What should be the attitude of the Theosophical Student towards revelation? He should treat the Scriptures of the world with reverence, remembering their origin, but none of them with submission, remembering that they are transmitted to him by varied channels. He should call to his aid the best scholarship, should gain all the light he can from archæological and historical researches, and use his best critical judgment in separating the essential truth revealed from all the accretions that may have grown up around it. If he has developed his higher psychic qualities, he should try to trace and disentangle the ancient from the modern, search the ākāshic records for comparison, confirmation, or contradiction of the revelation as it has come into his hands. How immense might be the services of such Theosophical Students as they become more numerous and better equipped for this gigantic task. And without this external equipment much may be done by inner unfoldment; he may unfold within himself his own spiritual powers; he may seek in profound meditation the truth which shines in the revelation beneath many a veil of ignorance and misconstruction; he may so purify his life that his bodies will become translucent of the light of the spirit within him, will illumine the written words. “The things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.” But that Spirit dwells in every child of man; and as His light shines out, the divine things are revealed to the pure in heart. Until the inner Spirit thus responds to the revealed teachings and statements, the Theosophical Student must hold his judgment in suspense before the claims of any revelation. It is not true for him until he can re-echo it in the voice of his own Spirit, his deepest Self. Useful and beautiful it may be; worthy of profoundest study and reverent research are the world’s Bibles. But until they are affirmed by the Spirit within submission cannot be yielded, lest that should be given to the errors of men which is due only to the divine Spirit.
What is Inspiration? The raising of the normal human faculties by some extraneous influence through grade after grade of intellectual, moral, and spiritual power, up to the point where the extraneous influence may even expel the man from his body and use it for the expression of another individual; where the new possessor is a Being at a height utterly transcending man, inspiration may pass into revelation. Some may think the word should be restricted to the raising of the powers of the subject from above their normal capacity to the highest point of their possible exercise, short of the expulsion of their owner and his replacement by another individual greater than himself.
The lower grades of inspiration are within the experience of very many. Have you never felt, when listening to a speaker whose knowledge and power transcended your own, that your mental faculties were lifted to a higher level than that to which you could rise unaided? On such occasions you grasp questions that hitherto have eluded you; you see plainly, where before there had been obscurity; the field of thought becomes illumined, and objects are seen in hitherto undreamed-of relations—you feel that you know. On the following day you desire to share with a friend the treasures you acquired, and you begin to recount the luminous exposition, to describe the great horizons which opened before you. You fail: where is the light, where the far-off scenes over which your eyes had swept? Your mind has sunk again to its normal level; the inspiration has passed away. As with the intellectual, so with the moral faculties. You had seen an unknown beauty, had felt an overwhelming admiration for the lofty and the pure: what has become of the warmth, the ardour? Are the cold ashes of the intellectual approval all that remains of the throbbing heart, the passionate delight in the moral ideal? Why does it now look so cold, so grey, so unattractive? You were raised to a higher level than you can reach unassisted; but none the less has the moral ideal and its power been shown to thee “in the Mount,” and the fact that you have once experienced its all-compelling power will render you more susceptible to it in the future, and the day will come when that which you felt when inspired by another shall become the normal exercise of your own moral faculties.
Coming to higher grades of inspiration, we may know, some of us, what it is to stand in the presence of the Masters, and to feel the marvellous uplift of Their presence. There is no need for words, no need for teaching; Their presence is enough. From that presence we go out again into the ordinary world, to feel the difference of its atmosphere from that of the Holy One. But, we have known, and the memory remains an abiding power.
Those who have written or spoken under inspiration have been thus uplifted, their own intellectual and moral faculties have thus been stimulated, and raised far above their normal level. It is still they who write or speak, and their own characters and temperaments colour what they say, leave their own impress on what they write. But they write and speak far more nobly, far more powerfully than they could do unassisted.
And so we may rise from grade to grade of inspiration until we reach the stage at which the mind and emotions of the man no longer sway his body, but the body is wholly taken possession of and used by One greater than himself. Then it is no longer the man himself who speaks, but “the Spirit of” his “Father who speaketh in” him; his own limitations are struck away, his own idiosyncrasies vanish, and the inspired utterances flow forth unsullied. Then inspiration may range into revelation.
The process of all this is a very simple one. We know that by the correlation between changes in consciousness and vibrations of matter, each change in consciousness is accompanied by a vibration of the matter appropriated by the consciousness and forming its body; each vibration of the matter of a body is accompanied by a change in the embodied consciousness. Either one of the pair may be the initiator; the other ever responds. When two or more people are together, one more evolved than the other or others, the more evolved person, thinking, desiring, acting, sets up in his own bodies, mental, astral, and physical, a series of vibrations which corresponds to the changes in his consciousness; these vibrations cause similar vibrations in the mental, astral, and physical matter intervening between himself and the less advanced person or persons present. These vibrations in the intervening matter cause similar vibrations in the neighbouring body or bodies. These vibrations are immediately answered by corresponding changes in the embodied consciousness or consciousnesses, and the person or persons concerned, thus placed en rapport with one more advanced, think, desire, act on a higher level than would be possible for them on their own initiative. They are able to understand more keenly, to feel more warmly, to act more nobly than they could do unassisted. When the stimulus is removed they gradually sink back to their normal level, but memory is left, and they remember that they “have known.” Moreover, it is more easy for them to respond a second time, and so on and on, until they establish themselves on the higher level permanently. Hence the value of companionship with those more advanced than ourselves, of living “in their atmosphere.” Words are not necessary; little speech may pass; but insensibly the subtle body is tuned to a higher key, and only, perhaps, when the companionship is interrupted do the younger become conscious of the change which has thus been brought about by contact with the elder.
Similar results may be brought about by reading the writings of those who are more evolved than we are. A similar series of changes is set up, though less powerfully than by the living presence. Moreover, intent and reverent study may attract the attention of the writer whether he be in or out of the body, and may draw him to the student, and thus cause the latter to be enveloped in his atmosphere quite as potently as though he were physically present. Hence the value of reading noble literature: we are keyed up to its level for the time, and such reading, steadily persevered in, will lift us to a higher level and establish us thereon. Hence the value of a brief reading before meditation, lifting us into an air more favourable to the work of meditation than we can start from unassisted. Hence the value also of “holy places” for such meditation, places where the atmosphere is literally vibrating at a higher rate than our own; and hence the advice so often given by the instructed, to keep, if possible, a room or closet set apart for meditation, such a place soon gaining an atmosphere purer and subtler than that of the surrounding world. It is of little use for the theosophical student to be acquainted with these laws if he does not utilise them to his own helping, and to the helping of those around him.
What should be the attitude of the theosophical student towards the inspired man or the inspired book? He should be receptive, stilling all his normal vibrations so far as is possible, and opening his whole nature to the impact and influx of the waves of vibration that pour forth upon him. But his attitude should be more than receptive: he should gently endeavour to attune himself and to co-operate with the inflowing waves. He should try to strengthen the sympathetic vibrations, so that the accompanying changes in consciousness may be as complete as possible. For this he must pour out to the inspiring Object his love, his trust, his complete confidence and self-surrender, for thus only can he attune his bodies into sympathy with those of the Inspirer. He must, for the time, empty himself of his own ideas, his own feelings, his own activities, surrendering himself to reproduce, not to initiate. As the unruffled lake can mirror the moon and the stars, but as that same lake rippled by a passing breeze can yield only broken reflexions, so may the lower being, steadying his mind, calming his desires, and imposing stillness on his activities, reproduce within himself the image of the higher, so may the disciples mirror the Master’s mind. And so, also, if his own thoughts spring up, his own desires arise, will he have but broken reflexions, dancing lights, that tell him nought.
If you are going to read one of the inspired books of the world—The Imitation of Christ; The Golden Verses of Pythagoras; The Light on the Paths; The Voice of the Silence—it is well to preface the reading with a prayer, if that be your habitual way of raising your consciousness to its highest mood, or with the repetition of a mantra, or the soft chanting of some familiar and beloved rhythm, in order to bring yourself into a sympathetic condition. Then read a phrase, re-read, brood over it, savour it mentally, suck out its essence, its life.