PRIMAL ELEMENTS IN HUMANITY’S EVOLUTION
Section 1
Is this material universe self-sufficient and self-contained, or is not the “other conception,” the true one, viz. “that of a universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through and through with a divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and love behind the law; a universe by no means self-sufficient or self-contained, but with feelers at every pore groping into another supersensuous order of existence where reigns laws hitherto unimagined by science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the material universe is governed?”—Sir Oliver Lodge, “The Outstanding Controversy between Science and Faith,” Hibbert Journal for October, 1902.
To the man of Western civilization, whose environment in youth was a domestic atmosphere of Sabbath-day Christian orthodoxy and week-day religious indifference along with a social atmosphere of commercial individualism and the steady pursuit of sense pleasures, it is no easy task to form a correct judgment regarding the true position of religion and its relative worth in evolution.
A study of the subject reveals that not only the more and less civilized races of mankind have each some specialized form of religion, but the non-civilized savage tribes of the earth are similarly endowed. Their worship may be degraded to the last degree, but it holds them in its grasp, and in studying these facts we are compelled to believe that humanity is so constituted that its deepest needs are only to be expressed through and by religion.
The various religions of the world must have been essential to evolution, since evolution, as applied to man, signifies the ample, thorough development of every integral part of human nature in each individual. But while recognizing religion as a necessary expression of human nature and a supreme characteristic of man, we have also to realize that its forms are as various as the distinctive differences amongst men, and that changes from time to time inevitably occur for good or evil in every religion. None are stationary, none are perfect. And the spiritual verities which lie at the base of all are constantly overlaid by superstitions, while the external forms harden and grow inoperative for good.
Now, on the theory that religion is in effect necessary to evolution, and further, that it represents fundamentally an emanation from the plane of spirit, i.e. from a region transcending our phenomenal existence, what would nineteenth century intelligence a priori expect of the various divergent religious systems? That amid variations, some striking similarities would exist to indicate the identity of their original source. It would expect also to find some statement of facts in nature not otherwise known to man, some recognition of the stupendous movement of evolution—the elucidation of which in its physical aspect is the grand achievement of modern science—and some hint of the laws governing that movement. Further, it would expect to find guidance to right conduct and some indications of the paramount purpose and end of universal life.
Hitherto, as it happens, the investigating spirit of modern science has concerned itself little with theological matters; and the recognized exponents of our own racial theology are incompetent judges here. Their training has made of them religious specialists so interpenetrated by sectarian dogma that they are incapable of assuming the mental attitude of a genuine criticism claiming no superiority for Christianity over other great religions, save such value of position as lies in its later birth and development. Outside the churches, however, comparative theology is not neglected, and it is freely admitted now by many earnest students of the subject that all the great religions of the world possess spiritual, ethical and philosophical ideas in common.
Hinduism deals with startling facts of the invisible world. In the Vedas[[15]] it teaches that consciousness is the foundation or groundwork of all nature, that matter and force are instinct with conscious life. Behind these is the great unmanifested Deity—the “Unknowable” of our own Spencerian philosophy—the Illimitable, Eternal, Absolute, Unconditioned Source of the Universe, incognizable and inconceivable to the finite faculties of man. With manifestation there appears the threefold aspect of Deity—the supreme Logos of the Universe—a Unity in Trinity and a Trinity in Unity, the reflection of which as Consciousness, Substance, Force, runs throughout nature, and is also shown in the Christian and other creeds and the Pauline description of man’s triune constitution—body, soul and spirit. The doctrine of evolution is taught in Hinduism on far wider lines than the modern intellectual conception lays down. The latter, dealing with outward appearance, bases itself on physical phenomena. The former transcends phenomenal existence and human experience. It embraces the superlatively great, the infinitely small and complex, and presents a cosmogony evolutional throughout, while it points to a spiritual development for the individual so extensive and sublime that the Western mind, unused to metaphysical thought, is unable to grasp and clothe it in words. In this philosophy there is no stultifying of human endeavour by the view of the soul’s opportunities as confined to three score years and ten. That span of life makes but a single page in the soul’s vast evolutional history, for at the centre of Hinduism lies a rock-bed of belief in re-incarnation—that process of nature which accomplishes the gradual growth and spiritual elevation of humanity by means of the individual soul’s successive returns to physical life, with intervening periods of spiritual rest or latency. The threefold nature of man gives him touch with three levels of existence, and Hindu religion represents him bound to a wheel unceasingly turning in three worlds, viz. a world of waking consciousness or the physical body, and of two other worlds to which he passes successively at and after death, and in which he works out his latest earthly experience and assimilates all its fruit, then returns through the gateway of birth to begin a fresh course of discipline and learning.
[15]. It is from the study of the Vedas that the educated Hindu seeks to derive his creed. I refer my reader to Mr. J. E. Slater’s Higher Hinduism in relation to Christianity.
Turning from the transcendental to the scientific and practical sides of Hinduism, we find an external worship and broad polity calculated to regulate human conduct in every relation of life, religious, national, social, family and personal—the entire system founded on the law of causation on all planes of being. By our own scientists, that law is recognized on the physical plane as the invariable sequence of cause and effect. Hinduism regards it as working also on higher planes, and terms it the law of action or Karma—the moral retribution which brings out inexorably in one life the results following from causes arising in previous lives. Responsibility therefore rests with every self-conscious, reflective being, and divine justice is shown reconcilable with the free-will of man through the union of Karma and re-incarnation. “God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”
The religion of the Parsis, i.e. the modern form of Zoroastrianism, has equally with Hinduism a metaphysical philosophy, and an outward worship, while mingled with all there is an astronomical teaching based on the same conception of nature as is found in Hinduism, viz. that it is the manifestation, in infinitely varied forms, of the one universal consciousness or mind. The constitution of humanity is two-fold. Spirit and matter are two distinct and different principles, both are in man; and he is capable of siding definitely with either. The ethic of Zoroastrian faith is based on the belief that he will throw himself on the side of the pure, that he will battle for it and maintain it. To be at all times actively on the side of purity is a clear personal duty. The devout Zoroastrian must keep the earth pure and till it religiously. He must perform the functions of agriculture as a service to the gods, for the earth is the pure creature of Ahura Mazdao—the Supreme Spirit to be guarded from all pollution. And passing from the outer to the inner life of the individual, the constantly-repeated maxim is this: I withdraw from all sins by pure thoughts, pure deeds, pure words.
In Taoism, a religion of China of earlier date than Hinduism or Zoroastrianism, there exists a fragment of ancient scripture called the Classic of Purity, wherein man is regarded as a trinity, viz. spirit, mind, body. To quote from Mr. Legge’s translation: “Now the spirit of man loves purity, but his mind disturbs it. The mind of man loves stillness, but his desires draw it away. If he could always send his desires away, his mind would of itself become still. Let his mind be made clean, and his spirit will of itself become pure.” (Here we have the idea, expressed in all religions, of the conflict between the higher and lower nature in man and the necessity for spirit to dominate mind and body. Refer to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, vii. 15, 21, 22 and 23.)
Again, Buddhism has absorbed the attention of modern Oriental scholars through the fascination of the Buddha’s purity and elevation of thought. There are two divisions of this faith, viz., the Mahayana, that of the Northern Church, found in Tibet, Nepaul, China, Corea, and Japan, and the Hinayana, that of the Southern Church, found in Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, etc. The Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) is closely allied to Hinduism in its teachings regarding the spiritual world, the continuing ego of individual man, the life after death, the rites and ceremonies of worship, and the mystic side of personal religion. In the Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle) of the Southern Church, much of this mystic teaching has been dropped, nevertheless it retains a wonderful system of ethics, with appeals made to human reason, and a constant attempt to justify and render intelligible the foundations on which the morals are built. Buddhism is clearly the daughter of the more ancient Hinduism. Its scriptures are the echo of the Hindu scriptures, and the general teachings, while thrown into a less metaphysical form, are penetrated with the Hindu spirit. Causation is in both an unbroken law. In the Dhammapada, for instance, it is written: “If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. He who has done what is evil cannot free himself of it, he may have done it long ago or afar off, he may have done it in solitude, but he cannot cast it off.”
Buddha taught that evil is overcome only by its opposite, i.e. good: “Let every man overcome anger by love, let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth,” etc., etc. And here the religion is closely in touch with Christian ethics: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,” etc. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” With regard to man’s destiny, Buddha’s teachings build on his hearers’ acceptance of the Hindu doctrine of re-incarnation.
(In the Pali Canon occur these words: “The Bhikshee [the disciple] sees, with eye divine, beings dropping away and reappearing, he knows them reaping according to their several karma, degraded and ennobled, beautiful and ugly, well-placed and ill-placed.” From this and many other passages of the Pali Canon “it is clear and evident and beyond a shadow of doubt,” says J. C. Chatterji, “that the Buddha taught the identity of the re-incarnating ego, though he did not give it that name. He called it Consciousness or Vignana.”—Theosophical Review, Jan., 1898, p. 415.) Without that his system falls to the ground. The path of salvation he points to implies a persistent course of personal effort, and he who would tread that path must open his mind to discriminate between things that are transitory and those that are real and permanent. To the former belong all the pleasures of sense, every earthly desire and ambition, and every selfish thought.
Deep within man’s nature, however, there lies hid a germ or seed of the permanent. This will persist throughout all the ages amid the fleeting phantasmagoria of many lives, and this he must cherish, nourish, develop. He must resist and renounce the corrupting influences of the flesh. He must master his passions, steady his mind, and control, enlighten and elevate his thoughts. Further, he must purify his emotions and actions, pervading the world with a “heart of love, far-reaching, grown great and beyond measure.” (The Tevijja Sutta.) Finally, the individual consciousness will expand, until, able to function in subtler vehicles than those of physical matter, the man passes out of the chrysalis state of formal existence to emerge upon higher levels of life and reach at length the Buddhist Nirvana—that supreme crown of immortality and acme of conscious bliss.
This pilgrimage of the soul through many births and deaths, with its steadfast struggles and gradual liberation from all earthly debasing entanglements, forms a striking contrast to certain teachings of the modern Christian Churches. Dogma there presents to us an undeveloped helpless soul, as playing—within a circumscribed area of earth’s surface—its one little game of experimental life. The fate of the soul for all eternity hangs in the balance, all its chances for weal or woe depending on a single throw of the dice. And what are the terms of the game? Conditions of life so adverse, in millions of cases, that defeat is a foregone conclusion. No wonder civilized men with a seedling of justice in the soul, reject the whole scheme of nature allied with this dogma, and frankly disavow religious faith.
But the question arises, how does it happen that Christianity, with an ethic fundamentally the same as that of every other great religion of the world, diverges so completely here? Is it conceivable that Christianity, while of Divine origin, has become in process of time dwarfed and deformed to the extent even of losing some essential features? It holds, as sectarian pulpits represent it, no doctrine of re-incarnation, and appears to have no clear basis of metaphysical or philosophic thought. Moreover, it has elements impossible to reconcile with the mental and emotional developments of a scientific and intellectual age. The anthropomorphic conception of Deity, the almost literal interpretation of the Jewish allegory of creation, the personalization of the metaphysical and mystic Trinity; the approval of the barbarous sacrifices and vengeful Deity of the Old Testament; the anti-evolutional doctrine of the vicarious Atonement in the New Testament; the crude ideas concerning the soul, heaven and hell; and the absence of any evolutional theory applied to human destiny—all these, and above all the ignorance and pride that claim for this particular form of religion a unique position in the world’s history, and assume that it alone and no other religion is the revelation of God to man, show an ample justification for the fact that the most intelligent men and women of Western civilization stand outside the Christian Churches to-day, or are in them from motives that have nothing to do with devout religious feeling.
If, however, we turn to the history of the Church and search its ancient records, or if unable ourselves to grapple with the problem, we place confidence in the evidence of students who have done so, we find that an entirely new light is thrown on Christianity and its real position. In the writings of the Christian Fathers, there is a constant reference made to grades of members and teaching within the early Church. First, the general members, and from those the pure in life went into a second grade. The latter formed the “few chosen” from the many called. But beyond these were the “chosen of the chosen,” who, “with perfect knowledge lived in perfection of righteousness according to the law.” Clement of Alexandria, one of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church, wrote: “It is not to be wished that all things should be exposed indiscriminately to all and sundry, or the benefits of wisdom communicated to those who have not, even in a dream, been purified in soul ... nor are the mysteries of the word to be expounded to the profane.” Origen tells us that Jesus conversed with His disciples in private, and especially in their most secret retreats, concerning the Gospel of God; but the words He uttered have not been preserved. And when Celsus assailed Christianity as a secret system, Origen replied such a notion was absurd, “but that there should be certain doctrines not made known to the multitude and which are revealed after the exoteric doctrines have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric.” Elsewhere he explains that Scripture is threefold in meaning, that it is the “flesh” for simple men, the “soul” for the more instructed, the “spirit” for the “perfect,” and in corroboration he quotes from Scripture the words of St. Paul, “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom,” and “we speak wisdom amongst them that are perfect.”
We have here, then, more than a trace of some deeper teaching than appears on the surface of Christianity, some mine of hidden truth too sacred and profound for open display to the undiscerning multitude. Is it not evident that Christianity contains at its centre, known only to the few, the same transcendental and spiritual conceptions, the same supra-physical and mystical philosophy as the ancient religions contain? But if this be so, how came the most precious truths of religion to be apparently lost?
They were lost through the uncomprehending ignorance of the early followers of the Master, Christ, and the sectarian bigotry of ecclesiastics who cut themselves apart from the holders of the inner teaching and, becoming a majority, overcame the learned few, stamping as heretics the last remnants known as Christian Gnostics, Manicheans, Pelasgians, and Arians, all of whom, counted schismatics, were eventually crushed out through cruel persecution by the victorious orthodox Latin and Greek Churches. Nevertheless, some fragments of the hidden wisdom of the early teaching have survived in the uncomprehended symbols of the creeds and ceremonies of the Churches. (I refer my reader to Mr. C. W. Leadbeater’s work, The Christian Creed.)
That re-incarnation and Karma formed part of the original teaching is, I think, abundantly evident. In Gnosticism and Manicheism they were apparent. The Christian Fathers speak plainly of these doctrines, and Origen refers to Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles as holding them. Moreover, Jesus Christ is made to utter a clear statement concerning John the Baptist, that implies the doctrine of re-incarnation, and his answer to the question about a blind man, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” shows the acceptance in the early Church of both doctrines. The whole incident reveals that the subject of re-incarnation was familiar to the followers of Christ, and Josephus expressly states that the Pharisees held the doctrine of re-birth. There is then little doubt that in the early Church the belief was widely spread, but later at a General Council—a Council held after darkness had begun its reign—it was formally condemned and stamped as a heresy.
Bearing in mind the view that all the great religions come from the same spiritual source, it is significant to find the following in the writings of a rigid Roman Catholic historian, viz. A. F. Ozanam: “Having burst over the borders of the country to which it had once been confined, Buddhism at the year 61 B.C. made a new appearance on the scene, and invaded all Northern Asia.... This great movement could not but influence the West. It effected its entrance (into Christendom) through the Gnostic sects. The Gnosis was the designation of a higher science or initiation reserved for a handful of chosen spirits.” Again, speaking of the Manicheans, he says: “It is difficult to decide whether Manes drew his system originally from these Buddhist sources or found the teaching which he handed down to his disciples held by former Gnostic sects, themselves impregnated with the Oriental doctrine.” (Ozanam’s History of Civilization in the Fifth Century, vol. i. pp. 247 and 254.) It is easy to see that this Oriental doctrine was none other than the hidden wisdom of Jesus and Paul as well as of Buddha.
The special doctrine of re-incarnation is said to be absent in the fragments of the Avesta and in the Zend commentaries, and absent also in the latter Pahlavi doctrines. It is not held by the modern Parsis. “On the other hand,” says G. R. S. Mead, B.A., M.R.A.S., “Greek writers emphatically assert that the doctrine of re-incarnation was one of the main tenets of the Magian tradition.” The same author elsewhere remarks: “Since Bardaisan, like all the great Gnostics, believed in re-incarnation, such a conception as the resurrection of the physical body was nothing but a gross superstition of the ignorant.” (The Theosophical Review for March, 1898, p. 17.)
To judge Christianity fairly, it was necessary to know something of its origin, its antecedents and the early phases of its life. We had to follow the history of its early sects and observe the changes effected in the Church by forces playing upon it from without. The Church gradually rose into a position of social influence and authority, from which it again declined, and it was during the latter condition that in its struggles to maintain power and supremacy amid adverse forces it dropped out the mystic beliefs difficult of apprehension by Western minds; it ceased to order and classify its adherents, and it ultimately adapted its doctrines to the materialistic spirit of the dawning era of modern science.[[16]] Nevertheless, the Church retained its pure ethical teaching. It has held up to view the noble unselfish life of its founder Jesus of Nazareth. No one could deny that during the period even of its degradation, this religion has proved to millions of human beings a source of vital comfort and joy, and to some extent of spiritual light.
[16]. Tertullian complains: “They have all access alike; they hear alike, they pray alike, even heathens if any such happen to come among them.”
The tendency of Protestantism was to assert the claims of all men—the weak and childish as well as the thoughtful and intellectually strong—to a clear understanding of the Church’s whole teaching. In pursuance of a policy to meet this demand, the Church gave forth a simplified presentation of God and Nature that contradicts the plainest facts of science, and creates within minds of deeper, more expanded faculty, a conscientious revolt from the Christian faith to an attitude of honest scepticism. Outside the Church, however, other forces of evolution have prevailed to carry man forward, and to-day there exists an earnest and devout spirit of inquiry, and a strong dissatisfaction with the purely materialistic theory of Nature.
Conspicuous among the forces of change are, first, the study of physical phenomena on scientific methods, a study which, by convincing the Western mind of a profound mystery behind all phenomena, gives fresh impulse to speculative thought, and rouses effort to reach and apprehend the law of evolution. Second, the study of psychic phenomena revealing modes of consciousness hitherto ignored, and impelling science to penetrate the hidden recesses of our psychic activities and investigate some of the heights and depths of man’s inner constitution. Third, the historical studies that throw new light on the marvellous civilizations of the past and those religions that are more ancient than Christianity.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of these studies may prove, it is clear that the perspective of early faiths—their range and reach—was vaster than that of current Christianity, and this perception is creeping into our popular literature and laying hold of public thought. For instance, a recent writer remarks: “The modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution seems a prodigious confirmation of Buddhist theories of cosmical law.” And again, “With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution old forms of thought crumbled, new ideas arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas, and we have a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy.” (Lafcadio Hearn’s Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life.)
This movement necessarily will advance only by carrying with it, i.e. convincing step by step, the reason of man, and seeing that Oriental philosophy has the doctrines of re-incarnation and Karma at its foundation, these must be tested and the fact ascertained whether or not they are consistent with the laws of phenomenal existence already discovered and believed in by the Occidental mind. “To-day,” says Lafcadio Hearn, “for the student of scientific psychology, the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact,” and he quotes in corroboration of this statement Professor Huxley’s opinion of the theory—“None but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality, and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.” (Evolution and Ethics, p. 61, Ed. 1894.)
At this epoch of the world’s history, the humanity that exists is of an infinitely varied character. At one end of the scale, we have in savages the simplest forms of racial types, at the other the most complex forms, and between these every conceivable variant. The distinctions go deeper as we ascend the scale, and there are no two beings alike in their powers of abstract thinking, the nature of their intellectual, emotional and moral qualities, and the groupings of these qualities—in a word, their individualities. Now one thing demanded by the developed intellects of this age is a generalization that will cover and explain these perplexing differences. The law of heredity does this to a very limited extent only. So far as the physical structure is concerned it explains much; but when we come to the mental and moral developments, its insufficiency is apparent. Genius and idiocy may be found springing up from the same parent stock and under identical conditions of training in childhood. Variety of character will appear in children of the same family from almost the moment of birth. One infant comes into the world handicapped by a sullen temper and vicious disposition, another with the most lovable traits. It is inconceivable that these incongruous effects flow from congruous causes on the physical plane. And were we able to logically accept these physical causes as adequate, no civilized being could morally respect the ordering of a universe wherein innocent souls newly created enter life handicapped by vicious propensities. Either the Power behind all phenomena is a malevolent Power, or the universe is a chaos—the inconsequent outcome of random chance.
These painful alternatives cease their troubling, however, and all perplexities gradually disappear as the mind of man grows into a clear apprehension of evolution in its full significance. The basic law of evolution is that all existence proceeds in cycles, each having its objective and subjective arc. In other words, there is a constant flow of motion and consciousness from without within and from within without. On the lowlier levels of life, this law is observed and science based upon it. In the vegetable kingdom, the leaves, stalk and flower of a specific plant perish as completely as though they had never existed; but the subjective entity remains, and in due course it reappears, clothed in a different vestment of cells, the same in all the details of its intricate form.
In the insect kingdom, all the wonderful changes that transform a crawling slimy caterpillar into a glorious vision of beauty and grace takes place in silence and darkness—from within without. Here the law of evolution takes a wider range than in the vegetable kingdom. Form, function, habit, all are changed, yet we know by actual observation that the soaring butterfly and crawling caterpillar are intrinsically one and the same. Moreover, the whole process of change is accomplished in the pupa stage independently of that food supply which—to the scientific conception—seems indispensable in the generation and continuation of vital force. (I must here refer my reader to the full discussion of this subject in chapters v. and vi. of Dr. Jerome A. Anderson’s Re-incarnation—A Study of the Human Soul.)
Now in our habit of regarding humanity in its higher aspect as the acme or crown of terrestrial life, we are apt to forget the potent connexions that link it with life in general. But re-incarnation, if we would judge it philosophically, must not be wrenched from its place in the order of nature and studied as an isolated fragment.
“All evolution consists,” says Mrs. Besant, “of an evolving life passing from form to form as it evolves, and storing up the experience gained through the forms; the re-incarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet conditions rendered necessary by the individualization of the continually evolving life.” (The Ancient Wisdom, p. 234.) The doctrine of human evolution summed up in the term re-incarnation cannot be proved in the same sense as a new discovery in physics can be proved—that goes without saying. But we may claim that it can be so nearly proved by reasoning that no intelligent being who correctly apprehends the idea and applies it with patience to the experience of existence, whether in or out of the body, can fail to believe it as fully, for example, as the modern scientific world believes in the electro-magnetic theory of light. That theory is no longer argued about. It is the only theory that will explain all the facts. And of re-incarnation in a higher domain we may equally affirm it is the only theory that explains the facts and is consonant with all the known laws of nature. It is luminous with a truly scientific aspect. It satisfactorily accounts for the inherent differences in character that heredity leaves unexplained, and it renews our faith in love and wisdom as underlying the phenomena of earthly existence, notwithstanding present appearances.
But add to this the fact that every great religion of the world, except modern Christianity, holds it more or less completely, whilst Christianity also originally held it; and if a spiritual and ethical theory of the universe be tenable, then cultured minds rejecting re-incarnation must either have failed to study the subject in its antecedents and bearings, or they must be by constitution profoundly unphilosophical. (I refer my reader here to chap. iii. of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s Growth of the Soul.)
After all, it is a comparatively few men and women who seek intellectual clearness of vision, and are restless of soul till they grasp a theory of the universe and an interpretation of life that alike may satisfy head and heart—the mass of mankind is unthinking. And as we contemplate the stupendous task of evolution in developing each individual soul out of the embryonic condition of the savage to a conscious control and exercise of all the divine potencies of a perfected spiritual man, we feel no surprise that the major part of humanity stands yet in its childhood. Unequal development is the natural corollary of general evolution. The heart of modern man, however, is for the most part in advance of his head, and it is here, viz. on the emotional side of human nature, that religion—no matter what the specific form may have been—has ministered to man’s needs and proved an all-important factor of evolution.
Revelation, as Lessing (who believed in re-incarnation) declares, has been the education of the human race. “It did not,” he says, “give anything that human reason left to itself would not arrive at, but it gave the most important of these things earlier”—that is, before the reasoning faculties were fully developed in man. (Lessing’s Treatise: The Education of the Human Race, translated by the Rev. F. W. Robertson.)
The founders of every religion—the great and wise ones of the earth—have guided the race in its slow and gradual ascent from infancy to manhood, and even through the degeneration to which every religion has been subjected from human ignorance and selfishness.
Section 2
We have now to turn from racial religions to personal religion, and as the springs of individual conduct lie earlier in the heart than in the head, spiritual developments begin there. It is in accordance with natural order that the right conduct and simple devotion of millions of human beings, intellectually blind, should yet aid the steady advance of evolution towards its highest goal.
The pilgrim soul pressing forward through a long series of births and deaths has a chequered career of conquest and defeat, until, experience guiding effort and overcoming waywardness, the animal stage of existence has been distanced and left behind. But each of these pilgrim souls pursues a path specifically its own, that is, differing from that of every other pilgrim soul. The paths pursued are divided by Eastern thought into three distinct classes. First, that of action; second, that of devotion; third, that of wisdom. In the first class are to be found men and women of infinitely varied powers taking part in all the activities of the world, and striving with keenness to attain certain desired results. Commencing, it may be, with low, selfish, narrow motives of action, these gradually alter and improve, till motive and action alike have become pure, unselfish and directed to the widest beneficence. Such types of humanity tread the first path, that of action, and in it are harvesting precious experience. They are developing interiorly the powers that make for righteousness.
To the second class belong all the world’s sincere religionists, those beings whose regard—whether of fear or love—goes out to an ideal person. The person, observe, may be of low or of high grade in accordance with the subjective development of the individual worshipper. As the object of devotion becomes purified, love casts out fear, and advance on this path proceeds. Men and women adoring their conception of Krishna, or Buddha, of Ahura Mazdao, or of Jesus Christ, are treading the path of devotion, and may rise to the highest emotions of altruism, the most selfless service of the Supreme, thus harmonizing ever more and more the human will and the Divine will.
Pilgrims of the third and smallest class are men and women whose constant desire and endeavour is to search out the truth of things. In the earlier grades of this path will be found scientific investigators of physical phenomena; more advanced on the path are materialist philosophers and all individuals directing their efforts to an examination of man in the regions of emotion and mind. Above these again are the men and women whose search is into the innermost nature of things, and who, in the intensity of that search, lose more and more their feeling of self, and merge themselves in Divine knowledge.
To summarise the three paths: The first is a progress through human activities from motives of self to motives of highest altruism. The second is a progress through religious emotions, from fear of an invisible demon, to the most selfless love of an ideal person and unswerving devotion to true ideals. The third is a progress from the simplest efforts to discover truth to the acquisition of Divine wisdom by means of the immensely increased faculties of the perfected man.
These three paths, like different ways up a mountain, meet at the top, where pilgrims attain to the qualities of all, and not only of the one path mainly traversed by each. All attain in the end to the fullest development of human power and faculty, and to complete liberation from the chain of births and deaths. That personal goodness and religious zeal are the measure of spiritual development is only the Church’s view, and it ignores a large part of human efforts and activities. Without personal goodness certainly no spiritual life is possible, but beyond the acme of personal goodness to lofty heights of knowledge, of wisdom, of transcendent love and benevolence, rises the pilgrim human soul under Divine tuition.
We have now to inquire wherein the pilgrims resemble one another? The feature common to all is the inner attitude of self-surrender. It may spring from impulse or a half-unconscious sense of duty. Or, it may result from the reasoning faculty, from reason controlling and directing conduct with a full consciousness of responsibility. Again, it may be allied with all the sacred aspirations and inspirations that follow upon a long course of development, but whatever the cause and degree, this attitude of mind makes it possible for the spiritual forces working in and through humanity as a whole to manifest there, expanding the heart and mind, and creating a further soul-evolution.
There is a law in nature which has been well called the pulse of our planetary system, a law of giving out. It involves no absolute and ultimate sacrifice; and it is the only law by which progress and exaltation in nature can be actually achieved. Now this law is a central part of the teaching of every great religion. The Logos, we are told, in bringing into existence an infinitude of centres of consciousness, made the voluntary sacrifice of limiting His own boundless life. This thought is expressed in the Christian Scriptures thus: “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This first great outbreathing of the life of the Logos is the earliest presentation of the law of sacrifice—that law which prescribes that at every stage of evolution life and energy shall be given out for the benefit of some consciousness on a lower grade than the giver. This great principle of evolution is manifest in the unselfish benevolence of all good men and women; even when they are working as yet in blind obedience to the scarcely articulate impulses of their awakening spiritual natures. (I refer my reader to p. 452 of Mr. A. P. Sinnett’s The Growth of the Soul.)
To our minds pain seems necessarily connected with sacrifice, but pain proceeds wholly from discord within the sacrificer, i.e. from antagonism between the higher part of his nature which is willing to give, and the lower part whose satisfaction lies in grasping and keeping. The process required in each case is a turning from the selfish, individualistic attitude to that of a social, altruistic giving—a giving joyfully for love’s sake. The transition naturally involves some pain, for the conscious will has to gradually master the animal part of the nature, and subordinate it to the higher self.
Man is, in the order of evolution, primarily subject to animal desires. His consciousness moves on the sensuous plane of existence, and he clings to the physical elements in nature. By-and-bye he learns to relinquish an immediate material good for a future good equally material—it may be a greater worldly prosperity for himself or his family. This sacrifice is not essentially noble, but it prepares the way for a harder lesson, and one that calls out a deeper faculty within him. Here again the process is one of exchange, but not of one form of sensuous good for another. It is the exchange of material possessions or sense pleasures for something of an entirely different order in nature—a reward not visible, nay, possibly far off beyond the tomb.
When humanity was in its childhood, religion inculcated and pressed upon it this form of sacrifice; and as we ponder the martyr lives that stud the pages of history we recognize the fact that thousands of human beings practised the precept, and learned to endure, as seeing the invisible, to stand morally upright without earthly prop, to value spiritual companionship and joy in an inner life of purity and peace when outward conditions were adverse and dark.
A later, far higher phase of the law of sacrifice, is that wherein no reward is thought of, or desired. Reaching manhood, humanity grapples with the duties and accepts all the grave responsibilities of an advanced evolutional stage. Duty becomes the motor of action, self-mastery and love of one’s fellows the very keynotes of man’s music. The animal part of his nature becomes subordinate to the higher self. The third great lesson of sacrifice works within, the lesson, viz. to do right simply because it is right, to give because giving is owed by each to all, and not because giving will in any shape be pleasing to or rewarded by God.
During the various stages of progress, the pain aspect of sacrifice is clearly seen. Nevertheless, a soul’s passionate grip upon things physical and sensuous relaxes, and a day arrives when to give spontaneously, freely, lavishly, is purest joy. Then is man’s life merging into Divine life, and sacrifice is no more pain. Vital dissonances cease to rend man’s heart, for his inner consciousness has soared above the selfish separateness of phenomenal existence into realms of nature where unity and love are the all-prevailing principles of life. We know these principles in action through the beautiful, selfless earthly pilgrimage of Him we call the Saviour of Mankind, whose whole career was an At-one-ment with the Divine.
The “Vicarious Atonement” doctrine of Western faiths to-day is both an ecclesiastical device for increasing priestly power and a misapprehension of the law we have been considering—the law of sacrifice, by which the worlds are made, by which the worlds are living now, and by which alone the union of man with God is brought about. That noble doctrine of antiquity was changed by Mediæval Christianity into a picture of the Godhead—Father and Son, in opposition to one another—a picture that “shocks all reverence, and outrages reason by bringing all manner of legal quibbles into the relationship between the Spirit of God and man.” (Four Ancient Religions, Annie Besant, p. 166.) Again, a race whose reasoning faculties are developed must needs repudiate the Church’s dogma of “Imputed Righteousness”—a righteousness not inwrought or attained to, but applied externally—a covering to what is corrupt and base, yet deemed sufficient to secure a perfunctory pardon of sin, a non-merited Divine favour.
The real At-one-ment with the Divine, whereof Jesus the Christ is our Archetype, admits of no substitutions, no subterfuges, makes no fictitious claims. It signifies an actual transformation or process of change, the inner consciousness passing from the lower to function on higher levels of being.
It is easy, however, to apprehend how the necessity of thinking of all supra-physical things, i.e. the finer phenomena of existence, by means of analogies and figures of speech that are purely physical, led to much of error in the earlier stages of human development; and there is a sense in which the “robe of righteousness” is a not inapt analogy or figure. When speaking of the pilgrimage of the soul, the picture presented is that of a concrete toiler, ascending slowly, breathing heavily, sighing and evidencing effort to all our outer senses, yet we know that the soul’s best efforts are mostly hidden from sight and hearing and touch. But no confusion arises. The mental conception to which the figure points is that of efforts as great though directed to evils that are chiefly mental, emotional, moral, not physical. Similarly, the “robe of righteousness” figure must not be overstrained. Man’s soul is clothed upon by, or clothes itself in (it matters not which, we say) robes or garments of flesh, and of finer physical elements than flesh, elements intangible to his five senses. The flesh garment or body is constantly changing, and so are the bodies of desire and of thought. The changes occur through the action and interplay of diverse subtle forces. Fresh elemental matter is borne in from without to replace the atoms of structures tending to decompose, while a process of selection, determination and assimilation proceeds through the action of forces within.
But the same laws of growth apply to realms of nature less open to observation, and a careful selection and choice of material is as potent and necessary in building the bodies of desire and thought as in building the body of solid flesh. And what are the available materials here? In the hidden life of our own thought and feeling we are conscious of an unceasing flow of transient states, or we may express it, currents of emotional and mental vibrations reaching us from we know not whence, waves breaking upon us from without. If we deliberately choose the elevated moods, the purest, swiftest vibrations, and seek habitually to retain these and make them our own, sweetness and light must inevitably characterize the habitation we are slowly building for our inner consciousness. In other words, the vehicles of our feeling and thought will become as “robes of righteousness.”
Desires, passions, emotions form what has been called the astral body;[[17]] aspiration and thought or the action of reason, imagination and the artistic faculties, create a still subtler, or mind-body, while the blend of the two is what we are accustomed to observe as ruling character. And when the physical is cast off at death, man’s consciousness passes into his subtle bodies and into regions of bliss whither we may not follow, but of which St. Paul gives us a glimpse when he says “we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, Eternal in the Heavens.”
[17]. A real body of subtle matter interpenetrating the flesh body and visible to some clairvoyants.
Now, to minds permeated by cruder ideas of man’s body and soul the above will seem mystical and unreal. Nevertheless, there are many minds, scientifically trained to a close observation of the manifold phenomena of life with all the finer forces and elements in nature, that are ready to accept a truer conception of the complex constitution of man. To all such, the proof of the actual existence of these transcendental vehicles of consciousness lies in hypnotic and other psychic phenomena, and in the evidence of experience. For, given a certain amount of intimate intercourse, and the man within the man shows himself to the eye of his friend through expression, attitude, gesture. But what the mental eye sees behind the veil of flesh must exist in some form. Hence the eye discerns not the consciousness, but its phenomenal garment or vehicle, and the texture organized is coarse, brutal, degraded or animal, sensuous, selfish, or of a finer and purer nature, divinely human, indicating the grade and quality of the animating principle or soul within.