Lecture VII
The Theosophical Student in face of Revelation, Inspiration, and Observation
A Lecture delivered to the British Convention of the Theosophical Society, July 4th, 1909
Friends: Those who seriously take up the study of Theosophy should not be satisfied with the mere reading of the voluminous theosophical literature poured out into the world through the centuries of the past, and continuing to flow into it in our own days. They should, in addition, if they have any innate faculty for such investigation, prepare to develop the faculties by which they may verify for themselves that which they are told by others. But in all cases much theoretical study is desirable before passing on into the practical, and in most cases it may not be possible to develop the subtler senses within the limits of the present incarnation, although a good foundation may be laid for such development in the next. Hence theoretical study must form a large part of the training of every theosophical student, and his attitude towards such study is a matter of serious importance. He needs to discriminate between the books he reads, and to suit his attitude to the type of the book; he must seek to understand what is meant by Revelation, what by Inspiration, and to distinguish revealed from inspired literature, and both from the records of observations.
Some Scriptures which are regarded as authoritative lie at the back of all the great religions. Thus Hindūism has the Veda. The word means knowledge, and this knowledge is of that which is eternally true. It is the knowledge of the Logos, the knowledge of the Lord of a universe; the knowledge of what is, not of what seems; the knowledge of realities, not of phenomena. This abides ever in the Logos; it is part of Himself. In its manifested form, as revealed for the helping of man, it becomes the Vedās, and in this form goes through many stages, until finally little of the original remains. All Hindū schools of philosophy acknowledge the supreme authority of the Vedas; but after this formal acknowledgment is made, the intellect is allowed to range freely at its will—to inquire, to judge, to speculate. Rigid as Hindūism is in its social polity, it has ever left the human intellect free; in philosophy, in metaphysic, it has ever realised that truth should be sought, and no penalty inflicted on error; error being sufficiently penalised by the fact that it is error, and breeds misfortunes under natural laws. Even to-day that ancient liberty is maintained, and a man may think and write as he will provided that he follows in practise the social customs of his caste. The Hindū divides all knowledge into two types—the supreme and the lower. In the lower he places all his sacred books—following in this the dictum of an Upanishad[5]—together with all other literature, all science, all instruction; in the category of the supreme he places only “the knowledge of Him by whom all else is known.” There you have Hindūism in a nutshell. When once supreme knowledge has been attained and illumination has been experienced, all Scriptures become useless. This is asserted plainly and boldly in a well-known passage in the Bhagavad Gītā: “All the Vedas are as useful to an enlightened Brāhmana as is a tank in a place covered over with water.”[6] What need of a tank when water is everywhere? What need of Scriptures when the man is enlightened? Revelation is useless to the man to whom the Self is revealed.
In the early days of Buddhism the Vedas held high place, for the Lord Buddha, as Dr. Rhys Davids says, “was born and brought up, and lived and died a Hindū.”[7] But the charter of intellectual freedom for Buddhists is contained in the wise advice of their Teacher: “Do not believe in a thing said merely because it is said; nor in traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity; nor in rumours, as such; nor in writings by sages, merely because sages wrote them … nor on the mere authority of your own teachers or masters. But we are to believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and consciousness. For this I have taught you: not to believe merely because you have heard; but when you believed of your own consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly.”[8] Even revelation, for the Buddhist, must be brought to the touchstone of reason and consciousness; there must be a response to it from within, the interior witness of the Self, ere it can be accepted as authoritative.
In the Christian and Muhammadan faiths—both largely influenced by Judaism—the authoritative nature of revelation is carried further than in any earlier faith. In modern days the yoke of a revealed Scripture has been much lightened for Christianity by the growth of the critical spirit and by the researches of scholars. The modern Christian student is little more hampered by his revelation than is the Hindū by his. A conventional reverence is yielded, a lifting of the hat, and then the student goes freely on his way.
What is Revelation? It is a communication from a Being superior to humanity of facts known to Himself, but unknown to those to whom He makes the revelation—facts which they cannot reach by the exercise of the powers that they have so far evolved. These facts can be verified at any time by one who has climbed to the level of the Revealer, who may be an Avatāra, a Rishi, a Founder of a religion. They “speak with authority,” the authority of knowledge, the one authority to which all sane men bow. We do not find that these great Beings wrote down Their teachings Themselves; They taught, but They did not record. Some follower, some disciple, it may be after the lapse of many years, even of centuries, wrote down what he or his forefathers had heard; hence the revelation—and to this rule there is probably no exception—is inevitably to some extent coloured, narrowed, distorted by the transcriber. That which was heard originally by those round the divine Teacher exists indeed in the ākāshic records, and may ever be recovered thence by those who have developed the inner senses by which those records may be read. In many cases true records will have been made at the time by highly qualified persons; but such precious books are kept securely in the custody of their chosen guardians, in secret temples, in rock libraries, available for the study of high Occultists, but of none other.
The Muhammadans would claim that in the case of their sacred book there is more certainty that the very words of their Prophet were preserved. And doubtless to this is due the overwhelming authority of Al Qurān in the minds of the faithful of Islām.