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A COMPLETE
assimilation of esoteric teaching up to the
point we have now reached will enable us to approach the consideration
of the subject which exoteric writers on Buddhism have generally treated
as the doctrinal starting-point of that religion.
Hitherto, for want of any better method of seeking out the true
meaning of Nirvana, Buddhist scholars have generally picked the word to
pieces, and examined its roots and fragments. One might as hopefully
seek to ascertain the smell of a flower by dissecting the paper on which
its picture was painted. It is difficult for minds schooled in the
intellectual processes of physical research as all our Western
nineteenth-century minds are, directly or indirectly to comprehend the
first spiritual state above this life, that of Devachan. Such conditions
of existence are but partly for the understanding; a higher faculty must
be employed to realize them; and all the more is it impossible to force
their meaning upon another mind by words. It is by first awakening that
higher faculty in his pupil, and then putting the pupil in a position to
observe for himself, that the regular occult teacher proceeds in such a
matter.
Now there are the usual seven states of Devachan, suited to
the different degrees of spiritual enlightenment which the various
candidates for that condition may obtain; there are rupa and
arupa locas in Devachan, that is to say, states which take
(subjective) consciousness of form and states which transcend these
again. And yet the highest Devachanic state in arupa loca is not
to be compared to that wonderful condition of pure spirituality which is
spoken of as Nirvana.
In the ordinary course of Nature during a round, when the spiritual
monad has accomplished the tremendous journey from the first planet to
the seventh, and has finished for the time being its existence there,
finished all its multifarious existences there, with their respective
periods of Devachan between each, the Ego passes into a spiritual
condition different from the Devachanic state, in which, for periods of
inconceivable duration, it rests before resuming its circuit of the
worlds. That condition may be regarded as the Devachan of its Devachanic
states, a sort of review thereof, a superior state to those reviewed,
just as the Devachanic state belonging to any one existence on earth is
a superior state to that of the half-developed spiritual aspirations or
impulses of affection of the earth-life. That period that inter-cyclic
period of extraordinary exaltation, as compared to any that have gone
before, as compared even with the subjective conditions of the planets
in the ascending arc, so greatly superior to our own as these are is
spoken of in esoteric science as a state of partial Nirvana. Carrying on
imagination through immeasurable vistas of the future, we must next
conceive ourselves approaching the period which would correspond to the
inter-cyclic period of the seventh round of humanity, in which men have
become as gods. The very last most elevated and glorious of the
objective lives having been completed, the perfected spiritual being
reaches a condition in which a complete recollection of all lives lived
at any time in the past returns to him. He can look back over the
curious masquerade of objective existences, as it will seem to him then,
over the minutest details of any of these earth-lives among the number
through which he has passed, and can take cognizance of them and of all
things with which they were in any way associated; for in regard to this
planetary chain he has reached omniscience. This supreme development of
individuality is the great reward which Nature reserves not only for
those who secure it prematurely, so to speak, by the relatively brief
but desperate and terrible struggles which lead to adeptship, but also
for all who by the distinct preponderance of good over evil in the
character of the whole series of their incarnations have passed through
the valley of the shadow of death in the middle of the fifth round, and
have worked their way up to it in the sixth and seventh rounds.
This sublimely
blessed state is spoken of in esoteric science as the threshold of
Nirvana.
Is it worth while to go any further in speculation as to what
follows? One may be told that no state of individual consciousness, even
though but a phase of feeling already identified in a large measure with
the general consciousness on that level of existence, can be equal in
spiritual elevation to absolute consciousness in which all sense of
individuality is merged in the whole. We may use such phrases as
intellectual counters, but for no ordinary mind dominated by its
physical brain and brain-born intellect can they have a living
signification.
All that words can convey is that Nirvana is a sublime state of
conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after all that has
gone before, to turn to the various discussions which have been carried
on by students of exoteric Buddhism as to whether Nirvana does or does
not mean annihilation. Worldly similes fall short of indicating the
feeling with which the graduates of esoteric science regard such a
question. Does the last penalty of the law mean the highest honor of the
peerage? Is a wooden spoon the emblem of the most illustrious
preeminence in learning? Such questions as these but faintly symbolize
the extravagance of the question whether Nirvana is held by Buddhism to
be equivalent to annihilation. And in some, to us inconceivable, way the
state of para-Nirvana is spoken of as immeasurably higher than that of
Nirvana. I do not pretend myself to attach any meaning to the statement,
but it may serve to show to what a very transcendental realm of thought
the subject belongs.
A great deal of confusion of mind respecting Nirvana has arisen from
statements made concerning Buddha. He is said to have attained Nirvana
while on earth; he is also said to have foregone Nirvana in order to
submit to renewed incarnations for the good of humanity. The two
statements are quite reconcilable. As a reat adept, Buddha
naturally attained to that which is the great achievement of adeptship
on earth, the passing of his own Ego-spirit into the ineffable
condition of Nirvana. Let it not be supposed that for any adept such a
passage is one that can be lightly undertaken. Only stray hints about
the nature of this great mystery have reached me, but putting these
together I believe I am right in saying that the
achievement in question is one which only some of the high initiates are
qualified to attempt, which exacts a total suspension of animation in
the body for periods of time compared to which the longest cataleptic
trances known to ordinary science are insignificant, the protection of
the physical frame from natural decay during this period by means which
the resources of occult science are strained to accomplish; and withal
it is a process involving a double risk to the continued earthly life of
the person who undertakes it. One of these risks is the doubt whether,
when once Nirvana is attained, the Ego will be willing to return. That
the return will be a terrible effort and sacrifice is certain, and will
only be prompted by the most devoted attachment on the part of the
spiritual traveler to the idea of duty in its purest abstraction. The
second great risk is that, allowing the sense of duty to predominate
over the temptation to stay, a temptation, be it remembered, that is
not weakened by the notion that any conceivable penalty can attach to
it, even then it is always doubtful whether the traveler will be able
to return. In spite of all this, however, there have been many other
adepts besides Buddha who have made the great passage, and for whom,
those about them at such times have said, the return to their prison of
ignoble flesh though so noble ex hypothesi compared to most
such tenements has left them paralyzed with depression for weeks. To
begin the weary round of physical life again, to stoop to earth after
having been in Nirvana, is too dreadful a collapse.
Buddhas renunciation was in some inexplicable manner greater,
again, because he not merely returned from Nirvana for dutys sake, to
finish the earth-life in which he was engaged as Gautama Buddha, but
when all the claims of duty had been fully satisfied, and his right of
passage into Nirvana, for incalculable eons entirely earned under the
most enlarged view of his earthly mission, he gave up that reward, or
rather postponed it for an indefinite period, to undertake a
supererogatory series of incarnations, for the sake of humanity at
large. How is humanity being benefited by this renunciation? it may be
asked. But the question can only be suggested in reality by that
deep-seated habit, we have most of us acquired, of estimating benefit by
a physical standard, and even in regard to this standard of taking very
short views of human affairs. No one will have followed me through the
foregoing chapter on the Progress of Humanity without perceiving what
kind of benefit it would be that Buddha would wish to confer on men.
That which is necessarily for him the great question in regard to
humanity is how to help as many people as possible across the great
critical period of the fifth round.
Until that time everything is a mere preparation for the
supreme struggle, in the estimation of an adept, all the more of a
Buddha. The material welfare of the existing generation is not even as
dust in the balance in such a calculation; the only thing of importance
at present is to cultivate those tendencies in mankind which may launch
as many Egos as possible upon such a Karmic path that the growth of
their spirituality in future births will be promoted. Certainly it is
the fixed conviction of esoteric teachers of the adept co-workers with
Buddha that the very process of cultivating such spirituality will
immensely reduce the sum of even transitory human sorrow. And the
happiness of mankind, even in any one generation only, is by no means a
matter on which esoteric science looks with indifference. So the
esoteric policy is not to be considered as something so hopelessly up in
the air that it will never concern any of us who are living now. But
there are seasons of good and bad harvest for wheat and barley, and so
also for the desired growth of spirituality amongst men; and in Europe,
at all events, going by the experience of former great races, at periods
of development corresponding to that of our own now, the great present
up-rush of intelligence in the direction of physical and material
progress is not likely to bring on a season of good harvests for
progress of the other kind. For the moment the best chance of doing good
in countries where the up-rush referred to is most marked is held to lie
in the possibility that the importance of spirituality may come to be
perceived by intellect, even in advance of being felt, if the attention
of that keen though unsympathetic tribunal can but be secured. Any
success in that direction to which these explanations may conduce will
justify the views of those but a minority among the esoteric
guardians of humanity who have conceived that it is worth while to have
them made.
So Nirvana is truly the keynote of esoteric Buddhism, as of the
hitherto rather misdirected studies of external scholars. The great end
of the whole stupendous evolution of humanity is to cultivate human
souls so that they shall be ultimately fit for that as yet inconceivable
condition. The great triumph of the present race of planetary spirits
who have reached that condition themselves will be to draw thither as
many more Egos as possible. We are far as yet from the era at which we
may be in serious danger of disqualifying ourselves definitively for
such progress, but it is not too soon even now to begin the great
process of qualification; all the more as the Karma, which will
propagate itself through successive lives in that direction, will carry
its own reward with it, so that an enlightened pursuit of our highest
interests in the very remote future will coincide with the pursuit of
our immediate welfare in the next Devachanic period, and the next
rebirth.
Will it be argued that if the cultivation of spirituality is the
great purpose to be followed, it matters little whether men pursue it
along one religious pathway or another? This is the mistake which, as
explained in a former chapter, Buddha as Sankaracharya set himself
especially to combat, namely, the early Hindu belief that moksha
can be attained by bhakti irrespective of gnyanam;
that is, that salvation is obtainable by devout practices irrespective
of knowledge of eternal truth. The sort of salvation we are talking
about now is not escape from a penalty, to be achieved by cajoling a
celestial potentate; it is a positive and not a negative achievement,
the ascent into regions of spiritual elevation so exalted that the
candidate aiming at them is claiming that which we ordinarily describe
as omniscience Surely it is plain, from the way Nature habitually works,
that under no circumstances will a time ever come when a person, merely
by reason of having been good, will suddenly become wise. The supreme
goodness and wisdom of the sixth-round man, who, once becoming
that, will assimilate by degrees the attributes of divinity itself, can
only be grown by degrees themselves; and goodness alone, associated as
we so often find it with the most grotesque religious beliefs, cannot
conduct a man to more than Devachanic periods of devout but
unintelligent rapture, and in the end, if similar conditions are
reproduced through many existences, to some painless extinction of
individuality at the great crisis.
It is by a steady pursuit of and desire for real spiritual truth,
not by an idle, however well-meaning acquiescence in the fashionable
dogmas of the nearest church, that men launch their souls into the
subjective state, prepared to imbibe real knowledge from the latent
omniscience of their own sixth principles, and to re-incarnate in due
time with impulses in the same direction. Nothing can produce more
disastrous effects on human progress as regards the destiny of
individuals than the very prevalent notion that one religion, followed
out in a pious spirit, is as good as another, and that if such and such
doctrines are perhaps absurd when you look into them, the great majority
of good people will never think of their absurdity, but will recite them
in a blamelessly devoted attitude of mind. One religion is by no means
as good as another, even if all were productive of equally blameless
lives. But I prefer to avoid all criticism of specific faiths, leaving
this volume a simple and inoffensive statement of the real inner
doctrines of the one great religion of the world which presenting as
it does in its external aspects a bloodless and innocent record has
thus been really productive of blameless lives throughout its whole
existence. Moreover, it would not be by a servile acceptance even of its
doctrines that the development of true spirituality is to be cultivated.
It is by the disposition to seek truth, to test and examine all which
presents itself as claiming belief, that the great result is to be
brought about. In the East, such a resolution in the highest degree
leads to chelaship, to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, by the
development of inner faculties by means of which it may be cognized with
certainty. In the West, the realm of intellect, as the world is mapped
out at present, truth unfortunately can only be pursued and hunted out
with the help of many words and much wrangling and disputation. But at
all events it may be hunted, and, if it is not finally captured, the
chase on the part of the hunters will have engendered instincts that
will propagate themselves and lead to results hereafter.
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