain extent. We 
owe many of our common terms and expressions to Mr. Sinnett, 
and we are duly grateful to him for the good work that he did in 
this respect ; but many of these terms are too vague. For instance, 
the term " Root-Race " is a most unfortunate one. At a later 
date we shall have to show how unfortunate it is. We propose to 
adopt the Masters' own term " Stock-Race ", using the word 
" stock " in the sense of body or trunk. We owe to Mr. Sinnett 
also the expression " Round ", meaning the passage of the Life- 
Wave from Globe A, the first of our Earth's chain, to Globe G, 
or the seventh at the end ; and many more of the words, phrases, 
and much of the technical vocabulary which is commonly 
employed by us today, are due to Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume. 
We are grateful for all this. They did good work in this respect, 
as far as it went. We are the first to acknowledge it. 
 
The question about " our system of worlds " asked by Mr. 
Sinnett, provided a perfect opening for the Master to tell him the 
truth in wholly general terms, and yet to hide from him that 
which he should not know. Had Mr. Sinnett been definite enough 
in his question ; indeed, to put it in another way : had he been 
wise enough to ask a perfectly definite question, it would have 
been much more difficult and embarrassing to the Teacher, in 
view of necessary secrecy, to give a definite answer. In such 
case, Mr. Sinnett would have got a definite answer ; or he would 
have been told that his question was one that should not be 
answered, as indeed happened in several cases. But what was 
the actual answer that he got ? We have read it, and it contains 
 
 
 


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several points of teaching under and in the words. All these four 
aspects of the general Doctrine of the Spheres, which we have 
been alluding to, are contained in the Master's answer in the form 
of hint and allusion, with especial reference to the most esoteric. 
" Our system of worlds " was taken at its face-value, just as the 
vague and indefinite question from the viewpoint of Occultism 
ought to have been taken. If the questioner was too mentally 
lazy, or too spiritually obtuse, to know the very unusual oppor- 
tunity that was his, and to realise the immense responsibility 
that was his, he immediately became subject to the archaic law, 
that only those who knock at the door in the right manner can 
enter therein. All depends upon which door you knock at ; and 
this is an old rule, ancient, ancient, ancient, running back into 
immemorial time, to the very days of the later Atlanteans when 
the Mysteries were first established in order to segregate the 
nobler portion of the Atlantean folk from those who were degener- 
ating, and rushing to their doom. 
 
So, then, please understand perfectly clearly that our Universal 
Solar System of worlds means our Sun and all the planetary bodies 
whatsoever in the solar system, of whatever degree or kind, on 
whatever plane, inner or outer, and in whatever orbits they may 
be revolving around their primary, the Sun. Remember likewise 
in this connexion that our solar system is septenary, that it is 
composed of seven planes, or " worlds ", and hence that there are 
seven suns in it, of which we see but one sun, the lowest in degree. 
 
We might as well say here and now, because it is a part of our 
study, that the inhabitants of the three globes preceding ours 
and those of the three globes following ours, in our Earth's Plane- 
tary Chain, in each case, see two suns. An illustration of this we 
have fortunately in modern astronomy, in what are called the 
star-doubles. There are many kinds of doubles. I do not mean 
mere optical doubles, but true solar pairs or couples, which is a 
fact of being closely connected with the very interesting and also 
mysterious doctrine of " Obscurations ", into which we shall have 
to go in pursuing this our present study of the Earth's Planetary 
Chain. But these stellar couples or doubles show that those suns 
which are seen as doubles, form a septenary system which, like 
our own sun, have a lower single sun, or lower fourth-plane sun, 
just as our own physical sun is. You see here how one key to the 
Ancient Wisdom will open the door to Nature's secret chambers. 
Never forget the old Hermetic axiom : Analogy is Nature's 
fundamental law : " As above, so below ". 
 
Next : the " seven sacred planets " of the ancients which 
ones are they ? They are as follows. I am not naming them in 
their proper esoteric order. I am naming them in the old exoteric 
Greek way : Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. 
 
 
 
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Note, first, that our Earth is not one of these " seven sacred or 
secret " planets.. Second, that the moon (the first one in order of 
enumeration, preceding Mercury) and the Sun, are considered 
here in exoteric enumeration as planets. Actually, however, they 
stand for two secret planets which are invisible to us : the sun for 
an Intra-Mercurial planet which we will, if you like, for purposes 
of convenience, call " Vulcan ", a planet visible to the men of 
the Third Root-Race or Stock-Race in this Round, but which 
now has disappeared from our vision. It will reappear, however, 
as our own race progresses to higher levels of perception. The 
Moon, again, as said, stands for another secret planet which is 
now dying, having nearly reached the end of its septenary life- 
cycle. Before the Earth has reached its seventh Round, our 
Mooti will have disintegrated into atomic stellar dust ; and this 
present secret Planet, being a dying planet, this mystery-planet 
for which the Moon is the exoteric substitute, will then be the 
satellite of the Earth in place of the Moon that was and now is ; 
but that planet-satellite will not be a true moon, but a mere 
satellite. Please note the difference. For instance, the planet 
Mars has two satellites, Phobos and Deimos. Phobos is not a 
moon ; but Deimos is a true Moon, but not of Mars. Phobos is 
a capture, as we may say, by Mars. 
 
Now, this subject of the " seven sacred planets " of the ancients 
is intimately bound up with the doctrine of our own Earth's 
Planetary Chain, the latter a specific instance of the general 
Doctrine of the Spheres ; and we shall have to go into this subject 
as a formal study. But let us point out, before closing tonight, 
that the Sun and Moon, as forming two of those seven secret 
planets in the exoteric enumeration are substitutes for two 
secret and invisible planets, briefly spoken of already. Further- 
more, with regard to Mars, there is a mystery i.e., esoteric secret 
connected with this matter which we have not time to go into 
tonight, but in it lies the reason why H. P. Blavatsky, in alluding 
to these seven secret planets on a certain page of The Secret 
Doctrine, speaks only of four Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and 
Venus and hints at three more which she does not mention 
there as belonging to the group of the Seven Sacred Planets of 
the ancients. 
 
Note also that every one of the seven globes of our Earth's 
Planetary Chain is under the guidance, and is actually formed by, 
one of the seven sacred planets, which, for this reason, with other 
reasons, was called " sacred ". So, again, each Root-Race or 
Stock- Race of every one of the seven globes during each Globe- 
Round is under the protection and guidance of one of the seven 
sacred planets. But the main reason for calling them " sacred " 
is this : As our Universal Solar System is composed of seven 
 
 
 


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planes of being in other words is composed of seven worlds, 
seven planes, seven spheres of life and activity not " globes " 
but spheres in the larger sense, as when a man says " spheres of 
activity " as this fact is so, we search for an answer to the 
question Why is it so ? Here is the answer, and it shows why these 
planets are called " sacred ". These planets, these seven planets, 
are the Houses, .each one to each one, of the seven logoi of our 
Solar System, thus forming a minor Group at the head of which 
is one of the Seven Primordial Logoi of the Universal Solar 
System. When our Universal Solar System came out of latency 
as a nebula, later it became a comet, still later separating into 
sun and planets, each one pursuing its own particular life-path ; 
the separation of the nebular inner life into Seven Cosmic Forces 
for future life-activities was done by the Seven Primordial Logoi. 
Put it in this way. The Chief Logos of the Universal Solar 
System is sevenfold, septenary, i.e., the Solar Logos Brahma, 
as the Hindus would put it is septenary. Then, each of these 
seven minor Logoi, again sub-dividing into seven Forces or 
Powers, form sevenfold Groups or minor Solar Systems, and our 
Solar System is one of such Groups : seven minor logoi : each one, 
each to each, is the Rector, the Guide, of one of the " seven sacred 
planets " ; if you like, its informing Soul. But, mark this : this 
former sub-division composes the Life-Forces of our Solar System. 
Hence our Solar System forms a Group within the Universal 
Solar System. We have explained what we mean before. In 
other words, then, there are forty-nine of these minor Logoi in 
our Universal Solar System ; but our " sacred seven " which 
with our Earth's Planetary Chain compose our Solar System, 
belong to our Solar Logos. In still other words, put it in this 
way : As the sun has its spectrum of seven rays, so each one of 
these rays again is sub-divided into seven minor rays. Please 
consider that as an illustration. Our Planetary Chain, you will 
remember, which will be the subject of our next study, consists 
of seven globes, collectively the developed sevenfold entity of a 
former sevenfold chain in another life-cycle or manvantara, 
which chain is now dead, but functioning now as our moon- 
chain. And remember that when we say our " moon " in this 
particular case we mean the sevenfold moon, the entire definite 
septenary entity. Our present moon, as a matter of fact, is not 
the physical moon that was, which has disappeared, but is its 
kama-rupa, its vampirizing shell, purely and truly in more than 
one sense vampirizing. It is a phantom of the Moon that was ; 
its true shell. Our Earth, which grew from it, draws still from 
it the life-atoms which the karmic destiny of our Earth obliges it 
to gather into itself, for its weal or for its woe, as the case 
may be. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLII
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES IN ITS FOUR ASPECTS. THE SEVEN 
SACRED PLANETS AND THEIR RECTORS : THEIR RELATION 
TO OUR EARTH-CHAIN. THE CIRCULATIONS OF THE KOSMOS : 
OUTER ROUNDS AND INNER ROUNDS : SISHTAS. ONE UNI- 
VERSAL BASIC LAW : AS ABOVE, SO BELOW. THE " EYE " AND 
THE " HEART " DOCTRINES. 
 
The most celebrated of the Babylonians, together with Ostanes and Zoroaster, 
very properly call the starry spheres herds ; whether because these alone among 
corporeal magnitudes, are perfectly carried about a center, or in conformity to 
the oracles, because they are considered by them as in a certain respect the bonds 
and collectors of physical reasons, which they likewise call in their sacred dis- 
courses herds [&y\as], and by the insertion of a gamma [d/yyAous], angels. 
Wherefore the stars which preside over each of these herds are considered 
demons similar to the angels, and are called archangels : and they are seven 
in number. 
 
Anon, in Theologumensis Arithmetics TAYLOR (Cory). 
 
The " Doctrine of the Eye " is for the crowd ; the " Doctrine of the Heart " 
for the elect. The first repeat in pride : " Behold, I know " ; the last, they who 
in humbleness have garnered, low confess : " Thus have I heard." 
 
The Dharma of the " Eye " is the embodiment of the external and the non- 
existing. 
 
The Dharma of the " Heart " is the embodiment of Bodhi, the Permanent and 
Everlasting. 
 
The Voice of the Silence : " The Two Paths " (H. P. BLAVATSKY). 
 
THE traditions of mankind tell us, and the records of the 
Ancient Wisdom corroborate the traditions, that the 
doctrines which we have been studying for the last four 
years or so have come down to us unimpaired and in 
their pristine purity, in the charge of great minds, great men, 
great souls, who are the heads of our Order. These traditions, 
as the ages passed, dating from the mid-point of the fourth 
Stock-Race or the Atlantean, took various forms as they were 
given out more or less fully at different times ; took forms, we 
say, in the various great world-religions ; and it is at the back 
of, behind, under the surface of, these great world-religions that 
we find many, if not all, of the doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom. 
We should not include in these religions thus spoken of, the 
various smaller religions or quasi-religious cults, however large 
their extent among mankind may have been, because these 
smaller religions were often the offspring of men who imperfectly 
understood the Ancient Wisdom, and actually who, in some cases, 
were unfaithful to their own Teachers. And therein we may find 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 459
 
one of the dominating reasons why these archaic teachings have 
always been held as sacred and secret ; because, as was told to 
Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume, our Masters had and have no desire 
and no wish to foist another mere exoteric religion on a world 
already priest-ridden and creed-burdened. 
 
Now, a source which is polluted at its fountain-head can hardly 
give forth the pure springs which heal ; and it has always seemed 
one of the noblest of our present Teacher's works that she has 
kept these teachings undefiled, guarded, and so secret, indeed, 
that for years none of them was given out publicly. It is only 
very recently, within a few years, when a need came for doing so, 
that she inaugurated these present studies. The best antidote for 
folly is wisdom ; for ignorance, real knowledge ; for false and 
therefore wholly unauthorized Theosophy, the archaic teachings 
of the Wisdom- Religion. 
 
We take up again tonight the study which was begun at our 
meeting, last week ; and the main theme then, you will remember, 
was what was called the Doctrine of the Spheres, of which the 
doctrine of our Planetary Chain, the Planetary Chain of our 
Solar System, is a particular case, as the mathematicians say. 
Let us pass in brief review, at the same time perhaps slightly 
bettering, the explanation that was then made, of what was then 
said. The Doctrine of the Spheres comprises the entirety of the 
teachings dealing with the origin, the life, and the destiny of the 
spheres or planets, and of the sun, belonging to and composing 
our Universal Solar System. By " Universal " Solar System we 
mean all the bodies whatsoever, known and unknown, visible 
and invisible, that revolve around the sun, which is their primary. 
There are many such planets, scores of them, most of them 
invisible to our eyes of flesh. 
 
The second aspect of the Doctrine of the Spheres is the sub- 
sidiary doctrine of the Planetary Chains. Each one of these 
planets is a sevenfold body, comprising in a unity seven globes ; 
and one of the seven is visible to our eyes in the cases of the seven 
or eight or nine planets known to astronomy, because our eyes 
have been trained through evolution on this planet to see them, 
for these few cases belong to our own " plane ". When we shall 
be on the globes of our Chain, to which we shall pass when leaving 
this earth, our senses will then be trained by nature, by evolution, 
to cognise ; to sense and to see ; to know, in other words, other 
celestial bodies, other planets of our Universal Solar System. 
Similarly was it the case with the globes which we left in descend- 
ing the Planetary Chain. Each Planetary Chain, therefore, has 
seven globes, according to the teachings, existing on four planes : 
two globes on each one of the three higher planes ; and of these 
seven globes only one is on the lowest plane ; our Earth is on this 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
lowest or Fourth Plane of our Chain. This doctrine of the 
Planetary Chain is our main theme of study at present, 
 
The third aspect of the Doctrine of the Spheres is what has 
been called the " Seven Sacred Planets of the ancients " like- 
wise a teaching comprising a sevenfold mystery. These Planets 
are respectively Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun (which is a substitute 
for enumerative reasons for an Intra-Mercurial planet), Venus, 
Mercury, and our Moon which is also a substitute for a planet 
near our Earth, and which is now dying. These Seven Sacred 
Planets of the ancients were called " sacred " for the reasons set 
forth in our last study. They are the Houses of the Seven Forces 
of one of the seven chief Rays of the Solar Logos : this one chief 
Ray being our particular Logos. This doctrine is really very 
simple, but because it is a case of seven involved in seven, it 
sounds very complicated ; actually it is not. There are seven 
main or Chief Rays or Forces which make and which inform the 
Sun ; and these seven Forces are the seven Solar Logoi. Each 
one of these seven main Logoi is sub-divided in its turn into 
seven ; and these seven sub-divisions of one chief Ray or Logos 
form the Rectors, the Genii, the Archangels if you will, of which 
the " Seven Sacred Planets " are the Houses. 
 
Now, each one of these Seven Sacred Planets was intimately 
concerned in building one of the Globes of our Planetary Chain. 
Each one of the Stock-Races or " Root-Races " on any one of 
our Seven Globes during the passage through it of the Evolving 
Life- Wave, is likewise under the direct governance and control 
of one of these Seven Sacred Planets ; and when we say " planet ", 
please note carefully that we do not mean the mere physical body 
of it, the planet which we see ; that is but the House of the 
Sevenfold Dhyan-Chohan, the Rector, the Genius, that particular 
solar Force which has builded and which uses that planet as its 
House its " nerve-Cent re ", so to say. 
 
The fourth aspect of the Universal Solar System deals with the 
group which is so sacred that, as H. P. Blavatsky says on pages 
163-4 of Volume I of The Secret Doctrine, " As to Mars, Mercury 
and ' the four other planets ', they bear a relation to Earth of 
which no master or high Occultist will ever speak [in public, we 
should add], much less explain the nature ". 
 
Now, this Doctrine of the Spheres is full of wonder. We have 
merely sketched an outline of it ; and closely connected with it 
is a twin-doctrine, even more sacred and more mysterious, which 
we may call the Doctrine of the Circulations of the Kosmos, of 
which the Circulations of the Forces of the Universal Solar 
System are a special case. Note here in passing, that the work- 
ings of Karma and the Reincarnation of the human soul on earth, 
are special cases, again, of these two doctrines : the Doctrine of 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 461
 
the Circulations which make the actions of Karma to be ; and 
the Doctrine of man's successive re-imbodiment in houses of 
flesh, as the Doctrine of the Spheres shows the building of other 
globes in houses of physical form, fit for the evolving souls, and 
providing bodies for them corresponding to each one of those 
globes. This Doctrine of the Circulations of the Kosmos is one 
which we approach with a great deal of caution. Please bear in 
mind, that whatever may be said on that subject here at present, 
does not by any means include all that could be said about this 
recon&ite subject ; no, not one-tenth ; for the reason, as often 
remarked before, that when the Teacher inaugurated our studies, 
we were instructed so to speak that while those who are members 
of our Order shall understand by allusion and by hint, the doctrines 
nevertheless could safely be printed and sent forth publicly, for 
those who are not members would not fully understand those allu- 
sions and those hints. But even we ourselves here today cannot hear 
and should not hear relations and parts of the teachings belonging 
tosuch a doctrine as the Doctrine of the Circulations of the Kosmos, 
because these belong to other Groups, the higher Groups. This 
Doctrine of the Circulations of the Kosmos, or of the Circulations 
of the Life-Forces in the Universal Solar System, among many 
other things, deals with the passage of the Life- Wave from globe 
to globe on our Planetary Chain ; explains to us and elucidates 
how this is done ; while the Doctrine of the Spheres sets forth to 
what globes these circulations go into which globes these 
circulations enter, and in what states those globes are left when 
their respective life-cycles are completed. This applies also, of 
course, to us here on Earth, and to the life-atoms on our globe 
here ; and, for instance, tells us of such men as we shall be 
on the next globe following this our Earth, and such as we 
were on the globe preceding this Earth ; and so on all the 
globes of our Chain the Life- Wave functions similarly. That 
is to say, these Circulations are related to each globe and to 
all. This subject we ^hall go into, in the future, as far as we 
can. 
 
Next, with regard to these Planetary Rectors or Genii or 
Dhy9.n-Chohans it matters not what name you give to them 
(each subsidiary solar logos of the seven minor logoi of one Chief 
Logos forming the presiding Genius of each globe), they actually 
are the builders of our Planetary Chain, plus the indwelling life 
or swabhslva belonging to our own Planetary Chain. The human 
seed is sown, for example ; it grows ; becomes an embryo ; 
finally is born, grows into a man. There is the indwelliiig life, the 
character, the inward urge, the forward push, the development 
of the inner faculties ; but this is done in a world of surrounding 
forces which affect it profoundly by action and reaction, or 
 
2H 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Karman. So with the globes ; so with our Planetary Chain as a 
whole. 
 
Let us also remark in passing that these Seven Sacred Planets 
are profoundly instrumental in building our Planetary Chain ; 
but the Earth also itself is one of another group or series of seven 
planets, which build or co-operate in building the Planetary Chain 
of certain other ones of our planets so closely interrelated and 
interlocked are the functionings of the Life-Forces and Life- 
Waves in our Solar Kosmos, our Universal Solar System. 
 
Now briefly passing in review questions which we shall 'study 
in detail later, please bear in mind that the Life- Wave in any 
Planetary Chain we will take our own as an instance of the rule 
passes once from the first globe to the seventh, through all the 
seven globes ; and when it has thus passed once through the 
seven globes of the Chain it completes what we call one " Chain- 
Round ' ' ' ' Round ' ' being a word which Mr. Sinnett coined for this 
purpose, and which we still use. Seven such Chain-Rounds com- 
plete a Life-Cycle of our Planetary Chain. Then what happens ? 
 
We now approach another mystery. There are Outer Rounds 
and Inner Rounds. The Inner Round comprises the passages 
of the Life-Wave in any one Planetary Chain from Globe A to 
Globe G (or Z) once around, and this takes place seven times in a 
Planetary Manvantara. The Outer Round please listen care- 
fully comprises the passage of the entirety of a Planetary 
Chain's Life- Wave, by the working of the Doctrine of the Circula- 
tions of the Solar System, from one of these Sacred Planets to 
another, and this for seven times. 
 
Reverting for a moment again to a Round in a Planetary Chain. 
On our Globe, the indwelling cgoic force in any one man, or in 
any one life-entity, evolves for itself bodies correspondential to 
its surroundings bodies outer, bodies inner. The higher ones 
of these inner bodies we may call monadic eggs ; and when the 
Life- Wave leaves any one such globe of the seven of that Plane- 
tary Chain in order to pass to the next gjobe, the vehicles corre- 
spondential and belonging to that particular globe, its own 
evolutions thereon, remain behind as the Sishtas, a Sanskrit word 
meaning " remainders ", in order to serve as the first vehicles or 
bodies for the monads when the same Life- Wave returns on the 
succeeding cycle, and after aeons upon aeons of time they the 
monads of the returning Life- Wave find these " sleeping 
spheres ", or dormant " life-atoms " or vehicles waiting for them. 
These " sleeping spheres " or dormant " life-atoms " are corre- 
spondential, each one and all of them, to the particular globe of 
the Planetary Chain which had evolved them. Thus the Sishtas 
are the already evolved or individualized vehicles or " life-atoms " 
fit to receive the returning monadic host. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 463
 
Let us now illustrate this doctrine of our Planetary Chain by 
drawing seven circles, each circle to be, if you please, one of the 
manifested globes of our Planetary Chain. 
 
The Life- Wave enters Globe A, runs through its life-cycle 
there, and then passes on to Globe B. Finishing its cycle on 
Globe B, it passes on to Globe C ; and then to Globe D, the 
lowest of the seven. In our own Chain, Globe D is our Earth. 
We draw straight lines under the three higher pairs, and one 
straight line under Globe D. These lines represent the four 
lowest planes or worlds of our Solar System, our Universal Solar 
System. There are yet three higher planes or worlds, making 
seven in all ; and beyond these higher three planes, there are still 
 
 
 
 
 
 
B 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DIAGRAM i 
 
three more, thus making the perfect number ten. Of these last 
three and highest planes or worlds, we shall say nothing more 
here. 
 
But now let us draw on the three higher planes of the seven, 
five more circles representing globes as follows : two globes on 
the lowest plane of these three highest, two more globes on the 
plane above that ; and one globe on the seventh plane from the 
bottom, thus forming tke acme or summit. We then shall have 
twelve globes in our Planetary Chain : seven manifest, and five 
hid ; and this is the system of construction (of the Solar Logoic 
Force) which we are going to study each one of these twelve 
globes, by the way, corresponding in the Ancient Wisdom to one 
of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. You see, then, that there are 
seven globes in manifestation ; one visible to us, the lowest and 
the fourth ; six higher in abscondito or hid ; and finally five 
globes on the three higher planes of the seven planes, forming 
therefore seven plus five, or twelve globes in all. This is just a 
sketch, at the present time, merely outlining the teachings. 
 
Now the question naturally arises : What is it that circles from 
globe to globe of a Planetary Chain in the Inner Rounds ; and 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
passes from one to the other and each in turn of the Seven Sacred 
Planets in the Outer Rounds ? We have said that each globe of 
a chain, when the Life- Wave leaves it, retains its hosts of monadic 
eggs as the Sishtas. We used the word "monadic" there in a 
general sense ; that is to say, it applies in all cases to that par- 
ticular part of the entire human spiritual-psychological-physical 
economy which corresponds to that particular globe which 
belongs to it, in short, and which is left behind much as a traveller 
 
 
 
 
o o 
 
 
 
o o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DIAGRAM a ' 
 
leaves behind a house or clothing fit for certain climates and 
weathers when he goes elsewhere ; because he is coming back 
to that his quondam house, to that his quondam home. But 
what is it, what is that final ultimate, that Monad, that higher 
Monad, which provides and really is the Undying Seed from 
which all these others spring forth ? That is what H. P. Blavatsky 
called the Spiritual Self, the Divine Soul ; the Immortal Seed, the 
Father-Mother, the Source, the Fountain-Head give it any 
name you like of the oviform body, the Auric Egg, which in its 
essence, not in its shape, contains the Divine-spiritual Individu- 
ality of man or of any other life-entity. That is deathless, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 465
 
birthless ; it lasts throughout the entire Solar Manvantara, and 
goes into the supreme para-nirvana only when the Universal 
Solar System in the due course of its cyclic evolution passes 
finally into pralaya or latency. 
 
Now, then, just think a moment, what does all this mean ? 
This means that on any one particular globe let us take ours, 
our globe Earth, as an illustration, and us men as the examples 
for the illustration we evolve here partly from within without 
by ojir own inner swabhavic urge, and partly from without 
inwards by the reaction of the Nature around us, certain person- 
alities and certain characters and certain vehicles, exactly 
correspondential to the globe on which we then are. Those 
characters and personalities and vehicles are utterly unfit for 
another globe, utterly unfit for another plane. They could no 
more pass to another plane or live on another globe than let us 
say a rose could live at the bottom of the ocean. They do not 
belong there ; they belong on this earth ; they belong in the 
material and psychological atmospheres of this earth ; they 
belong in and to that particular world of circulation of forces 
which make this earth and which actually are this earth. We do 
not find roses growing at the North Pole, nor glaciers at the sea- 
level in the tropics. Everything in Nature is fit for and has its 
own place. 
 
Similarly, on every one of the other globes of our Chain, there 
are bodies or vehicles, etc., evolved, inner bodies and outer 
bodies, correspondential in each case to those globes, belonging 
there, which we have made when there, and which we left behind 
when we left those globes. Similarly, as there is but one funda- 
mental rule, one basic " law/' to use the popular word, throughout 
all the Kosmos, when man reincarnates he comes back with the 
same spiritual individuality, indeed, he comes back with the 
same higher human individuality ; but he evolves for himself 
each time, and on each globe because the Race is different, the 
karman is different, |the circumstances are different, since 
succeeding evolution has evolved both him and the surrounding 
globe still more he evolves personalities, vehicles, etc., out of 
himself anew from the seeds which at each preceding death had 
passed into latency in the character, and thus passes into and 
informs anew the globe monadic eggs of various sorts formerly 
left behind on the different globes when the Life- Wave left them 
to pass onwards. 
 
Those of you who are Oriental Classical scholars will readily 
see how what has been said, little as it is thus far, throws a light 
which is really dazzling upon the teachings of the greater ones of 
the ancient religions, such as that or those of Egypt ; such as 
that or those of Greece ; pre-eminently so as regards the doctrines 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
of Brahmanism and Buddhism in India and the Farther Orient. 
No wonder is it, that Theosophy has been called the unifying 
philosophy of the world. It shows the Why and the How of all 
these great ancient religions. It tells us what they were and 
what they meant ; and we shall find as our studies progress that 
the promise which the Teacher told us to make when these studies 
were first inaugurated, to the effect that, among other things, 
they were to explain the ancient religions, will be fully kept. No 
promises are made in our Order, which are not kept and fulfilled. 
 
Now, then, one may ask oneself and this is a slight digression 
but apparently necessary why is there so much talk of seven : 
seven here and seven there and seven everywhere ? Comrades, do 
we live in an anarchical universe, a helter-skelter universe, one 
without order or well-defined shape ? Or do we live in a universe 
every atom of which is in the grip of forces controlled by Forces 
still higher and more recondite and powerful ? Obviously the latter. 
And these higher forces are in the grip and control of still higher 
ones. This simply means that there is one consistent Life- Wave 
running throughout all Being ; and being one coherent and con- 
sistent Will, having one basic direction, it must act on all planes of 
the Universe more or less in the same way. Hence you see the need, 
the necessity, the value, to us, yea and the beauty, of the ancient 
teachings, proclaiming the fundamental operation of Nature, 
commonly called the " law of analogy ", expressed by the Her- 
metic axiom " As above, so below ; as below, so above ". 
 
The Primal Kosmic Logos, let us say, has one direction in which 
its Will pours forth in floods of light and life. Those floods pass 
through their various cycles and formations in " descending into 
matter ", and " re-arising " again towards their source. By doing 
so they but follow and cannot do otherwise the powerful 
impulses springing from the central Heart, that one Will. We are 
tempted to use the words " purpose ", or " design ", were it not 
that these words are so misused in the Christian theological 
schemes, that it would almost give to ordinary listeners an idea 
of a Kosmic personal God, and that blasphemy we do not recog- 
nise. Just here is where enter the operations of Karman. Karman 
is not a " law " made by something or somebody. It is the 
inherent nature or quality of Kosmic Being to react against action 
upon it. It is the doctrine of Consequences. Kosmically speak- 
ing, it has its flow of action or force in a certain direction, which 
is the Will, the Life-flow, of the Kosmic Logos, and this Life-Flow 
of the Logos, as said before, springing from one heart, the central 
heart of our Solar System, and thus forming the constitution or 
fundamental operation of Universal Nature, everything in that 
Nature obeys its direction ; and hence we have the doctrine re- 
garding the seven, because it is but the photographing, so to say, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 467
 
on our minds, of the facts of the Kosmos, the Solar Logos being 
divided into ten parts, of which seven are manifest, and three 
occult or hid. Everything which owes its life to the Logos, which 
is part of the Logos, which is subject to the sweep of its energy, 
and, to use the popular word, to its " law ", is therefore by Primal 
Necessity likewise built on a sevenfold plan. 
 
So we can now, with these words of introduction, pass on to 
consider the first aspect of the Doctrine of the Spheres, called our 
Earth's Planetary Chain. This, as illustrated in Diagram 2, is 
composed of seven globes in manifestation, and five hid : the two 
highest of the lower seven forming the models for the five and last 
below. The two next globes are grosser and more material ; the 
two following are of still grosser and more material constituency ; 
the series of planes ending with our Earth, which is the copy here 
below of the super-spiritual globe forming the last or twelfth 
or first in our entire Planetary Chain. 
 
Those of you who know your Classics will remember how Plato 
speaks of the fact that the Deity geometrizes according to a twelve- 
fold plan. Why has the Zodiac twelve Houses or Signs ? Why 
were there twelve great Gods seven manifested and five occult 
in all the great world-religions of ancient times ? In these ancient 
religions, the forms of expression and the words differed, but the 
" Heart-Doctrine " was there and the same in them all : the 
" Doctrine of the Heart " ; not the " Doctrine of the Eye ", 
i.e., the outward things which were seen, the ceremonial ritual and 
worship which varied, often greatly, the ones from the others. 
That was the exoteric part not " false ", but unexplained ; but 
the Doctrine of the Heart, to use our ancient language, our ancient 
phraseology, meaning the Doctrine of that which is hid and not 
seen, and which is the higher expression of Truth, is hid, not 
visible to the physical eye. Therefore the outpourings from man's 
nobler nature, from his higher soul ; spiritual, beautiful, holy, yea 
and divine, were called collectively the " Doctrine of the Heart " 
also. I 
 
Now you will remember that we said at our last meeting that 
Mr. Sinnett and Mr. Hume and later others had misunderstood 
and misinterpreted the Masters' teachings with regard to the 
globes which compose our own Planetary Chain ; and we referred 
then to the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, and H. P. Bla- 
vatsky's kindly but nevertheless mercifully caustic criticisms of 
Mr. Sinnett's idea that his merely scientifically trained mind knew 
the secrets of Nature really better than his Teacher did, or than 
did H. P. Blavatsky, his second Teacher ; and on these pages of 
The Secret Doctrine, pages 163-4 f the first volume, you will find 
what she says on the matter. In the first place, she says that in 
answer to Mr. Sinnett's query the Teacher gave a reply which was 
 
 
 
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more or less vague. This was because the question was very vague. 
Mr. Sinnett never seemed to realize that he was asking questions, 
in certain cases, which simply could not be answered by anyone 
pledged to secrecy. What then was to be done ? The Teacher had 
offered himself to teach. The time had come to teach the world 
somewhat of the Ancient Wisdom ; a few seeds were to be sown 
in the world's thought-life. Yet the answer had to be given in a 
vague way. Had Mr. Sinnett questioned with perfect definite- 
ness, on definite subjects of which he himself had a definite 
knowledge, he would doubtless have received a definite answer, or 
would have been told that his question could not be answered 
for the reasons already set forth. This refusal to answer, indeed 
happened several times. His question in this connexion was, as 
read at our last meeting : " What planets, of those known to 
ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong to our system of 
worlds ? " We have seen that in Occultism " our system of 
worlds " can refer to at least four different things : our Universal 
Solar System ; our Planetary Chain ; our group of Seven Sacred 
Planets ; and this Mystery-group Earth, Mercury, Mars, and 
four other secret planets. 
 
Well, the answer came back generalized : " Mars and four other 
planets, of which astronomy knows yet nothing/' referring most 
particularly to the Mystery-Group. And why ? Because Mr. 
Sinnett had just previously been questioning his informant on a 
certain aspect of the teachings which could not be fully explained 
without giving out the doctrine concerning this Mystery-Group. 
That is all there was to that. And H. P. Blavatsky says here : 
"As to Mars, Mercury, and the four other planets, they bear a 
relation to Earth of which no Master will ever speak, much less 
explain the nature ". 
 
Now, obviously, this sentence does not refer to our Planetary 
Chain, because H. P. Blavatsky had already said that Mars and 
Mercury do not belong to it. Evidently, she is referring to some 
other Group. H. P. Blavatsky also wrote^as follows : " For the 
reply was : ' Mars, etc. [as a matter of fact the Teacher's answer 
did not contain the word etc.], and four other planets of which 
astronomy knows nothing." The Teacher's answer contained 
the word yet, " yet nothing ". " Neither A, B, nor Y, Z, are 
known, nor can they be seen through physical means, however 
perfected." 
 
Then H. P. Blavatsky continues : " This is plain : (a) Astronomy 
as yet knows nothing in reality of the planets, neither the ancient 
ones, nor those discovered in modern times ". Obviously, she is 
merely speaking of visible planets ; for modern astronomy did 
not then admit the existence of other planets on other planes of 
the Solar System, and does not admit them today. " (6) No 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 469
 
Companion planets from A to Z, i.e., no upper globes of any chain 
in the Solar System, can be seen/' Disproving again what Mr. 
Sinnett thought. But also mark you this : The Teacher in his 
answer to Mr. Sinnett did not say " companion planets from A to 
Z " as H. P. Blavatsky here writes. He said " Neither A, B, nor 
Y, Z ", specif ying four planets, two in the beginning, and two at 
the end of the^ Mystery-Group. You see, then, that there is much 
behind all this, much that does not appear on the surface. H. P. 
Blavgitsky in her turn was faced with precisely the same situation 
as the Master was. She could not tell the whole truth, because 
pledged to secrecy ; yet she had to give some answer ; and she 
did what Teachers from immemorial time have done in similar 
cases. They gave an answer, which was perfectly true, as far as 
they could go, but they deliberately, in view of the interlocking of 
the nature of the Kosmos and also therefore of our teachings, 
allowed a hint of something else to come in at the same time, 
which served a double purpose : for it was what is called a 
" blind ", and yet was absolutely responsive and truthful, as far 
as it went. 
 
Then on page 167 (The Secret Doctrine, Volume I) H. P. Bla- 
vatsky quotes from the Teacher's words again : " ' Let us imagine 
THAT OUR EARTH is ONE OF A GROUP OF SEVEN PLANETS OR MAN- 
BEARING WORLDS. . . .' " Then in parenthesis, and this paren- 
thesis is H. P. Blavatsky's, " (The SEVEN planets are the sacred 
planets of antiquity, and are all septenary) ". Here still another, 
a third, Aspect of the Doctrine of the Spheres is alluded to. This 
is a perfect illustration of how such a situation has to be faced. As 
still another example of the policy of secrecy we mention, in 
another place in The Secret Doctrine you will find H. P. Blavat- 
sky's statement that our Earth does not belong to the Seven 
Sacred Planets of the ancients, and here she says that it does, and 
the two statements are apparently contradictory. It is a paradox, 
but it is not contradictory. And fortunately this paradox is easy 
of explanation. The even Sacred Planets of the ancients as 
planets of the Solar System, are those mentioned in the beginning 
of our study tonight, i.e., Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, (a substi- 
tute) Venus Mercury, and Moon as a substitute. Our Earth is 
not included, as you see. But as we also pointed out tonight, each 
one of the globes of our Planetary Chain is the child of, in a sense 
built by, controlled by, and guided by one of these seven Sacred 
Planets, that is to say, by the respective Genius or Rector of each 
of the Seven Sacred Planets. Hence, the seven globes of our 
Planetary Chain were likewise frequently called the Seven Sacred 
Planets by the ancients, because those seven globes were builded 
by their co-operative instrumentality, and are under their guid- 
ance. The globes were builded by the Seven Sacred Planets, plus, 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
as before remarked, the action of the indwelling swabhavic life of 
our own Planetary Chain. 
 
Our time is drawing very near to an end for this evening, but 
we wish to call attention to two facts only before closing. First, 
the seven globes of our Planetary Chain are not the seven Princi- 
ples of the Earth. The analogy is good and very striking ; yet 
these seven globes of our Planetary Chain are, each one, a distinct 
and separate entity ; each one of the seven, our Earth included, 
has its own seven principles. Yet the other six globes of our Chain 
are not the other six Principles of our Earth. Our older students 
are probably smiling at the notion, for the idea is grotesque. It is 
as much as to say that seven men, seven chelas of our Masters, a 
group of seven chelas, are the seven principles each of each. Not 
at all. The seven globes form a single Group, but each one is a 
separate entity and has its own seven principles. 
 
The second thing is this, that these so-called planes, these seven 
planes which we have spoken of tonight, should really and truly 
be called Worlds. It is very difficult to find a proper word to 
describe this fact. These planes or rather Worlds, collectively are 
the Lokas and the Talas which we studied during recent meetings ; 
seven Lokas and seven Talas, corresponding one to the other, 
each to each. This bipolarity of Loka and Tala, repeated seven 
times on seven decreasing degrees of materiality counting up- 
wards, or increasing degrees of materiality counting downwards, 
are the seven Planes or rather Worlds of the Solar System macro- 
cosmically ; the seven Planes or Worlds of our Planetary Chain 
are the Lokas and Talas microcosmically. These Lokas and 
Talas, then, are worlds. Look at the world around us : the stars 
above us, the earth beneath our feet, the winds blowing in short, 
all the world we see and feel and know. It is one of the Lokas and 
one of the Talas conjointly. And these Lokas and Talas correspond 
one to the other, each to each, exactly as in the case of the bi- 
polarity of magnetism or of electricity on our plane. Funda- 
mentally they are one, but they manifest in bipolar character. 
That particular force or vital current whose tendency is down- 
wards, forms that aspect of the union which is called the Tala of 
any world. And the other, whose aspect is upwards or, technically 
speaking, north, forms the Loka. 
 
At our next study we shall begin a rather detailed investigation 
of our Planetary Chain, having now covered the various outlying 
fields of that which it was necessary briefly to survey before we 
could adequately understand the teachings regarding the Earth's 
Planetary Chain. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLIII
 
ANALOGY ! THE LIFE OF MAN AND THE LIFE OF A PLANETARY 
CHAIN. OCCULTISM AND ETHICS : " LIVE THE LIFE IF THOU 
WOULDST KNOW THE DOCTRINE." 
 
Analogy is thus the surest guide to the comprehension of the Occult teachings. 
 
Everything in the Universe follows analogy. " As above, so below " ; Man 
 
is the microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane 
 
repeats itself on the Cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction ; 
 
corresponding to the highest must be the lowest ; the material to the spiritual. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 173, 177. 
 
As you may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches its adult period, 
has to pass through a formation period also septenary. Law in Nature is 
uniform and the conception, formation, birth, progress and development of the 
child differs from those of the globe only in magnitude. The globe has two 
periods of teething and of capillature its first rocks which it also sheds to make 
room for new and its ferns and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms in 
the body change [every] seven years so does the globe renew its strata every 
seven cycles. 
 
The correspondence between a mother-globe and her child-man, may be 
thus worked out. Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the ele- 
mentals (of which there are in all seven species) form (a) a gross body, (6) her 
fluidic double (linga-ariram), (c) her life principle (jtva), (d) her fourth principle 
kama-rupa is formed by her creative impulse working from center to circum- 
ference, (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is 
embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms, (/) her sixth principle 
(or spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man, (g) and her seventh principle (atma) is in a film 
of spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. The Mahatma LetierSf pp . 93 , 94 . 
 
Those alone, whom we call adepts, who know how to direct their mental 
vision and to transfer their consciousness physical and psychic both to other 
planes of being, are able to speak with authority on such subjects. And they 
tell us plainly : 
 
" Lead the life necessary jor the acquisition of such knowledge and powers, and 
Wisdom will come to you naturally. Whenever you are able to attune your con- 
sciousness to any of the seven chords of ' Universal Consciousness,' those chords 
that run along the sounding-board of Kosmos, vibrating from one Eternity to 
another ; when you have studied thoroughly ' the music of the Spheres,' then only 
will you become quite free to share your knowledge with those with whom it is safe 
to do so . . ." The Secfet Doctrine, I, 166, 167. 
 
THESE teachings may seem recondite when first heard, 
and so indeed they are I But, like all our Theosophical 
teachings, there is one aspect of them which is very 
simple and contains the principal idea of each thought, 
i.e., of each doctrine ; and it is, in each and every case, this main 
or principal idea which the Teacher has asked us to illustrate, it 
 
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remaining for yourselves to fill in the details, and to prove by 
your own studies the theorems advanced. 
 
But may it not be a good thing to point out that one of the 
noblest results of these studies is the effect it has on the moral 
nature of man, of the student ? You may tell a man to " be good 
because it is good to be good ", as remarked once before ; and this 
statement is perfectly correct and probably no one will object to 
it ; but it will not go very deep into the hearer's consciousness 
and mind. But if you tell a man that he is, in essence, gm in- 
carnate god, an incarnate divinity in his essence, and that he has 
come down into these spheres of matter for purposes of universal 
work, and that he is failing in his duty, he is failing in his relation- 
ship to his own Higher Self, if that duty be not accomplished, then 
you put a thought into that man's mind which allows him to 
think, and makes him think, and gives him a basis for morals, a 
religious and philosophical basis, which if he has any good in him 
at all, he himself will follow up to the end. 
 
It is absurd to think that any one of our Theosophical doctrines 
can be divorced from its ethical aspect. They cannot be separated 
so ; and this, perhaps, is the distinction most easily understood 
between the teachings of our own archaic Order, and those of the 
various so-called cults or cultuses or quasi-religions which spring 
up like mushrooms from age to age and from time to time, and 
have a longer or shorter life, depending on circumstances, causing 
meanwhile more or less deplorable spiritual injury to the unfortu- 
nate people who hear of them and follow them in confidence and 
misplaced trust. 
 
One of our Comrades here present was discussing jocularly a 
paper the other evening, which the present speaker heard him 
read. It was a letter addressed to him as being a writer of some 
international renown and of growing international fame ; and it 
was obviously intended and written in order to appeal to him in a 
very subtile way ; it made great and pretentious claims for the 
writers of it ; it stated that the members of the quasi-mystical 
group of bewildered folk to which the writer of the letter belonged, 
did not adhere to any other society or organization all of which 
in itself was enough to condemn such pretentious claims in the 
eyes of genuine Occultists ; but the writer subtilely hinted and 
implied that the Masters were behind the writer of this truly 
foolish document. The letter stated, in substance, that if the 
recipient of it joined their little group of bewildered mystics, he 
would be put in touch with the Masters ; that we are now living 
in the Fifth Root-Race, and after that will come the Sixth Root- 
Race, and that a time of peril is approaching, the planets fore- 
casting the crisis ; the implication in the letter being, and the 
inference expected to be drawn by the reader being, that if he 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 473
 
joined their group he would be one of the elect and therefore 
saved. There was more matter of the same kind. The letter was 
signed " No. , a pupil of the Master ", or words to that effect. 
 
Now the merest tyro in Occultism knows that any one who 
claims publicly to be a chela of the Masters, de facto proves 
that he is not one, and that he is an impostor. This is an age-old 
and invariable rule ; and the only exceptions to it are those who 
are the direct* Messengers of the Masters, and who are sent out 
into he world for public work, such as H. P. Blavatsky, Pytha- 
goras, Lao-tse, and many more such. 
 
So far as this question of ethics, as connected with our teach- 
ings, is concerned, pray remember that you cannot understand 
them adequately unless you " live the life " that they inculcate. 
Our Teachers have told us so, plainly : " Live the life as it ought 
to be lived, and Knowledge will come to you naturally ". There 
is only one Truth in Nature, and understanding of it comes 
naturally to him or her who " obeys the law ". Real knowledge 
brings modesty and compassion and magnanimity and courage 
in its train ; and all the fine, old, noble virtues ; and those 
virtues are the insignia which mark the real disciple, not foolish 
claims which, in direct proportion as the claims are false, are 
the more foolishly pretentious. The greater the claims, the less 
truth is there behind them. 
 
With regard to these doctrines being so difficult ; it is a matter 
of real pleasure to see that, for the first time in many thousands 
of years under any Teacher's direction, such doctrines as we have 
been studying at our last two meetings could have been openly 
spoken of in a large audience, and have been understood even in 
small degree. It shows, at least, that we as students have made 
some progress along the Path. These doctrines are very difficult, 
not merely in their elucidation, which we are attempting, but also 
because they are so intimately interwoven together. Yet, as often 
pointed out in these Temple-meetings, this very fact contains the 
clue, the Ariadne's Thread, leading to their solution. The very 
fact that, just as the forces and principles and planes of Nature 
are so interlocked and are so intimately bound together that 
if you really know one you know more or less of all, just so is it with 
these doctrines. If you really know one with some fair degree of 
complete knowledge some fair degree, I say you have a more 
or less perfect key that will fit the locks of all. 
 
Thus, as one of our Comrades said very truthfully, in substance, 
at our last meeting : " The Professor is perfectly right in 
repeatedly calling our attention to the law of analogy ". Indeed 
so. It is the fundamental " law ", or, if you like, the fundamental 
operation, of our processes of thinking, derived from Nature 
because we are the children of Nature ; for just as the highest is 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
reflected in the lowest, so is the working of the human mind. If 
you follow the workings of Nature as taught in Occultism, you 
will find that the lowest is but the exemplification or copy of what 
is above. But when we say that in our lectures we refer to and 
follow the " law of analogy " the operation in Nature of the 
" law " of analogy as our main basis of reasoning and exposition, 
please do not misconstrue that statement to mean that the 
Teacher has brought us together here merely in order to listen to 
the individual ideas of the lecturer. That would indeed fye an 
inexcusable mockery of your highest hopes and of your holiest 
aspirations. No. These teachings, which we have been studying 
together here, you will yourselves find in the pages of The Secret 
Doctrine. Search, and you will find them. Yet it may take you 
years to find them. But that is no real reason for discouragement. 
Why, in the old times, in India for example, the pupil had to pass 
ten or twelve years in the study of the sacred Sanskrit language 
alone, before he was even allowed to read the scriptures written 
in that noble tongue ; twelve more years were then passed in 
study of the scriptures before he was allowed even to speak of, or 
to give an opinion upon them. Twenty-four years of daily study, 
from eight to twelve hours a day, so sacred were these ancient 
teachings then held to be ! No one may expect or need think 
that he or she can have any comprehension of our teachings 
without some honest effort on his own part, or her own part, to 
study them, to understand them, and, above everything else, to 
think about them, to reflect on them. That is the greatest help 
of all, to reflect, to ponder them in the mind, to brood over them. 
Now, at our last study, you will remember, we passed in brief 
general review the doctrines concerning the birth, building, 
growth, maturity, decline, and final death, of our Planetary 
Chain. This short general review was made in order that the 
many and various statements made in The Secret Doctrine, here and 
there, and dealing with all these four aspects of the general 
Doctrine of the Spheres, should be separated in our minds. No 
Teacher can give out any such recondite doctrine in its fullness, 
in easy language. These doctrines closely interlock ; and the 
more esoteric part is always deliberately hid under the same 
words which set forth the exoteric presentation. The former 
must be picked out and studied ; the intuition must be developed ; 
the intellect polished ; and, above everything else, the spiritual 
nature must be appealed to and aspired to. This process of study 
is not so difficult as it sounds, for these higher faculities are innate 
in us. The spiritual nature is the real Man. The constant appeals 
to us by our Teachers to look inwards and to look upwards, are 
not meaningless ; they have a most profound practical value for 
the serious student, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 475
 
We open, then, our study tonight by reading from the first 
volume of The Secret Doctrine as follows, on page 158 : 
 
Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is 
septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet, whether visible 
or invisible, is credited with six companion globes. The evolution of 
life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from the first to the 
seventh in Seven Rounds or Seven Cycles. 
 
That is, the Life- Wave circles around the seven globes in seven 
different courses, each course from Globe One to Globe the last, 
being called a Round. But let us not confuse a general or Chain- 
Round from Globe A to Globe G or the last, with a Globe-Round, 
which merely means the passing through or traversing of any one 
of these seven globes by the Life- Waves. This latter is a Globe- 
Round. Furthermore, these Rounds, circling, revolving, from 
Globe A to Globe G, in any one Planetary Chain ours for 
instance is called an " Inner Round ". The " Outer Rounds ", 
as pointed out at our last meeting, refer to the Seven Sacred 
Planets ; and these Outer Rounds we shall not touch upon except 
very incidentally, at least not in this Group. There is no 
authorization from the Teacher for it. But it ought to be pointed 
out that these Seven Sacred Planets actually build and govern 
and oversee, each to each, all the seven Globes of our Earth's 
Chain. What are the correspondences here ? Let us point them 
out. We draw a diagram of the twelve Globes of our Earth's 
Planetary Chain once more : 
 
00 
 
o o 
 
 
 
 
 
 
B 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Beginning with the seven globes on our manifested Planetary 
Chain, below the line which we have drawn in order to separate 
them from the five which are hid, we will call the first Globe A, the 
next Globe B, the next C, the next D, which is our Earth. The 
one above us on the ascending Arc is E, the next one above it is F, 
and the last one of the seven we shall mark as G. There are, 
furthermore, as shown in this diagram, five hid Globes on the 
three higher planes of the Solar Kosmos, the Universal Solar 
System, which Globes we merely mention in passing. 
 
Now the Sacred Planet which builds and forms Glotfe A, 
subject of course* to the Swabhava of Globe A that is to say, its 
own indwelling Genius or Will or Spirit, its own individuality, 
just as a growing child is shaped more or less by its environment, 
but nevertheless has its own growing individuality and person- 
ality the Sacred Planet, I say, that builds Globe A, is the Sun, 
or rather that planet for which the Sun is an enumerative substi- 
tute, and which, if you please, we will call Vulcan. The Sacred 
Planet which builds the second Globe B, is Jupiter. The Sacred 
Planet which builds Globe C, the one preceding ours on the 
downward Arc, and from which we came during this Round, 
before we entered the Earth-Globe, is Venus. The Sacred Planet 
building our own Earth is Saturn. The one building Globe E, to 
which we shall go when we leave Globe D our Earth, is Mercury. 
The one building Globe F, is Mars ; and the one building Globe G, 
or the last, is the Moon, or rather the planet for which the moon is 
an exoteric enumerative substitute. 
 
Note well, however, that in all cases we mean the spiritual 
Genius or Rector (not the physical planet) which is the Builder, the 
Former, the Overseer, of any respective Globe of our Earth's 
Chain. 
 
Please understand then, that these Genii or Rectors, these 
Sacred Planets actually are the Kosmocratores of our Planetary 
Chain, the World-Builders ; plus the swabhavic impulses 
emanating from the Planetary Chain itself : as, for instance, a 
child is born on earth ; it has its own indwelling vitality, its own 
personality, its own Individuality, its own inner push and urge 
to life and experience ; but it is born into an environment, into 
conditions, which mold it in a very large degree, and which 
similiarly in large degree direct the way and manner in which its 
body and higher principles are builded and work and function. 
 
We merely allude here once more to what was said, I think at 
our last meeting, that when the last of the Seven Rounds of our 
Earth's Planetary Chain is fully completed, the Life- Waves pass 
on to one of the " Outer Rounds ". Now you know that the Moon 
which we see in our evening skies is but the relic, the Kama-rftpa, 
of a former planet which lived and completed its Life-Cycle before 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 477
 
our Earth existed, and which was as full of life and the hosts of 
Lives as our Earth is now. It also ran the course of its seven 
Rounds, along seven lunar Globes, and when its septenary Life- 
Cycle was completed, when its seventh Round was completed, 
what then happened ? Each Globe, as the Life- Wave left it after 
completing the last globe-round of the seventh Chain-Round, 
passed into invisibility, was in abscondito t after it had cast forth 
its energies, ar large part of its life-atoms, into a laya-center 
in space. 
 
Let* us take these seven globes, as shown in the diagram, which 
represent the Chain of our Earth, and imagine them, if you 
please, to be the seven Globes of our Moon during its last Round. 
We mean the Seventh or last Moon-Round. When the Globe- 
Round on A is completed, or rather nearly completed, the ten 
classes of life-entities prepare to leave it. The class which is most 
advanced, project their energy into space, into another point of 
the Solar System, into what is called a laya-center, which we have 
described before and which is a Sanskrit word meaning a 
homogeneous center, a center of homogeneous substance, on a 
spiritual plane of course, using the word " spiritual " in a general 
sense. And this process goes on, for all the ten classes of that 
Globe A, each one of these ten families or stocks leaving the globe 
one by one, until, when the time has come for the last animalcule 
of the last stock to leave the Globe, that Globe then suddenly 
disappears and is in abscondito, invisible. And why ? The 
reason is this : All matter, as even our scientists today are 
beginning to realize, is but another form of Kosmic Force, for 
Force and Matter are one. All matter is built up of atoms ; these 
atoms in turn are built up of electrons and protons ; and these in 
their turn are but tiny substantial entities, built up of energic 
matter or force force and matter being fundamentally one, as 
spirit and substance are fundamentally one. 
 
Hence, when the life-atoms, when the life, so to say, leaves the 
globe, it vanishes, because those life-atoms are its ultimate 
particles. The Globe i& not annihilated, but it passes into the 
state which is called in abscondito, or invisibility. This is perhaps 
the most difficult point of all others in our study to explain, 
because there is nothing known to us at present on Earth that we 
can point to as being analogous to it. At any rate, such is the 
fact ; and, as I have tried to point out, when the life leaves an 
atom, its sub-atoms, so to speak, are not annihilated, but, as it 
were, they separate and they become invisible, and the portions 
of the undeveloped substance which remain behind pass into 
latency, into dormancy, much like ice-crystals hanging in space ; 
pass into latency as tiny globules of Force-Matter, and remain in 
that state until the attraction to activity later comes which is 
21 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
another subject which we shall have to go into some day to 
join the new Earth-Globe A, the life-atom returning, after seons 
of wandering transmigration, to its own life-source. 
 
Similarly with Globe B of the Moon-Chain, the same process 
takes place, and it vanishes. And so with all the seven globes. 
How is it then, it may be asked, if Globe D of the Moon-Chain 
vanished, that we see our present Moon ? We have before pointed 
out that our Moon is a phantom, a Kama-rupa, "of the Moon's 
Globe D that was, but we of Earth happen to be on the plane of 
what was the astral to the Lunarians. We have gone up a step, 
and we see with our physical eyes what would have been invisible 
to us when we lived on the Moon. As a man when departing this 
life leaves his kama-rupa in the astral realms behind him, the 
shade, as the ancients put it, his spook, until it disintegrates if 
haply that be the man's fortunate destiny so does it happen 
with the globes ; because these globes are living things. Can life 
come from anything but life ? Clear your minds of the idea that 
there is any dead matter. Wipe out all that old scientific trash of 
fifty or one hundred years ago. There is nothing in it. Already it 
is ancient and forgotten. Even the scientists now have new 
theories. Fifty years ago there was nothing but matter. The 
forces were only " modes of motion ". Forces per se did not exist ; 
nor did anybody know how such " modes of motion " arose out of 
dead matter. Now, however, they are beginning to tell us that 
there is no matter, that there is nothing but force ; and that what 
we call the modes of matter are merely quanta of Force or Energy, 
certain forms or functions of what these very metaphysical 
scientists call " Energy " or " Force " or what-not. 
 
Thus, these various globes of the Moon-Chain cast their life- 
substance each into a laya-center ; these seven laya-centers 
forming as it were the planes of rest of these " sleeping spheres ". 
There is more behind this, which we cannot now go into ; but it 
would be dishonest to pass over this point without calling to your 
attention one fact, that the higher nature of a globe, as of a man 
its child, is deathless, and tastes never of 'death during the Solar 
Manvantara, at least ; sleeps not during these intermediate times 
of planetary rest, but is in Nirvana, for some period of time, at 
least. Please mark those words. 
 
After long seons of time, these sleeping spheres re-awaken for 
another period of manifestation, in principle exactly as a man 
returns to earth-incarnation. The thrill of active or to-be- 
manifested life now runs through these seven laya-centers, and 
they begin to differentiate. Do you know that the secrets 
regarding death and human incarnation are bound up in this 
subject of the Planetary Spheres, the Planetary Chain, and also 
in that marvellous, wonderful doctrine of the Circulations of the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 479
 
Kosmos ? As far as the present speaker can do so, and knows 
that he is authorized to speak on this subject in this Group, he is 
doing so ; but, speaking with plain frankness, it is impossible to 
set forth all concerning so esoteric a matter in lectures which are 
going forth to the public some day. Therefore, please understand 
certain reticences ; and please try to find more in the words than 
are said ; because, truly, there is much more behind them. 
 
What do the Christians mean we make a slight digression which 
seems, necessary and interesting as well what do the Christians 
mean when they speak of the Resurrection of the bodies of 
the Dead ? A ludicrous doctrine this, if taken at its face- 
value as taught by the old-style theology. Much well-merited 
criticism by independent thinkers has been directed against this 
Christian dogma well-merited criticism, we said ; but never- 
theless in its pagan origin it was one of the old Mystery-teachings. 
Here is a part, at least, of the secret of it. The life-atoms which 
form a man's body, which form a man's astral body, which form 
a man's psychic nature, which form a man's mental and spiritual 
nature, are his offspring, the off-throwings of the man in life who 
now physically is what we call " dead ". They are far more 
" bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh ", incomparably more so, 
than is the son of his parents, because they are himself, his own 
dissipated life-atoms, and they will return to him as inevitably 
and as infallibly as the strokes of karman for good or ill fall upon 
a man who has originated them, who has acted upon Nature, 
which automatically reacts, rebounds, against the action. These 
life-atoms come back to him in the succeeding life, when the 
attraction pulls them, when the gravitational pull comes from 
the entity descending again through the various planes of 
substance into reincarnation. Each plane that he passes through 
after death in going out, in going up, is again traversed in coming 
down into reincarnation ; and these life-atoms flow to him by 
gravitational attraction, by magnetic pull, and form anew his 
various vehicles on the yarious planes of his being. They are the 
life-atoms, as one of oiir Comrades now here present said years 
ago in a well-found phrase, whose " faces he once dirtied ", 
perhaps, and which he now again must wash ; or, again, those 
which he had helped on their upward way. Because, verily, these 
life-atoms are themselves germ-souls in their essence, even as we 
men in our higher natures are Children of the Highest of the 
Logos, whose very essence is in us, is we ourselves ! These life- 
atoms also, even as we ourselves, are building for an immortal 
destiny ; and this is a really fine illustration of the interlocking 
of the hosts of lives of Universal Being. 
 
Think of the mystery, of the wonder, behind this beautiful fact. 
In that way, also, are the worlds builded, This, then, is the 
 
 
 
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secret meaning of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the 
body, an old Mystery-teaching ignorantly adopted not the old 
body which Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith had, for that is 
gone forever ; but the life-atoms which builded that former body 
and actually were it, collect anew to form the new body of the 
reincarnating man. As they were his before, so now they come 
back and build him a body more or less closely like to the one he 
had left at death in the former life. Can you escape the action of 
the Law, as our present Teacher says ? Think of the moral view- 
points that this action of Karman brings to your eyes. Think 
of the responsibility, moral and physical and mental and spiritual, 
that is ours. We suffer from our own acts, and we have joy from 
our own acts ; and these little beings, these embryonic souls, 
these life-atoms, build the bodies of the vehicles which once again 
we live in. Man, each one of us, in future aeons of time, after ages 
upon ages in the future, is destined to be a Logos ; and the 
beings then in his care and charge, his own life-atoms then more 
or less " grown-up ", will be the archangels, the angels, the 
prajapatis, the manus, the human souls, and all the various 
smaller entities, less entities such as we now know of beneath us. 
The Logos that is now our own Highest, our own " Father in 
Heaven ", was, aeons upon aeons upon aeons agone, a man also, 
of whom our present hosts of Beings were then the life-atoms, 
marching upwards and onwards. Can you imagine and see, now, 
why these doctrines have always been kept so secret and sacred ? 
Suppose that they were subject to misunderstanding, and mis- 
represented in cheap advertisement, such as was pointed out in 
the first part of our lecture this evening dropped in the mire, 
" cast before the swine ", as the Syrian teacher said ! 
 
But there is danger in all this. There is always a danger in 
saying more than should be said about these esoteric and holy 
doctrines. We have not said more than should be said ; we are 
merely elucidating and explaining under the direction of our 
Teacher, what has been said by hint and allusion in The Secret 
Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky, and by Mr.' Judge and by our own 
present Leader and Teacher in her many lectures, particularly on 
" self-directed evolution ", which thought is at the back of all this 
wonderful doctrine. 
 
In future years, or in another Group under the Teacher's 
instructions, we may go deeper into these things ; but surely 
enough has been said tonight to show the analogy and the much 
that might be said between the life of man and that of a Planetary 
Chain. 
 
At our next meeting, Comrades, we shall take up the beginning 
of the growth of the Earth's Planetary Chain along the lines of the 
thoughts which we have investigated this evening. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLIV
 
PRINCIPLES OF THOUGHT AND STUDY '. CAN OCCULTISM BE 
TAUGHT ? . ANCIENT ASTROLOGY A TRUE SCIENCE. OUR 
EARTH-CHAIN OF GLOBES, THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS, AND 
THE TWELVE ZODIACAL SIGNS. LIFE-ATOMS I THE BUILDING- 
BLOCKS OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
Astrology is a science as infallible as astronomy itself, with the condition, 
however, that its interpreters must be equally infallible ; and it is this condition, 
sine qua non, so very difficult of realization, that has always proved a stumbling- 
block to both. Astrology is to exact astronomy what psychology is to exact 
physiology. In astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible 
world of matter, and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit. 
 
Isis Unveiled (H. P. BLAVATSKY) I, p. 259. 
 
The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From one point of view 
they represent the different stages of evolution up to the time the present material 
universe with the five elements came into phenomenal existence. As the author 
of Isis Unveiled has stated in the second volume of her admirable work, " the 
key should be turned seven times " to understand the whole philosophy under- 
lying these signs. 
 
"The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac " Five Years of Theosophy (T. SUBBA Row). 
 
IT is an egregious folly to suppose that Occultism can be 
taught in lessons as one would teach a language or a science ; 
and the question arises : How, then, since these meetings 
are for the purpose of studying together some of the noble 
doctrines of Occultism how is it that to the outsider, at least, 
they might seem to be taught in that manner, by lessons in 
courses ? The difference is this : While Occultism cannot be 
taught as one would teach a language, for instance, nevertheless, 
obviously and of necessity, there must be some means and method 
by which the great sages of olden days communicated from time 
to time appropriate parts of the Esoteric Knowledge to the world ; 
and this is done by teaching and elucidating certain doctrinal 
principles thereof, these principles actually being some of the 
basic facts of the Kosmos. You cannot teach Occultism as you 
would teach a language, for the reason that the facts of Being of 
the Kosmos, of inner and of outer Nature, are so interlocked that 
unless one had a thousand tongues, speaking a thousand idioms at 
the same time, and the hearers were capable of appreciating these 
thousand idioms at the same instant, could you convey the ideas, 
the thoughts, simultaneously into the minds of the hearers. This 
may illustrate, if poorly, why you cannot teach Occultism as you 
can teach a language, or a mere physical science, or some other 
ordinary system of exoteric study, such as our Universities do 
 
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teach ; for these latter studies or sciences or arts are very simple, 
dealing with one main line of thought alone. 
 
But the great Sages of ancient times laid down certain principles 
of thought and of study which, they tell us, are, or rather 
represent, the fundamental operations and characteristic natures 
of the Universe ; and not one of those mighty minds ever 
attempted, because it is de facto impossible, to teach of these 
operations and natures as one would teach a language or a mere 
physical science ; but by hint, by allusion, by an appeal o the 
intuition and the innate knowledge of his hearers, and by proper 
physical illustration, such a Teacher leads them on, step by step ; 
until finally the man or the woman, the hearer himself or herself, 
sees as in a flash, the meaning conveyed as a Key, and grasps the 
key, and himself or herself applies that key, with greater or less 
success, depending on the hearer's own spiritual insight. In that 
way, therefore, are the doctrines of Occultism communicated 
in the first four stages of initiation, as we have pointed out in 
other previous studies. 
 
You may take, for instance, the teaching regarding the 
beginnings of Kosmic Evolution. We realize from this study 
that there are seven different Principles of and in which the 
Kosmos is builded ; which work, each one of the seven, on its 
own Plane or rather in its own World ; and to attempt to 
describe at the same instant of time the simultaneous operations 
of these seven Principle-Elements is physically impossible. But 
a hint is given, an allusion is made to some one or more fact of 
Universal Nature ; and the mind of the hearer is opened by an 
intuitional thought which is aroused in himself by the com- 
munication. No child is taught to walk merely by seeing its 
parents walk, but by itself learning to put leg before leg ; and its 
first feeble and vacillating steps, in time, grow into the assured 
and confident stride of the man. 
 
So it is with these doctrines. Little by little, step by step, our 
Teachers lead us on to understand, so that we in our turn become 
teachers to and of ourselves, and are enabled boldly and success- 
fully to apply as Keys the doctrines that we have heard to larger 
doors of learning and Knowledge, leading into still more secret 
chambers of our great Mother Nature. And these chambers are 
full of wonders and mysteries, mystic and marvelous beyond all 
comparison with things upon earth. I am thinking, as I speak, 
of one of the real meanings of that wonderful inscription which 
Plutarch tells us of in his treatise on Osiris and Isis, ch. IX 
Plutarch of Chaeronea, the genial writer, the inimitable biographer, 
the great-hearted man, initiate, quondam priest of Delphi, of 
the famous Oracle there. One of his most mystic writings it is, 
and one of the most difficult to understand, so carefully does he 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 483
 
veil his real meaning. He says that this inscription, presumably 
engraved over the portico of the great Temple of Nei'th, at Sai's in 
the Delta of Egypt, ran as follows : " Isis am I, I am all that was, 
that is, and that shall be, and no one of mortals has ever lifted 
my veil 1 '. And Proclus, the Neo-platonic philosopher, in the 
course of his commentary on the Timceus of Plato, remarks 
incidentally as follows with regard to this inscription, that its 
ending was : " and the fruit that I brought forth became the 
Sun ", Neith is the mystic or occult side of Isis ; Isis represented 
the open side, the obvious or plain side, of the hid goddess Neith. 
This veil was the universal Nature around us, hiding the mysteries 
and operations of the great Kosmic Life. And to this day, no 
one of mortals, however great, has ever succeeded in raising that 
veil utterly. But little by little as the aeons of time flow by, our 
greatest Seers, our Masters, and the Masters of our Masters, who 
also in their spheres of thought and action, advance even as we 
advance, check and prove and try the Knowledge communicated 
by the gods our ancestors to the early races of mankind ; prove 
the truths of Being again, modify them in form for presentation 
to a later age ; and in that sense send forth anew to the world, 
from time to time, some and more of the doctrines of Reality. 
Their work is a very difficult one. There is nothing that men 
resent so much, nothing that so greatly arouses their ire and their 
hatred, as to have their cherished beliefs disturbed. Consider 
how all the World-Teachers have been received, in whatever 
age. Look at the great-hearted Socrates who, though not ini- 
tiated, betrayed parts of the Mysteries to the public ear, from his 
own intuitional insight a serious crime in those days. Look at 
the legends concerning Jesus ; legends only, nevertheless 
representing certain mystic truths ; look at Pythagoras ; yea, 
look at every one of those great Souls who have attempted to 
enlighten mankind throughout the different ages every one of 
them was persecuted and misunderstood, though every one of 
them was giving his life-work, his very soul, in order to help his 
fellows ; every one of them was hated ; and, in later ages, every 
one of them, though more or less understood or misunderstood 
and wronged, was almost and in one or two cases quite 
deified ! So has it been today, in our own age. 
 
We enter upon our study tonight by reading again the same 
extract from Volume I of The Secret Doctrine that we read at 
our meeting last week, from page 158 : 
 
Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is 
septenary. Hence every sidereal body, every planet, whether visible 
or invisible, is credited with six companion globes. The evolution of 
life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from the ist to the 7th in 
Seven ROUNDS or Seven Cycles. 
 
 
 
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You will remember that we passed briefly in review the four 
aspects of the wonderful Doctrine of the Spheres ; and we merely 
approached another doctrine still more wonderful, the Doctrine 
of the Circulations of the Kosmos ; and we closed our study for 
that evening at the point where we saw that each globe of the 
Lunar Chain of the sevenfold Moon that was each one of those 
globes had perfected its respective series of ten stocks or families 
and had projected them into a laya-center, one for each globe, 
in order that these respective ten families or stocks might have 
their long pralayic rest ; and then that when, after the course 
of cyclic aeons, the thrill of waking life returned again to these 
sleeping hosts, differentiation set in in these laya-centers, as the 
Life- Waves advanced downwards towards them through the 
various planes of superior matter, quickening and enlivening each 
plane, one after the other, as the Life- Waves went lower and 
lower down. Remember that " lower " here does not refer to 
movement in space alone, but much more to quality ; the Life- 
Waves were descending into grosser and still grosser planes of 
matter. 
 
Now the first of the sleeping hosts that felt the inflow of the 
Life-Forces as these reached it, coming from the higher spheres, 
was that aggregate which was to form Globe A of the Earth- 
Chain. 
 
00 
 
o o 
 
 
 
 
 
B 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here, if you please, are twelve globes, representing the Planetary 
Chain of our Earth, or, inferentially, the Planetary Chain of any 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 485
 
one of the scores of Planetary Chains in our Universal Solar 
System. The uppermost five, as shown in the diagram, we shall 
say very little of. They are super-spiritual worlds. The lower 
seven are the worlds in manifestation, and it is these lower seven 
that form the main subject of H. P. Blavatsky's outline of the 
Planetary Chains as given by her in The Secret Doctrine ; and it 
is to these seven that we shall restrict very largely our remarks. 
We will marlc the first Globe, A ; the second Globe, B ; the third 
Glo^e, C ; the fourth Globe, D ; the fifth Globe, E ; the sixth 
Globe, F ; and the seventh Globe, G. 
 
Now these globes of the Earth-Chain are not yet as at this 
point of our study in existence ; but that particular series of 
ten stocks or families, which hitherto has been sleeping a sleeping 
sphere coming over from the Moon that was Globe A of the 
Moon that was, when it feels the thrill of incoming life, begins to 
develop into Globe A of the Earth-Chain. This incoming life on 
each sleeping but now re-awaking globe, in the course of the latter's 
progress to full formation, passes down from the spiritual of its 
plane to the material of its plane, through seven stages or steps 
or spaces of evolutionary development. As does Globe A of the 
Earth-Chain, so do Globes B, C, D, E, F, and G ; and each in 
turn ; but by a peculiar procedure which we are now going to 
study. 
 
Now of these ten families, we shall go not much farther with 
regard to the three highest, than a mere allusion to them ; and 
restrict our remarks to the seven manifest stocks or families 
which form the volumes of the Life- Waves circling around the 
seven globes in what are called the Chain-Rounds, as we saw at our 
last study ; a Chain-Round being a passage of the seven Life- 
Waves through the seven globes, once, from Globe A to Globe G : 
and a Globe-Round, as said before, being the passage of these seven 
Life- Waves through any one globe the traversing of any one 
globe by those seven Life- Waves during the course of their 
Chain-Round. These Rounds are the Inner Rounds. As regards 
the Outer Rounds, we ^hall make but little more than an allusion 
to them at present, and for a very obvious reason. If to some of 
us for we are all in the same state in this respect it is difficult 
enough to understand even the Inner Rounds the passages of the 
Life- Waves around the seven globes of our own Earth-Chain 
it would be impracticable, unwise really, at the present time, to 
overload our minds with the teachings regarding the Outer 
Rounds, which you will remember we stated as being the passages 
of the Life- Waves from, through, and into, in other larger Rounds, 
the Seven Sacred Planets of the ancients. 
 
Before continuing, I would like to make a little digression, in 
order to avoid a later possible misunderstanding. You know 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
that there is a great deal written and taught in the world about 
Astrology, and various so-called astrological teachers print 
pamphlets and books, and will cast and read your horoscope as 
best they can. Occasionally, by a lucky hit, a happy guess, 
guided more or less by the tattered fragments of Ancient Know- 
ledge that have come down to us in the books of the ancient 
peoples, they may tell you something that is true, but how often 
with the best of goodwill do they mistake. The Astrology of the 
ancients was indeed a great and noble science. Modern Astrology 
is but the tattered and rejected outer coating of real ancient 
Astrology, for that truly sublime Science was the doctrine of the 
Origin, of the Nature and of the Being, and of the Destiny, of the 
Solar Bodies, of the Planetary Bodies, and of the beings who 
dwell on them. This wonderful Science was founded on two 
doctrines mainly, i.e., those two which we have been studying 
together for the last two or three evenings : the Doctrine of the 
Spheres, and the Doctrine of the Circulations of the Kosmos, 
the latter being microcosmically the Doctrine of the Circulations 
of the Universal Solar System. And the so-called astrology that 
has come down to us and is with us today, is but a series of sadly 
incomplete and mutilated fragments of teachings misunderstood 
by the later Greeks and Romans themselves. Please understand 
this clearly, because there actually is a vast and noble Science 
which was in the ancient times called Astrology, a term which 
means the " Science of the Celestial Bodies ". So great and so 
noble was it that it was held strictly as a Mystery-Teaching. It 
was always against the law of the Mysteries to tell to the outward 
world any of these Mystery-Teachings any such divulging of the 
secret doctrines being held to be a grave crime, and in the later 
times, was even punished by the State with death. The ancient 
nations themselves, the later Greeks and Romans, for instance, 
forbade the public practice and teaching of astrology, from reasons 
of sound public policy, because they knew that it could not be 
taught or practised honestly in public as a means of private gain. 
They even went so far in the Roman Empire as to forbid its 
practice under penalty of banishment or death. Time and again, 
the Mediterranean nations issued the most drastic laws against 
it, and against what the Romans commonly called the " Chal- 
daeans " or " astrologers ", because of the much mischief which 
arose from it ; the misleading and unsettling of the minds of the 
ignorant and thoughtless aroused the legislatures of those times, 
and they took legislative action in an attempt to curb the growing 
evil v Nevertheless real astrology is a very profound truth, for 
there actually is a bond of closest union, a strict and perfect 
correspondence between all the parts of Being : all the parts of 
Being forming the one vast Organism through which circulates 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 487
 
 
 
 
cc 
 
UJ 
 
u 
 
< 
 
u 
 
 
 
 
o 
o 
 
r 
 
 
 
c 
D 
(f) 
 
 
 
 
o 
 
UJ 
 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
and flows one Universal Life ; this Life follows certain channels, 
and collects in certain Centers, and these channels and Centers 
are infilled with spiritual and intellectual energies, and with 
what we would call today electric and magnetic forces ; they 
function more particularly in the Centers, certain sojar systemic 
ganglions, which we call the planets, and herein lies the secret 
of the circulations which we have been speaking of, the secret 
of the gravitational pull which draws the Life-Atoms of the 
Kosmos here and not there, or vice versa. These life-atoms we 
must briefly speak of before we close tonight, if our time permits. 
 
We shall now point out a few correspondences between the 
twelve globes of our Planetary Chain and the planets, and also 
between these and those and the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. 
There is a strict and close correspondence between each of the 
seven Sacred Planets and one of the globes of our Earth-Chain, 
respectively ; and between each one of the globes and one of 
the constellations of the Zodiac one of the Houses of the Circle 
of Life, as the Greeks called it. But while it is true that the Seven 
Sacred Planets of the ancients, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun 
(as a substitute for a secret planet), Venus, Mercury, and the 
Moon (as a substitute for another secret planet), do actually 
build and oversee our Planetary Chain as a whole (one of the 
Sacred Planets respectively to one of the Globes), nevertheless 
while the influences of the other six of the Seven Sacred Planets 
are at work therein also, yet the one predominating power over 
each globe comes from its especial sacred Planet. Likewise, 
while each one of these twelve globes of the Planetary Chain is 
under the particular oversight, or overseeing, of one of the con- 
stellations of the Zodiac, that is to say of the predominating 
Genius or Rector of that constellation of the Zodiac, nevertheless 
each one of the other eleven constellations is also at work in each 
of the twelve globes of the Chain. There can be no separation of 
forces, for everything works together in Nature towards a common 
end which is one of the noblest proofs we have of our doctrine 
of Universal Brotherhood. <, 
 
Now let us begin with Globe A of the manifest seven. Globe A 
is under the oversight of the Sun (that is as a substitute) and its 
zodiacal House is Leo. Globe B under Jupiter, zodiacal House 
Sagittarius. Globe C, Venus, zodiacal House Libra. Globe D, 
our Earth, Saturn, zodiacal House Capricorn. Globe E, Mercury, 
zodiacal House Virgo. Globe F, Mars, zodiacal House Scorpio. 
Globe G, Moon (as a substitute for a secret Planet), zodiacal 
House Cancer. 
 
Now going to the five super-archetypal globes, let us take the 
one at the top, the first (or last), of which, by the way, our poor, 
material Earth is the copy in matter. Planet Saturn, zodiacal 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 489
 
House Aquarius. Please note that this is the constellation called 
the Waterman. Continuing to the left, the globe below : the 
Planet is Venus, zodiacal House Taurus. The one below that on 
the descending arc is under Jupiter, the zodiacal House is Pisces. 
Crossing alokg and taking the globe on the same plane as the last 
mentioned, but on the ascending Arc, the Planet is Mars, and the 
zodiacal House is Aries. The one above it and next to the last 
(or first) ; the Planet is Mercury, and the zodiacal House is 
Gemini. 
 
If it were possible to do so in the short time we have, and if it 
were permitted, we could go into wonderlands of study in follow- 
ing out the various relations of the globes of our Chain and of the 
planets and of the Houses of the Zodiac, and concerning the beings 
dwelling on these globes and planets, and concerning the circu- 
lations of the Life- Waves ; and perhaps in future time our 
Teacher may instruct us so to do. Let me recall to your mind, 
before leaving this small detail of our study, a statement made by 
H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, where she says that " if 
we might, if we could, only follow the adventures of an atom ", 
I am quoting in substance " no romance that has ever 
been written or imagined, could equal this theme for mystic 
wonder, and for the profundity of its appeal to the spiritual 
nature of our soul/ 1 
 
We are now going to pass, if you please, to a much later stage 
in planetary evolution, possibly returning later to the point 
where we are now. We have now arrived at the point where we 
must find out how Globe A of the Earth-Chain, in the first Round, 
is builded. These ten families, three of them we will leave 
without further mention at present or rather these seven mani- 
fest families or stocks of the inflowing Life- Waves, these seven 
Life-Waves, are the seven which left the corresponding globe A 
of the Moon at its death, and were its ten or seven principles. 
They are now re-entering into manifestation after their long 
pralayic rest, clothing^themselves with sheaths, or veils, of super- 
sensuous matter as they descend through the three super-arche- 
typal spheres above the manifest four Kosmic planes, on the 
Downward Arc, until aeons upon aeons later, when they have 
reached this Plane, the fourth Kosmic Plane counting downwards, 
of the seven Kosmic Planes, on which fourth Plane of the Kosmos 
the forthcoming Globe A of an Earth Planetary Chain is to be, 
they are ready to begin its formation. And how do they proceed ? 
First come the three Kingdoms of the Elemental World. The 
first Kingdom builds, running the gamut of its seven degrees or 
stages ; and when its work is finished, it goes into obscuration ; 
seven minor steps of building does it build, seven degrees of work 
has it to do, before its surplus of life can pass to a lower plane on 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
the Downward Arc, and begin to construct and build the founda- 
tion of the succeeding Globe B to come. 
 
When its seven stages of work are finished, the second Elemental 
World then steps in instantly, and follows the same course of 
seven stages. When its seven are finished, it also (passes in its 
turn its surplus of life onwards, down to the foundation prepared 
for it by the first Elemental (or preceding) Kingdon?, to Globe B 
below. Then follows on Globe A the third Elemental Kingdom. 
Then, when these three are thus finished, there begins to work on 
Globe A the Mineral Kingdom, that is to say, the Mineral World 
corresponding to Globe A ; and when its sevenfold work is 
finished on the basis provided by the three Elemental Kingdoms, 
there follows the sevenfold Life- Wave of the Vegetable Kingdom ; 
and it runs through its seven cycles or stock-races. And when its 
course is finished, its surplus life follows the stream of the already 
descended entities into the Plane below, into Globe B, into the 
work prepared for it by its predecessors. 
 
Then comes the Animal Kingdom into Globe A. Remember, 
I am speaking of the first Round only, so far. When the first 
Round is finished, and the second Round begins after the inter- 
global pralaya between Globe G and Globe A, the method of 
procedure is changed. We are now discussing the First Round 
only. When the Animal Kingdom has run through its seven 
Stock-Races (or Root-Races) on Globe A, then comes the seventh 
and last Stock-Family or Kingdom, or the Human, on Globe A 
of our Chain. 
 
Now to go back a little. Take the first Elemental Kingdom on 
Globe A. It is finishing its seventh Root-Race, its seventh Stock- 
Race, its seventh cycle, its seventh Ring as Mr. Sinnett called it ; 
and when it has finished this, its Life- Wave then passes on com- 
pletely to Globe B, where its six preceding Stock-Races had 
already gone when they had finished their respective cycles. 
And what is left behind ? Do all the hosts of lives of that first 
Elemental Kingdom go there ? Do they all pass down to Globe 
B ? Please note this detail, for it is very, very important for our 
future studies. They do not ; that first Elemental Kingdom 
leaves behind it on Globe A the " remainders ", the ishtas a 
Sanskrit word meaning " remainders ". This word itself contains 
a whole doctrine of wonder ; and just here is illustrated one of 
our difficulties in lecturing. Every step that we make forwards, 
opens to view a new avenue, opens a new door, till we are fairly 
bewildered with the wonder of it all ; and we must hold by sheer 
force of will to our main theme of thought lest we be drawn off into 
other paths. And this is one of the ways by which our Teachers 
are enabled to disguise our teachings and hide them from those 
not entitled to them, as remarked before. They cannot tell all, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 491
 
not even of a single doctrine, for the reason that it simply wouldn't 
be understood. They tell us as much as they may and can, and 
give hints and allusions to something else ; and this method very 
conveniently thus acts as a " blind ". Hence, sometimes ignorant 
people say, L' Why, this doctrine is contradictory ! " It is not. 
Paradoxical, yes ; contradictory, no. 
 
Now what are the Sishtas of the first Elemental Kingdom or 
World that remain on Globe A after that Life-Wave has passed 
on to form the foundation of Globe B ? And what are the lishtas 
of the second Elemental World when its Life- Wave has passed 
down to Globe B and its ishtas remain behind on Globe A ; 
and similarly with the third Elemental world, and all the other 
four Kingdoms ? We will describe what it is by an illustration 
drawn from our own present Mineral Kingdom on this Earth. Com- 
rades, the minerals we now have on our Earth, today, are the 
Mineral Kingdom of our Globe D in obscuration here, that is to 
say they are the remainders or the Sishtas of our Mineral Kingdom 
which has passed on forwards to the globes on the Upward Arc, 
preparing those globes for our future coming, when we come in 
our turn on leaving this Globe D or Earth. Not that they alone 
work for us, for we work for them too ; each Kingdom works for 
each other Kingdom ; and all work for all. But the real bulk or 
volume of the Mineral Kingdom has gone on ; and it has left 
its ishtas behind on this globe Earth, its " sleeping spheres ", 
its " sleeping atoms ". And so when all the Kingdoms of Globe A 
have passed on, each one leaves behind its ishtas, its remainders, 
its lives representing the very highest point of evolution arrived 
at by that Kingdom in that Round, sleeping ; sleeping life-atoms ; 
dormant, relatively motionless. Not without life however ; for 
everything is alive ; there is no dead matter anywhere. Is a 
man dead who is asleep ? No ; but sleeping, dormant, resting. 
These Sishtas of all the seven Kingdoms thus await the incoming 
of the Life- Waves on the next Round, and then they re-awaken 
to a new cycle of activity. 
 
You know doubtless a beautiful old fairy-story, given to us 
from the French, who got it from the Persians, and the Persians 
received it from the Hindis ; I think that the English version is 
called " Prince Charming ", or " The Sleeping Beauty ". The 
French title of it is " La Belle au Bois Dormant ", " The Beauty in 
the Sleeping Enchanted Wood ". Remember the beautiful 
old tale : the wondrous castle, the enchanted wood, in both of 
which everything and all is sleeping ; even the princess, the 
castle's chatelaine, is sleeping, waiting, enwrapped in dreamless 
sleep ; and by and by comes along Prince Charming, who sees 
this enchanted wood and he enters into it. He is a knight-errant, 
out to achieve deeds of noble doing. He enters this enchanted 
 
 
 
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castle and he sees the Sleeping Beauty, and he bends down and 
he kisses her forehead ; and instantly everything awakens, every- 
thing is restored to consciousness, and is set in motion and move- 
ment. Thus, verily, is it with the incoming of the Life- Waves. 
When the incoming Life-Waves strike or rather re-enter into the 
dormant Life-Atoms, they awaken ; things are restored to indi- 
vidual activity. Thus, each one of these seven sphere-globes of 
our Chain, when it is in what we call obscuration, is a sleeping 
sphere, a dormant sphere full of general life, indeed, as is a 
sleeping man ; but individualized activity is dormant. c 
 
Let me say in passing, lest there be a future misunderstanding, 
that not one of the globes, when in obscuration, remains dormant 
for the full period of a Chain-Round. That is to say, when its 
seven Stocks or Families have left Globe A and passed on forwards 
to the succeeding globes, it Globe A does not remain dormant 
throughout the complete duration of the remaining six-sevenths 
of the Manvantara of that Round until, after the inter-planetary 
Nirvana, the Life- Waves re-enter it again. But when a certain 
period of time has passed, it re-awakens and receives another 
succeeding Life- Wave. Difficult indeed it is to understand the 
interworking even of the Inner Rounds, to say nothing of the 
Outer Rounds. And these different Life-Waves, Comrades, 
are the seven Life-Waves passing around the Chain, not all 
together, and not all during the period of one Globe-Round, but 
some of these Life- Waves precede others, because they are more 
evolved, and run the race more quickly. Hence it is that we have 
among us what H. P. Blavatsky and our Masters call Fifth- 
Rounders and even, very, very rarely, Sixth-Rounders. Now there 
again is another one of the many subjects which we must refer 
for study to future meetings. 
 
So, then, each one of these seven Kingdoms, during a Globe- 
Round, after the expiration of its seven Root-Races or Stock- 
Races, passes its surplus of life to the globe next following in 
order, around the Chain, and itself its Remainders goes into 
dormancy or obscuration with the globe ^hat it leaves as a Life- 
Wave. 
 
We leave our study tonight at this point to be taken up again 
at our next meeting. 
 
But I would like to add a few general words about the Life- 
Atoms before closing. What do we mean when we speak of Life- 
Atoms ? We do not mean, the Teachers do not mean, that they 
are only and merely the atoms of Prana, for they are only one 
small part of the vast hosts of the Life-Atoms. The Life-Atoms 
in general mean the Atoms of Life, of the Universal Life forming 
our Planetary Chain. Hence, the expression " Life-Atoms " is a 
short and convenient way of saying the building-blocks of the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 493
 
Universe, the bricks, so to say, of the vital Kosmos. So many 
men on Earth, so many gods in heaven. So many monads in 
heaven, so many life-atoms on Earth, or elsewhere. So many 
atoms on Earth, so many equivalent god-sparks in heaven. 
Gods, Monads, Atoms : You remember the chapter that H. P. 
Blavatsky h\s so prefaced in The Secret Doctrine, thus showing 
the three general classes or degrees of manifested Life : the highest, 
the Inner God ; the Monad, its vehicle, which is man in his 
essence ; and third, himself as a composite being formed of the 
Life-Atoms which he himself has brought forth. The Life- Atoms, 
then, are the vital building-bricks of the Kosmos. We mean also 
in one sense that they are the Life- Atoms of the globe. The globe, 
all globes, are the Life-Atoms of a still larger body. Remember, 
too, that there are Life- Atoms on the physical plane ; Life-Atoms 
on the astral plane ; Life-Atoms on the mental plane ; Life- 
Atoms on the spiritual plane ; Life- Atoms on every plane or 
rather World ; and, as far as we know, so on forever. Further- 
more, each one of these Life-Atoms, no matter on what plane it 
may be, is an embryo-soul, growing, evolving, with a sublime 
destiny before it. Even we are the Life- Atoms of our own Solar 
Logos, its offspring or children verily, the children of our Highest, 
of it, the Logos. And in aeons to come, if we run the race success- 
fully as men, and then as Dhyan-Chohans, we, each one of us, 
in the infinitudes of Matter-Space, shall be a Logos ; and the 
Life-Atoms which now compose our bodies and our vehicles, inner 
and outer, and which are our offspring, our children, shall be in 
those distant aeons the Dhyan-Chohans, the archangels, and the 
angels, and the Prajapatis, and the Manus, and the human beings ; 
and all the hosts of the evolving lives now below us and behind 
us in the grand evolutionary drama of Being, shall in their turn 
also have advanced correspondingly far along the Paths of 
Destiny. 
 
Before we close this evening the Teacher has asked me to answer 
the questions : " What proof can you bring to the average man 
or woman of the truth pf these sublime teachings ? " " What are 
the foundations of the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy ? " 
The answer to the first question is this : We can bring proof, 
cumulative proof ; and you will remember what we have pointed 
out before as being proof. Proof is the bringing of conviction to 
the mind ; and this conviction is brought by a preponderance of 
evidence. If you can make the mind of a man to believe that what 
you say is true ; if you can convince him by reason and evidence ; 
you have proved your point, not merely in a court of law, because 
that is the way the lawyers look at it, but in actual fact. 
 
Now if we choose to embark upon fine-spun disquisitions of 
philosophy as to what Theosophy is and what Truth is and what 
 
2X 
 
 
 
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Truth is not founded upon, that may be a different thing, and 
 
require somewhat different treatment. But for the average man 
 
or woman, who asks a question such as the Teacher says is 
 
frequently asked, we bring proof to him or her ; we convince him 
 
or her that what we say is true. And if asked a further question, 
 
" On what foundation do you bring that proof ? f we say, on 
 
two foundations, mutually supporting. First, on the innate 
 
faculties in the human Soul which tell a man that such or another 
 
thing is true ; he then is satisfied spiritually, intellectually, 
 
emotionally. To him it is proved. That is one proof. The other 
 
one is perhaps not so strong per se t but to the average man it is 
 
perhaps stronger. We can show that the greatest minds of all 
 
ages have believed as we believe. They did not use the same 
 
words or technical phrases perhaps, did not teach the doctrines 
 
in the same form perhaps, but the heart of it all none the less was 
 
there, the real thing was there, the core of it. You will find all 
 
this in the world's literatures ; and the only difficulty that it 
 
seems to me could be encountered and I merely make this 
 
remark out of prudence is this : that only too often, as our 
 
Brother remarked the other evening, the ancient literatures 
 
are not understood, even by those who translate them and read 
them. More : very often they are not honestly studied ; yet 
this fact does remain, that those who have honestly studied them, 
know that they support our teachings. Perhaps to the average 
inquirer the greatest and most convincing thing of all is the fact 
that the finest minds of all times have believed in our Theosophical 
doctrines ; and it is to them to these great intellects that we 
refer, as to an ultimate Court of Appeal ; much as ordinary 
human beings refer disputed questions for solution to the noblest 
minds that they have among themselves, feeling sure that the 
questions will be solved in the best way in which good and able 
men can solve them. I repeat, that we bring proof. But, of 
course, the inquirer, if honest, must do his own thinking ; that 
we cannot do for him. 
 
The foundations of the esoteric teachings, for the average 
person not for us, but for the average person rest on exactly 
the same basis of demonstration that the former question does. 
If you find that back of the teachings which have come down 
to us from immemorial times, there are certain facts, certain 
doctrines, which are the same all over the world, and in all ages, 
which were not outwardly, not openly expressed, but were kept 
hid, it is logically necessary to assume that they were looked upon 
as esoteric, otherwise why hide them ? These being the same in 
substance everywhere, we ask the reason, Why are they the same ? 
The natural and correct inference is that they were drawn 
from the same common source, which, now an inference, grows 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 495
 
into full conviction as we study them. Really, their best proof is 
in themselves ! 
 
The only way to convince a man finally of the truth of any- 
thing is to carry it " home " to him so present it to his faculties 
that they instinctively give assent. We say " Here is our proof, 
here is the evidence. Yet I cannot form your mind for you, or do 
your thinking for you. You must do all this yourself, and draw 
your own conclusions therefrom. We say that these doctrines are 
thus, A and so are the facts. We prove it by evidence. Take the 
evidence and digest it. Make of it all your own intellectual feast. 
If you are normally human, you will be satisfied." 
 
Of course you will understand that these are answers to 
questions asked by outsiders. If the Teacher had asked me that 
question to be answered for ourselves, I would have spoken 
differently ; but to the ordinary outside person I suppose it 
would be the answer that he would want. As to those in our own 
Groups who want proofs, the same answer is still largely applicable. 
Other things, of course, could be said to students who are 
" newly born " into our Group, on other lines. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLV
 
PHYSIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PNEUMATOLOGY OF THE 
UNIVERSE. TEN AND TWELVE PLANES OF THE UNIVERSAL 
SOLAR SYSTEM : INTERMEDIATE CRITICAL PLANES. ALL 
MANIFESTED BEING A GRADED CONTINUUM OF INTERRELATED, 
INTERLOCKED HIERARCHIES I EACH WITH ITS OWN BEGINNING 
AND END. SlSHTAS AND THE " SURPLUS OF LIFE ". 
 
" The Sun is the heart of the Solar World (System) and its brain is hidden behind 
the (visible) Sun. From thence, sensation is radiated into every nerve-center of the 
great body, and the waves of the life-essence flow into each artery and vein. . . . 
The planets are its limbs and pulses. ..." (Commentary.) 
 
 
 
Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, 
of which the Sun is the heart the same as the circulation of the blood in the 
human body during the manvantaric solar period, or life ; the Sun contracting 
as rhythmically, at every return of it, as the human heart does. Only, instead 
of performing the round in a second or so, it takes the solar blood ten of its 
years, and a whole year to pass through its auricles and ventricles before it washes 
the lungs and passes thence to the great veins and arteries of the system. 
 
. . . The universe (our world in this case) breathes, just as man and every 
living creature, plant, and even mineral does upon the earth ; and as our globe 
itself breathes every twenty-four hours. 
 
The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, p. 541. 
 
Space is the real world, while our world is an artificial one. It is the One 
Unity throughout its infinitude : in its bottomless depths as on its illusive 
surface; a surface studded with countless phenomenal Universes, systems and 
mirage-like worlds. Nevertheless, to the Eastern Occultist, who is an objective 
Idealist at the bottom, in the real world, which is a Unity of Forces, there is " a 
connection of all matter in the plenum," as Leibnitz would say. This is sym- 
bolized in the Pythagorean Triangle. 
 
Ibid. I, p. 615. 
 
Intelligences are without beginning. 
The Sphere hath an active Soul. 
The heavens have neither rent nor seam. 
The Desdtir : The Book of Shet Sasan the First vv. 16, 17, 20. 
 
The heavy-moving stars are many, and each has an Intelligence, a Soul, 
and a Body. 
 
And in like manner every distinct division of the heavens and planets, hath its 
Intelligences and Souls. 
 
Ibid., The Book of the Prophet, the Great Abad w. 23, 24. 
 
(Mulla Firuz Bin Kaus, trans.) 
 
THE Physiology of the Universe which we have been 
studying during the last few meetings should be under- 
stood in its relation to the Psychology of the Universe ; 
and, at the same time, we should remember that 
beyond the psychological aspect of the Kosmic Life there is 
the Pneumatology of the Universe ; these giving rise in their 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 497
 
respective fields to the three essential Vehicles through which, and 
in which, from which, and back to which, the Universal Life 
plays and flows and is, the three thus being the Fountainheads of 
and therefore corresponding in man to his three general divisions 
of Body, Slml, and Spirit. The Physiology of the Universe 
comprises thfe totality of all the imbodied or envehicled entities 
thereof ; and the Psychology of the Universe comprises the 
various Hierarchies of spiritual beings which work in those hosts 
of bodies ; and the Pneumatology of the Universe comprises all 
those Divine Beings standing behind, ruling and inspiring, the 
Intermediate Classes. Now the doctrines with regard to this 
third and last division are extremely difficult, as we all know, and 
hitherto we have had occasion merely to allude to them. Our 
studies, so far, have comprised only an attempt to understand 
something of the Psychology and of the Physiology of the Spaces 
of Kosmos. 
 
Now one and perhaps one of the greatest of the functions or 
operations of Universal Nature, is that which is expressed by our 
word " Evolution " ; and we use it in strictly the etymological 
sense, meaning the unfolding or the unrolling, or the rolling 
outwards, of what is, or has been, impacted in the original seed or 
root. We do not use the word " Evolution " as that word is 
misused in modern biological science. In fact, biologists do not 
teach Evolution ; they teach what the French very correctly call 
Transformisme ; and the difference between the two senses is 
immense. As, at a later date, we shall go into this study more in 
detail, we desire at present to call attention to this great difference 
of meaning merely in order to avoid a misunderstanding, that in 
using the words Evolution or Development as these are used in 
Occultism, we use them in the sense used by modern biologists. 
Not at all. We employ the word " Evolution " strictly in the 
etymological sense the unfolding, the unrolling, the outgoing, 
of the forces lying latent, from its past Karman, in the seed of the 
being or entity, or whatever it may be, which enters upon a cycle 
of active existence. * 
 
This great principle was well illustrated in the case of Kosmic 
Evolution by what the ancient Stoics taught with regard to the 
evolving or development or evolution, the rolling out, of the four 
(or five) Elements of the ancients, as those Elements were under- 
stood in their day. They taught, as you remember we pointed 
out at a former study, that the Fifth Element, the Fifth Essence 
or Quintessence, called " -^Ether " which is our Akaa held in 
its bosom before their manifestation or evolving the seeds of the 
lower four ; and that when the time came for these four to evolve, 
when the Deity, when Zeus, wished to send forth the worlds again 
into manifestation after a period of repose, the first that appeared 
 
 
 
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was the Element Fire, rolling out from ^Ether (or Akaa) 
evolving, unwrapping itself, from it. Not " Fire " as we under- 
stand it, but, as it were, the Seed of Fire, the Spirit of Fire, that 
primary and elemental kosmic force of which Fire on our plane, 
this low plane, is a feeble manifestation. Then, when Fire had 
run through its course of cyclic evolution : in the satme way that 
it had proceeded forth from the bosom of JEiher or Akaa, so did 
Air from Fire, unrolling itself from the bosom of Fire which had 
contained in itself this Element Air ; containing not merely its 
own swabhdva, or characteristic or quality of fieriness, as we say 
in our Oriental thought ; but containing in itself also the 
characteristic of its own Parent ^Ether, AkaSa. Then, next in 
sequence, from Air rolled forth, was unwrapped, sprang forth in 
development, the Element Water. Not our water, which is 
absurd ; but that which we might call the Seed of Water, the 
Spirit of Water, that which Water or Liquidity represents on our 
plane ; and it held in its bosom somewhat of the quality or 
characteristic of Air, its Parent ; and of Fire, its Grandparent ; 
and also of ^Ether or AkaSa. It contained also the Forces, the 
Potencies, and the Powers, of these its Predecessors, but feebler 
naturally in Water than in their own respective realms ; the 
qualities and potencies of each preceding one growing feebler as 
the evolution proceeds farther on, i.e., more largely into " matter ". 
Then from Water, from its bosom, evolved or rolled forth the 
Seed of the Element Earth. When the turn of the cycle set in ; 
when the evolution of these Elements, when the building of 
globes and so forth, had come to an end, and Zeus wished to 
recall them all back to his bosom, then, the reverse procedure 
began, and Water took unto itself again its child the Element 
Earth. Earth began to liquesce and to pass back into the Element 
Water. Then in its turn, in its due period, the Element Water 
began to aerify its particles and to pass into, or was gathered 
again into, the bosom of its parent the Element Air. Then air in 
its turn began to ignify its nature and to pass into the bosom of 
its parent Fire. Then, finally, Fire aetherialized its nature and 
passed back into the bosom of the Fifth Essence or ^Ether, its 
parent ; and the cycle of Kosmic Evolution was ended for 
another period of repose. 
 
Now we carry these five Elements farther on at least to seven 
in number. But there is the principle of development inherent 
in the Kosmos which we illustrate by using the word Evolution 
as above outlined : the Outgoing of the Breath, the breathing 
forth, of Brahma, as the archaic Indian thinkers said. The work 
done, then ensued the Inbreathing, the Ingathering, the Involu- 
tion, of Brahma. Precisely the same illustration that we have 
just given from the Stoic philosophy you will find in the ancient 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 499
 
Hindft literature, in the Upanishads, and more particularly in the 
Puranas. 
 
Just so, after the same manner, with due changes made for 
circumstances and entities, are the globes of our Planetary Chain 
evolved. Crlobe A runs through its life-cycle, and then evolves 
Globe B, \\&dch in turn runs its life-cycle, and then evolves 
Globe C, which runs through its life-cycle and evolves Globe D, or 
our Globe Earth. Globe D runs through its life-cycle and evolves 
Glofye E ; and then are evolved Globe F and then Globe G, the 
last of the manifested seven, in the same manner. These globe- 
evolutions are the subject which we are now studying. 
 
The Teacher's permission to have questions asked and answered 
has been exceedingly helpful to the present speaker. It has shown 
him, for instance, that not enough has been said about the Planes 
of Kosmos and the Principles of Kosmos, and about the various 
ways and forces by which these twelve globes of our Planetary 
Chain are interrelated. Let us then illustrate these in the 
following diagram : 
 
 
 
 
ncr 
 
 
 
C) 
 
 
C) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
00 
 
 
(0 
 
 
 
00 CO 
 
 
 
 
D 
 
 
 
Here we have the seven Kosmic Planes represented by straight 
lines, and above them is shown a triangle, which will represent, 
if you please, the Pneumatological or Divine or Superspiritual 
three Planes about which it is needless now to speak, because even 
if anything were said about them it is very doubtful that it would 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
be of assistance to us at the present time. The teachings with 
regard to them are too abstract. Below the triangle, Mow the 
three higher Planes of the Kosmic Manifest Seven, containing the 
five hid globes of our Planetary Chain ; then below Jhese, follow 
the four lower Planes of the Kosmic Manifest Seven, of the 
Kosmos, please understand, containing our manifested seven 
globes, or what H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine usually 
called the Planetary Chain of the Earth. We have numbered them 
as in former studies, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. Please remember, 
in addition (a subject to which we shall later allude tonight, or 
at a future study) that each one of these seven Kosmic Manifest 
Planes or Worlds is itself a septenary, i.e., divided into seven 
sub-planes or Worlds. This fact will come in as a very important 
subject in our later studies. 
 
Now you will notice that these twelve globes are on seven 
planes. You will next notice that in the diagram only seven 
Manifest Kosmic Planes, and a triangle representing three Divine 
Planes, are given, which make ten. Now why do we not here 
show twelve Kosmic Planes or Worlds ? We have drawn the 
diagram in this way in order to call attention, by an apparent lack 
of something, to a fact which we wish to emphasize. You may 
remember the Latin poet, Martianus Capella, speaking of the Sun, 
" whose sacred head is encircled with twice six rays ". Now these 
twice six rays encircling the head of the Solar God, represent 
the twice six powers or the twice six globes in the spiritual Sun. 
Our visible physical Sun is but the body of the Sun. There are 
seven manifest suns ; actually there are ten and two polar 
" Links ". We see but one Sun, the lowest ; that sun, as a matter 
of fact, nonetheless being on our highest physical plane ; but, as 
the story-teller says, " that is again another story " I 
 
Now these twelve Forces of the sun represent and are the 
twelve Forces of the Logos, who is the Manifest Solar God ; and, 
naturally, being twelve forces they must have their own homes 
to live in, their own spheres of appropriate action. They must 
have the appropriate matters or substance's in which to work. As 
a matter of fact, they are themselves their own homes 1 They build 
their own houses with a part of themselves ; even as a snail 
builds its own shell ; remaining notwithstanding apart ; in it, 
controlling it, each one to each, but yet not of it ; as the Spirit 
and the Soul of a man remain apart from his body, in it yet above 
it, and in a true sense not of it. 
 
These twelve Forces represent and are, therefore, the twelve 
Planes of the Universal Solar System ; yet there are but ten 
planes in a Hierarchy. What about the extra two, the eleventh 
and the twelfth ? Now here is the solution of the riddle. All 
manifested Being is a continuum. You understand, I suppose, 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 501
 
that philosophical word. It means that Universal Being extends 
itself infinitely in all directions, most especially we say inwards 
and outwards, without break of continuity, yet graded into 
innumerable parts or steps or planes or worlds ; and this 
continuum ?s, so to say, broken up into hierarchies manifesting 
in seven, ten, or twelve divisions or parts. The lowest seven 
parts are thp manifest portion of any hierarchy, that portion 
which is builded below a certain plane of materiality, and these 
seveu are the rtipa-worlds or worlds of form ; and of these seven, 
as a matter of fact, the three higher are relatively arfipa or 
" formless" to us, to our cognition, please understand. The 
truly arfipa or so-called " formless " or Divine Worlds are the 
three highest above these manifest seven, thus making the ten 
worlds or planes or degrees. 
 
Now any hierarchy has of course its beginning and its end, its 
zenith and its nadir, its acme and its ground, its highest and its 
lowest, the first and the tenth counting downwards. But 
what is it that connects this first and this tenth with the 
other hierarchies, with the rest of the Continuum ? What is a 
hierarchy ? It is an individualized entity. This entity is 
composed, in its turn, of hosts and multitudes of smaller or 
Inferior entities ; as man's body is an entity, and yet is composed 
of hosts of cells ; and these cells again are entities, and in their 
turn are composed of molecules and of atoms ; and the atoms in 
their turn are composite things ; and yet they all live together, 
and function together, every one of them common to a hierarchy, 
within other hierarchies, and all interrelated and interlocking. 
But each one of these hierarchies nevertheless has its own acme 
or summit and its nether pole, its head and its foot, its beginning 
and its end. 
 
Now that which connects a hierarchy, let us say at the acme 
or the beginning, with the rest of the Continuum, is an inter- 
mediate or " critical " plane partaking of the nature both of the 
hierarchy beneath and of the hierarchy above it in the Continuum, 
of which, of course, it i$ a part. With its foot, again, it is connected 
on an extra or twelfth plane, another intermediate or " critical " 
plane, with the highest plane of the hierarchy which is beneath 
it or follows it. Thus, then, we have a hierarchy consisting of ten, 
always ten, degrees or stages or planes or forces : seven manifest, 
and three hid or occult, or mystic it matters not what word 
you use here ; and these ten principles or planes, forming a 
hierarchy, are connected with the superior worlds and connected 
with the inferior worlds by two extra or intermediate planes, one 
below and one above, each to each. 
 
Let us now take up our main study from the point where we 
left it last week. A very interesting question was asked last week, 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
as to whether our Planetary Chain formed the seven principles of 
the Earth. And the answer was : " They do not, because each 
one of the seven globes is itself a distinct and separate planet and 
is itself a septenary ". But the Planetary Chain forms a hier- 
archy of globes. Please remember that " hierarchjr " does not 
mean any one particular thing. It means any possiole collection 
of entities to the number of ten, which form a^unity. You 
remember how much emphasis we laid in a former study, upon the 
differences between a One, a Monad, a Unity, and a Union. Ij: was 
then emphasized in anticipation of questions on studies like our 
present subject. If we have not these elementary ideas clear in 
our minds, there is bound to be confusion. A Union is a more or 
less fast or loose aggregate or assemblage of diverse entities. 
A Unity, as we shall use it, is a Union in which the bonds are so 
tight that it functions not as an assemblage, but as a single being, 
as an individual. A hierarchy is a Unity. A Monad is the root 
of a hierarchy, a pure and permanent individual, like the 
characteristic life-center in a seed from which a tree springs. The 
tree functions as a Unity, but if you take its individual leaves 
and branches, and roots, and consider it as a mere assemblage, 
it is only a Union. Considered as an entity, as a hierarchy of 
less lives, smaller lives, it is a Unity ; and the spiritual center or 
seed from which it springs, its indwelling characteristic swabhava, 
its peculiar life-seed, is the Monad. And the One is that ultimate, 
purest, simplest, form of Kosmic Being which we call Divine, and 
of which the old theologians sang : " In which there is no shadow 
of turning, there is no manifestation nor differences." It is Pure 
Being, as contrasted with differentiated substance. It is the One, 
in which are no opposites or no contrasts ; pure being, pure bliss, 
pure consciousness what the Hindu Upanishads call Sat Chit 
Ananda ; Beness Consciousness Bliss. 
 
Now, then, the Planetary Chain being a Unity or a Hierarchy, 
functions as a single entity, and is a single entity ; it is coadunated, 
because it is a Unity ; it is formed into one thing. Why ? 
Because it is endowed with a Soul and a Spirit flowing forth from 
its generating Monad. In other words, its consciousness is 
monadic. 
 
Let us read from The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 166, an 
extract as follows : 
 
Hence it only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow 
our Earth must be on different and superior planes. In short, as 
Globes, they are in CO-ADUNITION but not IN CONSUBSTANTIALITY 
WITH OUR EARTH and thus pertain to quite another state of conscious- 
ness. 
 
Coadunition, or rather coadunation, the forming into a Unity, 
does not mean that the entity so unated is a single (non-composite) 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 503
 
being in the ordinary popular sense ; otherwise its component 
parts would not be conjoined in a unation. It means that the 
coadunated entity is a Unity or a Hierarchy in the same way that 
man's body is a Unity and a Hierarchy, if we consider that body 
as the vehicle through which works the indwelling monadic soul 
of the man, 'governing and controlling the hosts of smaller lives 
of which the body is made. 
 
Now we take up the method or process by which our manifest 
seven globes of the Planetary Chain are evolved or " born ", let 
us say. When the thrill of the incoming Life- Waves, consisting 
of ten classes or stocks or families, after their long pralayic rest, 
coming over from the Moon Globe A that was and now is not, 
inaugurates the new Earth-manvantara, they begin to differ- 
entiate on the plane of the Globe A of the Earth Planetary Chain 
to be, and to gather into themselves magnetically or gravitation- 
ally the hosts of life-atoms belonging to that plane and which 
are hanging in space, and which have been transmigrating 
during the long pralayic rest of the higher principles trans- 
migrating into other beings on that particular plane and out of 
them. And here is the real meaning of the ancient doctrine of 
transmigration : The Life-atoms which a man throws off during 
life, and which his body at any moment consists of during his life, 
and which are left behind him after his death, and while he 
himself is resting in Devachan, transmigrate according to their 
respective natures ; pass into and inform the beasts, and the 
vegetable world, and the mineral, and the elemental the three 
elemental worlds or kingdoms ; and similarly those of his inter- 
mediate principles. But when that man returns to incarnation, 
passing through the various planes downward into physical 
incarnation, he makes for himself, at first, garments of light 
formed of his former life-atoms belonging to the higher planes, 
that is, he gathers into himself again the same life-atoms that he 
shed and cast off when he passed through those respective planes 
on his way " upwards ", And so on each plane on his way 
downwards into incarnation. Similarly, when he reaches this 
Earth, he gathers the life-atoms of this plane into himself again, 
not merely by the magnetic pull unconsciously to himself active 
during his ante-natal life, but even more so after his birth. And 
so do these planets, the various globes of the various Planetary 
Chains. The Life- Waves gather again to themselves, for each 
Globe in turn, as they pass down and through the four lower 
Planes of the Kosmos, the Life-Atoms that belonged respectively 
to the former Moon-Globes on the four lower Planes, which Life- 
Atoms help to build the new " physical " globes or bodies of the 
new Planetary Chain to be, which the incoming Life- Waves or the 
seven Principles of each of the Globes of the Moon that was, form 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
and shape, and in which they are now to work in the new 
Manvantara. 
 
Now, what does each one of these Globes of our Planetary 
Chain, or any other Chain, consist of ? It consists of these Life- 
Atoms, plus the indwelling vital forces, the Life- Waves ; and 
together they actually construct the Globe, and ar& that Globe. 
Man likewise builds his own body from within. There are secrets 
even in nutrition that our scientists have not yet solved. Man 
builds his own body out of himself, as often said before. He first 
secretes, and then excretes his various vehicles on the different 
planes of his being. He excretes his own body and bodies or 
vehicles from the secretions that come from within himself. And 
the Globes of our Chain are built in precisely the same way. 
 
We have passed briefly under consideration, in other studies, 
the three Elemental Kingdoms as regards their work in forming 
Globe A of our Chain. Let us now return to that. The Elemental 
Kingdom No. I has finished its work, let us say, on what is now 
the first foundation of Globe A. That Globe, therefore, has begun 
to take form. It is one-seventh (or one-tenth) formed, formed 
to the extent of the range of the first Elemental Kingdom. That 
first Elemental Kingdom has now passed through its seven periods 
of work, of evolution, and then goes into " obscuration " one 
of Mr. Sinnett's words. A far better word would have been 
dormancy or sleep, because this word " obscuration " actually 
rather obscures the sense. A man is not " obscured " when he 
sleeps. The body may be so, in a sense ; but it is better actually 
to state in more appropriate words just what the real condition 
is. It is that of sleep, or latency of dormancy, rather. 
 
But what happens now ? Instantly that Elemental Kingdom 
No. i goes into dormancy, Elemental Kingdom No. 2 begins its 
work on the foundation just laid for it by Elemental Kingdom 
No. i. Meanwhile, the surplus of life of Elemental Kingdom 
No. I passes on to Globe B, and lays there the first foundation of 
Globe B as it did for Globe A. Now what do we mean by the 
" surplus of life ", and what, furthermore, ris it that is left behind 
as the ishta or remainder, of the Elemental Kingdom No. I now 
dormant on Globe A ? (Nevertheless, the active life of the Life- 
Waves, a part of it, passes on and forms the beginning of Globe B.) 
What is the " surplus of life ", then ? " Surplus of life ", as here 
used, is that to which we alluded a few moments ago, when we 
spoke of the unfolding or unrolling of the Elements, which, before 
manifestation, are involved in each other. This surplus of life 
contained or involved in the Elemental Kingdom No. I, on 
Globe A, is the 42 principles of all the other six globes of the manifest 
seven, as regards the first Elemental Kingdom, enwrapped, 
enfolded, involved and dormant therein, so to say, and not yet 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 505
 
ready to manifest, because of not being appropriate and fit for 
Globe A, and therefore spoken of as " sleeping ", resting in the 
bosom of Elemental Kingdom No. i, but more truthfully over- 
shadowing it and infilling it with life, with the 42 " Fires ". As 
this " surplus of life " is unfolded, or evolved, " sleeping spheres ", 
" sleeping "" forces or potencies which are really the over- 
shadowing 42 Fires pass down to the Plane below as " surplus 
of life ", the passing " down " being due to the gravitational 
attraction or pull of the lower Plane, as felt by their inferior 
swatihdva or inherent characteristic. Hence, as soon as they touch 
their own realms, so to say, the " sleeping " fires of the Life- 
Waves belonging by nature to those realms, begin to awaken, the 
life-waves appropriate and belonging to that Plane begin to 
work, and the Elemental Kingdom No. I on Globe B begins its 
life-cycle. 
 
Let us go back to Globe A. When the Elemental Kingdom 
No. 2 has finished its work on Globe A, i.e., when it has run 
through its seven stock-races on Globe A, then Elemental King- 
dom No. 3 steps in as did No. 2, after No. I. Immediately 
thereupon the gravitational pull on No. 2, after that Elemental 
Kingdom No. 2 on Globe A has gone into dormancy, draws that 
" surplus of life " in Elemental Kingdom No. 2 down to Globe B, 
where immediately No. 2 on Globe B begins to awaken and to 
work, and to gather in the life-atoms belonging to it on that Plane. 
Thus, on Globe A, we have Elemental Kingdoms i and 2 in 
dormancy, and No. 3 working out its life-cycle on Globe A. 
Elemental Kingdom No. i, when it has finished its sevenfold 
course of work on Globe B, passes similarly on to Globe C, and 
begins to form it ; while No. 2 coincidently is entering on its work 
on Globe B ; and No. 3 is on Globe A, as said. 
 
Thus, then, at the present stage we have Elemental Kingdom 
No. i beginning its work on Globe C ; Elemental Kingdom No. i 
in " obscuration " on Globe B, where No. 2 is active ; Elemental 
Kingdoms Nos. i and 2 asleep, and Elemental Kingdom No. 3 
active on Globe A. After its No. 3's life-cycle is completed on 
Globe A, then comes the fourth or Mineral Kingdom on Globe A, 
and there does precisely as did its predecessors, Elemental 
Kingdoms Nos. i, 2, and 3, i.e., it runs through its sevenfold 
stock-race or course on Globe A. And instantly that this is 
finished, the Mineral Kingdom enters into dormancy or sleep or 
" obscuration " on Globe A, and the Vegetable Kingdom begins 
to appear there, Meanwhile, when that happens, the Mineral 
Kingdom passes down to Globe B, following the same rule or 
operation or function of Nature as did the preceding Kingdoms or 
Life- Waves. As the Vegetable Kingdom appears on Globe A, 
Elemental Kingdom No. 3 passes on to Globe C. No. 2 passes on 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
to Globe D, our Earth ; and No. i then passes on to Globe E. 
Then, on Globe A, appears the Animal Kingdom ; and when it 
has run through its sevenfold course it passes down to Globe B, 
and coincidently each of the five preceding Kingdoms or Life- 
Waves makes a step forward to the next globe. Tflen, finally, 
comes the 7th, the Human, Kingdom, on Globe A. 9o that when 
the Human on Globe A appears, the first Elemental Kingdom 
is beginning its work on Globe G the last of the manifest seven. 
Thus, step by step, one Kingdom or Life-Wave following the 
other in turn, the seven Life- Waves pass from Globe A to Globe G 
through all the intermediate Globes ; but when the yth or Human 
Kingdom reaches Globe G, the other Kingdoms are also respec- 
tively completing their evolution there ; the reason being The 
Law of Retardation operating to slow up the progress of the 
inferior Kingdoms on the Upward Arc, because these inferior 
Kingdoms ascend through the Globes on the Upward Arc with 
more difficulty than the higher and more evolved Kingdoms. 
The drag of matter holds them back. 
 
Now, this is the first Chain-Round. From the second Chain- 
Round on, the process is different, and we shall have to study 
that difference in detail next week, perhaps, or at a later meeting. 
Meanwhile, please get this clear. The March of the Life- Waves 
through the spheres, represents one detail of the Circulations of 
the Kosmos the passing of the life-entities from sphere to sphere. 
Furthermore, before we close this part of our study tonight, 
remember that we have been speaking mostly of Globe A ; and 
that therefore when we say " Mineral " and " Vegetable " and 
" Animal " and " Human ", we do not mean those things as we 
know them on Earth today, on this Globe D in this Fourth Round, 
in their already more or less evolved condition now. We are 
speaking of the First Round of and through the First Planet, or 
Globe A ; and those Kingdoms as they then were, would be to 
our present perceptions, even at their fullest development on 
Globe A during the First Round, the mere filmy and invisible 
and wholly imperfect presentments of whetf they are to be in the 
future i.e., they would seem to us to be spiritual entities. And 
yet to their own Globe, and to themselves, even in that first 
Round and on that first Globe A, they were as physical as our 
Globe is now to us, and we are to each other. 
 
 
 
At our last meeting, Comrades, the Teacher asked me to give 
tonight a fuller answer to the question that she put to me then 
regarding our Esoteric studies an answer more complete than 
I was able last week to make on account of the lack of time. You 
remember that the Teacher asked me to tell you what would be 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 507
 
a good answer to the question frequently asked : " What is the 
basis of proof upon which our esoteric teachings rest ? Whence 
came they, and how old are they ? " And she suggested that such 
an answer might be useful for inquiring minds among us, for those 
who had bew, as it were, newly born into our Order. In the first 
place, then, Ipt us take the first part of this question : " What is 
the basis of proof ? " The answer to that is simple. The basis 
of proof is the operations and functions of Universal Nature, as 
we have repeatedly said already. Nature : by " Nature " we 
meaifc not physical nature alone, but all that is, inner and outer, 
higher and lower everything ; for that is Truth, that is, the 
Reality of Being. Now that is the basis. How do we gain an 
understanding and a knowledge of these things and facts of 
Universal Nature ? So far as the understanding is concerned, the 
argument in proof is presented on the same grounds on which any 
fact or truth of Nature is presented and by an appeal to intelligence 
and common sense. 
 
" Science " in our days is a word to swear by. Call a thing 
" scientific " and people will swallow it without much pretence 
of close analysis. It does not matter much to the average man 
whether the scientific allegation be true or not per se. He rarely 
examines it. It may be a " scientific fact " today ; and then 
tomorrow it is replaced by some other " scientific fact ". No 
men in the world, I venture to say, have more real reverence 
for true Science, i.e., for classified and co-ordinated knowledge, 
than have Theosophists ; but, as we have said many times, for 
the fancies and fads and theories and hypotheses of scientific 
researchers, we have no more respect than those fancies and fads 
and theories and hypotheses are intrinsically worth. Our experi- 
ence has shown us that they vary and change and are too often 
replaced by others, to receive from us more than a modicum of 
respect ; and it matters very little to us whether we receive 
obloquy and persecution for this our attitude of devotion to Fact 
and Truth per se. It is our duty to search for and to tell the 
Truth when found. As pointed out a year or two ago, we have 
attacked, from the tim when H. P. Blavatsky began her great 
work, two of the fundamental theories of modern physical science : 
the hypothesis of the " Conservation of Energy ", and that of 
the " Correlation of Physical Forces ". Neither of these is true ; 
yet both are partly true ; and now, after having received for 
many years past much ridicule and cheap- jack criticism, we find 
our very metaphysical brothers the sometimes learned, often 
enterprising, and frequently truly self-denying investigators into 
Nature's secrets telling us as yet in guarded whispers that 
these two supposed fundamental and eternal supports of Physical 
Science are open to criticism and to a more rigid investigation. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
They are not now certain whether or not these two theories are 
true after all ! And that attitude of truly scientific reserve, is 
right. The day when Science begins to dogmatize through its 
representatives, it becomes nothing more than a peculiar kind of 
church. I know of nothing that kills dogmatism irore quickly 
and easily and naturally than these studies in ,our Ancient 
Wisdom ; for the simple reason that no sooner do we understand 
one thing, and think that we have seized a final truth, than we 
learn from the expansion of our faculties and our knowledge, the 
very wholesome lesson that it is but a baby's introduction to a 
truth still more sublime. We learn that lesson very, very quickly ; 
and if we have any tendency to dogmatize or to worship mental 
idols of any kind, that tendency is quickly killed in us by Theo- 
sophical study. And we may thank the immortal gods that it is 
so ! 
 
But here is our point : we return to it. Ask any scientist for 
proof of one of the theorems, of one of the established theorems, 
of his Science ; let us put it even more forcibly : for proof of one of 
the more recondite facts of Nature ; and he will probably say 
to you : " My dear Sir ! When you come to me, after having 
pursued an adequate course of study, and your mind has. been 
disciplined to understand what you are asking about, and you 
are ready to investigate, then I may be able better to aid you, 
for then you will be able to understand what I shall have to say." 
And the man would be absolutely right in giving such an answer ; 
and that answer is exactly in substance what our own Teachers 
tell us. That answer comprises the basis of the argument in 
proof. When the questioner or aspirant is willing to discipline 
himself and to study, not merely to read, but to give adequate 
thought and study to the subject mental study and mental and 
moral discipline, including physical care for the body, and above 
all else showing deep spiritual aspiration ; when he has thus truly 
disciplined himself, because Discipline precedes the Mysteries ; 
when his nature is thus opened up and trained, all exactly in 
principle as the scientist tells the inquirer to do before the latter 
can understand the truth ; then he shall know ; for, as our 
Masters tell us : " Live the life, and ye shall know the Doctrine, 
because knowledge will come to you naturally." And this living 
the life, let us say in passing, means not merely one thing, it does 
not mean merely morality of sex alone, however important that 
truly is ; it means, if anything, far more than that. It means the 
full training of the interior man to be true, right, clean, aspiring ; 
in other words, the good old-fashioned word Righteousness, 
acting rightly because you are thinking rightly ; because such 
training opens wide the doors within to the Light. The man 
and this applies to the woman, too, of course who has envy or 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 509
 
jealousy or hatred or selfish ambition corroding his soul, or who 
nourishes revenge in his heart, or any other and all others of these 
denizens of the inner infernal regions, these hellions of the inner 
man, is utterly unfit to understand the Doctrine ; and for a very 
simple reason. His intellect is befuddled and beclouded. His 
psychic nature is thickened and rendered gross. His inner nature 
is cut off from its spiritual Sun and its inspiration ; and his very 
brain-mind becomes opaque to the millions of rays of the higher 
nature. 
 
N&w these are old reflexions ; we all know them ; we have read 
them time and time again. But let us take home into our hearts 
this illustration : Just as the scientist tells his inquirer : When you 
have studied and are prepared, then come to me, and we will begin 
investigation, for then you will be able to understand. So do our 
Teachers tell us : When you are disciplined and are ready, when 
you are prepared and trained, then come to us and we will investi- 
gate Nature's secrets, and you will then have first-hand proof ; 
because you yourself, your inner nature, will not merely have been 
so quickened that knowledge will come to you naturally and 
intuitionally, and you will know ; but your soul, or rather spirit- 
soul, through the methods of training of the Ancient Wisdom, 
and of the Ancient Schools, will be sent into the very Heart of 
Being, of Universal Nature ; and you will discover first-hand 
knowledge for yourself -a Knowledge that will endure unchanged 
for aye ! 
 
Remember that this answer is given for us here in this School, 
for our inner members. It simply imbodies facts that we all 
know. Our teachings are based on, or rather are the codified 
expression, the formulated expression, of the fundamental opera- 
tions or functions of Nature, of Universal Nature. The argument 
in proof, or the demonstration, takes exactly the same form, and 
rests upon exactly the same grounds, as does the argument or 
proof of a fact in natural physical science. Fulfil the conditions, 
and you will have the knowledge, says the one ; and so says the 
other. % 
 
Now as regards the Whence. These teachings came to the 
first conscious human race on our Globe in this Round from 
semi-divine beings who brought them over from a previous 
manvantara ; and these semi-divine beings were once men, as 
we now are. These beings or Revealers are what we shall in our 
turn be when the sevenfold manvantara of our Planetary Chain 
shall have ended its course ; and we shall then become the 
Teachers and Instructors on the future Planetary Chain, the child 
and offspring of this Chain, of those vast hosts of less progressed 
entities who are now trailing along behind us on this Chain. 
 
This form of instruction was first communicated to the original 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
thinking human race by direct passing ; and then, as time went 
on, and the races of men sank more deeply into matter, there were 
established Leaders of the people, priest-kings of the so-called 
divine dynasties, a fact which was the original source of what has 
now become a mere legend, the so-called " divine right of kings ", 
which was then an actual fact. There were then true. priest-kings, 
leaders of men ; spiritual souls in other words, consciously work- 
ing among men. Then, still later, when the races sank still more 
deeply into matter, these priest-kings, great and noble beings, 
geniuses of the first water, spiritual luminaries in every sense,*were 
replaced by the priest-colleges, depositories of the primeval 
Revelation ; and then the Mysteries were inaugurated, to which 
chosen ones were taken from the masses of the people for initiation 
and for spiritual and intellectual training, in an era still more 
engrossed in matter. 
 
This last happened at about the middle period of the Fourth 
Root-Race, the Race which preceded ours ; and this system of 
the Mysteries has descended even to our own day. 
 
But there is still one fact most difficult to explain, but which 
must be gone into at least shortly in order to complete our 
survey ; and that is, that from the very beginning of our Round 
on this Earth, from the very beginning of the First Race, a Race 
of empty and mentally senseless " shells " in the sense that the 
beasts are " shells ", not being enlightened by the inner intel- 
lectual light, the inner rays, the Manasaputras, from the very 
beginning of Human Race-life on this Earth in this Round, 
certain Entities of far higher grade than man will be even aeons 
upon aeons hence, had come to Earth and had watched over and 
guided the evolution of the First and Second and early Third 
Races. During the Third Stock-Race they created, by the power 
of Will and Yoga, by KriyaSakti, a Mystic Body of high Adepts 
and Seers, a Body which is the most secret and hid ; and this 
Body has functioned and worked even down to our own times, 
and it is what we today call the Lodge of our Masters, its repre- 
sentative among men on Earth today. Those beings " created " 
by Will and Yoga, by KriyaSakti, were they who carried on the 
Mystic Knowledge, the Wisdom of the Gods, from age to age 
during the aeons that dropped, one after the other, into the 
background of the Past, passing that Knowledge on to their 
successors in turn, until it at present has reached our own day. 
 
Now let us leave this, and take up the third point of query. How 
old is the Esoteric Wisdom ? We have already answered that 
question in the foregoing observations ; but we might add this, 
that its age is incomputable per se it is, rather, ageless. Can 
you tell me, please, how old are the functions and operations of 
Universal Nature ? Tell me that, and then I will tell you how 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 511
 
old the Ancient Wisdom is I It is ageless. This Wisdom of 
Universal Nature, the Reality of Being, is the same to an inhabi- 
tant of a planet circling around Sirius or any other great or small 
star, as it is to us. It is that Wisdom which is in our day truly 
called " TKSosophy ", God- Wisdom, the Wisdom of the Gods 
that which they themselves study, we may say. 
 
 
 
There was another question which was sent in to the Teacher 
for aftswer. She has asked me not to spend much time on it, for 
our evening's study is already overlong. It came in a letter, and 
it alludes to what is an apparent misunderstanding with regard 
to the planet Mars. This Comrade seems to have misunderstood, 
or at least to be disturbed by, the fact that the planet Mars was 
reckoned as one of the planets overseeing one of the Globes on the 
ascending Chain of our System : in other words, the sixth Globe 
of the manifest seven of our Chain, and also as overseeing one of 
the globes of the hid five ; and she asks : " Why is this ? If 
Mars represents the principle of desire or kama, as in diagram II, 
of No. I of the E.S.T. Instructions, would it not come in the 
order there indicated ? Do not the colored circles in plate III 
of the same No. I Instructions, represent the correct order of the 
Hierarchies or sacred Planets and principles ? " I think this 
comrade has confused the idea. Let us point out first that we 
are not alluding to the physical planet Mars. We are alluding 
to the Hierarchy Mars, when we speak of it as being the overseer or 
controller of two of our twelve globes. 
 
Furthermore, as representing the principle of kama or desire, 
please bear in mind that Mars is also a septenary ; that it has its 
own seven, ten, or twelve Globes, and that these Globes are 
divine, and spiritual, and psychic, and one of them physical, as 
is our Globe Earth. Desire is dual. There is a divine desire as 
well as an evil desire. What is aspiration, for instance ? 
Obviously, the Globes correspond in the Martian chain to those 
which it affects in our hain ; and it exercises on the Globes of 
those two Planes a corresponding influence, a noble one. 
 
Whence comes that impulse in a man's nature which makes 
him eagerly desire to do good ? Yes, remember the old Greek 
cosmogonic mythos, that the first divinity to stir in the bosom 
of Chaos, was Eros, Divine Desire. Everything has its opposite, 
desire included. 
 
And this Comrade further asks a question with regard to 
" Mars, Mercury, and the four other planets ", quoting H. P. 
Blavatsky : " They bear a relation to Earth, of which no Master 
or high Occultist will ever speak, much less explain the nature." 
And she adds : " Have not disciples a right to know if they guess 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
right ? " Our Teachers have told us that in such case they most 
certainly have ; but our companion has not guessed aright. 
And, as remarked before, H. P. Blavatsky has said, as this com- 
rade points out, that it is a matter which cannot be alluded to in 
anything that is public or that goes out to the puUlic. But I 
might say this, perhaps : This special septenary represents a 
particular group whose function is to act in building another 
Planetary Chain. 
 
There is another question that has been asked on the subject 
of man's entire inner constitution : whether this is also tWelve- 
fold, as is the complete constitution of the Planetary Chain. We 
have said that man has seven manifest principles, which make 
of him a complete man. He also has three higher principles 
which, when they become manifest in him, make of him a divine 
being, a Dhyan-Chohan. In addition to all these, he has two 
more " links ". I have avoided speaking of them as " principles " t 
in order to avoid creating confusion. But he has two more 
" links " : one in his higher nature, and one beneath him ; along 
one or the other of which it is his destiny to travel. Now you 
may call these two extra " links " " principles " if you like. I 
do not think that they should be so-called because man is a self- 
conscious hierarchy. His entire nature is a denary, or composed 
of ten fundamental principles ; and really this higher " link " is 
the Root by which he is rooted into Divinity. It is so high above 
him, that to say that it is one of man's " principles " sounds to 
me like a desecration of thought, or a blasphemy. 
 
On the other hand, in the nadir of his being, beneath him, he 
has the other " link ", or the twelfth, if you like, counting down- 
wards. This other link, this other body or field of matter or 
force, or both, or force-matter or energy-substance, along which 
it may be his awful destiny to travel, is his link with Absolute 
Matter, and is the opposite of his Divine Root. 
 
Now, the further question comes up : Can you call these two 
links " principles " or not ? I can only say that if you call them 
" principles " then man's twelve principles correspond in a 
general way each to each to the twelve Globes of our Chain. But 
otherwise we may say this, that the first (or the last) of these 
twelve Globes symbolizes man's link with the Divine ; and our 
Earth-Globe, the lowest in the diagram on page 499, which is 
the copy in gross matter of the highest Globe, is his link going 
downwards into Absolute Matter. 
 
You remember what H. P. Blavatsky says in one of her 
beautiful works, the Voice of the Silence, where she speaks of the 
" men of Myalba ". Now, Myalba is our Earth, and it is also 
called a Hell. It is so considered in the Esoteric Wisdom ; and 
we have pointed out before and now once more say in concluding 
 
 
 


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this answer, that of these hells some are described as being quite 
pleasant and agreeable to the beings who inhabit them ; but to 
the beings who live on the superior Globes above them they 
would be awful. The description of a Globe as a hell must be 
properly understood, in order to get the meaning of this truly 
profound fact. " Hell " means the limitations and sorrows 
inevitable to spiritual entities passing through a globe of gross 
matter, sucK as our Earth-Globe is. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLVI
 
THE CHELA-LIFE. SEVEN AND TEN LIFE-WAVES I THE COURSE OF 
THE MONADS AROUND THE SEVEN GLOBES : LAWS OF 
" ACCELERATION " ON THE DOWNWARD AND OF " RETARDA- 
TION " ON THE UPWARD ARC. FIFTH AND SIXTH ROUNDERS. 
THE SACRED " WORD." 
 
There are many sorts of chelas. There are lay chelas and probationary ones ; 
accepted chelas and those who are trying to fit themselves to be even lay chelas. 
Any person can constitute himself a lay chela, feeling sure that he may never in 
this life consciously hear from his guide. Then as to probationary chelas, there 
is an invariable rule that they go upon seven years' trial. These " trials " do 
not refer to fixed and stated tests, but to all the events of life and the bearing of 
the probationer in them. There is no place to which applicants can be referred 
where their request could be made, because these matters do not relate to places 
and to officials : this is an affair of the inner nature. We become chelas ; we obtain 
that position in reality because our inner nature is to that extent opened that it 
can and will take knowledge : we receive the guerdon at the hands of the Law. 
Letters That Have Helped Me (W. Q. JUDGE), pp. 64, 65. 
 
Verily I it is this noble eightfold path ; that is to say : 
Right views ; 
Right aspirations ; 
Right speech ; 
Right conduct ; 
Right livelihood ; 
Right effort ; 
Right mindfulness ; and 
Right contemplation. 
 
This, O Bhikkhus, is that middle path, avoiding these two extremes, dis- 
covered by the Tathagata that path which opens the eyes, and bestows under- 
standing, which leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to full enlighten- 
ment, to Nirvana ! 
 
Sacred Books of the East Dhamma-Chakka-Ppavattana-Sutta 
 
(F. MAX MULLER). 
 
Seek this wisdom by doing service, by strong search, by questions, and by 
humility ; the wise who see the truth will communicate it unto thee, and knowing 
which thou shalt never again fall into error. 
 
Bhagavad-Gttd, Ch. IV (\y. Q. JUDGE'S Recension). 
 
Let loyalty and truth be paramount with you. CONFUCIUS. 
 
Be what you love. Strive after what you find beautiful and high, and let 
the rest go. Harmony, sacrifice, devotion : take these for keynotes ; express 
them everywhere and in the highest possible way. -yy Q JUDGE 
 
THERE is something very beautiful and encouraging in 
the thought that the doctrines which we study have 
been studied with the same devotion in other ages, not 
only by learners such as we are, but by the greatest 
minds of all times ; and, furthermore, that these being the 
doctrines of Nature, of Mother Nature, they are essentially the 
 
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same in all parts of the boundless spaces of the Kosmos ; so that 
kindred thinkers on the planets of other Solar Systems study the 
same essential thoughts that we do. As the mind of man grows 
in its comprehension of these wonderful doctrines ; as his mind 
expands and his soul grows greater under the inspiriting rays of 
his inner spiritual sun ; he comes to realize that the more he 
learns, the more does he know that there are endless knowledges 
ahead to learn ; until, finally, the student reaches the point 
where his whole soul is infilled with a reverence and a love and 
a demotion for Truth and his Teachers, that know no limits ; and 
truly, that realization is the mainspring and the inspiration of what 
we call the chela-life. 
 
I have been hoping, before the present cycle of our studies is 
concluded, to take advantage of the Teacher's permission given 
some months ago to touch upon this question of the inner life of 
the student, the chela-life ; because I know nothing that is more 
beautiful, nothing that is so encouraging, and at the same time 
nothing that calls for larger exercise of the truly spiritual will 
and of the higher understanding than do the requirements of 
soul needed in order to follow that chela-life ; because that life 
calls out everything that a man has in him, or a woman has in 
her everything. You may remember that H. P. Blavatsky 
somewhere, in fact in several places, speaks of the chela-life as 
being very, very beautiful, and at other times as being a " terrible 11 
thing. And so it is, and for one simple reason which we shall 
mention, and then we shall turn to our evening's study. 
 
The reason is this : Beautiful we know it is. But why should 
it be " terrible " ? Because no sooner does the student set his 
feet finally and firmly on that still small Path which we are told 
leads to the very heart of the Universe, than everything that is in 
his karman and that would find expression through many future 
lives perhaps, comes down upon him all at the same time, more 
or less ; and, as H. P. Blavatsky says, to succeed requires an 
inflexible will of iron and an undivided concentration of all his 
faculties upon the Gr$at Work. He must face, and conquer, in 
one short lifetime perhaps, the karmic fruitages of bygone 
mistakes and failures falling upon his devoted soul ; all at once, 
like horrible ghosts of the past. You can imagine what that 
means ! He must face them, and conquer ! Such is the working 
of Nature and the Karmic Law ; and all aspirants must go through 
the trial. Our Teachers as well as all others have had to face 
karmic circumstances, and conquer them ; and these things have 
been a puzzle to the ignorant outside world, which inevitably has 
most unjustly blamed the aspirant. In our own beloved H. P. 
Blavatsky's life, to take an instance, there are passages which, 
as anyone who knows of and who can understand them aright, 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
will realize redound infinitely to her credit ; but the ignorant 
and biased and cruel world outside does not see the originating 
karmic cause of past lives in those passages, and blamed her as 
having originated them in this life, as " weaknesses " in its blind 
view, because it does not know of what these greatei^souls have 
to face when their devoted feet are following the Path to Glory 
and Success " working out old Karman ", as the saying is. 
 
I think that this is a very valuable truth which we should 
carefully reflect over ; and to me it has always been a very 
practical and morally useful one, because it brings charity for 
others into our hearts ; a greater kindliness ; and a greater 
realization of the nobility, of the self-sacrifice, of those who tread 
this Path not for themselves but for us, a Path which yet is pure 
joy ; it is absolutely so ; but, on the other hand, until the final 
victories have been won, and they must be won, it is often strewn 
with pitfalls and surrounded with circumstances which cause the 
treader of that Path to be grossly and cruelly misjudged by the 
world, which sees but understands not. 
 
Now we have been studying during the last few evenings, as 
you will remember, the Doctrine of the Planetary Chains, and 
we have arrived at the point where we are enabled to see how 
the various planets of our Chain, as illustrating all the Planetary 
Chains, came into being as the off-throwings of the Life- Waves 
coming down from the Rest to which they had gone when leaving 
the preceding Planetary Chain at its pralaya, or death. 
 
Now what do we mean when we speak of " Life- Waves ", the 
seven or the ten ? We mean the collective hosts of the Monads ; 
and in order to have a short and easy definition, which perhaps 
will best recall to our minds what a Monad is, let us call it, if you 
please, a spiritual ego. It is, in fact, a consciousness-center, being 
in the spiritual realms of the Universal Life what the life-atoms 
are in the lower Planes of Form. Now these Monads and life- 
atoms collectively are the seven (or ten) Life-Waves these 
Monads with the life-atoms in and through which they work; 
these life-atoms having remained when, the former Planetary 
Chain went into Pralaya in space as Kosmic dust on the physical 
plane, and as corresponding life-atoms or life-specks of differenti- 
ated matter on the intermediate planes above the physical 
 
Out of the working of the Monads as they come down into 
matter or rather through and by the Monadic rays permeating 
the lower planes of matter are the globes builded : partly out 
of the substance of the Monads themselves, thrown out from 
themselves; and partly from the ingathering of the life-atoms 
magnetically attracted to the incoming monadic Life- Waves, for 
these are the same life-atoms that formed the various vehicles of 
those identical Monads in the preceding Planetary Chain, and 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 517
 
therefore are now attracted to them again. These life-atoms had 
remained behind, when that former Chain died, on each of the 
various planes : the Physical, the Astral, the Psychic, the 
Intellectual, the Quasi-spiritual, the Spiritual, and the Divine ; 
for all the^e Planes or Worlds have their various life-atoms (or 
building-bricks) through and in which these spiritual egos or 
Monads work. 
 
Now you "will remember that we have already explained the 
building of the Globe A, the first on the downward arc of our own 
Plartetary Chain. Let us briefly recapitulate. The seven (or ten) 
Hosts of Monads, or the seven Life- Waves, consist of Monads in 
seven degrees of advancement for each host, or in ten degrees, if 
we count ten. Let us say seven for purposes of easy illustration. 
Therefore, these seven main Hosts with their seven subdivisions 
each, comprise the forty-nine " Fires ", or the forty-nine sub- 
life-waves, which work and function through the globes of the 
Planetary Chain during the Rounds after they have builded those 
globes. These seven main groups or Hosts or Hierarchies per- 
tained each one to a respective one of the seven manifest globes 
of the Planetary Chain that was ; of the Moon in our case ; and 
they build each one the respective new globe of the Planetary 
Chain that is or that will be of the Earth in our case. Yet all 
enter into the work of building each globe ; for instance, Globe A ; 
and when Globe A is builded, they all enter into the work of 
building Globe B ; and likewise so with Globes C and D and E 
and F and G, which are all of the manifest seven. 
 
In doing this work of building, first enter into the arena of 
activity, as said before, the three Kingdoms of the Elementals, 
one kingdom of which may perhaps be called a spiritual Kingdom. 
The second Kingdom of the Elementals we may perhaps call a 
Quasi-spiritual or Akaic Kingdom ; and the third Elemental 
Kingdom is much more material, immediately preceding the 
Mineral which is the fourth Kingdom. The other Life- Waves or 
the Hosts or Hierarchies, outside of these four, are those of the 
Vegetable, the so-called Beast or Animal, and the Human ; and 
then finally above these seven are three other Kingdoms, thus 
forming ten ; and these three highest are the Kingdoms of the 
Dhyan-Chohans, the completed or fully evolved Entities from 
the preceding Lunar Manvantara. About them there is a most 
fascinating detailed study, which we cannot go into tonight. 
It has reference to the reason why these particular Dhyan- 
Chohans failed to attain full Dhyan-Chohanship during the 
Lunar Manvantara, and therefore were obliged to take a hand 
in the building of the succeeding Planetary Chain, that of our 
Earth ; in which they actually function, however, as the inspiring 
spirits, the inspiring gods, so to say. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Now then : first enters Elemental Kingdom Number i, and 
forms the basis or lays the foundation of Globe A. When it has 
run through its sevenfold cycle, when its seventh sub-cycle 
begins, its first sub-class is attracted to the plane below in order 
to form the foundation of Globe B as it had done that di Globe A. 
But it is the " Surplus of Life " which so descends. The actual 
Elemental Kingdom Number i belonging to Globe A remains 
behind on Globe A and goes into dormancy there ; Whereas the 
Surplus of Life which Elemental Kingdom Number i had in its 
bosom (latent as it were in Globe A) is projected out or attracted 
to that spot of Kosmos which is to develop into Globe B, because 
the monads of this " Surplus of Life " belonged to Globe B, 
of the Lunar Chain, as the Monads on Globe A did to Globe A 
of the Lunar Chain. Then follows on Globe A, Elemental King- 
dom Number 2 ; followed in turn by all the other Kingdoms. As 
each new Kingdom enters Globe A, a step forward is taken by all 
the preceding Kingdoms, each to its succeeding Globe. 
 
After Elemental Kingdom Number 2 ends its course, then on 
Globe A follows Elemental Kingdom Number 3 ; and when its 
seventh sub-kingdom is running its course, its first sub-kingdom 
is projected to Globe B, which also attracts the same. Mean- 
while, the first sub-kingdom on Globe B of Number 2 moves to 
Globe C ; and Elemental Kingdom Number i passes to Globe D ; 
and so it is that these Kingdoms follow each other, step by step, 
globe after globe, up to Globe G. 
 
Then on Globe A comes the Mineral Kingdom, or what may 
be called the Mineral Kingdom on such a spiritual globe as is 
Globe A. We probably could not conceive of its condition on 
Globe A, First Round, in our present condition of existence here 
on Globe D, Fourth Round, although we our Monads passed 
through that condition on Globe A. We ourselves as monads 
took a part in that building of the Mineral on Globe A, First 
Round. 
 
Each one of the Kingdoms on the several globes below Globe A, 
when the Mineral Kingdom enters Globe 4> now each in its turn 
moves a step forward to the next globe. Then appears the 
Vegetable Kingdom on Globe A, and then the Animal, and then 
the Human. As each following one appears, each of the preceding 
Kingdoms, each on its globe, moves one step forward to its next 
globe ; so that it works out that when the first sub-kingdom of 
Elemental Kingdom No. i reaches the last manifest globe, or 
Globe G, the first sub-kingdom of the Human (or what is the 
" Human " for Globe A) reaches Globe A and runs its course 
there. Then follow on Globe A the three highest Kingdoms, the 
Dhyan-Chohanic, but in a very peculiar way ; and it would 
overload our minds, I think, at the present time, to go into the 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 519
 
details of that study now. Let us get the main principles of the 
course of the monads around the seven globes clear first. 
 
Now when these seven Kingdoms from Elemental No. I to 
the Hum^p have finished their evolution on Globe A during this 
First Round, Globe A goes into what Mr. Sinnett called " obscura- 
tion ", that is, into dormancy ; it goes to sleep. Everything on 
it is now dormant, is sleeping, awaiting the incoming of the Life- 
Waves when Round No. 2 begins. Please remember that we 
are now studying Round Number i only. Beginning with Round 
Number 2, the process followed by the Life- Waves through the 
seven globes, changes. Again when the Life- Waves have run 
their full sevenfold course, or their seven Stock-Races or Root- 
Races on Globe B, then it in its turn goes into dormancy or 
" obscuration ", which is not pralaya, please. Technically not. 
It may be possible to call the state of dormancy by the name of 
"pralaya" in a general sense; but "Pralaya" really means 
disintegration and disappearance, like that of death. But 
" obscuration " is sleep. It is, really, dormancy, but Mr. Sinnett 
called it " obscuration ". And so is it with each one of these 
seven globes, one after the other. When the final or rather the 
last representatives of the last Stock-Race, i.e., of the last Life- 
Wave, leave it, each one in turn then goes to sleep or into 
dormancy. 
 
But there is an interesting fact, due to what our Masters have 
called the " Law of Acceleration " operating on the Downward 
Arc, and the " Law of Retardation " operative on the Upward 
Arc. It so happens that the most evolved Kingdoms, such as the 
Human and the Beast and the Vegetable, pass through their 
various cycles more quickly than do the younger Kingdoms or 
Hosts of these seven Life-Waves or Hierarchies, such as the 
Mineral and the three Elemental Kingdoms. These latter are 
younger, and have not been over the ground before ; whereas 
the more evolved Kingdoms have to go over what is, in a certain 
sense, a more familiar path unfamiliar only in this respect, that 
they are now running, the Round in a new Planetary Chain, on 
and in and through a new Plane or World of the Universal 
Kosmos. 
 
Remember that there are seven Planes of Kosmos, ten really ; 
but we are now keeping our study limited to the seven manifest 
Planes. With each new Planetary Chain, a new subdivision of 
one of those seven Worlds or Planes is entered upon, for this 
purpose : to gain experience in every World or Plane that the 
Universal Solar System offers the evolving entities of the Life- 
Waves. So that when seven full Chain-Manvantaras have been 
run through : in other words, when seven Planetary Chains have 
been lived through, one complete Plane of the Kosmos has been 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
traversed or experienced by the Life-Waves ; and there then 
ensues what is called a " Solar Pralaya ". This is another deep 
subject which we reserve for future study. 
 
Now, then, all the entities in our First Round on our present 
Planetary Chain, have reached Globe G, the last of the manifest 
seven ; the smaller and inferior and less evolved entities having 
had more trouble and difficulty in making the route, in running the 
round, on account of having had less experience in former great 
cycles. But as these less Kingdoms, inferior Kingdoms, come 
down the Arc of Descent, being more matter-full than the more 
evolved, i.e., the older and therefore more spiritualized, they run 
faster than do these latter; and this is the Acceleration of the 
speed of development of the lower Kingdoms on the Downward 
Arc. Conversely, on the Upward Arc, from our Globe D or the 
Earth, the rate of development is reversed ; the higher Kingdoms 
run faster, while there is for those lower Kingdoms, a Law of 
Retardation : Acceleration for the Higher Kingdoms, such as the 
Human, but a slowing down or Retardation for the Lower 
Kingdoms. 
 
Here, then, is the reason why the process of evolution works 
out as I have tried to explain it : When all these seven Hier- 
archies do finally reach Globe G during this First Round, they 
reach it all together, that is to say, they gather on that last Globe 
G all together, Globe G being the last globe of the manifest seven ; 
and here they all finish the First Round simultaneously before the 
Inter-Planetary Nirvana begins. 
 
After this long Inter-Planetary Nirvana, when it is ended, then 
opens Round 2 on Globe A ; and Round 2 is the exemplar, or 
sets the example, of the evolutionary process for all the succeed- 
ing five rounds, seven rounds in all ; and while, indeed, the 
same general procedure or plan of evolving on each globe, and 
from globe to globe, that was followed in the First Round still 
holds, there is this immense difference, that all the " houses ", the 
" tenements ", used by the evolving entities in the Second Round, 
were builded during the First Round for them. They are ready 
and awaiting the incoming Monads, as the Sishtas, the " Re- 
mainders ", of the First Round. So that the entities, the Host 
of Monads, when they return to Globe A and the other globes 
of the Chain, for the Second Round, have but to step into and 
thus awaken these sleeping bodies or houses, each Host passing 
into its own Class, instead of having to build anew and go through 
the lowest houses or bodies up to the highest, as was the case in 
the First Round, for each Kingdom now enters into its own 
appropriate bodies evolved during the First Round and now 
waiting for the incoming Monads. And so it is on each of the seven 
Globes of the Planetary Chain. When Round 3 begins, an 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 521
 
identical procedure is followed ; and likewise for all succeeding 
rounds. 
 
Another immense difference, already alluded to, is this : that 
beginning with the Second Round, all the lines of evolution or 
activity nOw having been laid, and nothing having to be instituted 
de novo, from the ground up, as it were, the progress of the Life- 
Waves or Hierarchies is relatively faster for those which are the 
most evolved : having this effect, that some smaller hosts of 
monads, and individuals, too, outrun the others, run through 
their evolutionary course much more rapidly, and thus out- 
distance or precede the general body of the seven evolving 
Hierarchies, so that, for instance, when they leave our own 
Globe D, they pass on ahead of, or before, the bulk of the advanc- 
ing army, to Globe E, and then to Globe F, and finally to G the 
last, and then have their Inter-Planetary Nirvana ahead of their 
more slowly evolving brothers ; and return to Globe A as advanced 
Rounders. In our case, the case just cited, they would be 
" Fifth Rounders ", since our present Round is the Fourth. This 
is why we have Fifth Rounders now among us, although we as a 
Human Host are in our Fourth Round. As regards the " Sixth 
Rounders " those whose spirituality is so high, and whose 
innate capacity acquired through long aeons of experience is so 
great that they outrun even the Fifth Rounders, as regards these 
they are very, very few in number. Our Teachers tell us that 
Gautama the Lord Buddha is the only fully developed Sixth 
Rounder in recorded history who has succeeded in attaining 
this exalted state, and he only the noblest initiate in recorded 
history, he only succeeded by virtue of a Mystery 1 i.e., a 
profoundly esoteric process. 
 
 
 
There remain a few scattered thoughts for us to take up and 
advert to before we leave our study tonight. First : the seven 
so-called Sacred Planets are not all necessarily higher in degree or 
stage of evolution than is our Earth-Chain, although they do 
indeed actually build *our Earth-Chain by their supervision and 
guiding influence as Architects, and by and through the forces 
which they lend to the evolving Hierarchies or Life- Waves 
belonging to our Chain. Some of them, of our seven Sacred 
Planets, are actually lower than the Earth is, spiritually. Others 
are higher. Others again are higher in degree but less evolved in 
time than we are. That is to say, they are spiritually higher, yet 
they are younger in years. As, for instance, a son is younger in 
years than is his father, but it is quite possible that the growing 
boy is, spiritually speaking, his father's superior ; not necessarily 
so, but it could be so and often is. Gautama the Buddha is an 
 
 
 
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example in point. He vastly outranked not merely his own 
family, but all human beings since his time, and also for ages 
preceding his time. 
 
 
 
As has been said, the Second Round opened the new process of 
evolution for the remainder of the manvantara of our Planetary 
Chain ; and at our next meeting we shall deal briefly with this ; 
and then we shall turn to our own Globe D and its evolutionary 
history ; because it seems better to follow the lines of study laid 
down by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine; and, after 
having pointed out the general evolution of the Planetary Chain, 
to come to our own Globe and specialize on it. Its history holds 
all that we can possibly manage to study and understand for 
months to come ; and this study will, of course, involve the study 
of the seven great Stock-Races or Root-Races of our Globe during 
this present Fourth Round. 
 
 
 
I have before me three questions which the Teacher has asked 
me briefly to answer. The first question is as follows : 
 
" What is the true esoteric explanation of the physiological and 
psychic effect or influence exerted by the vibratory movement set in 
motion by the sounding of the ' Word/ upon the cerebral or nervous 
centers of the human body, and is there any special, definite musical 
note, which ought to be sustained throughout the sounding ? " 
 
This question we are not enabled to answer in full for two 
reasons ; first : interesting as it is, it does not bear upon the 
subject of our present study, and the Teacher has instructed us 
to limit our answers to questions bearing upon our present themes, 
however interesting other questions might be. And the second 
reason is, that a full answer to this very interesting question 
would involve a virtually complete outline of practical Theurgy, 
and that, of course, is impossible here and now. But we might 
say this : the main thing is not so much what musical note is 
sounded, as what is behind the sounding. If the sounding is to 
be merely a humming, or making a musical noise, or a vocal 
exercise, you might as well be still ; but if there is behind the 
sounding the aspiration of the heart, and the uplifting of the mind, 
and the throwing of the will as a consciously exerted energy to 
everything that is spiritually noble, it matters very little, so far 
as we are concerned, on what note the voice is sounded. It is 
what is aroused by Will and Meditation in the inner man, or what 
the inner man is enabled to give out, that counts for good ; but 
this does not mean that the proper sounding of this Mystic Word 
 
 
 
FUNDAMENTALS OP THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 523 
 
cannot be done so as to produce the most wonderful effects. It 
certainly can. 
The next question is : 
 
" Is not .pur number 10 made of 6 and 4 instead of 7 and 3 ? The 
upper and lower globes are connecting or transition-globes, as I under- 
stand. We have often been told that this earth is the real hell, so to 
speak, which is now more comprehensible. Some beings, I understand, 
may have t(5 travel lower, which would mean backward, and this 
must be connected with the mystery of the moon, it would seem. I 
should also imagine that the lower globe at least, must have been 
formed or evolved or compounded differently from the others.' 1 
 
The answer to the last part of this question is No. It has not 
been evolved differently. As regards " the upper and lower globes 
being connecting or transition-globes ", I presume the Comrade 
who sent this question in meant the uppermost and lowest ; in 
other words, Number i, and our Earth. They are so. The rest 
of the question has already been answered. The evolving entities 
are ever travelling, either lower or higher ; and this is very truly 
connected in one direction very straitly with the " Mystery of the 
Moon " ; but this is a subject which, for us at least, is and must 
remain absolutely " tabu " for the present. 
 
I will in a few moments draw a diagram which will illustrate the 
question of the 6 and 4, or 7 and 3. Meanwhile, we will go on to the 
next question. 
 
" The moon must also have had twelve globes/' 
 
It did. 
 
" Are possibly our present globes the ones which held this position 
for the moon ? " 
 
They are, yes, in a sense ; not the actual present globes of our 
Chain, but their " privations ", as Aristotle would have said. 
That is to say, those spiritual-astral remnants or types or images 
which the lunar globes became when they went into pralaya, do 
reappear again when the new Planetary Chain comes into being, 
and around them is formed, as around a model, the 12 globes of 
the Earth-Chain. The answer, then, is both Yes and No ; the 
12 globes of the Moon that were, come out of " privation " as 
types or models for the 12 globes of the new Chain to be the 
Earth-Chain. 
 
" And those now above us the ones we shall next use, climbing as 
does the nautilus, who ' left the past year's dwelling for the new ' ? " 
 
I do not fully, perhaps, understand this part of the question ; 
because, obviously, we shall use next all the globes on the 
Ascending Arc, and of course we shall climb. Unless, indeed, the 
 
 
 
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Comrade means", perhaps, three of the five hid globes, the three on 
the Ascending Arc ; in which the answer is the same, Yes. 
 
Now with regard to the 6 and 4, or 7 and 3. Perhaps I might 
point out that it is quite possible theoretically to divide these 
ten principles of man or Nature in various ways. I have never 
heard, however, of a division into 6 and 4. I do not see why it 
could not be so divided ; but I have never heard of such a 
division ; and, to follow the old saying, " We have not so received 
it, and we cannot so impart it " in substance, an old Buddhist 
saying. But the division into seven and three is a natural 
division. There is a sharp separation between the divine worlds 
and the worlds of manifestation, and this division into 7 and 3 
shows it. But the best two divisions that I have ever heard of, 
or seen, of the seven and ten principles, are this, and one other as 
I shall now show in the following diagram : 
 
 
 
 
 
DIAGRAM T. 
 
 
 


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Here we have an upper triangle (this diagram is a symbol, please 
understand, a symbolic diagram) : a triangle with its " horn " 
pointing upwards ; then an intermediate square below it ; and 
then a triangle with its " horn " pointing downwards : these three 
figures shoVing the ten innate or natural principles of man : The 
Divine Triad ; the Intermediate Quaternary, showing the 
personal or individual entity as a composite and complete 
" man " ; afid the lower triangle with its " horn ", if you like, 
pointing downwards. 
 
Now this is a very general diagram, but it does show how the 
 
 
 
 
fionacf 
 
 
 
\ Individual or* 
\Spir itua/ Ego 
 
 
 
Manas 
 
 
 
Baddhi 
Kama: Persona/ Ego 
 
 
 
 
DIAGRAM II; 
 
ten element-principles function : the Divine, the purely Material, 
and the intermediate Quaternary. But for practical purposes, 
I think the best way is to divide the ten principles of Man as 
shown by Diagram II : First, of course, is the upper or Divine 
Triangle, a figure which goes without saying. Then we divide the 
Intermediate Quaternary, as already shown, into two Duads (I am 
going to give here the most practical illustration that I have ever 
heard of), and we now draw them as here shown in this second 
diagram. Please remember that this composite drawing is a 
symbolic diagram used merely for purposes of illustration. Here, 
then, we have as before, the Divine Triad above ; then the Duad 
of the Monad, so to say, Atma-Buddhi. Then the second or 
 
2M 
 
 
 
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personal or astral duad, which is Manas and Kama. Then below 
is the inverted triangle representative of the mere vehicle, the 
body that is to say, the Sthtila-Sarira and the Linga-Sarira 
and the Pranas. The value of this division is, that if you study 
it, it will most admirably illustrate what happens to man post- 
mortem, or after death. This intermediate quaternary, as shown, 
can be divided, as said, into these two duads, which separate 
naturally after death. They can be separated even in life, 
without a man's killing himself. When a man dies, the lower 
triangle disperses, simply goes to pieces. The psychological 
struggle after death, when the " second death " ensues, takes 
place between this lower duad, Kama and Manas, or Kama- 
Manas, and the Monad, Atma-Buddhi ; and if the upper Duad, 
Atma-Buddhi, succeeds in taking out from this lower duad all 
that is of good in it, then the reincarnating ego has its stock of 
experience increased, and its incarnation has not then been a 
failure. 
 
The lower duad likewise is mortal, and finally goes to pieces ; 
but the Monad, the upper Duad, is at last indrawn into the 
Divine Triangle, into the three highest of the ten principles of 
man, and there it passes its post-mortem experience, whether it be 
Devachan for the ego of ordinary men or Nirvana for the Initiates. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLVII
 
TE/CHER AND PUPIL. REQUISITES OF CHELASHIP. 
 
" i. To the earnest Disciple his Teacher takes the place of Father and Mother, 
for, whereas they gave him his body and its faculties, its life and casual form, the 
Teacher shows him how to develop the inner faculties for the acquisition of the 
Eternal Wisdom. 
 
" 2 9 To the Disciple each Fellow-Disciple becomes a Brother and Sister, a 
portion of himself, for his interests and aspirations are theirs, his welfare inter- 
woven with theirs, his progress helped or hindered by their intelligence, morality, 
and behaviour, through the intimacy brought about by their co-discipleship" 
 
From the Book of Discipline in the Schools of " Dzyan." 
Given by H. P. BLAVATSKY to her pupils. 
 
The WISE ONES tarry not in pleasure-grounds of senses. 
 
The WISE ONES heed not the sweet-tongued voices of illusion. 
 
Seek for him who is to give thee birth in the Hall of Wisdom, the Hall which 
lies beyond, wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light of truth 
shines with unfading glory. 
 
That which is uncreate abides in thee, Disciple, as it abides in that Hall. If 
thou wouldst reach it and blend the two, thou must divest thyself of thy dark 
garments of illusion. 
 
Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become that Path itself. 
The Voice of the Silence (H. P. BLAVATSKY). 
 
" Upadhyaya, the choice is made, I thirst for Wisdom. . . . Thy servant here 
is ready for thy guidance." 
 
' Tis well, Sravaka, Prepare thyself, for thou wilt have to travel on alone. 
The Teacher can but point the way. The Path is one for all, the means to reach 
the goal must vary with the Pilgrims. 
 
Ibid., " The Seven Portals." 
 
WE are going to interrupt the regular course of our 
studies tonight in order to take up a subject which 
undoubtedly is very dear to the hearts of all of us, and 
upon which we have touched more or less briefly at 
different times : that is to say the subject of the relationship 
between Teacher and pupil, between what the old Hindus called 
the Guru and the chela ; We are going to treat it from the stand- 
point of our own Order, of course ; not as that relationship has 
been all too often misunderstood in different countries and at 
different times in those periods which Plato called periods of 
" spiritual barrenness ". Our age is one of such periods ; or, 
perhaps better, is just emerging from one; and you all remember, 
doubtless, how in one of the most beautiful of the ancient Hindu 
writings, the " Bhagavad-Gita ", the Logos Krishna states that at 
such periods He incarnates anew in order to save and establish 
the just and to overthrow the unjust and the wicked for the 
re-establishment of righteousness on earth. 
Now this relationship is an extremely sacred one, because it is 
 
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a tie which binds closely heart to heart, mind to mind ; and, 
according to the beautiful teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, the 
preceptor, the Teacher, the Guru, the Master call him or her by 
what name you will acts as the midwife, bringing to birth, 
helping to bring into the active life of the disciple, the hid part 
of the disciple, the soul of the man. You remember that Socrates 
always refused to hear himself called a Teacher in the ordinary 
sense. But he said : "I am a midwife to young men, because 
I bring their souls to birth. I help the inner being, the inner man, 
to express himself ". And this is exactly the spiritual relation 
that the Teacher holds to the disciples, to the pupils, to the 
chelas, the learners, the hearers call them by what name 
you will. 
 
The idea is, again, that the latent spiritual potencies in the 
mind and heart of the learner shall receive such assistance as the 
Teacher can give, but it does not mean that the Teacher shall do all 
the work that the disciple himself or herself must do. No child 
can be taught to walk merely by seeing its parents walk ; and no 
parent can eat for its child, or drink for its child, or learn for its 
child. The child must do these things itself. You may remember 
that H. P. Blavatsky frequently points out that, according to the 
old teachings, the relationship of Teacher and disciple is infinitely 
more sacred even than that of parent and child ; because, while 
the parents give the body to the incoming soul, the Teacher brings 
forth that soul itself and teaches it to see, and teaches it to know, 
and teaches it to become what it is in its inmost being that is, a 
divine thing. 
 
Now we pointed out at our last meeting that the so-called chela- 
life, or chela-path, was a beautiful one, full of joy to its very end ; 
but also, as a warning, lest such an idea be taken in a light or 
frivolous manner, in a manner not sufficiently deeply understood, 
we endeavored also to point out that it called forth and needed 
everything noble and high in the learner or disciple himself or 
herself ; for the powers or faculties of the Higher Self must be 
brought into activity in order to attain and to hold those summits 
of intellectual and spiritual grandeur where our Masters them- 
selves live. For that, Masterhood, is the end of discipleship ; 
not, however, that this ideal should be set before us merely as an 
end to attain to as something of benefit for one's own self ; because 
that very thought is a selfish one and therefore a stumbling in 
the Path. It is for the individual's benefit, of course ; yet the 
true idea is that everything and every faculty that is in the man 
or the woman, in the soul of either, shall be brought out in the 
service of all Humanity ; for this is the Royal Road, the great 
Royal Thoroughfare of self-conquest. It actually is far easier to 
follow than is the path of Self, the Road of Shadows. And, as 
 
 
 


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we have often said before, the Path of Light, of Self-Conquest and 
Growth, leads to the very Heart of Being, to the very Heart of 
the Universe ; because, as the inner faculties develop, as they 
grow and xpand under the inspiriting rays of the inner spiritual 
sun, they receive and comprehend new knowledges, take wider 
and vaster insights into the Secret Chambers of Mother Nature. 
Each new insight, each intuition of great things, in its turn opens, 
as it were, new doors into Chambers still more vast. The mind 
undertakes first to understand ; and, finally, knows through 
immediate perception the realities of the universe ; and this is 
Masterhood ; and beyond those great Teachers, beyond the 
Masters themselves, are still Greater Ones who follow a Path still 
more sublime ! 
 
But every footstep along that path is a footstep now please 
listen carefully and do not judge before you hear the end 
is a footstep of self-sacrifice sacrifice joyfully made of the lower 
self's egoisms ; the noblest, the most joyful, the most beautiful 
thing in the world, because it is the giving up at each such step 
of the shackles of the lower or inferior self with its multitudinous 
limitations, in order to pass into a greater light. Co-operation 
with others in the Great Work in that noble sense and we mean 
by the use of that word, no modern political shibboleth what- 
soever the mental and spiritual co-operation not merely 
between Teacher and disciple, but between the disciples them- 
selves, and all the hosts of the spiritual beings of the universe, can 
come only when the lower selfish self is utterly forgotten ; and it 
comes in exact proportion as this inferior self, our personal ego, 
is so forgotten, and the Higher Self takes over the reins of our 
destiny. 
 
What is our greatest limitation ? What is it that prevents us 
from seeing not merely truth itself, but also into futurity and 
into the past ? What prevents us from knowing the secrets of 
Being ? It is the veils enshrouding the personal self, the con- 
centration of our thoughts and ideas around the individual, 
around the personal, egoic center. We clasp these veils to our 
breast and thereby weave around us a web of maya or illusion, 
because we wish for personal benefits, and will them, and want 
them for the lower selfish self. 
 
The real process of growth is the exact reverse of this. It is 
the casting down of these idols of the personality, the throwing 
away of these inner veils, so that, as often said, the light may 
come in, that light and that peace, which latter, in the beautiful 
words of the Christian ritual, " passeth all understanding of men ". 
 
What are some of the requisites of chelaship ? First, perhaps, 
Devotion, devotion to an ideal. Have first the ideal, then be 
devoted to it, follow it always. It will require your will fully in 
 
 
 
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exercise, the spiritual will. Coincidently, perhaps, comes Duty. 
Ask any man or woman who sincerely has tried to follow this 
Path, whether Duty be such an easy thing, and he will tell you 
truly that there is nothing like the right performance of duty, 
which brings into the soul such indescribable peace* and rest. 
Think of what it means to have nothing behind you to undo, no 
mistakes of the personality which have to be remedied, rectified ! 
And this can be done, and easily done. It can be accomplished 
by following that " still old path ", as the HindA Upanishads put 
it, which leads into the haven of eternal joy, eternal peace," and 
to that enwrapping consciousness of universal presences and 
processes which to the nobler side of the intellect is supreme bliss. 
 
Coincidently again with these two, is the noble virtue of 
Loyalty. Can any man succeed in anything unless he be true ? 
Fancy a man undertaking a noble work and being told to trust 
neither himself nor his fellows ! How is it possible to succeed 
with one's own nature running in diverse directions, his very 
heart-strings pulled here and there, hither and yon, by the 
conflict of selfish desires and by the petty egoisms of his person- 
ality ? It cannot be done. 
 
These principles of chelaship rest on no vague or uncertain 
foundation, but on the vast experiences of the human race, which 
any man or woman can prove by looking within, looking into those 
founts of spiritual life, crystal clear and pellucid as the water 
of the mountain tarn : where he may see, as in the beautiful old 
Mythos of Narcissus, his own reflexion, the reflexion of his own 
Divine Self. That can never be done when and as long as the 
mind is covered with the dust of its enshrouding veils. It is the 
dust of selfish actions, the cravings of these petty egoisms, the 
disturbed and untranquil surface of the mind blown upon by the 
windy gusts of passion, which unfit it utterly to reflect the Higher 
Self the Companion of Stars. That which reflects the stars, 
itself must be in a sense starlike ; and only that which is starlike 
in the soul can understand the lessons of the stars. 
 
So far, then, as regards the Teaching^ But how about the 
Teacher ? What man would go upon a ship captained by another 
man in whom he had no confidence at all ? What man would 
step into an automobile driven by another man whom he knew 
to be drunken ? A trite simile, but a very true one, and directly 
applicable to the case in point. Where, then, shall we find these 
Teachers, those in whom we can place such trust ? We can, 
indeed, learn something from the books, the great scriptures of the 
old-time religions, written by great initiates. We can learn much 
even from their surface-meanings ; but there is a key which 
unlocks still deeper meanings in those scriptures, and that key 
can be imparted alone by one who knows, a Teacher. 
 
 
 


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Now where shall we find such a Teacher ? A momentous 
question, one, probably, that is asked, would be asked, rather, by 
any outsider who might hear us speaking as we do. The Insignia 
Majestatis, the signs of spiritual majesty, cannot be mistaken ! 
Have thent in your own heart , and you will know them when you see 
them. % And you can have them in your own heart : and how ? 
Simply follow the noble old rules of conduct. Live as ye should, 
and ye shall know the Truth, because ye shall see it ; and, as our 
Teachers add, it will come to you naturally ; and you will know 
the Teacher when you see him or her, and you will also know 
better than to judge a Teacher by superficial appearances, by the 
words of the day, the day's mere exercises and duties ; but, 
having that Light in your own heart, at least in some degree, you 
will perceive the kindred rays in the heart of the Teacher, and 
know him. 
 
Therein lies the meaning of the beautiful saying, ascribed 
to Jesus : " I am the Way and the Truth and the Life ", and it is 
truly so, because no disciple, no man or woman desirous of 
leading a better and a nobler life, can put his foot on that Path 
until he or she himself or herself becomes it, at least in some 
degree. 
 
You know that in olden times there were seven (and ten) 
degrees of initiation. Let us speak only of the seven. Of these 
seven degrees, three consisted of teachings alone, which formed 
the preparation, the discipline, mental and spiritual and psychic 
and physical ; what the Greeks called the Katharsis or Clean- 
sing ; and when the disciple was considered sufficiently cleansed, 
purified, disciplined, quiet mentally, tranquil spiritually, then he 
was taken into the fourth degree ; and this fourth degree likewise 
consisted partly of teachings, but also, as we have pointed out 
before, in part of direct personal introduction, by the old mystical 
processes, into the processes of the universe, by which Truth was 
gained by first-hand personal experience. In other words, to 
speak in plain terms, his spirit-soul, his individual consciousness, 
was assisted to pass into other planes and realms of being, and to 
know and to understand by the process of becoming them. Because 
a man, a mind, an understanding, can grasp and see and thereby 
know only those things which it itself is. 
 
Think over those words, they are full of meaning and truth. 
You can understand nothing that is not in you, nothing. No 
man, for instance, who is deprived of the mathematical faculty 
can understand even the mere elements of mathematics. Having 
this mathematical faculty within himself he understands some- 
thing of the meaning of the rules of mathematics. No man can 
understand what right action is, what devotion and duty and 
loyalty are, unless he has at least something in his own soul of 
 
 
 
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devotion and duty and loyalty ; and the more he knows of these 
beautiful qualities the more he loves them, the more he wishes to 
follow them ; and in following them, following them always farther 
on, he loves them the more and the more. These truths living 
in you, lead you finally to a complete understanding of the hearts 
of your fellow-men ; giving you an ability to read their cjiarac- 
ters, an ability to understand the woes and troubles that they 
carry ; and the power as well as the ability, and the desire as 
well as the power and the ability, to replace those sorrows and 
egoisms in the hearts of men with joy and peace and love* and 
goodwill. 
 
That is the noble work that is before us ; and that is the 
work of the Masters themselves. You may remember that 
when Mr. Sinnett was in correspondence, through H. P. Blavatsky 
and two or three more of the chelas, with the Masters, he was told 
plainly that the last truths, even of the limited sphere of esoteric 
knowledge that it was permissible to give to him, could not be 
imparted to him, because, as he himself confesses, he had no right 
comprehension of the meaning of Universal Brotherhood, and no 
love for that noble truth. Apparently, his utmost understanding 
of that sublime truth was a form of sentimental unity, or merely 
a political co-operation. He had, apparently, no sense of the 
meaning inherent in the words, the Spiritual Brotherhood of all 
Beings, and, particularly, of the fact that all human beings are 
linked together, not merely by the bonds of emotional thought 
or feeling, but by the very fabric of the universe itself, all men, as 
well as all Beings, springing forth from the inner and spiritual 
Sun of the Universe, as its hosts of rays. We all come from one 
Source, that Spiritual Sun, and are all builded of the same life- 
atoms on all the various planes. It is this interior unity of being 
and of consciousness, as well as the exterior union of us all, 
which enables us to grasp intellectually and spiritually the 
mysteries of the universe ; because not merely ourselves and our 
own fellow human beings, but also all other things that are, are 
children of the same Parent, Great Mother-Nature, in all her 
seven and ten Planes or Worlds of Being. 
 
After the fourth Degree, there followed the fifth and the sixth 
and the seventh initiations, each in turn, and these consisted 
of teachings also ; but more and more, as the disciple progressed, 
was there developed in him the faculties and he was helped in 
this development more and more largely as he advanced farther 
there was developed in him the faculties, still farther and more 
deeply to penetrate beyond the veils of maya or Illusion ; until, 
having passed the seventh or last initiation of all of the " mani- 
fest " initiations, if we may call them that, he became one of 
those truly called Supermen whom we call the Mahatmans, great 
 
 
 


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soul-spirits, whose very nature is Magnanimity used here in the 
old Latin sense of Great Souled-ness a Latin word meaning 
exactly what Mahdtmaship does in the Sanskrit. 
 
Loyalty to the Teacher, Devotion to the Teacher, the complete 
fulfilling 'of all Duties to the Teacher, is the other side of this 
subject. Devotion, Duty, and Loyalty to Truth and its behests, 
on the one side : unfailing, unchanging, never varying ; and 
the same Virtues living in our souls towards the Teacher whom 
we have chosen, is the other side ; because that Teacher has 
given us inner light ; yea, more, has given us inner life, inner 
life in a very real and practical sense, and not merely in a mystical 
one ; because, by the processes of the ancient Schools, such a 
Teacher is enabled to carry the disciple, if uninterrupted in his 
studies, even over the gulf of what men call physical death ; is 
enabled so to awaken the dormant powers of the spirit-soul in him 
that they function as it were automatically. The giver of inner 
Light and the giver of inner Life : such is the Teacher. How 
rarely is this recognised or even known in the Occident today. 
This explains in part why the egoistic and so-called individualistic 
Occidental, self-satisfied in his blind folly, hurls against the 
devotion of Teacher and Pupil of the ancient Eastern schools, 
the devotion of the disciples to their Teacher and of the latter to 
them, such unkindly and insulting epithets, calling such devotion 
mental servitude, calling it mental subservience, speaking of it 
in terms of mockery, proving, as said before, that the critic 
understands it not, because that noble virtue is not in his own 
soul in the sense we mean. How great and far-reaching is his 
spiritual loss ! 
 
There is something so beautiful in Devotion and Loyalty and 
Duty, faithfully carried out, that all nations of men, in all times 
and in all countries, have placed those three qualities of the soul 
in the very forefront of manly virtues and of womanly virtues. 
I venture to say that if we follow these three noble virtues faith- 
fully, undismayed by the many mistakes that we may make, and 
our courage never dampened by the falls that we may have, but 
always rising again t*o the battle I venture to say that as time 
goes on, easier and easier, smoother and smoother, will become 
for us the Path of Wisdom and Peace, and ever more joyful. 
 
Fidelity is comprised in these things. Semper Fidelis, runs 
the beautiful Latin motto, Always Faithful ! What loveliness of 
thought there is in this ! What man or woman can fail to despise 
the weakness in the weakling, the unfaithfulness in the unfaithful 
one ! Indeed, such moral obliquity is a human characteristic ; 
even the beasts have it not. Show me an unfaithful beast ! 
It is only in us men that this petty vileness has its existence. And 
what can we learn from this little fact ? Simply this : that we 
 
 
 
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have, in additidn to the innate love of the beast for its master, 
the divine gift of self-conscious intellection ; and in too many of 
us it is weakly allowed to remain uncultivated and undeveloped ; 
so that we have but two or three feeble glimmerings or rays from 
the Spiritual Sun, so to say. And these two or three* or more 
feeble glimmerings are just enough to put " sin ", to usp the 
old word, into our hearts. They are just enough to make us see 
and realize our self-importance, but not enough to nlake us see 
the Truth and our inherent spiritual Brotherhood ; and here is 
where the human being fails and falls the so-called " Secret of 
Satan ". 
 
What, then, is the remedy ? More light. What is the remedy 
for folly ? Wisdom. What is the remedy for ignorance ? More 
knowledge. With more light, with the flooding of the inner 
nature by the rays of the Spiritual Sun within, these feeble 
glimmerings and rays grow and expand, until finally the whole 
inner nature is deluged with this wonderful Inner Light that the 
Mystics of all ages have talked of; and then unfaithfulness 
becomes impossible, utterly impossible. No man will sit down, 
child-like, and spend his time casting up sums in simple addition 
" two and two make four ". He has passed that childish stage. 
He goes to higher things ; and he looks upon the unfaithfulnesses 
and the failings of his less developed brothers with compassion 
if not with condemnation of the weakling himself. These weaklings 
are precisely like little children with their small sums in arith- 
metic. They are precisely like mentally undeveloped people. 
They have only a few poor glimmerings or rays in them of that 
glorious Luminary within. Who wants to be of these ? Surely, 
neither you nor I ! 
 
Now there is the actual psychologic fact. It is not a trope, 
or figure of speech ; it is not a metaphor. That is what the crimi- 
nal is in his inner nature : I mean the really criminal man or 
woman he or she who chooses evil-doing from love of it. That 
is what the poorly developed man has in him : just these poor 
feeble glimmerings of the inner Sun, which are all that reach his 
undeveloped mind : just enough to make him see something, 
and to recognise, as he thinks, his own self-importance. But 
when the Greater Light, when the flooding, the deluging, of the 
inner nature with the larger illumination comes, then we see that 
all there is of us, in the sense of this petty self, is but a reflexion 
of something nobler ; and all our natures, our entire natures, are 
opened, when that realization comes, to an alliance with this 
inner and higher and nobler Self, the Spiritual Sun of our inner 
being. 
 
 
 
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CHAPTER XLVIII
 
THE HEARf OF THE UNIVERSE. THE WAY TO PEACE, BLISS, UNDER- 
STANDING, IS WITHIN. THE GREAT QUEST : KNOW THYSELF I 
THE WHOLE SECRET OF INITIATION. OUR RESPONSIBILITY I 
ETHICAL VALUES AND THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE : HARMONY. 
 
There is a road, steep and thorny, and beset with perils of every kind, but yet 
a road, and it leads to the heart of the Universe. I can tell you how to find 
Those who will show you the secret gateway that leads inward only, and closes 
fast behind the neophyte for evermore. There is no danger that dauntless courage 
cannot conquer ; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through ; 
there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount. For those who win 
onward, there is reward past all telling : the power to bless and serve humanity. 
For those who fail, there are other lives in which success may come. 
 
H. P. BLAVATSKY. 
 
The ancient narrow path that stretches far away 
Has been touched by me, has been found by me. 
By it the wise, the knowers of Brahma, go up 
Hence to the heavenly world, released. 
 
Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad [-4.4.8]. 
 
The way to final freedom is within thy SELF. 
That way begins and ends outside of Self. 
 
The Voice of the Silence, " The Two Paths " (H. P. BLAVATSKY). 
 
The great secret is Sympathy for the souls of men, the Will to press forward 
to that which is True. KATHERINE TINGLEY. 
 
THIS evening's call for a resumption of our esoteric 
studies was in one sense unexpected ; and with the 
Teacher's permission, instead of following the thread 
of our discourses where they were left off at our last 
meeting, I am going to ask you to come, all of us together in 
thought and in spirit, into an atmosphere of magical beauty, into 
an atmosphere where the roots of our being live, and whence is 
drawn the sustenance, both spiritual and intellectual, from which 
the intermediate nature of man, and also man as he appears in 
the everyday affairs of life, finds its nourishment, its guidance, 
and its direction, and all the finer things which make man man. 
In this spiritual and intellectual atmosphere, I refer first to 
some elementary propositions of the Ancient Wisdom which we 
all know by heart, and the first of which is that all men, in their 
inmost spiritual essence, are not merely in kinship, but in an utter 
and inseparable union. This does not mean that the hosts of 
Monads who are the spiritual portions of men, one Monad to one 
 
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man, are but one Monad ; but, as you all must know, it means 
that the Monads themselves also have a spiritual side, and that 
that spiritual side or nature of each one has its roots, finds its 
ultimate fountain of being, in the transcendent Divine in which, 
speaking in general terms, we live and move and have our being. 
 
Therefore through each Monad, if we so will it, run the streams 
of intellectual omniscence, which streams are transmitted to us 
men even through the beclouded veils of the intermediate nature ; 
for we derive both that spiritual life and that intellectual om- 
niscience : in other words, bliss and pure consciousness and ptire 
understanding : from the Divine which is at the heart or core of 
every man and of every woman ; yes, and also at the heart and 
the core of the beings beneath us, though they as yet have not 
evolved the sensitive vehicle which can translate those sublime 
and supernal mysteries into comprehensible thought-form through 
their lack of the necessary organ of thought which in them has 
not yet expressed itself as a self-conscious faculty. 
 
The human beings above us, I mean those who are the chelas 
of the Teachers, and the Teachers themselves, and the Teachers 
of the Teachers, are each one respectively a stage nearer than 
the preceding class to that Divine, a degree or a step higher in 
the Buddhic Hierarchy, in the Hierarchy of Compassion, of which 
we have so often spoken before in these meetings under the 
Teacher's direction. 
 
Let us recollect that we are the outmost rank or ring of that 
Buddhic Hierarchy of Compassion, and it depends upon each one 
of us, not only upon the life that we live, but upon the ideas that 
we hold inshrined in our minds and in our hearts, to how great a 
degree we may become faithful transmitters and manifestors of 
the divine streams from that supernal source. When we can 
transmit these in their native crystalline purity, when our minds 
become transmitters so limpid and clear, so high in their aspira- 
tions and so unadulterate in their natures that we can consciously 
receive and pass on these life-giving streams, the streams of 
understanding from the fountain of the JJniversal Life, then 
indeed we are saviors of men, saviors of our fellows ; and this is 
the goal to which our Teachers call us ; this is the end and purpose 
of our meetings here in this our Temple of Peace in esoteric 
conclave, in order that, heart to heart and mind to mind, we 
may draw closer together in bonds of more strict and more 
stringent fraternal union, not merely welcoming with arms out- 
stretched and with the ancient kiss of brotherhood the new- 
comers into our ranks, but by giving them an example of what we 
have had the opportunity ourselves to obtain. Thus are we 
exemplars of the lessons we have learned here and through our 
aspirations and meditations in private ; and thereby we begin 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 537
 
that noblest of duties, the saving of our fellows through our own 
individual subordination to the laws of our Order and Universal 
Brotherhood. 
 
For after all, is not this aim the one which the Teachers have 
told us is the life-work of themselves, and should be the life-work 
of us at the present time, their chelas farthest from them ? It is. 
In some countries they speak of a Christ ; in other countries they 
speak of a Buddha ; elsewhere they speak of one who has found 
the Way, the Path, who has found Tao. And in each case the 
reference is to one who has so completely subordinated his 
individuality to the universe that he thereby becomes the faithful 
transmitter of the spiritual life of which we have spoken. 
 
All these various names and titles mean the same thing. What 
is this meaning ? It is that the mind and the heart, the under- 
standing and the consciousness, and therefore the example and 
the life, are all at one, all in unity working along the same path- 
way leading to the sublime goal at which we have hinted ; and 
this life so led brings not only to the heart of each one of us a 
peace and a joy which pass all ordinary human understanding, 
but it likewise enables us to give that peace and that joy to others. 
 
It is through and by the lessons that we learn in our daily life 
that come to us the opportunities of setting our feet upon this 
pathway. As all of us know, who have been many years in the 
work of the Theosophical Movement, under our three Teachers, 
H. P. Blavatsky, and W. Q. Judge, and Katherine Tingley, the 
noblest aim that we can have is to fit ourselves for this life-work. 
Now, how is it done ? Is it by looking for mere mysteries and 
for weird tests and expected trials ? What kind of a test or trial 
should such be, at a time when one is wrought up to a pitch of 
exaltation and high expectation so that in a certain sense he is 
temporarily abnormal and therefore has a transitory, but never- 
theless an abnormal strength to meet such tests or trials. Such 
would hardly be tests or trials at all and hence would be of very 
little profit and very little worth. The testing comes in the 
affairs of life that concern us daily, in the duties which we perform 
faithfully or perhaps unfaithfully, in never leaving the ranks 
for personal or selfish purposes ; for here we are tested in every 
part of our being, and at every moment, and in the most un- 
expected and most unforeseen places, and at the most unexpected 
and most unforeseen times. 
 
Our rejoicing passe th all ordinary comprehension when a 
Comrade, through long and faithful service and unswerving 
devotion which leads to inner development, which takes him far 
along the path, follows that still small path which leadeth to the 
Heart of the Universe ; for we feel that what he then has attained 
we also may attain and should attain and must ultimately attain 
 
 
 
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if we do as he did ; it is a matter for joy to all of us when this 
happens. And then standing more closely shoulder to shoulder, 
we try by our united efforts to fill the vacancy that he has left 
until another Comrade joins our ranks for this wonderful Work. 
 
I have just spoken of the pathway which leadeth to tiie Heart 
of the Universe. Now what is that Heart ? Is it " God " ? What 
god can we conceive of which is not, after all, the noblest figuration 
of our own imagination ? Nay ; such a god after all would be 
but a name, a breath, and nothing more, for it is a conception 
originating in our own minds. We do not mean by the phrase, 
" The Heart of the Universe ", some divine being who after all 
is but an aggregate, a collection, a synthesized unity of the 
various individuals of the hierarchy of which it is the controlling 
head. We do not mean this, for what sense would it have since, 
as we have so often pointed out, these hierarchical heads are 
more numerous than the sands on the shores of an infinite ocean, 
for they are infinite in number ; and how should any one such be 
the Heart of the Universe ? Nay, that is not our meaning. We 
mean by the " Heart of the Universe ", that Consciousness, that 
Light, that Understanding, that Nature whose essence is bliss, 
which is the life of the universe not a personal life but an im- 
personal life, from and through which the Universe draws the 
forces which infill it, which forces are the gods, the spiritual beings, 
the playing of whose vitality we sense even through the shell of 
the physical world, and therefrom take the term so familiar to us, 
the forces working in matter. 
 
This Consciousness, this Light, this Understanding, this Nature 
whose essence is bliss, are collectively what we mean by the 
Heart of the Universe, a heart which is nowhere in particular, 
because everywhere ; called the " heart " only because it is the 
secret center in each one of us, the core of our being, and which is 
not only the source but also the passage-way, or the canal, or 
the channel, through which those supernal forces of the Divine 
do pass into us ; and, reduced to the last analysis, we are they 
and they are we, because the recondite and secret fountains of 
our being are all these things. 
 
You know the teaching of the old Eastern philosophy, the 
Vedanta of Hindusthan, which in this respect is likewise the 
teaching of the Northern Buddhism, and is also ours, to this 
effect : The universe is one vast organism, an organism which is 
composite of organisms still smaller, still more minute, not 
located in any particular place but spread throughout the spaces, 
indefinitely in all directions, and likewise inwardly and outwardly, 
in the inner worlds as well as in the outer worlds. And these are 
full of these still smaller, still more minute organisms, which in 
their aggregate form the vast organism of the cosmos. 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 539
 
I fancy that after all it is only a figure of speech to speak of 
the universe as one vast organism, for the reason that any organ- 
ism, in strict logic, must be a limited entity, and the thought 
that we are endeavoring to express is dealing with That which 
is limitless in all senses. Hence the expression " vast organism " 
is a metaphor, a trope, a manner of speech in order to express an 
idea almost too subtil and high to put in ordinary language. 
 
This vast organism of the cosmos then is an organism only by 
philosophic licence, so to say. It is an organism in the sense in 
which the human race is an organism, formed, as the latter is, 
of individuals, composite of men, men who are minuter organisms 
of the corporate body we call humanity, of men whose bodies in 
their turn are composite of entities still more minute ; and these 
entities still more minute are again composed of entities still 
smaller than they ; and so forth indefinitely. 
 
Let our minds pass in thought in the reverse direction towards 
macrocosmic spheres, and there also do we find the same law of 
unity in diversity, prevailing everywhere. We may reach in our 
imagination an ultimate point and say, This is the Universe ; 
but by a still stronger effort and looking beyond that point not 
only do we sense other universes still more remote ; but our 
instinct, our intuition, alike tell us that through these more 
distant aggregates, as through our own universe, play the same 
deific forces that we know, the same divine energies, the same 
driving urge to progress, the same call to come up higher. Having 
the same forces playing through them, their brother-universes 
or sister-universes, if you will ; and there are indefinite numbers 
of such, incomputable hosts of them, hosts visible and invisible, 
hosts without and within. So that all that we can mean, when 
using the phrase, " the universe is one vast organism ", is to carry 
our thought ever onwards and to realize that it is boundless space, 
without limitations, without frontiers, without ending-places. 
 
Let us remember, furthermore, that any such organism exists 
only in periods of its own manvantara ; for manvantara is a word 
which we may by analogy employ for both the great and the 
small. There may b a manvantara of a universe as well as a 
manvantara of an aggregate of universes ; nor does any such 
universe, nor does any such aggregate of universes, necessarily 
have its period of manvantara or its period of pralaya con- 
temporaneously with all other aggregate bodies. 
 
Let us be cautious about this. When we speak of " universal 
manvantara " we mean the manvantara of our own cosmic 
aggregate ; but another universe may be in pralaya while we are 
in manvantara ; many other universes may be in pralaya, or in 
manvantara, while we may be conversely in manvantara or 
pralaya. 
 
 
 
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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY
 
Let us be watchful over our thoughts, keeping close guard over 
our minds, for in this manner we shall never allow our mind to 
crystallize into a mere succession of phrases and thus make of the 
thought a dogma. We learn much by thus watching ourselves 
and by thus studying ourselves, and by reaching ever* inwards 
into our own spiritual natures, guided by the teaching which our 
Masters have given to us through our three leaders, as they have 
construed those teachings and interpreted them and explained 
them ; and the essence, or, so to say, the keynote of all these 
teachings is that the way to light and to life and to peace and to 
bliss and to understanding is within ourselves ; and we obtain 
these wonderful things by reaching or striving ever farther inwards, 
inwards, inwards, endlessly. For the farther we reach into 
ourselves, so to say, the farther we follow that pathway leading 
inwards, the more we become conscious of still greater things, 
still wider visions, and the pathway thus followed becomes space 
itself. 
 
Is this pathway a different path from that which leadeth out- 
wards, outwards, outwards, still farther outwards to spaces and 
cosmoi which we can intuitively sense as existing beyond the 
boundaries of our own universe ? No, it is the same path, exactly 
the same path ; it is only our mind of matter in which we of 
necessity must work on this our present period of evolution, that 
conceives of the mysteries of consciousness as occupying space, or 
as following lines of directional expansion. All these things exist 
in our consciousness, not along any material directions ; it is 
consciousness which understandeth, and consciousness is neither 
forwards nor backwards, nor to the right nor to the left, nor up 
nor down, but is. It is all things at all times, and because it is 
everywhere, it is nowhere in particular. 
 
Where then abides this consciousness which is in each one of 
us ? It is within, it is found by reaching inwards ; it is the Great 
Searching, the Great Quest ; it is the seeking the light ; it is like- 
wise the finding it ; it is seeking the life ; it is the finding of it. 
This consciousness should be sought for by turning inwards 
therefore ; yet when we say that the path is inwards, it is, 
after all, but a figure of speech ; it is a trope ; it is a metaphor ; 
it is a manner of verbal expression, in order to convey an idea, and 
we must not let our minds crystallize around a mere figure of 
speech. 
 
Do you remember when the Teacher requested me to speak 
at a former meeting here, in this our Temple of Peace, on the 
nature of the ancient initiations ; under her specific direction we 
then called your attention to the very profound truth that there 
could be no initiations unless there were the awakened conscious- 
ness in the postulant or neophyte. What is initiation ? The 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 541
 
word itself really means a beginning, the first steps of a beginner, 
and there are many beginnings. There is the beginning for the 
man of the world ; there is the beginning for the true chela ; there 
is the beginning for the Mahatman ; there is the beginning for 
his Teachfer, and so on indefinitely. It is the opening of the 
course for development of a beginner, and he who guides his 
first steps will do so with much the same care and attention that 
a mother uses in guiding and watching the first steps of her 
little one. 
 
Itis an old Oriental saying, and a very beautiful one, too, that 
the initiator is both father and mother to his disciple, and more 
even than this : because whereas the father and the mother give 
the life of the physical body, and that body itself for the purpose 
of the incoming soul, and also give the love and the care and the 
attention necessary to save the child from dangers and perils in 
our physical world : the initiator in very truth gives you your 
soul, because he awakens it for you, acquaints you with yourself, 
opens the portals of your understanding, leads you forth to 
inspect and understand the universe surrounding us and the 
mysteries which it comprises ; in brief, the Teacher, the initiator, 
leads you inwards so that you may know yourself in other 
words, as just hinted, watches over and attends to the growth 
and development of your expanding consciousness. 
 
Tvudi a-avrov, said the Greeks : " Know Thyself ", an injunction 
carved over the temple of Apollo at Delphi ; this mandate 
comprises in two words the whole secret of initiation and of the 
initiations, because it comprises the path which the expanding 
consciousness follows in its growth ; Know Thyself. 
 
" Thyself " what is it ? It is consciousness ; it is also the 
" Heart of the Universe ". Thyself, that self which is the same 
in thee and in me, in you and in all others, which is not different 
in any one of us, as compared with any other one of us. It is the 
ultimate self, the spiritual over-soul ; and therefore it is the one 
self, the Heart of the Universe ; it is the consciousness in you 
which says simply " I am ", and that same consciousness is in me 
and in all others : in the Teacher, in the chelas of the Teachers, 
in the Teachers of the Teachers, in the Silent Watcher of our 
supernal sphere that over-self is the same in all entities com- 
prised in any hierarchy. 
 
But while that over-self is the same in you, and in me, and in 
all that is, not different anywhere from what it is anywhere else ; 
yet this does not comprise all there is of us psychologically speak- 
ing. There is something else within us not different from the 
over-soul but a ray of that over-soul so to say, and this something 
else in each one of us is the individual ego : that part in each of us 
which says not merely " I am ", but " I am I ", and not you. 
 
2N 
 
 
 
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Think over this psychological mystery as it is to those who are 
not well acquainted with the Ancient Wisdom ; for truly one of 
the most wonderful mysteries of the Ancient Wisdom, of 
esotericism lies in a correct understanding of this psychological 
mystery. 
 
In order to make my meaning more clear, please remember that 
while it is a perfectly true statement that the inner nature of man 
is the seed of his individual consciousness, that consciousness is 
but a reflexion so to say, of the Universal Consciousness which 
abides in all other entities whatsoever and wheresoever they may 
be. It is quite true that we reach into this universal consciousness 
and partake of its universality by following the path leading 
inwards ; but this is not a procedure of the consciousness ; and 
the mind should not be allowed to crystallize around any idea of 
mere directional expansion. 
 
A man, by considering the starry orbs which he sees over his 
head at night, may as easily follow the path inwards as another 
man may by sitting in a corner with his attention concentrated 
on his navel or the tip of his nose, in the manner of some exoteric 
Hindu yogis, so-called. The truth is that it is an arousing of the 
consciousness to self-understanding, and to developing it towards 
the universal. 
 
Therefore, once you begin that undertaking, and once you 
begin to follow that path, you will find that mere directional 
expansions are but words. The consciousness itself will give you 
the meaning of these things, and such meaning is always away from 
the directional limitations or particularities of the material world. 
It is a growth of consciousness actually rather than a following 
of any path so-called in any particular direction. As a man's 
consciousness expands he realises that it is growing ; but he will 
probably smile if he hears one whose consciousness has not 
expanded equivalently, talking of any particular direction in 
space as being that which the pathway towards the Light follows. 
 
This relative I, this ego-self, as we have pointed out in former 
lectures, this individual I in each one of us, is not the Heart of 
the Universe ; but it is rooted in the ffeart of the Universe, 
therefore rooted in the Universal Life, in the Universal Conscious- 
ness, for it is a ray of it ; it is that part of us which, by the magic 
of evolution, by the wondrous magic which the gods work in their 
deific energies, forming and framing the cosmos as a wonderful 
web of being it is that part of us, I say, which grows from un-self- 
consciousness to self-understanding, to self-consciousness. 
 
In the vast womb of eternities past it began its career as an 
un-self-conscious god-spark ; and its destiny is to flower out in 
due course as a self-conscious god, becoming so through the 
unwrapping or unfolding or evolving of the potentialities which 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 543
 
are latent or inherent in its very nature as a spark of the universe. 
This is spiritual evolution, and can be considered as a building up 
of a god from the forces and faculties and powers inherent in its 
own self, the pouring forth of the latent or sleeping energies which 
intrinsically belong to it ; yes, a self-conscious god, as it will 
finally^ become, infilled with and by the Heart of the Universe, 
which is the Universal Self. It is the building up of a god through 
and by me^ns of the ego-self, its periodic mirror or reflexion. 
 
As our Teacher expresses it in her most beautiful invocation, 
which we regularly use in our Temple meetings : 
 
" Oh ! My Divinity ! thou dost blend with the earth and fashion for 
 
thyself temples of mighty power. 
Oh ! My Divinity ! thou livest in the heart-life of all things, and dost 
 
radiate a Golden Light that shineth forever and doth illumine even 
 
the darkest corners of the earth. 
Oh ! My Divinity ! blend thou with me that from the corruptible I may 
 
become Incorruptible ; , that from imperfection I may become 
 
Perfection ; that from darkness I may go forth in Light." 
 
The Universal Self is the Heart of the Universe, for these two 
phrases are but two manners of expressing the same thing ; it is 
the Source of our being ; it is also the Goal whither we are all 
marching, we and the hierarchies above us as well as the hier- 
archies and the entities which compose them inferior to us ; all 
come from the same Ineffable Source, the Heart of Being, the 
Universal Self, pass at one period of their evolutionary journey 
through the stage of humanity, gaining thereby self-conscious- 
ness or the ego-self, the "I am I ", and they find it, as they 
advance along this evolutionary path, expanding gradually into 
universal consciousness an expansion which never has an end, 
because the Universal Consciousness is endless, limitless, bound- 
less. 
 
Yea, in very truth, it is all a most wondrous mystery, using the 
word " mystery " here in its Greek sense of something secret and 
wonderful. We leave our deific source as un-self-conscious god- 
sparks, as I have already so expressed it, and our destiny is to 
become self-conscious *gods, thereafter taking a direct part in the 
vast Cosmic Labor. 
 
But is this the limit which we reach, thereafter to go no farther 
ahead ? Do we then reach the frontiers of consciousness-space, 
thereafter finding or discovering nothing still grander or greater 
to know or to be ? No indeed, the truth is the exact reverse of 
this. The consciousness expands gradually, and the more it 
expands the more it learns, and that expanding is timeless, outside 
of time and space. It expands forever. 
 
We have spoken of the hierarchies above us, that is to say, of 
the hosts of hierarchies who have passed through the human 
 
 
 
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stage and who are marching along their own respective evolu- 
tionary pathways towards still greater destinies ; but let us not 
forget that beneath us there are other hosts of hierarchies 
composed of lives innumerable, uncounted hosts of them, trailing 
after us, consciously or unconsciously looking up to 'us as we 
look up to those who have preceded us, even as we have /trailed 
after, in former manvantaras, them who are now ahead of us, 
whom we look up to as gods or spiritual beings, or', to use our 
own beloved Theosophical term, adopted from Buddhism, Dhyan- 
Chohans. 
 
Of the hosts of these small and inferior entities who are trailing 
after us, one portion of them is comprised in the multitude of 
minute, even infinitesimal, lives which compose our bodies : that 
is to say the physical body, the astral body, the mental body, the 
intellectual body, and the spiritual body, which aggregate hosts 
composing these respective bodies, being of different grades or in 
different stages in evolution, and each such host furthermore 
interlocking with each other and with all others, and with 
different hierarchies of the world around us all the hierarchies 
composing these various bodies of man's septenary constitution, 
together form the composite unity through which man's inmost 
self works, because in them, in another sense than that used by 
Paul of the Christians, we live and move and have our inferior 
being. 
 
What is this inmost self ? I have already said what it is this 
evening, and on many another occasion here in this Temple. It 
is that part of us by which we conjoin with the heart of the 
universe in very truth it is the Heart of the Universe itself, 
limited only by the individualized expression of our spiritual 
nature ; and this spiritual nature itself is the source of our ego. 
 
Let us try briefly this evening once more to sketch the con- 
struction or rather, perhaps, constitution of our inner nature, and 
I select us men as examples because we have developed up to the 
point where self-consciousness is beginning to manifest itself ; 
and thereby we may illustrate more clearly and more easily how 
evolution proceeds. 
 
First, then, is the Universal Self, the Heart of Being, which is 
the same in all of us. This universal self pours out its energies 
through the highest in man's constitution, which in each one of 
us is the Monad, our inner spiritual god. The Monad working 
through the various spheres, builds up man's intermediate nature, 
which is the ego-self; and this ego-self, as its consciousness 
expands away from personality and limitations towards univer- 
sality spontaneously enters upon greater and ever greater spheres 
of life and activity, until this ego becomes in its turn a fully self- 
conscious expression of its inspiriting Monad, which is but another 
 
 
 


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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 545
 
way of saying that it re-becomes that Monad itself, plus the 
experiences that the ego has acquired from absorbing the aroma 
of the various lives which it has had. 
 
When the ego has thus re-become Monadic, in other words has 
become a Monad itself its own inspiriting Monad meanwhile 
having itself advanced to spheres of life and activity still more 
sublime than it formerly had the ego-Monad then assumes a 
cosmic nature, and in its turn evolves an intermediate self or 
intermediate selves, which works or which work through our 
lowr natures, helping thereby the lives beneath us and in us, 
in whom we live and move and have our inferior being, as I 
have already said. It is through these inferior lives composing 
our intermediate or lower natures that the ego-self finds its fields 
of self-expression ; and when it finally becomes an egoic Monad, 
it becomes to the hosts of lives on these intermediate and lower 
spheres their divine over-soul, the Hierarch of their Hierarchy. 
 
Thus then, as a parting thought, Comrades, let us realize the 
responsibility spiritual, mental, psychical, emotional, astral, 
and physical which is ours. And when I say " ours " I mean 
ours as self-conscious beings, egos. We are responsible for what 
these intermediate and lower lives undergo to a very large extent ; 
we realize that as we impress them, so will they self-express 
themselves, until they have attained self-consciousness in their 
turn ; we realize that we give them the initial impetus towards 
evolutionary unfolding, and that as we set their faces so to say, 
so will they travel the path. 
 
We realize, finally, that ethical values are in human life, and 
in the connexions that I have just hinted at what the laws of the 
universe are in the cosmos. Both signify harmony ; both signify 
consistency in action ; both signify an identic source ; and both 
point to the fact that both we and they, these lower entities, are 
treading the path which they who have gone before us have 
trodden. As I have said before, this treading of the path is a 
growth of consciousness, it is an expansion of the conscious under- 
standing ; and hence it is that these entities ahead of us are where 
they are, because, having trodden that path, they have come to 
know. 
 
The Buddhists have a most beautiful expression to illustrate 
this fact of the common nature of those who have gone before 
ourselves, and those who are coming after us. They speak of a 
Buddha as one who is a Tathagata, a Sanskrit expression com- 
pounded of two words meaning either " thus come " or " thus 
gone ", for the Sanskrit is susceptible of either translation ; but 
the meaning is identical, signifying one who has followed the 
inward way, the inner pathway, the still small path coming down, 
so to say, from the Universal Self, passing through the human 
 
 
 
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constitution onward until it disappears again in the heart of 
being from which we came. 
 
All of you are that pathway. I mean that each one of you men 
and women is for yourself that pathway ; there is no other for 
any one of you, because it is yourself travelling along tlie path of 
understanding consciousness, and reaching ultimately its ^evolu- 
tionary goal, when you become a God. 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
Absolute, defyiition of, 151-2 
 
evolution of the, 154 
 
-matter, 192, 204 
 
Sa,t, Chit, Ananda, 157 
 
-self, 192 
 
the, 204 
Addm, 85, 188 
Addm-Qadmdn, 31, 69 
Adhibhuta, defined, 270 
Adhidaivata, denned, 270 
Adhydtman, denned, 270 
Adi-Buddha, 198-9, 234 
Adi-Buddhi, 351 
 
Swabhavat, 164 
Adi-tattwa, 298, 350-1 
JEschylus, 216 
Akdsa, 497-8 
 
Swabhavat, 164 
Akdsa-tattwa, 350-1-2 
Amrita-Yana, the right-hand path, 156, 
 
.158 
 
Ancient Mysteries, 38 
Angels, " fallen ", 126 
 
hierarchy of, 67-8 
Animal, definition of, 63 
 
man is an, 199 
Animals, planets are, 63 
Annihilation, of kama-rupa, 187 
 
of " lost souls ", 184, 186, 195 
Anupapddaha-tattwa, 297, 350-1 
Apas-tattwa, 350, 353 
Apollonius of Tyana, 221, 237, 241, 266 
Apostolic Succession, 244, 246 
Aquinas, Thomas, 58, 420 
Arc, downward, acceleration of de- 
velopment on, 520 
 
Shadowy and Luminous, 90, 92, in, 
 
296, 332, 350 
Astrology, ancient and n^odern, 207, 
 
224, 486 
 
Atheism denned, 436 
Atlantean Race, 296 
Atlantis, sinking of, 304 
Atma-Buddhi, 166 
Atma-Vidyd, self-knowledge, 262 
 
the seventh " Jewel ", 162, 179 
Atman, a trinity, 257 
 
a universal principle, 268 
 
our, belongs to Fourth Kosmic 
Plane, 393 
 
our link with the Unutterable, 2 
 
root of our selfhood, 64-5 
Atom, adventures of an, 489 
 
bearer of lives, 196, 301 
 
 
 
Atom, boundless Kosmos latent in 
every, 393 
 
definition of, 316, 324-5 
 
its own Logos, 205 
 
Kosmic, 439 
 
Life-, 462, 492-3 
 
miniature Solar System, 300, 319 
 
Science and the, 196, 332 
 
solar, 50 
 
spiritual, 31 
 
un-self-conscious God-sparks, 132 
 
various meanings of, 427 
Atoms, hierarchy of the, 217 
 
Supreme self of the, 217 
Attica, mysteries celebrated in, 232 
Auric egg, 70, 102, 114, 117, 118, 402 
Avatdras, 266 
 
come at specified periods, 262 
 
doctrine of, explained, 230, 2356 
 
Racial Buddhas and, 273 
Avlchi, 1 1 6, 169, 415 
 
lowest hell, 143 
Avichi-nirvdna, 125, 186 
 
destiny of lost souls, 169 
 
Being, Ancients recognised reality of, 
182 
 
Divine, 52 
 
evolutionary drama of, 493 
 
germ of, 31 
 
of the Solar System, 439 
 
Plato's definition of, 45 
 
Primordial Elementary, 331 
 
the illimitable Void, 375 
 
Universal, 65 
Bernard of Clairvaux, 218 
Bhagavad Gttd, definition of Sanskrit 
 
terms, 270 
 
Bible, esoteric teaching hidden in, 6-7 
Biela's comet, 50 
Blavatsky, H. P., crippled psychically, 
 
361-2 
Bodhi, 22 
Bodhisattva, 241 
 
a Christ on earth, 272 
 
definition of, 261 
 
of a globe, 234 
Boundless, exemplifies the Void, 218 
 
limitless aggregate of all Hierarchies, 
1 80 
 
the, 29-34, IOI 2I 7 
Brahma, breathing of, 498 
Brahmd, 268 
 
Day of, 93. 142, 234 
 
 
 
547 
 
 
 
548 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
Brahmd, has lived half his life, 119, 
404 
 
seven days of, 296 
Brahmd's Egg, 180, 432, 434, 439 
 
consists of Lokas and Talas, 432 
 
Kosmic atom, 427 
 
the solar system, 433 
Brahman, the Unmanifest Logos, 33-4 
Brahmdnda, or Egg of Brahma, 180 
Brahmd-Prakriti, 31, 33-5 
 
Kosmic soul, 226 
Buddha, 22-3, 314-5, 327, 446 
 
a, higher than an Avatara, 237, 273 
 
a Causal, for each round, 234 
 
a Racial, for each Root-Race, 235, 
239 
 
ego of Avatara supplied by a, 235, 
 
273 
Buddha, Lord, 189, 200, 241, 332, 521 
 
remained on earth as a Nirmanakaya, 
236 
 
summit of the Hierarchy of Sages, 
 
36i 
Buddhas, 200 
 
Celestial Hierarchy of, 234 
 
headgear of, 425-6 
 
Pratyeka, 156 
 
Buddhism, Eye and Heart doctrines of, 
190 
 
Esoteric, 189 
 
most spiritual of all religions, 238 
Buddhists, Theosophists are not, 190 
Budha, 211 
Builders, hierarchy of, 313, 439 
 
Ccesav, Julius, 208, 209 
Calendar, the Roman, 208 
 
changing of, 223 
Cataclysm, coming Racial, 239 
Causal Buddha, for each round, 234 
Celestial Bodhisattva, for each globe, 
 
261 
 
Chaos, Theos and Kosmos, 316 
Chela-life, the, 473, 515-6 
Cherubim, definition of, 68 
Chhdndogya-Upanishad quoted, 23-5 
Chohans, 162 
Christ, 107 
 
man is a potential, 133 
Christian teachings, inadequacy of, 68 
Christianity, derived from Neo-Pytha- 
 
gorean and Neo-Platonic systems, 
 
420 
 
Christmas, 222-3 
Christos, the, 31, 133, 384 
Chronology, Esoteric, 206 
Cicero passed through the Eleusinian 
 
rites, 366 
Circle, divided by twice curved line 
 
(diagram), 406 
Circulations of the Kosmos, 407, 461, 
 
506 
Coadunition and Consubstantiality, 502 
 
 
 
Comets, periodic, may become planets, 
 
47. 50 
" Conservation of Energy ", theory of, 
 
open to criticism, 507 
Cosmic Egg, symbol of the, 35, 114 
Cosmogony, Gods that direot, 49 
Creation, emanation and evolution, 83 
Croitn, symbolism of the, 216, 217, 426 
Crucifixion, origin of the, 'in the 
 
Mysteries, 425 
the, 221-2 
 
Cycle, 31, 35. 253, 295. 49O 
opening of a secret, 211 
Septenary Planetary, 234 
 
Daivt-Prakriti, 384, 392 
 
gives light to the nebulae, 42, 44, 50 
 
the Second Logos, 259 
Dante, his heavens, hells and pur- 
gatories, 145-7 
 
Darkness, a form of vibration, 55 
Dawn of Manifestation, 49 
Days of the Week, and the planets, 212, 
 
281 
Death, the Mystic, 216, 222 
 
the second, 141 
Deathless Watcher, 220 
Demi-urgos, the aggregate of the 
 
Dhyan-Chohans, 271 
Devachan, 415, 526 
 
degrees in, 141-2 
 
for the personal soul, 43 
Devas, real nature of, 105 
Devil, God and the, 155 
Dharma-kdya, 198 
Dhydni-Buddha, 198-200 
Dhydni-Buddhas, are the Architects, 
 
439 
 
seven, 234 
 
were once men, 332 
Dhydn-Chohan, man an embryo, 199 
Dhydn-Chohans, 60, 63, 113 
 
agents of Cosmic Laws, 121 
 
and Dhyani-Buddhas, 286, 381 
 
and Pitris, 351 
 
do not guide Nature, 334 
 
Lords of Meditation, 183, 352 
 
seven classes of Monads followed 
from Lunar chain, 134 
 
thought of, reflects Universal Idea- 
tion, 271 
 
three classes of, 199 
Diagoras, 216 
 
Diagrams and Paradigms, use of, 38 
Dionysius, founder of Christian mystic- 
ism, 293 
 
his " Hierarchy ", 67 
 
writings of, 57, 58, 67 
Divine Dynasties, 222 
Double stars explained, 455 
Downward Arc, acceleration of develop- 
ment on, 520 
Duality, origination of, 31 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
549 
 
 
 
Earth, not the " best possible world ", 
 
135 
 
Earth-chain, evolutionary development 
 
of, 484, 485 
Easter, 222-3 
Ecclesiastas, Book of, 187 
 
esoteric teaching in, 188 
Ego, difference between, and self, 131-3 
Divme, 205 
 
is between^ self and soul, 132 
re-incarnating, 205 
 
Egos, diagram of, and souls in man, 203 
Einstein, 301, 320 
Electricity and magnetism are matter, 
 
319 
 
lowest form of " divine light ",44 
Electrons, there are beings on the, 196, 
 
301 
Element, one, predominates in each 
 
globe, 298 
Elemental world, three kingdoms of, 
 
4*9, 505, 517 
Elements, fire, air, earth, water, and 
 
ether, 115, 497-8 
in the Stoic philosophy, 367 
of the Ancients, 297 
symbolism of the four, 392 
Eleusinian Mysteries, Lesser, cele- 
brated at Agrae, 248 
religious and philosophic, 247 
succession of teachers in, 245 
Eleusis, Greater Mysteries celebrated 
 
at, 232 
 
what was taught at, 233 
Elohim in Genesis, 79, 80 
are ourselves, 87 
were our Theosophical Monads, 82, 
 
102, III 
 
Emanation, evolution and creation, 83 
 
from Primordial Being down to 
 
atoms, 331 
Energy, conservation of, 88 
 
potential, an absurdity, 89 
Enke's Comet, 50 
 
Epicurus on Atheism (quoted), 263 
Epicycloid, explained, 91 
Epiphany, a minor manifestation of 
 
Theophany, 242 
Equinox, 207, 222 
Esoteric, and exoteric truths, 28, 425 
 
and exoteric philosophical systems 
contrasted, 325-6 
 
chronology, 206 
Esoteric School, 197, 215 
 
part of Hierarchy of Compassion, 305 
 
reasons for secrecy in, 214 
 
Trans-Himalayan, 215 
Ether, will become palpable in the 
 
Fifth Round, 308 
Evil, Chohans of, 186 
 
imperfection in any sphere, 55 
 
origin of, 52 
 
relativity of good and, 55, 155, 156 
 
 
 
Evil, workers of spiritual, 186 
Evolution, and Involution of spirit and 
matter, 349 
 
Darwinian, incomplete, 320 
 
from Gods to bodies, 358 
 
on each Globe, 393-4 
 
self -directed, 287 
 
the fifth " Jewel ", 161 
Eye, Doctrine of the, 190, 375, 386 
 
Father, Mother and Son, 31 
Fifth-Rounders, and Sixth-Rounders, 
 
492, 521 
Force, and matter are fundamentally 
 
one, 278 
 
is etherealized matter, 150 
Fourth dimension, no such thing as, of 
 
space, 413 
Free will, the question of man's, 269 
 
Genesis, Chapter II deals with third 
 
and fourth rounds, 85 
Globe " A " gives place to Globe " B," 
 
and so on, 308, 490, 518 
each, composed of fourteen 
 
" worlds ", 394, 400, 403, 416 
Globes, are not " principles ", 176 
correspondence between, and signs of 
 
the Zodiac, 488 
 
five hid, seven manifested, 476 
higher nature of, goes into Nirvana, 
 
478 
 
Globe-Round, distinguished from Chain- 
Round, 475 
Gods, are the higher inhabitants of 
 
Nature, 171 
 
belief in, by Ancients, 54 
Monads and Atoms, 316, 423 
we became sons of the, 259 
Good, means perfection in any sphere, 
 
55 
 
and evil, 155 
 
relativity of, and evil, 55, 156 
Good Friday, 222 
Gospels, contain story of initiation, 
 
221, 222 
 
Jesus of the, a mythos, 221 
Greeks, popular mythology of, and 
 
Romans, 53 
Guardian Wall, 220 
Guruparampard, 244 
 
Heart, divinity is within the, 22 
 
doctrine of the, 375, 386 
Heavens in Mithraism, 144 
Heavens and Hells in Buddhist teach- 
ings, 143 
 
none in the Christian sense, 149 
Hebrew language, peculiarities of, 76-7 
Hell, meaning of, 513 
Hermes, the planet Mercury, 211 
 
Emerald Table of, quoted, 359 
 
 
 
550 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
Herschel, Sir Wm. and the Nebular 
 
Theory, 61-2 
Hierarch, meaning of, 52 
Hierarchies, 423 
 
Divine, 57, 63-4, 313 
 
endless in number, 180 
 
esoteric philosophy and, 63-5 
 
explained, 52, 55, 60-72, 225-8 
 
Greek, 56 
 
in Christian theology, 67 
 
Kosmos is guided by, 121 
 
Neo-Platonic, 65 
 
or Lokas, 180 
Hierarchy, a, is a Unity, 502 
 
Absolute of our, 192 
 
diagram of any, 203, 225 
 
diagram of consciousness in a, 186 
 
every man is a, 261 
 
in Jewish Qabbalah, 68-9 
 
Supreme self of our, 204 
 
Universal Kosmical, 195 
Hierarchy of Compassion, 258, 263, 
266 
 
and Hierarchy of Builders, 313, 439 
 
Esoteric School is part of the, 305 
Higher Self, initiate meets his own, 220 
 
withdrawal of the, 216 
Humanities, six other, evolving with 
 
us, 395 
Hyparxis, 55-6 
 
Immortality, 194, 195, 196 
is conditional, 125 
 
Infinite, the, never becomes finite, 28 
 
Initiation, and the Mysteries, 315 
degrees of, 218-20 
fourth, 275, 412 
process of, 219-21 
quickening of the Soul, 241 
three possible results of, 249 
 
Initiations, 412, 426 
 
I sis, and the Goddess Neith, 483 
 
Jehovah, not a very high God, 440 
Jesus, and his illiterate disciples, 420 
" crown of thorns " of, 216 
His egoic vehicle provided by the 
 
Buddha, 263 
Mystery teaching of, 215 
story of, a mystery story, 221 
unquestionably lived, 267 
who was, 237 
Jewel, the seventh, Atma-Vidya, 162, 
 
179 
 
teaching imbodied in the first, 182 
Jewels, the seven, a synopsis of all 
possible human knowledge, 157-8, 
160-1-2, 231 
Jewish Qabbalah, 68-70 
Jivdtman, 205 
John's Gospel, opening verses of, 
 
explained, 382-4 
Judaism, replete with polytheism, 54 
 
 
 
Jupiter, builds Globe B, 476 
Justinian, closed the Mystery Schools, 
419 
 
Kabeiroi, nature of, 233 
Kaliyuga, Hindu cycle of, 58 
Kalpa, or Planetary Manvantara, 90 
 
Solar, 296 
 
Kdma-manas, the " man " proper, 166 
Kdma-rupa, annihilation <jf, 187 
Kant, and the Nebular Theory, 61-2 
Kdrana, the Causeless Cause, 272 
Karma, guiding impulse of Kos,mic 
 
nebula, 45 
Karman, definition of, 129 
 
there is no law of, 142 
 
the second Jewel, 161 
 
the will of spiritual beings, 130 
Keys, seven, to Wisdom, 157-8 
Kingdoms, elemental and the Globes, 
 
518 
 
seven, or " humanities ", 398 
three highest, are Dhyan-Chohanic, 
 
5i3 
Kosmic, aim and end of, evolution, 
 
194 
 
atoms, 217 
clock, 206, 212 
 
diagram of the seven planes, 499 
each, element is filled with its 
 
" humanity ", 398 
elements, 391-3, 398-400 
Kosmocratores of our Planetary Chain, 
 
476 
Kosmos, 204, 217 
 
circulations of the, 407, 461 
elements and principles of, 400, 403, 
 
413-6, 421-2 
elements and worlds of (diagram), 
 
390 
 
guided by sentient beings, 60 
seven elements and seven forces of, 
 
378 
 
scale of correspondences of, 194 
Universal, 193, 197, 217 
Kriydsakti, the power of Will and 
Yoga, 510 
 
Ldmaic succession is Bodhisattvic, 238 
Laplace, Marquis de, and the Nebular 
 
Theory, 61-2 
Law, 143 
 
Universal, 64 
Laws, of Manu quoted, 356 
 
of Nature are habits of Beings, 143 
Laya-center, explained, 322 
 
life substance cast into, 478 
 
of man is Atman, 401 
 
of the Sun, 323 
 
or mystical point, 43-4, 49 
Left-hand path, 32 
Leibnitz, the Monads of, 82, 99 
Lhamayin, 186 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
55i 
 
 
 
Life Atoms , are germ souls, 479 
 
the building blocks of the Universe, 
 
493 
 
Life-wave, making a " Round ", 393-4 
Life-waves, march of the, 506 
 
seven, tr ten, 516 
Light, a body, 44 
 
corporealized in stone, metals, etc., 
 
4* 
 
corpuscular, 44, 319 
 
form of vibration, 55 
Logoi, seven primordial, 457 
 
Steven Solar, 460 
Logos, 205 
 
Loka, within loka, 402, 405 
Lokas and talas, 377, 394-5, 400-8, 
414 
 
Table of, 399 
 
technical word for Hierarchies, 180 
Lost souls, definition of, 186, 187, 195 
 
reincarnate, 168 
 
two classes of, 168, 185-6 
Luminous arc, 400, 402-3, 439 
Lunar-chain, lowest point of evolution, 
404 
 
Macrobius, 209 
 
Magnetism, lowest form of " Divine 
 
Light ", 44 
 
Mahd-Buddha, 199-200 
Mahd-Buddhi is Mahat, 259 
Mahd-manvantara, half of our, is gone, 
 
I5 I 
 
Mahd-Sunyata, the Great Void, 422 
 
Mamo-Chohans, 186 
Man, average life of, 252 
 
builds his own body, 504 
 
can become a God, 19, 388 
 
can know Truth, 9 
 
Christian, Indian, and Qabbalistic 
divisions of, 10 
 
component parts of, 187 
 
destined to be a Logos, 480 
 
evolution of, 32 
 
how, becomes a God, 388 
 
no abiding principle in, 187, 227 
 
origin of seven principles of, 10 
 
threefold division, 235 9 
Manas, entry of, into senseless man, 
 
314 
 
is mortal, 228 
 
is the reincarnating ego, 256 
Mdnasaputras, are our higher selves, 
 
307 
entities from the Buddhic Hierarchy, 
 
34i 
 
guided evolution of early races, 510 
incarnation of, 258, 288, 314 
Swabhava of, 306 
 
we are, of future Manvantaras, 286 
Mdnasic, quality of man comes from 
 
the Sun, 125 
Manifestation, of a world, 28-31 
 
 
 
Mdnusha-Buddha, 199 
 
the human Buddha, 234, 260 
 
ushers in each Root- Race, 235 
Manvantara, 33-4, 296 
 
Planetary and Solar, 46 
 
evolution from dawn of, 153 
Mars, and Mercury, not members of 
our Planetary Chain, 175, 449 
 
is building Globe F, 476 
 
is younger than the earth, 173-4 
 
the vital essence has left, 279 
Master, difference between a, and our- 
selves, 311 
Master hood, 228 
Material Universe, is unreal, 12 
Matter, Absolute, 192, 204 
 
all, is " radio-active", 319 
 
crystallized force, 46, 103, 150, 319 
 
is crystallized spirit, 307 
 
is force to the hierarchy below us, 310 
 
the upadhi of force, 278 
Maya, meaning of, 19 
Mercury, 211-2 
 
and Esoteric New Year, 211, 224 
 
and initiations, 224 
 
beginning his last Round, 174 
 
building Globe E, 476 
 
perturbations in orbit of, variously 
explained, 301 
 
the planet of Bodha, 276 
Messianic Cycle, runs 2160 years, 58, 
 
274 
Meteoric dust, encircles every planet, 
 
279 
 
Milky Way, the most Spiritual Ele- 
ment, 293 
Mind, breaking the molds of, 202, 
 
410-11 
Mithraism, heavens in, 144 
 
seven initiations in, 145 
Monad, and loss of the soul, 195 
 
does not " descend into matter ", 
 
33 8 , 34 
 
higher duad, 166 
 
is a spiritual ego, 516 
 
is the root of a hierarchy, 502 
 
our inmost self, 103 
 
the human, 107, 141 
 
the spiritual, 141 
 
vehicles of the, 193 
Monadic, envelope, 205 
Monads are souls of the atoms, 434 
 
mineral, vegetable, animal, 338 
 
of Leibnitz, 82, 99 
 
spiritual atoms, 132 
Moon, building Globe G, 476 
 
Hermes, son of, 211 
 
mystery of, must remain " tabu ", 
 
523 
 
stands for an invisible planet, 456 
the, in relation to cycles, 211 
the visible, is a kama-rupa, 476, 
 
784 
 
 
 
552 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
Moon-chain, how the "life passed from 
globes of, 477-8 
 
Morality, basis and meaning of, 212 
 
Morals, 37-8, 421 
 
and ethics, 104, 328, 389, 397, 421, 
472 
 
Mukti or Moksha, the Absolute, 152 
 
Mulaprakriti, 34, 205 
root-nature, 307 
the root-substance, 151 
 
Mysteries, betrayal of, 215-6 
calendar derived from, 222 
coronation taken from, 216 
fell because of intrinsic degeneracy, 
 
248 
 
first established in Atlantis, 246 
greater and lesser, 27, 38, 232, 248 
jargon used in speaking of, 233 
state functions copied from, 222 
symbolism of the cup taken from, 
 
216 
 
the Eleusinian, 211 
were dramatized forms of initiations, 
 
315 
 
Mystery Planets, seven, 276 
Mystery Schools, 215-6 
 
method of teaching in, 410 
 
of Asia Minor, 221 
 
reason for their establishment, 275 
 
Ndstika, every occultist is a, 271 
Nature, an abstraction, 169 
 
Laws of, 172 
 
" Mistakes " of, 52 
Nebular Theory, as originally taught, 
 
39-40 
 
defects of, 41-5 
 
originated by Kant, 61 
Nefesh (Heb.), the lower nature, 167 
Ne'ith, the hidden side of Isis, 483 
Neo-Platonists, philosophy of, 4 
 
some teachings of, 55-6 
Neptune, first planet formed, 40 
 
is a " capture ", 453 
 
not part of our system, 175 
Nero unfit to pass rites of Eleusis, 
 
419 
Neshdmdh (Heb.), the most spiritual 
 
principle, 10 
New Year, Esoteric, 206 
 
methods of computing the, 207, 223 
Nirmdnakdya, 199, 200 
Nirvdna, 415 
 
absorption into the higher self, 142 
 
and Nirvana- Avichi, 141 
 
definition of, 43 
Nirvritti, evolution, 161 
Nitya Pralaya, 35 
 
Obscuration, is not pralaya, 519 
 
of planet Mars, 1 74 
 
or rest period, 90 
Occultism, meaning of, 138 
 
 
 
Olympus, 36 
and Tartarus in Homer's Kosmos, 
 
148 
 
Om, pronunciation of, 14-15 
" One ", the, 179-80-81 
One Life, is neither Spirit nor Matter, 
 
48 
Osiris, Isis and Horus, 31 
 
Padmapdni, legend of, 71 ^ 
 
Pairs of Opposites, we learn Truth 
 
through, 21 
 
Palingenesis or repeated self-genera- 
tion, 182 
Pansil, H. P. B., took, and became a 
 
Buddhist, 189 
Parabrahman, n, 12, 34 
 
and Mulaprakriti, 12, 21, 100, 307 
lives 100 Divine years, 153 
Mulaprakriti the garment of, 151 
of a Hierarchy, 152 
Para-Brahman-Mulaprakriti, the high- 
est part of every Hierarchy, 123 
Paradoxes, or apparent contradictions, 
 
289 
 
value of teaching by, 411 
Paramdtman, develops a sheath on 
 
each plane, 132 
man is the, for atoms of the body, 
 
196 
 
meaning of, n, 12 
our, 192-3, 204-5 
the Supreme Self, 64 
Para-Nirvana, 152 
Pass Not, Ring, 12 
Paul, and the Athenians, 369-70 
Saint, 57 
 
the initiate, 411-2 
Personal Ego, 196, 203, 205 
Philosophers and Theosophy, 20 
Physical Body is no principle, 113 
Plane, each, embodies all higher 
 
planes, 392-3 
Planes, are actual entitative worlds, 
 
398 
seven, are seven Kosmic Elements, 
 
391, 4M 
 
three highqst, are arupa, 293, 499 
Planet, a, is an " animal ", 173 
 
each, really a constellation, 377 
 
inter-mercurial, exists, 276 
 
the lowest, is " near the moon ", 300 
 
the seventh, 276 
Planet of Death, 126 
 
the " Eighth-Sphere", 164, 228 
Planetary Chain, 199, 439-46, 448-57 
 
a Bodhisattva for each globe of the, 
 
234 
 
a hierarchy, 502 
building of the, 476 
Mars and Mercury not part of our, 
 
175. 449 
twelve Globes of, 475 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
553 
 
 
 
Planetary Spirits, or Dhyani-Chohans, 
 
234 
 
Planetesimal hypothesis, 62 
Planetoids explained, 290 
Planets, and signs of Zodiac (diagram), 
 
487 
connected with seven Dhyani- 
 
Chohans, 300 
 
havfc one true moon each, 453 
many, unknown to astronomers, 277 
origin of, 290 
 
relation of, to days of week, 212 
spores of, in our Solar System, 451 
seven sacred, 176, 298 
seven sacred, are Upadhis of Solar 
 
Forces, 277 
seven sacred, build our seven globes, 
 
475 
seven sacred, transmit primal Forces 
 
of Kosmos, 408 
 
times of revolution (geocentric), 280 
Plato, opinions re Circular Motion, 45 
 
taught Theosophy, 4 
Pleroma, the Doctrine of the Fullness, 
 
380 
 
Plotinus, 58 
Pradhdna, 33 
Prajdpati, meaning of, 23 
Prakriti Maya, 33, 34 
Prdhritika-pralaya, 93 
 
planet in, 29 
Prakritis, all seven, imbodied in every 
 
Globe, 309, 393 
ten Kosmic, 310 
Pralaya, 34 
Nitya-, 35 
or dissolution, 44 
Universal Kosmic, 152 
Pralayas, Mamo-Chohans preside at, 
 
186 
of matter, solar system, earth and 
 
man, 34-5 
Solar, 227 
 
Pratyeka-Buddhas, 156 
Pratyeka-Ydna, the left-hand path, 
 
156, 158 
 
Pravritti, or involution, 161 
Precessional Cycle, is ttye cycle of a 
 
Family-Race, 240 
Priest Kings, 510 
 
Primordial Point, 29, 31, 35, 64-5, 67 
Principles, all, are septenary, 306 
and Elements of man and space, 378 
four lower, form a " union ", 258 
man's, derived from higher beings, 9 
names of seven, explained, 10-11 
of man correspond to the seven 
 
elements, 299 
real nature of seven, 255 
the ten (diagrams), 525-6 
Prophets of Israel taught polytheism 
 
53-4 
Psychology, what we mean by, 124 
 
 
 
Psychopomp, Hermes the, 211 
Purusha-Prakriti, is the Kosmic soul, 
 
123 
Pyramids, were Initiation Temples, 249 
 
Qabbdldh, contains Theosophy of Jews, 
 
5-6 
Jewish, 68-69 
 
Race, 200 
 
Buddha of a, 200 
Races, diagram illustrating, 251 
Root-, family and national, 239-40 
first and third destroyed by fire, 302 
table of, and Rounds, 252 
Raja-Yoga, three principles of, 361 
Regeneration, 188 
Reincarnation, objection to, 357 
Relativity, 204 
 
Religious Systems, different, 53 
Renunciation, spirit of, 185 
Resurrection, 222-3 
 
secret meaning of Christian, 479 
Ring, Pass-Not, 12 
Root-Race, 204 
 
Fifth, millions of years old, 302 
Sixth, will produce children by 
 
meditation and will, 346 
we are now in fourth Sub-Race of 
 
Fifth, 239 
Root-Races, destroyed by fire and 
 
water, 302-3 
Round, each, brings out one principle, 
 
118 
 
Fourth, 199, 200 
 
Second, differs from the First, 520 
seven globes formed in the First, 90 
Round Manvantara, length of, 92 
Rounders, " Fifth " and " Sixth ", 395 
Rounds, Chain and Globe, 485 
Globe and Planetary, 441 
Inner and Outer, 462, 475 
three elemental, 90 
Rudhh or Ruach, 79 
Spiritual Soul, 10, 188 
 
Saints, substitution for gods, 54 
Sambhala, a place of great beauty, 264 
home of the Hierarchy of Sages, 361 
messenger comes from, at " barren 
 
periods ", 362 
 
Samothrace, mysteries at, were scien- 
tific, 247 
mysteries of, the oldest in Greece, 
 
232 
 
Sankardchdrya, was an Avatara, 262 
Sapta-Ratndni, the " Seven Jewels ", 
 
157 
Saturn, builds Globe D the earth, 476 
 
spiritually ahead of Earth, 175 
Science, distinguished from " theories 
 
of scientists ", 246 
Second death, 141 
 
 
 
554 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
Second Round, how it "differs from the 
 
First, 520 
Secret Doctrine, forms heart of Ancient 
 
Mysteries, 27 
how to study The, 202 
Self, all beings are fundamentally one, 
 
5i 
 
difference between, and ego, 129, 131 
 
the link with the Unutterable, 2 
Self -discipline and ethics, the first 
 
lesson, 397 
Selflessness, 22, 32 
Self-sacrifice, joy of, 185 . 
Separateness, heresy of, 42, 400 
Seraphim, definition of, 67-8 
Sermon on the Mount, 215 
Seven, the number of the Manifested 
 
Universe, 70 
Sex, a passing phase, 342, 345 
 
procreation, 345 
Sexes, separation of the, 86 
Shadow, Brothers of the, 156, 326 
Shadowy Arc, 400, 4023, 422, 439 
Silent Watcher, one, for each Globe, 
441 
 
or Initiator, 183 
 
the, 178-85 
Sishtas, on Mars, 174 
 
or remainders, 490-1 
Sixth Rounder, Lord Buddha the only, 
 
521 
 
Skandhas, 43, 49 
 
" Sleeping Beauty " (fairy tale), ex- 
plained, 491-2 
Socrates, 216 
 
not an initiate, 483 
Solar Kalpa, comprises seven Planetary 
 
Manvantaras, 296 
 
Solar Lhas, sacrificed themselves, 258 
Solar Nirvdna, 442 
Solar Pralaya, follows seven Planetary 
 
Chains, 519 
Solar System, 195 
 
origin of, 439 
 
the atom a miniature, 1 96-7 
Solomon, 188 
Solstice, the Winter, 222 
Song Celestial, mistakes in translation 
 
of, 3-4 
Sorcerers, annihilation of, 186 
 
conscious, 185 
Sosigenes, 208-9 
Soul, a vehicle of spirit, 322 
 
loss of the, 216, 228 
 
lost, 187, 195-6, 228 
 
vehicle of ego, 193 
Soulless Beings, 164 
Souls, and egos in man (diagram), 203, 
225-8, 131-3 
 
are gods in embryo, 154 
 
four, in man, 126 
 
lost, classes of, 168, 185-6 
 
lost, and " soulless " beings, 164-5 
 
 
 
Space, finite and infinite, 412-3 
principles and elements of, 378 
real meaning of, 330, 346-7, 368, 
 
372, 374 
 
rigidity of, 33 
 
the spaces of, 374 
Spheres, Doctrine of the, 459 
Stellar Universe, directed by intelli- 
gence, 49 
 
Stoics, taught intermingling of every- 
thing, 51-2 
Sub-Race, our, is fourth of Fifth 
 
Root- Race, 239 
Succession, of Teachers, 244 
Sun, a mass of force, 279 
 
and Moon are substitutes for sacred 
planets, 176, 277 
 
builds Globe A, 476 
 
composition of outward form, 50 
 
has no heat or combustion, 46, 319 
 
is a reflection, 322 
 
is highest degree of matter on this 
plane, 317 
 
is not hot, 46, 319 
 
is not really physical, 278 
 
of Life, 31 
 
Sunya, the great emptiness, 383 
Sunyata, the Doctrine of the Void, 218, 
 
380 
Supreme Self, of the atoms, 217 
 
our Paramatman, 64, 151, 154 
" Surplus of Life ", in Globe evolution, 
5i8 
 
what is, 504 
Swabhdva, a fundamental doctrine, 121 
 
contrasted with Swabhavat, 163-4 
 
or inherent characteristic, 109, 505 
 
the fourth key, 158 
 
the indwelling Spirit of a Globe, 476 
 
the selfhood of the Self, 104, no 
 
works through Hierarchies, 123 
Swabhavat, " Father-Mother ", 163 
 
mystically Adi-Buddhi, 164 
 
the self-becoming, 102 
Swastika, 406-7 
 
Taijasa-tattwa, the fiery Tattwa, 352 
Tolas, are thfi seven Elements, 432 
Tartarus, and Olympus, 148 
Tattwa, a Principle of Nature, 297 
 
Anupapadaka-, corresponds to an 
unknown " Element ", 297 
 
Prithiwi-, the lowest of the scale, 348 
Tattwas, 297-8 
 
difference between, and prakritis, 
 
307 
 
or Elements, 298, 350 (diagram) 
Tau, the Egyptian, 407 
Teachers, succession of, 244 
Teaching, esoteric method of, 144 
Ten, sacred number, in occultism, 70 
 
the key number, 64 
Tetractys, 70 
 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 
 
555 
 
 
 
" That ", the ineffable, not " a " 
 
being, 45 
 
Theoi, the Builders, 316 
Theocrasy, doctrine of, 130 
 
meaning of, 42 
Theopathy M $bi, 386-7 
Theophany, 361, 386-7 
 
in the fifth initiation, 242 
Theopntusty, 361, 387 
Theosophy, and European philosophies, 
20 
 
an enemy to materialism, 49 
 
in^the Book of the Dead, 4-5 
 
in the Scandinavian Eddas, 5 
 
in the Qabbdlah, 5 
 
in the Upanishads, 4 
 
taught by Plato and Pythagoras, 4 
 
taught in Greek Mysteries, 4 
 
the test of truth, 128 
 
transmitted from immemorial times, 
 
9 . 
 
Timaus, of Plato, quoted, 344, 447 
Transmigration, a misunderstood doc- 
trine, 44 
 
real meaning of, 503 
Transmutation of metals, etc., is a 
 
fact, 319 
 
Treasuries of Wisdom, the Seven, 326 
Triangle and Square, meaning of, 39, 
 
391 
 
Trishnd, 29 
Truths, Esoteric, found in poetry, etc., 
 
424-5 
 
Universe, the material, is unreal, 12 
Unthinkable, thinking towards the, 2 
Unutterable, our link with the, 2 
Upddhis, the three, of man, 124 
Upanishads, Theosophy found in the, 4 
Uranus, does not belong to our system, 
 
175, 452 
Ushmsha, explanation of, 426, 427 
 
Vdyu-tattwa, the aerial tattwa, 352 
Veddnta, meaning of, 4 
 
the highest form of Brahmanical 
teachings, 19 
 
the noblest of the six Incjian schools, 
 
307 
 
Venus, in her last Round, 174 
built Globe C, 476 
 
 
 
" Virgin Birth " of Christ, various 
 
explanations, 343, 355 
Void, doctrine of the, 218, 377 
higher planes of the Boundless, 376 
the Illimitable, 375 
Vulcan, an intra-mercurial planet, 276, 
 
456 
one of the sacred planets, 299 
 
Week, origin of our days of the, 211-2 
Welsh Bards, esoteric teachings given 
 
by, 155 
Wondrous Being, a septenary entity, 
 
235 
 
an entity, 198 
and the Calendar, 223 
and the Lord Buddha, 189 
Banyan key-word to teaching on, 
 
191 
 
came from superior spheres, 237 
Dhyani-Buddha of the Fourth 
 
Round, 200, 306 
incarnates from age to age, 264 
Kosmic correspondence of Milky 
 
Way to, 201 
names of, 217 
nature of his sacrifice, 185 
or Great Initiator, 182 
our Highest Self, 192-3, 197, 200 
relation of human ego to, 201 
Seventh Jewel and, 217 
The, 159-60, 163, 178, 191, 195, 200, 
 
205, 220 
 
the Great Sacrifice, 184 
the Silent Watcher, 234 
three-fold manifestation of, 198 
Word, sounding of the, 522 
World, definition of, 413 
our physical, but the husk of 
 
Reality, 409-10, 423 
Worlds, the four, 392 
 
Year, the real Mystic, 224 
 
Zodiac, relation to Planetary Chain, 
487-9 
 
Zdhar, on the study of Jewish re- 
ligious books, 6 
 
Zoroaster, Book of the Prophet, quoted, 
359-60 
 
 
 
THE HOUSE OF RIDER 
 
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THE EXTENSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
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is further expounded in this remarkable volume." The Daily Telegraph. 
 
"It seems safe to assert that Madame Alexandra David-Necl is the only writer who 
has furnished anything like a complete account of the strangest of all religious systems." 
Dundee Advertiser. 
 
"An extremely interesting and well illustrated volume." News-Chronicle. 
 
Large Demy 8vo. 224 pp. Fully illustrated. ia/. 6J.net. 
 
 
 
io SPRING LIST. OF BOOKS 
 
 
 
MAETERLINCK 
 
by Auguste Bailly 
 
Maeterlinck, by Auguste Bailly, the well-known novelist and critic, and winner of the 
Prix Lasserre in 1928, is a penetrating sketch of the plays and essays of the world-famous 
Belgian mystic and philosopher. This book is indispensable to all those desirous 
of understanding the trend of events, literary and mystical, during the past half-century. 
Monsieur Bailly sets forth Maeterlinck's position in many varied aspects *of human 
thought, and gives us the most luminous and fertile commentary it wotfld be possible 
to produce. 
 
Striking analogies arc drawn between the activities of the animal kingdom, in its 
lowliest though highly intelligent form, and those of man ; and Maeterlinck's attitude 
towards destiny, his views on animal and plant life, on metaphysical and metapsychical 
problems, are expounded with remarkable lucidity and sympathetic insight. 
 
Large Crown 8 vo. 160 pp. Cloth gilt. 5J-.net. 
 
 
 
The Morning Post says : 
 
"A book that grips the imagination as much from its sincerity and logical quality, 
as from the universal interest of its subject." 
 
EXPERIENCES FACING DEATH 
 
The Self -revelation of a distinguished Novelist 
by Mary Austin 
 
THIS autobiographical work constitutes a deeply penetrative self-revelation of a 
keen intelligence faced with the prospect of death. It cuts right through 
creeds and orthodox religion and deals with the inevitable question at the 
back of all. 
 
Large Crown 8vo. 288 pp. y-f. bd. net. 
 
 
 
AN INTRODUCTION TO ROYAL ARCH MASONRY 
by "Essex Master" 
 
A WORK written to inform Companions of the Order in the meaning, symbolism 
and teachings of this exalted Degree in Freemasonry. It is written in simple language 
and will be found of interest and instruction alike for the newly-admitted and long- 
established member of the fraternity. The historical introductions are entertaining, 
whilst the practical language in which the mystical explanations are set forth is just 
what one would expect from the pen ot "Essex Master", whose previous work, The 
Teachings of Freemasonry^ has had such a wide commendation amongst Freemasons 
of repute. 
 
Large Crown 8vo. 116 pp. zs. 6J. net. 
 
 
 
ENGLISH FREEMASONRY IN ITS PERIOD OF 
TRANSITION (1600-1700) 
 
by W. Bro. F. de P. Castells, P.M., P.Z. 
Author of "The Apocalypse of Freemasonry" 
 
Demy 8vo. 224 pp. Cloth, ^s. 6J. net. 
 
 
 
SPRING LIST OF BOOKS n 
 
 
 
Is it Reincarnation? 
 
SOUL OF NYRIA 
An Actual Memory of a past life in ancient Rome. 
 
PERSONS CONCERNED IN THE PRESENT PRODUCTION : 
 
THE OCCULTISM. Writer and Lecturer on Occult Philosophy and Introducer 
 
(A. P. Sinnett) of the Instrument. 
 
THE INSTRUMENT. A modern Englishwoman who, in an abnormal state of 
 
consciousness, relates the life-story of Nyria, a slave- 
girl in Imperial Rome. 
THE RECORDER AND To whom Nyria, through the lips of the Instrument, 
 
EDITOR (Mrs. Praed) dictates her story. 
ASSISTANT-EDITOR. Critical Examiner into historical verifications of Nyria's 
 
(Tne Hon. Ralph Shirley) narrative and writer of the Critical Preface. 
THE COMMENTATOR. A Source of Information and Instruction upon the super- 
 
physical Level, whether individual or collective is indeter- 
minable : which is apart from the Entity Nyria, but is also 
expressed on the physical level through the mouth of the 
Instrument. 
 
Large Demy 8 vo. 448pp. Illustrated, zu. net. 
 
 
 
A sequel to that brave challenge to Sir Jams Jeans and Sir Arthur 
 
Keith entitled Man and the Universe". 
 
JESUS, THE SPIRITUAL ASTRONOMER 
 
by Walter Wynn 
 
THE value of the work is found in the way the author gives to the words of Jesus 
in astronomical setting. 
 
''The book is full of graphic descriptions and gives food for much thought.'* 
Cambridge News. 
 
"Written in Mr. Wynn's forceful style, the book is both readable and instructive." 
Ugbt. 
 
"A work which bears unmistakable signs of exhaustive search into the New 
Testament." Manchester News. 
 
Crown 8vo. 160 pp. 4J. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
For Hosts and Hostesses seeking new ideas ! 
 
YOUR BIRTHDAY MONTH AND YOU 
 
 
 
by Margaret Baillie-Saunders, the famous novelist 
 
A NOVEL system of character-reading. 
 
"Should provide many people with a welcome diversion on a winter's evening." 
Bookfinder. 
 
"The author's theories are certainly novel." Public Opinion. 
 
"The results of her studies will provide entertainment as well as instruction for 
readers. It is interesting to test the validity of the system as applied to one's friends 
and neighbours." Cambridge News. 
 
"Here is first-rate amusement, ready made." Modern. 
 
"Good fun for parties." The Lady. 
 
Large Crown 8vo. Tastefully produced. 3-f. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
12 SPRING LIST OF BOOKS 
 
ind large impression. 
 
THE PROJECTION OF THE ASTRAL BODY 
 
by Sylvan J. Muldoon and Hereward Carrington 
 
From the Foreword : I am well aware of the fact that one must first experience 
conscious astral projection before he can believe in it, and I confess that I should not 
accept it as true myself, perhaps, had I not experienced it and know it to be true. The 
sceptic says : "I want the proof, the objective proof, then I will believe itl" 
 
And the projector replies: "You cannot have objective proof. ''You must /*- 
perience it, then you will have the proof." The argument that the projector cannot prove 
to the sceptic that it is not a dream is of no avail ; for neither can the sceptic prove to 
the projector that it is a dream. Thus, argument is useless as useless as argfling the 
matter of a first cause or a last effect. 
 
I stand on a clear-cut issue. I say experience it. "The proof of the pudding 'is the 
eating 1" I have not tried to conceal anything nor resorted to pseudo-arguments about 
the "dangers" involved, which is a common characteristic of most writers 09 this 
subject. I have given the specific methods for bringing about the projection of the astral 
body, as I know them, and I am willing to have the truth of my statements judged 
squarely by the results obtained through the practice of these methods. You want 
proof, and I say you can have it but you must experience it. You want to know bow 
you can experience it, and I tell you how to go about it. I can do no more. 
 
Large Demy 8vo. z88 pp. Profusely illustrated, i8j.net 
 
 
 
THE STORY OF PSYCHIC SCIENCE 
 
by Hereward Carrington 
 
"INTERSPERSED throughout the book descriptions of tests with many of the most 
famous mediums are given, and altogether the volume is one of the most compre- 
hensive and critical that has been written in recent years on psychic investigation and 
its results." Edinburgh Evening News. "This survey is timely." Public Opinion. 
"Those who want an introduction to the subject under a leadership they can trust 
will find it here." Northern Whig. 
 
Large Demy 8vo. 418 pp., with 26 Illustrations. Chart of the Psychic Sciences, and 
copious index. 24^. net. 
 
 
 
THE MODERN WAY TO HEALTH 
by Victor S. Davidson 
 
"It is full of good advice, useful information and many fine recipes." Epoch. 
"There can be few 120-page books more closely packed with sound advice." Dail 
Herald. 
 
Crown 8vo. 128 pp. With frontispiece, chart and plate. 2S. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
HAVE YOU A STRONG WILL 
 
by Charles Godfrey Leland 
 
How to develop and strengthen Will-power, Memory, or any other Faculty or Attribute 
of the Mind by the Easy Process of Self-Hypnotism. 
 
jth Edition. Crown 8vo. Cloth, y. 64. net. 
 
 
 
SPRING LIST OF BOOKS 13 
 
PSYCHIC SELF-DEFENCE 
 
A Study in Occult Pathology and Criminality 
by Dion Fortune 
 
"... An extremely interesting and informative little study of occultism in its various 
branches." Truth. ". . . Vitally important." Eirkenhead Nws. 
 
yd Impression Demy 8vo. 244 pp. Cloth, -js. 6d, net. 
 
 
 
THE PROBLEM OF PURITY 
by Violet M. Firth 
 
yfhc most sensible and useful book of its kind that this reviewer has ever read." 
Publishers' Circular. "I most unhesitatingly recommend it to my readers, and I am 
sure the advice given will be of the greatest value." T. BOWEN PARTINGTON in Health 
and Strength. 
 
yd Impression Crown 8vo. 144 pp. $s. Gd. net. 
 
YOUR LATENT POWERS 
 
by Margaret V, Underbill 
Author of "Your Infinite Possibilities" 
 
"The book is an uplifting, consoling, illuminative, sane and powerful contribution 
towards the art of fine living. It is sure to be popular ; try it 1" Good News for AIL 
"A book to have and a book to read often." The Seer. ". . . It is a helpful, practical 
piece of work, worthy of study by everyone who desires to progress intellectually 
and spiritually, and full of encouragement for the discouraged and despairing." 
Southport Guardian. 
 
Crown 8vo. 192 pp. 5-f. net. 
 
4//6 impression 
 
THE SCIENCE OF SEERSHIP 
by Geoffrey Hodson 
 
". . . Of interest to all who wish to know something of the possibility of cultivating 
the psychic senses." Theosophist. "A book of real interest, specially to the medical 
profession who wish to know more than any study of the physical body alone can 
teach," Sunday Referee. 
 
Demy 8vo. 224 pp. Illustrated, js. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
A provocative and bold contribution to the discussion of the most pressing of all butnanprobltms. 
 
THE ETERNAL POLES 
 
A book about Love in all iif forms and phases initial, daemonic, celestial, personal, 
sexual. 
 
by Claude Bragdon 
 
" The book is well written, is readable and interesting and provides food for much 
thought." Science of Thought Review. 
 
"This book is a real book, not just words and chapters. It is a book for libraries, 
a book to own and a book to lend." News and Notes. 
 
"I claim for him that his writing upon love is the most significant since Swedcn- 
borg." Sunday Referee. 
 
It is very interesting and Mr. Bragdon can write well." The Tatler. 
 
"Mr. Bragdon writes and argues very well. . . ." Times Literary Supplement. 
 
Crown 8vo, 16 pp. Cloth. 41* . &/. net. 
 
 
 
14 SPRING LIST OF BOOKS 
 
 
 
COMTE DE GABALIS 
 
by the Abbe N. de Montfaucon de Villars 
 
RENDERED out of French into English with a Commentary. 
 
The title of this curious, learned and imaginative work is supposed to veil the 
identity of a great mystic of the seventeenth century. 
 
Demy 8vo. Illustrated. Cloth. 8/. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
IN DEFENCE OF MAGIC 
 
The Meaning and Use of Symbol and Rite 
 
by Catharine Cook Smith 
 
"Will be read with pleasure by those who delight in mystic lore." East Anglian 
Daily Times. "Full of common sense, and is a book which will help those who fight 
shy of all forms of ritual as a return to more primitive forms of faith, to realize how 
much they miss by a too rigid rationalism." Immortality and Survival. "We commend 
it to the student who is at sea in a welter of conflicting views." Sunday Referee. 
 
"Although the subject is treated, as space demands, in a somewhat sketchy manner, 
the book loses nothing of value on this account. Rather it becomes, shorn of bulky 
notes and instances, far more readable and entertaining." Birkenhead News. 
 
Crown 8vo. 160 pp. Cloth, j/. net. 
 
 
 
Revised Edition 
 
THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GHIZEH 
 
From the Aspect of Symbolism and Religion 
 
by Francis W. Chapman 
 
A NOTABLE contribution to the literature of the Pyramid in its symbolical aspects 
as embodying the great fundamental Principles of the Ancient Wisdom-Religion. It 
contains many rich gems of thought gathered from the writings of sages, philosophers 
and thinkers of all ages. A book of general interest as well as specially so to students 
of Pyramid literature. 
 
Demy 8vo. Pp. 293 and three Plates. 6s. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
~]th Impression 
 
THE MEANING OF MASONRY 
by W. L. Wilmshurst, P.M. 
 
"Among Freemasons it will be conceded that the author has justified the title of his 
 
 
 
work. The book is distinguished by patient research, erudition, lofty ideals, and good 
literary style. . . . Mr. Wilmshurst carries one far beyond the or 1: 
of the Masonic Art." Yorkshire Post. 
 
Demy 8vo. Bound in Buckram, los. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
SPRING LIST OF BOOKS 15 
 
A Vindication of Food Reform and Nature Cure 
 
DELIVERANCE FROM CANCER 
 
by H. Reinheimer 
 
MR. REiNHfiiMER is the first to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the medical and 
scientific world the importance of Symbiosis, both as regards evolution and the biology 
of food. He shews that Nature's supreme sanction favours the symbiotic way of life, 
which is the. vegetarian way. After matriculating at London University, Mr. Rein- 
hjimer becamfc a medical student and eventually devoted his attention to the study of 
biology. He has contributed to the leading scientific journals and has written some 
sixteen books, all mainly concerned with "vegetarian biology". A vegetarian for 36 
yearsjiMr. Reinheimer was a Vice-President of the International Vegetarian Congress 
hel^nn Paris in 1900. He served on the Executive of the London Federal Union, also 
on the Council of the London Vegetarian Society, and is a Vice-President of the Kingston 
and District Vegetarian Society, 
 
Crown 8vo. 192 pp. Cloth. 5/. net. 
 
 
 
A MANUAL OF OCCULTISM 
 
A Complete Exposition of the Occult Arts and Sciences 
by "Sepharial" 
 
"A well-furnished store of information for students of the occult arts and sciences." 
Light. 
 
Crown 8vo. 368 pp. Cloth, gilt. With numerous diagrams and illustrations. 6/. net. 
 
 
 
A PACK OF 78 TAROT CARDS 
 
EXQUISITELY drawn and coloured, from new and original designs by Pamela Coleman 
Smith. Each card has a separate allegorical meaning. This is without question the 
finest and most artistic pack that has ever been produced. 
 
Price 5/. in neat blue box. 
Key 2/. 6J. Cards and Key in Box js. 6J. 
 
 
 
A NEW MANUAL OF ASTROLOGY 
by "Sepharial" 
 
IN four books. Book I : The Language of the Heavens. Book II : The Reading of 
a Horoscope. Book III : The Measure of Time. Book IV : Hindu Astrology. 
DemySvo. Cloth, gilt. 264pp. i2/. 6d. net. 
 
 
 
Library Edition 
 
DRACULA 
by Bram Stoker 
 
DRACULA 1 Dead six hundred years, yet still living ! Was he beast, man or vampire ? 
This is a new edition of one of the most famous and enduring books of the world a 
novel of horror and thrills which remains one of the most dramatic and imaginative 
stories of mystery and the supernatural ever written. 
 
Crown 8vo, 416 pp. Bound in full cloth. 31. (>d. net. 
 
 
 
SPRING LIST OF BOOKS 
 
 
 
TRUTH TACTFULLY CONVEYED 
 
British Medical Journal says : "The author has courageously tackled the fuiftk- 
mental facts and problems of everyday life." 
 
Medical Times says : "An excellent example of how this delicate subject can be 
handled with success." 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
34-36 PATERNOSTER Row, LONDON, E.C.4 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales

Theosophy House

206 Newport Road

Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 – 1DL

 

Searchable Full Text of The Early Techings of the Masters Edited by C Jinarajadasa

 

 

Instant Guide to Theosophy

Quick Explanations with Links to More Detailed Info

 

 

What is Theosophy ?  Theosophy Defined (More Detail)

 

Three Fundamental Propositions  Key Concepts of Theosophy

 

Cosmogenesis  Anthropogenesis  Root Races

 

Ascended Masters  After Death States

 

The Seven Principles of Man  Karma

 

Reincarnation   Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

 

Colonel Henry Steel Olcott  William Quan Judge

 

The Start of the Theosophical Society

 

History of the Theosophical Society

 

Theosophical Society Presidents

 

History of the Theosophical Society in Wales

 

The Three Objectives of the Theosophical Society

 

Explanation of the Theosophical Society Emblem

 

The Theosophical Order of Service (TOS)

 

Ocean of Theosophy

William Quan Judge

 

Glossaries of Theosophical Terms

 

Worldwide Theosophical Links

 

 

Index of Searchable

Full Text Versions of

Definitive

Theosophical Works

 

 

H P Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine

 

Isis Unveiled by H P Blavatsky

 

H P Blavatsky’s Esoteric Glossary

 

Mahatma Letters to A P Sinnett 1 - 25

 

A Modern Revival of Ancient Wisdom

Alvin Boyd Kuhn

 

Studies in Occultism

(Selection of Articles by H P Blavatsky)

 

The Conquest of Illusion

J J van der Leeuw

 

The Secret Doctrine – Volume 3

A compilation of H P Blavatsky’s

writings published after her death

 

Esoteric Christianity or the Lesser Mysteries

Annie Besant

 

The Ancient Wisdom

Annie Besant

 

Reincarnation

Annie Besant

 

The Early Teachings of The Masters

1881-1883

Edited by

C. Jinarajadasa

 

Study in Consciousness

Annie Besant

 

 

A Textbook of Theosophy

C W Leadbeater

 

A Modern Panarion

A Collection of Fugitive Fragments

From the Pen of

H P Blavatsky

 

The Perfect Way or,

The Finding of Christ

Anna Bonus Kingsford

& Edward Maitland

Part1

 

The Perfect Way or,

The Finding of Christ

Anna Bonus Kingsford

& Edward Maitland

Part2

 

Pistis Sophia

A Gnostic Gospel

Foreword by G R S Mead

 

The Devachanic Plane.

Its Characteristics

and Inhabitants

C. W. Leadbeater

 

Theosophy

Annie Besant

 

The

Bhagavad Gita

Translated from the Sanskrit

By

William Quan Judge

 

Psychic Glossary

 

Sanskrit Dictionary

 

Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy

G de Purucker

 

Obras Teosoficas En Espanol

 

La Sabiduria Antigua

Annie Besant

 

Glosario Teosofico

1892

H P Blavatsky

 

 

Theosophische Schriften Auf Deutsch

 

Die Geheimlehre

Von

H P Blavatsky