The Christs of all the ages have preached this one doctrine: Charity and Brotherhood of Man. To deny the law of charity is to deny the Christ. The Theosophical Society is not responsible for unveiling to the present generation the occult nature of man. Modern Spiritualism had already done this; nor is the responsibility to be charged to the Spiritualists, for these unseen forces had revealed themselves in the fullness of time, and many millions had become convinced, many against their wills, of the reality of the unseen universe. These things are here, and neither crimination, or recrimination is of any use. The responsibility therefore, rests entirely with the individual, as to what use he makes of his opportunities, as to his purposes and aims, and as he advances in his course, involved in the circle of necessity, he influences whether he will or no, those whose spheres of life touch at any point his own. As ye sow, so shall ye also reap. By and by the cycle will close and both the evil and the good will return like bread cast upon the waters. This is a law of all life.
Imagine not that they are weak and vacillating souls who enter the left-hand road: Lucifer was once a prince of light, admitted to the councils of the Most High. He fell through pride, and dragged downward in his fall all who worshiped the demon pride. This is no foolish fable, but a terrible tragedy, enacted at the gates of paradise, in the face of the assembled universe, and reënacted in the heart of man, the epitome of all. Only Infinite pity can measure the downfall of such an one, only Infinite love disarm by annihilation, and so put an end to unendurable woe, and that only when the cycle is complete, the measure of iniquity balanced by its measure of pain. Occultism and magic are not child’s-play, as many may learn to their sorrow, as many visitants of dark circles have already and long ago discovered. Better give dynamite to our children as a plaything, than Magic to the unprincipled, the thoughtless, the selfish and ignorant. Let all who have joined the Theosophical Society remember this, and search their hearts before taking the first step in any magical formulary. The motive determines all. Occult power brings with it unknown and unmeasured responsibility.
If in the secret councils of the soul, where no eye can see, and no thought deceive that divine spark conscience, we are ready to forget self, to forego pride, and labor for the well-being of man, then may the upright man face his destiny, follow this guide and fear no evil. Otherwise it were far better that a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into the depths of the sea.
Pythagoras.
Tea Table Talk.
The Tea Table has had a sensation!
Do you remember the case of “Chalanka”? He was the “Fallen Idol,” in Anstey’s book of that name, and played the very deuce with people and bric-a-brac alike. There’s a deal of truth in that clever little satire, and the author shows up the elementals quite correctly without in the least suspecting it.
The Chalanka of the Tea Table arrived very demurely one winter afternoon, per Adams Express, in a promising box which bore the mark of a great china firm and contained as well, securely moored in its harbor of cotton wool, a tea-pot which the Tea Table pronounced “Adorable” were it not smashed. Nothing else was near this brittle loveliness save and except Chalanka. To all appearances he was a pencil sketch of the head of a young Brahmin of high caste, folded in the typical turban. The drawing is powerful and the subtle sidelong glance of the eyes to the extreme left has one peculiarity, viz: if you come round from behind the picture on the extreme right, the eyes meet you equally, and so from any position. I cannot escape that dark and searching gaze. Still, one would say there was nothing dynamic about a sketch, and yet the tea-pot arrived literally crushed to pieces within its perfect casing, and the indignant ladies, with the acumen of their sex, soon spotted Chalanka and held him responsible. Presently I noticed that everyone had a more or less sidelong glance in return for his, towards where he glowered from an étagère on which we had put him, and in the course of the social hour I collected these remarks upon him.
The Professor, sauntering up.—“H-m. Who have we here? The fellow has a beautiful face and—the devil’s in it!”
Sue. “Goodness! who’s that? Makes me feel like when I step down in the dark.”
The Mother. “That man’s face is not human.”
The Widow. “I have it! I wondered what Chalanka made me think of. Don’t you know that thing in the Bible about ‘the serpent that listeneth not to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely?’” (The Widow was wiser than she knew.)
The Student. “You ladies always go in for poetry. Now he looks to me as if he said,—‘Get me if you can, my boy; if you don’t, I’ll get you!’” Great sensation and nervous shivers from the ladies, followed by instant demands for the lamp. The maid who brings it being observed to fix a fascinated gaze on Chalanka, is asked what she thinks of him. After a little urgency she replies. “That gentlemaen’s so sad, ain’t he? I do’n’ know, he’s unnatr’al like. Seems like there’s somethin’ he can’t get over.” Flings her apron over her head suddenly, and breaks from the room. Apologizes later and says “nerves is in her family” but always thereafter calls Chalanka “that gentleman,” as for instance; “I couldn’t bring meself to dust that gentleman.” Or, “I knocked that gentleman down but he ain’t hurt.”
Now the curious fact about the above remarks is this: A fellow F. T. S. felt impelled to draw one night. As he did so, a mist gathered near him, and gradually this Brahmin stood plainly before him, just as the sketch shows him, with his magnetic gaze which affects everyone who sees him. Many callers come into the room where the 5 by 8 drawing stands inconspicuously, surrounded by all the Heaven-only-knows-what, of modern decoration, but the Tea Table has yet to see the person who does not comment upon Chalanka with a baffled sense of mystery. The artist, a student well up in such matters and a man of unimpeachable veracity, knew his strange visitor for an elemental who assumed that shape to attract attention, the artist knowing many Hindus and thinking often of them.
What do you suppose it is that tells the story of this silent, watchful face, even to the incurious? Does some odic fluid inhere in it, or does the clue rest with the akasic vibrations from it? In consequence of its arrival, conversation has turned to coincidences, and from this I have collected the following items of interest:
A. “I dreamed the other night that I had a talk with a fellow student; next day he told me he dreamed same night—that I came and said: ‘I’m tired of your nonsense; you must get serious.’ That was just what I dreamed I had said to him myself. So when Father died; four times my Brother and I dreamed on the same night that we saw Father and talked with him on the same subject.”
C. “Three times I dreamed of getting a letter in a blue envelope, each time I received one such next day. Dreamed one night of reading Sun paragraph that a new gun shield had come out to shield artillery men. Next morning’s Sun had the exact paragraph. I had never previously thought of gun shields. Another night I dreamed I was in a town all on fire. Next morning’s Sun had an account of the burning of Little Rock, Ark.”
W. had some second sight in his family. One night when twelve years old, in Roumania, as he lay down in his bed, on looking towards the foot of the bed saw in the bright gaslight the head and shoulders of a beautiful child. He was very much frightened: his brother, who was with him saw nothing. A few years later W. emigrated to the U. S., married later in life, and his first child, a boy, grew up to be the exact image of the vision which had gone out of his mind until the developed features of the child reproduced it. The same lad when 11, desired a dictionary, but could not find it after much search. The same night he dreamed that he got up and took it from a certain other shelf: looked the next morning and there it was.
Several curious instances of thought sent ahead have also been sent in to the Tea Table, where persons seemed to see some one they knew and in a few moments met a member of that family.
Some one suggested that the sketch might represent a black magician, (Dugpa) and the mother asks me what such a man really was. I had just been reading a Hindu MSS on this subject and I was able to explain, vide its able pages, as follows: As the Yogi is a person busied in converting his lower nature into higher, so the Dugpa endeavors to sink all his higher elements and changes them gradually into lower ones. He might remain in our earth life until the last spark of ethical nature or kindly emotion had been transmitted into love of evil for its own sake. He would then presumably go to any of the lower states from the eighth to the thirteenth. We know well, as Sinnett has put it for us, that “nature sets no trap for any of her creatures,” and so it happens that having been long immersed in the lower spheres, our Dugpa might once more ascend into the realms of light and begin to develop his higher nature. Many will ask whence the impulse is derived, if the ethical nature was completely destroyed. From the great law-giver; from Karma! In such a case, if there remained but a small balance of good Karma in his favor, even though it were at the very moment of his descent, he could necessarily rise again, (sooner or later,) until he had exhausted it, for the lex parsimonae of nature gives every possible chance for the recovery of lost ground. These opportunities are said to occur whenever one or more items of the balance of good Karma have ripened, and often when the momentum of the lower nature was for the time exhausted, and he could no longer descend. In this view it will be seen that we only receive from time to time a part of our deserts. The whole bulk of our Karma does not fall at once, but is distributed throughout the series of lives. When a man goes into the extreme of occultism unadvisedly however, the resistance he encounters is apt to draw down the whole weight of Karma at once. If the balance is in his favor then great is the power for his benefit, otherwise he is crushed and fails. He has then an additional opportunity of choice along with his race, when the race period of choice occurs, as it will in the next round, we are told. In the fourth chapter of the Koran occurs a confirmation of the occult teaching as regards this distribution of deserts. “Covet not that which God hath bestowed on some of you preferably to others. Unto the men shall be given a portion of what they shall have gained, and unto the women shall be given a portion of what they shall have gained.”
“Well, Sir,” said the professor, “I should like to know the exact rationale of this Karmic process. Why does a student professing chelaship draw down the bulk of his Karma?”
“There are many who want to know quite as much as you do,” I replied. “All they have to do is to study the operations of cyclic law for themselves. And mind, if you dig for ore, you bring down other things in the debris, while if a miner hands you a lump, you’re not much more of a miner than you were at the start. You will find these laws represent perfect, equilibrated Justice.”
“Humph! I’m rather like the man in a recent novel, who said: ‘who am I that should yearn to deal out strict Justice? I never got it, thank God!’”
The fact is, Justice is a gun too heavily loaded for the use of man; its backward kick is more than I like to think of.
Julius.