Annie Besant · 6

The third great fetter is Superstition; the belief that a particular rite or ceremony is necessary for the attainment of the result that by it is sought. He no longer needs the bridge which a ceremony is intended to be to those who cannot yet reach the higher worlds by their own power, by their own knowledge. He realises that the ceremonies of all the religions are equally useful for the adherents of each, [81] but that none are necessary for him. He knows he can no longer depend upon any ceremony; he depends only on the God within. Useful, beautiful, helpful, as they may be to those who have not passed the Portal, their value is over for him, for he sees unveiled the realities of the worlds which they can only symbolise, and to which they bridge the way.

When those three fetters are utterly cast aside, when they no longer have power to hold him back, then he has grown to young manhood, when he is ready to pass the second of the great Initiations. In the Christian drama it is called the Baptism. It is written that the Spirit of God came down upon Jesus, and abode with Him. That is the Christian form; the Spirit comes down, the Spirit of Intuition, and before he can go further, to the third Initiation, he must learn to bring it down, through his enlarged causal and mental bodies, to his physical consciousness, so that it may “abide on him”, and guide him.[2] Hence the Hindu calls him the Builder, the builder of the vehicles that he requires; the Buddhist: “He who shall receive birth, once more”, looking onwards to the goal towards which the aspirant is pressing.

After this Initiation, the man has not to get [82] rid of weaknesses but to add powers, all those superphysical powers which belong to the per­fection of the superphysical bodies the man has now to create in himself, in order that he may more perfectly serve; for that great spiritual world, the intuitional world, is being conquered step by step, and he must be ready to serve in that, as in the mental and the emotional worlds. During the time that he stays in this stage of his progress, he is perfecting all the bodies, building them for the great work in front.

Short, as a rule, is that stage. And then he approaches the third great Portal, that which in the Christian story is called that of Trans­figuration, among the Hindus the Swan, the bird of heaven, the symbol of the recognition of the ‘I’ as one with God. In that the manifest Deity shines out, illuminating for a moment the Path in front, which is to go down into the depths of suffering, which is to lead him through the valley of the shadow of death; for you may remember that in the Gospel drama the Transfiguration on the Mount of Olivet is immediately followed by the steadfast turning of the face to Jerusalem, to the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Calvary, the divine light shining on the darkness, that the human heart may be able to pass on, undaunted.

During the time which intervenes between the third and the fourth Initiations, two more weaknesses have to be got rid of for ever, attraction and repulsion to all outer things. [83] Attraction; you may see in the gospel allegory how the attraction was thrown aside of all that would hold the Christ back from the approach­ing Passion. And you may see how all repulsion had ended, when “the woman who was a sinner” was allowed to approach Him to bathe His feet with her tears, to wipe them with her hair; for attraction and repulsion for all external things must die before the last great trial comes, else would the road remain untrodden, else would the last ordeal be too great. And so the disciple learns in this stage to rise above attractions and repulsions, to cast them aside for ever; they no longer have power to touch him.

He prepares himself for the going to Jeru­salem, for the betrayal by one Apostle, the desertion by all, the loneliness in which the last great sufferings have to be faced; for between the third Initiation and the fourth there is that gulf of silence, where the disciple hangs alone in the void with nothing on earth to trust to, nothing in heaven to look to, no friend whose heart can be relied upon - nay, even the vision of the Supreme blurred and dimmed. It is symbolised by the Agony in the Garden, where the human heart cries out “If it be possible, let this cup pass away”, and still the human will arises, strong in renuncia­tion: “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done”.

Onward he passes through the stages of the Passion; sees his beloved flee; sees [84] himself betrayed, denied, rejected, until at last, upon the cross of agony, he is held up for all men to mock at, for all men to despise; sees at last no friend, but only a ring of enemies triumphant; hears the taunt: “He saved others; himself he cannot save” - the deepest truth of all; utters at last the cry of the break­ing heart: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and in that uttermost loneliness finds himself for evermore; losing the God without him, he finds the God within. For when the great darkness comes down, and nothing can be seen, then arises the light of the Spirit in the human heart, and then through the darkness are heard the final words of triumphant success: “It is finished”. Those are the words that ring out from the assembled hosts of Men made perfect and of Angels, when the great trial is over, and the agony of the cross is past.

Then the fourth great Initiation, that of the Arhat, the Paramahamsa - “He who is beyond the I am He,”[3] - is accomplished; he it is who has become the Christ crucified, and therefore the helper of the world; he has trodden the wine-press alone, and found in himself the strength divine to do it; he then awakens to the exquisite truth that loneliness for him is over for ever, for he has found the One Life and knows it evermore. He has [85] conquered; and the rest of the path is com­paratively smooth and easy.

After that fourth Initiation, the Passion, there remains only the Resurrection, the Ascen­sion, which is the Initiation of the Master. And in the hidden life which intervenes between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the last weaknesses of humanity have to be cast aside. No longer can he desire life in any world, for he is life, and all outer desire passes away; from him also disappears that sense of being in any way ‘I’; he is all, and all forms are equally his own. No longer can he be shaken, for what can shake the life that knows itself? All may go, but all had gone before, and he had not perished. He knows there is nothing that can touch him, nothing that can shake him; he has become invulnerable to every weapon that might wound. He has become as the diamond, which nought may cut nor break.

And so from his eyes fall away the last remnants of the veil of ignorance. From him pass the last remnants of weakness, and he lives for the rest of that life in which he has become the Arhat, free as the birds in the air, his path trackless, his motives not understood; but what matters that to him on whom the light eternal is ever brightly shining? He lives as part of a mighty Order, part of a mighty force; he knows his work, and does it, and knows that the end is sure. [86]

And so he works in this world and in other worlds - for now all worlds are open to him - ­having died to earth he has passed into Eternity, and the light is ever upon him, and the way is open. He only labours that others may share what he has gained, having won that most splendid of all rights, the right to help, whether the help be seen, or recognised, or not. What is that to him? He has risen to that point where all men are open to him, and he can pour down strength, help, know­ledge into all of them from that higher stand­point that now he has reached. And that it is to have become a Christ: to know the identity of nature which makes yours the weakness of the weakest, as well as the strength of the strongest; which makes yours the sin of the guiltiest, as well as the purity of the highest; which makes you share the foul­ness of the criminal, as well as the spotlessness of the saint. That is the true glory of Christ­hood, that the lowest is as loved as the highest, as much part of himself as the loftiest and the purest. For only those know the One Life, who can feel themselves in the worst as well as in the best, to whom all are as himself, all that he possesses theirs to take. [87]

THE CHRIST TRIUMPHANT

AND THE WORK OF THE HIERARCHY

THE long steep Path is trodden, and He who has climbed it, who has passed and assimilated all human experiences, He who has nothing more to learn in this world-system, who has faced the agony of isolation, who has passed for the last time through the gateway of death, He stands triumphant, with the door of the fifth great Initiation open before Him, great vistas of glory stretching beyond it. Nirvana, as it is called in the East, that all-embracing consciousness, that extinction of the lower self, and the full expansion of the Spirit, that stretches before Him, all-embracing, all-power­ful, and there break from His lips the triumphant words: “Lo, I am He who liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore”. Master of life and death, freed from every fetter that can bind, all power given to Him in heaven and in earth, He stands the Perfect Man, the cycle of humanity accomplished, the ideal of Divine Manhood fulfilled; in the [88] language of the East, He who is liberated; in that of the West, He who has attained final salvation. The one of whom it was said that the Christ was born in him has now attained the stature of the fulness of Christ. He stands among the many Brethren of whom the Christ is the Firstborn. He has “become a pillar in the temple of my God who shall go out no more”. You catch in Christian and in Hebrew Scriptures from time to time a glimpse of such mighty Figures, as you read in the Hebrew Old Testament of that mighty One who was met by the patriarch Abraham, of whom it was written: “Without father, without mother, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, made like unto the Son of God, He abideth a priest continually”. Such is the mighty triumph of the man who now has reached the Perfection of Humanity; the long past lies behind Him, with its struggles, its failures, its successes. He has been born for the last time; over Him death has no longer power; He has become one of the Masters of the Wisdom; He has gained eternal life.

And now there stretch before Him, having accomplished His pilgrimage, seven paths that lead him onwards in the great realms of super­human life, seven paths of glory and of power, of which all, save one, free Him for ever from the burden of human flesh. Into mightier realms, where matter is but the obedient servant of the Spirit, thither may He pass to [89] work in the vast universe in which He stands now as King and Priest, and as He stands gazing at those seven pathways, He sees but one that turns back to the earth that lies behind Him, where the burden of the flesh must still be borne, where the weight of physical matter must still encumber, one path that keeps Him still to labour in the world, while the other six stretch onward, far away from our earth.

As He stands there, across the exquisite music which surrounds Him there sounds a sob of pain, a wailing from the earth that lies behind. He hears the cry of humanity in bondage; He sees the gropings of the ignorant, the helpless, and the blind. He sees the suffering that He has transcended, the weakness that in Him has turned to strength, the helplessness that in Him has been crowned into power. His race has cast around Him the only fetters that still have power to bind the enfranchised, the liberated Spirit; they are the fetters of compassion; they are the bonds of love; the old sympathy for the humanity of which He is the flower; for those who still he in darkness and the shadow of death while Light Eternal is radiant around Him. And then He turns back­ward to the world that He had left. Then, instead of casting away the burden of the flesh, He takes it up and bears it still, in order that He may help mankind. The body which was the body of humiliation, and has become the glorified and spiritual body, He still is willing [90] to wear, that He may not lose close contact with the humanity that He loves. And so, holding the mighty consciousness that He has won, but bearing still the burden of the flesh, He remains in the world that He has the right to leave, in touch with the humanity that cries out to Him for help. And so He becomes what we call a Master, a liberated Spirit who still bears the burden of the flesh. He it is, and such as He, rising in grade beyond grade of superhuman wisdom and power - He and such as He form the Occult Hierarchy, which consists of the Guardians of the world. They it is who, remaining with us, remain to help, to guide, to strengthen, to uphold, so that humanity may not be without its Guides along the Path, may not be left to wander unhelped, unaided, in the difficult ways of human evolution.

He has become a Saviour of the world; He has gained the right and the power to help; for just as the sun pours down upon the world his light and life, as all life on earth is stimulated by his rays, as his warmth causes the seed to germinate, enables the plant to build up its substance, gives vigour and strength to the animal, and makes possible the life of man, so do these Suns of the spiritual firmament pour down upon earth Their strength, Their wisdom, cause to germinate all seeds of good in human kind, pour down life and strength that enable us to grow. They do not take our place; They cannot substitute Themselves for us; but by [91] identity of nature, by the height at which They stand above us, They can pour down Their life to stimulate our growth; and our weakness becomes strength by the stimulus of, Their power.

So They help the world, help it in ways that roughly now I will seek to outline for you. Three general ways there are in which the great life of the Hierarchy pours down upon mankind. From the great spiritual sphere Their light pours down in general benediction, like the light of the sun to which I likened it, illum­inating and blessing all. All of you may profit by that, just in proportion as you are receptive to it, just in proportion as you are able to open your hearts to it, to breathe it in like the atmosphere that surrounds you. For as the sun shines, and you may open your windows and let the sunshine flood your rooms, or you may bar it out with closed shutters so that it may not illuminate and bring life and health, so is it with this widespread blessing of the Masters’ life, which makes the spiritual atmosphere, which pours out as spiritual light. Open your windows and Their light shines in; it is beat­ing against the shutters; and you have only to throw them open, and your Spirit will be flooded with Their light and strength.

And then there are great organisations, great communities, religious communities, into which a special Master will pour down His blessing and His strength. Made as vessels to receive [92] the water of life, as mighty reservoirs to be filled in order that the water may be distributed, such are the great religions of the world; such these great spiritual vessels of many shapes, of many forms, but all containing the one spiritual water, for the quenching of the spiritual thirst of man. Into those organisations, drawn together for spiritual purposes, joined with the aim of spreading spiritual knowledge, a Master pours His life and inspiration, in order that they may distribute it to their adherents, so that they may give it to those within their pale. Hence the different religions of the world, with their different sacraments, or means of grace, adapted to the needs of the time for which they are given, to the temperament of the people on whom they are bestowed to shape and mould special civilisations, and so to guide and help the races and sub-races of men.

And in yet a third great way They help the thought of the world, sending out mighty thoughts of knowledge, of beauty, of inspiration, specially for those men and women of genius who have climbed to the point where they can be individually affected, and made, as it were, channels to the world at large; great thoughts of knowledge sent to the scientific genius; thoughts of beauty sent to the artist of genius; thoughts of patriotism and helpfulness to the statesman of genius; thoughts of mighty power to the literary genius, whether expressing him­self in prose or poesy. These are the blessings [93] sent out by the Masters of Wisdom for the helping and the raising of men; and never a great inspiration flashes into mind or heart, never some mighty thought illuminates a whole field of knowledge, never some exquisite form of beauty, whether for sound or vision, comes winging its glorious way into our earthly atmosphere but comes from that great Hierarchy that lives for the helping of man, ever plans new ways, works out new schemes, by which evolu­tion may be quickened, by which the race may climb. Some of these take as pupils and disciples - along the lines by which I have already led you - take as pupils and disciples those who are willing to tread the Path that They have trodden, so that the ranks of the great Hierarchy may never be depleted, so long as men need helping, so long as humanity is dwelling on our globe.

From that more general and individual helping let us turn to two great departments of human life, in which the work of the Hierarchy is most specially to be seen, and in which all who have eyes to see may trace it as they will. There are two great departments of human life in which especially help is needed - the Ruling Department, which guides all natural evolution, changes the face of the surface of our globe, builds and destroys continents, raises fresh races which grow mightier and pass away, controls the destinies of nations, shapes the fate of civilisations, balances up from time to time the [94] great accounts between the races and the nations, and rules the outer destinies of men. That mighty Ruling Department is one in which the Occult Hierarchy is ever at work, and there the Ideal Man - the Manu, as he is called in the East, the word being only the word from which our own ‘man’ is derived, the thinker - is the one who shapes and guides the activities of this Ruling Department, under the Supreme Head of the Hierarchy, the Lord of our world.

And then the Teaching Department, that from which all religions come which inspire and colour civilisations: at the head of that depart­ment, two grades above the grade of a Master, stands the Supreme Teacher, the Teacher of angels and of men, whom in the East they call the Wisdom, or Bodhisattva, whom in the West they call the Christ. His the duty of watching over the spiritual destinies of mankind; of guid­ing, blessing, maintaining the various religions of the world, founded in outline by Himself. His the duty of appointing one Master or another as the special Guide and Protector of a special religion, while His own benediction flows ever upon the whole of the living religions of the time. His the great duty of appearing from age to age to inspire a new religion, to strike a key­note, until all the notes shall have been struck that make up the great religious chord of our humanity, varied but all harmonious, giving out different tones but forming one mighty chord. [95]

Looking backwards over the past of our race, we see how he came from time to time, the Bodhisattva of the past, the Christ of the past, who gave the earlier religions to the great Aryan Race; who built up the fabric of Hinduism for the Aryan root-stock; who taught as Thoth in Egypt, later known as Hermes, the mighty Revealer; who came as Zoroaster to the great Persian Empire, thirty-one thousand years ago; who came as Orpheus to the Greeks, founding the Orphic Mysteries from which all other Mysteries in Greece were gradually successively derived; who spoke as the Sun in India, as Light in Egypt, as Fire in Persia, as the exquisite Beauty of Music and Sound in Greece; who gave to each great nation in turn its own religion, laid in each the foundation of the civilisation which that religion was to colour and to inspire; and who, then, having done His work, came forth for the last time in Hindustan, there to reach the Illumination of the Buddha, and with Buddhism closed the ancient cycle, and left to His Successor the opening of the new.

For when the World-Teacher has performed His task, when He has appeared over and over again to build in turn the great religions which it is His function to reveal, then when a great world-age is over, He comes for the last time, speaks His last word, reaches the final Illumina­tion, and passes away from earth. Thus in Buddhism that great cycle of antiquity found [96] its ending; in that great religion the last word of the ancient world was spoken, and He who had taught, He who had illuminated, the Christ of that elder world, He passed away, His work for humanity completed, His task accomplished, His Successor ready to take His place.

Then opened the new cycle, the new age of racial life. The old was closed, the new was to open, and with the fifth sub-race, the Teutonic sub-race that now is leading the nations of the earth, a new cycle was to open, and to it there came the new Bodhisattva, the new Christ, to be the builder of a yet greater civilisation. He came among the Jewish people to give out His message and to meet His destiny, to be rejected by His contemporaries, murdered by the people from whom He took His body. But none the less, out of the apparent failure there came a magnificent success; out of the apparent utter breakdown of the mission grew the tree which over­shadows Europe and America today.

Two notes He struck, both of vital import­ance, both marking the beginning of a new age, and the line which in due time that age would have to follow.

All the great civilisations of the past had been built on the family as unit. The man, it was declared in India, consists of the man, the wife, and the child. And so if you look back into all those old civilisations, you will see the individual as comparatively nothing, the family [97] the foundation of the State, and out of the families the State built up, and civic duty the mark of highest morality. In the new age the note that was struck was the note of the individual, not of the family, of the value of the individual, of the necessity of the building of the individual, the thought of the one human being standing alone for the time to learn strength and self-reliance. Out of that thought, with all that was necessary for its full evolution, with the clouding of the idea of reincarnation and the going forward with the loss of that to the idea of an everlasting heaven and an ever­lasting hell, out of that grew the overwhelming sense of the importance of the present life, of the value of the individual soul, which it was the first duty of Christianity to add to the thought of the world. It meant combat, strife, for a time chaos, well-nigh anarchy, but without that the future would have been impossible. Unless the stone was hewn out of the quarry, unless it was made to be alone for a time, hewn into form, shaped into the necessary appearance, polished; until that was done and the individual stones were ready, a great temple of the Brother­hood of Humanity could not possibly have been builded. Rough is the work of the chisel and the mallet, full of dust and confusion the clamour of the stoneyard; but out of the dust and the clamour, out of the blows and the chipping away, there comes the polished stones of strong individuals fit to be synthesised [98] into a building, fit to be put together to make a mighty Brotherhood; for you must build your Brothers before your Brotherhood can be made. And this past struggle of individualism was a necessary precedent for the building of a mightier and happier race.

And so through all that clash of individualism, through all that chaos of warring classes, men and women see that the Christ breathed another note, lost in the earlier years, but presently to become dominant and all-compelling. It was the teaching that He that is greatest is to be as he that doth serve, that strength accomplished is meant to be yoked to service, that the measure of power is the measure of duty, and that those that are highest should be the helpers of all. Through Christendom the note of self-sacrifice has breathed as it has breathed through none other of the great faiths of earth, and while at first you see the clash of the individuals, you see it is only a means to an end, the fitting of the individual to help. And so out of the teach­ing of the Christ and the opening of the new cycle there has grown up a civilisation battling and tumultuous, but yet m which a social con­science is being born, a realisation of human duty, a recognition of human responsibility. And when individualism has done its work, when it has worked out its inevitable destiny, then will come back the Teacher, to show how the stones are to be fitted together; He, the great Master Builder in humanity, He shall [99] again appear, to build up a new sub-race, to shape a universal religion. He literally shall not come to destroy but to fulfil, and to draw around Himself the many creeds of earth; for now the day is approaching when the words He spoke shall be fulfilled: “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice and shall follow me, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd”. And that shepherd shall be the mighty One, who is the Master of Masters, the Supreme Teacher, the Teacher of the world, who stands at the head of this Teaching Department of the Occult Hierarchy, who is the Head of all earth’s faiths, who loves and blesses and will unite them all.

But I said there was also a great Ruling Department, in which the Ideal Man stands out as guide. That has also its work going on amongst us, side by, side with the gentler, more hidden, more spiritual work of the Christ. Look over the story of man and see how, as you study it, it more and more unfolds the features of a mighty Plan, in which all the races and the sub-races and the nations of mankind have each their appropriate place, each its func­tion and its duty. Look back over history and see the mighty changes that have altered the surface of our globe. Remember how the great naturalists tell us of a time when the huge continent of Lemuria stretched where now the Pacific rolls. See how more and more science [100] is beginning to recognise that once Africa and America could be reached from each other dryshod, and that a vast continent spanned East and West where now is the Atlantic Ocean, and a mighty ruling race was there that spread its civilisation far and wide over the globe. See how with our own great Aryan race both these continents have vanished, and the surface of earth and water redistributed makes the habitat for the ruling race of the time. Glance onwards and see the signs of the building again of a coming continent, of islands thrown up in the vast Pacific, of extra­ordinary volcanic activity busy shaping the foundations of a new continent on which humanity shall live and flourish, when much of our own has been broken up, shall have disappeared. Realise that that changing surface of land and water goes side by side with the building up of different types of humanity; that the Lemurian continent had its own type of which the negro is a mixed remnant today; that Atlantis had also its race, the fourth, of which you can find traces in the North American Indians, traces in the old Egyptians, myriads in China and Japan, for the fourth race is still the most numerous upon earth. And then see your own type arising, the great fifth race type, the Aryan, spreading over the whole of the habitable world, divided into its various sub-races, each distinguishable enough when pure, as you can distinguish the Kelt from the Teuton, the Latin [101] from the Scandinavian. See how that race is spreading and growing, how it is dominating and ruling, how it is colonising and building a mighty Empire. Look onwards for some hundreds of years, and you will see that race rising to its summit, building a mighty World­-Empire greater than the past has known, into which shall flow all the power and the glory of the nations, in which shall be incarnate that wondrous group of mighty intellects, that now and again comes out into the world to a race when it reaches its zenith, to be incarnated in the future as in the past in that wondrous triumph of the great Teutonic sub-race. See how it holds the West, how it is gripping the East; realise that all the spreading has a purpose, and that behind it stands its Manu, guiding and shaping the mighty Empire which yet shall be. Realise that all wars and all con­quests have a purpose, that when a nation invades another, oversweeps it, dominates it for a time, that at that period the nation that is conquered profits, as well as the conqueror who learns his lesson. When the Greeks conquered part of India they brought with them their Art, and left deep imprinted on the Art of India the mark of Greece the all-beautiful. When from Central Asia there swept down into India the mighty flood of the Mughals, that developed another form of Art and enriched the country that they conquered. All these con­quests of East by West and West by East work [102] into the mighty Plan, and spread abroad through the nations the treasures that otherwise would be enclosed within the limits of a single country.

Open your eyes to wider horizons; see the mightier, larger Plan; realise that a nation is separated to build up something of value to humanity, and then is spread abroad and scattered that it may carry everywhere that which within its own boundary it made. These wars and conquests, these struggles of nation against nation, of race against race, they all have their place in the mighty Plan; they are guided by the Manu, who knows exactly what is wanted for each, and makes the wondrous mingling by which humanity grows. Look back, if you will, to the last great struggle that took place in the East between Russia and Japan, and you will see behind those warring armies that two mighty ideals were at grips with each other. Eastern ideals were losing their influence too rapidly; eastern thought was not sufficiently respected. And because the balance which has swung up and down so often between East and West had long been on the side of the West, therefore were East and West flung against each other in those terrible battlefields of Asia, and an eastern nation came out as conqueror for a time, not for itself, but for humanity, that some of the great eastern ideals might not be lost for the world. And so we realise that wherever there is struggle, there the Manu is guiding; that wherever there is [103] turmoil, there the strong hand of the Lord of Men is shaping the future. Oh, it would seem terrible to you if you saw, coming down from some vast mountain side, the glacier ploughing its way, or the river bursting over all obstacles and spreading flood and destruction in a valley, and blotting out human and animal life. But come back centuries later; visit it again when a thousand years have rolled by, and the same valley ploughed by the glacier is glorious with flowers, golden with corn; the children are playing there, and man is happy. Destruction only means rebuilding; death only means new life. Humanity through many trials wins to mightier stature, and the Hierarchy plans and guides for the uplifting of all at last.