Be this as it may, what we have is enough to perplex us greatly; and the control allowed by the fragments which have been saved from historic antiquity absolutely removes all suspicion of more or less recent fraud or deception in respect of the essentials. Moreover, any fraud or deception of this nature seems hardly possible and would be so ingenious that we should be obliged to marvel at it as a phenomenon almost as remarkable as that whereof it would be seeking to give the illusion; and we should have to admit that the mind of man has never insinuated itself so far into the infinity of time and space, or into the origin of things, and has never risen to such heights. Had this revelation profited by all the attainments of our latter-day science and thought, it could not have furnished us with theories more satisfactory, more logical, more coherent, more plausible, more synthetic, or worthier of the infinity which they strive to embrace and often seem to attain, on the rhythm of the eternities, the ebb and flow of the eternal Becoming, the never-ending cycle and the periodic existences of the ego, the birth, movement and evolution of the worlds, the divine breath and the intelligence that animate it, on Maya, the eternal illusion of ignorance, the struggle for life, natural selection, the gradual development and transformation of stars and men, the functions and energies of the ether, immortal and infallible justice, the intermolecular and fantastic activity of matter, on the nature of the soul and the existence of the vast, nameless power that governs the universe, in a word, on all the riddles that assail and all the mysteries that overwhelm us.
But, let us hasten to repeat it, there could not seriously be any question of fraud, because the texts or traditions that might be regarded with suspicion are corroborated by other texts, such as the sacred inscriptions of Egypt, which no one thinks of contesting. At most we may come upon a few passages antedated by the imprudent zeal of adepts or commentators, a few interpolations which merely embroider the majestic lines. Taking it as a whole, we have to do with a revelation which dates back infinitely farther than all that we have called the prehistoric ages, wherefore it is legitimate that our astonishment should be unbounded.
12
Very good, it will be said, this interpretation of the universe, this anthropocosmogenesis is the loftiest, the most spacious, the most wonderful, the most unassailable that has ever been conceived; it teems in every part with human thought and imagination; but what is it all based upon? When all is said, we have here only magnificent hypotheses, boldly disguised as authoritative, dogmatic and peremptory declarations, but every one incapable of verification. This is the objection which I myself put forward, a little hastily, in one of the early chapters of Our Eternity.
It is indeed undeniable that we shall not for some time to come, that perhaps we shall never know the truth about the origin and the end of the universe or any of the other problems which these declarations profess to solve. But it is curious to note that science, despite itself, is daily drawing nearer to one or other of these declarations and that it is unable to set aside or to contradict any of them. There is for example, a certain study of the genesis of the elements, by the well-known chemist, Sir William Crookes, which unconsciously becomes plainly occultist, while the discovery of the radioactivity of matter reproduces precisely the theory of vortices of the initiate Anaxagoras. It is the same, mutatis mutandis, with the function attributed to the ether, the latest, indispensable postulate of our scientists. It is the same with the supreme and essential functions of certain minute glands of which modern medicine is only now beginning to rediscover the importance and which probably hold hidden the primordial secrets of life: the thyroid gland, which directs growth and intelligence; the suprarenal gland, which governs the unconscious muscle that is the heart; and the pineal gland, the most mysterious of all, which brings us into relation with the unknown worlds. It is the same again with astronomy, when the manifest insufficiency of our so-called cosmic laws, notably that of gravitation, propounds a host of questions which only the cosmogony of the east is able to answer. But this would require a long enquiry, which I am not qualified to undertake.
For the rest, nothing obliges us to accept these declarations as dogmas. There is no question here of a religion which imposes upon us its blind faith, its Credo quia absurdum. We are quite entitled to regard them as mere hypotheses, as immense, incomparable antediluvian poems, of which the Mosaic Genesis is but a disfigured fragment. But, even as hypotheses or poems, it must be admitted that they are prodigious, that we have nothing better, nothing more probable to set against them and that, in view of their incontestable antiquity, of their prehistoric origin, they seem really superhuman.
Must we admit, as the occultists contend, that they come to us from beings superior to man, from more spiritual entities, living under unknown conditions, who occupied our earth or the neighbouring planets before our coming; from a Lemuro-Atlantean civilization which, in its megalithic monuments, has left indelible traces in the memory of the peoples and on the face of our earth? It is quite possible; but here again we are free to await the confirmations of Hindu, Egyptian, Chaldean, Assyrian and Persian archæology, which on this point, as on so many others, has not spoken its last word.
13
I am well aware that this revelation, as apparently all those which may be made in the course of time, dates back to and ends in the unknowable, the insoluble mystery of divinity, of being, or existence; and it necessarily stops short before the barrier of this unknowable, which is as impenetrable and impregnable as a cliff that is infinite in every dimension and formed of a single block of black diamond. There is nothing to be done; we can but halt; we cannot even seek to outflank it, to approach it from the other side, for the other side, if we could reach it, would necessarily be like the side in front of us, seeing that the non-existence of everything would be just as inexplicable, just as incomprehensible as its existence. It is true that, in the secret recesses of the doctrine, the universe and all that it contains is known as Maya, that is to say, the eternal illusion, so that the two irreconcilable mysteries unite in a still greater mystery which man’s intelligence can no longer approach.
Fundamentally, the primitive riddle, the primordial mystery not being elucidated, all the rest illumines only the steps that lead from comparative knowledge to absolute ignorance. It will probably be the same with all the revelations that may address themselves to man’s intelligence so long as he continues on this planet, for this intelligence doubtless has limits which no effort can enlarge. But in the meantime it is certain that these steps, which lead to nothing, nevertheless, at the first onset and from the earliest days led him to the highest point which his intelligence has attained or can hope to attain. The most ancient explanation embraces straightway all the attempts at explanation that have hitherto been offered. It harmonizes the positivism of science with the most transcendental idealism; it accepts matter and spirit; it reconciles the mechanical impulsion of atoms and worlds with their intelligent guidance. It gives us an unconditioned divinity, “a causeless cause of all the causes,” worthy of the universe which is this divinity itself and of which all the divinities that have succeeded it in all our religions are but scattered, mutilated and unrecognizable members. It offers us, lastly, in its law of Karma, by virtue of which each being undergoes in his successive lives the consequences of his actions and gradually purifies himself, the loftiest, justest and most unassailable, the most fertile, consoling and hopeful moral principle that could ever be proposed to man. Because of all this it appears worthy of investigation, respect and admiration.