But it is not Physical Science that we can ever ask to read man for us, as the riddle of the Past, or of the Future; since no Philosopher can tell us even what man is, as known to both Physiology and Psychology. In doubt whether man was a God or a beast, Science has now connected him with the latter and derives him from an animal. Certainly the task of analyzing and classifying the human being as a terrestrial animal may be left to Science, which Occultists, of all men, regard with veneration and respect. They recognize its ground and the wonderful work it has done, the progress achieved in Physiology, and even—to a degree—in Biology. But man's inner, spiritual, psychic, or even moral, nature cannot be left to the tender mercies of an ingrained Materialism; for not even the higher psychological Philosophy of the West is able, in its present incompleteness and tendency towards a decided Agnosticism, to do justice to the inner man; especially to his higher capacities and perceptions, and to those states of consciousness, [pg 698] across the road to which such authorities as Mill draw a strong line, saying “So far, and no farther shalt thou go.”
No Occultist would deny that man—together with the elephant and the microbe, the crocodile and the lizard, the blade of grass and the crystal—is, in his physical formation, the simple product of the evolutionary forces of Nature through a numberless series of transformations; but he puts the case differently.
It is not against zoölogical and anthropological discoveries, based on the fossils of man and animal, that every Mystic and believer in a Divine Soul inwardly revolts, but only against the uncalled-for conclusions built on preconceived theories and made to fit in with certain prejudices. The premisses of Scientists may or may not be always true; and as some of these theories live but a short life, the deductions therefrom must ever be one-sided with materialistic Evolutionists. Yet it is on the strength of such very ephemeral authority, that most of the men of Science frequently receive honours where they deserve them the least.[1098]
To make the working of Karma—in the periodical renovations of the Universe—more evident and intelligible to the student when he arrives at the origin and evolution of man, he has now to examine with us the Esoteric bearing of the Karmic Cycles upon Universal Ethics. The question is, do those mysterious divisions of time, called Yugas and Kalpas by the Hindûs, and so very graphically, κύκλοι, cycles, rings [pg 699] or circles, by the Greeks, have any bearing upon, or any direct connection with, human life? Even exoteric Philosophy explains that these perpetual circles of time are ever returning on themselves, periodically and intelligently, in Space and Eternity. There are “Cycles of Matter,”[1099] and there are “Cycles of Spiritual Evolution,” and racial, national, and individual Cycles. May not Esoteric speculation allow us a still deeper insight into their workings?
This idea is beautifully expressed in a very clever scientific work.
The possibility of rising to a comprehension of a system of coördination so far outreaching in time and space all range of human observations, is a circumstance which signalizes the power of man to transcend the limitations of changing and inconsistent matter, and assert his superiority over all insentient and perishable forms of being. There is a method in the succession of events, and in the relation of coëxistent things, which the mind of man seizes hold of; and by means of this as a clue, he runs back or forward over æons of material history of which human experience can never testify. Events germinate and unfold. They have a past which is connected with their present, and we feel a well-justified confidence that a future is appointed which will be similarly connected with the present and the past. This continuity and unity of history repeat themselves before our eyes in all conceivable stages of progress. The phenomena furnish us the grounds for the generalization of two laws which are truly principles of scientific divination, by which alone the human mind penetrates the sealed records of the past and the unopened pages of the future. The first of these is the law of evolution, or, to phrase it for our purpose, the law of correlated successiveness or organized history in the individual, illustrated in the changing phases of every single maturing system of results.... These thoughts summon into our immediate presence the measureless past and the measureless future of material history. They seem almost to open vistas through infinity, and to endow the human intellect with an existence and a vision exempt from the limitations of time and space and finite causation, and lift it up towards a sublime apprehension of the Supreme Intelligence whose dwelling place is eternity.[1100]
According to the teachings, Mâyâ—the illusive appearance of the marshalling of events and actions on this Earth—changes, varying with nations and places. But the chief features of one's life are always in accordance with the “Constellation” under which one is born, or, we should say, with the characteristics of its animating principle or the Deity that presides over it, whether we call it a Dhyân Chohan, as in Asia, or an Archangel, as with the Greek and Latin Churches. 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 [pg 700] Saviours and Avatâras. Hence the connecting link between the Buddhas, the Avatâras, and so many other incarnations 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 supersedes the first, until, from Ray to Ray, the Inner Man is drawn into the one and highest Beam of the Parent-Sun. Thus, “the events of humanity do run coördinately with the number forms,” since the single units of that humanity proceed one and all from the same source—the Central Sun and its shadow, the visible. For the equinoxes and solstices, the periods and various phases of the solar course, astronomically and numerically expressed, are only the concrete symbols of the eternally living verity, though they do seem abstract ideas to uninitiated mortals. And this explains the extraordinary numerical coincidences with geometrical relations, shown by several authors.
Yes; “our destiny is written in the stars”! Only, the closer the union between the mortal reflection Man and his celestial Prototype, the less dangerous the external conditions and subsequent reïncarnations—which neither Buddhas nor Christs can escape. This is not superstition, least of all is it fatalism. The latter implies a blind course of some still blinder power, but man is a free agent during his stay on earth. He cannot escape his ruling Destiny, but he has the choice of two paths that lead him in that direction, and he can reach the goal of misery—if such is decreed to him—either in the snowy white robes of the martyr, or in the soiled garments of a volunteer in the iniquitous course; for there are external and internal conditions which affect the determination of our will upon our actions, and it is in our power to follow either of the two. Those who believe in Karma have to believe in Destiny, which, from birth to death, every man weaves thread by thread round himself, as a spider his web; and this Destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible Prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral, or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable Law of Compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully following [pg 701] the fluctuations of the fight. When the last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this self-made Destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the immovable rock, or carries him away like a feather in a whirlwind raised by his own actions, and this is—Karma.
A Materialist, treating of the periodical creations of our globe, has expressed it in a single sentence:
The whole past of the earth is nothing but an unfolded present.